Shriver

by Chris Belden

  Shriver cranked the window shut and removed his sopping clothes. From his jacket pocket he retrieved the manila envelope and set it down on the desk with a metallic clank. After toweling himself off, he climbed into bed. There, he took up the pages from the bedside table and continued to read his story.

  “All night I lay there, wide awake, wondering what the water mark would look like when daylight started creeping in the next morning. As dawn broke, I saw that the spot had grown even more, now to the general size and shape of an adult person, complete with arms and legs, and at the top, a head. Furthermore . . .”

  Here his eyes failed him again, scrambling the words into meaninglessness. He turned to page two, then three, but found only a jumble of inky symbols. Perhaps it was just fatigue this time. He set the pages down, turned off the light, and lay listening to the sound of a seemingly endless train, broken by the occasional bark of laughter and high-pitched squeals from outside, or maybe next door, he couldn’t tell. Either possibility was unpleasant to contemplate.

  After a while, when the train had finally passed and the cheerleaders had gone inside, he slipped toward the ether of slumber. Reaching out to stroke Mr. Bojangles, Shriver heard only the sound of rhythmic breathing, which gently lulled him to sleep.

  DAY / TWO

  Chapter Six

  When the telephone rang, waking Shriver from a deep sleep, he did not recognize his surroundings. Where was his mahogany bureau? Where was his signed portrait of Tina LeGros of the Channel 17 Action News Team? Where was the water mark over his bed? Most alarming of all, where was Mr. Bojangles? Normally his friend’s whiskered face, always so charmingly neutral in its expression, hovered inches away from his own as the famished cat awaited his morning bowl of cottage cheese.

  The room was dark but for a bright strip of sunlight between the heavy window curtains. The bed felt strange, the sheets crisp with starch, the pillows thin and hard. Not his usual soft cotton sheets and thick, fluffy pillow.

  And that irritating sound? It had been so long since he’d heard the close-up jangle of a telephone, he assumed it must be emanating from somewhere else. Answer the damn thing! he wanted to shout to his annoying neighbor, the one who played his television so loud every night until two in the morning. But no, he now realized. The offending telephone was right here, beside the bed.

  “All right, all right,” he said as he reached for the phone. “Hello?”

  “Mr. Shriver?” came a chirpy, singsong voice.

  “Yes?” he croaked through dry lips.

  “Hi. This is Teresa Apple.”

  “Yes?”

  “You’re speaking to my class this morning?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m here to pick you up.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I’m down in the lobby.”

  As his eyes grew accustomed to the dark, he could make out the old television set and the painting of a windmill on the wall.

  “Oh! Of course! I’ll be right down!”

  He jumped to his feet, hobbled to the bathroom, and turned on the light. The sudden brightness scalded his eyeballs. He grabbed his skull and, forgetting about his bruised backside, sat down hard on the commode.

  “Ow!” he cried, his headache momentarily gone.

  The whiskey-tinged taste of bile floated up into his throat and it all came back to him. As if watching a Channel 17 Action News summary, he saw a briskly edited montage of yesterday’s events, from his ride to the airport—it seemed so long ago—to last night’s debauchery on the hotel lawn.

  Then he recalled a vivid dream in which he’d been awakened by the sound of snoring only to find Gonquin Smithee passed out in the bed beside him. He remembered touching her shoulder, but she did not wake up. He shook her, to no avail. Her face, so hard and defended when awake, seemed to him soft and open, and so he’d decided to let her be. The dream was so real it seemed more like a memory to him.

  Gasping, he ran out and checked the bed, but Gonquin Smithee was not there. Thank goodness—it was a dream.

  A dull throbbing returned to the space behind his eyes. More than anything in the world he wanted to take a long bath, but he had no time. He splashed some water on his stubbly face and under his arms. He brushed his teeth. He took a moment to lather up his left hand with soap and attempted to pull off his wedding ring. He felt some give, but he was unable to force the gold band past his knuckle. For the first time in years, he wondered what his ex-wife had done with her ring. Had she pawned it? Thrown it away? Was it sitting in a dark drawer somewhere?

  He unzipped his bag and dug around for some fresh socks and underwear. He threw on a clean shirt and trousers and checked his jacket, which was draped over the curtain rod, still damp from last night’s Keystone Kops routine. He would have to go without.

  He went out into the hall, and only after the door had slammed shut behind him did he remember that the key was still in his jacket. He tried the knob. Locked. Now he would have to go through some big rigmarole with one of those beehived clerk twins. He hoped this was not an omen.

  A horde of uniformed cheerleaders had gathered at the elevator. They seemed so small and young now, fresh as the proverbial daisies, all corn-fed innocence. He thought of the half-nude vixens of the night before and wondered if these could possibly be the same creatures. And here was the willowy brunette, looking like a Sunday school student but for the gum she chewed extravagantly as they entered the elevator. Shriver squeezed in beside her and as the elevator descended the girl smiled and blew a bubble that covered half her face. The doors opened, and the cheerleaders poured out into the lobby, erupting into their usual squeals and giggles as they scurried toward the saloon for their eggs and cornflakes.

  Coming around the corner into the lobby, Shriver noticed Ms. Labio at the front desk. She looked even more agitated than usual as she spoke shrilly to one of the twins behind the counter. Staying out of her line of sight, he tiptoed past the desk toward the door.

  “Shriver!”

  T. Wätzczesnam sat on his usual stool in the saloon, his hat beside him on the bar, drinking what appeared to be a tall glass of milk. The cowboy waved him over.

  “I believe I may have discovered the fountain of youth last night!”

  “Please, T.,” Shriver said, mentally blotting out visions he did not want to have.

  “Ever hear of the ‘low-hitch stunt,’ Shriver?”

  “Can’t say that I have.”

  “How about the ‘Swedish fall’?”

  “Nope.”

  Shriver noticed a young woman waiting near the door. Tall, curvy, with straight reddish hair, she seemed tense as she glanced at her wristwatch.

  “Excuse me, T.,” he said.

  The cowboy lifted the glass of milk in a toast, his hand visibly trembling.

  “ ‘Youth, large, lusty, loving—’ ” he chanted. “ ‘Youth, full of grace, force, fascination.’ ”

  Shriver started toward the door.

  “There’s a whole uncharted world out there, Shriver,” the cowboy called after him. “These gals today are capable of almost anything!”

  As Shriver made his way toward the door, Ms. Labio waved him over to the front desk.

  “Is something wrong?” Shriver asked, noticing the sculptress’s pink eyes and puffy face.

  “Fucking A, something’s wrong. Gonquin is missing.”

  “Missing?”

  “Mr. Shriver!”

  The redhead rushed to meet him with an outstretched hand. She wore tight, faded jeans and a clingy red blouse that showed off her pert bosom. Though perched upon preposterously high heels, she seemed perfectly balanced as she jogged across the lobby.

  “Teresa Apple,” she said.

  “Hello,” Shriver said, shaking her hand. Her face was lightly freckled, her eyes a piercing blue.

  “What am I going to do?” Ms. Labio cried. “I don’t know where she is!”

  “What’s the matter?” Teresa Apple asked.

 
“Ms. Smithee is missing,” Shriver said.

  “Missing?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Maybe we should call the police,” the clerk suggested.

  “The police?” Ms. Labio screeched.

  “What’s the ruckus?”

  T. Wätzczesnam approached the desk, the tall glass of milk sloshing in his shaky hand.

  “Gonquin Smithee is missing,” Ms. Apple told him.

  “Missing?”

  “She never came back to our room!” Ms. Labio bellowed.

  “How strange,” Wätzczesnam said. “Well, let’s see. Wasn’t she in your room last night, Shriver?”

  “Shriver’s room?” Ms. Labio said.

  “Yes,” Shriver said, then quickly added, “Along with everybody else.”

  He tried to recall the poet leaving his room but remembered only his dream about her passing out in his bed.

  “I didn’t notice when she left,” he told them. “But I’m sure there’s some explanation.”

  “What do you mean,” the sculptress asked, “you didn’t notice when she left?”

  “There was a lot of chaos last night,” Shriver explained. “People in and out.”

  “You were all drunk!”

  “Ms. Labio,” the cowboy said, “I resent the implication.”

  “I’m sorry,” Ms. Apple interrupted. “But we have a class to get to.” She turned to Ms. Labio and added, “I’m sure Gonquin will turn up.”

  “Where could she be?”

  “Maybe she went for a walk,” Wätzczesnam offered.

  “A walk? Where to? There’s nothing here!”

  “I think we should call the police,” the clerk again recommended.

  “Mr. Shriver,” Ms. Apple said, taking him rather firmly by the elbow, “we’re going to be late.”

  Shriver looked back as they made their way through the lobby. Ms. Labio and the cowboy continued conferring with the clerk, the sculptress’s arms wheeling about in distress.

  “I wonder what happened to her,” Shriver said as he followed Teresa Apple into the parking lot.

  “She probably met someone nicer than her current companion. Here’s my truck.”

  She led him to a worn-out pickup, faded red in the spots not covered by rust.

  “I apologize for my tardiness,” Shriver said as he climbed up into the cabin. “I overslept.”

  “You had a long day yesterday,” Ms. Apple courteously replied. She proceeded to stomp on the gas pedal, and the truck shot out of the hotel parking lot.

  The vast sky shone bright and cloudless, and as Teresa Apple steered the rumbling pickup toward campus, there came a refreshing breeze through Shriver’s open window. The throbbing blood vessels in his head had quieted down.

  “Did you sleep well?” Ms. Apple asked.

  “Like a baby.”

  “The helicopter didn’t wake you up?”

  “Helicopter?”

  “They sprayed early this morning. Some sort of synthetic pyrethroids.”

  “Pyre-what?”

  “Insecticide. It works pretty well, but the mosquitoes will be back at dusk. Trust me.”

  “Oh dear.”

  “Aedes vexans. The bane of our existence. They migrate up to twenty miles for a blood meal.”

  Shriver scratched at the raw lump on his hand. “Sounds gruesome.”

  “I hate the little fuckers,” Ms. Apple said as she accelerated to beat a yellow traffic light. “You’re younger than I expected,” she said after a moment.

  “Really?” It hadn’t occurred to Shriver that the real Shriver might be older.

  “Your novel strikes me as having been written by a cranky old man.”

  “I hope you’re not too let down.”

  “On the contrary,” she said with an enigmatic smile. She made a sharp right turn into a parking lot behind one of the university buildings and screeched to a halt. “Here we are.”

  Feeling dizzy from the ride, Shriver gingerly set foot on the ground.

  “This is Custer Hall,” Teresa Apple said, swiftly leading him to a back entrance. He followed her up a flight of stairs and down a long hallway. Students scurried past on their way to class, their faces screwed up into serious academic expressions. Oh dear, Shriver thought. This class would be the biggest test yet of his ability to fool people into thinking he was the real Shriver—but it was just a warm-up for the panel discussion to come.

  As Teresa was about to enter the classroom, Shriver grabbed her elbow and pulled her aside.

  “I want to ask you,” he said, feeling the now-familiar flutter of the black crow in his rib cage, “in all seriousness: what do these students expect of me?”

  She patted him on the arm. “You’re nervous, aren’t you? That’s sweet. But they’ve all read your book. Some of it, anyway. They think you’re a genius. You could fart in there and they’d worship you. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Shriver said. “I guess.”

  As she turned on her considerable heel and sashayed into the classroom, Shriver again scolded himself for accepting the conference invitation. He wished he’d been discovered right away as an imposter and sent back to his comfortable home. But then he remembered Simone. He recalled shards of another dream he’d had last night, in which she had figured prominently. She’d been wearing a cheerleading outfit and was bouncing on an unseen trampoline outside his sixth-floor apartment window. Each time she arced up into view she performed a different acrobatic maneuver, bright red pom-poms in her hands, and asked, “Are you a writer?”

  Shriver took a deep breath, swallowed yet another upsurge of bile, and entered the classroom.

  Inside, a dozen or so students sat at their desks and gazed up at him as though he were about to hand out one-hundred-dollar bills. The windows had been thrown open, letting in fresh air and the musical chirping of birds. Shriver stood abashedly to the side while Ms. Apple introduced him. She utilized a range of superlatives to describe Shriver’s talent, creating a weird, almost disembodied experience for him, since after all she was not actually speaking of him, even as she and the students thought she was.

  “I encourage you to ask Mr. Shriver anything at all,” she continued, “but since this is a creative writing class, you may want to know about how he works—his process, his writing habits. Anyone want to dive in? Or,” she said, turning to the guest of honor, “do you have anything you’d like to say first?”

  Shriver’s mouth, already parched, became a veritable desert.

  “Well,” he squawked, his dry lips clicking, “as you probably know, I haven’t been writing so much lately.”

  “Twenty years,” Teresa Apple helpfully reminded him.

  “Yes. So, I’m a little bit out of the loop when it comes to technique and that sort of thing.” He was hoping this would excuse him from having to answer any technical questions about writing.

  “You haven’t written anything at all?” a young man asked from the front row. “Not a word?”

  “No, I have written a little,” Shriver said, thinking of his story.

  “When are we going to see it published?” someone asked.

  “I have no idea.”

  “What’s it about?”

  “It’s hard to describe.”

  “Are you going to read it tomorrow?”

  Shriver leaned back against the front edge of the teacher’s desk. “I hope to.”

  The students murmured excitedly.

  A hand shot up. “Why is your book so misogynistic?” a pigtailed young lady asked. The rest of the class sniggered.

  As Shriver tried to come up with an adequate response, another student—a young man sitting far in the back—said, “I don’t think it is misogynistic. I think he’s just telling it like it is, ya know?”

  “But it is misogynistic,” the young lady said. She opened a copy of Goat Time and, in a clear voice, read aloud: “ ‘He stroked his cock furiously, remembering the night he’d spent with the dark-haired waitress from the sal
oon—the way she had writhed atop him, her knees up, both feet flat on the motel room floor, her green eyes rolling backward, her breath catching in her throat, her small breasts flopping in counterpoint to the rest of her body . . .’ ”

  Shriver’s face turned red. “I wrote that?”

  “I think it’s kind of erotic,” another girl said.

  “It’s just dirty,” the pigtailed girl countered.

  Shriver found himself agreeing with her.

  “What’s wrong with ‘dirty’?” Ms. Apple asked. “Is there room for dirtiness in literature? Are our lives so clean? Do we have to limit ourselves as artists to those clean moments, those corners of our lives that are not shadowed, or dirty?”

  Shriver thought she might have a point.

  “Not if we’re going to be honest,” the boy in the back offered.

  “I don’t know,” the young lady said, feeling outnumbered. “It just seems excessive to me.”

  True, Shriver thought. That bit about the flopping breasts was over the top.

  “Life is excessive!” a chubby young man in a tight T-shirt shouted. “We have a responsibility to show that.”

  “You would say that, Cornelius,” the pigtailed girl shot back. “All you write about is fellatio.”

  The other students chuckled in recognition.

  “Yeah, well, fellatio can be important.”

  Cheers from the others.

  “Okay, you guys,” Ms. Apple interrupted. “Let’s get serious.”

  “I am serious,” Cornelius said.

  Another hand went up. A pale young man with a wispy mustache asked Shriver where he’d gotten the idea for his novel.

  He had rehearsed this one. “I don’t remember.”

  “Why is the novel partly written in the second person?” someone asked.

  “Second person?”

  “Are you indicting the reader?”

  “Uh, I’m not sure.”

  “What about your new story?” the pale student asked. “How’d you come up with that?”