Message in a 300 Page Bottle

One day I entered her office and saw on the desk a stack of sheets that must have been four inches tall. She tapped the pile and smiled.

"Pretty good, Doug. What now?"

What now indeed? Was I ready to open up? Was anyone interested in my frenetic typing? Was I prepared to be rejected?

Hell, yeah.

**********

Mary Kay

"Muriel...." I hadn't expected to get her in person so soon. I had no cannons loaded.

"Hello, Mary, how are you?"

"How are—? I am... Muriel! You're representing Douglas Walker."

"I am, dear. Have you read his book yet?"

"You know I—! Well, no... I actually have not read the thing. But damn it - you know it's about me. About us. You must have known it. How could you—"

"It is a fine work. It made me cry."

I wanted to scream.

"Muriel, don't you remember when I was getting death threats with Friend came out? I had to hide in the middle of nowhere. I wore a damn wig in public. I had PTSD after that lunatic in Paris came at me with a knife. You know this."

Muriel made sympathetic noises, which pissed me off even more.

"And yet," I continued accusing tone increasing, "you publish his book. Putting me back in the spotlight again—"

"He didn't use real names, Mary."

"People. Will. Figure. It. Out." If I had been in the same room with her, I would have been tempted to grab this kindly mother figure and shake her severely.

"Let them," she said calmly. "It will boost the sales of both of you."

"Both of us? He only has one book. I have six. Four number ones, Muriel."

"But," she replied, "Message is selling gangbusters."

Gangbusters? She might as well have said like hotcakes. There was a good reason why she was repping writers and not writing herself.

I had a sudden sickening thought.

"Muriel, did you hang his picture over your desk?"

Hesitant silence.

God damnit!

**********

Doug

My mother liked it. She cried. Then again, she had cried when I delivered the Gettysburg Address in fourth grade assembly.

It wasn't just my mother. My dad liked it. He did say it needed some explicit sex to spice it up, the old pervert. The reading public, what there is left of it, seemed to like it. They were buying it and downloading it. My two partners liked it both as thinly-veiled fiction and as advertising for Akrivis. Any publicity is, you know.

My friends liked it. I gave personalized copies to M&M and Henry and some of my old teachers at Turner Falls High.

I held my spiritual breath and waited for any response from Claire. I was not gutsy enough to offer her a copy, personalized or not. I heard nothing. I did not ask M&M about it. I guess I am not as courageous as Dr. Jager wishes me to be.

Muriel Bloom had liked it.

The book had been nothing more than an electronic file and an uneven jumble of laser-printed pages. I was still living in the same Watertown flat. It had gone condo and I was used to the location so I bought it.

On the third shelf of a bookcase in my bedroom. I had never disposed of it. Trash, recycle, Goodwill, library donation, all opportunities to let go of my copy ignored over ten years. I had not opened it since reading the last page in Brooklyn. The cover was creased, some of the pages folded down at the top corner. It had a couple of glass shards still embedded in it.

I opened to the credits at the end. Sherman thanked Muriel Bloom of Bloom Literary Group for trust and guidance.

Good for the gander and stuff.

I flung an email into the static of the net. As I clicked on the send icon I fancied that my effort had all the directionality and chance of success as twisting my query note into a slip, jamming it into a bottle and heaving the bottle into the ocean.

**********

Mary Kay

The book landed flat with an alarmingly sharp report on the table in front of me, startling me from my daydream.

"Ha!" Sara almost shouted in some kind of what I recognized as a victory cry.

"You bitch!" I squealed, looking at the book. Message in a 300—

"It's about you!"

I pushed the thing as far away from me as I could.

"It is, isn't it?" She was going to break out into a jig. She probably knew how to dance a jig, too.

"That's Doug. The Doug."

I had made the mistake of telling my sister all about the college student I had dallied with before....

"Have you read it?" she continued. "Why the hell did you run off? He was smitten like a kitten."

Sara was loving this way too much.

"I didn't run off," I said coolly. "I decided not to hide anymore and moved to New York."

"So you ghosted this poor sucker who was obviously in love with you."

"I...." I looked into her face, now very serious. "Love? What?"

"Read it."

"No thanks."

Sara sighed and sat down across from me. She picked up the book and stared at the cover. "This is the same thing you did after the attack."

"What same thing?"

"You pretended that you were okay. You were untouched. Miss Mary Kay - excuse me - C. Sherman was not in the least affected by the events around her."

"I wasn't. I was fine."

"You were not fine," my sister said with an edge of anger. "You needed help. You needed somebody to talk it out with. Not me. Not Mom. A professional."

"I was fine," I repeated. It sounded lame even to myself.

Sara glared at me. She tapped a fingernail - three times - on the cover of Message. "You know what irony is? Douglas Walker wrote this as a tool in his therapy. A man went to therapy to work on his issues. You, a female last I checked, are in dire need of therapy and yet do not go. That is irony, I think."

I digested that. Doug had needed therapy? A tiny bit of guilt tickled at me.

"That's not really irony—"

Sara interrupted. "Irony in Greek tragedy was when the full significance of a character's actions was clear to the audience but unknown to the character. I am the audience and you, in this example, are the character. It is fully and officially irony."

I stared at my sister. When had she become so damn smart? I was the smart one, wasn't I?

**********

Doug

"Here they are," my agent said. She scooted her water glass and her half-finished Moscow Mule and her dessert plate and my water glass and my finished Moscow Mule and my dessert plate aside and laid the floorplans of her house on the table.

I scanned them. Pretty standard layout for a mid-twentieth century ranch. Living room, kitchen, interior steps up to bedrooms over garage.

"We want to add a master suite off the back."

I studied the scale and estimated. "I can see why. Your bedrooms are 1950ish small."

Muriel fluffed the air with her fingers. "We raised three children in that house, and now we have an empty nest. The Mommy and Daddy birds want a hot tub and a sauna to sooth their old feathers."

I tapped numbers into the calculator on my phone. "Connecticut new construction. Foundation work, fancy fixtures...."

"Hot tub and sauna. And a big soaking bath."

"Sure. Twenty by twenty at least. That's going to be a healthy six figures to start. Going up if you want more footprint."

"Money is an object," she said, "but not as big an object as it once was. Message is printing it for us. Plus, the publicity from it has increased sales of C. Sherman's books across the board."

I tried to intercept my wince and keep it to a twitch, but she caught it.

She pounced. "Are you ever going to contact her?"

I frowned. We had talked about this the first time we met. The day I took the Acela down to New York believing all the way, even after the phone calls and papers signed and notarized, that it was going to turn out an elaborate prank.

I had told her about the story behind the story. Actually, not even really very much behind. The whole story was this story, just with some details massaged and names changed to protect the innocent. Although who was innocent was undetermined. Up to the reader.

"I told you. She had my number. She could have called me anytime. She didn't. It's her serve." Then I paused, looked around the restaurant. "She lied to me."

She nodded. Slowly. I knew that nod. It was a mom nod.

**********

Mary Kay

My mother likes book club. She always comes home cheerful and talkative. The intellectual stimulation of adulting with her peers does her good.

Today, she came in the front door and slammed it behind her. I closed my computer and came out.

She wouldn't look me in the eye.

"Mother, what's wrong?"

She was still holding her book bag. She let it slip off her shoulder and thud to the floor, then looked down at it for a moment as if it held wisdom within.

"He said you never called."

I was lost for a second parsing who he was. Oh.

"You mean he wrote that—"

"Don't be a goddamn pedant!" my mother snapped. She never snapped. "Did you or did you not ever contact this man to let him know you were okay or ask how he was or wish him a merry fucking Christmas— or anything? Anything?"

I was amazed. Where had this come from?

"The whole club. They turned on me. How could I have let my daughter treat this poor fellow so shabbily?" She kicked the bag. "Book club is supposed to be fun. I don't go to get interrogated about my family's lack of basic goddamn manners!"

"But I...."

"He has a website. He has a feedback form. It was kindly pointed out to me at my book club that contacting him is dead easy. Have you been to his site? Have you even done that?"

I shook my head. There was no way to win this one.

"And it goes without saying that you have not read the book."

I nodded. Then stopped. Then shook my head. She wasn't even looking in my direction now. It was entirely rhetorical.

"You discarded and humiliated what seems like a good man. But you're willing to let a loser like Chesley Vipin get you pregnant."

I sucked in surprise air. "Sara—"

She cut me off. "Sara had nothing to do with it. I am not blind. If you had come home carrying that idiot's child, I would have loved you - and your baby - as much as ever. But. My opinion of you as a woman would have been shot to hell."

"I was trying to protect Doug," I said evenly. "There were people after me. I was attacked. I didn't know who might have been coming after me next. I was scared."

"I remember. You were so scared that you moved to New York City and started up a very public affair with that musician fellow. Did it cross your mind even once what Mr. Walker was feeling as he read about your wonderful plan to protect him?"

I balled my fists. "We were just friends. Doug and I were just friends."

"That isn't how being friends works, Mary Kay."

**********

Doug

Muriel had me on the treadmill. I took a short leave from my firm to run on it. I owed her. Interviews with written press. Interviews with television. Interviews with podcasters. Interviews with influencers. Telling the same account over and over and making it different every time so you don't get caught plagiarizing yourself.

Someone would sure as shit splice together a video of you delivering the same answer to different questions twenty or thirty times and put it on YouTube. Then you would be able to determine to the person how many millions thought you an idiot.

All part of the machine, the book-humping celebrity-shining machine.

After three months, I was exhausted. I told Muriel I was done, that I had a real job to get back to, that I did not care if Message sold another frigging copy.

"That's okay, Doug," she said brightly. "It has a life of its own now. I have interns to take over for you. We are riding it to the moon!"

I expected her to say: Run along, son. Let the pros take it from here.

I was at my desk in the Seaport at the time. I disconnected the call, tossed the only copy of my book I had into a bottom drawer, and unrolled the site plans for a condo renovation project in Southie.

**********

Mary Kay

Okay, life. You win.

I searched for Doug. Douglas Walker dot com and all that. Lots of results for his book, lots of results for a company he runs in Boston.

He is doing well. And he still looks good.

But ten years is too long. It's embarrassing.

I sat and stared at the empty text field.

Do you have a question for Doug? Enter it here. 500 character limit.

Ten years. One or two or three, yeah. I was busy. I lost your number. How are you?

Ten years is a fuck you I don't care.

I can't do it. I look at the photo of him. I close the page.

That night, Muriel calls. The traitor.

"The NAP awards are in LA this year."

"So?" I am still a bit salty with her. "I didn't have anything in the window."

She poofs a doesn't mean shit into the phone. "Come on. Show your face. Yeoman is sponsoring the Simons. They want you to be in the audience."

My sister is probably around the corner eavesdropping, so before she asks: the NAP is the National Association of Publishers, Yeoman Brothers published all my books to date, the Simons Medal for Creative Fiction is the crown jewel of fiction writing, and I have not published anything within the twelve-month window to qualify for it this year. Got that, Sara?

"I will break the agency bank and send a limo for you. I'll book us in at the Marriott so we can stay up late and get shitfaced with the Yeoman brothers."

"I...."

"I know." She said. "It's the other thing."

The other thing being me as the obvious protagonist of a popular novel. I have been avoiding any writing-community-related gatherings. Tired of the looks. Tired of answering the questions.

"Show the world it doesn't bother you," she insisted. "We will sit at the Bloom Literary Group table and heckle the readers."

I laughed. She might just.

**********

Doug

One habit I kept up was going down to the Atlantic Avenue Guild every Thursday night and sitting in on writer's circles. I don't do it for my ego, because I am well aware that most of the members are far better writers than me. I go because I owe them. I want to be the example of how hard work and being honest and truthful can pay off.

The advanced groups have many who have been published. I like to listen to their anecdotes and works in progress.

The beginner groups have lots of ideas. They just need to write.

They ask me how to become a writer. I tell them: Write.

Sometimes I allow the discussion to come my way. I tell them that Message in a 300 Page Bottle is a mystery to me. It doesn't have a real ending. It just kind of peters out. Nobody gets killed, kidnapped, blown up. I never thought it would sell more than maybe a hundred copies, and most of those to my immediate family.

The petering outness of it makes many think it was intentional, that I have a sequel planned to tell the next chapter in the lives of the principals.

I don't. I have said what needed to be said.

I talk with Dr. Jager maybe once a month now. She thinks I am ready to be happy.

I want to be happy.

**********

Mary Kay

The room is done up like a high school prom whose theme is At The Bottom Of A Sea Which Is A Nice Blue But Isn't Getting Enough Sunlight Down This Deep To Let Anyone Appreciate It.

I can't see which foodstuff on my plate I am cutting into.

The NAP hired that guy I don't recognize from that show I never watch to host the awarding, and his patter is trite, but at least it is lame.

One of Muriel's other clients, a middle-aged woman who writes about dysfunctional families, wins a minor award and reads from her work for five minutes.

We applaud politely. Muriel puts her fingers in her mouth and whistles so powerfully I fear my wine glass will shatter. I snatch it up and drain it. Just in case.

I am questioning my ability to let the world witness that I am fully plussed, as in this light no one in the world except possibly the junior agent sitting to my left can see me.

I activate the flashlight function on my phone and use it like a lighthouse beam to guide our server over safely so I can get another glass of red.

By the time whatshisname is pumping up the next award, the final award of the evening, the one and only Barbara and Richard Simons Medal for Creative Fiction, I wish I had stayed at home. The food was surprisingly mundane, the room too hot, the people at my table and nearby tables uninteresting. Except for Muriel, who is vibrating like a tuning fork.

My phone is surreptitiously under the table as I read the draft I was working on this morning, and I just catch the last of the sentence:

"—Walker!"

My head pops up. What?

A man who looks like— It is.

Doug has won the Simon.

I shoot daggers at Muriel, who is grinning so hard I can see every stretched tendon in her neck. Both of her hands are giving the hall a thumbs up.

Applause for him.

Nausea for me.

I won the Simon for my third novel. He gets it in one?

And it's about me, to boot. Not fucking fair.

Tears of rage and frustration blur my view of Doug as the spotlight picks him out. He is standing at the podium, book open in front of him.

"Thank you," he says as the ovation tapers down. "I am going to read about the orchids." A sound runs through the audience, a soft wave of Ohhh! Mostly from female voices.

"Thank you," he says again. "I get that response from the orchid lovers."

Rippling laughs.

He begins. I have not read the scene. I have not read the book. It is all new to me, yet familiar. It is a description of my apartment. He busts in through the back door.

How come I never knew that? Was he trying to save me?

He searches for me, but I am gone. I deserted him.

No, the character in the book, Kate. She deserted him.

Just like I did.

Even I hate the fictionalized myself at that moment.

"Most of her stuff is gone," he reads. "The stuff you would take in a hurry. The kind of hurry you would be in to leave the orchids you loved like children to die alone—"

Somewhere in my brain the shadowy figure of a woman jumps to her shadowy feet and objects.

I swear by all that I hold dear. I knew in this room were the assembled literary drivers of North America. Agents, publishers, critics.

I knew. And I jump to my feet anyway.

"Hey! I...."

I what? It was all true.

Every face turns to me. Agents, publishers, critics.

I caught a glimpse of Muriel.

She should have been mortified for me, afraid of the implications of playing the fool here and now, angry that one of her stable had broken the polite conventions of the business.

But she looks elated, like she has just won some other kind of award.

No time for that.

Doug lifts his hand to take the spotlight out of his eyes as he sweeps for the source of the interruption.

"Sherman?"

He remembers my voice. Who remembers voices for ten years?

I cannot produce a sound as he makes the short hop off the elevated platform and walks to me.

The spotlight follows him and lights me up when he comes close.

"Sherman?" He says again. The wireless mike clipped to his lapel is picking up clearly and rebroadcasting loudly.

"Hi, Doug," I say meekly.

He puts out one hand and then lets it drop.

"It's good to see you."

I nod. "I know.... I'm really sorry."

I was sorry. Suddenly sorry for allowing ten years of debris and detritus to block my way.

"I just." I swallow. Doug looks at me with that warm Doug look. "I just did love those orchids. I didn't mean for them to die."

Tears fill my vision. Those orchids become in the instant as precious to me as any pet I had ever had. I had abandoned them. I had killed them.

"They didn't."

His words echo in the huge space but do not drown the spontaneous intake of breath of two hundred or so in attendance.

"What?"

He looks down, abashed.

"They didn't. I took them. I watered them."

I close that last step to him and turn up my face.

"I still have them," he says. "You can have them back if you want."