The Writer

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The furious clicking of the keyboard sounded throughout the house as Brandon finished what he claimed would be his best work yet.  The rain spattering lightly on the windows worked in counterpoint to the machine-gun bursts coming from behind his office door, creating a pleasant backdrop as Katie sat on the faded blue loveseat in the living room, sipping her coffee and reading one of the books she'd checked out from the library.  With only half an hour to go before she needed to get ready for the nightshift at the motel, she was anxious to get through at least one more chapter

A brief silence issued from the hallway, followed by the soft sounds of the LaserJet giving life to formerly blank pages.  She knew what was coming, so her eyes moved greedily down the pages as she heard the office door open.  He came down the hallway at an eager trot, and she glanced up to see the gleam in his eyes.  She knew she wouldn't be able to tell him 'no', even before he asked.

"Katie, would you um..."  The nervous excitement was evident in his voice; he sounded like a little kid asking to go out and play too late at a friend's house.  "Do you think I could get you to proofread my story?"  He indicated a modest stack of papers in his hand.  She smiled at him; she knew that "proofread" was his euphemism for "read it and tell me I'm not wasting my time, no matter how bad it is, but do it honestly."

"Of course honey, here."  He dropped the story into her outstretched hand and walked quickly outside for a cigarette.  She could see him just outside the rain speckled window, clouds of smoke billowing past his head, as he paced nervously like an expectant father in a hospital waiting room.

She thumbed through the stack to gauge the length of his two weeks worth of effort; ten pages, 12 point font, single spaced.  Definitely his longest so far.  She turned back to the first page and started reading.

Brandon had taken up writing as a hobby a month or so ago, and he loved doing it--she could see that, and she encouraged it.  Unfortunately, he had all of the writing ability of a brick, and some of the short science fiction stories he'd penned might have been better if they had been written by inanimate masonry.  

Katie felt bad for thinking this about something he took such obvious pride in, but she couldn't help it--he was terrible.  Brandon's characters were thinner than the paper they were printed on, leaving little more than a name up to the imagination.  His ability to drown any cohesive storyline with adjectives was matched only by an uncanny lack of concern for any plot devices that might catch a reader's interest, like, for example, dialogue.

With little else to do during her long night shift behind the motel's counter, Katie read an average of two decently-sized novels a week, so she had an idea of what was "good" writing and what wasn't.  She figured that with a couple of years of hard work, Brandon might be able to get away with writing a review for a book on a second-rate website, working his way up to bigger things, like reviews on Amazon.com.  She hated herself for thinking this way, and as much as she loved him, she almost hated him for making her feel it.

By the time her eyes found the heralded words "The End" at the middle of the last page, she'd come to the conclusion that the extra room for detail ten pages gave him would've been put to better use had it been left blank.  He apparently had been watching her read, as the door opened only moments after she set the story down.  Katie saw the anxious look in Brandon's eyes and her heart sank; she couldn't lie to him about it anymore.

"So, whatcha think?  Better?"  He shuffled from side to side, trying to both warm up from the cold rain and expend his nervous energy.

"Well, yeah," she said cautiously.  It was technically true, like saying three-day-old fish didn't smell as bad as four-day-old fish.  It was essentially the same story as the last three he'd written--alien invasion, humanity enslaved, a couple falls in love against all odds.  As Joe Friday might've said, only the names had been changed, to protect the innocent from any continuing embarrassment his pen would bring them.  His wanting expression drove a tinge of pain into her heart, and she sighed heavily.

"Look, Brandon, you have potential; you could be a great writer.  But these alien stories, they're just...it's just not happening."  She glanced at the clock to take a break from the pain in his eyes; she was running late now.  "Crap, I need to get ready.  Why don't you try a different story?  Try writing what you know."  She gave him a kiss as she walked to the bathroom to start her nightly ritual of makeup and fighting her short, brunette hair.

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