The Danger of Being Me (9 page)

Helen didn't hesitate.  "Ernest Hemingway."

"Mrs. Kraven said
living
author," Ben said.

Winnie gave her an apologetic nod.  "She did."

"Fine," Helen said to Ben.  "Chuck Palahniuk."

Ethan grinned.  "Sticking with the minimalists, huh?"

"They get to the fucking point," Helen said sweetly.

Ben looked away from Helen, and a faint smile tugged at the corner of her mouth.  "My last will is going to specify that my life-story be penned by Bret Easton Ellis."

"The guy who wrote
American Psycho
?" I said.

Ben nodded.  "The very same."

"You certainly are the transgressive sort," Phil said.

Ben didn't notice Winnie's frown.  Instead, he waved a hand at Phil.  "So who's writing
The Book of Phil
?"

Phil considered the question for a long moment before coming to a decision.  "Michael Chabon."

"Nice pick," Helen said, nodding.

"Who the hell is Michael Chabon?" I asked.

Helen turned to me and blinked.  "
Wonder Boys
?"

"Okay," I said.  "I'll take your word for it."

"No," she said slowly.  "You'll read my signed first edition of
Wonder Boys
, you uncultured fuckin miscreant."  She shook her head at me.  "How about yours?"

I thought, then grinned.  "Marquis de Sade."

"You fucking wish," Ben said, laughing out loud.

"You wouldn't survive one day of Sodom," Phil said, "let alone a hundred and twenty."

I laughed back.  "Then I suppose the honor has to go to J. D. Salinger, but only if he writes the book as a collection of interrelated short stories that feature me as a recurring minor character appearing in other people's stories."

"Pretentious prick," Ben said, grinning.

I shrugged.  "Just being honest about the part I play in the world.  I'm an ancillary player in dozens of stories, but the main character in only one."  I glanced around the table to each of them in turn.  "When you think about, all of your stories are going feature a character based on me."

"
Ancillary
, huh?" Ben said.  "Methinks that someone else is skipping ahead on his Word-a-Day calendar."

Helen considered.  "The man makes a valid point."

"Don't encourage him," Ethan told her, but I saw the contemplative look on his face when he glanced to me.

"But when Mr. Salinger's book gets made into a movie," I said, "it has to be directed by Danny Boyle."

"The director of
A Life Less Ordinary
?" Winnie asked.

"No," Ethan snapped.  "The director of
Trainspotting
."

Ben shook his head.  "No one wants to be remembered for their part in
A Life Less Ordinary
."

"Who's going to direct your biopic?" I asked Ben.

He didn't even hesitate.  "Tim Burton.  He's got just the macabre sense of humor that
Delicate Situation
needs."

Phil laughed at that.  Ben looked across the table and watched Phil, a tiny grin playing across his mouth.  Phil finally shrugged, and said, "Kathryn Bigelow."

"And just who the hell is that?" Ethan asked.

"Just the first woman to win a Saturn Award for Best Director," Ben scoffed.  "You never saw
Strange Days
?"

"Nobody but you has seen
Strange Days
," Helen said.

"You've seen
Strange Days
," he replied with a smirk.

Helen rolled her eyes.  "You
made
me watch it, and it's 145 minutes that I'll never get back.  So thanks for that."

"Any time," Ben said, pointing his index finger at her and cocking his thumb as he shot her a wink. "Who's going to direct this Hemingway-penned masterpiece of yours?"

"Palahniuk-penned," Winnie corrected him.

"Right," Ben agreed, nodding.  " Sure.  That guy."

Helen leaned back in her seat and folded her arms across her belly, accentuating her generous cleavage.  I glanced away toward the door and tipped back another mouthful of my soda as she said, "Joel Coen."

Ethan grinned at that.  "What about his brother?"

"Just Joel," Helen said curtly, shaking her head.

Ethan laughed.  "I would gladly trade every penny in Phil's trust fund in exchange for signing up John Hughes to direct the filmic adaptation of my biography."

Winnie turned to Phil.  "You have a trust fund?"

Phil shot Ethan a brief glare, then looked to Winnie with a small smile, and said, "No."  I laughed at that.

"It's going to be called
Cecilia's Song
," Ethan said.

My mind snagged.  The words burned brightly in my memory for one glorious moment before I thought of the untidy stack of neon-orange pages piled on the bottom shelf of the computer desk in my bedroom.  I had stashed the manuscript down there six months ago, shortly after Ethan had dropped it onto my desk at the beginning of September.  I had attempted to read it twice so far, and twice had failed to get further than a dozen pages.

The top sheet read
Cecilia's Song
in large, plain font.

I blinked twice, then once more.  I looked at the game board, saw the bits of plastic representing each of us in our neverending journey around the wheel of time.  Winnie rolled a two and moved her gamepiece to a pink space.  Phil pulled a fresh card.  I looked across the table at Ethan, and found him watching me with a knowing grin.

"What William Makepeace Thackeray novel was made into a film by Stanley Kubrick?" Phil asked.

"Why
Cecilia's Song
?" Helen asked.

"Why
is
a raven like a writing desk?" Ben asked.

Ethan bit off a chunk of his cheesesteak and considered Helen's question. He chewed while he thought, then said, "It's got a certain phonetic quality that I appreciate."

Helen watched Ethan eat, and he grinned at her as he washed down his food with his imported soda.  There was more to his story than he admitted, but Helen let it go.

"Poe wrote on both," I said to Ben.

He looked at me blankly.  "Both of what?"

"A raven and a writing desk," I told him.

"Both come with inky quills," Winnie added.

"They are alike because there is a B in both and an N in neither and a TH in both and neither," Helen said.

Ben blinked at Helen, and she flashed a wide smile.  I saw Phil grinning as he looked at Winnie over the card in his hand and asked, "Care to hazard a guess?"

Winnie turned back to Phil.  "
Barry Lyndon
.  1975."

"That would be absolutely correct," Phil said.

Winnie flashed a broad, endearing smile as she fished a brown pie-piece out of the box and tucked it into one of the free spaces in her gamepiece.  She rolled the die again for a five, and slid her piece around the rim of the gamewheel.  Phil pulled a fresh card from the box and asked her, "What baseball player was nicknamed The Georgia Peach?"

"Oh, come on," Winnie said, laughing.  "You know that I don't know the first thing about baseball."

Phil smirked.  "Here's a hint: he's from Georgia."

Winnie shook her head.  "Rogers Hornsby?"

"That would be incorrect." Phil tucked the card away. "It was Tyrus Raymond Cobb."

"Hornsby's nickname was The Rajah," I told Winnie.

"Hold on," Ben said.  "How is it that you know nothing about baseball, but you know about Rogers Hornsby?"

Winnie shrugged.  "My dad just bought a whole bunch of sports memorabilia at an estate sale in Hobbes Landing.  There was a baseball signed by Rogers Hornsby.  He hasn't stopped talking about it for more than a month now."

Ben gave her a sarcastic smile.  "A likely story."

Ethan laughed, grabbing the die and rolling a one as Winnie said, "I guess you'll have wait for
Winsome, Lose Some
to come out in the Spring of 2033 to learn the truth." Ethan shifted his piece a single space counterclockwise, and Winnie added, "It'll be a Kevin Smith film.  The whole thing will be in black and white except for two scenes where an amethyst scarf will appear in Technicolor."

I saw the corners of Ethan's mouth twitch into a wistful smile just before he tore off another bite of his cheesesteak.  Winnie didn't turn to see Ethan's expression, but she wore a faint smile of her own as she watched a memory.

From beside me, Helen laughed and asked, "Fifteen years from now, you think any of us will be working jobs we hate because they're not what we love to do?"

"I will," Phil said.  "I'll be an accountant or something."

Ben laughed and shook his head.  "I'll be dead."

"Ben!" Winnie admonished him.  "Take it back."

"Why?" he said, grinning.  "I'm gonna write the greatest novel of my generation by the age of 28, and then descend into the celebrity cesspit of drugs and alcohol before dying tragically young death."  He tore off another bite of pizza.

Phil looked over the card in his hand. "I suppose there's no point in dragging out a career knowing that nothing else that you write will be as good as your first book."

"Better to burn out," I agreed, "than to fade away."

"Hey hey," Ethan said with a smirk.  "My my."

Winnie shook her head.  "Don't joke about dying."

Ben laughed once, softly, but he nodded to her.  Helen glanced to Ben, then looked around the table at the rest of us.  "Are any of us are going to remember today?"

Her voice sounded distant when she said it.  Ben's grin receded, and he glanced from Helen to Phil before turning to me.  I looked across the table and saw the small frown on Winnie's lips as she studied her hands, then glanced to Ethan as he shook his head and flashed a dry smirk.

Phil pulled a fresh card from the box.  Before he could read the question, I stood from my seat and rounded the table, passing behind Helen as I headed for the counter.  I searched through the debris of the latest issue until I found a little disposable camera buried under scrap paper.

"What are you doing?" Phil asked from behind me.

I turned back to the group, held up the camera, framing the five of them inside the viewfinder.  "Stapling today into the your memories," I told him.  "Now say cheese."

Only Winnie actually did.  Ben was too busy flashing rock-horns in his best Gene Simmons impersonation.  Phil glanced sidelong toward me, still holding the fresh card in his palm.  Winnie favored me with that broad, endearing smile, while Helen cocked an eyebrow at me in a look that somehow both patronizing and curiously alluring.  And then there was Ethan, not even looking at the camera, wearing an impossibly knowing grin.  Of course he was.

I pressed the button to take the photograph, and the flash erupted like the unfiltered light of a supernova.

3.

The unfiltered light of a supernova splashes through the blinds.

I blink. A couple of seconds later, the headlights swing away across the cul-de-sac outside the window, and darkness rushes back in to fill the bedroom. The silence is compromised only by the steady whirring of the laptop's motor and the intermittent ticking of snowflakes dashing themselves against glass.

I consider that window for longer than any window ought to be considered. Tranquility washes over me, and giddy laughter bubbles up the back of my throat. It never quite makes it out, but the ripples reach my lips.  My mouth spreads into a soft smile.

At last, I look back to the laptop resting on my knees, to the last eight words that I just typed at the bottom of the screen:

"Because that was the only truth that mattered."

The cursor blinks at me. I read the words again. My smile widens. It is the greatest closing line that I have ever written. And it may be the eight most improbable words that I will ever write, because after all the years, the story is finally finished.

I read the line again. Just to make sure that I really did write it. Just to ensure that I'm not dreaming the medicated dreams of a dreamer that is dreaming. I have dreamed those dreams before, and others like them: dreams of endlessly circular staircases that lead to cramped stone cells where a man who looks too much like me sits handcuffed to an ancient Remington typewriter.

I blink hard enough to make my eyes water, and brush away the tears with the heels of my hands. I look back to the screen and find my words staring out at me, just as I remember them.

I smile again and shake my head at myself. I save the file, then copy a backup of the entire document to a small flash drive plugged into the side of the computer. Seconds later, I remove the storage device from the laptop and hold it up in the glow of the laptop's screen. This bit of plastic and metal is smaller than my car key, and it holds the entirety of my life's creative work.

I look at the flash drive, and feel oddly humbled.

Ten seconds slip by before I set the laptop on the corner desk and climb out of this hard plastic chair. I stand, stretch, wearing only my boxerbriefs as I unknot my mutinous muscles. I scratch absently at my stomach, and resolve to start working out. A few hundred crunches a week, perhaps. Nothing spectacular.

I glance to the digital clock standing on my bedside table as the maroon numerals flicker to 3:22. I smirk at that, and reach for one of the small shelves above the corner desk. I tuck the flash drive into the back of the ledge, behind a framed photograph that I haven't really noticed much lately. It has watched over me for fifteen years, as I sat in this hard plastic chair, laboring through the solitary confinement of this unimaginable novel.

Now, swaddled by the silent night, I watch the photograph, marveling at this fragment of undigested chronoclastic ether that has been captured, preserved, immortalized. Ben flashes rock-horns in his best Gene Simmons impersonation at the right side of the frame. Winnie favors the photographer with a broad, endearing smile, while Helen cocks an eyebrow at the camera in a look somehow both patronizing and curiously alluring. Phil glances sidelong toward the camera, distracted from the card in his palm. And at the left side of the frame, not even looking at the camera, Ethan wears that impossibly knowing grin.