Friday, June 12, 2009

guests

They’re in the house.

I know this, even without opening my eyes, or raising my forehead from where it rests on the desk. I know it in some place in the back of my brain, the same way I know everything else about them: an instinct. It’s what tells me how they eat, and their nervous tics, and what makes them insecure or happy. Now it tells me: they’re in the house.

They make their way slowly down the hall, pausing often because they think it’s such an odd place to live, my house. (Especially at the moment, as we’re redoing our living room. Books everywhere, a piano in the hallway…)

This time, only three of them have come. Three characters. There’s my heroine, taking careful and incredulous steps, leading the way. Following her—she must have pushed past him, because he’s not the type to follow—is the man she loves, with his fierce and beautiful smile. They shouldn’t have turned their back on the third figure, one of many villains peppering their story. But he’s not harming anyone at the moment, admiring instead the color of our walls.

I don’t have to ask why they came. It’s in their eyes, just as my answers sit in mine.

My heroine wants the most difficult questions, as she always does. She wants to know why I haven’t been writing. Uninterested in my descriptions of a crazy May or June, unwilling to sympathize, no matter how frenzied my gestures or expressions might get. Her arms folded. Why have I abandoned her on page 41 of Part Three? After all this work? She has been through so much, and so have I. Can’t I get back to work? Please? She pushes outlines, scene lists, pages of description toward me…

I’m working on it, I growl.

The man who came with her—neither of them know his real name, and neither think to ask me—shuffles through the books on my desk. I chew on a thumbnail, watching him. He is perfectly grumpy. And I’m wondering if I’ve gotten him just right, or if I’ve written him too—

What’s this? he asks. A stack of Billy Collins books in his rough hands.

Too unable to appreciate quality poetry. That was my mistake. Too late for it now, though. I just swipe the books back and glare at him. Ooh—I did write his glare just right. He scowls nicely.

The villain is last to speak, and I try not to be nervous. After all, of the three of them, he doesn’t make it out of Part Three alive. Judging by his expression, he doesn’t know this. Yet.

I carefully push my notes out of sight.

He grins at me, just like he grins at everyone. Always at ease. I wonder what he might ask or demand—of the three of them, he is most often out of my reach, most readily surprising… But what he says is: he has come all this way to remind me never to nap in my contacts. Once you do, he says, once you’ve given in and let your mind wander from Billy Collins to dreams…

Your eyes will stick closed. [He says this so casually, not quite looking at me.] And you’ll be winking and blinking your way out of their mists for the rest of the afternoon, he adds. His own eyes wide. Grinning his open-mouthed grin.

And then they’re gone, and I’m stretching, feeling somewhat cranky, my eyes sticking closed. Of course, I think. Of course the villain likes Billy Collins. Of course he does.—jl

Posted by Jenn Langefeld on 06/12 at 05:12 PM
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