“It’s good to let your hair down. What kind of writing do you do?” He hadn’t talked to her yet, and she had been avoiding him, once she observed him trying to seduce the other women indiscriminately. She was the youngest person in the camp. The only other person close to her age was a Dartmouth dropout who said he was writing a book about whales and smoked weed all the time. So far, he was incoherent every day by dinnertime, and she could smell the marijuana wafting from his tent at all hours of the day and night.
She wasn’t sure how to answer Josh about her writing, and didn’t want to tell him the truth. She said the first thing that popped into her head. “Young adult novels, for girls.” She felt ridiculous saying it, because it was so far afield from what she did write, but her answer suited her image better than the truth.
“No sex in those, I guess,” he said, looking bored, and then put a hand on her thigh and smiled at her, as she wondered in terror if he was going to rape her. “Maybe you need to do a little research so you can move on to adult novels, although the big money is in YA these days, so you’re smart to aim for those, just don’t live them.” It was a slimy thing to say, and she stood up to get his hand off her leg. He made her feel dirty just sitting next to him.
“I think I’ll go back to camp,” she said as she started to walk away and he followed her. She was by far the most attractive woman in the camp—he just hadn’t gotten around to her yet. He assumed that every woman there would be pleased to go to bed with him, but he was wrong about Alex, who made it clear that she wouldn’t. He reminded her of a snake as he slithered along beside her.
“How about a swim in the river on the way? And since we didn’t bring our bathing suits…” He smiled lasciviously at her, and she wanted to throw up. She sped up her pace, which only enticed him more, and just before they reached the camp, he grabbed her, pulled her into his arms, and pressed his body against her. She could feel his erection bulging in his hiking shorts, and knew exactly what it was, although she’d never been in that situation before. She was still an innocent at twenty. By pure reflex, she did the only thing she could think of to get him off her and raised her knee sharply into his groin. And as he doubled over, she ran the rest of the way back to camp, and went to pack her bags. The week at writers’ camp had been expensive, but she didn’t care. She was packed by the time he got back to camp, limping slightly and livid. He stopped at her tent and looked at her with eyes blazing with pain and fury.
“What are you? A lesbian?” he spat at her, while two women stopped to listen and wondered what had happened.
“No, a writer. I must be the only one here. What is this? A sex camp for bored housewives and people like you pretending to be writers?”
“Who are you? Heidi? What did you expect here?”
“A lot more than this. Have a great week,” she said as she brushed past him and went to check out at the main tent. She was in her rented car five minutes later, and offered no explanation for her early departure. She drove home slowly through New England and got back to the convent four hours later, where everyone was surprised to see her. She told them about it at dinner, and they were relieved she had left. And when she saw Bert a week later, she told him he had been right about the writers’ camp.
“I told you, it’s just a lot of wannabes looking to get drunk or high and laid.”
“You forgot to tell me that part,” she said, looking embarrassed.
“You don’t belong in a place like that. You’re the real deal, Alex. There’s nothing you can learn from them.” She had discovered that herself, and she still felt sick when she thought of Josh West. She told Bert about that too. “What’s a porno crime novel?” he said, laughing after she told him she had kneed him in the groin.
“I didn’t want to ask. But when he gave a workshop on self-publishing, which he recommends, I realized that that’s how he published his porno crime series.”
“What did you tell him you write?”
“Young adult books for girls,” she said, and started to laugh too. “I couldn’t think of anything else.”
“That’s what you look like. They should know you write the scariest damn crime scenes I’ve ever read.” And she did it with art, skill, and precision. The victims in her books so far were evildoers whose deaths were no loss to anyone. There were no crimes against women or children. The key to her books was not the violent deaths she depicted, but the intricate twists and turns in the plot to solve the crimes. They were acts of pure genius that kept the reader guessing till the end. There was nothing seamy or sordid about them, which wasn’t easy to pull off and yet somehow she did. They were smart books for intelligent people—a Rubik’s Cube of crime that she took apart and put back together, and presented the simple answer no one had thought of in the end. Reading her books was like watching a magic trick, even he couldn’t figure out how she did it, which he loved about her work. There was no sex in the books, and the reader didn’t even miss it. She had created a style all her own, distilled from all the crime books she had read, detective stories, and thrillers. And he thought her latest one was even stronger than the first two, and it involved multiple murders.
“No more writers’ camps for you, young lady,” he chided her. “Now get back to work,” he said sternly, and then chuckled to himself as he walked to his kitchen to get a glass of wine. He loved working with her. It was the most fun he’d had in years, and he was learning from her too. It was a good exchange. He was grateful to Rose for bringing them together, and so was Alex.
He sat down in his favorite chair and read the new pages she’d brought him. She’d completed the outline and was starting to work on the book.
“This is terrible,” he said, frowning at her after he read for a few minutes.
“It is? I thought it was good. I thought it was a lot tighter.” She looked disappointed.
“You’re right. It’s terrible because there isn’t a damn thing I can do to improve this. You’re getting too good for me, Alex. Slow down a little. You learn too fast. Give an old man a chance.” She smiled at what he said and was pleased.
“Don’t worry. I just had a good run this week. I’ll make a mess of it again next time.” But he doubted it. She was learning quickly. And one day she wouldn’t need him anymore, but the time hadn’t come yet. He still had a few tricks to teach her, and she was an avid student.
He sent her home early, back to work on the book, and after she left, he poured himself another glass of wine, and thought that if he’d had children, all he could have wanted was a daughter like her. But he knew he would never have been that lucky. He was just happy to be her mentor and her friend. She had added immeasurably to his life. And he hoped it would never end. It made up for some of what he’d been missing for fifteen years.
Chapter 9
When Alex went back to college in September for her junior year, she was finally able to enroll in more of the electives she wanted to take for her major in literature and her minor in creative writing, which seemed less crucial now, with a book sold to a publisher. But she was looking forward to taking classes which were of more specific interest to her. She worked hard in school and kept up her grades. She was writing her fourth book when she went back to school, and she continued to spend Saturdays with Bert Kingsley. He always had useful comments about what she wrote.
Alex took a heavy course load again. Her advisor felt she could handle it, since she always maintained her grades. And all through the fall, she had the fun of approving the book jacket, ads, and flap copy of her upcoming book. She carefully read the galleys and made corrections. Everything was sent to her through her agent, and Rose forwarded it to the convent since Mr. Green was supposed to be in Scotland.
Alex loved the cover of the book. It was a shimmering steel blue, with a knife blade as the main graphic. She could hardly wait for it to come out in April. And for spring semester she signed up for a fiction class, despite the fact that her career was taking off. The professor was a well-known fema
le novelist whose books Alex had enjoyed. They were entertaining and fun and totally different from her own. Scott Williams, the teaching assistant, was an unpublished writer so far, but he told the students he was working on a novel, and took over for the professor for a month, while she went on a seven-city publicity tour for her latest book.
Scott was lively and intelligent, and told Alex he liked her writing style, although he criticized her plot twists and said they were weak, which surprised her. She handed in her assignments on time, and was particularly proud of the one which he gave her a C− on, and told her that her characters were unappealing, not believable, and didn’t move him. Then she realized that he was competitive with her, and judging her work harshly, whenever she felt she had written the piece well. She finally took some of the stories to Bert for his opinion.
“Is this as bad as he says?” she asked about the story she’d been shocked to receive a C− on. He read it and looked up at her with a grin.
“You must be kidding. I like your crime stuff better, but this is great. What’s wrong with this guy?”
“I’m not sure. He’s very nice to me, but he doesn’t like what I write, and he keeps giving me lousy grades.”
“It’s the green-eyed monster again, my dear.”
“Meaning?”
“He’s jealous as hell. Have you seen anything he’s written?”
“No. He’s not published. He’s writing the great American novel, and has been working on it for six years.”
“You can write circles around him, even in a different genre from what you’re best at. You’re a hell of a writer, Alex. My guess is that this guy can’t write for shit, and recognizes you for what you are, a real writer. I’d love to see what he’s written.”
“So what do I do now? I don’t want grades like this on my transcript. I could drop out, but I hate to quit and waste the time and effort I’ve put into it, and get an incomplete in the class. I was taking his assignments seriously till now, but that last grade made me think something wasn’t right. I can argue with him about the grade. But he’s tougher on me than he is on everyone else.”
“Has he seen your crime stories?”
“Of course not. I have you for that,” she said glumly. “I don’t need him to teach me how to write thrillers. Besides, I already know how to do that. I wanted to learn to write other kinds of stories.”
“So you can switch to romance novels?”
“No. I just thought I might pick up some pointers and it would be interesting to write something else.” But Scott was taking the fun out of it for her, and was overly critical of everything she wrote for the class.
She tried discussing it with Scott at the next opportunity, and he suggested they go to dinner and talk about it, and she accepted. She liked him, except for the bad grades.
They agreed to meet at the Washington Square Tavern, a few blocks from the campus, and she rode up on her bike on a freezing cold night. Her cheeks were pink and her dark hair gleamed when she got there. He was waiting for her at the bar. His eyes lit up when he saw her. And he managed to avoid the subject of her grades and assignments for most of dinner, and only got around to it over dessert. They had eaten burgers and ordered ice cream afterward. Hers melted while she listened to him explain everything that was wrong with her writing and why it didn’t work. And none of it made sense. He contradicted himself several times about her plots and her characters and said there was no depth to her work. He was actually quite insulting, and she would have been crushed if she didn’t have a book contract under her belt and Bert to reassure her. But what she couldn’t figure out was why he was so hostile about her writing. He said it politely, and smiled at her while he did, but when she thought about it afterward, she realized that he had been incredibly mean.
She got a C from him on the next short story assignment. When he asked her out again, she accepted his invitation, wanting to solve the mystery of his attitude about her. He was even more critical the second time, although he was charming and funny over dinner, and kissed her on the lips when he drove her home. But all she could think of were the things he had said about her work, which canceled out everything else.
“Maybe you just don’t like my writing,” she said when he walked her to the door of her dorm, and she didn’t ask him up. She said her roommate was in that night, which wasn’t true, but she had no intention of sleeping with him, even if he was obviously smitten with her, which was flattering. But he was anything but smitten with her writing.
“It’s not personal,” he explained to her. “Your work just isn’t strong, compared to the others in the course. In fact, it’s very weak, Alex. I think you can do a lot better than that.” And oddly, instead of dismissing his comments, she wanted to try harder to convince him she could write and knew what she was doing. It was like a challenge to win him over, which made no sense even to her. She was going to be a published author very shortly, and she had no idea if he could write. But he had been a teaching assistant for four years, so she assumed he knew more than she did about the stories she was writing, and how they should read. She was obviously falling short, and believed him.
He took her to a football game after that, and the movies, and kissed her again. And no matter how hard she tried, her grades didn’t improve. But she was dating at least, which made her feel like everyone else, and he was a great-looking guy. Her roommate saw them together and declared him a hunk. So it was official. But all the while they were out together, he slipped in unnerving comments about how inadequate her writing was, which made her feel awful, and then he would tell her how fabulous she was in other ways, and the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. He made her feel good and bad alternately, and had the power to make her insecure about what she wrote. The only time she felt good about herself was when she was working on her latest book with Bert, or writing alone in her room on weekends. She turned down Scott’s invitations because she had to work, and told him she had papers due for her other classes, or had too much reading to do. He invited her skiing during spring break, which she declined too, because she wanted to spend it at St. Dominic’s and was hoping to finish her book.
She forgot about his cutting comments when she stood outside a bookstore in April and grinned from ear to ear when she saw her book. There it was. Blue Steel by Alexander Green. It was dedicated to her father, and she almost cried when she saw it in the store, it was so beautiful and real. She had given all her free copies to the nuns, who were thrilled for her. She walked past the same store again, two days later, when she was with Scott, and it was still in the window. They stopped to look at what was on display, and Scott pointed at her book.
“I’m reading that now. The guy is incredible. You wouldn’t like it, it’s too rough, but he has an amazing mind. It’s his first book, he lives in Scotland and Montana, grew up in England. He’s a man’s man. It’s beautifully written, with the best lurid crime scenes I’ve ever read. He makes murder sound like an art.” Her heart flew as he said it. So he didn’t hate her writing after all, just her assignments for class. She felt better after that. She had him tell her the story, just to see what he’d say, and he hadn’t even finished it yet. There were unimaginable surprises in store at the end.
“I hear the ending is great,” she said as they walked away.
“The whole book is great,” he said, and she beamed.
The professor had returned from her book tour by then, and Alex got two A’s in a row, and an A+ on her final assignment, which made her decide to meet with the professor in her office on the last day of class. Scott’s grades in the professor’s absence were going to pull down her overall grade for the class severely. Alex explained the situation to her, and asked if she would look at the assignments Scott had graded to see if she agreed. The professor said that she usually didn’t do that, but she would this time, because the grades seemed surprising to her too, given the caliber of Alex’s work.
She got her answer two weeks later. The professor said t
hat there had obviously been a mistake, she thought Alex’s stories were outstanding, and she gave her an A+ in the class. Alex was relieved to see it, but more than that, it told her something about Scott. He had been jealous and had abused his position to put her down and make her feel terrible about herself. She felt betrayed, justifiably, and when he called her that night to see her, she said she was busy and couldn’t make it. She didn’t care anymore about what he’d said about her writing, but she was irate about what he had tried to do to her, to crush her and shake her confidence in herself. He was passive-aggressive to an extreme degree, and it felt like abuse. It had worked for a while, but the professor’s grades restored her faith in herself. It was a sad lesson to her.
As it turned out, Bert and others were right. People would be jealous of her writing, and maybe one day her success. She was treading on a minefield when she showed them her work, and Scott had hated her talent and tried to undermine and destroy it. She felt as though he had tried to steal something from her. She didn’t answer his calls after that, but he showed up at her dorm the last day of school. She had just sent her latest book to her agent, and was feeling happy and free.
“Why are you avoiding me?” He confronted her in the lobby of her dorm. He had been waiting for two hours, and seemed angry when she walked in. “And what right did you have to sweet-talk the professor into raising your grades?”
“The same right as any student,” she said, looking him in the eye. “That was personal, Scott. The work was better than you said.”
“Not in my opinion,” he answered, turning vicious immediately. “I thought it stank. I could have failed you in the course, but I didn’t, because I thought you were cute. But not so cute if you sneak behind my back to complain about the grades I give.” The professor had questioned him about it, and wasn’t pleased.
The Right Time Page 11