The Uncanny Influence of Keith Wright, Part 8

The week he failed to show up for an appointment was the week I crashed my car. I had passed through the waiting room at about a quarter of, half to go to the bathroom and half just to see if he was there yet. And again a few minutes before the hour I stuck my head out, and no Keith. And then five minutes after the hour. That was more like him, though. He was more lateness than earliness, and more unpredictability than he was either of those in particular.

At quarter after I left him a message.

When the hour was up I left him another message, which isn't something I do. It wasn't until halfway through that I realized I had nothing to say. "Just calling again to make sure... just checking up, give me a call and we can reschedule." I was a damn fool. And the next day, I ran my car straight into a postal service van hovering blatantly in front of me. I had never seen it.

And Keith never called me back. Instead he simply showed up a week later, at his usual time. And of course I had the hour open. He bustled himself into my office. "Sorry about last week," he said with a grin. "I was thinking maybe we could talk some more about career issues..." he had already closed the door and was sitting down. "...I feel like I need to get stuff done. You know?"

So I didn't ask him about what had happened the week before. The hook set out -- to have another conversation about something significant to him -- was too tantalizing to pass up, in any case.

"Tell me what you've been thinking," I said.

And we spoke about his career for a good ten minutes. He had decided, he said, that it was his career after all that was making him unhappy. "I know that was why I came here in the first place," he interrupted me partway through, "and that it's what you've been telling me all along. But I didn't really see it until now."

"Sounds like good news... what happened?"

Keith was wearing a yellow tie that day, I remember, one that would only have looked good on him. He loosened and re-loosened it probably three times while he was talking. "This morning was a great morning, I had eggs... Lysa made me breakfast... I had a record commute... spent the first half hour going over stuff with a new intern, she was brilliant... then Bob Ricci came in with some stuff they wanted me to sign onto and I felt my stomach drop, I felt my mood just go ten times worse." His hands dangled between his knees, having illustrated the drop in dramatic style. "It's not coming from nowhere. It is the job. It's this crap I have to do. Being fake and signing stuff I don't want to sign."

His eyes shone with eagerness to reenact the eureka moment for me. When I asked him what he was going to do, he immediately went flat.

"What would I do? I can't quit. What do you want? I'll wait until my term's up, then I'll be free to move on."

I ignored the rhetorical questions. "How are you feeling right now?"

He opened his mouth, then -- uncharacteristically -- paused, took a couple breaths, then spoke. "I feel a little better."

I nodded.

"The world makes more sense."

I remember maintaining a thoughtful silence.

"Thank you."

"Me? You're the one doing all the work."

He was impish. "Oh no, Frau Doktor, it's you with the..." he paused to tap his skull. "Vit ze shmartzhaben."

I sniggered.

"Any old jamoke can run his mouth for fifty-five minutes, it takes a true professional to make sense of it all. No, really, this is doing amazing things with my life. What, stop laughing. Did you know, the other day I actually capered? I did. Like this. Lysa thinks I'm crazy."

And on my word, the senator thrust himself from his chair and skipped a short skip to the window, making the floor tremble a little, where finding himself already out of room he turned around and looked at me, straightening his tie. "Do you ever do a little walking therapy? Get out of the office, take a client around the block? I had a teacher who used to like to do that with us. Maybe next week, if it's this nice." A grin stretched his face. "It'd be criminal not to take advantage of this mood. Or this April."

So that was the first time I met Keith outside the office, in a manner of speaking.

He lacked the particular bounce he'd had the previous week, an energy that had continued through the rest of a session devoted mostly to discussions of other teachers and mentors he'd taken particular liking to. This week he was calm in a cheerful way. When I caught up with him in the waiting room he stood and said, "Well?" so I opened the door onto the street, my heart pounding between ribs of jelly.

I had never, in fact, conducted therapy anywhere but in an office -- the office worked, so why trouble myself? But I could not have refused Keith's suggestion if I'd wanted to. The idea of being with him in the real world -- a place apart from the dim sanctum where all my transactions were usually performed -- aroused a greed so mammoth that my power of decision was not only overthrown, but forgotten. Why in the world would I want anything else but to spend more time with this man, in more places? To let him bleed into a little more of my life, if he so desired... and he apparently did!

In my first steps I was afraid I would not be able to concentrate on the conversation, would not even be able to draw a normal breath. I was suddenly afraid he would know. Surely there was some glazed look to my eye, or some hateful audibility to my swallow that would tell him not all was right in the world that walked beside him. But nothing happened. And as he began to talk about the usual things, a strange feeling came over me. I was happy. I was walking down a street lined with cherry trees on a beautiful April day, gifted with the company of a rather handsome, zanily charming man -- in a bright green tie with tiny turtles on it -- whose attention in its full force was like an industrial heat lamp. I found myself smiling for no reason at every other point in the conversation. I was enjoying myself!

"Dad really wanted me to get into a profession where I could make some money," Keith was saying. "But it wasn't like he was a distant or particularly hard-driving man. He cared a lot about me." His tone became wistful and he stopped for a moment, then jerked a flower up from the sidewalk border and stuck it behind his own ear. "I didn't think he'd be happy with me as a writer. Though I obviously should have been."

"You've been thinking about this some more."

"I've been more than thinking. I've been talking to some people. Every time I started rambling about maybe leaving office to write full-time for magazines, they'd get excited."

"People like who?"

"Oh... people like my brother-in-law. The other secretary who works in our office. My hairdresser."

Keith didn't look particularly like he'd had a haircut recently. "People who know you, you mean?"

"They'd have a reaction like this--" He grabbed both my hands in his and let his eyes light up. "Really? That's great! Keith, that's wonderful!" His high-pitched rendition made me laugh. When he stopped squeezing my hands I slipped them into my pockets without thinking, warm.

"So... I see."

"So it's like everybody's been just waiting for me to come to this decision. Like it was obvious for everyone but me. Don't be a politician, stupid!"

"What are you going to--"

"Everyone's been really supportive. It left me with a huge smile on my face."

"Have you talked to your wife about it?"

"No... well... I didn't want to worry her until I got a better feel for what I wanted to do. She's been busy with a big case they're bringing to court. I've barely even seen her lately. I feel like I see you more than I see her. So... what am I going to do... My brother-in-law said he knew a guy who wanted to start up a new nature journal, something more balanced than the usual left-wing radical proselytizing. Rich Wegman, do you know him? He's a meteorologist."

My ears were buzzing. "No, I don't think so."

"So I talked to Rich--" All this in the past week? "--who's a brilliant guy, and he says he was just going to make it a local thing, but if I wanted to join he says he'd push to try to make it statewide coverage, statewide readership. He said with my experience and reputation that... not only would my name sell copies, but that he'd be crazy not to offer me the lead editorial position. If I was available."

"Are you available?"

"Can you imagine? The California Nature Review, edited by Keith Wright. He says it's just going to be a monthly, about fourteen, sixteen pages per issue. Still."

Keith strolled nearly as fast as he talked, and we'd come most of the way around the block by now, turning the last corner. I let my overfilled mind struggle through the last few sentences to sit at a point of vague irritation. Did he not hear my question? I realized he'd slowed down as we headed back toward my office building. The light breeze was tugging some of his hair over his eyes.

"Rich said I was welcome to bring anybody else on board... we really hit it off. This is going to be a true collaboration. He said he trusted me to bring in anybody else who knows anything about business, or science, or writing. So I was wondering... how'd you like to do a little consulting?"

"What?"

"You know, help us get things set up, figure out a business plan, see what we need for staff. You said you used to do consulting for small businesses. I only worked for a giant corporation. Not the same. Plus, you're smarter than me and Rich put together. Don't tell Rich I said that, though," he laughed.

My chest and face felt hot, my stomach icy. The California regulations on fraternization never had a chance; it was too late; the words were already vaulting from my mouth. "Of course. If you think I'd have something to add--"

"You're way too modest. Please, five months ago I was a miserable political lackey. With a bad case of melodrama. Now, look at me! I'm almost the editor of a monthly journal! with a bad case of melodrama." He pulled the flower out from behind his ear and tossed it over his shoulder.

My cheeks were still burning. I wanted to ask him again, What about your job? What did you decide? It's the therapist's role to get a client thinking clearly about his life. It was all too late though. As we ascended the steps to the office, one of his restless hands seized me at the elbow and he turned me bodily to point out how the full moon hung above a blooming cherry tree. "I love April," he said, and I felt myself nod in agreement; then we were inside.

The Inopportune Moment

I had just left a party at my friend Jeff's and was walking home, because I was drunk. I had only gone a few steps when I sort of hazily became aware of a presence next to me. At the time it felt natural to only sort of hazily be aware of someone being next to me, because I'd been that way since about nine o'clock in the evening, but then I started to wonder if it was more because it was Jesus.

My mind was too sluggish to be really startled. I had kind of a delayed startled reaction. By the time I realized I was startled I had already moved on to not caring that the guy next to me had a beard and robes. In fact I knew right away that he must be Jesus. Pretty right away.

"Hello, Ben," He said.

"Hi," I said.

"How have you been doing?"

"All right, I guess." I pushed against a telephone pole for balance as I walked past it and wondered if I'd been doing that with all the telephone poles, because I couldn't remember.

"Things have been difficult lately, haven't they."

I looked at Jesus. I wondered what to say. I was still wondering this when I noticed I was already talking. "I'm sad about Mom," I said.

"I know." He walked quietly with me for a while and I was upset because I was trying to focus on Jesus but frankly it was requiring a lot of my concentration to make sure I kept my balance. I thought about apologizing to Him for being so sloshed but I wondered if that was stupid. Then a car turned into the road in front of me, which I hate. I was upset at the car.

"Ben?"

"Yeah?" I couldn't believe Jesus was still talking with me.

"It will be all right. There will be a place for her. And there will be a place for you." He laid His hand on my arm.

"I know," I said. And God I really wanted to say something nice to the guy but it was hard to push it through the question of whether this was weird or not. Then after that He was gone, and I fished around in my pockets for half a minute before realizing I'd already forgotten why I wanted to do that.

"Shit," I said.

Experiment; Googlism.com: The Bird

the bird is starting to boss you
the bird is orphaned
the bird is the word the wild turkey didn't return to illinois until the late 1950s
the bird is
the bird is no longer there
the bird is transferred to a new keeper the registration document is returned to us with the transfer details filled in at the base of the form and a new
the bird is treated correctly
the bird is tame
the bird is chaotic in the sense that its dippy behavior is regular but not predictable
the bird is under anesthesia
the bird is eating approximately the same amount every day
the bird is held firmly between the index and middle fingers of the hand
the bird is spotted some tens of times every year
the bird is repeating some of the gossipy conversations he learned when he eavesdropped on the customers
the bird is in a box
the bird is a substance with a low vaporization point; it evaporates easily
the bird is truly orphaned or is it a fledgling who is fine where it is
the bird is sent out to a lab for identification
the bird is like a rudder
the bird is called the quetzal
the bird is rescued
the bird is in the cage or box then it should be removed to a warm place
the bird is a warm

In the Tissue Box

The bird is eating approximately the same amount every day. This was fine when it was just brought in, bleary in a tissue box, but now it's starting to worry me. Well, worry is a strong word. I take note. Jamie would be worried. Little girls are easily attached to little birds. When I was her age and found a dying baby bird under a hedge, I picked it up and put it in the woods to see if a wild animal would come eat it.

A part of me wants this little robin to die, just so Jamie and I can have a "teachable moment." It seems a horrible thing to admit. But both my parents are likely to pass on within the next year, and how could a four-year-old understand? How could I even hope to do the job I'll need to do? I've been waiting for the question, "Daddy, will you die?"

"Not for a long time" is what a magazine article counseled me to say.

That isn't really what I want to say, though. I vacillate between the truth in my heart, which is "No, I'll always be with you" and "Yes," flat-out Yes, which is also the truth. Is it selfish of me to feel unable to dilute the truth? What is it that makes me want to raise my hatred of equivocation over the needs of a preschool girl?

Selfishness lingers. Sometimes I feel I don't have the strength to slay it, or the nobility to transcend it. Sometimes I only hover beside it, and watch it breathe.

The Future of Sportfishing

The coast of Ireland wasn't the same as when Rory was a boy. He was eighty now, and he could remember all the way back to when they used to haul in five fish a day. Now people were lucky to get one in a month of sportfishing, and that too little to keep.

This was an observation that escaped most of the fishermen these days. They were ecstatic whenever they did get a fish. That's what ignorance did to you. Lowered expectations had brought the joy back into being a sportsman. It had also kept the objective situation from improving. This was the way it was! One fish a month. The young things out there on their foils, sixteen, eighteen, twenty years old, that's what they'd grown up with. Plus, there were other things out there, unnatural things in the water that didn't belong there. Stuff that was taken for granted now.

Rory didn't use a hydrofoil. They were ungodly noisy. If you want to catch fish, you need to be quiet. Rory still used an old wooden rowboat, with carbon muffler oars. He and Willis went out every Sunday morning to catch fish. Willis was also eighty, or thereabouts.

"Bad weather today," said Willis that morning.

Rory nodded.

They pushed the boat into the water and rowed out on the pewter bay. The sun hadn't come up yet and what light there was seemed to come from nowhere, no source, but there was enough for them to find their way all the same. They got out far enough into the bay that the little boat began to rock slightly. Willis unscrewed his thermos of coffee.

Rory looked out at the ocean. "Let's head out a ways."

"Storms, they said."

"When?"

"In the morning."

"It's not stormy now."

Willis shrugged.

"We want to catch fish, we've got to get out of this bay. The only thing we're going to catch in this bay is plastic."

Willis took his time drinking half the thermos of coffee, screwed the top back on and picked up the oars again, and they rowed out into the sea. By the time they got there the water already had more chop on it. The little boat bobbed up and down. The sun had risen but couldn't be seen; the sky was all cloud, from north to south.

Rory set his pole up and slid his fingers into the bag of bait. The squid was still cold, half-frozen, squid from Japan, shipped in just for crazy sportsmen like them who just had to keep fishing, damn the drain on their bank accounts. He pierced the squid with the hook and dropped his line in the water. Willis put on a lure.

"What are you doing that for?" Willis was stupid with lures. Anything Willis thought was pretty, he figured the fish would too. He figured the fish thought like he did. Rory didn't give either of them that much credit.

Willis shrugged. "I bought it, might as well use it."

"You've never caught anything here with a lure. Here, use my bait."

"I have too. There's plenty of stuff in here'll go after a lure."

"Have it your way." Rory leaned back in the boat and looked up at the sky. The storm was coming up, sure enough. The breeze that hit his face was wet, and stronger than when they'd set out. He sat there while Willis jerked his line about, reeled it in, cast it again. He looked like a fool.

When the chop got high enough to rock him back and forth in the boat, Rory wedged himself in and gripped the gunwales. He figured the sun was high by now, but the day was no lighter. Willis had given up jiggling the lure around and had wedged himself in the bow with his coffee. Fishing was being out on the water as much as it was catching a fish, but even the prettiest storm, wild and real like a black and white photograph brought to life, could leave you feeling a little green. When the rain started Willis looked about ready to head in.

"Not yet," said Rory. "Wife'll be after me about why didn't I stop in at the store if I come home early."

After twenty minutes the storm was starting to come into its own, blowing cold rain in their faces from all directions, so of course it was then that one of them finally got a bite on the line.

"I'll be damned, Willis," said Rory. "There IS something that'll go after those lures."

Willis was already cranking on the reel. The pole was bent nearly double. Rory grabbed the oars.

The big fish began pulling them out to sea, hauling the boat through the heavy chop, and Rory didn't dare slow them down too much for fear of snapping Willis's line. He knew Willis wouldn't let it go. The old fool had too many years of experience in him to mishandle a big catch like this. The fish zigged and zagged, but kept them on a course away from land, which Rory noted. Still, even if they wasted hours rowing back through the wind and chop, it'd be worth it for their first catch in weeks.

"This is a good one," shouted Willis over the wind, his old fingers working like lightning to let out slack then crank on the reel again.

"You bastard," said Rory.

It was ten or fifteen minutes until their catch slowed at all. Its course became more meandering, at times drifting back toward shallow water. Rory was glad. The cold and wet was seeping in, and the row in would be wearisome. The wind made it hard to keep his hood up.

As Willis reeled in the final yards of line it was apparent that the fish would outrank most of the rare beauties they'd caught so far. His pole was still doubled, even though the struggle had stopped. Rory got the net ready. The boat was bucking on the waves as Willis's catch came up in the soupy water high enough for Rory to see its pale bulk. It was huge.

"Get it over the side! Don't pull us both in now!"

But as Willis reeled in the last of the line, he stopped, scowling. Then he reached for his knife.

Rory tried to stand up high enough to see, gripping the gunwales in the howling wind. Willis cut the line and Rory saw through the murk the pale outline, the seeping blood where the hooks of the shiny lure had pierced flesh, before it sank down again unseen. He collapsed back down into the back of the boat in disgust, glancing at the shoreline that now lay darkly distant through the worsening storm. That was it.

"Bloody mermaids," said Rory.

Practicality rises from the ashes

I created this blog to encourage myself to just write, and not worry about the quality or the editing. Just write little things. But it pretty quickly turned into a rehashing of my writing life to date, involving snowball-like stories that get bigger and gather weight until I'm afraid to even approach them anymore. Or not like a snowball but a marble sculpture... once I realize it's looking nice I become too terrified to put my chisel against the stone any more, for fear I'll gouge some heinous irremovable dent in it.

Which is wrong on at least two counts, one being that my writing is looking all that nice, the other being that "dents" are permanent (what the heck is rewriting for)? but I still plan on weaning myself off the perfectionism with smaller pieces first.

I love Keith Wright. I need to finish that story, but no more of the "if you write, you have to write about that, you have to finish it" goading. So while I'm taking this breath I might as well say now (to the three or four spam-bots who are my only current readers) that the idea of not editing stuff sounds really romantic in theory, but is hideous in practice. What gets me most right now is the van. I'm not sure what kind of transportation we'll have 150 years in the future or whenever the hell I set the story, but it probably won't be vans.

I get myself into a trap with science fiction because I'm not really interested in writing about the science, I'm interested in writing about the people, and the wild possibilities of the future are just an excuse to explore little-taxed muscles of human nature. My story doesn't fit the definition of "real" science fiction, in which the story itself would be impossible without the precise inventuations of the setting. I meant to say "inventions and situations" there but what came out amused me.

My story wouldn't be impossible in the present. It happens every day. It's just a story about a person who bases a decision on the sorts of things you're not supposed to base a decision on. No Matchlinx or moon required. It's rather similar to the writer's decision about setting, now that I think about it... I chose the moon because it's so much more infatuating a metaphor than, say, Arkansas. But if you're choosing settings for your story out of infatuation you're probably going to end up the same way our narrator does: in a situation that reflects your lack of internal direction.

The way our space program is going I figured 150 years was a minimum estimate for civilians on the moon. 150 years is a long time. Long enough to require some dedicated thought on what kinds of society and technology we'd have around us. Dedicated thought that somebody trying to write a character piece really wasn't interested in thinking, and it shows. But what if I were to put in the effort and construct a solid, believable world of 150 years' hence? Would it then become a story about the world and not about the characters? I don't want to overshadow what the story's really about. If I end up rewriting it I expect I'll focus on one element to put detail in -- say, by beefing up the Matchlinx concept -- and say as little as possible about the rest.

The other thing that I noticed that bugs me is the terrible repetitiveness of the story. Some of that can be forgiven. I started out thinking it'd be like Kendlin where there'd be a break in between each installment, so readers would need to be "caught up" at the beginning and would need a dose of foreshadowing at the end. But all that looks very silly when the installments are sitting right next to each other. There's so much foreshadowing I think I have foreshadowing poisoning.

The Kendlin stories are all right. The character doesn't really grab me. Maybe I'll write more and maybe I won't.

The "heaven is full" stories are terrible. I still like the idea of heaven being full, but I think I'll take a different treatment of it.

Enough for now.

The Uncanny Influence of Keith Wright, Part 7

The beginning of an obsession never feels like an obsession. The beginning of an obsession is absorption so complete that the obsesser has no perspective on his or her own lack of perspective. The first week, I didn't worry about being infatuated with Keith. I simply was.

After he left my office for the first time, I was flush with energy; I was happy, excited, and warm. I recall that I had other appointments that day but I don't particularly remember them. I do know that I was reasonably focused on them and the day completed like basically any other day. But the flight home after work was lost to my memory, one of those commutes that never imprints itself due to some unusual flightiness of the mind, in which you arrive at your front door and realize you navigated the last hundred miles in apparent total unconsciousness. My thought as I stepped into the house was to find out if this fellow could really be a state representative. I didn't doubt his honesty on that count; my eyes simply hungered to see it in print, so I went straight for the goggles. I never ate dinner that night.

On the internet, there is always one more link to follow, and my greedy mind swallowed each shred of information about Keith's life in a five-hour binge. And as the feeding proceded, my sense that I knew the man grew, but so did my alienation from him. It was the very act of devoting all my energy into the search that night that accomplished this; in my striving to consume him I had as surely made an object out of him as I had made a man. Yet, looking back, I don't believe it could have happened any other way. I don't believe any of this could have happened another way, from the moment I signed into the Matchlinx. I couldn't have stopped myself because I had no desire to stop myself. It never would have occurred to me. It had to happen.

I was drunk on Keith. What a man! How devoted he was to the small farmer, how devoted he was to his wife, how brilliant, how funny he was when pressed for quotes. "The Committee for Business and the Environment is a five-legged giraffe with two heads, each of which controls two legs and vies for control of the fifth." "Politics is like a pomegranate orchard, only seedier and less useful." And handsome, of course. He had a sharp look to him that owed more to the expression in his eyes than to the actual lines of his face.

And I went to bed sated, for the time being. And I got up and went to work the next day, and the next, and he was little more than a pleasant tingle that stayed in the back of my mind throughout the week.

And I met with him again, delighted. It was the greatest good fortune that this man had come to my office. I was rapt, again. We spent almost all of that second visit telling stories... at least, he told stories, I smiled. I had the sense that the stories -- about drunken college nights, first jobs, his grandfather's death -- were no different in quality or substance from stories told by a hundred acquaintances over the years, and yet to hear the same from Keith was pure enjoyment. Maybe it was his silly and self-effacing jokes. Maybe it was that the whole time I was paying attention to him, I felt like he was the one paying attention to me. As if, instead of seeking therapy, he had come here just to chat with me, because he liked me.

And the reasons for his seeking therapy did dive below the surface for much of the time. Most weeks he seemed completely content to chat away the hour. Occasionally he'd swing into something more personal, and I was handed gems of some emotional clarity from somewhere inside him. And anytime he spoke about something he couldn't tell the other people in his life, I felt ridiculously privileged.

"Lysa has this friend, Jean, and when she comes over they'll huddle together snickering and give me a look when I come in the room. That just strikes me as juvenile. She makes me feel like I'm not welcome in my own home. I mean, come on. Right? It just annoys me." And then he'd be off and running into a story about skydiving. With every complaint delivered so naturally and generously, a little bit more of my professionalism peeled away. He liked me.

I have a special appreciation for the memories of that first month, before the shame set in, before the bitter discomfort set in. I was having great fun. I was having the time of my life and loving my job and not thinking about it. But then the leash began to grow taut, and the painful evidence of my attachment sprung to my attention.

Keith was changed in our fifth session. His essence, the him I thought of as him, was simply gone. His charm was absent. Suddenly we were therapist and client, not pals and confidants. He did tell stories -- many in the exact same vein as in weeks past -- but he no longer seemed to care about me the listener. Something warm in his eyes was missing when he glanced at me. Something in his body language was less engaging. I found myself scrabbling. There was a small panic stewing in my brain, a sensation I scarcely recognized. What was going on? Why wasn't I having fun? Why wasn't he paying attention to me?

None of these were questions I could ask. I couldn't even find a way to confront the change (What would I say? "Keith, is there a particular reason you're behaving more like a client than a a date today?"), though I did ask if anything was troubling him.

"No," he said.

I bit down on the "Are you sure?" Because I was suddenly not so sure myself. Why was I upset that he was behaving like a man meeting with his therapist? What had I thought his previous behavior meant? Why did I care more about his eyes crinkling when he looked at me than about what kind of a job I was doing as a psychiatrist? I wasn't falling for him, certainly. That had never happened to me. I hadn't even fallen for my husbands. Either of them.

The next week he was back to charm and animation, which my baser parts greeted with huge relief... and discomfort. I was now aware, barely. It was all downhill from here.