A Writers Imagination

A Writer's Imagination

I spent my morning holding down a bench in Eola Park. I had just gotten out of jail for an assault charge because I gave some jerk a shiner. A nice one that circled his whole left eye as opposed to one of those little half-moon jobs. The bottle of Mad Dog I had that night stood in my way of remembering why I came to odds with the guy.

I never drank much before my wife left. Since then, I've had many benders, each time swearing I'd never drink again. I guess I was still adjusting to being alone after twenty-five years of marriage.

I laid my palm against my pocket on a bulge created by a .22 caliber revolver I got by pawning my wedding ring. A decision like the one before me deserved the time it took to think things through. Once made, there wasn't any going back.

As a writer, I enjoyed creating characters, so I occupied myself by watching the people parade while deciding who they were and what situations I could put them into. At the very least, it allowed me to postpone the decision looming before me until after the park closed and there were no children around to freak out.

Along came a man in a business suit. He was a bit overdressed compared to others around him, yet the suit didn't quite appear natural--like someone who had borrowed one from a friend who wore a smaller size to go to a funeral, and his shoes were unpolished. I named him Charlie. I gave him a wife who sold Tupperware. His teenage son sniffed glue in the woods behind the house. The boy owned a massive porn collection on a jump drive he hid in a hollowed-out book on the songbirds of Kentucky. He visited it every isolated moment he could carve out to enjoy himself.

Charlie went to Calvary Baptist Church every Sunday but usually left his Bible at home on a small table next to the coat rack in the hallway, where it lived unopened most of the time. He worked as a telephone solicitor selling extended car warranties. He had the hots for the teenage girl who ran the coffee shop where he stopped every morning. He wasn't supposed to drink caffeine because of an irregular heartbeat, but his partaking of it had always been his lame attempt at living dangerously and his excuse for his morning lust fest. He imagined everything he'd like to do to the young girl as she turned to fasten a lid on his latte.

But tit for tat, because he rationalized his wife always seemed to find a reason to be out sunbathing, wearing sunglasses with little else whenever the gym-raised teenager down the street cut their grass with his shirt off. The sun glistened off his sweaty, tight skin, shining like a new penny.

Unlike that guy's wife, I never suspected her of cheating. Mine spent most of her leisure time in books. In the evening, she sat in her recliner enjoying a romance novel while I relaxed in a matching one next to her, tapping my keyboard to finish my manuscript. I missed those times we spent together. The thought of never having those moments again left me empty. I had nothing left. I didn't like to think about not having her in my life. I continued to concentrate on the people traveling past to avoid doing so.

An older man stopped and dug through the park's wastebasket. He pulled out a juice box, then crushed it over his tongue for the few remaining drops. I named him Fred, but everyone referred to him as Catfish. A drunk driver would hit him, causing one eye to veer to the left while the other would stair in the opposite direction. His mouth hung open like someone slapped him hard on the back, knocking his breath out. I gave him a long, pencil-thin mustache that drooped past his cheeks, thus the name. As a younger man, he worked as an executive on Wall Street. That all ended when he got busted for insider trading. People who were once his friends treated him like a rabid skunk with bad breath that had just strolled through a pile of day-old road kill.

After six months of not being able to come anywhere close to finding a job, his wife of three years left him for the pool boy. They got busted for trafficking cocaine within three hundred feet of a schoolyard. Now the older man waited for death while surviving on scraps or begging for wine money at the bus station.

But on second thought, that seemed too harsh. I decided to imagine him as an actor filming an episode of Law and order instead. He wore make-up to play the part of an undercover cop who posed as a bum. The scene would soon explode with the sound of gunfire from blank pistols with smoke from flash pots filling the air. After a day at the studio, he'd enjoy a supper of snow crab legs along with Brussels sprouts paired with butter-soaked baby carrots sprinkled with brown sugar. At night he slept on silk sheets with two young groupie chicks who thought the sun rose in his emerald green eyes.

I thought about the pile of rejection notices in my desk drawer. Writing novels gave me satisfaction, but publishers had so far failed to share my enthusiasm. Most never even bothered to reply. I assumed they shuffled my stuff from their slush pile to the paper shredder without bothering to examine it.

I knew I should have listened to Jill and started searching for a real job once we got down to our last five hundred bucks. The rent money took most of that. Yet I continued to hold out hope the literary world might one day notice my brilliance. I couldn't blame her for leaving. Our only income came from my magazine articles which only paid seven cents per word and the few dollars she made selling homemade jewelry. We never could afford to do much more than survive, and she grew tired of frozen dinners bought on sale at Save a Lot and store-brand mac & cheese.

A young boy distracted me as he shuffled down the sidewalk. I named him Willy, and he appeared to be about fourteen. He wore a blue backpack with an emblem for the Buccaneers. He never liked football. In truth, he didn't care for any sport. His mom bought it for a dollar at Goodwill. In it, he carried his lunch consisting of a pack of cheese crackers, an apple, and a bologna sandwich with tomato. The tomato came from his mother's garden. Being the first she harvested made the boy's sandwich special, according to her. But he wouldn't understand why she felt that way.

He thought his ears stuck out too much. He had almost accepted he'd never know the warmth of giving a girl a wet kiss on the mouth. His pimples survived every cure the drugstore sold. Yet his face still resembled the battlefield at Normandy. His mother bought his jeans too long, then rolled up the cuffs because he grew like a weed. He thought it made him appear dumb as a stick, and it embarrassed the hell out of him. He sat behind the prettiest girl in school and got called out for not paying attention because he became lost in the smell of her shampoo. Her ponytail hypnotized him whenever she moved her head.

He lived in those awkward years we all endured. That rite-of-passage when we developed our character and decided who we would be based on how skillful we were at dodging the slings and arrows of life--that, and the luck of the draw. As we all do, the boy grew past his adolescence to eventually take his place in modern civilization.

His first real job would be at McDonald's, where he flipped burgers and emptied the trash cans in the parking lot. He grew into those ears and eventually kissed that girl on the mouth along with many others. One made him smile one time too many, then captured his heart along with half his net worth. When he grew old, he had three great-grandchildren he loved dearly, but they rarely spent time with him. They turned out to be every bit as awkward as he was. But today, he traveled down the street, trying to avoid the cracks on his way to the ninth grade.

I noticed the sun heading toward the horizon. Soon the lights would go out in the park, prompting the sprinklers to come on. But what future could I possibly paint for myself? Why should I bother to try? My past had been one with few wins and many sleepless nights. I pulled out the pistol--a quick, simple end to all the noise in my head. No more dead ends and living vicariously through people I made up.

Then, I saw a woman across the lake who resembled my wife. She strolled around the perimeter toward me. I pondered why she might be there. Perhaps she wanted to give me a second chance. Or maybe she went to check our post office box and found I received a letter from one of the publishers I queried. I imagined opening it to find Netflix wanted to turn one of my manuscripts into a new original series. A six-figure check would be in the envelope, and Jill and I would dance a jig around the park bench.

I imagined going to the Western Steer Steakhouse. I'd order a porterhouse, and she'd have the salad bar being a vegetarian. Later we would shop for the first new clothes either of us had in years. I'd even go for something a little classier than blue jeans and black T-shirts. That night we would make love. As we drifted into unconscious bliss for the first time in a long while, I'd find myself happily anticipating the coming day--for a change.

As the woman got closer, the resemblance to my wife faded. My dream shattered as I noticed the differences. The last pieces of my hope were lost.

Just then, I got a text message. It was from Jill and read, 'I made a terrible mistake. I want to come back home. Call me if you think there is any way we can work things out. I seriously hope to hear from you.'

I threw the gun into the lake once I realized I could write my own happy ending with an honest effort. I pushed the reply button.

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