A Short Story by Alan Paul Collenette
Recently jolted into awareness by job loss and wife departure, Simon is sitting in the kitchen of his San Francisco apartment. It is an October day. He has just turned forty-five.
He stands up and watches the fog swirl through the eucalyptus trees in the park opposite. His life has not amounted to much of anything at all. This is not a dress rehearsal. Maybe Sue Ann was right. Maybe he is “too cautious, too deliberate, too fucking predictable.”
Suddenly, Simon makes the decision to become a famous writer. He has always intended to be a writer. It has been the tyranny of the urgent that has kept him from his calling; the domestic chores, building a nest egg, trying to stop Sue Ann from leaving him, feeding the parrot. He has a year’s worth of rent and grocery bills and if it doesn’t work out he can always go back to writing software in darkened rooms for companies he doesn’t care about. If it does work out Sue Ann can read about him in the New York Times Book Review.
He buys The Art of Creative Writing and highlights in yellow the key passages. When he has finished, the white sections stand out like snow against an almost continuous yellow background: “Be yourself…write what you know… kill your darlings”.
Simon decides his Voice should match his own character: noir with a hint of humor; complicated, but capable of dumbing down to cater to the median intellect.
He applies to Oxford University’s Creative Writing Program by means of the most humorous and irony-laden letter (I will waive my fee in consideration of my desire to enhance the quality of your Program.). The letter accompanies his only finished short story (The Suitcase). He changes the date on the yellowed, ten-year-old manuscript and photocopies The Suitcase onto fresh paper. He pictures an Oxford professor in a mortarboard and tails opening it with a severe expression, which the academic struggles to maintain as he reads the entertaining cover letter. Soon the professor’s face lights up with wonderment at the sheer skill of the writing.
After a month’s silence from Oxford, Simon is forced to attribute their failure to reply to a breakdown in the postal service.
He applies to various writers’ programs in the US, focusing on the ones where admission is by selection only. Iowa; Columbia; New York; Rocky Mountain. Time and again The Suitcase jets across country. Simon uses Express Mail to create a sense of urgency and importance for the recipients. Always he strikes out:
“Your manuscript does not perfectly mesh with the genre that is our principal focus…”.(Iowa).
“We did not see any merit in The Suitcase.” (New York).
He buys a book called Rejection Letters. It is a compendium of rejection letters received by famous writers, including Hemingway and Salinger; he feels better.
When his combined Kinko’s and Post Office bills exceed $2,000, he settles for a local workshop in Berkeley run by a teacher called Burly Cox with a TV announcer’s voice and one minor novel. The workshop contains 20 aspiring writers and takes place in a small craftsman-style cottage at the edge of the campus.
Burly Cox addresses the class, “Good morning. If you haven’t read my novel yet, you have missed out on the leading edge of contemporary literature.”
Simon surveys the room: a guy with a beret and a scarf who reminds him of a know-it-all he once went to school with; a beady-eyed schoolmarm type who looks ready to scold anyone who challenges her; a younger woman in a pink low-cut dress with beckoning body language and the lanky sexuality of a flamingo; an older man with a satisfied expression on his face like an old lion who has just eaten rather too much wildebeest.
They introduce themselves one by one, each reading a paragraph from their own work. Simon understands quickly that they do not have his talent, but he is touched by their willingness to try to attain the unattainable.
“The suitcase was covered with labels and was brown”, he reads when it is his turn, “but it was a dark brown, a sinister brown, reminiscent more of river bottoms than of holidays in the sun." Simon pauses, looks up and scans the room, expecting a “bravo” or maybe a gasp. What he gets instead is a long silence. Cox coughs and asks the next writer to proceed.
The following week, the writers submit stories to Burly Cox, who reads them out anonymously to the group at future classes, in a deep, hairy chested John Wayne voice. No one except Burly and the writer knows who has written a specific story; and Simon, who has shuffled through the pile during the mid-session break during the second week.
“In this fashion”, Cox tells them, “we ensure constructive criticism that is not personalized.”
A pile of stories accumulated on Cox’s desk by the beginning of the third class. The Suitcase is in there. Cox sorts the stories as though shuffling cards. The group is arranged in chairs in an oval around the living room of the cottage, with Cox at one end of the oval. Simon has taken an aloof seating position on the high-backed armchair opposite Cox at the opposite end of the oval. From this vantage point Simon can watch his classmates’ expressions and be far enough away from Cox that he can zone out without being noticed if a story is just a waste of good foolscap.
Flamingo, Beret, Schoolmarm and Lion Face are closer to Cox and all clearly visible to Simon. As soon as the reading begins, it is obvious to Simon, who prides himself as a maestro in the art of reading body language, who has written each story.
Lion Face’s story is, frankly, a study in tedium. So much is left to the reader’s imagination, it is an effort to listen to. A death in the first paragraph, a lot of dialogue and some uncomfortable tension between a fighting couple right from the very beginning, but none of the careful descriptions and scene setting that today’s reader demands. You end the story without even knowing the color of the protagonist’s hair. A common mistake amongst amateurs. At intervals Cox pauses and says things like, “How are we doing so far? Are we rooting for anyone yet? Do you care about the next page?”
“Wonderful hook in line two,” Beret says with the look of a gerbil that knows where the nuts are hidden. Simon looks at Cox knowingly, thinking, what is this, fishing or writing?
“Splendid hook, as you say,” says Cox.
“Spare, well-muscled prose that raises the bar with every phrase”. Flamingo says this in a breathy, Marilyn Monroe voice. What, are we weightlifting now?
Lion Face basks in the praise. He wears a half smile that says ‘King of the Pride.’
Flamingo’s piece is about nuns. Simon immediately begins doodling on his notebook. No one wants to hear about vespers and ablutions and endless self-denial. The ending is some far-fetched stuff about the key nun running away to be with a lesbian lover, which is as unlikely as it is in poor taste. Anyhow the reader is never going to believe this kind of thing – something so remote from their daily experience. Write what the reader knows.
Simon’s misguided classmates really seem to like it, though. Lion Face speaks of it reverentially as “a fascinating window into a, for most people, alien yet parallel and coexistent universe.” This is degenerating into a sort of mutual admiration fest.
Schoolmarm’s piece appears to be a vehicle to talk about sex, male body parts and lack of self-restraint. It is called “The Dress”, and Simon imagines the subtitle ‘how many times can I fit the word penis into a short story?’ It is clear why Schoolmarm likes an anonymous reading. The Dress is too embarrassing even to listen to, let alone have attributed to yourself.
“Brave, brave, piece” says Cox.
“Yes” gushes Flamingo. “Yes, yes, yes. YES!”
This is beginning to feel more like a therapy session than a writers’ group.
“Masterful self-esteem in this piece” says Lion Face. “Self-confidence and authority command the reader to take notice.” Go on, ask her for her phone number.
Beret’s piece is a monologue. All dialogue with no second character, no descriptive passages and no relief. Simon is gratified to see that, this time, the reaction is lukewarm, although disappointingly no one calls it “a piece of garbage”. Simon sees the tide going against the writer and feels safe wading in:
“Yes, even in my shorter pieces, my sub-novella pieces, I stray away from dialogue. I find that setting the stage through careful, precise and quite lengthy descriptive sections is vital.”
There is an awkward silence, which Cox breaks by calling for the next story.
“The Suitcase” he says. “Yes,” he coughs, “The Suitcase. Indeed.”
Simon’s heart is thumping, and he struggles to keep a poker expression, but not too hard. If they figure out who wrote it by reading his body language, it will be embarrassing but pleasantly so.
“Let’s read this one straight through”, Cox says. “This is the last story, and I want to be sure we have time left at the end for comment.”
Simon imagines he is listening to Short Shorts on the radio. It is a rush to hear his own descriptions of the main character, Dick Stern, in Cox’s marvelous, deep voice. The meticulous attention to detail, the sunsets in the early days in Florence, the angle of the sunlight falling on Jane’s gingham print dress. The way the name Dick Stern so perfectly matches the sturdy brown suitcase that he owns. The shredded stitching in the suitcase’s seams. The shape and place names on each of the labels on the Suitcase. The expressions on the faces of the check-in clerks at the airports and the color of the ships’ hulls in the harbors. The exact shade of blue of the sunny southern skies at the beginning of the piece, fading artfully as Dick’s hopes fade, to the quality of darkness in the clouds of the later northern destinations. The thundershowers at the end in Iceland, foreshadowing Dick’s despair as Jane tells him that she cannot bear to be with him anymore. The marvelous symbolism of the final paragraph, where the Suitcase slides along the conveyor belt, alone and homeward bound, with Jane’s baggage already speeding in the opposite direction. When the story is finished, Simon can feel himself blush. He glances around and catches the Flamingo looking at him. He has the impression that she may have figured out who wrote it. He is gratified by the group’s thoughtful, appreciative, silence.
For a while.
No one speaks. He looks up and wonders if anyone else has figured out he is the author. As the silence continues, he begins to hope not. Eventually Cox intervenes, “What do you think of the Suitcase?”
Beret says, “It is a story about a suitcase, but it is really about Dick. The suitcase never does anything unexpected. Neither does Dick. It is too predictable. There is no dialogue at all. Can they speak? Maybe they are mutes?”
Simon feels the blow deep in his insides.
“It’s kind of boy meets girl, boy bores girl, boy loses girl?” Cox says.
Lion Face joins the fray, ”The story is a bore, because the story takes no risks. Dick and his suitcase take no risks. Furthermore,” he says, rather pompously, “We do not get inside their heads. We know what Dick looks like, kind of like his suitcase, but we do not know what he feels like.”
“In other words, we really don’t care much about Dick, because we don’t know much about him?”, Cox asks.
“Well, we know one thing for sure”, Schoolmarm says, “ from line one we know Dick is going to lose the girl. He’s such a damn bore. Trailing her off to Italy and Finland and every point of the compass in between, but they never actually do anything. As far as we know they never even have sex. I mean the lady wanted a good time. Dick might as well have stayed home with Jane and watched the National Geographic Channel. They could have saved a lot of money if they’d left the damned suitcase in the attic where it belonged.”
Simon has moved from indignation right through rage and into emotional pain. His eyes well with tears and he fights them off.
Composing himself he says, “Maybe Dick’s happy with his life. I think perhaps Jane was ungrateful and unappreciative of all the lovely places he took her. Maybe he’s better off without her.”
Flamingo looks at Cox. The heat in the cottage has made her face flush. In profile she is looking spectacularly sensual. “Dick is a bit of a dodo”, she says. “He just kind of lays back and accepts the inevitable without a fight - like, why bother? But if someone got to him, maybe he could change enough, within the story, to come out ahead. I think that’s believable. I think the story is crying out for Dick to run after Jane like Hoffman in the Graduate, and beat on her doors and change her mind.”
Flamingo looks straight at Simon, and he holds her gaze. She is really very beautiful.
Then she turns back toward Cox, giggling slightly, “Oops, silly. There I go writing someone’s ending for them again.”
Alan Paul Collenette
Alan Paul Collenette is a writer and a Scottish expatriate. Alan's short stories, poems, essays and articles have appeared in Bust Out, San Francisco Business Times, The Registry and in Writers Digest where he received Honorable Mentions in the 71st Annual Competition in the Genre Short Story and Literary Short Story categories. He is currently working on a historical novel based on the life of John Paul Jones, the legendary Scotsman, and founder of the US Navy.
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