Farewell from Paradise
Page 25
Pittsburgh twinkled in the summer night. Two figures lay on a swinging bench upon their balcony overlooking the city. They were laughing, talking, happy. In their house, a poster hung in the hallway, depicting a dragon and a metropolis and three giants and a little dinosaur. It read Paradiso, the National Bestseller at the bottom. Next to it was a map of Tennessee, pictures of family reunions and a wedding tacked to it, places they had visited circled by red marker.
In a room that had once been their spare, the walls were half-painted light green, a crib lay half-finished, toys and bottles were prepped and ready to go, neatly stacked on a changing table. A mobile whirled softly from the ceiling, little cars, boats and trucks suspended from gold balloons. A fish tank bubbled in the corner, within which was a tiny model city. And on a pile of towels in the corner lay a broken watch. Sitting innocently, patiently, frozen in time.
Yet, as if spurned by the gentle rumble of thunder from somewhere far off in the distance, the stopped hands suddenly—and as inexplicably as Sam’s miraculous reawakening—started to tick.
“And that’s the end?”
“Yes,” Sam said, “that’s how it ends.”
Simon Tam, literary agent, pressed his palms together and set his fingertips beneath his nose as he stared at the young man sitting across from him. He had an elegance, a warmth to him, that Sam had found appealing, much more so than with the previous agents with which he’d interviewed.
“It seems a tad abrupt,” Tam said. “As does the whole romance in the novel. It happens a little too fast to really be believable. But I guess love at first sight isn’t an uncommon phenomenon.”
“I know, but…” Sam got nervous. This is usually where agents gave him backhanded compliments then told him they’d pass. “There’s not much else to say.” He gulped.
For the longest time, Tam said nothing. Finally, one corner of his mouth rose, forming a slight smile. “May I ask, how much of this is true, Sam?” He tapped the manuscript sitting on his desk.
“It’s just fiction,” Sam answered sharply.
“You can be honest with me, Mr. Pierce.”
He mulled it over, then let out a faint chuckle. “They say the best stuff comes from real life.”
Tam waved his hand. “But there was no car accident, or coma or anything?”
“No, no, of course not. But the background…my family…”
“And your situation?”
He nodded. “Writing this helped me…forgive, I guess you could say.”
“Right, right. You’ll have to change all the names, you know?”
“Oh I know, I’m planning on—” He stopped, realizing something. He felt even more nervous all the sudden, a building elation growing in his chest. “Does this mean…”
“Yes,” Tam smiled and nodded. “I would love to represent your work, Mr. Pierce. It needs edits and cleanups, but I believe the potential is massive.”
Sam sat speechless. “This is…this is…”
Tam laughed and patted the stack of pages. “This is a very subjective business, Mr. Pierce. I guess I was just the right agent on the right day.”
Sam put his hand to his heart. He couldn’t help but smile, staring off into space.
They took a few minutes to discuss the details, including a ten percent reduction on Tam’s typical commission—because Sam reminded him of himself. Young, ambitious, but rendered brooding by a life of perpetual disappointment.
As Sam shook his hand and headed for the door, he heard one last question behind him.
“I have to ask,” Tam said, “is she real?”
He turned. “Who?”
“Delaney Cooper. Is she taken from real life?”
Sam sighed. “She really is just fiction. Unfortunately.”
Tam nodded. “Have you heard the term Manic Pixie Dream Girl?”
“No…”
“The MPDG concept is an archetype from film and literature. It is typically a bubbly, outgoing woman who helps bring a shy, down-on-his-luck man out of his emotional shell. Call it the ying to his yang, if you will. Typically these are not so much characters as they are tools for the man to grow and mature, often at the expense of her own characterization. Obviously, Delaney represents some form of this caricature, though deeper, considering her own demons with which she struggles. Authors tend to create these women as idealized beings, representing not so much what they want in life, but what they need, to make them whole.”
Sam was lost. It showed.
Simon Tam smiled again. “I was just hoping that she was real, too, not just your own creation. But you never know. Perhaps the universe shall,” he clasped his fingers together, “intervene.”
“Knowing me, I’d probably just miss it,” Sam said, only half joking.
“I’m sure that fate will let you know, Sam. I’m sure it will let you know.”
The train ride home was wonderful. Sam called his mom, then his dad, and told them all the good news. It was done. Finally. Right agent, right day.
He was finally a writer.
A lifelong dream realized at his darkest point.
It was twilight by the time he got to his studio, where he found even more eviction notices taped to the door. But he didn’t care. Not anymore. He came to New York to chase his dream, and now that dream was imminent. He ordered a pizza to celebrate, tuned the radio to some 1940s swing jazz, and spent the evening tearing up the rejection letters he’d accumulated over the years, turning them into mindless strips of paper that he squished into a box of old junk he was planning on throwing away.
At one point, he found a little velvet ring box. He knew what was inside, and what it represented. He didn’t want to see it again. It didn’t matter anymore. With a confidence he’d never felt before, he opened his window and dropped the box into the dumpster far below, where it landed with an inaudible thud amongst a mass of black garbage bags. He looked out across the street, where a condemned Italian restaurant sat at the bottom of the adjacent building. It had been closed since he arrived in New York and served as the inspiration for Romano’s. The truth was that he couldn’t even see the real name through all the grime. He wondered what would happen to it in the future, and whether—
Knock, knock!
Two raps at his door reminded him of his pizza. He quickly shut the window, turned down the embarrassing music and answered the door.
And on the other side stood the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.
Dressed in a green polo and red cap with an outstretched hand holding a pizza box, she had a round face and brown hair tied back in a ponytail. She spoke with a northern accent, not too high, not too low, a whisper in a choir. “How are you doing tonight, sir?”
Her eyes. They were as blue as the open ocean on a clear day. And around the wells of her pupils were thin rings of orange that gave off a brilliant radiance.
“Never better,” Sam said as he stared into the celestial gateway of her eyes. “Literally.”
And then, he asked for her name.