Roger looked directly at Mrs. Knox. “We’ll work it out.”
“Easy for you to say. You still have hair,” Frank said. “Look at me. I look like an alien. I look like I’ve been radiated.”
“You’re way too meaty to look like you’ve been radiated,” Corky said. “And your color is all wrong. Too healthy. Trust me.”
“As your instructor,” Mrs. Knox cut in, “I’m not comfortable with this turn of events. Frank and Roger, I want to speak with you after class.”
I thought after class might be a good time to throw the Corky issue onto the table, so I raised my hand. But Veronica reached over and pinched me, and I took that as a signal to stay silent. So I lowered it.
“Frank isn’t going to hurt Waller,” Roger said.
“Yeah,” said Kite. “He won’t do anything stupid.”
“Don’t speak for me!” Frank said. “Where were you last night? Huh? Where were you when I needed somebody to say, ‘Hey, Waller, put down the razor’? Where were you then?”
“I was still in the alley,” Kite said.
“You’re telling me that Waller shaved your head?” Mrs. Knox asked.
Frank nodded. “I don’t remember it. But I’m pretty sure he was the one.”
“Well, I think that’s an act of assault,” Mrs. Knox said. “And that’s something that the July Prague Writers’ Workshop doesn’t tolerate.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Roger said. “Frank asked Waller to shave his head.”
“I did not!” Frank said. “I’m not an idiot. And I love my hair. It’s very important to me. Or at least I did.”
We sat in silence, looking at Frank. It felt like we had entered into some sort of recovery group together.
“This is freaking ridiculous,” Corky muttered.
We stopped looking at Frank and repositioned our stares on Corky.
“Hair grows back,” she said. “I’ve shaved my head bald four times. It’s no big deal. It’s not like he scarred your face or cut off your manhood. It’s hair. What will you do when you’re forty and it all falls out anyway?”
“We need to get started,” Mrs. Knox said. “Frank and Annie Earl are up today.”
I grabbed Frank’s dolphin story and Annie Earl’s pie story out of my bag.
“If you want some time to gather yourself, I’ll go first,” Annie Earl said to Frank.
“No,” Frank said. “I actually wrote something this morning that I’d like to read instead.”
I stared down at all the marks I’d made on his story. I didn’t think we were allowed to swap material.
Frank took out a stack of paper and passed it around. He leaned over the table to hand Veronica and me ours, and I could smell strong booze on his breath.
“Actually,” Mrs. Knox said, “we need to work on the story you submitted. You don’t want feedback on fresh material. You need to give writing time to sit.”
Frank didn’t stop passing his papers. “I disagree,” he said. “I practically bled on these pages. I gave everything I had.”
Mrs. Knox seemed stuck. Should she defend her authority over the workshop, or defuse a volatile situation? She decided to let him read the new material. It was a poem.
“I want to read the whole thing,” Frank said.
Mrs. Knox glanced through the poem and nodded. Frank moved his chair back and stood up. “My poem is called ‘Kill the Razor.’”
Then he read it in a very powerful and, at times, choked-up voice. He also rubbed his head a lot.
“Kill the razor. Kill
the blade. Kill the hand
that held them both.
My head is what matters.
My shorn scalp.
I came to Prague a man. A man.
A man. Until he took
my hair. My hair.
My hair. I stand next
to the white toilet. I gaze
into the cold bathroom mirror.
I am so hungry for
what I’ve lost. No, I cannot
forgive. No, I cannot forget.
Under the moon. Under the
stars. Under the canopy
of my ruined life. My bare head
glistens in limitless pain.”
“Wow,” Annie Earl said. “That was very powerful.”
“You’re still a man,” Brenda said.
“That was really great,” I said.
I nudged Veronica again. She kept writing the word BALD and drawing frowning faces over Frank’s poem.
“Good job, man,” Roger said. He sounded sincere, but I could tell his patience was wearing thin.
Tears dripped down Frank’s face and splattered on the floor. I felt really sympathetic toward him. Because even though Corky thought hair didn’t matter, I realized it did.
“I need to get out of here,” Frank said.
“Do you want company?” Veronica asked, starting to stand.
I wasn’t sure if Veronica wanted to help console Frank, or if she was looking for an excuse to ditch class.
“No,” he said. “I don’t. I need to go back to bed.”
“Frank,” Mrs. Knox said, “if you leave, it’s unlikely that we’ll be able to workshop your dolphin story at a later date. We’ve got a tight schedule.”
Frank didn’t say anything. He took his bag, tossed it over his shoulder, and walked out the door.
“He’ll be fine,” Roger said. “We’re all still a little hung over.”
“Well,” Mrs. Knox said, “I think the alcohol consumption is getting a bit out of control. Could we taper it off for the next couple of weeks to avoid some of this drama? I feel like I’m on Dynasty.”
“Nobody even knows what Dynasty is, Mom,” Veronica said.
Mrs. Knox blushed. “Let’s just drop it. And no more substitutions. The material you submitted is the material we workshop.”
I thought we all needed to take a break, but Mrs. Knox didn’t give us one. “Annie Earl, shall we proceed with your story?”
Annie Earl nodded. “What I’ve brought for you isn’t fiction. ‘Baking & Heartache’ is an essay I wrote about entering a baking contest and subsequently getting a divorce. I plan to write a collection of them that deal with my life and its unlikely trials and unlikelier travails.”
“That last sentence would make great jacket copy,” Brenda said.
“It would,” Mrs. Knox agreed. “I expect some of you may have read this as a piece of fiction. If so, Annie Earl has asked that you let your comments on the page stand as they are. But for in-class feedback, let’s address the story with sensitivity. Annie Earl has trusted us with something more personal than fiction, and that takes a great deal of courage.”
“Thank you,” Annie Earl said. Then she read from her bleached-flour scene.
“My fat was liquefying. I’d taken precautions against this, but as temperatures rise, there’s always a risk. The clock on the wall ticked down the minutes. The seconds. Over my shoulder, other women worked their rolling pins with confidence. I pulled my warm hands from the dough. My own heat might be partly to blame. Things felt too sticky, but I didn’t want to add more flour—I needed a flaky crust. I slipped off my long-sleeved shirt. Underneath I wore a T-shirt. Now they were going to see my arms. This would be on television. No more hiding. Let them look at my scars and wonder. I pulled my lard from the refrigerator and started over. I deserved to be here. All my life I’d been waiting to take home the prize.”
After Annie Earl read, nobody spoke for a minute. Then Brenda commented. “Your narrator, I mean, you really allow yourself to be vulnerable. It makes me care about you. I think that’s really powerful.”
“Yeah,” Roger said. “This is one of the most suspenseful stories I’ve ever read. I felt everything that was at stake for you.”
Mrs. Knox cleared her throat. “When a writer takes an emotional risk, it can be a vastly rewarding experience for the reader—but only if it’s an honest risk. The controlled, frank narration of this story’s opening s
cenes gave me that reassurance that what I was reading was a search for meaning, not a plea for sympathy or admiration. Annie Earl doesn’t sensationalize anything, and because of that, each revelation brought me to surprising emotional places.”
“I felt that,” Kite said. “I like pies, but I could care less about baking. But this piece put me in the middle of a kitchen. The scene was written so well that I could feel the heat coming off the stove. And it was hot!”
Everyone seemed to like Annie Earl’s essay. It made me happy because it would have been painful to hear people criticize it. The things she’d written about were moments taken from her actual life.
I glanced at Veronica, who was staring at Frank’s bald poem again.
“You’ll bounce back,” I whispered.
“I don’t want to bounce back,” she whined. “I want Frank to have hair.” She jabbed her pen at the poem, making holes in the paper.
“I like your cliff-hanger ending,” Corky said. “Closing on the announcement that you’re getting a third divorce implies there’s so much more heartache around the bend. And you are a very believable wounded person.”
I was still too shy to comment. I took notes while everybody else discussed what details they wanted more of in the essay. Like tactile sensations and dialogue and flashbacks.
When class finally ended, I was totally ready to go.
“Waller will either be e-mailing you his story or delivering it directly to your room. Corky, do you have yours?”
Corky nodded and passed around a stack of papers.
“And for an assignment,” Mrs. Knox said, “following up on Annie Earl’s piece, I want you to think about place. I want you to pick one place where you have lived, and I want you to write a page of description about that place. List everything about it. I want you to engage all five senses: sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste. I want you to picture this place and recover it to the best of your ability.”
We all filed out while Mrs. Knox pulled aside Roger and Kite.
“Go! Go!” Veronica whispered to me.
I threw all my stuff into my bag and followed her out the door.
“This way!” she yelled.
I reluctantly followed Veronica into a small, ancient AV room. Clunky VCRs cluttered the room’s lone worktable.
“At this point, do you really think we can continue to live with Corky?” I asked.
“Not safely,” Veronica said.
“I don’t know. Maybe we’re overreacting.”
I heard Annie Earl and Brenda walk past. They were discussing how to get rid of soap scum. Then I heard the sound of clogs.
“Corky?” I gasped.
“Shh,” Veronica said.
We crouched in silence. The footsteps stopped.
“You two can run,” Corky said. “You two can even hide. Temporarily. But what you can’t do is escape your consequence. I will find you.”
“Corky Tina Baker, you are freaking mental,” Veronica said, pounding the door with her fist.
Corky didn’t respond.
“You think you’re so tough because you killed a mountain lion. And have a criminal record. But I think you’re bluffing.”
There was a light tracing sound against the door. Like Corky was writing on it.
Then I heard the sound of Corky’s clogs as she walked off.
“Do you think she’s really gone?” I asked.
“I do,” Veronica said.
“You don’t think she’s tricking us?”
“I don’t,” she said.
I held my breath as Veronica slowly opened the door. A sliver of light fell onto the floor. She poked her head out. Then she shoved the door open in one quick motion.
“Watch it!” Kite said. “You could have given me a concussion.”
“Sorry,” Veronica said.
I followed her into the hallway and shut the AV door.
“What’s that?” Roger asked.
Veronica and I stared at the large shape Corky had drawn. It looked like half of a Twinkie with the letters “RIP” written on it.
“It‘s a tombstone,” Kite said.
Oh my god. It was a symbol of our fates.
“Does this mean something?” Roger asked.
“I’m not really sure,” I said.
Roger took my arm and led me farther down the hallway.
“I want to apologize for this morning,” he said.
“It’s okay,” I said. I could hear Veronica pumping Kite for details about the shaving incident. They walked together toward the stairs.
“I’m not an angry person,” Roger told me. “It’s just, Waller has been acting insane these last few days, and when I found him today I was really fed up.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and looked down at me.
“No hard feelings,” I said.
Roger was still agitated. “I don’t mean to trash Waller,” he said, “but you can’t come to Prague and get plastered and then shave someone’s head.”
“I would never do that.”
“Right, because people who go through life with no impulse control are boring. I’m not saying he’s boring. But he is definitely prone to bouts of unnecessary flagrant stupidity.”
I loved that phrase: unnecessary flagrant stupidity. I stored it away in my brain to use against Veronica.
“Anyway, while sauced, he likes to flirt with things, especially disaster.” Roger shook his head. “I’m sorry if I ruined your morning,” he finished.
“You didn’t,” I said. “I had a pretty good morning. I mean, until now.”
He nodded at the AV door and raised his eyebrows. “She’s joking, right?”
“I hope so.”
He looked back at the door and then at me. “Let me know if you need anything. I’ve had EMT training,” he said. “So I’m good at responding to distress signals.”
“That’s cool,” I said. We walked outside and found Veronica waiting at the bottom of the stone steps.
Roger waved good-bye to me. “Thanks for listening.”
I smiled and would have said “Any time,” if Veronica hadn’t thrown her arms around me and semi-collapsed into my chest.
“I can’t believe something this terrible happened to my main hot-dude.”
“Your main hot-dude?” I said. “You’re seriously worried about Frank right now?”
Veronica reached out and fluffed my hair. “We’re fine,” she said. “We just have to look out for Corky as we search for more hot-dudes. Also, I really need to find a banana.”
Chapter Fourteen
I wasn’t sure why I’d postponed calling my mother until the fifth day I was in Prague. It just seemed like so much was happening. Yesterday, after workshop, Veronica and I walked over the Charles Bridge and took a funicular to the top of Petřín hill, and then ate cheap Thai food at a restaurant that only had nine chairs. Miraculously, after that, Veronica went with me to attend a Black Light Theater show, because four hot-dudes from Spain, whom we met at the park, were going. However, when the two dudes Veronica had found hottest began to make out during the show, her enthusiasm dwindled.
In the dorm lobby I fed enough crowns into the pay-phone change slot to talk for seven minutes. I only had $350 of my $400. And I still had twenty-three days left in Prague. It didn’t take an economist to realize that, financially, I’d soon be on the ropes.
ME: Mom! I’ve been so busy here. How are you?
MOM: If you hadn’t called today, I was going to phone the embassy.
ME: Wow. Sorry.
MOM: Why didn’t you call sooner? We said two days. That was the plan.
ME: I know. I know. It’s just been crazy here.
I watched Corky enter the building. She bent her fingers into the shape of a gun and shot me.
MOM: Things are crazy? Has something happened? Your voice sounds funny. What’s going on?
ME: No. Nothing is going on. I mean it’s been crazy busy.
MOM: How’s your money holding out? Should I deposit
more into the account?
ME: No. I’m fine. I have enough.
MOM: Okay. Now that I know you aren’t dead and dismembered in a ditch, why don’t you tell me about Prague?
ME: It’s amazing. The buildings are totally different from anything in Ohio. And I toured a few synagogues with ceilings that were so high that they must use cherry pickers to clean the cobwebs.
MOM: It sounds wonderful.
ME: It is.
MOM: Are you liking the food?
ME: We eat cereal in the cafeteria for breakfast. And Mrs. Knox bought us a bunch of regular groceries.
MOM: Don’t let her do that!
ME: I know. Don’t worry. The food is pretty cheap.
MOM: Do you have any roommates?
ME: Um. Yeah.
MOM: Tell me about them.
ME: There’s not much to tell. I’m just getting to know them. Mainly I hang out with Veronica.
MOM: This could be a fun chance to meet new people.
ME: Yeah.
MOM: You might end up making a lifelong bond with a roommate. You never know. She could turn out to be a bridesmaid at your wedding.
ME: I’m not really thinking about my wedding.
MOM: Right. You know, I’m not sure if you want to hear this, but Hamilton called.
ME: Oh my god. Why? Did something happen to him?
MOM: No. Calm down. He wanted your mailing address in Prague.
ME: He did?
MOM: Yes. And he also asked for a phone number, but I told him that you didn’t have one.
ME: This is shocking. I mean, I haven’t talked to him in over a month. If he wants my phone number, he must want to talk to me, right?
MOM: I’d assume so. Dessy, I gave him your address. Is that okay?
ME: Yes! Did he mention what he wanted to mail me?
A Field Guide for Heartbreakers Page 16