The Writer's Orchard Page 2

  "I didn't know. You never said it was the apples themselves."

  "She figured it out.” The old man blew his nose in a handkerchief and inspected the results. "Took you a lot longer."

  "I'm sorry," Alex said.

  The old man snorted.

  Alex put on his most sincere expression. "It was wrong of me to take it, and I hope you forgive me. I'll make amends. Name your price."

  The old man blew his nose again. "Three hundred dollars."

  "Three hundred for a short story? You were going to sell me an entire novel for five!"

  "Inflation."

  Alex pulled the money out of his wallet and stomped from foot to foot, trying to drive away the cold. "Here.”

  The old man took the bills and began to close the door.

  "Wait!" Alex wedged his boot into the opening. "I'd like to buy one of my own."

  "You're not a writer."

  "I can write. I wrote in high school."

  "Did you, now?"

  "It's always been a dream of mine," Alex insisted.

  The old man sighed but let Alex enter. The inside of the shack was stark, with only a cot and chair for furniture and a wood stove to heat the place. A basket on a shelf held the last apples of autumn.

  "Mr. Writer, eh?” The old man took the basket down. "You think it'll get you lots of money? That women will flock to you, or fame will fill that hole in your heart?"

  "Character motivation," Alex said. "I get that. Acting and writing are closely related, you know."

  "You could get hurt."

  "I can handle it."

  "Heard that before.” The old man sorted through the fruit and pulled out one that was small and decently shaped. "Here. Nursing home resident turns amateur sleuth."

  Alex reached for the largest apple instead. "I want this one."

  "You won't be able to swallow it."

  "How much?"

  "Don't you want to know what it's about?"

  Alex weighed the apple. "I'll find out. How much?"

  "A thousand."

  He managed not to wince by thinking of royalties and movie rights. "Do you take credit cards?"

  "Visa and Mastercard."

  The transaction only took a few minutes. Alex wanted to stay and warm himself but the old man didn't offer an invitation, only advice.

  "Booze might help in the short run, if things become too bad," the old man said. "Lock up your guns beforehand, if you have any."

  "Yeah," Alex said. "I'll do that."

  Out in the driveway he paused to gaze at Bob and Gwen's house, which was decked out for the holidays. Thoughts of hot apple cider by the fire pulled at him, but the apple in his pocket sang out promises of fame and fortune. By nine o'clock that night he was back in his basement apartment in front of a second-hand computer and an inkjet printer. Beside the monitor were a half-dozen books a librarian had recommended for beginning writers. Alex pushed the books aside and cracked his knuckles.

  "Apple, do your thing," he said, and bit into it as deeply as he could. The skin was crisp, the flesh beneath it tender and succulent. Sweeter than he'd expected, a little tartness mixed in, and he thought he could smell cinnamon, burning leaves, pumpkin pie fresh from the oven. When only the core was left he wrapped the seeds in a napkin and waited for the story to come.

  "It was a dark and stormy night," Alex said, but that didn't sound very exciting. He peered out the barred window at pedestrians hurrying by. "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..."

  No. Someone else had already done that one. He picked at a piece of apple caught between his teeth.

  "Call me Alexander," he said, in as deep a voice as he could manage, but it didn't have the same impact as Ishmael.

  After several minutes of fruitless beginnings he turned the TV on and watched the Dick Clark special. Just another New Year's Eve, he decided, and though he normally would have been at some wild party or another, a writer had to sacrifice for his art. He dozed off before the ball dropped in Times Square and it was in his dreams that the idea came as bright and sharp as lightning zig-zagging across a dark Midwestern prairie. A man walked out of the west, Alex thought, and it was there, all of it, spilling from his head to his hands, buzzing through his nerves like electricity, the epic story of an immortal man who'd survived the fall of Rome and had been doomed to wander the world ever since. Alex dashed to the computer so quickly his head spun and typed that first line, that glorious first line, and after that an entire paragraph about the city by the sea to which the man came, and then he stopped because his hero needed a name.

  "Barry," he decided. It didn't sound right. Alex tore through the phone book and after several Antonios and Miguels latched onto Adam, which wasn't appropriate either but which he could always change later. Adam the Roman paused on the beach of the city by the sea, his noble head aloft, awed by the skyscrapers gleaming in the sunset--but then Alex hesitated, because he wasn't sure if he wanted to use New York or Miami as his backdrop, and in either case if Adam came out of the west he would have had to go around the city in order to get to the water, so that first glimpse wasn't really a first glimpse after all, and wouldn't the sun be behind the buildings, casting a glow Adam wouldn't see? And what was so awe-inspiring about the buildings anyway? Surely the man had seen skyscrapers before.

  "No, no, no.” Alex squeezed his eyes shut as words and images swelled in his brain. Additional characters fought for space on the page. A woman eyes the color of amethysts, a gnarled man who wheezed with every sour breath, children of mysterious parentage, reporters with poor ethics--Alex would have to tell all their stories, but how? Shifting third person point of view? An omniscient narrator, peering down on the great city like God himself? The woman, Isabella, emerged naked and glistening from the sea, she wraps her arms around him, she kisses his brow, and it took two more pages before he realized he'd switched verb tenses and there was no plausible reason for her to be frolicking naked in the water in the first place.

  He kept typing anyway, the keyboard shaking under the slam of his fingers, remembering periodically to save the work to the hard drive and a back-up disk. At one point he looked up and saw daylight. Soon after it was night again. Every now and then he staggered to the refrigerator or bathroom. He might have slept, though he didn't remember it. He was plowing through twenty pages of backstory when his manager at LaPierre's called to berate him for being late.

  "I'm sick," Alex said. "Diarrhea."

  "I don't care if it's coming out your nose and both ears. Get your ass in here."

  Alex hung up. Later he unplugged the phone from the wall. The printer died in the middle of page nine hundred and fifty and so did his confidence at being able to end the damn thing. Looking in the mirror, he saw a wild-eyed man with hollowed cheeks and tea-bags of flesh under his eyes. He forced himself into the shower and then went out into the world in search of Chinese food. At a payphone he paused, wondering if Linda would help him if he asked.

  "Screw that," he said, and bought a six-pack instead.

  The beer slowed his pace and made the pages more coherent. The next day Alex advanced to rum, which made Adam's plight as a sympathetic man in an unsympathetic world come more sharply into focus. Vodka took care of both Isabella's issues with intimacy and the climax of the story in one of the very same skyscrapers Adam had once admired from the shore below. Alex didn't remember typing "The End" but someone in a drunken stupor surely had, for he woke to dried vomit on the keyboard and those magnificent words staring him in the face.

  "I finished!" he screamed out his window. "I did it!"

  "Screw you!" someone shouted back.

  Alex slept for three days. When he woke and read the manuscript cold he saw a few minor problems but could tell it was the defining book of his generation, well worth swollen fingers and an aching back. He had found his true calling. Against all expectations, he was indeed a writer.

  ###

  No one bought his book.

  Most of th
e editors and agents he contacted didn't respond to his queries, follow-ups or phone calls. A few sent form letters full of boilerplate language--doesn't meet our needs, not what we're looking for. Alex knew how to deal with rejection as an actor but as a writer it was unexpectedly more personal; couldn't they see past a few minor problems to the overall strength of the work? No one was gracious enough to acknowledge how much time he'd put into the novel, how much of his own soul he'd poured onto the pages. The most detailed response came on a cream-colored notecard from an agent who'd lived up on the second floor before she'd hit it big and moved uptown.

  "Great ideas," she wrote. "Not-so-great execution. Take some classes and rewrite. Good luck."

  Alex tore that note into shreds as he trudged to work. Spring had come, revealing all the compacted garbage that had been hidden under snow all winter. After LaPierre's had refused to hire him back he'd been forced to take the worst job of his life in a fast-food restaurant and it was there, that night, as he dunked a bin of frozen fries into a vat of oil, that his manager Omar said, "I hear you wrote a book."

  "Yeah.” Alex turned a timer and watched the seconds of his life tick away. "I've got publishers looking at it."

  Omar grinned. "I too am writer. Movies. 'Star Wars' meets 'Monsoon Wedding.' You would read?"

  A screenplay. Of course. Alex spent the next three months hacking his epic down to three hundred pages formatted for the big screen, complete with detailed camera angles and casting suggestions. Twelve Hollywood agents rejected it without comment, and he cursed their short-sightedness.

  "Maybe you should go back to the acting thing," Joey said one day at the copy shop.

  Alex bristled. "You don't think my writing's any good?"

  "I think it takes eight years to be a lawyer and eleven years to be a doctor," Joey replied. "I've got a freaking MFA. What makes you think you're shit's ice cream overnight?"

  That weekend Alex put the novel and screenplay in boxes and laid them to rest under his bed next to dust bunnies and forgotten porn. He felt like a kid burying a beloved pet after it had been run over by a truck, but with more free time on his calendar he started auditioning again and soon picked up a gig delivering raunchy jokes and penne marinara at a nightly spoof of Italian weddings. The pay was better than the fast-food joint, and at least he didn't go home after every show smelling like hamburgers.

  Despite his best efforts to put writing behind him, he found himself carrying a small spiral notebook and jotting down plot ideas whenever they struck. He went back and read one of the writing books the librarian had recommended. He toyed with a short story about a magical orchard in upstate Maine, but couldn't figure out where the story started or ended, or if he even liked his protagonist.

  To his surprise, Linda came to see him one night after the show. The last of the intoxicated guests had been kicked out and the theater looked like a tornado had whipped through a bridal shop. Alex was watching the busboys clear away wedding cake when Linda appeared at the door, looking thin and pale in a green dress.

  "Hey," he said.

  "Hi.” Linda stepped over a broken wine glass. "Is this a good time? I thought it might be."

  "Sure. How'd you know I was here?"

  "Judy from Accounting saw the show last week. Remember her from LaPierre's?"

  Alex shook his head and patted a bar stool. "Drink? It's on the house."

  "I can't stay. Greg's waiting in the car. He's my--well, anyway, I wanted to give you this."

  Linda dug into her purse and pulled out a shiny red apple. Though he was several feet away Alex's heart gave a little extra beat. He asked, "Is that what I think it is?"

  "Yes. I heard you were writing these days."

  "You keep it. Last time I bit off more than I could chew."

  Linda put the apple on the bar next to a discarded napkin. "It's just a little vignette. Take it. I owe you for helping me get started."

  "You got started long before I met you."

  She smiled. "I guess."

  "And you've been doing well."

  "I've been doing great. The book's coming out on schedule, and I've got a contract to write two more. It's only that...well, it's silly. Gift horses and all, you know?"

  "What do you mean?"

  Her right shoulder lifted in an eloquent shrug. "I haven't been able to come up with any ideas of my own lately. Only ones that I buy."

  One of the busboys turned off the stage lights. Another began sweeping the debris around Linda's high-heeled shoes. Alex said, "It's probably the stress. Success and all."

  "I guess.” Linda pulled her gaze from the apple. "Take care of yourself, okay? Maybe one day our books will wind up on the bestseller's list next to one another."

  She left to join the man waiting for her. Alex picked up the apple and after a moment's consideration slid it into his pocket. Walking home in his cheap tuxedo, the city hot and neon-lit around him, he decided to resist temptation. He knew his strengths, such as they were, as well as his limitations. He knew the healthiest and sanest thing for him to do was hurl the fruit into the nearest trash bin and let it rot away unnoticed and unheeded, never to be appreciated by readers or fellow writers.

  Instead Alex went home, took the apple from his pocket, and bit it.

  The End

  Table of Contents

  The Writer's Orchard