Message in a 300 Page Bottle

**********

Doug

Other things to worry about. Bigger fish to fry. Which makes less sense than I thought. If you have a fish that's so much bigger than your normal fish that you have to disrupt your life finding a way to fry it, just cut the thing up. Problem solved.

Next problem actually was not related to finding the book. That line item became maybe number 25, under moving in, getting utilities connected, etc.

Booth and I found a place over west of Pelham, just a couple miles from campus. Near enough to get to class and all the conveniences of downtown Amherst, far enough from the freshman dorms to be out of range of water balloons, arrows, and homemade trebuchets. Yes, that is a specific list, and yes there is a story behind it.

Booth and I and Steve Mulvaney had lived together as juniors on campus. Steve dropped out to become a professional surfer, so Booth and I continued on. Our new place was not fancy, but it had a pool and a basketball court and a sand pit volleyball court and tennis courts. We would tough it out.

My dad and my little brother helped me move my bed and computer and bookshelves in. Toiletries, linens, dishes, pots, utensils, flour, salt, etc. Booth showed up with a small U-Haul truck, of course shortly after all our helpers had left. We spent the rest of the day unloading boxes and furniture and arranging our living space.

The sun was low when Booth took off to visit his girlfriend at UMass. I stood in the living room and looked out over the pool.

A woman walked through the gate carrying a sea green folding beach chair and a red shoulder bag. She closed the gate behind her, set up the chair, and eased into it. She took a laptop out of the bag and opened the lid.

She wore a short terrycloth robe over a yellow polka-dot bikini. A big floppy straw hat to shade the sun from her face. Even through that and her sunglasses, I could see that she was pretty. She looked close enough to my age. My man calculator inputted all the available data and reached a conclusion.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained. I took two beers from the refrigerator - Modelo Negras this time, not Bud of any flavor - and slid the door open.

**********

Mary Kay

I saw the kid coming out of the corner of my eye. I knew this would happen no matter where I was living. It is just so tedious sometimes.

I wasn't in the best of moods anyway. You'd think that my baseline state was one of anxiety and low-level fear due to the death threats, but it wasn't. I was getting used to that, believe it or not. What I wasn't getting used to was the creative drought.

I had gotten off the phone with my agent just an hour before. She very politely inquired as to my health and reviewed with me the upcoming travel I had to make to support the book. She pointedly did not ask me how my next masterpiece was coming along. She did not ask because she has been around enough writers to have a robust survival instinct.

'Coming along' sounds nice. Like progress, slow and steady and sure, is being made and the destination is in sight. A notebook unsullied by actual writing and a brain uncomplicated by any ideas are not 'coming along'. Not at all.

So I was unwilling to do the dance with this kid. You know the one, girls. The one where you try to impress upon him that you are not interested in a romantic relationship but you are also not a misandrous bitch. You are an intelligent and charming person. Why can't we just be friends? Why can't you stop stealing looks at my tits? If I am interested, I will give you some kind of obvious signal. Until then, let's talk about the Patriots defense.

The kid came over and stood in my light. He cast an actual and metaphorical shadow on my relaxing sit down by the pool. I tilted my head back to say something sarcastic and dismissive—

But his face. He was a total.... I didn't know the word. 55 grand a year for four years and I could not come up with an English word to describe him. Dweebish, nerdish, shy, genuine, guileless, hopeful, earnest, quivering with anticipation like a newborn fawn?

He was just adorably awkward.

My resolve went down the drain.

"Hi," I said.

**********

Doug

She accepted the beer. I had thought she might be a wine drinker, and I was prepared to drive right out and get red, white, rose, Châteauneuf-du-Pape... whatever she wanted. But she took the beer.

I pulled a church key from my pocket and opened the bottle for her. Claire had given me strict instructions some years ago that a gentleman never gives a lady an open drink. The new etiquette, she said.

Her name was Sherman. She said I could call her Sherman.

We talked about the weather for a while, then about the apartment complex. Then about food. Then about the pool pH. Then about her orchids. Then about school. For me, anyway. I guessed Sherman was about two years older. I assumed she had already gotten her degree.

"I work from home," she said, then hesitated like about to reveal a deep secret. "Writing."

"Oh, technical writing? Manuals?"

"Yeah.... Manuals."

"Oh," I said. "Who for?"

She drank the last of her beer and handed me the empty.

"Whoever pays."

She got up and folded her chair.

"Nice to meet you, Doug. Back to work. Thanks for the beer."

And Sherman went through the gate and back to her unit.

I was left sitting cross-legged on the pool apron with two empties in front of me. I stared at the mouthwash-blue water of the pool and thought about Sherman's smile.

I had talked to her for maybe 30 minutes, and in that brief time I had intuited that she was one of the smartest people I had ever met. And warm and kind. I hoped my intuition was not taking the piss, because I had just committed myself to a new goal and objective.

**********

Mary Kay

Oh, for fuck's sake. Really?

Thank God I had insisted on reshooting my photo for the jacket. With the wig this time.

Doug, the guy I just met at the pool, was supposed to read a book over the summer. All of the Amherst College senior class was supposed to read this book. 500 young women and men, America's best and brightest and most pampered and most clueless, all living not two miles from where I was hiding out, were all going to read this novel about, and I quote my new friend Doug here:

"Some kid who owns a hog and it dies or something. In some country in Asia. I think the pig dies. Just like in Charlotte's Web."

"The pig's name is not Charlotte," I said with wonderfully-controlled outrage. "And the pig doesn't die. The spider—"

I burst into tears. Goddamn it!

I managed to salvage some dignity by pretending I had a massive coughing fit.

Doug ran to his unit and came back with a roll of paper towels in lieu of tissues, explaining that they had just moved in and that men never stocked kleenex.

I can't tell whether he is really that sweet or if my reclusive existence recently has made me so starved for interaction with another human that my detectors need to be recalibrated.

As I blew my nose - Allergies! I promise! - he told me that he hadn't actually read the book. All of his information about it was hearsay, second-hand. He hadn't run across any copies yet, but he was sure he could find, borrow, or steal one soon.

I started to tell him that I had twenty or so copies stacked in my front room, but something stopped me.

"You must have read it," he said. "Everyone has read it. Everyone but me."

"I... I glanced at it one time." I was becoming a good liar, but then again, to be a writer of fiction means that you put lies to paper all day. And the better you lie the more famous you get and the more you get paid.

I was destined for greatness.

**********

Doug

The gods smiled on me at last.

I went to the first book discussion like it was a long-postponed dental appointment. I slinked in sans book. Luckily, less than half of my ten peers in this group bothered to bring the book, so I did not stand out as a huge dweeb. That would no doubt become evident later when I opened my mouth.

At least I got to finally see an actual copy in the flesh. In the compressed cellulose, I rather. The cover was yellow and red and orange. The title in black: The Empty Friend.

On the back of the book was a picture of the author, but between the long black hair, the makeup, and the glasses it was hard to tell if she was a she or if she - if she was a she - was attractive. Not that it mattered, but as a guy, it always matters.

It was a warm early fall day, so we were sitting on the quad lawn. We went around the circle and introduced ourselves. I already knew most them - one of the many advantages of attending a smallish college. Then the proctor, a graduate student in the English Department, started us on our way to enlightenment by reading a list of questions and discussion topics kindly provided by the publisher for the express purpose of... well, what? Why would they think a group of sober adults who cared enough about literature to actually take the trouble to acquire and read a book and then gave a crap enough about it to gather together with the express purpose of intellectually dissecting said work of literature would need a prompt?

Examples. Actual examples lest you think anyone would or could make this shit up:

1.Who do you believe is the true protagonist of the story?

2. How do you think Liang's childhood shaped him?

3. What can we learn from Liang's relationship with Charsu and what does that say to you about our human obligation to animals?

Oh, I don't know. Let me take a crack at it. In order. 1. The true protagonist can't be the obvious one, otherwise why ask the question? 2. He grew up eating pork and treating pigs as... pigs. And 3. (Assuming that Charsu is the pig and not the kid's grandmother or something.) We can learn that pigs are delicious and my human obligation is to eat as many of them as possible.

2 out of 3.

There was just enough powder in those lame bullet points to get the two women and one man who were English majors to start arguing amongst themselves and then shortly with the two philosophy majors about suffering, sentience, wild vs tame nature, nature, moral status, absolutist rights, relative rights. They then as a subgroup group veered wildly and unexpectedly into feminine superiority and motherhood while the rest of us watched the crash. The groups of antagonists split along gender lines and continued until our hour was up.

I was going to skate on this.

I did not need to read the book.

**********

Mary Kay

The first cool day of fall and he still brings me a cold beer. I nod, and he pries off the cap and hands it to me. The mating dance of the American college senior.

"How have you been?" he asks. He is wearing a hoodie and board shorts. He slowly collapses his legs until he is on the cement facing me in my chair.

I have on some old sweatpants and a jacket in acknowledgement that summer is not coming back, at least this afternoon.

"I had to travel for work," I say. Yes, I really did. I flew from Worcester to San Francisco for an interview on a local morning show, then drove a rental down to LA for 5 minutes on a late night network show, then visited my folks for a day, then flew to Dallas for a book signing, then New Orleans, Miami, Pittsburg, and one other place I just can't recall in the pile of very homogenized memories of generic television studios and book stores. Then back home. This was home, I realized.

"Boring," I say. "How about you?"

Doug tells me about his architecture senior studio project, designing the incorporation of a biotech research and manufacturing complex in the middle of a livable community. Housing, schools, small businesses. How to project and incorporate growth, traffic, supply lines, etc. He is obviously passionate about it, and it makes me passionate about it by contact transfer. Then he pauses for breath.

"And that damn book discussion thing turned out not to be a problem."

I sit up a bit, trying to act like I don't care.

Why should I care?

"What happened?" I prompt nonchalantly.

"Turned out I could pick up enough of the story by listening to the people in the group who love to hear themselves talk. Then I just agree with what they say. I nod and look thoughtful."

"Aren't you curious at all about... the book? The actual book? Not what you hear about it from other people?"

He shakes his head. "Nah. What I do hear I don't really like. An eviscerated hog has just enough left in the tank to run out of the slaughter house? What kind of bullshit is that?"

I feel myself getting defensive. I try to stuff the emotion back into its bag.

"Maybe it's a metaphor. When Charsu takes Liang's hand in his mouth—"

"I thought you hadn't read the book."

Oops. I wave aside an imaginary fly. "My sister described it to me when we talked on the phone.... She liked it."

"So you heard about it from someone else, same as me."

I change the subject fast. I have to tap dance to make him forget this line of conversation and then never bring it up ever again.

"Hey," I chirp. "I owe you for many beers. How about if I buy you a steak?"

**********

Doug

We had a date! It was a real date, not just hanging out beside the pool and shooting the shit.

We went instead to a nice steakhouse and shot the shit. But with beer from a tap and medium rare New York strips. And fries. And a nice salad. And she insisted on paying.

Sherman is odd. She talks a lot, and she talks freely, but I have started to see that certain areas of her past, and even her present, she describes with a kind of washed-out colorblind blahness. Which makes me wonder, because otherwise she is terrific with words.

None of my business, really. The thing inside me that is a guy wants to make it my business, but that thing does not get to steer the ship.

My internal guy thing keeps poking me in my liver and pointing out how sometimes when she smiles so hard her eyes scrunch closed she hits 9.5 on the beautiful scale. The guy thing waves a towel over my heated brain and then winds the towel up and snaps me in the ass with it while shouting into my ear how goddamn cute Sherman is. How she fills up a sweatshirt very nicely. The guy thing is like that. Try to ignore him.

The other parts of my brain have to beat that sonofabitch down when he gets like that. Those parts are the ones that appreciate her intelligence, her kindness, her empathy.

Her lips are moving. Wow, she has great lips. They are forming words, I think. Words I am supposed to hear and respond to. Too late. I have to counterpunch.

"I was reading an article in Slate about the market for technical writers. Seems like a hot field to be in."

And there it was. She shut down. Subtly but noticeably.

"I think I need to buy a new laptop," she said, directing me in a different direction like those guys at the airport who wave glowy sticks at the pilots. "Got any suggestions?"

I did, and we spent some time discussing that topic, any residual bad feelings about my behavior seemingly scuttled.

We ate, we desserted, she paid, I drove us back.

I parked in a spot equidistant to our units. We went along the sidewalk until we came to the critical spot - the fork where I had to turn left and she had to turn right.

We stopped as if choreographed and pirouetted to face each other.

"Thanks for the steak," I said.

"Thanks for the— oh, hell," she said.

And she turned her face up and we kissed.

**********

Mary Kay

All right, Dear Diary.

I kissed him.

He was going to kiss me. I could just feel it, so I decided to meet him halfway.

Scratch that. Big blue pen line through it. I did not decide to kiss Doug. The ratty thing that passes for my soul decided. My mind said go for it and my body went for it.

The whole thing could have gone much farther, or further, or whatever.

Goddamn it. One kiss and I lose language skills.

But Doug was too embarrassed to press his luck. He just mumbled good night and practically ran back to his place.

He is such a lovable dork.

Shit, did my internal dialog just use the word 'lovable'?

Goddamn it.

**********

Doug

I sat on the sofa watching Booth destroying some kind of shape-shifting possum army and wishing that I had a controller for life.

Sherman kissed me. Maybe I kissed her.

The memory is seared into my brain like the grill marks on the steak she bought me about two hours ago and yet at the same time it is slowly fading from my recall, images and sounds and the fantastic feel of her lips being overwritten by my dumb operating system with mundane very much less important data.

I needed a button to press and make her go back in time so we become the same age, to make her closer to my state of being right now, to make her more attainable.

Maybe I kissed her. Maybe she kissed me.

I don't remember already.

**********

Mary Kay

Management drained the pool. It was time. The weakest, least determined leaves just started falling. The nights are chilly instead of cool.

I have to wear long sleeves and real pants to sit by the empty pool.

Oh, yeah, I still go and sit by the pool. I sit and type ideas into a document. Then I look at them and look at them and erase them.

The notebook has a few pages written at last. But when I reread the thoughts I had been mightily impressed by at the time, they are immature febrile scribblings of the child I was and still am. The one who thought the world loved her before a not insignificant fraction of the world threatened to find me and make me eat my words. The one who thought she had a caring sympathetic audience. The one who found out that all there are are customers. Consumers.

I go out to the pool on days I should be inside at the kitchen table with a cup of hot cocoa and instead bundle up and suffer the scooting grey clouds because that pool is our common ground.

Doug comes out to meet me there. He always brings a cold beer. We sit together and drink and talk. I wonder if we will be continuing our ritual with a foot of snow.

He has never set foot in my apartment nor I in his. We meet only on neutral turf.

Hanging out together on a bare cement apron as the New England fall begins to prepare our souls for the long winter by sending a biting cold wind is the one thing I look forward to now.

I research fake assignments I have been commissioned to write as part of my fake technical writing gig, then I ask him to help me brainstorm them. Yesterday I told him I had gotten a query from a manufacturer to write a booklet about the history of burial rituals and the construction of the modern casket. We spent an hour tossing topics and ideas. Doug amazes me. He seems to know something about everything and knows how to find out the things he doesn't. I feel like I could go and actually put this fictional project together. I wonder if I could write a novel about a couple who work on fictional projects as a plot device to get and keep them together. I will write it down in my notebook. It has lots of blank space.

My ability to lie so facilely to a guy I am coming to consider a close friend and intellectual equal amazes and frightens me.

Very often we share a parting kiss. I kiss him because he is a man and I am a woman. I kissed him the first time, and probably every time since, because he is the only literate person in the United States who has not read my book. Whatever he says to me or what he thinks of me is entirely him, unperturbed by his knowledge of my work.

The book came from my unconscious. It is a look into my private self as sure as if there were a hole drilled into my skull as an observation port.

Doug doesn't even know the hole exists.

Everybody else has seen it. The other members of the Smith College creative writing program, the ones I would have described as friends not too long before this have seen it. They did not like what they saw therein. I don't know what it is. All I know is that it changed their relationship to me. I was a fellow struggler, then suddenly I was not in the club anymore. I was excluded.