The Fictional Man (10 page)

Niles gave up. “Another pint of the usual,” he said, shoulders slumped.

The sportscaster turned to a tanned, healthy young blonde man, seven feet if he was an inch, his body seemingly perfectly designed for the sport of baseball. “Joe Hardy – can I call you Shoeless Joe?”

“From Kokomo?” The big man on the screen laughed. “Just don’t sing it, you’ll have to pay royalties. Trust me, I know.” Of course, his voice – speaking and, Niles assumed, singing – was a perfect baritone.

“I’ll be sure to remember that,” the sportscaster chuckled. “Joe, not all of the people watching are going to be, heh,
familiar
with musical theatre – can you give us a quick run-down of how you came to be and what makes you the perfect pick for the Yankees this season? A lot of people are calling this a stunt casting, so to speak.”

Joe grinned – Niles could see that he spent most of his time grinning. A healthy glow seemed to radiate from him, out of the screen. Niles found himself scowling in response, like a vampire exposed to the sun. One of those would probably walk in to get out of it in a minute.

“Well, truth to tell, Sir, there’s not much to it. The fellas at ParaVideo got the rights to the musical, decided to make a film of it, and, well, the short version is it’s about a guy makes a deal with the Devil to be the perfect baseball player. So they figured they’d just go ahead and make the perfect baseball player, and then once the film was made I could hire myself out for stage versions and they’d get a big cut, and that’d justify translating me. And, well, here I am.” He laughed again. “I don’t just sing musical numbers. I’ve, uh, got a record out at the moment that might be a little more up folks’ alley, uh...” He seemed genuinely shy about promoting himself – undoubtedly part of his character as a big, gentle lummox.

“Adorable,” Niles groused, taking another big swallow of beer.

“‘Take Me Out To The Ball Game,’” the sportscaster smiled. “Out on mp3 as we speak. It’s a classic, I’m sure our viewers will agree. Now, Joe – as I’m sure you know – in the musical, you’re actually a Washington Senators player. In fact, you actually play
against
the Yankees.” His face fell, as if discussing news of the utmost gravity. “As you can imagine, this business of signing
with
the Yankees hasn’t sat so well with your fans – not to mention the Senators themselves, who of course are now the Minnesota Twins. They’re launching some kind of legal action, I believe?”

Joe showed his other expression – confused misery. From what Niles could remember of the musical, he pulled that one a fair amount, and his face certainly seemed built for it. “Well,” Joe said, “I don’t know much about that, I’m not the best with contracts or legal stuff, as you know...” He sighed heavily. “But, uh, folks seem to figure that... well, because I was created, uh, genetically, to be the best baseball player in the world... well, they figure, and I ain’t sayin’ they’re right, but they figure that that’s, uh...” – he swallowed hard, as if trying to gulp the word down before it could leave his mouth – “cheatin’.”

“Not the first time you’ve been accused of wrongdoing on the diamond,” the sportscaster said, sympathetically.

“No, sir, it ain’t.” Joe breathed another sigh of abject misery. “But before it was always just part of the show.” He slumped down further in his chair. “Now it’s real. I ain’t sure I like that. Hell, I never wanted to sign for the damn Yankees anyway – why would I? I’m a Senators guy, through an’ through! But... there ain’t no Senators any more...” He sighed again, and the sportscaster looked nervously around the studio, as if expecting some hidden orchestra to burst into a song about hopes, dreams and devil’s bargains.

“Oh, God, turn it off,” muttered Niles, draining his second glass. “That was just depressing. And get me another, please.” Behind him, he heard the creak of the door swinging open.

He looked over his shoulder, and froze.

It was the red-haired woman from the previous night. She was smiling at him.

She was wearing a blue summer dress, what looked like a grey faux-fur bolero jacket, and a pair of flat shoes. Niles wasn’t someone who paid a great deal of attention to fashion – “
it ain’t about the skirt, baby, it’s about the gams underneath,” the author heard Dalton Doll leer in the recesses of his mind, “and those sweet stems go all the way up” –
but even he could see that it was an outfit that paid little or no attention to it at all. It seemed like an attempt to create the fashion of another era, far in the past, with whatever she could find. And who on earth wore fake fur on a hot spring day like today?

She had to be mad.

“And whatever the lady wants,” he heard himself say.

The red-haired woman smiled a little wider, showing unnaturally perfect white teeth. “Thank you,” she said, in a prim, English accent – pure Received Pronunciation – that might have seemed real to someone who hadn’t grown up in Surrey. “I’ll have a pink gin, please.” Niles could hear the California hiding underneath her voice. He realised he was staring again, and began digging in his wallet for the necessary notes.

“Thank you,” he said to the barman as the fresh pint and the gin arrived. The red-haired woman picked the glass up carefully, little finger crooked, as though she was drinking a cup of tea in some Victorian play, then placed it down again in the exact same spot before turning and smiling sweetly at him.

The performance seemed so mannered and artificial that Niles honestly didn’t know how to respond.

The author smiled, fixing the striking girl’s dazzling green eyes with a piercing gaze. “I’m not sure,” he said, his voice betraying the subtlest hint of amusement, “that I caught your name.”

Well, that would do. Niles wasn’t sure he could get any subtle hints of amusement into his voice – not after two pints of pale ale – but he could at least try not to sound like he was in the middle of a minor meltdown.

“I’m... I’m not sure I caught your name,” he stammered, and then forced a brittle smile. The smile the woman returned was quite dazzling.

“Liz Lavenza,” she trilled in her artificially cut-glass accent, “from Geneva. An absolute pleasure to meet you, Mister...” She offered her hand in a way that suggested it should be kissed.

“Niles Golan.” Niles took hold of her hand, shaking it a couple of times in a way that might, now that he thought of it, have been the most awkward physical act he’d committed with a woman since he lost his virginity. And he couldn’t quite get his mind off the fact that neither the accent she was faking nor the one he could occasionally hear underneath it were in any way Swiss. She was a very strange person, this Liz Lavenza.

But she did have lovely eyes.

“I’m an author,” he said, the words tumbling out of nowhere. “I write books. And, um, screenplays.” Oh, God, where was this coming from?

She sniffed at his idle boasts, rising from the bar stool and leaving the place immediately, her gin barely touched. The author was left alone with his beer and his loneliness, to contemplate the utterly atrocious screenplay – singular – that he’d completed, and the pitch for the other that he was having trouble even contemplating. Realising the futility of his existence, he smashed his glass on the wood of the bar top and slit his throat in a single motion.

Get a hold of yourself, he thought.

“Oh, that’s marvellous,” she beamed, her face lighting up. “Do you know, I had a feeling you were – I heard a little of what you were saying to your friend the last time you were in here.” She grinned. “It sounded like fun.”

“Last night,” Niles murmured. The coincidence of her coming back to the Victoria so soon – at lunchtime, when nobody came within a mile of the place – unnerved him in a way he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Was she stalking him? No, that was insane. Paranoid.

Was she a regular here, then, like him and Bob? He didn’t think he’d met her before, but then it wasn’t like they were in every night of the week. Her name seemed familiar, though. Had he seen it before somewhere?

“It must be wonderful to be a writer,” she said, interrupting his thoughts. She took a moment to sip her gin and look at him – a sly look, as if she was talking in a code he should know how to crack. “Making up all those characters. Inventing every little quirk of personality for them, then making them flit about the page and do whatever you want. Having complete control over every single little aspect of their lives.” She smiled brightly, placing the gin back down, again in that very mannered way. “Without you, all those people would just be empty little dolls. Just sitting there with no story – well, they wouldn’t even be that, would they? They’d be nothing.” She tilted her head, looking at him like a cat looking at a mouse she’d caught. “Nothing at all. Tell me, does it give you a feeling of power?”

He stared at her for a moment, then shook his head, looking away. “Um, no. No, it doesn’t, not really. Mostly it’s just... very hard work.” He took a long swallow of his beer. “Ah, mostly, you find out what your characters are going to do at the same time they do. You sort of write a sentence and... well, there’s only really one way for it to end. So that’s what the character ends up doing.” It was an old speech, hard-worn from various interviews, and not fully true, but the truth of it was too complex to really put into words. Especially after two pints of pale ale.

Make that two and a half. He looked at his beer – already half gone, while her gin remained practically untouched. And this was his third, and it wasn’t even half past one. Liz would think he was a drunk.

“Like life, then,” Liz said, softly. She was looking at him playfully. “I’m not sure I like the sound of that.”

“Well, not exactly like life,” Niles said, smiling despite himself. “It’s a bit more exciting. Beloved side characters die, and there’s lots of sex and infidelity – and only a few locations, if you’re on TV, because there’s not much of a budget. And it’ll probably end with someone learning some kind of lesson – you know, the moral of the story.”

Liz burst out laughing. “That’s
just
like life,” she said, the California overtaking her voice a little, “you only have a few locations in that, when you think about it.
And
you’ve not got much of a budget.” Her real accent made her sound far more attractive. “And every paper you pick up tries to tell you what the moral of the story is.”

Niles shrugged, smiled, and drank. She
was
very attractive – there, he’d admitted it – but on the other hand this was turning into exactly the sort of unsettling conversation he’d switched off the TV set to avoid. Ever since he’d made the mistake of agreeing to pitch for that damned remake... ever since he’d taken on the responsibility for a new Fictional...

He paused, as an unpleasant thought struck him. Then he set his drink down again, and turned to look at Liz. She looked back at him guilelessly, her expression empty. His stomach lurched.

Was
she
a Fictional?

No. Surely not. He’d
know.

Anyway, if she
was
a Fictional, surely he’d have heard of her? Unless, of course, she’d given him a false name. Maybe, on some subconscious level, he recognised her face. Was
that
why she seemed so interesting to him?

Oh, God, he hoped not. He didn’t want to be a pervert.

He took another sip of the beer. Was she one of those ‘manic pixie dream girls’ he kept hearing about, the ones who were always popping up in TV shows these days? She might headline a sitcom, for all he knew – that would make sense. Why not just ask her?

“Are you a Fictional?” The author asked, quietly.

“Oh, my God!” The girl screamed, eyes wide with horror. “You actually think I’m a Fictional? Why, I’ve never been so insulted in my life, you foul, wretched little man!” She slapped him hard across the face before turning on her heel and walking out of the author’s life forever. Later that day, her father, hearing of the insult, had him killed.

Niles decided he’d have to ask anyway. Although maybe not quite so directly. “Have I... have I seen you somewhere before...? Maybe on the television?” He felt like he was playing twenty questions. “A sitcom?”

Liz looked at him, with those green eyes of hers, and he felt his mouth go dry, his throat closing up. She leaned forward, looking very deeply, very seriously, into his eyes.

“Perhaps,” she said slowly, “I’m from one of
your
novels.” She grinned, standing up straight again, her red hair bouncing around her flushed face.

“What?” Niles blinked.

“Maybe I got out. Stranger things have happened.
Maybe,
” she teased, “we’re going to fall in love. Despite ourselves.
That’s
the kind of thing that happens in stories, isn’t it?” She tilted her head again, looking mischievous. “But the question is, am
I
the kind of person who happens in stories?”

Niles just stared at her.

“Oh, look at the
time!”
Liz gasped, grabbing her pink gin and knocking it back in one gulp, then slamming the glass down and hurrying to the door. A moment later, she was gone.

“She’s quite mad, of course,” the author said to the barman, who nodded soberly.

“I’ve seen the type before, sir. Manic pixie dream girls, we call ’em. They’re nothing but trouble, mark my words.” He spat into a glass for emphasis, before wiping it with a dirty rag.

The author nodded, sucking ruefully on a briar pipe. “Still, she did have the most wonderful eyes...”

“Not to mention gams, sir. Dynamite stems, as Dalton Doll would say.”

Niles winced, shaking his head. His habit of self-narration was starting to get out of control. The barman came over as he finished off the rest of his third beer. “You want another?”

Niles shook his head. “No, I shouldn’t. I’ve got to...” He tailed off, staring into his empty glass. What did he have to do this afternoon?

Oh, yes. He had to watch
The Delicious Mr Doll
again and try to think of a version of the lead character that wouldn’t feel like he was unleashing a cross between a men’s-rights-advocating baboon and a two-fisted plague of syphilis into the world of human beings.