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| panda-like calm through fiction | |||||||||
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Murder Your Darlings
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Malcolm Dane was the best creation of my career, my Sherlock Holmes, my Parker or Jack Ryan. I remember an interview I gave to some small book review website (mostly because the interviewer was cute), where she asked how I created such a thoroughly remarkable villain. I'd thought about it before, though I'm still not sure if I was being clever, but I told her, "Simple: I don't write him as a villain. No one thinks of themselves as evil, or stands near train tracks they've tied damsels to twisting their moustaches. Not Pol Pot, not Stalin, not even Hitler."
It was the facile answer, but there was something to it, too. Malcolm was a hero, and not just in his own mind. He was a hero who'd gone rotten. Like if Superman was a son of a bitch, or if Batman was a cunt, if Spider-Man's radioactive spiderbite pushed him over that social ledge and he pulled a super-powered Columbine. But Malcolm didn't need superpowers, or even a mask to hide behind. He was a businessman- one so good he could talk his way around or through anyone, or nearly so. That was the trouble. I grew weary, coming up with increasingly more savvy and intractable protagonists for him to antagonize. So I decided to end his career. I started an uproar killing him. If I’m really honest, I was tired of writing him, tired of his goddamned smirk, tired of having to one-up every prior outing just to sell more books (and feeling like a literary Michael Bay for my troubles). But Malcolm was smarter than me. Because he didn't die. And he was never the sort to turn the other cheek when someone tried to kill him. Not that I knew it was him- not at first. Honestly, that first night, I thought it was just a fan, deranged, and beautiful, but a fan who'd internalized my first novel, a tragic love story surrounding a failed double suicide. She was every bit my Mary Anne, big red hair that dated back to the nineties, soft strawberry lips, and freckles that sparkled in dim light but almost disappeared when I turned on my bedroom light. She wasn’t supposed to be there. I’d been at a mixer pushing publicity for an anthology of short stories. I knew enough the difference between a gift horse and a Trojan one not to confuse the two, and asked her what the hell she was doing on my bed. She said she couldn’t leave me- no, that she couldn’t leave without me. She swore I was Dylan from the novel, up and down. I tried calling the police, but she tore the phone from my hands and threw it out the window. I tried to talk her down, convince her she was mistaken, convince her that she needed to let me take her to a hospital for her slit wrists. Instead, she came at me with the knife in her hand, and in the ensuing struggle she was stabbed. She bled out while I waited for the ambulance, with my hands in the wound vainly trying to keep her fluids in. When the paramedics came in the room I was still holding her, tears streaming down my face. One asked if I knew her, and I said “I, I’ve never met her before in my life.” But it wasn’t simply that she died- though that was tragic. She knew things. Things I’d written down a long time ago, an epilogue to the novel that had been too clean, too pretty, and too personal. I’d never admitted to my publisher or even my agent it existed; I’d burned it without a soul ever seeing it. But she knew every word. The police took me in for questioning. Her fingerprints were on a rock she’d used to smash a window to get into the kitchen. Her fingerprints were on the knife- and she’d quite honestly been bleeding a long time before I got home. But still they asked me questions, about who she was, what she’d wanted, what I’d said. And that likely would have been that. Only I know a few people in not high places, but we’ll call them above-ground places, a detective sergeant, a few aids in the mayor’s office, people who learn things, not people who decide them. And as far as anyone could tell, the girl didn’t exist. Fingerprints weren’t on record. She didn’t match any missing persons account for several hundred miles (and she’d been the kind of girl someone was bound to come looking for). And finally, slowly, I found myself recognizing that she wasn’t some fan cosplaying, that it wasn’t a lovestruck girl in a push-up bra and a sundress from a thriftstore- every aspect, every line in her face, every speckle in her eye, was Mary Anne. It could have been one of those déjà vu moments- it had to be, after all- but I couldn’t just leave it alone. So I had to make a call, to Lucy. Lucy was Mary Anne in most of her facets. When we were young and stupid, she’d even looked the part, except for her eyes, muddy brown eyes, which I’d never quite felt did the rest of her beauty justice. We’d changed since then, and that tragic love story that even then was a melodramatic retelling was even further from the truth now than it had been then. Lucy was well. Her husband had taken a teaching position at Western Washington University, and as soon as she’d tied up some loose ends in Portland, she planned on moving up there for him. A little part of me was let down by that; the Lucy I’d known would never have uprooted like that, but the Lucy I’d known had never been married, either. My musings ended abruptly when she said, “I was pregnant.” “A few weeks ago. I’m sorry, I don’t know why I’m telling you this,” but it was told, already, and I still loved enough of her that I wanted to comfort her, and told her to go on. “We- I lost the baby. It wouldn’t have been so hard, but the baby wasn’t supposed to come for a few more weeks, and Marc’s semester had started already- I’ve been so alone.” But as she went on to describe it, how she woke up bleeding, my blood ran cold. “When did it happen, exactly?” I asked, already knowing the answer. It had been the night, that same night, when I’d killed Mary Anne. And I knew there wasn’t anything coincidental about that. There couldn’t be. I’ve always liked my agent- she’s a shark with a heart of gold, but she’s part agent, part lawyer, and that combination can make her cold; I think it’s because of that more than anything else (her uptight librarian attractiveness, or even the fact that I’ve known her only a few years) why I usually confide in my manager, Albert. “You’re nuts, kid,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with that in general; I mean, all writers are whack-jobs, because if they weren’t they’d do something healthy like living their lives, rather than inventing better ones for themselves and their readers to live vicariously through. So inherently, there’s nothing wrong with you being nuts. But if you start internalizing this shit, if you start looking for ways to blame yourself for other people’s problems, you’ll start yourself on a very dark road indeed. Look, bottom line, what do you need? What do you want from me, to feel okay about all this? I can get you a gun, unregistered, if you think that kind of thing would help. Uh, if you don’t mind parting with some of that advance, we could hire you some protection.” I sighed, and thought for a moment. “What I want, is for you to ignore how insane this really does sound, and indulge me. What if, somehow, there is a connection? I’m not making any guesses as to what, or how. But what if there is something rattling around in my subconscious, something that now has consequences for people I care and cared about.” “Kid, you remember what I told you, first manuscript you gave me? I told you it was raw, but that it had potential, but that the one thing you had to do was fall out of love with it, by which I mostly meant out of love with yourself. You got to get distance, closure, see that you’re not as clever or talented as people think, and that even sometimes when you are, you’ve got to cut things that don’t belong in your story.” “Murder your darlings,” I whispered. “That’s right. From the sounds of it, you murdered that epilogue because it didn’t belong- and from the sappy shit you’ve been dribbling at me, I think you did the right thing, there. I still think you’re trying to do-good, with this Lucy business. She lost a kid, and that’s very sad, but it wasn’t your doing, unless by way of not knocking her up when you were young retards in love with nubile young bodies you want to take the blame on yourself. Your call. But sleep more. Jerk off more, if you think it’ll help. But calm down. And if things go south, call me first.” He talked a lot of sense. Albert lives and works out in the hills, so it was a long way back through town, and I was still driving when my agent called. “You need to come here. Hurry.” The phone went dead. I tried calling back, and got nothing but dial tone. I tried her cell, but after two rings it dumped me to voice mail. So I called Albert. “Yeah, I know a guy. Technically a PI, mostly an enforcer by trade. Might want to wait for him outside Kati’s office.” I told him I’d try, “By which you mean I need to hang up right the fuck now so I can tell my guy to hurry because you’re not going to wait for him.” He did just that. My agent’s office is in one of the scrapers downtown. I’ve never much liked it, because it all feels too corporate, too intimidating; or maybe I’ve never gotten used to this part of my success- maybe that’s why I still have Albert, who operates out of a home office that’s got a loveseat for an office chair. But she’s very good at what she does. And I can’t help but wonder and worry as the elevator climbs too slowly towards her office on the sixth floor, but what my mind lingered on most was why I always called her my agent, or Ms. Richardson, why I’d never called her Kati. Then there’s a ding and I tell my brain to shut up for once. Half of the floor is taken up by her and a group of agents, the other half by a dental and orthodontic collective, and because of that there’s always an oddly sterile feeling (and sometimes smell) to the hallway. The light was still on in Kati’s office, and when I tried the door it was ajar. Kati was standing against the wall behind her desk. Her hair, usually pulled back in a tight bun, was mussed, and were it not for the terror on her face, would have made her prettier. A man, short and slight, with blonde hair and too-deep dimples, stood on the other side of her desk, holding her letter opener out to be threatening. I recognized him immediately as Ernie, from a book I’d written called Guy Love. “The letter opener’s different,” I said. He looked at it in his hand, and it fell to the floor. He turned red. “I, I didn’t know how else to get a hold of you.” Kati slid back into her chair, and her fingers danced nervously along her desk, near the phone. “Don’t call the police,” I said. She stared two little holes in me, but after a moment, her composure returned, and she nodded. Ernie walked over to a sliding window and sat down, hanging his feet out over the street. I knew the scene. The book was about male relationships, but the one with Ernie I’d largely adapted from a childhood friend and almost sweetheart; and this tilted the narrative too far. I sat down beside him, and in my mind I saw the water rushing between our feet instead of cars. “I don’t know any other way to say it, so I’ll just come out with it: I love you. And I don’t care if that queers our friendship, because a friendship based on lying ain’t one worth saving. I think you maybe feel a bit the same, but I know just one way to know.” He leaned in and kissed me, and I wasn’t sure if I was remembering that summer when Cassie kissed me, or the moment I’d written about with Ernie, but I didn’t pull away. “So say something, David, don’t just let me sit here like a fool,” he said, blushing again. Using my character’s name brought me back out of my thoughts, and I said, “I’m sorry, Ernie. That friendship you aren’t worried about, means something to me. The kiss meant something, too, but not what you’d like it to mean. So, I’m sorry, truly.” Ernie lunged, only this time I was ready, and rather than let him get his hands around my throat hanging over the window’s edge, I pushed him, just enough that his momentum carried him forward, out away from the building. He smashed into a lamppost at street level, but it didn’t pierce him the way I might have thought, and instead crumpled under him. I stared a moment at his body, sitting peaceful where it lay. I hoped he died quickly, and without much pain. And as I stood up, a large man burst through the door. Kati had been dialing the phone, but he put his fingers down to hang it up. “We ain’t calling no police.” “You pushed that man out the window,” Kati said, ignoring Albert’s man and speaking directly to me. “I need you to call the Modesto operator, ask after Cassie Bais. She’ll have been in an accident, a fall. I want to know she’s all right.” “You pushed-” “Call her. I need to know she’s okay.” Kati didn’t pretend to understand, but in her mind she seemed to be adding up her commission based on my book sales and the sales of other authors I’d helped steer to her collective. Apparently I was worth enough for her to play along- at least for the moment, because she dialed. After a moment’s talk with an operator, and another moment speaking with someone else, she hung up the phone. It was a moment before she was able to speak. “She fell off the landing in her home. Broke her ankle. It just happened. How did you” “Ernie. Was a character based off of Cassie. Something like this happened, once before.” “That break-in, at your apartment,” she mouthed, but there was almost no breath behind it. I nodded. Albert’s man stepped between us. “I’ll take care of the body. He’s staying at your place tonight. Knockin’ boots is optional- but that’s your story and you’re sticking to it.” Kati looked embarrassed, almost to the point of interrupting. “You called him in, late at night. Bodies disappear, phone records don’t. He staid at your place. So take him there.” She did. Though we didn’t. I think she was still a little unnerved by the whole situation, so I preemptively volunteered to sleep on her couch- or her floor, whatever made her more comfortable. She threw some blankets on the couch, whispered goodnight, then more forcefully said, “We’ll discuss this,” then closed and locked her bedroom door. We did discuss it, over breakfast. She didn’t know what to believe- but then, neither did I, but she decided to trust me (after the lawyer in her gave a dissertation on the fact that by going along with last night she had already de facto decided to trust me- or at least implicated herself so thoroughly that to turn me in was to turn herself in, too). Then she blushed as she asked, “Have you ever written about me?” And I blushed a little, too. “A little,” I said. “A few little quirks and mannerisms have made it into some characters. But the bulk of stories where you factored haven’t been published.” She blushed even harder at that, but pressed on. “Do you think,” and stopped. “I think you’re probably safe. Especially now, knowing what I know, I think I’ve got a handle on how to tackle this.” Still, I told her to take a little time off, go somewhere out of town and relax, “Expense a ticket somewhere sunny.” Later that day, I got a message on my phone from Eugene, the matriarch of Kati’s agent group, saying that she’d gone out of town on a family emergency, that anything urgent should go through her. She was gone a week before I got a post card. It was plain she’d gone out of her way to keep her location anonymous, and even the card itself seemed written in code. But basically she wanted to know what had happened, and if it was safe for her to come home. And nothing had happened. I was beginning to think I’d been crazy all along, that all of those things were coincidental, and that I’d murdered two innocent if strange people. Then I received a call from Erika. Erika Dulac was the love of my life. Unfortunately for me, I met her when I was still too stupid to recognize that. Every single love story I ever wrote started around her, and every single time I found myself stripping out every part of her, because it was too easy. Falling in love with Erika was effortless- and no conflict means no story; of course, ruining my relationship with Erika had been effortless, too. I tried to know as little about Erika as possible, because unlike Lucy everything for her went well. With Lucy there were moments when I could feel like she would have been better off with me; with Erika I could never claim to be more than a speed bump in her life. So when she called me, my heart fluttered. I thought perhaps for a moment that the world wasn’t as cold and as cruel and as dark as I’d always believed, that perhaps second chances were possible. She was staying at a dive motel on the north side of town, and I broke every major traffic law getting there as fast as I did. Her room was on the lower floor, and I ran around the building. She was standing on a chair. She’d smashed a hole in the ceiling, and tied a rope around a support beam, and the other end around a neck I could almost taste. She was wearing her Homecoming dress, and was every bit the girl she’d been in high school- she was the girl I’d known in high school. “You came,” she said, almost surprised. I recognized the scene, a cruel little fiction I’d written only once, days after she left me. I hadn’t even bothered to hide her behind a pseudonym. “Of course,” I said. Her foot landed on the back of the chair. “Don’t,” I whispered. “Why?” She asked. “Because,” I said finally, “your sadness is my fault. You weren’t angry, or bitter- I was. And,” I paused, not sure how far to tell, “you’re not the only one you’ll hurt. And I know you better than that.” She hesitated a moment, and even lost her balance, causing the chair to buckle and sway beneath her, but then she pulled her makeshift noose over her head, and stepped down. She collapsed on the edge of the bed, burying her head in her hands. “Ernie I could believe. Mary Anne, even. But you- even when I tried to write you cruel, mean- by day’s end I’d retract it, because even at my most bitter, and angry, I knew better. You didn’t come here, or come to these conclusions, on your own. Someone’s pulling strings, aren’t they?” And immediately, the moment the words were out of my mouth, I knew the son of a bitch responsible: Malcolm Dane. I changed my question: “Where is he?” He was three doors down. I didn’t bother knocking, but kicked the cheap motel door in. He was sitting at a small round table in the corner, sipping tea, with only the bed lamp illuminating the room. “I have to know,” he asked. “Did she do it? I regretted not convincing her to use a shotgun like Hemingway, because then I wouldn’t have to wonder- and I hate suspense.” “What do you want?” “Simply? Money and women, and a pulse with which to enjoy them. I suppose I could have just slipped kiddie porn on your computer and sent you to prison, but this seemed like it would hurt more. Besides, in prison someone might have tried to murder you, and that just never would have done.” The realization must have shown in my face. “Ah, so you hadn’t figured it out. Your creations, they’re all bits and pieces of people you know, but mostly hiding behind those crudely constructed masks, they’re you. So the damage you’ve done wasn’t just to your friends- I’d guess you’ve taken a good slice off the end of your life, too- no more than a smoker or an overeater, but enough that you might kick before seeing, well, not yours, but someone else’s great grandchildren.” “So what’s the point of this? I don’t see you having an endgame. After all, you didn’t come up with all of your clever ploys- I did.” He smiled. “You come up with grifts over the course of two years writing a book. I do it over the course of four minutes waiting for water to boil for my tea. But really, there’s no ploy here. I’m you, you’re me. Admittedly, I was angry with you for trying to kill me, and I did marshal some of your more tender moments against you, but frankly, you’ll notice that none of the real monsters came after you, none of the mercenaries, hitmen, psychopaths, or even dirty cops. I lobbed softballs over the plate for you, knowing that every homerun you hit just hurt you and the people you love that much more. But I never wanted you murdered. Because I’m you. Unlike most of the characters you’ve dealt with, hell, unlike even most of your other mains, I’m you, removed of the moral tropes and allowed to function as a purely Darwinian creature. As for you- even assuming you could best me, do you really want to wager that you left enough of yourself out of me that you’d survive my end?” It seems like an anticlimax now. Perhaps I should have struggled with him a bit, first, for show. But I shot him in the face. You see, I’d let Albert get me that gun. Malcolm barely had time to react, barely had an instant for the smug smirk to slide off his face before his face slid off his face. And it cost me. I have headaches strong enough that I hear Arnold Schwarzenneger yelling, “It’s not a tumor!” and it echoes like those Ricola yodelers. And I’m not as quick on my feet. My mind’s a little slower, and I forget things I haven’t written down (really only a slight inconvenience for a writer), and Albert keeps pushing to have me tested for Alzheimer’s. And I keep forgetting to ask Kati to a proper meal- though I think there are other reasons for that. |
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