“You sonofabitch!” Steve yelled and pushed himself out of bed. He winced and drew his hand toward his face, staring at the thin white groove.
“Look at that,” Steve said to no one, prodding the wound. “Well, we’ll just take care of that,” he mentioned to himself as he realized where the cut had come from.
He’d had it. It was one thing believing the paper man was real. It was another thing entirely to pander to him. “Dues, my ass,” Steve said loudly, “and speaking of asses, kiss yours goodbye.” He went to his drawers and produced a Bic; he used it when he and his friends went camping, or smoked cloves, or both. He fingered it twice before it caught, and then turned the flame dial all the way up. Smiling, he walked back around his bed.
“Should have thought of this before,” he reprimanded himself mildly. “How you going to unwrinkle ashes, friend. I’ll tell you how. You won’t. You can’t. So goodbye, Mr. Paper Man,” he concluded with sarcastic glee.
Steve picked up the single sheet nervously. Still, just touching it was unsettling. But even with trembling fingers he managed to get it up. Then he fingered the Bic. It lit, first time. Karma. But before he could do the deed, his eye caught something, like the way you can look over a humongous crowd and see to see the one face you recognize. It was in the printer.
He let his finger slip off the propane lever. He took a step to his right to see it straight. It was type. It was a story. Or, at least, there was a “The End” at the bottom of the last printed page. But if it was a story, whose was it? That question was at least semirhetorical. No one had been in here during the night but Steve and the paper man, and somehow Steve didn’t think it was the other. The paper man seemed confined to the other side of a story, the part that’s finished. And if it wasn’t the paper man, then who? Me? But when? Steve stared dumbly down at the fatalistic two last words: “The End.”
Happy-sad words Steve called them. Always it was good to have finished something, but then you always felt like you were leaving something behind too.
Steve put down the piece of college-ruled that was by night a wicked man of paper, like maybe a lost cast member from The Wizard of Oz. He sat down, looking dazedly at the computer. It was more craziness to think he had written a whole story unawares, as Professor Brentley would say.
“One way to tell for sure,” he spoke softly to the story, as if speaking to calm a savage beast. Then he tore the sheets from the receiving tray and laid them in his lap, a good forty pages of manuscript.
“Looks like I might have been busy,” he teased himself, and started to read.
“Hey, that’s pretty good. Pretty damn good,” Steve said for maybe the tenth time as he’d read one hell of a version of “Under the Wood.” It was amazing. The story he’d been reading for the past hour, and just possibly written, was more than good—it was fantastic. He’d be cashing a check on it as soon as whatever magazine he submitted it to could send one back. He felt sure of that.
He put the manuscript down gingerly on his computer desk. Then he sat back with an intense sense of satisfaction. The way he’d felt the first time he’d had sex and actually known what to do. But it beat sex handily. Or maybe it was sex. Coitus in some pure sense. Whatever. The story kicked ass.
Steve’s satisfaction again turned to curiosity. If he’d written something so good, why didn’t he remember? He’d heard of automated writing, but it didn’t seem to explain this, not really. He closed his eyes and scrubbed out the sleep-seeds. His cut rubbed ungraciously on his skin. He slowly opened his eyes then and again remembered the paper man cutting him, and the blood. Blood on the paper.
Steve snatched up “Under the Wood” and riffled the pages. There must be blood stains on it, at least on the first couple of sheets. Nothing. Steve lowered the papers with trembling fingers. His mind turned on one of the paper man’s dark, ridiculous utterances: “You owe the paper.” Steve’s jaw dropped perceptibly. He was thinking about dues, what “owe” meant. How did paper collect for its part in a writer’s success? And the money winner: What did you do different last night, Steve, that you haven’t done before? Why is this version of “Under the Wood” so much better than before?
Steve looked down at his paper cut and then up at the single piece of college-ruled. He was taking the paper man’s meaning when the phone rang downstairs. He jumped, but got to the phone in a run-walk, glad to be out of his room for some silly reason.
He picked it up halfway through the fourth ring.
It was Professor Brentley.
“Hello, may I please speak with Stephen Kreig,” Brentley said with trained telephone etiquette.
“You got him,” Steve returned with deliberate slang.
“Steve, missed you in class, you feel okay?”
“Yeah, just busy is all. Don’t tell me you called ‘cause I missed one class,” Steve said, feeling rather bitter toward the good doctor, because he felt bitter.
“No, though I hope you don’t make a habit of it. What I called about is ‘Let’s All Wear Coxcombs: Revisited.’ Steve, I won’t beat around the bush. It’s great. Probably the finest piece of analysis I’ve received during my tenure here.” Professor Brentley was sure Steve would melt under such congratulation.
“Oh,” Steve said.
It was clear to Steve that Brentley was slightly taken aback by his response.
“I’m not donning you with feint praise, Steve. I mean it. You looked right at it. It was a pleasure to read. A-plus. You really poured your guts into this revision. Most of my students sweat blood and tears for a paper half as good.”
Steve soured out a smile. The literary term was dark irony. But whatever the term, Professor Brentley had hit the head of the nail. Steve had poured something into that paper, all right. He remembered the small cut he’d gotten feeding the paper into the printer. He also remembered how well the writing had gone that day.
Dues.
Had it been an accident, really? Or was the paper taking what it had coming?
Hold up! He called a timeout on the crazy. Even the Christians had dispensed with blood sacrifice millennia ago. The fact that he was entertaining the idea was probably proof that the paper man and all the attendant horseshit were part of a larger psychotic breakdown. Too much pressure from his schoolwork. Mom up and leaving him and his dad dry. And the fact that he hadn’t been writing. It had all stacked up on his mind and broken him down. Thus the nightmares about a horrific little paper golem and the ludicrous idea that paper, as a thing, required blood to yield good writing.
I’m losing it.
And yet, Steve allowed himself to think it a couple of steps further: How much is too much? Is it ever enough?
“Stephen,” said Professor Brentley, “are you there?”
“Well,” Steve said to maintain the idiot parlance, “I tried to feel some of Lear’s pain. After that, the text opened itself up to me.” Boy, that ought to make Professor Brentley wet himself.
“Really very remarkable, Steve.” A studied pause. “Have you considered graduate school?” Steve heard the pitch. Professors were constantly trying to do missionary work. Convince their students that continuing education was where it’s at.
“Yeah, but I’ve got a few more papers to write before I’m ready.” Steve was studying the cuts on his fingers, accidental or otherwise.
“Never too early. I might offer that our graduate studies are nationally ranked.”
“Really,” Steve said mustering faux interest. “I’d like to get an application,” he finished, hoping it would end their telephone conversation.
“Have one for you in class Monday, Steve. And really, you went right to the heart of Lear.”
“Thanks Professor Brentley. See you Monday.”
“You bet. Goodbye.”
“Bye.”
It had taken an entire day of moping, eating Clover Club potato chips, and watching I Dream of Jeannie reruns for Steve to see the error of his ways. He had felt alarmed, and sanctimonious, and apprehensive
, and scared shitless about the paper man and his dues. He still couldn’t remember what happened that prior night as far as the writing was concerned, but the little ritual before it was crystal clear in his mind. It was pulling a dagger down on a sacrifice. But you had a right to do it, if that sacrifice was yourself, right? And why the hell was he being so crazy about it anyway? A few token drops of blood. And what in return? One hell of a story. Probably worthy of a Year’s Best anthology. So why had he felt like burning the paper man? That little leprechaun had just shown him a way to get it done. And by the time Steve handed the new and improved “Under the Wood” to his father that night, he had indeed seen the error of his ways.
“Well, bless my soul, boy,” Ron said looking up at Steve, who sat munching more Clover Club right from the bag.
“Not bad, huh?”
“Not bad. Get your coat on. I’m taking you out for ribs.” Ron was absolutely preening. Paper man or no paper man, fathership or no, his dad had the look of a man who thought his son was on his way. And when a man can see his son making a life, he was fit to mount the heavens. And the heavens tonight would be a full rack of baby backs at the new in-town Tony Roma’s.
“I thought you might like it,” Steve said, smiling with a hint of modesty. He took another chip out and put it in his mouth whole before chomping it.
“Steve, I told you how I’d wanted to write myself as a young man.” His dad’s face turned sober.
“Yeah,” Steve said, putting the chips aside.
His dad smiled sadly. “What I didn’t tell you was how bad I wanted to. It was like an ache inside me. An itch I couldn’t scratch. I tried and tried. But I just didn’t have your talent . . .” he broke off. He tried to smile through a face on the brink of tears, filled with regret and remembrance. “I guess what I mean to say is that it feels like a kind of victory for me too, this story.” His dad held it up, his eyes glassy.
“It is, Dad,” Steve said before his dad could let it go. “It sure as hell is.”
“Since your mother left I didn’t think I was—”
“Hey, you said ribs, and that’s as far as I need to hear.”
His father sat a few moments more. Then he stood up. “All right, let’s go. You can drive. I’ll grab my wallet and be right out.”
“Okay,” Steve said, the disastrous sad-talk averted, and went out to warm up the car.
Ron went upstairs to get his wallet. He passed Steve’s room on the way and thought about the paper man his son had told him about. On his way back, he stopped at his son’s door. Rollercoaster was what he was thinking when he pushed into Steve’s bedroom just to take a look.
The room lay in shadow. Hall-light spilled in to form a yellow rectangle on the carpet. Ron just stood there, tears coming again, thankful. The last few months he’d thought he was failing with Steve. Steve was his life. And so, failing life. But now things were looking up. Maybe there was no woman to come home to, and maybe that scar would show forever. But his son was alive, alive and writing, and all because of some damn dream about a paper man. Life, huh? His son’s room filled him with a strange kind of peace. He looked opposite the door and his eyes fell on Albert Einstein and his quotable quote. The house lay still all around him.
Distantly he heard the computer monitor click on and warm to life.
Then Ron’s eyes fell on a piece of paper that lay atop Steve’s keyboard. A smile came over him and he walked over to it. He stood looking at it. A paper man dream. Ron picked up that piece of 8½-by-11. He looked at it and a tear escaped his left eye. It made him feel silly, emotional, but he couldn’t deny it. He pulled it close and gave it a kiss.
“Thank you,” he said, “you gave me my son back.” He replaced the paper just as a honk blast came from the car.
He smiled again on his way out of the room, thinking about a silly dream that had kicked his son into gear.
Steve was awake this time when the paper man started to speak. He felt too good to sleep. There was the story, and most of all his dad—they’d eaten ribs and joked with each other to the amusement of their lovely waitress, who scolded them with every new rack she brought to the table. Ron tipped her generously for putting up with them. He didn’t think even the paper man could ruin this high.
“Feeling pretty good, are you?” the paper man said from his perch.
“Yeah, I am,” Steve replied without looking directly at him.
“Good to hear it,” the paper man said with a sound of sincerity. “May I assume then you like what we’ve done with ‘Under the Wood’?”
“That’s an understatement.” Steve turned to see the one paper-hole eye. He became more serious. “Did I write that?”
“We, and yes we did.” The paper man sat down, dropping his legs over the monitor screen. “When you keep things in proper perspective, you’ll be surprised at what you can accomplish. And by the way, I received the nicest payment tonight that I think I ever gotten for my efforts.”
“Yeah, what was that?” Steve asked, looking back toward the ceiling, musing.
“A kiss—a kiss from your old man.”
Steve whirled his head back to the paper man, “What!”
“Yep. Nicest thank-you ever.”
Steve stumbled over his words. “You mean he saw you? What the—”
“Nah, don’t get so drawn up. He just came in and said ‘thank you’ to a piece of paper. Kissed me and left.” The paper man swung his legs playfully. “Appreciation, Steve, what body doesn’t want it, or need it.”
Steve settled. “I think I’d feel better it you left him out of this.”
“Sure. His writing days were a long while ago, but he’s harder on himself about it than he needs to be.” The paper man sat looking nowhere. “But to the matter, my boy. You’ve got writing to do.”
“I do?” Steve said quizzically.
“No more on your laurels, Steve, let’s be about it.” The paper man stood.
“What about an idea. I can’t just write aimlessly.”
“You got ideas,” the paper man said back, “got a lot of ‘em. Got one about a malevolent little girl name of Genevieve. Haven’t forgotten about that one, have you.” It wasn’t a question.
Steve looked at him. He didn’t need to ask how the paper man knew. But neither did that mean it didn’t make him uncomfortable. Genevieve had been a novella idea he’d had his first year of college. He’d never gotten around to it.
“Let’s start,” the paper man prompted, his voice merry and yet not companionable at all.
Steve got up as the paper man had directed. The paper man himself hopped nimbly down to the power switch and keyed the computer into life. The pale blue light filled the screen and then touched the paper man’s tubular body. Again he stood motionless. The room was expectant suddenly. And it all emanated from the sexless eleven-inch incubus that stood alongside Steve’s terminal. Even the hum of the computer droned out in the blank stare of the paper man. A wicked sensation caught Steve. The lackluster body of the paper man nailed that sensation home with finality.
Dues.
Steve sat into his chair and produced another piece of 8½-by-11-inch college-ruled from his desk drawer. He looked at the paper man who said nothing and felt nothing; he might not have been alive at that moment except for the intimidating way he stood witness to this little ritual.
Steve looked up at Einstein once, back at the paper man, and then brought the new paper up. He looked at it for a long moment. Then he drew its edge across the third finger of his left hand. The paper cut slowly and deftly down, pulling that easy, heating friction with it. It came cleanly through the layers of skin, sending pricks of sharp pain through Steve’s hand. He winced but made no attempt to stop. Paper buried in his skin. He was only halfway across its length. He pulled on. The agony was slow and exquisite. The thin edge sank hotter and deeper into his flesh, searing tender nerves. At the end he ripped it fast, shooting screaming darts of pain into the tip of his finger. How easy it glides right on
through, he thought.
Then it was done and blood began flowing up.
Steve applied it.
The paper man didn’t stir.
Steve began to type.
A week later Genevieve was written. It was almost a hundred and fifty pages and it was at least ten times better than “Under the Wood.” Steve’s hands looked like he’d thrust them into a twirling fan. The story was great.
“This story is great,” Ron said over his dinner plate. He had just finished reading Genevieve. Steve had given it to him not long after he’d finished it.
“Not bad,” Steve replied somewhat indifferently.
“You’re too modest. Steve, I think your writing’s getting better every day. Say, what are those Band-Aids on your fingers?” His dad hadn’t really noticed them.
“Oh, just a few little paper cuts. Nothing to worry about.” Steve thought about the antiquated medical practice of bloodletting. A bitter laugh burst out and flapped his lips.
“What’s so funny?” his dad asked.
“Ah, nothing. I just . . . you really like it, Dad?” Steve was inwardly desperate to be sure of that.
“No, it’s awful, probably only sell a few million copies,” his father said smiling. “No lie. I’m fit to be stuffed. Or however the saying goes.”
Steve managed a meager smile. “Thanks, Dad. I guess I needed to hear that. The truth, I mean. I can always tell when you’re lying.”
“Oh, you can, can you? Well, it’s your turn for dishes. You think I’m lying there?” Witty can was his dad.
“No, I’ll do ‘em.” Steve got up to run some dishwater.
“Hey, pal, I’m just kidding.” Ron felt bad, because his son looked like . . . well, he looked the way he did the day his wife left him that pain-alleviating note: “Ron, it’s not working. I think I deserve more. Don’t be bitter. You’ll find someone too. Love, Jess.”
“I know, Dad. I’m just not particularly chipper today, that’s all. Give me your plate.” Ron handed it to him.
Unfettered III Page 34