by Chris Belden
“Professor Cleverly,” Rather said.
“Mr. Rather.” Simone’s eyes tilted upward to meet those of the lanky playwright. Behind him, of course, came his mistress.
“Have you found the source of the technical difficulties?” he asked.
“I was assured it was accidental. Something about a power surge.”
“How apt,” Rather snipped. “Whose power was surging, I wonder.”
“I’m told it affected the entire campus.”
“The timing was certainly interesting, don’t you think?”
“Who would do such a thing, Mr. Rather?”
“Perhaps there are those who are envious,” he replied, his eyes focused on Shriver. “Where is our friend Ms. Smithee?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“And her sidekick, Betty Crocker?”
Simone narrowed her eyes into steely bullets. “Surely you don’t think one of the other writers tampered with the equipment?”
“Stranger things have happened.”
“Not here.”
“No, of course not,” the playwright sniffed. “Not at your precious writers’ conference.”
“Now, see here, Rather,” Shriver started. He wanted to belt the man in the mouth, but he was fairly certain that, with his superior height and reach, the playwright could amply defend himself. “Don’t speak to Professor Cleverly like that. She’s doing her best to make this conference a success.”
Shriver was surprised to see that the playwright seemed a bit intimidated. Then he realized that, as far as Rather was concerned, he had just been upbraided by the legendary Shriver. Who knew literary eminence brought with it a certain amount of authority?
Emboldened, Shriver added, “You owe Simone an apology.”
Rather’s face turned pink. “Of course,” he said meekly. “I’m sorry, Professor. It’s just that I was a bit . . . thrown off by the whole incident.”
“And I apologize to you, Mr. Rather,” Simone said. “I look forward to seeing you at tomorrow’s panel.”
Rather nodded, then he and his assistant turned like two dancers in a choreographed movement and, side by side, disappeared through the door.
Simone looked back at Shriver, and he knew, somehow, what it was she needed.
“Yes, please,” she said, accepting the offered cup. She drank greedily. “Thank you.”
“I am at your service.”
The singer had started another tune, an upbeat number with a welcome perky rhythm.
“Trying to be too bad,” he sang, “trying to be too tough . . .”
“It’s been a long day,” Simone said.
“For both of us.”
“Yes. I think it’s time for me to head home.”
His heart sank. The whiskey, the defeated look on Rather’s face, the memory of Simone’s pale blue brassiere—all had combined to lift his spirits, and now she wanted to go?
“Can I give you a ride back to the hotel?” she asked.
Chapter Five
They ran to her car, zigzagging to throw off the relentless mosquitoes.
“The nightmare continues,” Simone said once they were safely in the massive vehicle.
Though it was a warm night, they had to keep the windows rolled up. But Shriver didn’t care about the bugs. He couldn’t even feel the bruise on his rump anymore. Illuminated by oncoming headlights and other ambient light, Simone looked incandescent.
“I just want to say,” he told her, “I think you’re doing a great job.”
“Oh, I’ll be fine. It seems every year there’s some sort of controversy.”
“I guess you get a bunch of writers together and . . .”
“Exactly. Last year, for example, there was this poet who did his best to seduce everyone in the department. Women, men—he’d have had his way with a bison if there’d been one on the faculty.”
“Wow. How successful was he?” Shriver asked pointedly.
She hesitated. “He was a seductive character. He was short and I was not a fan of his poetry, but there was something about him. Self-confidence? Cockiness? I don’t know.”
Shriver tried to think of something cocky to say but came up with nothing.
Simone braked at a red light. “What is it about writers? Why are they so self-absorbed? Is it because they spend all that time alone? Is it because they’re so used to playing God? Is it something in their genetic makeup? I don’t get it!”
With each question Shriver’s heart wobbled. This woman had obviously been hammered by some blunt instrument.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Simone laughed and said, “Oh, no, I’m sorry!”
“For what?”
“Here I am running down all writers, and meanwhile you . . .”
“What about me?” he asked.
“Well, you’re sort of the ultimate example of the species.”
Is that how she saw him? As the ultimate self-absorbed writer? Then he remembered that he wasn’t a writer at all, and his hopes perked up.
She turned into the hotel lot, pulled up to the door, and shifted into park. The behemoth’s engine purred.
“Well, I hope your first day wasn’t too terribly traumatic,” she said.
“Not at all.”
“I’m sorry if I burdened you with my personal drama.”
“I honestly don’t mind.”
“Tomorrow you’re speaking in Teresa Apple’s writing class, remember.”
“Have I met her?”
She snorted. “You’d have remembered, believe me.”
“Oh?”
“She’ll pick you up at nine or so.”
“I’ll be here,” he said, disappointed that Simone would not be driving him in the morning. “Though I don’t know what I’m going to tell her students.”
“Just tell them what you know.”
“That won’t take long.”
She laughed, almost reluctantly, and feeling as though he’d hit a bull’s-eye, he opened the door and climbed down onto the pavement.
“Thank you, Mr. Shriver,” she called down to him.
He turned back. Simone’s face was lit a rose color from the hotel’s neon sign. “For what?”
“For what you said back there, to Mr. Rather.”
“That was my pleasure.”
She gazed down upon him from her high perch. “And sorry about that crack about writers,” she said.
“Writers are trouble,” he told her.
“Yes, they are. Truth is, I kind of forgot you were one of them.” She blushed and quickly added, “Good night.”
“Good night, Simone.”
He slammed the door and she roared off, leaving him in a mini-twister of exhaust and swirling mosquitoes. As he ran inside he wondered if he should have asked Simone in for a nightcap at the saloon. Had she wanted him to? She seemed to be softening toward him. It had been so long since he’d had to read the subtle signals of a woman, he felt like a man raised by wolves. He wondered if someone was waiting for her at home, and was surprised at how sad that thought made him.
As he made his way through the lobby, Shriver spotted Gonquin Smithee sitting by herself on a corner stool in the Prairie Dog Saloon.
“Good evening, sir,” the clerk called out to him from behind the front desk.
He paused to take in the beehive hairdo, the lean face, the gum chewing.
“Are you still here?” he asked.
The clerk’s face crinkled in confusion, then she grinned.
“Oh, you probably mean my sister, Charlevoix. I’m Sue St. Marie.” She pointed to a homemade name tag.
Shriver stared, amazed at the resemblance.
“I’m three minutes older,” she said, “in case you’re wondering.”
Just as Shriver was walking away, the clerk called out, “Oh! I almost forgot. There’s a message for you.”
“For me?”
“You are Mr. Shriver, correct?” She handed over a folded sheet of paper.
He opened the note: I’m in bar. —GS.
For a moment he considered meeting with the poet but decided there had been enough drama this evening and headed to the elevator.
As he waited, he heard high-pitched laughter from the arriving car. The doors opened and half a dozen teenage girls fell out, dressed in bathing suits with towels tossed over their slender shoulders, the braces on their teeth flashing. Among them was the girl he’d seen before, the willowy brunette. She smiled coyly as she passed by, then ran to join her friends on their way to the pool.
Shriver boarded the elevator and rode to the second floor. There, he inserted the key to room nineteen. Again, the key would not turn. Then he remembered to turn it to the left. He heard a click, and he pushed open the door. He switched on the light and sat on the edge of the bed. Outside a train crept by, its wheels clanking rhythmically.
He rose and went into the bathroom. He flipped the light switch, but the room remained dark. He’d forgotten about the burned-out bulb. Oh, well. He would take a bath anyway. He searched in the dim room for the faucet and turned on the bathwater. He poured in some of the bubble oil provided by the hotel. If only his old friend Mr. Bojangles were here, he would not feel so lonesome.
As he started to take off his jacket, he remembered the story he’d written and removed the pages from the pocket. He sat on the bed near the lamp and looked down at the words on the page.
“The Water Mark.”
His eyes were tired but they seemed to be working properly as he read the first few lines.
“The water mark appeared on my ceiling on the rainy day my wife walked out on me. At first it was just a spot, approximately the size of a quarter, directly above the bed where I lay weeping. Listening to the rain fall, I watched the water mark grow, ever so slowly, to the size of a baseball. After a few hours, the mark was as big as a honeydew melon. By the time it got dark outside, the water mark had elongated to roughly the shape of a two-foot-long oval. All night I lay there, wide awake, wondering what the water mark would look like when daylight started creeping in the next morning—”
Then came a sharp knock on the door. Startled, Shriver threw the pages onto the bedside table and stood up.
“Who’s there?”
“House detective!”
“What?”
“Please open up, sir.”
“What’s the problem?”
“We’ve had a complaint from one of the cheerleaders, sir.”
Oh my God, Shriver thought. The brunette. What had she told them?
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“Please open up, sir.”
He unlocked the door, and T. Wätzczesnam came crashing into the room, accompanied by several others, including Edsel Nixon and Gonquin Smithee.
“Fooled ya!” The cowboy tipped up the front lip of his ten-gallon hat. “Brought some replenishment, Shriver, ol’ buddy.” He set a substantial bottle of whiskey on the writing table, along with a full ice bucket and some hotel cups wrapped in plastic.
Shriver turned to Nixon, who shrugged. Gonquin Smithee unscrewed the bottle cap and poured herself a generous drink. Her eyes appeared shellacked over.
“Didja get my note?” she asked.
“I thought I’d freshen up first.”
“Izzat so?”
“Where’s Ms. Labio?” he asked.
“Aw, she’s back in our room, sulking, as per usual.”
Delta Malarkey-Jones reeled through the door, her doughy arm around the folksinger from the café.
“This here is Christo,” she announced.
The singer, not quite as inebriated as his companion, grabbed Shriver’s hand and shook vigorously. “I am a major fan.”
The other stranger in the room was a tall African-American woman with closely cropped hair and long, pendulous earrings that looked painfully heavy.
“Oh,” the cowboy said, “let me introduce you to the last, but not least, of our featured authors. This is Zebra Amphetamine. She flew in tonight.”
The woman nodded to Shriver with heavy lids.
“ ‘A Nubian girl,’ ” Wätzczesnam recited, “ ‘more sweet than Khoorja musk, / Came to the water-tank to fill her urn . . .’ ”
Zebra Amphetamine laughed like a hyena at this, as did the cowboy, who wrapped his arm around the much taller woman’s waist and pulled her close.
“Was that Aldrich, sir?” Edsel Nixon asked.
“Nixon, you are most impressive.”
Someone handed Shriver a plastic cup filled nearly to the brim. He peered down and saw his face, tired and defeated by gravity, reflected in the brown liquid. Then he took a sip.
“Listen to that train!” Zebra Amphetamine shouted as she ran to the window. “It’s the sound of America! We could be Lakotas in our skin teepees listening to the clackety-clack of White Death rolling toward us!”
“Never mind that,” the cowboy hollered. “Look down there!” He cranked open the window and shouted, “Ahoy, girls!”
On the back lawn of the hotel, lit by the moon and fluttering underwater swimming pool lights, several girls in bathing suits lounged on deck chairs while bubblegum music percolated from a nearby radio.
“Watch out for those mosquitoes, girls!” the cowboy warned, but the cheerleaders appeared impervious to the attack of insects.
“Come on down!” they shouted. “Let’s party!”
Among them, Shriver saw, was the willowy brunette, dancing provocatively with one of her fellow cheerleaders.
“We would be fools, gentlemen,” the cowboy said, “to pass up such an invitation.”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea, Professor,” Edsel Nixon said.
“Poppycock! These nubile young things are more experienced than all of us put together. Who’s with me?”
“I’ll go!” Zebra Amphetamine said.
“Capital. And you, Shriver?”
“I think I’ll stay put, T. I’m tired.”
The cowboy held his face just inches away, his breath flammable. “I’m very disappointed in you.”
He grabbed the bottle and left with his new friend. Meanwhile, the shaven-headed singer strummed his guitar in the corner, with Delta at his feet.
“Well,” Shriver said after the singer’s second tune, “I’m a bit tired, so—”
He was interrupted by a deep-throated braying that could be heard from outside. On the lawn the cowboy danced lewdly with the brunette, his hat held high in one hand as he waggled his bowed legs to the sugary music. Zebra Amphetamine stood nearby, doubled over with laughter.
“They’re on their own,” Edsel Nixon muttered, shaking his head.
“Oh my gosh!”
Delta Malarkey-Jones jumped up and pointed toward water flooding underneath the closed bathroom door. Shriver pushed inside and splashed his way through the dark to the tub, which was full of overflowing bubbles. As he attempted to turn off the water he slipped on the soapy floor and crashed onto the froth-puddled tiles.
Delta cackled at the sight of Shriver struggling in vain to climb to his feet, his face now bearded with foam. Edsel Nixon attempted to help him up but also succumbed to the slippery floor and dropped with a great upheaval of bubbles. Delta, still hooting, entered the room despite pleas for her to remain outside, and immediately lost her footing. She proceeded to teeter like an oak on the edge of collapse, first in one direction, then the other, all in tortuous slow motion, until finally the momentum was too much and, as Shriver and Nixon covered their heads, she plunged backward into the tub. A tsunami flooded the bathroom and sent a small wave out into the hotel room proper, where Christo the Folksinger stood strumming in accompaniment.
Somehow, Shriver was able to reach up and twist the faucet handle into the off position. He then pulled the lever that opened the drain. Nixon got quickly to his feet and tossed dry towels onto the floor. Meanwhile, Delta Malarkey-Jones lay in the tub, held tight by the suction from the draining water.
“I’m stuck,” she chortled,
holding out her hands for anyone brave enough to come to her aid.
The task required all three men and nearly sent them to the floor as their feet slipped on the soapy tiles. But after a few moments of tugging and grunting, they finally pulled Delta free, and she gave them each a sudsy, smothering hug for their efforts.
The ever-efficient Nixon ran to the front desk to get some more dry towels, as well as a new bulb, and in fifteen minutes the floor was relatively dry and the light fixed.
“Thank you, everybody,” Shriver said, sitting down on the commode in exhaustion.
“Well, I’ve had about enough for one evening,” his handler announced. “I’m headed home. If Professor Wätzczesnam shows up again, tell him I’ll see him tomorrow.”
The dripping graduate student departed, leaving behind Delta and her folksinger friend.
“Listen,” Delta said, “Christo and I have been talking it over, and we’d really like it if you came back to my room for a bit.”
“What for?”
“Okay, we could stay here, if you prefer. But my room has a king-size bed. There’s room for all of us.”
The musician smiled throughout this exchange, his hands gripping the guitar.
“Thank you,” Shriver said, “but I think I’ll pass.”
“You sure?”
“Very.”
“Okey-doke. Don’t say we didn’t try. C’mon, Christo.” She grabbed the musician by the wrist and pulled him out the door.
Shriver stood by the window and removed his wet shoes. Out on the lawn the cheerleaders were in the process of forming a human pyramid, with the cowboy and Zebra Amphetamine on their hands and knees among those at the base. The group had reached the third level, comprised of three girls atop the backs of the four girls below them. Two more girls clambered up like monkeys to form a fourth level. Then the willowy brunette ascended the pyramid to her solo spot at the apex, where, tall and lithe in her aqua-blue bathing suit, she stood perfectly poised atop the backs of the two girls beneath her, her angelic face level with Shriver’s. The confident cheerleader smiled at him with dazzling teeth and asked, “Are you a writer too?”
While Shriver pondered this question, the girl shouted down to her teammates, “One . . . two . . .” On three, the entire pyramid collapsed, like an imploded office building, and the brunette landed in the arms of two of her huskier teammates while the other squealing girls rolled off one another onto the grass. The cowboy and Zebra Amphetamine were the last to emerge from the pile, their skin wet with perspiration, the grins on their faces speaking of some secret ecstasy.