Asimov's SF, October-November 2011 (17 page)

She snarled at Davy. “And no fraternizing with outsiders either, under pain.” She didn't say on pain of what. “And you. You keep to the path when you go to your individual studios in the woods and you stay there until the dinner bell. Don't even think about leaving the grounds. If you're caught trying, you're out, and believe me, the ride away from Strickfield is not pleasant. And whatever you do, never
ever
go down to the lake."

"Not even to swim?"

"No! Read this sheet carefully, memorize it and keep it on your person at all times, because you must never forget even one of these important rules. Your room is on four, it's 13A—take the rear stairwell; it's down that hall. And remember, you don't interface with the others until the banquet. Cocktails at six. Now go."

Davy and I stood there blinking, like,
Whatever happened to hello?
He dragged my stuff inside in spite of her, while I studied the portrait of Dame Hilda above the fireplace and wished to hell she hadn't died. See, Dame Hilda did all the intake interviews, and Davy looks like that portrait of her son. They say she was a sucker for cute guys, although they also say if you happened to be one and she asked you up for coffee in the Morning Room,
watch out
.

Now it's this Miss Nedobity in her don't-fuck-with-me diamonds and black polyester dress, and she could care less that Davy and I are in love. She A-
hem
med until we kissed goodbye, and ripped us asunder so fast that I heard the pop and slammed the door on him. So I had to lug all my stuff up four flights because Strickfield rejects don't get past the foyer, Or Else.

The Or Else is spelled out in very small print. There are outdoor strobes and sirens so don't even think about sneaking out, and if your boyfriend or girlfriend makes it over the razor wire . . . Well, there are Dobermans. Like they're scared one of us will be caught having sex with, shudder, an
outsider
, although they don't spell out which of us does what with which others after the gates clang shut.

You read books about Strickfield's famous writers and their famous affairs, but is it, like, mandatory or optional? Miss Nedobity's poop sheet doesn't say. So, is one of the elimination rounds about the sex? Wait. Do you win if you have a lot of it and I should find someone—or if you don't have it at all?

There's a lot I don't understand, like the weirdness I keep hearing overhead, or the hastily scrawled note on my door.

Results may be affected or determined by Outside Event.

Outside Event? Affected or determined? Just tell me. Which is it? Is Strickfield really about art for art's sake or is it something I didn't know about?

Dear Davy, This place is big and creepy and I miss you already.

Department of conjecture:

1. Writers’ colony as first rung on the ladder to success, in which case I'm lucky I'm here. Note to self: What makes you so sure?

2. Writers’ colony as penal colony like in Kafka, and we get tortured if we don't produce?

3. Writers’ colony as Olympics, with elimination rounds based on number of pages we crank out?

4. Writers’ colony as pressure cooker of human emotions.

a. Unexpected love affairs and concomitant infidelity.

b. Artistic meltdowns.

c. Jealousy and petty quarrels.

d. Food fights.

e. Potential violence sparked by honest opinions of rival's work.

5. Writers’ colony as test match, the prize goes to the best? Note to self: What is best?

6. Writers’ colony as narrative petri dish, as in: You may wonder why I have gathered you together here.

Which?

None of the above?

All of the above?

Will I go home changed?

Will I go home at all?

—Oh, I know, I know how to start my book!

Now that she was at the destination she'd struggled all her life to reach, lovely Dahlia Eastwood shuddered,
thinking: Something is not right.
As she approached the manor, the outline of the monumental heap shifted slightly, as though without the occupants knowing it, something profound had changed. From somewhere within came a sound that might have been taken for a prodigious groan, as though the entity inside knew how beautiful she was, and that she had come here alone. The most frightening thing about it was that although she was afraid, she was not surprised.

I'm sorry, I got distracted. I was thinking about my, um, novel, which I'm writing this summer, right? Um, right?

Look. I have to go do wardrobe and makeup for the Opening Night Banquet, first impressions are so important. So, if you're actually shooting this and it isn't just a surveillcam, are we graded more on promptness or more on our personal look? Charm or number of words produced? Do I have to sell a whole novel to win, or what?

Look. Why don't you just tell me? Like, is the winner the first one to make it to the top?

Or the last one still standing at the end?

The faces you meet are false faces we put on to meet you, and it isn't just me wearing an expression that's not my own. What the twenty of us are doing and what you think we're doing aren't the same
.

Smile, girl. Put on your Swarovski chandeliers and crystal flash drive and go down and show yourself to the people. And suss them out.

Behold Cynthia LaMott on the grand staircase at Strickfield, beholding all the other wannabes milling outside the sliding doors to the Great Hall. Down I go in my simple, drop-dead little black dress. I put on Davy's crystals to signify that not only am I better than the others, I am also different, although how I can make this dress look new and exciting every single night . . .

The people I have to beat are milling around down there in the foyer, talking and laughing like they belong, and! The clothes! Did every single woman bring designer dresses but me? I should be draining my debit card at Nordstrom's Rack right now, because every single one of them is dressed to kill or maim.

To tell the truth, that foyer is a lot like the mezzanine at Nordstrom's, with a pianist tinkling while people you'd kill to get friends with mingle in evening clothes.

You see the outfit. The smile, and nothing of the engine that drives me, not even a hint of what's going on underneath the hood. While we scope each other I'm considering:

Is this a death match?

Dog show, with prizes for looks and grooming?

Arena, where we're matched like gladiators?

Coliseum, with lions TK?

Or is this really only about words?

It's too soon to tell
.

Idea:

In the grand foyer all but one of the gifted, chosen ten fluttered like trapped pigeons, plucking at each other with anxious fingers. Maribel ran among them, asking, “Where's Brad?” Here for less than a week, and she and Brad Fairchild are lovers, separated since lunch with no hint of where he went. Frantic, she starts the others buzzing, “Has anyone seen Brad?” They were already uneasy, ten strangers summoned to the dismal mansion for a reason, here because of Aunt Matilda's mysterious note.

The day was ending like all the others, until the rhinoceros housekeeper shrieked, “Stay out of the library. Something terrible has happened."

They were no longer ten.

Dear Davy, If only you'd seen me tonight, sexy and dressed to kill.

Okay booth, I'm not supposed to be here, but if I don't tell
somebody,
I'll explode. One night at Strickfield and the pressure is intense. Standing right there on the stairwell, I started my watch list, and five hours later, it's only half done.

People to watch out for:

Edwine Evergood, with her sweet pre-Raphaelite smile and a bunch of stories I totally don't get, in spite of which she's
actually
published
, but it's a very small press. Wardrobe A+, potential hard to measure because her stuff is obscure but she already has a book. Is
obscure
a good thing and I should try it? Yuck!

Fred Fisher, he has a story under consideration at
The New Yorker
and he got his hunting memoir into
Esquire;
looks like a lumberjack even in black tie; either too nice or totally confused.
Confused is good, but: Watch out for too nice.
I could never write like Fred. Every page drips testosterone.

And then there's The Great Profile. Suave. Way too suave. Sleek Mark Armitage is older, but not so old that it's creepy; head of some big-time ad agency and, wow, he got an MFA from Columbia nights, and wrote
Trash
in his spare time, slick but arty, already on the AWP short list. Plus, he's too short to be trusted, it's hard to explain. Stingray cowboy boots with the tux and he looks, I don't know. Relentless. Like he could knock you down and walk right over you.

Serena Soleil. I don't care what she writes, she's tall and silky and so gorgeous that you'd just as soon she died.

By dinnertime I'd made some contacts, although it's hard to figure out who matters here. I picked this old guy Cecil to eat with because he's friendly, and too creaky to be a threat, like IBM gave him the gold watch so with nothing to do, he might as well write a book. Well, good luck with that. Unlike certain others who shall remain nameless I'm strong and the youngest if you don't count Alvin Gelb, who is, face it, fourteen and easily confused, which means that whatever it takes, I can beat him out.

I kind of have to. The kid's on the bestseller list.

Cecil says Andover let Alvin out before exams for this, probably because his father is Ted Gelb. He's here in a hand tailored Armani tux, thanks to his famous dad. I bet that's how he got published in the first place and I know it got him on that bestseller list; I mean, whose newspaper is it, anyway? He comes on all cute and preppy but if you ask me, the kid is shifty and way too smart to be nice.

Dear Davy, I wish I was at our place, where I can work!

Explain to me please how being thrown together with others, everybody out for the same thing, can help me get good enough at what I do to matter in the world. I work at home! Alone, so how? Contacts, maybe. A big plus on my resume, that's for sure, but in terms of free time and limiting distractions, a month in Solitary with no visitors and no Internet, no phone and no TV would be a lot less distracting. What does sorting out this jumbled mess inside my head have to do with anything we say to each other in this big, intimidating place?

At dinner Dame Hilda's fat nephew Leslie gave the opening speech—Cecil says it's sad that poor Ralph wasn't here to cut the cake, terrible about what happened to him, whatever it was.

This Leslie used to come to Cecil's birthdays when they were little, but he cried and went home before the cake. Miss Nedobity cut this one; it was bitter, like her. Every year bakers replicate the castle with all its turrets and crenelations, plus marzipan chimneys and slate roofs paved in chocolate. If I sleep on my cake will I have nightmares or can I dream this novel and win?

We toasted Dame Hilda with pink champagne and everybody got a little drunk. Then Aline Armantout, who gushes like a game show host, led us down to the Garden of Forking Paths and turned us loose to find our studios in the woods. After breakfast tomorrow that's where we go. Lunch comes in a basket under a checkered napkin, no fraternizing, and don't even think about coming back to the big house before six. They want us to lock ourselves in and think Big Thoughts.

Turns out, if you can't find your studio you're out, so this really is a contest and that was the first event.

Poor Cecil. I guess I should have picked a friend with more staying power. He got lost in the woods and we never saw him again. I don't know what they did to him, but Aline says he gave a sweet exit interview in the Confessional and the world will see it when this show finally airs. OMG, we're on a show! We didn't ask her where Cecil went, and she didn't say. It's not like we had a tribal council and everybody got to vote. Aline and Leslie call the shots.

But, hey. Win and it's the Strickfield Wall of Fame! They carve your name into the marble and you get famous, like every winner since this place started. The future is ahead, but what about Davy?

I don't get to see him again until I win or I lose and they kick me out of the colony, and this is what scares me. Right now I don't know which would be worse. What do I have to do to win this?

Meanwhile I hear eerie noises in the attic every night. Unless it's my imagination.

We're all here because of our vivid imaginations, right?

Frightened as she was of the darkness overhead, Gemma knew that sooner or later she had to find out who or what was suffering on the floor above. Every fiber in her body shrieked, “Don't go up there, don't go up there,” but if she didn't, she might spend the rest of her life wondering, and never sleep. She would, she thought, go up there, but not until she found somebody she trusted to stand watch while she entered the cavernous maw of the unknown, so that was the issue. Finding someone she can trust.

Dear Davy, I'm just so very, very sorry they made you leave, and I . . .

Memory, imagination, anxiety, that deep, what-if paranoia—everything feeds this question I'm trying so hard to satisfy: what I want, really, and what I want to do. Which is cool, except instead of coming up with answers, I come up dry. Not knowing terrifies me. That and these formal dinners, me up against the others on wardrobe, on style, everything, all of us gauging the others’ level of confidence, all of us asking, all faux-naive, “How did it go today?"

This is what I'm most afraid of. Silence. Not the terrible, silent woods or the cutesy rustic studio where I'm expected to work all alone—no water cooler, no coffee shop—until nightfall, but the silence inside my head.