by Boo Walker
Finally, it was time to get to it. The typist closed his internet browser and opened up his latest novel in Microsoft Word. It wasn’t that he’d gone completely dry. It was just that the last ten years he’d written a series of unfinished novels. Somewhere between one page and halfway through, he’d decide that his premise sucked or that the writing was pedestrian at best, and that there was no way he’d show the world that this was his follow-up, that this was his best attempt to outdo his last one.
This new novel could be good, though. To change it up and catch his readers off guard, he’d decided to write a period piece. He wanted to explore life in the twenties in St. Pete, those days when Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe were allegedly sneaking around in their affair, and Frank Sinatra was crooning and chasing women at the marina in Tierra Verde.
Best of all, he knew this story was the right one because he was giving back to the city that had blessed him with his first novel. In return, he’d write another love letter to St. Pete, a novel oozing over with the magic of his beloved city. The premise was that a bootlegger was trying to escape his ties to the Mafia and become an honest man. His agent had said the book might be a bit off brand but that he could sell it. His agent really meant, “I’ll take whatever I can get at this point.”
After putting on one of his favorite Paco de Lucía albums, he lifted his fingers and straightened his back. It’s time, he thought. With the effort of attempting to lift a car by oneself, Whitaker tapped the first key. Because the story would be in first person, “I” was a logical choice.
I.
I am.
No. Terrible verb.
I walked.
Even worse.
I ran.
Whitaker nodded his head.
I ran through the wild.
“What is this, Whitaker? You ran through the wild? No, no. You’re a bootlegger and a family man. Everything you do is for your family. And you just want out.”
Paco wailed on his flamenco guitar as Whitaker typed: I want out.
Ah, there it is. I want out. Who is he talking to? A crime boss. An Italian. Matteo.
Whitaker said triumphantly, “I want out, Matteo.”
There, he did it. He’d written the first line. “Thank you for the soundtrack, Paco.”
Feeling like he’d broken the tape at the finish line of a race, he pushed back from his chair and raised his hands in the air. “Victory,” he said. “It’s a start, Whitaker. It’s a start.”
Taking a break, he ambled to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. In place of the capers, cornichons, freshly caught fish, farmers market vegetables, and fine cheeses of yesteryear, the fridge was now a wasteland of items fit to make quick-and-easy meals. Heinz might have agreed to sponsor him if he’d asked. After processing the realization that he needed to toss out half of it, he fumbled around until he found a carton of Chinese food that was a few days old. How many days, exactly, he wasn’t sure. After a positive assessment, he grabbed a fork and dug in. No need heating it up. He was just looking for a little fix, something to stop his stomach from growling.
Halfway through, as soy sauce filled his taste buds, he said with a mouth full of food, “Coffee and cold moo goo gai pan. Couldn’t pull this off when I was married. There’s that.”
Noticing the time on the range clock, he felt frustrated that the hours were getting away from him. He wanted to get more writing done and treat himself to an hour or so of video games before this family thing. Every part of him wanted to call his brother with an excuse, but Riley would never let him live it down.
He cast an eye toward the door leading to his office and then to the hallway leading to the living room. Write more or kill zombies? Internally justifying his choice to kill zombies, he prided himself on finally getting that first sentence. Sometimes the first sentence was the most difficult.
Whitaker moved a wrinkled shirt out of the way and plopped down onto the black-and-white houndstooth sofa his parents had handed down to him. They replaced their furniture far more often than they needed to. He set the Chinese food down and grabbed a controller. Pushing a button, the game started, and in no time he was dropped into a foreign future world where his avatar was wielding a giant gun. With this level of technology now available, who said gaming was for kids only? He circumnavigated a boulder and climbed a hill. The zombies started after him, screaming wildly as they jumped and flew around him. Whitaker pulled the trigger and let his automatic weapon wreak havoc on these decaying meat bags.
As the dopamine began to satisfy Whitaker’s brain, a knock came at the door.
“Ay dios mío,” he said in Spanish, the language he often slipped into when he was angry. Also fluent, his ex-wife had started the habit and had truly mastered it by the end of their marriage.
Whitaker paused the game as a zombie was making a run at him. Shaking his head, he said, “Qué tipo de persona molesta a un hombre el domingo por la mañana?” What kind of person bothers a man on Sunday morning?
He eyed the front door. Wasn’t everyone supposed to be at church? Slinking lower on the sofa so that he couldn’t be seen through the window next to the front door, he lowered the volume and returned to battle.
Chapter 5
NO, THANK YOU, GOODBYE
The knocking didn’t stop. Someone out there was determined. Cinching his robe tight, Whitaker crept across the house to a window in the dining room. He peeked and saw the back of a woman with light-brown hair and long, tan legs waiting on the stoop. Who in the world? Perhaps someone interested in pushing her religious beliefs. Or someone selling something. With those legs, probably the latter. Either way, he’d better answer it and run her off, or she’d just come back at an even more inopportune time.
Whitaker walked to the front foyer and cracked open the door about two inches. “How can I help you?”
She was about his age. The rims of her glasses reached from her eyebrows down to the bottom of her nose. That was the style these days, Whitaker thought. She wore a romper with thick stripes of white and faded blue that fit tightly around her skinny waist. He attempted to stop his gaze from descending again but took a quick glance all the way down to her bright pink flip-flops and painted white nails. Whitaker pulled open the door even farther.
Though she looked like she hadn’t slept all night, Whitaker found her arresting. Nerves he hadn’t felt in a long time dizzied him. It occurred to him that he’d seen this woman before, but he couldn’t place her. The big glasses, the seductive eyes and lips—as if a red rose had a face.
“Hi there,” she said. “I’m . . .” She stopped and took a breath.
Why is she nervous? Whitaker wondered.
Stabilized, the woman touched her chest. “I’m Claire Kite.” When the name didn’t register, she said, “You probably don’t remember me, but we met at my restaurant. I own Leo’s South on Pass-a-Grille.”
That’s right, he thought. He flashed back to the days when he was single and used to type in her restaurant, a couple of years after Napalm Trees. He couldn’t remember the specifics, but he remembered her. “Oh, yeah, sure.”
Whitaker realized he shouldn’t have opened the door. He couldn’t imagine what he looked like, the robe, his wild and shaggy hair probably all over the place. “I used to love Leo’s, but it’s been a while. How can I help you?”
“I don’t even know where to begin, really.” She looked down briefly. “Can I come in?”
“Umm, I’m not exactly prepared to accept guests. Sorry. The place is a mess.” He looked down for a wedding ring and noticed a stack of composition books in her left hand. The books covered her ring finger. “You’re not some kind of journalist on the side, are you? I’m not doing interviews.” Other than the ones in my head, he conceded silently.
Stay out of it, Walter.
“No, I’m not a journalist. I just need a few minutes of your time to explain. It’s very important. To me, at least.”
Whitaker thought for a moment. No way was he going to
let this beguiling woman come in and see the disaster he’d become. Cold Chinese, zombies frozen on the television. Still, he was intrigued. What did she want from him? The pleading and sadness in her voice suggested that he needed to hear her out.
He pinched his mustache. “Would you please give me a moment? Let me put some clothes on, and we can sit out front. Can I offer you an ice water?”
Claire smiled. “Yes, absolutely. Thank you.”
Whitaker ran up the stairs and pulled on a pair of blue shorts, which had become more difficult to button. Until recently, he’d always weighed around the same as he had during his college days at Emory, so the idea of wearing anything larger than a thirty-two-inch waist terrified him. He pulled on a white T-shirt and rushed into the bathroom. As he gargled mouthwash (no time for brushing), he couldn’t help shaking his head at the man in the mirror. He was still tall, thank goodness. No one could take that from him. But what was this mustache he’d grown? Between that and the unkempt wild hair, he looked like he belonged on a sailboat much farther south, running drugs. Of course that would be looking at him in a more positive light. His father would tell him he looked like a redneck who lived with his hound dog in a single-wide trailer in the middle of Florida.
There wasn’t much more he could do for his appearance while she waited, but he wondered why he even cared. It had been a long time since he’d cared what anyone thought about his appearance, but he felt this strange need to attempt to impress her. He shrugged and pointed at himself in the mirror. “Be nice.”
After a quick stop by the kitchen for her glass of water, he found Claire waiting in one of the two chairs on the front porch. A pot with a dying fern hung above her head. She stood when Whitaker came out, but he waved her back down. Sadly, a daunting engagement ring and wedding band clung to her finger as if to say, “Don’t bother.”
Almost relieved that he wouldn’t have to attempt a quick dusting off of his cobwebbed charm, he handed her the drink and took the seat opposite her. The sudden intimacy of the little porch made him uncomfortable. He wasn’t the confident man around women that he used to be, especially around this one.
A towering kapok tree was in full bloom in the middle of the yard. He’d spent many hours in awe of this tree, the giant tropical red flowers coming to life on the tree’s stubby, leafless branches. He couldn’t help but think of a Tim Burton film whenever he took the time to appreciate the wicked beauty of the kapok.
While Claire explained that she wasn’t a stalker and that a friend living nearby had told her where he lived, Whitaker scanned the park for any scandalous dog walkers. No dogs, only a man tossing a baseball with his two sons on the other side near a statue.
“Anyway,” she said nervously, “I’m sorry to bother you on a Sunday morning.”
“It seems important.” They met eyes, and then Whitaker quickly looked back to the park. One of the boys attempted to catch a poorly thrown ball.
God, she is beautiful, he thought, as their first encounter a decade before started to come back to him. He remembered being as attracted to her then as he was now.
“My husband died three years ago yesterday.”
Oh. A kaleidoscope of butterflies migrated back to his stomach. He spun his head back to her, both death and possibility knocking on his door. When he met her eyes, though, it was the stone-cold sobriety of widowhood that pulled at his heartstrings like the puppeteer of the lonely.
He gave her his full attention.
Claire sat up straight, placing her hands on her lap. “You probably wouldn’t remember, but years ago, you were writing in my café, and I walked up to your table and introduced myself.”
“Yeah, I remember,” he said. To be clear, he remembered typing there, not writing. His well had already dried up by the time he’d started visiting Leo’s South.
“I told you I loved your book, but that my husband, David, hadn’t read it yet. You came back a week later with a copy for him. David didn’t touch it for a couple more years, but when he finally did, it hit him hard.” Claire shuffled her feet in her pink flip-flops and took a breath. “In fact, he started writing again. He was an English major in school and wrote a couple novels—mystery kind of stuff—but couldn’t get them published. Went on to be an architect and let go of the writing thing. Until he read your book. Then it was reading and writing all the time. Up until the day he died.”
Whitaker wasn’t sure what to say. Apparently, she felt a need to share this story so badly that she’d shown up at his door on a Sunday morning to do so.
“He died without finishing it.”
Whitaker nodded again. She wasn’t about to ask him to finish it, was she?
“I read it yesterday for the first time,” Claire continued. Before she could get out another word, her face melted with sadness, and she dropped her chin.
Whitaker wasn’t very good at taking care of anyone else. He had been at one time, but those days felt distant. His inability to get outside himself was most certainly the culprit; he knew that. Either way, he had an urge to rise and comfort her. To whip out a white handkerchief and pat her tears. Alas, he had no white handkerchief. In his current state, the only comfort he might have offered her was a turn at killing zombies inside—the best (healthier than drinking) release for pain he’d found to date. He decided to let her take her time until she could get it all out.
“What he’s written is special, and it needs . . .” She wiped her eyes.
“Can I get you some tissues?”
She shook her head and wiped her eyes again. “He wrote something great, and it needs to get out there. I want you to finish it. I’ll pay you, of course. I’ll do whatever it takes.”
“Why me? Because my book from ten years ago inspired him? That’s a far stretch.”
“I think it’s a pretty good reason. And I see a part of you in his writing. Not the setting, though I think you both come from the same school of description. And your prose is obviously more elevated. But it’s in the tapping deep that I see similarities.” Her gaze flitted all around, occasionally meeting his. “When I read Napalm Trees, I felt like you’d put it all out there, like you didn’t care what people thought about you. You just wanted to be true, all else be damned. That’s what his book reads like, like his story needed outing, all else be damned.”
She finally settled and looked at him with pleading, almost irresistible eyes. “You inspired him to write again in a new way, and I believe that you are meant to finish this book. Not just because you inspired my husband to write. It’s because you’re one of the best writers in Florida, and he and this story deserve you.”
Whitaker watched a lizard run up the wall. “Thank you for the compliment, but I haven’t released anything in ten years. Life’s kind of gotten in the way.”
She processed his words with a few slow breaths. Then, with great determination, she asked, “What if this story is meant for you?”
Whitaker’s eyes bulged, and his head floated backward at the notion. He could see that the idea of it being meant for him was her magic bullet, the words she’d been saving for the right moment. “Claire, I’m into the cosmos and meant-to-bes and aligning stars and all that. But I’m not abiding by the laws of the universe right now. You’ve caught me in a pretty low moment.” He saw no need to lie to her or pretend he was anything more than a has-been caught in a constipated rut.
Claire shook her head again. “You can’t say no.”
Something about her words struck a dissonant chord, and he suddenly felt as if a squire were racing to clad him with armor for protection. A cautious voice warned, Stay true to the course.
“I have to say no,” he said. He didn’t want to, that was for sure. To say no to a widow in need felt below even him at his worst.
“Whitaker Grant, I’m asking you from the bottom of my heart. Will you please finish my husband’s novel?”
He scratched his head and mumbled, “I want out, Matteo.”
“What did you say?”
/> “Nothing, sorry. Just talking to myself.” This moment was nothing to make light of, and he knew that. Smiling and awkward jokes in the midst of sadness were Grant family traits. “Look, I’m so sorry for your loss. I really can’t imagine what you’ve been through. You’re a brave woman to get out of bed every day.” He clasped his hands together. “But I can’t finish your husband’s novel. Frankly, I can’t even finish my own. I’m not your guy.”
Her shoulders sank. “You are. I know you are.”
“You can’t know that.”
Whitaker watched a flock of white ibises land in the front lawn and peck into the dirt. Though getting paid to write was tempting, this wasn’t exactly what he’d been gunning for. The last thing he ever wanted was to follow up his hit novel with something he’d ghostwritten. He hated himself for his selfishness, but he had to put himself first. He might only have one shot left.
“Seriously, I’m a year away from hanging up this frivolous profession. You don’t want me touching your husband’s novel.”
A tear rolled down her cheek, and the air left Whitaker’s lungs. He’d only known her a little while, but her pain hit him like a dear friend was suffering. No, don’t go down that road, Whitaker. Don’t let pity or your attraction to her win out. You must hold strong. In his mind, he held out his arms so that the squire could finish assembling his armor.
“Will you at least read it?”
I want out, Matteo.
“Look, Claire, if I read every book that people asked me to read after I found some success, I wouldn’t have a moment to do anything else. Even after ten years, people stop me at least weekly.” In his grandpa accent, he said, “Have I got a story for you! Back when I was a . . .”