No Ghost Writers
I come home, and HE is at my dining room table.
Naturally my first instinct is to defend myself, so I withdraw a thermos from my backpack’s side pocket like a sword out of a scabbard and chuck it full force across the room. It misses laughably. Sails way overhead, hits the opposite window with an agonizing clang. The distance it’s crossed, if nothing else, is impressive. HE doesn’t laugh laugh, but I can tell my hostility tickles him.
“Get anything done today?” HE asks, grinning like a coyote at a hen.
Fuck it. I’m in the mood to play question tennis. I could use the exercise, I know what HE means, and I don’t want to talk about it, least of all with a guy like him. “Why aren’t you dead?”
“Well, V,” HE tells me, making it abundantly clear HE thinks it’s a moronic nickname, “I don’t much feel like being here, either. Unfortunately for the both of us, my name is still in your mouth. I’ll pass on as soon as you’re ready to let me.”
“Your name’s in a lot of mouths.” I stop standing there dumbly and start digging through the kitchen for something to brandish at him, however uselessly. I pull knife after knife after knife out of the holder, but none of them are satisfactory: too small, too dull, damn my habit of being a greater danger to myself than I am to others. “Why me?”
“Why aren’t you writing?”
Of course. Takes two to play question tennis. Should’ve thought about that.
But that one, I’m ready for. “Because I have a job—“
“Which you’re not at. Hey—“ HE pretends it just dawned on him pretty unconvincingly, but HE puts on a damn good show of offense “—do you mean to suggest writing isn’t a real job?”
“I have homework, asshole,” I retort, over the sound of him clicking his tongue.
“Which you aren’t doing. And you won’t until, when, 11 P.M.?”
HE checks his watch and draws in air through his teeth.
“Got a lot to indecisively ruminate about. Best get on that.”
For just a moment I consider leaving. Running away, as it were. I could easily call up Esther, tell her something isn’t right, with me or with the dorm, I don’t know which. Maybe, if I play my cards right, I can tell her why without sounding like a lunatic. Either that, or I kill him.
But then again.
“I can’t write now,” I say on my way to the seat after the seat after his. HE perks up at the sound of an excuse. “You’ll just neg me the whole time.
The little shit scoffs. Like HE has no clue what could have given me that impression. “No, I won’t. You will.”
I look daggers at him. It’s bad enough to be insufferable. But when you’re insufferable and right… well, who’s in any position to shut you up?
I ask him, “Don’t you have anything more interesting to do in Hell?”
“Wouldn’t you like to make a mark on the world before you find out for yourself?”
I’m already seated by the time HE’s finally, mercifully stopped talking. Fine. Sure. I’ll indulge him. Maybe I can keep him quiet if I convince him HE’s won— not that I’m willing to say so. I’m kind, not stupid. And for a while, I turn out to be right. He doesn’t anything have to say about my laptop, or the way I type with two fingers, or my choice in word processors, or my nonsensical file names, or—
My motivation trickles to a halt before a blank page, constricting around the words like a bladder going shy.
Every time. Every fucking time! It doesn’t matter if there’s a plan, or a timer, or someone there to “hold me accountable,” however anyone’s supposed to do that. It doesn’t even matter now, with him, no matter that HE’s not here to babysit, hell no, HE’s here to demand I prove myself. It probably wouldn’t even matter if you tapped the muzzle of a gun against the back of my head, or if you told me a nuke was on its way tomorrow, or if I knew for sure I only had a year left to live.
I don’t know what’s wrong with me.
Last year or thereabout, I read an interview with Danielle Steele. She said she started writing, or got published or something, when she was 19. Can you believe that? 19 years old! Doing 19-year-old things! And still writing! And do you know how many books Danielle Steele has written? Me neither, but enough that I see a new one, at least one, on the Walmart shelves every year. And, I just looked it up, before you say anything, I just looked it up, and she doesn’t use ghost writers. Anyway, I read that article when I was 18, that’s what’s important, and I thought, Wow, I really need to kick my ass into gear if I’m going to write as much as she has. I only have a year left. And, for the record, just so we’re clear, I don’t feel like I need to write as much as she has to be, like, a ‘real writer,’ or anything, but I want to, goddammit, and novels, too, novels plural, not like your short stories, █—
“You’ll never be Danielle Steele, you know,” HE says offhandedly, eyes intent on the blinking cursor.
“Yeah, no shit.” I don’t recall if I’ve been thinking aloud or not. Maybe HE’ll disappear if I think hard enough at him.
HE scoffs. “Good. You’re a lot of things, V, but you’re not a hack. Yet.”
“I don't know,” I tell him, “I think you think everyone who isn’t you is a hack.”
“Well, you’re sure as hell not writing— what’d you call them? Walmart books? That’s a start.”
“Worse.” I title the godforsaken document and make sure to label it the (DUMBEST VERSION), more for his sake right now than for mine. “I’m writing fanfiction.”
“Mm.” A ‘fair enough’ sort of sound, but no further comment.
Then: “Are you, though?”
“Let me put it this way,” I say. “I’m masturbating my frontal lobe right now. Do you have to watch? You sure the missus is gonna be okay with that?”
It kind of freaks me out to hear him laugh sincerely.
“Blue-balling it, more like.” He chortles. Shakes his head once he gets a hold of himself, in what I can only imagine is disbelief, get a load of this guy. “Do you really believe that, by the way? No ghost writers? Ever?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
I regret it as soon as it’s left my mouth. I can't bear the idea of looking stupid in front of him, nevermind that his kind of cleverness requires a cynicism I just don’t have in me. Maybe someday. The road into the future forks. I promised myself a long time ago that the world would never harden me. I can cling to that; I can sacrifice it for a dead author, or several; I must choose one. Tall order.
That’s it.
That’s it, I realize, as HE shifts like HE’s going to speak again. Think of what I could have finished by now, if I didn’t demand so much of myself!
“Do you just believe anything any author tells you?”
“Hypocrite,” I say, and open up one of my reference documents, only half-procrastinating. Baby steps.
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that.” His tone is nauseating, honey-sweet, like chiding a naughty cat. “You’re talking to me right now, aren’t you?”
Confused, I turn to him. There is no him left to turn to.
But I know what I need to do.
I type up a line I’ve been hoarding away for weeks.
I go from there.
⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅