Prologue with Señoritas

I’ve always been a lucky son-of-a-bitch. 

Ask anybody. 

For instance, they paid me eight-and-a-half thousand dollars to write this prologue, and I haven’t even finished reading the manuscript I’m supposed to write the prologue for.

Wouldn’t you say that was lucky? 

Or at least admit that I’m a son-of-a-bitch?

My publisher finally tracked me down at El Gato in Madrid. “Where’s that prologue?” she demanded over the phone. “And keep it under five-hundred words this time.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I replied sarcastically, trying not to let her hear me laughing with glee.

“Who’s that with you?” asked my publisher, somewhat annoyed. She thought I should always be writing, not enjoying myself in some tapas bar with the señoritas.

I covered the mouthpiece with my hand. “Shhh, she can hear you,” I said to Glee and the others. “Stop that! Please girls! I’ll be with you in a minute. Order me another Mahou and some croquetas, will you?” 

“Is that your wife?” asked another, reaching for the phone. “Let me talk to her.”

“He’s married?” asked a third. “He sure doesn’t act like it.”

“Shhhh,” I hissed at them. “Quiet girls, please!” 

“There’s nobody here with me,” I lied into the mouthpiece. “I’m writing.”

With any luck, of which I have plenty, I’ll knock this prologue out by siesta time, I thought. Then maybe go uptown, get a bite to eat. I know a great little place just off the Calle de Alcala.

“I need it by Friday,” said my publisher. 

“What’s the hurry?” I asked. “It’s just an autobiography by a broken-down old animator, isn’t it? How interesting could that be?”

“The Company thinks it has great potential,” she answered.

“He named it Hold the Beetroot, for fuck’s sake,” I said. “What does that even mean?”

“Remember, Rusty. By Friday please.”

“We’ll see,” I said. “Bye.”

“Don’t you hang up on me!”

“Eureka!” I answered. “Inspiration has just struck! Gotta go.” 

“Inspiration my ass! Listen, you no-good, lazy …”

I hung up.

Turning to the girls, I said, “Sorry ladies, I’ve got to get to work. Why don’t you meet me at La Paloma tonight about ten o’clock. Okay?”

The girls picked up their things and left, calling me a few choice names in Spanish.

That was okay. Luckily, I don’t speak Spanish very well, so I couldn’t be too offended.

The beer and croquetas arrived.

I picked up the manuscript and began to read…

Prologue to the 11th Re-Write

Being a writer isn’t easy.

Some writers work and struggle all their lives for their art, yet never find what you or I would call ‘success.’

Not me though.

I found mine on the backseat of a NYC taxi in 2007. 

Almost sat on it. 

It lay on the backseat, gleaming in the watery light which filtered through the taxi’s windows. 

A typewritten manuscript. 

“Where to, Mack?” asked the taxi driver.

“Lafayette and Bleeker,” I answered.

The driver grunted and put the car into gear.

As the taxi began moving I picked up the manuscript beside me. It bore no title. No author’s name or address anywhere on it, either. It was dogeared and well thumbed, with notes scribbled on the margins in soft blue pencil.

Over 500 pages. 

I hefted it. 

Heavy… with promise?

I turned down the volume in my earbuds and leaned forward. Dylan’s wail reduced to a whisper in my ears. 

“Hey!” I said to the driver through the thick plastic barrier that separated us, “This yours?”

“Huh?” he replied.

“You a writer?” I asked, raising my voice to get through the plastic and lifting up the manuscript for him to see in his rearview mirror. “You write this?”

His eyes in the mirror shifted to meet mine. Without turning around, he barked, “Do I look like a fucking writer, Mack?” 

I couldn’t see all of him from where I was in the backseat. Just his shoulders and the back of his head and of course, his eyes in the mirror. He had crazy eyes, wild yet fiercely focused, but every taxi driver in NYC had those. 

Occupational hazard, probably. 

He grunted again and his eyes in the mirror returned to the road ahead.

No, he didn’t look like a writer. From the back, with his pointy little head atop massive sloping shoulders, he looked more like an axe murderer. Especially with those eyes of his. But I couldn’t be sure, never having met one that I know of. This was New York City, though, where I lived on and off for twenty years, I could’ve met any number of axe murderers by now and not known it. 

New York City.

What a town!

Hell, I thought, I should write a book about it.

But that was my problem. 

I couldn’t write a book about anything.

I was a writer who couldn’t write.

Writer’s block, fear of failure, creative incompetence, call it what you will. It was that and more. As an author I’d spent my entire career farting around on the edges, never unleashing the artistic greatness I was sure was within me.

“You’ve got to shit or get off the pot!” my ex-wife used to say, for she considered my problem to be one of commitment. 

My lack of it.

Or was it that I ought to be committed?

It doesn’t matter now, she’s finally happy. She got tired of waiting for this great defecation of mine she so strongly urged, and soon after left to join the circus as a bareback rider and part-time fortuneteller (two occupations she was by nature ideally suited for), eventually becoming the mistress of The Great Scarletti.

He was the lion tamer.

He’ll need to be, I thought at the time.

But that was long ago.

We’ve all passed a lot of water under the bridge since then.

Now I’d found an abandoned, unpublished book.

I stared out the taxi’s window into the wet afternoon, wondering who had left the manuscript behind. And when? Only moments ago? And why no title? Who was the author? What was their story? Did they think so little of their work that they left it on the seat of a NYC taxicab?

To be found by me, a writer who’d give his soul for a good story.

Ha! Ha! How the gods love a laugh!

Outside, it was the usual afternoon traffic jam on Seventh Ave, compounded by the icy rain. We were going nowhere fast, so instead of telling the driver I’ve found something back here, and hearing him croak “Whadaya fucking want me to do about it, Mack?” I thought I’d just read a few pages of the thing and leave the driver to his driving.

I’d tell him about it later, when we arrived at Bleeker and Lafayette.

Besides, my curiosity was killing me.

So I started to read. 

It was a novel about a boy. 

There wasn’t anything remarkable about this boy. No great heritage or lofty ancestry. No display of childhood genius. Nothing to foretell of his accomplishments to come, if any. He was just a daydreaming kid from California who liked to draw. 

And then, just before his fifteenth birthday, he and his family moved to New Zealand. 

The other side of the world.

“Lafayette and Bleeker!”

“Huh?” 

“Lafayette and Bleeker. That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it?”

I looked up from the manuscript. 

“This side of the street okay?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I replied. “Thanks. What do I owe you?”

“Eight and a half bucks, Mack.”

I gave him a ten and took the manuscript with me.

Brief Interruption

“Ding dong.”

“There’s the bloody doorbell,”  I muttered to myself. “Hell!”

I tapped command S on the keyboard and got up to see who was at the door.

“Hi,” said a young man when I opened it. “Ah, yeah. Hi. I was admiring your garden. Well, really my wife was admiring it… and she asked me to to ask you…what was that tree over there in the corner? The big pink one?”

“Oh,” I said, stepping outside. I was wearing my usual winter writing attire. Worn-out hoodie, faded T-shirt, flannel pajama bottoms and fuzzy slippers. The slippers were a Christmas gift from my wife, who I still believe loves me in spite of the slippers. They are truly hideous, but they are warm and comfy. I like to be warm and comfy when I write, or at least my feet do. 

I politely looked to where he was pointing, although I knew without looking which tree he meant. “That’s a Tabebuia tree,” I said.

“A what?” he asked. 

“A Tabebuia tree,” I repeated. He doesn’t look like a gardener, I thought to myself. Not that they have a definite look. Anyone can be a gardener. All around the world, anywhere you go, people tend to gardens. From paupers to kings. But he doesn’t seem to fit the mould. He’s in his mid-thirties, wearing a Yankees baseball cap (backwards), closely trimmed beard, sunglasses and sports clothes.

“Let me write it down for you,“ I offered. 

“Thanks,” he said. Over his shoulder I saw an Audi parked at the curb, with a large dog half hanging out the passenger window, its attention unwavering from its master in the Yankees cap. 

“Sure, no problem,” I replied. “Would you like to see the rest of the garden?”

“Uh, no, not really. I’m late for the links. Golf’s my thing, and I’ve got to drop my dog off at the vet first. Dixie’s her name.”

“Dixie’s your dog’s name?” I asked.

“No,” he answered. 

“Dixie’s your vet’s name, then?” I asked.

“No,” he answered.

“Your wife’s?” I wondered.

“Right,” he answered. “She’s into gardening and wondered what that tree was.”

“The vet?” I asked.

“No,” he answered.

“Your dog?” I asked.

“No.”

“Your wife?” I said.

“Right,” he laughed.

Then I remembered it was Saturday. Probably his day off, and here he was wasting it talking with me. How nice to be a writer, I mused, and work whenever I wanted to, and not work whenever I didn’t want to. 

I hardly realize what day it is anymore. 

Ha! Ha! Some people have been saying that about me for years!

“Yeah,” I agreed. “My wife too. 

“Your wife’s name is Dixie too?” he asked incredulously.

“No!” I laughed. “My wife’s name is Saucy Boy. She’s very proud of her garden and enjoys working in it too, like Dixie does.” 

That was true, her nickname is Saucy Boy and she is an avid gardener. Our garden had even won ‘Yard of the Month’ in the neighborhood more than once, and, like today, complete strangers sometimes knocked on the door to ask what was this plant or that shrub in the front yard.

“Your wife’s name is Saucy Boy?” he asked.

“Uh-huh,” I nodded. “She got that name because she’s saucy, not because she’s a boy.”

Yes, I thought, my wife is saucy. And she loves to work in the garden. It’s one of her favorite things to do. She is curious about life and nature, and takes delight in beauty. I like to work in the garden, too. We have a very nice suburban tropical garden, with many palm trees and some interesting bamboos. The private garden in the back is colorful and cozy and contemplative. 

Over the years my wife and I together have made our garden what it is, achieving more as a team than we ever could as individuals. Sharing the joy of work and the satisfaction of a job well done. And maybe sometimes, as happens when you’re married, disagreeing about what to plant where or when to water it or even why the heck one bothers trying to get along with you in the first place in this blasted Florida heat and humidity!

“Be right back,” I said. I left him there and went to fetch a pencil and paper.

He turned towards the Audi. “Just be a minute girl!” he called to the dog. 

I presume he called to the dog. He’d be pretty stupid if he’d called that out to the car, now wouldn’t he?

“Here ya go,” I said when I returned. I handed him a piece of paper with the name of the tree written on it.

“Well …nice garden,” he said. “Thanks for the info. Dixie’ll love it! See ya.” 

We shook hands, then he turned and walked down the path, pausing to glance at the Tabebuia tree.

His dog was happy at his return, excitedly welcoming him into the car. 

I watched him start his car and drive it to the end of the cul-de-sac, turn around and drive past the house. I like cars and sometimes watching them is a pleasure. As he passed me he waved his thanks. 

I waved back, closed the front door and started towards my office.

Fried Potatoes With Ketchup

I’m not sure this is such a good idea. 

I told my publisher that I was tired of writing about the fighting I do with my wife, and that I feared asking my readers to go with me into these unpleasant matrimonial circumstances week after week. 

No matter how funny they were. 

You know me, my readers come first!

“Haven’t I already gone over that stuff?” I whined. “I’ve had enough!”

I may have mentioned that I often end up whining when I meet my publisher.

I was in my publisher’s corner office on the sixty-second floor overlooking the park, sitting in one of the oversized leather chairs reserved for guests. “After all,” I said, giving her the same excuse I just gave you, “My readers come first.” 

She wasn’t falling for it either. 

My publisher looked back at me from across her opulent desk with a patient smile, as if I were a pet dog who had just amusingly crapped on the front lawn. The perfectly manicured front lawn, I should add, knowing my publisher.

“You know how writing about my marriage upsets me,” I added. I squirmed in the chair and put a look of earnest piety upon my face (much easier to do on paper than in real life, believe me) and said, with all the conviction I could muster, “I needed three Bloody Marys just to sit down and face the keyboard this morning.”

If you’ve been keeping up with my blogs so far, then you can imagine what she said to that! If you haven’t been keeping up, or, even worse, you have no imagination, then I’ll tell what she said to that.

“You ungrateful little bastard,” was what she said to that. She laughed as she said it, too. 

She wore a perfectly fitted, dark gray business suit over a simple cream-colored silk blouse. Her blonde hair was pulled back and coiled into a tight bun. Not a hair was out of place. Her makeup and nails were flawless. 

There was not one speck of dust in her office, either. Never was.

Nothing was ever out of place in her office.

Except me. I always felt out of place in her office. 

“It was me,” she said, “who first gave you a chance, remember? You were nothing. Unpublished. Unwanted. Unwashed. You were less than nothing really. You were all like, ‘Please, please, please! I want to be a great writer!’ Remember? What a load of crap!”

She laughed again, with more heartiness this time. My publisher has a charming, musical laugh that gaily fills the air, yet somehow at the same time stabs at my artist’s heart.

“Actually,” I replied. “That was your predecessor. It was him who gave me my first shot at the big time. He died right here in this building. Just keeled over during his coffee break! That was just after you started here.”

“Big time!” she snorted derisively. “Your books only sell because we put a huge international marketing campaign behind them. Yes, the Company spends billions shoveling your unique brand of shit. And we expect to make a solid profit, don’t forget that.”

I squirmed in my seat and made a mental note not to forget. Billions shoveling shit. Got it. 

She hates it when I forget.

“You see,” she said, as if speaking to a child, “people will buy anything if you wrap it up beautifully and sell it ever so carefully.” She smiled and added, “As long as they don’t have to get their fat asses off the couch.”

She is one of the city’s most successful publishers, so I suppose I’m lucky to be working with her, but sometimes I have my doubts. She often told me I was her favorite author, but she probably told all of her authors the same thing. 

Without a doubt, though, she liked to lecture me, and she enjoyed it whenever she got the chance. She did it all the time, lectured me, as she saw it the ignorant, naive artist, about the cold, hard facts of the big, nasty world.

The world she had on a string tied to her finger.

“Remember sweetie,” she cooed, “you’d be nothing without me. You’d be back living in your broken down Buick, a burned-out bum hustling in cheap porno flicks for a greasy burger and a dime-bag. Or pressure-washing the turds from sleazy motel swimming pools in Central Florida at twenty-five bucks a throw.”

“How’d you know about that?” I asked before I could stop myself.

“We know everything,” she answered breezily. “About everybody. And what we don’t know, we invent. Remember, the Company hates to lose.”

“Why would the Company hate Toulouse?” I asked, attempting a little levity and wishing I could trade my coffee for a Bloody Mary. The coffee tasted odd today. 

“Don’t you think it’s a little late for you to pretend you didn’t know that?” she said. 

“What? That the Company hates Toulouse? This is the first I’ve heard of it! Has anybody informed Toulouse?”

“Please don’t try that corny hash on me,” she replied,  and unbidden to my mind came a vision of her completely naked, smothered in corned beef hash, with some fried potatoes covered in ketchup on the side. I saw in this vision a banquet table topped with silver racks filled with golden buttered toast. Platters heaped with exotic French pastries, bowls of fresh fruit from the Tropics. Pancakes and waffles stood piled high and dripping with maple syrup. There was coffee and tea and orange juice and champagne on the table, too.

Oh, why hadn’t I eaten breakfast at the hotel, I chided myself, instead of downing those four extra-spicy Bloody Marys?

She leaned back in her swanky leather chair and brought her fingertips slowly together in front of her chin. She stared at me for a moment. 

She is very beautiful, my publisher, in a perfect, cold, sanitized kind of way. Myself, I find it eerie, rather than attractive. Like she’d just stepped out of a Vogue photo shoot or a movie set and was more Hollywood special effects than a real person. Not that I mind Hollywood special effects or beautiful women, certainly not, but she was just too perfect, in my opinion, to be completely, convincingly real, and without realness what have you got? 

Perhaps, with me, attraction is a matter of temperature as well, for she is a cool one, my publisher. 

Of course, the vision of her naked and covered in breakfast was triggered by hunger pains and my writer’s imagination exceeding the speed limit, nothing more. 

It happens all the time to us writers. 

You’d be surprised by who I’ve imagined naked and covered in food.

My publisher looked at me a minute longer with her perfect blue-gray eyes, which were slightly out of focus as if lost in thought. She seemed to make up her mind about something. Then she allowed herself to display a very self-satisfied Cheshire cat kind of smile.

“Have some more coffee,” she urged sweetly, “it’s fresh from the cafeteria.”

Hundreds of Chimpanzees

I had a particularly disagreeable conversation with my publisher last night. 

The Company wants me to deliver my next book in time for Christmas.

“Christmas?” I whined, “that’s six months ahead of schedule!” 

I always end up whining when I talk with my publisher. That, or crying.

“So what?” she said. “We need it by then, it’s as simple as that. If you must know the writer whose book was supposed to go out for Christmas shot himself yesterday…”

“What?” I interupted. “Shot himself? Who?”

“… and we need a replacement in a hurry. Never mind who it was. It was nobody you knew.” 

That was probably true. They keep us writers apart as much as possible, to stop us getting together and plotting for better conditions or more money. I made a mental note to check later for writer obituaries on the internet.

“The Company expects you to step up and earn all that money they pay you, Mr Pliers.”

She didn’t usually call me Mr anything. That made me suspicious.

“What money?” I asked. “I haven’t been paid for my last book yet!”

“That’s a matter for the courts to decide,” she reminded me agreeably.

I mumbled something nasty about lawyers under my breath.

“I wish you’d learn to write a better first draft,” she complained. “We can hardly make any sense of it out here!” Rewrites on my latest manuscript go poorly, she added, and the pressure’s on her to show immediate improvement.

The Company doesn’t tolerate failure of any kind, she reminded me.

“That’s not my problem,” I answered agreeably. “Besides, now’s your chance to step up and earn all that money the Company’s paying you.”

She laughed and it was like acid pouring into my ears.

“Touché,” she said softly.

According to Company financial analyzers, after the first draft I as a writer am not fiscally viable, being too slow, so the Company doesn’t allow me to rewrite my own material anymore, preferring instead for me to get on with the next book while they trust rewriting to cost-effective interning teenage ghostwriters, and the eggheads downstairs who are trying to come up with a computer program to replace me. 

That, and the remote possibility that one of the hundreds of chimpanzees they have locked in the basement with Apple computers will actually come up with a novel worthy of Rusty Pliers. 

Ha! That’s a laugh! 

So far, all those damned monkeys have come up with is a couple of short stories slightly reminiscent of Haruki Murakami.

“Maybe the Company should hire better rewrite people,” I suggested. “Or smarter chimps.”

That only made her angry. She started to tear me a new one.

So I hung up on her. 

This is no time for listening to her insults, I figured. I’ve got to get back to work. 

I’ve got a lot to do if I’m going to finish my first draft in time for Christmas.