I sat for a minute or so looking at my hands resting on the
keyboard. My fingers were obediently in position, poised to hammer out a novel
any minute now.
Any minute now.
I watched them, stationed on the home keys, just convinced
they’d start typing soon. Instead they rested, fingers curled, until the
cigarette felt hot on my lips, burned down to a tiny roach.
Denise went to bed hours ago, when the sound of insects in
the trees still filled the summer nighttime air. Now even the bugs and the moon
have retired and here I am, waiting for these fingers to jump into action and
slap a few chapters down.
Any minute now. They’ve done it before. Just be patient.
My first novel was really my best. I know because it’s the
only one any publisher in 48 states would touch. Sure, I’ve had a few good
ideas here and there, but it hasn’t felt the same since that first good novel.
Now, it seems, I tell my hands what to write and they reluctantly oblige, as if
they think they could write it better.
Back then, though, I simply put them to the keys and they
did all the work. I hardly felt right taking credit for that book. Maybe I
should have given them credit because now they’re holding an awful grudge. I
set them atop the keyboard and they just sit like pouting dogs who intuitively
know they have a vet appointment.
Hell, maybe they could
write it better. I bet if I’d let them write this, instead of dictating my own
words to them, they’d have spun it into a beautiful multi-dimensional plot and
led you over mountains of emotional peaks and valleys. By now, you’d be letting
go of old characters, getting to know new ones, and reconciling your lifestyle
with your new perspective of right and wrong.
But, of course, you’re not. Because I’m writing this piece
and, in spite of all of my many talents (there’s not a house fly in North
America I can’t catch up to with an open-hand swat), I’m not a writer. These hands did
all the work back then, and in doing so they pushed me head first into a storm
of fame and notoriety I’m likely never to see again.
So I sit at the old mahogany desk, scattered with notes and
doodles, and wait for them. They lay on the keys night after night, uninspired
and apathetic, only breaking to remove the roach from my lips, stamp it in
the heaping ashtray, and roll another smoke. Soon they’ll tire of this achingly
mundane life and get to work. Anytime now.
Any old time now. You just wait.
Denise still supports my writing, long after my most recent
friends fell back into the same deep crevices of dishonesty that led them to be
my friends at all. It seems the quiet life of a once-famous nobody doesn’t
quite stimulate their senses. We often wrote to each other back then, my
friends and I, in between cocktail parties or sailing trips. Not anymore
though. The champagne stopped flowing from my proverbial bottle and, almost immediately,
the ink stopped flowing from their pens.
For all I've given up since the money ran out, I still have
the greatest wife a man can have. Every night she retires early and leaves me
to the weighty task of staring at my hands. She swears my next break is around
the corner. Maybe she’s right. It would be nice to make some money again.
For me, though, it’s not really about money. It’s not about
writing another New York Times best seller, nor is it about getting my name in
Forbes or appearing on Oprah. See, Denise thinks of my writing as courageous. A
noble determination and resiliency. I see it for what it is. It’s exactly the opposite
of courageous. It’s pure cowardice. It’s fear.
Let me explain. When it comes down to it, if I don’t have writing, what the
hell do I have? I dropped out of college to go find a beautiful place in my soul
from which to write novels (I actually thought of it like that--a small, intangible pocket of brilliant creativity waiting to be liberated from my otherwise messy and chaotic existence). I never learned a single other skill that may do me
good. I can bare-hand flies until the cows come home, but that won’t get me far
with the electric company. In short, I've put all my eggs in this one very tiny
basket and I fear I’ve crushed the whole damn thing. Now, I'm afraid to devise a Plan B because it may be as monumental a failure as Plan A. But she doesn't know all that.
I let her go on thinking I’m courageous. And I go on staring inanely at my inanimate hands night after night after immutable night. I stare at them until once again I feel the dull, glowing heat of my cigarette, dwindling down like the good years of my life. I beg and plead and promise my stiff old hands, praying they have some kind of talent or magic left in them. They’ll start ticking away soon like tap dancers and these keys will be begging for mercy by the time these old hands are done. I can feel it.
Anytime now.
Be patient. Any moment now they’ll start tapping away.
Anytime now.
