Erik, a French-Canadian playwright of middling note followed me out from an impromptu get-together of which I wasn’t a part and rather found myself slowly pushed into a lonely corner. My anxiety piqued, I slugged the rest of a plastic cup of watered-down bourbon, took up my satchel and shoved my way out as quickly as possible.
Erik caught me by the elbow as I turned into the alley, an offering a beer. His broken face hung in the gloom, dirty curls bouncing as he talked his squawky Quebecois talk trying to convince me to go back into his little creole cottage. In the glow of our cigarettes, he was monstrous, upturned nose, heavy brow, but he was a (mostly) working writer and therefore gorgeous. Or so I was told.
I did not have such fortune. My ex recently sobbed over a scene I’d written, “How can something so beautiful come out of someone like you?” “But it is me!” I insisted. To be fair, she was not really an ex, but someone I just desperately loved.
“How do you do it?” I asked at length, “Get out of your own head, let them live? I don’t want them attached to me.”
“The characters? They are an orchestra. Write for them.” He screeched. “Once, you know them fully in your head, let them go, just direct. You are the conductor. See them before you. They’re not in your brain, they’re there on the stage.”
“Yes,” I admit, “They’re all chattering away, I feel more stenographer than writer. I just need to put some sense to it.”
He raises an invisible baton, “Point and they speak. Your Hero, a mighty double base, so desperately he tries to woo his piccolo heroine and her entourage of flutes, but our villainous Viola has popped up between them with his army of violins. And—”
“Seriously?”
“Yes, try it. Watch.” He slips the next unlit smoke behind his ear and sets the bottle in the gravel, “Starting position, hands out. You are setting the scene. Point, wave them in. Right hand baton gives them the tempo. Beat and counter beat of the conversation between hero and heroine. Up, up, down beat as we bring in the villain.”
“I see.”
He drops his arms. “Do you?”
“My problem is I’ve no baton and my characters are just babbling fast and slow, entering and exiting. It needs some rhythm. Up tempo, preferably.”
“There is no story without melody. Set the beat, then put in the highs and lows. Crescendo climax and then end. Coda. Voila.” He grinned. I can see his teeth in the dark. He pulled the cigarette from his ear and lit it. I stubbed mine underfoot. “Your stuff is pretty good though. I suspect you have other problems.”
“My heroes are crushed. I am crushed.”
“Quoi?”
“This orchestra stuff is garbage. The problem is that I am not lovable. People love my stories, hate me. Why are you so dammed infatuating?”
“Your time will come. Everyone loves an artist, if he is good.”
“You think? They will like me?”
“Oui. They will. When they find you,” He squeezed my shoulder. “But by the look of you, you’ll probably be discovered after you are dead.”
“Gee, thanks.” I sucked at the last of the beer, threw it into a dumpster and pulled of a fifth of Old Crow from the inner pocket of my barn coat. “Must I be dead?”
“Perhaps,” he shrugged.
“Well, I’m working on it.”
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