Love and Betrayal in The First Person Past Perfect Tense by Robert Villanueva
Two rival writing groups engage in a literary rumble for access to their favoured corner of the Mega-Libro Bookstore.
I had no idea how it had escalated to this, but there we were in the Java Jones Café in Mega-Libro Bookstore downtown ready to rumble, two writers' groups face-to-face in a confrontation that resembled a Saturday Night Live parody of West Side Story.
Just beyond the Prose and Cons, a coffee barista had leaned over the customer-free counter and watched our exchange as he sipped away at a foamy mocha-cappa-frappa-something. The Prose and Cons was the other writer's group whose members mentored recently-released criminals, encouraging them to use writing as a creative outlet.
I had hated the Prose and Cons. Maybe not so much the whole group, but I had hated their leader, Rich. He was a smarmy, egomaniacal 30-something substitute teacher who had a few publication credits in small magazines.
To hear him talk, you'd think he'd won the Nobel Prize for literature. In that respect he had the makings of a fantasy writer.
Rich had stepped toward me. His name isn't really Rich, but the first time I saw him he was wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the adjective surrounded by lots of dollar signs. I guess it had been meant to be ironic, but I thought it underscored his nature, his superior attitude that even the bookstore clerks on occasion ridiculed when he wasn't around.
Until now, I had only vaguely heard about writer rumbles. They had remained the stuff of fiction, of dark lore whispered in shady bookstores where writers' groups dealt in black market prepositions.
Truth be told, maybe I should have been more concerned about facing a group that included ex-cons, but most of those guys were guilty of primarily misdemeanors, like bouncing checks or shoplifting. On the other hand, a couple of them, namely Marc the Narc and a guy they called Cutter, scared the baristas. I heard Celie "The Fist" even made one of them cry.
"Time to settle this once and for all," Rich said.
I had sneered at him then nodded and grunted.
There's something to be said for that which goes unspoken, the sparseness of dialogue.
"You guys pick three of ours; we pick three of yours," Rich said.
I had stared at him, trying to appear as if I was mulling it over but mostly trying to figure out if I should barter or something. What the hell did I know? I've never been in a writer rumble.
So I waited what felt like a respectable amount of time, then I nodded.
In my head I heard a song about the Jets and the Sharks.
I glanced over at Madison, one of the newest members of the Prose and Cons. She averted her eyes.
"Ground rules," I said.
"Random genre selection."
"I select three, you select three, all from a mutually agreed-upon list."
"Done," Rich said, his beady eyes boring into mine. "Word limit."
It was no secret my short stories tend to run longer than average. And Rich knew it.
"Determined by an impartial panel of judges," I countered.
Rich had recoiled.
"The Pen Pals," he suggested.
Who was he trying to kid? The Pen Pals was another writer's group similar to his own. Some of their members were even friends with members of the Prose and Cons.
"No way," I said. "The Write Stuff."
He had given me the same look I had given him for his suggestion, for the same reasons. Hell, it was worth a shot.
"Dr. Shakespeare," we said, in unison, like a harmonized line of a song, a song about a rumble. A kind of lame rumble.
In truth, both of us had known where this rumble was headed.
Dr. Shakespeare's real name was Martin Adams, and he had a reputation for being a hardass creative writing teacher. Notoriously fond of quoting The Bard at the drop of a hat, he had published three critically-acclaimed literary novels and a collection of short stories.
There was no chance of bias with him as a judge. He didn't like anyone's writing, unless they had gone through his creative writing program, and even there, there were no guarantees.
We had known Dr. Shakespeare delighted in this sort of thing, not necessarily writer rumbles but opportunities to critique writers not in his program. He regularly held open readings, enlisting the aid of some of his better students to provide harsh critiques and practice literary evaluation. The professor would choose the location on campus. It would be neutral territory.
The result of the writer rumble would determine once and for all the biggest point of contention between our groups: who would get the comfy chair corner at Mega-Libro. That's what had started this whole thing. The comfy chair corner had been coveted by both groups from the beginning. Unlike the other solid wood chairs used throughout the bookstore, the comfy chair corner had four overstuffed chairs that felt like settling into a warm embrace.
It had been a source of contention for nearly a year, since our groups met at the bookstore at the same time. The spot went to whichever group had a member claim it first each time, and that had gone back and forth.
It was going to be settled now, as we all found chairs in neutral territory, the Java Jones Café, to make our picks for participants. Rich and I had faced each other. Rich's crew, all seven of them, sat at the tables behind him.
The six members of my crew, the Easy Writers, sat at tables behind me. Let me say right now I'm not crazy about our group's name. It makes us sound like we're slutty word whores or something, turning tricks for an active verb or a well-timed onomatopoeia.
Come up and see us some time, and we'll make sure to take care of your dangling participle.
But our group had voted from a list of three suggestions. So Easy Writers it was.
Each group had huddled to confer about their picks.
Our selections had been decided days ago. My fellow Easy Writers hadn't known it, but this had been in the works for some time.
"Madison," I whispered to my fellow writers. "And Cutter and Celie."
"Why not Landon?" Jared said. "He's new."
"New to the group," I had corrected. "We don't know his background. For all we know he has more publication credits than all of us combined."
My fellow writers had appeared doubtful.
"On the other hand, I happen to know Madison doesn't write fast, and she's never finished a story. Cutter's writing is saccharine sweet, and Celie is practically illiterate."
"Seriously, bro, how do you know all this?" Brandon said.
I had done my best to keep things as clandestine as possible, and now I had to fess up. At least to a point.
"I've been doing some reconnaissance."
"What does that mean?" Kayla said. Her expression had denoted she was expecting a sordid explanation but not wanting one.
I had spouted off a quick and innocuous account of having met Madison a few months earlier. Then I had diverted the conversation back to the matter at hand.
They had known better, and I had known they knew. I hadn't really cared what that said about me.
I had glanced over at the Prose and Cons huddle. Every now and then Rich looked over at us with his beady, beady eyes.
Madison had peeked over Rich's shoulder, her blue-green eyes fixing on me for lengthy seconds before darting back to those in her huddle. When we broke huddle I didn't even wait.
"Madison," I said, choosing our first opponent, even before Rich stepped in front of me.
"Predictable," Rich had muttered.
Then he had selected Brandon and Lexie, and I had chosen Cutter and Celie.
Before Rich had made his final choice he had paused dramatically.
"And you," Rich said.
I had hesitated. I had wanted to say something like, "Oh, yeah? You want a piece of me?" Instead I had stood silent as a voice in my head said, "Crap!"
It wasn't so much the pressure of writing something on the fly or even the limitation of the word count or threat of an unfamiliar genre. It was the fact that I was going toe-to-toe with the one person on that team who I had blatantly betrayed.
Madison had always arrived for our informal chats late and left early. Her clothes often had appeared disheveled and carried the fragrances of her job at the Market Street Deli. She usually had smelled pretty gouda.
To say I hadn't known what I was doing would be a lie. It had started out as a chance encounter, but I had known enough to take advantage of it from the very beginning.
I first had seen Madison at the Harrington County Public Library late one Saturday afternoon. For almost two years I had been visiting the library on Saturday afternoons to catch up on that week's news by way of their cache of local newspapers, most of which are so small they have no Internet presence.
I had watched Madison plunge her small hands between the puke-green cushions of an overstuffed couch at the open end of the last aisle of the Reference section. She had been sitting - half-turned toward the back of the couch - unaware I was standing in the last aisle, and poking out of the side pocket of her purse was a brochure for The Prose and Cons.
When she had shifted into the most embarrassing position - her knees on the edge of the couch, her upper body hunched down, her backside prominently swishing back and forth due to her vigorous actions - Madison had caught a glimpse of me over her shoulder.
"Lost my reading glasses," she had explained.
Her translucent skin had held the burst of flamingo pink that crept into her cheeks. She had grinned with all her teeth.
"Don't you just hate misplaced modifiers?" I had managed to say with a straight face.
"Yes. Especially when they're separated from a possessive subject," Madison said, without skipping a beat.
This had impressed me, but I knew what had to be done. I offered to help Madison in her search just as she pulled out a black vinyl case with the missing glasses.
"Thanks for the offer," she had said. "But I've found what I'm looking for."
"I'm Nick, by the way," I said, not letting the opportunity for introductions pass.
"Madison," she said. She had straightened up and put the case in her purse.
That's how it had begun. That had been two beginnings.
Over the next 12 weeks we had met at the library on Saturday afternoons in a sort of spontaneous manner. I had made it known I was there every Saturday afternoon and practically begged her to drop by. We never called it dating.
She had told me she was brushing up on elements of writing before committing to a reading at a Prose and Cons meeting. She said she was interested in community service, and the Prose and Cons provided that along while nurturing her creative writing.
Some might say I stalked Madison, and I guess that was true enough, technically. But my motivations had nothing to do with her. She had just been the unwitting means to an end.
To my wicked delight, Madison had told me about the members of the Prose and Cons, their best writers, their weakest ones. She confided in me that she had never actually finished writing a short story but had literally a hundred that she had started.
Talking to her had been the easy part, so easy, in fact, that I had been surprised at our range of conversation. But to avert suspicion of my intentions, I had made sure to allow the digressions from the subject of the Prose and Cons to whatever topics she brought up only to work the conversation back to my true interest.
At one point she had asked if I was seeing anyone, and if not, why not. She had admitted to noticing I didn't wear a wedding ring but had explained she wasn't being forward, just curious.
Love, I had told her, was not my forte. I had told her it was probably because I had never had reason to take it seriously.
Madison had described a more hopeful, yet just as unsuccessful, love life. She had been through a lot of mediocre relationships but nothing special.
"I'm waiting for someone I want to hold hands with," she had said.
"Why hold hands?" "That's the most intimate kind of relationship," Madison said. "Your hands are what you use to reach for things."
I had just nodded, as if I understood.
Whatever it took to convince her. I had always responded in a manner that made her believe we were becoming good friends, that I didn't hold the same grudge Rich held. She had been aware, she said, the Rich sometimes seemed annoyed by our group, but since her shift at the deli on weekdays ended just as our groups met, she did not get to see the full show. She had been to only two meetings when I had first met her.
Madison seemed pleased to be able to talk about writing and our groups, and that had been the whole idea. It had been easier than I thought until it was time to rumble.
A small but respectable crowd of about 50 had gathered at Millay Auditorium, located in a historic building accented in wood that held darkness like guilt. Dr. Shakespeare directed six of his beloved students to act as monitors for the six participants.
It was pretty straightforward: After random drawings for genre and form, each writer got a notebook and their choice of pen or pencil. No other materials, including cell phones or electronic devices, were permitted. To ensure no one cheated, each student was paired with a writer, sitting beside their matches to monitor them from beginning to end.
Each team had to produce two short stories and one poem, each within the given genre. The work had no word limit, but a timer would be set for 60 minutes, after which participants would read before the panel of judges comprised of the students and Dr. Shakespeare. Points would be deducted if the work was unfinished and, of course, for any number of literary infractions.
Our team had randomly drawn the genres of inspirational, romance and western. The Prose and Cons got mystery, science fiction and contemporary.
We had lucked out, in a way: Brandon wrote poetry so at least he had experience in the form. But the rest had been a crap shoot for our team.
An hour goes by fast when something is on the line. I don't remember much once we divvied up the genres and began writing.
Before I had realized it, time had been called, the works collected and the rumble got underway.
Cutter had read first, a poem about melons. Large melons. Large juicy melons. He pondered his inexplicable and mysterious draw to them, much like a moron wondering why he's soaking wet as he stands in the pouring rain.
I had wanted to shout to him to get a room and take his melons with him.
The judges had seemed equally repulsed by the reading. It looked like one of them vomited in her mouth a little.
Still, I had suddenly realized Cutter wasn't spouting the saccharine-sweet fluff I had been told he wrote. In fact, despite the inappropriately amorous overtures to fruit, his writing wasn't horrible.
Brandon had gone next with a poem called "Fight," and I wish I could say it had gone better for our team member. But Brandon hadn't grown much as a poet since he joined us two years ago, fresh out of high school. He had continued writing painfully didactic diatribes that sounded like declarations of machismo, all about overcoming the enemy at all costs and proving worth despite the pain. He might as well have been writing about melons, too. In his pants.
Next came Celie's short story titled "Mr. Toots and the Meow Meow Mafia," about a farting cat with mind control abilities. Something about the flatulence creating chemically-induced compliance in humans.
At the end it turned into a furry bloodbath in which Mr. Toots had to face a feline mafia of cats with the same abilities that wanted him to join them. It was not pretty, but it didn't sound illiterate either, and I felt a sense of uneasiness working its way into my mind.
Lexie had volunteered to take the western genre for our team and came up with a story titled "Bad Day at Badham Creek Ranch" that told the tale of a rancher who has a run in with cattle thieves. If she hadn't overused the phrases "Aw, shucks," "Dagnabbit" and "Get along little doggies" it might have been quite a bit better.
When Madison took the stage, I had been surprised how conflicted I felt. I had found myself searching the words for special meaning. Her contemporary story, "The Last Rites of a Dying Summer," told the tale of a group of high school friends departing for different paths at the end of a summer together.
The story had ended with the misfit group dancing in front of the screen at a drive-in movie that was closing that night.
She had finished it.
I was stunned and inexplicably happy. She had finished writing a short story.
Something had been off about the whole thing. I hadn't understood why she kept glancing my way during her reading, a knowing smirk on her lips. If anything I had expected scornful glares from her.
Then, as she stepped down from the stage amid generous applause, she had been greeted by an enthusiastic kiss from Rich who stood from his front row seat and embraced her.
These had not been casual gestures. They had been the actions of a couple.
Then I had come to the slow realization of what was happening, unable to allow it to fully develop. I had been called to the stage to read.
Maybe I had provided my own surprise; I'm still uncertain about that. I had finished my story with just over a minute to spare. It was simply titled "Spectacles."
The story was about a guy who met his soul mate at a Laundromat when she had returned to look for her missing glasses between the cushions of the cheap vinyl couch. In the story, the couple could not be together because the woman was engaged to another man and decided not to leave him.
As I wrote the story, I hadn't known how it was going to end. I had meant the story to be a blatant representation of a calculated betrayal.
As I read the words, I had been startled by my own truths. I had felt a flutter in my chest and a rush of blood to my face that alternated between self-conscious warmth and cold reality.
Before leaving the stage, I had managed a glance at Madison in the front row. I saw her grin falter. Something resembling sadness tinged her countenance. Her hands rested in her lap, despite the fact that Rich's hand rested on her knee.
The critiques had been merciless.
Dr. Shakespeare himself had called Brandon's poem "a testosterone-laden turd" and sarcastically commended Lexie for bringing Yosemite Sam to life once more for the benefit of pre-schoolers. Despite these observations he did allow some elements were not complete garbage.
Cutter was told by two of the judges he should seek therapy, while Celie was told by one judge to find a world beyond rectums. Again, the judges offered a few bits of praise amid the eviscerating comments.
Madison's work was called sophomoric by one judge but rated a bit above mediocre by most of the others, including Dr. Shakespeare. The consensus had seemed to indicate the story was not great but at least salvageable.
My short story fared about as well with the student judges, but Dr. Shakespeare allowed there was a "tiny spark of worth in a dimly-lit maze of literary mish-mash." Then he went on to mutter something about me pissing on that spark with a heavy-handed ending.
It had taken the judges 20 minutes to compare notes and confer. The Easy Writers looked uneasy, but all I could think about was how Rich had muttered the word "predictable" when we chose opponents, how Madison never actually had worn the glasses she had been looking for, how Rich carried the glasses case in his shirt pocket and wore glasses.
When Dr. Shakespeare had made the announcement, he prefaced it with a note that neither group should win any awards. But in the end, he had relinquished victory to The Easy Riders.
Amid the screams and exclamations of our members and the flurry of hugs and high fives, I couldn't bring myself to look at Madison. Rich, to his credit, had come up and shook my hand. But that just made me think of hand-holding.
The Saturday after our writer rumble I could not make myself leave the apartment. From outside, the sound of children laughing and shouting as they played drifted into my living room, echoing in its emptiness.
Even the couch had felt different, as I shifted on its cushions to settle in, channel surfing without any real desire to watch anything the TV world had to offer. But I had wanted to shake predictability, to shed a part of myself somehow.
Predictability was going to the library every Saturday. Predictability was how I had seized the opportunity to take advantage of what I had thought was a chance encounter.
In the end, I had gone to the library anyway. I don't know why. Or maybe I do.
The bright day fell in great white beams of sunlight through the windows onto the library floor. I grew sick as I walked toward the back section of the building.
I had rounded the corner with my heart in my throat only to find an empty couch, empty table and chairs.
For the rest of that afternoon, I had sat there, alone in the reference section, resting my head on the cool, slick surface of the table, thinking about things won and lost.
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Just beyond the Prose and Cons, a coffee barista had leaned over the customer-free counter and watched our exchange as he sipped away at a foamy mocha-cappa-frappa-something. The Prose and Cons was the other writer's group whose members mentored recently-released criminals, encouraging them to use writing as a creative outlet.
I had hated the Prose and Cons. Maybe not so much the whole group, but I had hated their leader, Rich. He was a smarmy, egomaniacal 30-something substitute teacher who had a few publication credits in small magazines.
To hear him talk, you'd think he'd won the Nobel Prize for literature. In that respect he had the makings of a fantasy writer.
Rich had stepped toward me. His name isn't really Rich, but the first time I saw him he was wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the adjective surrounded by lots of dollar signs. I guess it had been meant to be ironic, but I thought it underscored his nature, his superior attitude that even the bookstore clerks on occasion ridiculed when he wasn't around.
Until now, I had only vaguely heard about writer rumbles. They had remained the stuff of fiction, of dark lore whispered in shady bookstores where writers' groups dealt in black market prepositions.
Truth be told, maybe I should have been more concerned about facing a group that included ex-cons, but most of those guys were guilty of primarily misdemeanors, like bouncing checks or shoplifting. On the other hand, a couple of them, namely Marc the Narc and a guy they called Cutter, scared the baristas. I heard Celie "The Fist" even made one of them cry.
"Time to settle this once and for all," Rich said.
I had sneered at him then nodded and grunted.
There's something to be said for that which goes unspoken, the sparseness of dialogue.
"You guys pick three of ours; we pick three of yours," Rich said.
I had stared at him, trying to appear as if I was mulling it over but mostly trying to figure out if I should barter or something. What the hell did I know? I've never been in a writer rumble.
So I waited what felt like a respectable amount of time, then I nodded.
In my head I heard a song about the Jets and the Sharks.
I glanced over at Madison, one of the newest members of the Prose and Cons. She averted her eyes.
"Ground rules," I said.
"Random genre selection."
"I select three, you select three, all from a mutually agreed-upon list."
"Done," Rich said, his beady eyes boring into mine. "Word limit."
It was no secret my short stories tend to run longer than average. And Rich knew it.
"Determined by an impartial panel of judges," I countered.
Rich had recoiled.
"The Pen Pals," he suggested.
Who was he trying to kid? The Pen Pals was another writer's group similar to his own. Some of their members were even friends with members of the Prose and Cons.
"No way," I said. "The Write Stuff."
He had given me the same look I had given him for his suggestion, for the same reasons. Hell, it was worth a shot.
"Dr. Shakespeare," we said, in unison, like a harmonized line of a song, a song about a rumble. A kind of lame rumble.
In truth, both of us had known where this rumble was headed.
Dr. Shakespeare's real name was Martin Adams, and he had a reputation for being a hardass creative writing teacher. Notoriously fond of quoting The Bard at the drop of a hat, he had published three critically-acclaimed literary novels and a collection of short stories.
There was no chance of bias with him as a judge. He didn't like anyone's writing, unless they had gone through his creative writing program, and even there, there were no guarantees.
We had known Dr. Shakespeare delighted in this sort of thing, not necessarily writer rumbles but opportunities to critique writers not in his program. He regularly held open readings, enlisting the aid of some of his better students to provide harsh critiques and practice literary evaluation. The professor would choose the location on campus. It would be neutral territory.
The result of the writer rumble would determine once and for all the biggest point of contention between our groups: who would get the comfy chair corner at Mega-Libro. That's what had started this whole thing. The comfy chair corner had been coveted by both groups from the beginning. Unlike the other solid wood chairs used throughout the bookstore, the comfy chair corner had four overstuffed chairs that felt like settling into a warm embrace.
It had been a source of contention for nearly a year, since our groups met at the bookstore at the same time. The spot went to whichever group had a member claim it first each time, and that had gone back and forth.
It was going to be settled now, as we all found chairs in neutral territory, the Java Jones Café, to make our picks for participants. Rich and I had faced each other. Rich's crew, all seven of them, sat at the tables behind him.
The six members of my crew, the Easy Writers, sat at tables behind me. Let me say right now I'm not crazy about our group's name. It makes us sound like we're slutty word whores or something, turning tricks for an active verb or a well-timed onomatopoeia.
Come up and see us some time, and we'll make sure to take care of your dangling participle.
But our group had voted from a list of three suggestions. So Easy Writers it was.
Each group had huddled to confer about their picks.
Our selections had been decided days ago. My fellow Easy Writers hadn't known it, but this had been in the works for some time.
"Madison," I whispered to my fellow writers. "And Cutter and Celie."
"Why not Landon?" Jared said. "He's new."
"New to the group," I had corrected. "We don't know his background. For all we know he has more publication credits than all of us combined."
My fellow writers had appeared doubtful.
"On the other hand, I happen to know Madison doesn't write fast, and she's never finished a story. Cutter's writing is saccharine sweet, and Celie is practically illiterate."
"Seriously, bro, how do you know all this?" Brandon said.
I had done my best to keep things as clandestine as possible, and now I had to fess up. At least to a point.
"I've been doing some reconnaissance."
"What does that mean?" Kayla said. Her expression had denoted she was expecting a sordid explanation but not wanting one.
I had spouted off a quick and innocuous account of having met Madison a few months earlier. Then I had diverted the conversation back to the matter at hand.
They had known better, and I had known they knew. I hadn't really cared what that said about me.
I had glanced over at the Prose and Cons huddle. Every now and then Rich looked over at us with his beady, beady eyes.
Madison had peeked over Rich's shoulder, her blue-green eyes fixing on me for lengthy seconds before darting back to those in her huddle. When we broke huddle I didn't even wait.
"Madison," I said, choosing our first opponent, even before Rich stepped in front of me.
"Predictable," Rich had muttered.
Then he had selected Brandon and Lexie, and I had chosen Cutter and Celie.
Before Rich had made his final choice he had paused dramatically.
"And you," Rich said.
I had hesitated. I had wanted to say something like, "Oh, yeah? You want a piece of me?" Instead I had stood silent as a voice in my head said, "Crap!"
It wasn't so much the pressure of writing something on the fly or even the limitation of the word count or threat of an unfamiliar genre. It was the fact that I was going toe-to-toe with the one person on that team who I had blatantly betrayed.
Madison had always arrived for our informal chats late and left early. Her clothes often had appeared disheveled and carried the fragrances of her job at the Market Street Deli. She usually had smelled pretty gouda.
To say I hadn't known what I was doing would be a lie. It had started out as a chance encounter, but I had known enough to take advantage of it from the very beginning.
I first had seen Madison at the Harrington County Public Library late one Saturday afternoon. For almost two years I had been visiting the library on Saturday afternoons to catch up on that week's news by way of their cache of local newspapers, most of which are so small they have no Internet presence.
I had watched Madison plunge her small hands between the puke-green cushions of an overstuffed couch at the open end of the last aisle of the Reference section. She had been sitting - half-turned toward the back of the couch - unaware I was standing in the last aisle, and poking out of the side pocket of her purse was a brochure for The Prose and Cons.
When she had shifted into the most embarrassing position - her knees on the edge of the couch, her upper body hunched down, her backside prominently swishing back and forth due to her vigorous actions - Madison had caught a glimpse of me over her shoulder.
"Lost my reading glasses," she had explained.
Her translucent skin had held the burst of flamingo pink that crept into her cheeks. She had grinned with all her teeth.
"Don't you just hate misplaced modifiers?" I had managed to say with a straight face.
"Yes. Especially when they're separated from a possessive subject," Madison said, without skipping a beat.
This had impressed me, but I knew what had to be done. I offered to help Madison in her search just as she pulled out a black vinyl case with the missing glasses.
"Thanks for the offer," she had said. "But I've found what I'm looking for."
"I'm Nick, by the way," I said, not letting the opportunity for introductions pass.
"Madison," she said. She had straightened up and put the case in her purse.
That's how it had begun. That had been two beginnings.
Over the next 12 weeks we had met at the library on Saturday afternoons in a sort of spontaneous manner. I had made it known I was there every Saturday afternoon and practically begged her to drop by. We never called it dating.
She had told me she was brushing up on elements of writing before committing to a reading at a Prose and Cons meeting. She said she was interested in community service, and the Prose and Cons provided that along while nurturing her creative writing.
Some might say I stalked Madison, and I guess that was true enough, technically. But my motivations had nothing to do with her. She had just been the unwitting means to an end.
To my wicked delight, Madison had told me about the members of the Prose and Cons, their best writers, their weakest ones. She confided in me that she had never actually finished writing a short story but had literally a hundred that she had started.
Talking to her had been the easy part, so easy, in fact, that I had been surprised at our range of conversation. But to avert suspicion of my intentions, I had made sure to allow the digressions from the subject of the Prose and Cons to whatever topics she brought up only to work the conversation back to my true interest.
At one point she had asked if I was seeing anyone, and if not, why not. She had admitted to noticing I didn't wear a wedding ring but had explained she wasn't being forward, just curious.
Love, I had told her, was not my forte. I had told her it was probably because I had never had reason to take it seriously.
Madison had described a more hopeful, yet just as unsuccessful, love life. She had been through a lot of mediocre relationships but nothing special.
"I'm waiting for someone I want to hold hands with," she had said.
"Why hold hands?" "That's the most intimate kind of relationship," Madison said. "Your hands are what you use to reach for things."
I had just nodded, as if I understood.
Whatever it took to convince her. I had always responded in a manner that made her believe we were becoming good friends, that I didn't hold the same grudge Rich held. She had been aware, she said, the Rich sometimes seemed annoyed by our group, but since her shift at the deli on weekdays ended just as our groups met, she did not get to see the full show. She had been to only two meetings when I had first met her.
Madison seemed pleased to be able to talk about writing and our groups, and that had been the whole idea. It had been easier than I thought until it was time to rumble.
A small but respectable crowd of about 50 had gathered at Millay Auditorium, located in a historic building accented in wood that held darkness like guilt. Dr. Shakespeare directed six of his beloved students to act as monitors for the six participants.
It was pretty straightforward: After random drawings for genre and form, each writer got a notebook and their choice of pen or pencil. No other materials, including cell phones or electronic devices, were permitted. To ensure no one cheated, each student was paired with a writer, sitting beside their matches to monitor them from beginning to end.
Each team had to produce two short stories and one poem, each within the given genre. The work had no word limit, but a timer would be set for 60 minutes, after which participants would read before the panel of judges comprised of the students and Dr. Shakespeare. Points would be deducted if the work was unfinished and, of course, for any number of literary infractions.
Our team had randomly drawn the genres of inspirational, romance and western. The Prose and Cons got mystery, science fiction and contemporary.
We had lucked out, in a way: Brandon wrote poetry so at least he had experience in the form. But the rest had been a crap shoot for our team.
An hour goes by fast when something is on the line. I don't remember much once we divvied up the genres and began writing.
Before I had realized it, time had been called, the works collected and the rumble got underway.
Cutter had read first, a poem about melons. Large melons. Large juicy melons. He pondered his inexplicable and mysterious draw to them, much like a moron wondering why he's soaking wet as he stands in the pouring rain.
I had wanted to shout to him to get a room and take his melons with him.
The judges had seemed equally repulsed by the reading. It looked like one of them vomited in her mouth a little.
Still, I had suddenly realized Cutter wasn't spouting the saccharine-sweet fluff I had been told he wrote. In fact, despite the inappropriately amorous overtures to fruit, his writing wasn't horrible.
Brandon had gone next with a poem called "Fight," and I wish I could say it had gone better for our team member. But Brandon hadn't grown much as a poet since he joined us two years ago, fresh out of high school. He had continued writing painfully didactic diatribes that sounded like declarations of machismo, all about overcoming the enemy at all costs and proving worth despite the pain. He might as well have been writing about melons, too. In his pants.
Next came Celie's short story titled "Mr. Toots and the Meow Meow Mafia," about a farting cat with mind control abilities. Something about the flatulence creating chemically-induced compliance in humans.
At the end it turned into a furry bloodbath in which Mr. Toots had to face a feline mafia of cats with the same abilities that wanted him to join them. It was not pretty, but it didn't sound illiterate either, and I felt a sense of uneasiness working its way into my mind.
Lexie had volunteered to take the western genre for our team and came up with a story titled "Bad Day at Badham Creek Ranch" that told the tale of a rancher who has a run in with cattle thieves. If she hadn't overused the phrases "Aw, shucks," "Dagnabbit" and "Get along little doggies" it might have been quite a bit better.
When Madison took the stage, I had been surprised how conflicted I felt. I had found myself searching the words for special meaning. Her contemporary story, "The Last Rites of a Dying Summer," told the tale of a group of high school friends departing for different paths at the end of a summer together.
The story had ended with the misfit group dancing in front of the screen at a drive-in movie that was closing that night.
She had finished it.
I was stunned and inexplicably happy. She had finished writing a short story.
Something had been off about the whole thing. I hadn't understood why she kept glancing my way during her reading, a knowing smirk on her lips. If anything I had expected scornful glares from her.
Then, as she stepped down from the stage amid generous applause, she had been greeted by an enthusiastic kiss from Rich who stood from his front row seat and embraced her.
These had not been casual gestures. They had been the actions of a couple.
Then I had come to the slow realization of what was happening, unable to allow it to fully develop. I had been called to the stage to read.
Maybe I had provided my own surprise; I'm still uncertain about that. I had finished my story with just over a minute to spare. It was simply titled "Spectacles."
The story was about a guy who met his soul mate at a Laundromat when she had returned to look for her missing glasses between the cushions of the cheap vinyl couch. In the story, the couple could not be together because the woman was engaged to another man and decided not to leave him.
As I wrote the story, I hadn't known how it was going to end. I had meant the story to be a blatant representation of a calculated betrayal.
As I read the words, I had been startled by my own truths. I had felt a flutter in my chest and a rush of blood to my face that alternated between self-conscious warmth and cold reality.
Before leaving the stage, I had managed a glance at Madison in the front row. I saw her grin falter. Something resembling sadness tinged her countenance. Her hands rested in her lap, despite the fact that Rich's hand rested on her knee.
The critiques had been merciless.
Dr. Shakespeare himself had called Brandon's poem "a testosterone-laden turd" and sarcastically commended Lexie for bringing Yosemite Sam to life once more for the benefit of pre-schoolers. Despite these observations he did allow some elements were not complete garbage.
Cutter was told by two of the judges he should seek therapy, while Celie was told by one judge to find a world beyond rectums. Again, the judges offered a few bits of praise amid the eviscerating comments.
Madison's work was called sophomoric by one judge but rated a bit above mediocre by most of the others, including Dr. Shakespeare. The consensus had seemed to indicate the story was not great but at least salvageable.
My short story fared about as well with the student judges, but Dr. Shakespeare allowed there was a "tiny spark of worth in a dimly-lit maze of literary mish-mash." Then he went on to mutter something about me pissing on that spark with a heavy-handed ending.
It had taken the judges 20 minutes to compare notes and confer. The Easy Writers looked uneasy, but all I could think about was how Rich had muttered the word "predictable" when we chose opponents, how Madison never actually had worn the glasses she had been looking for, how Rich carried the glasses case in his shirt pocket and wore glasses.
When Dr. Shakespeare had made the announcement, he prefaced it with a note that neither group should win any awards. But in the end, he had relinquished victory to The Easy Riders.
Amid the screams and exclamations of our members and the flurry of hugs and high fives, I couldn't bring myself to look at Madison. Rich, to his credit, had come up and shook my hand. But that just made me think of hand-holding.
The Saturday after our writer rumble I could not make myself leave the apartment. From outside, the sound of children laughing and shouting as they played drifted into my living room, echoing in its emptiness.
Even the couch had felt different, as I shifted on its cushions to settle in, channel surfing without any real desire to watch anything the TV world had to offer. But I had wanted to shake predictability, to shed a part of myself somehow.
Predictability was going to the library every Saturday. Predictability was how I had seized the opportunity to take advantage of what I had thought was a chance encounter.
In the end, I had gone to the library anyway. I don't know why. Or maybe I do.
The bright day fell in great white beams of sunlight through the windows onto the library floor. I grew sick as I walked toward the back section of the building.
I had rounded the corner with my heart in my throat only to find an empty couch, empty table and chairs.
For the rest of that afternoon, I had sat there, alone in the reference section, resting my head on the cool, slick surface of the table, thinking about things won and lost.
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