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Love Sacrificed.

Photo by Stephen Hocking  https://www.lysias.blog/pand-set

Across my desk the smoke rings drifted, some reaching the ceiling and crashing into pieces, others arching sideways, captured within the ventilator’s reach, then quickly vanishing before my eyes. I was sitting in my study, reliving once again the chain of events that left me here alone in semi-darkness.

She left my house, not in anger, but by some unspoken truce, my fiancée. She drove down the rugged and bumpy hill and back to the smooth highway to her apartment in the city, and the same frantic work schedule she’d been through before, twelve or more hours a day. She was needed as the fourth wave of the pandemic had just hit and the hospitals were full again. Many people were told to stay home. There was only room for those needing oxygen.

Perhaps our engagement was off. I couldn’t tell. But there was definite anger in the way she packed her suitcase, slamming it shut. I hadn’t seen those glaring eyes since the first day she walked in the door and I didn’t ask if it was me or the news from the calls she made that day. I knew I was much to blame, a disappointment to her.

She said she’d call in a week. She didn’t. She called after six weeks and briefly told me she’d been working fourteen hours a day and had to continue. Things were getting worse. Then she hung up. I had no chance to tell her about the near completion of the book. As usual, she did all the talking.

I think the mind of a writer moves at a different pace than those who just talk. We pause over words, compare adjectives and phrasings in our heads for the exact meaning we wish to express, while others babble on. It made me seem speechless in that particular conversation. But I more than corrected that reticence a few days later.

I knew I was much to blame. She had nursed me back to health, but I’d been idle, even faking weakness, lying in bed or on the couch half the day, smoking, (which she disliked), while she brought me meals on trays and did everything else. I loved her pampering me. I loved just watching her tiptoe quietly in and out of the room, not to disturb, serving me whatever I asked for. I felt like a baby in a cradle being rocked and looking up into a beautiful face.

It started with that first fireside chat. It felt so pleasant, so warm, that we continued it each night after dinner. They became richer and longer. We'd move from the table to the couch with our desserts and coffee in hand, the sweets after dinner. But the talk was still sweeter.

I discovered she'd never read much or liked most of her high school classes. So, with a roaring fire in front of us I began with a brief history of English literature, spicing it with short poems and anecdotes from my favorite authors, those in my mind. We progressed to longer stories, me pulling out a favorite volume and reading. She loved my excerpts from De Quincey, describing the scenes from his childhood, and Poe, my anthology of poetry. She knew she was getting a college level education. Her own slender reading had been all magazines. So, I remedied that gap, with pieces of Shakespeare, Milton, and the Romantic poets, in chronological order, all strange and delightful to her, and she loved to listen, even laughing at the quaint words and sentiments, while I explained the imagery, the allusions, the allegory, and gave her short biographies of the authors, often as pathetic and wild as what they wrote. 

She had a strong mind, saw and relished the qualities of these gems immediately, almost giggling, feasting on them like a girl presented for the first time with a large box of chocolates, savoring each one, then greedily plucking another, as if she'd never tasted sugar before. Each piece I finished she asked for another. Her head was just ignorant of such delicacies. I wondered how many more people there were that passed their whole lives without a single taste of such treats of fine thought and tender sentiments, couched in a poetic language to match. The sad thing about it, I knew it was the greater part of mankind.

But with these long hours, as if reading 'The Arabian Nights', to a starry-eyed child, our bodies moved closer together, shoulder to shoulder and soon her arm slipped around my neck as I recited from a book, as if the warmth of the fire and the sentiments evoked by the poetry comingled. And when it died down one night we went to bed, the same one, cuddled under the blankets, to continue the glow.

I’d never known a woman so open and pure, one you’d say was honest to a fault, candid and sincere, guileless, and every expression on her face a mirror of her heart. I suppose I was the same way, naïve and like a child, so unused to such simplicity and sickened by my brief foray into the decadent world. We fell deeply in love. I told her so honestly, that she was my star and nothing else mattered.

But something else did, my book.

Those first weeks she was constant smiles, with a glow to her face, and no demands. She had the bloom of a country girl and a purity to match, something I'd never seen before. She was a genuine, complete, human being.

This contrasted in my thoughts with the life I’d just escaped, almost an invalid because of it. As soon as I met Nancy, I fell in love, recovered all my strength and wits over the following weeks and then lost her just as swiftly as she appeared, all because of the book, prematurely promised, with the whole world salivating for it. The responsibility was ruining our love affair. I put it off at first, knowing I could still pull it off. But she didn't know that.

After the first weeks of bliss in her arms and fully recovered, I did set to work, in my manner.

At first she would cozen me with kisses, beg me to enter the study and write a few pages. I’d sit for hours, mostly smoking, scribble a page of unconnected sentences and ideas, doddles, stray patterns of lines connecting words, which looked to her like a map of some underground subway system, and nothing accomplished. She'd check on me every few hours, leaning over my shoulder, wondering at the strange maze on the paper with the pretext of asking if I wanted something to eat or drink.

This went on for five weeks. Then the kisses turned to pleas, then admonitions. Only in bed were we still pure lovers and I think the vigor of my lovemaking, matching hers, blew away any pretense of weakness on my part, my one excuse for lying on the coach for hours each day, blowing smoke rings and thinking.

But she had no idea how an author’s mind works. It's too hard to explain. Perhaps I didn’t even understand it. Most of my best thoughts came to me during my morning shower and I'd hastily jot them down in this abbreviated code, my shorthand, before breakfast. Then I'd lie on the couch mulling them over, whole chapters in embryo, with all the appearance of doing nothing. Those scribbled incomplete sentences were a whole book congealing in my head, like signs posts on streets leading to a long highway of flowing narrative, being mapped out in my head to the destination I desired.

The calls became more frequent with each passing week, more frantic, and soon directed to Nancy much more than me. The publisher also took to the phone with urgent, troubled calls. The deadline was less than two months away. He hinted that the whole mansion would collapse on our heads if the book was not forthcoming. Nancy took all this to heart it bothered her far more than me. It strained our love.

On week six she left in a huff, with the same angst my agent and publisher were feeling in New York. But the hour she left, I rose from my couch, went to the desk and soon began to write the real thing, slowly at first but in coherent paragraphs. With her gone it commanded my whole attention. The plot and the scenes were all mapped out.  And with deliberate speed and unperturbed pace the story flowed from my pen in one smooth continuity, as if I were in a rapture.

From those jottings I finished the whole book on time, filling page after page, as fast as my hand could move. The words came in one continuous stream, needing little emendation. And it was brilliant. I even skipped meals, drinking cup after cup of coffee instead, working late into the night.

Then I copied it out on unlined, thin white paper in my best penmanship, using one of the many quill pens I’d found in the desk. I placed a sheet of lined paper under each translucent one to keep the letters straight. It meant I could only use one side, but it looked as professional as any Victorian manuscript could be, before the age of typewriters. And even in this process of that recopy I improved the quality of the prose. I always thought that fine ideas should be written in the most elegant, legible handwriting, and that the desk, the manor itself, the ancient pen and tulip shaped bottle of India ink added to the whole ambiance, inspiring me.

I hate to say it, but I could never have done that if she were there.

I phoned my agent the night it was done. This was beyond her wildest expectations. The next day by noon both she and my sixty-year-old publisher pulled up in the Wrangler, Nancy driving.

I wondered at what speed Nancy must have pushed it over those potholes. The plane ride from New York to Burlington must have taken a few hours. Then the drive here, in only three hours, seemed almost impossible. They were hardly the types for such a wild ride.

I was scratching my head at this conundrum as they burst in. They did seem a little shook up. But they quickly calmed down and asked to see it, my agent brushing the dust off her boss's shoulders as I ushered them into the dining room. My final revision was sitting there, right in the middle. Nancy made lunch while they began reading my neat, schoolboy handwriting. I always prided myself on my calligraphy.

He took up the first page with a nod of satisfaction at the beauty of the writing and said: 'this is unusual.' Then he began reading with a serious look on his face. He'd pass each page to her as he finished, still with the same grave look on his face. But I could see he liked it. I wouldn’t even call it a draft. It was a polished piece, ready to publish, my best prose ever.

He read as he ate, transfixed, and handed each page as he finished to my agent, automatically, without looking. She followed suit, slowly taking a bite of sandwich with one hand as she held the page close to her face with the other, chewing slowly, missing her mouth sometimes, or groping around for the food on her plate without looking, so wrapped in attention. She couldn’t take her eyes off it.

I leaned back on my chair enjoying this scene immensely. Nancy had gone to the car, then upstairs with a suitcase, back to her bedroom, as if ready to move in again. If I wasn't so taken by the scene before me, I would have gone up to help, delighted by that development. Time passed for me but not for them. I finished off my meal, two glasses of wine and two cigarettes then left the table bored, no conversation there. I went to my office, puttered around, emptied ashtrays and took cups and saucers to the kitchen sink. Then I put my books and papers back in order, as the whole room was a mess after my creative spree. I wanted it to look nice for Nancy. There's nothing like a woman's visit to make one tidy up a place.

I went upstairs to talk to her but saw that she was fast asleep on her bed, still in her clothes. She must have been working those long hours when she got the call. I returned downstairs.

I took one book off the shelf. Then I sat down to a clean desk, put my feet up, lit a cigarette and calmly began re-reading Céline’s “Voyage au bout de la Nuit”.

Around four my publisher came in and threw his arms around me. He’d never done that before. He was only half-way through but said it was my best work ever. He went to the sofa in the living room to continue reading more comfortably. A half-hour later my agent came in and kissed me on the cheek, her lipstick leaving its mark. Neither had been so kind to me since my first book went viral.

As she walked out, I noticed that she must have been a stunning beauty twenty years earlier. She still had the shape for a tight dress, the perfectly round derrière, the high heels and makeup and class. But the business over the years had hardened her heart and wrinkled her face, like rainfalls crevice rocks, except for moments like this when her smiles erased them.

That evening I made my own dinner and took a walk in the woods. It's a relief when any long task is over. Not knowing what to do I just wandered around, admiring my pine forest for the first time, the smell of resin, the majesty of the trees, looking up at their distinct shapes and the shadows they cast, mindlessly. The floor too was impressive, the pine needles, with only a few bushes intruding upon their dominance of the terrain.

I might have been lost, except for the faint light in the distance, my house. My book was done. I savored the air. The ramble finally tired me out. With one more glass of wine I took Céline to bed. My novel was just as negative as his, not depressing, but troubling.

The next morning, they were all aglow, up before me at the breakfast table. They told me again that it was excellent, and they had to get back to the city right away. They would handle all the details, the covers, and it would be out in a week making the three of us a fortune. That’s all they cared about.

But my publisher was a wise man and pulled me to my study and asked me why the last part of the last chapter was so enigmatic.

“This fourth wave of the pandemic”, he said, “and ten percent of the human race wiped out, along with so many world leaders and famous people. Then the wave of celebration around the world when it dies out. It was fascinating throughout, the humor, the doctors the politicians at odds, the vignettes of characters, the communal fear of a return just as each wave ends, and a new universal church of hope. I love how you weave the little and the large together. You make it human, like being there. It’s a great description, fantastic in details, but how can you end the trilogy on such a strange note, the hint of something hidden, when everyone is celebrating”?

“Well, I’ve been dead-on in all my predictions so far and that’s what makes my work so popular and you, so rich.

“And I truly believe this is exactly what’s going to happen. It’s a gut feeling. Don’t worry, this book will sell over a hundred million”.

“I believe you” he said, “but you can’t end your last chapter like that, with a question mark. You have to write a fourth”.

I figured this was coming. In a way, I wrote myself into that fix.

“This is fiction, my boy. Make something up. And do it soon so people aren’t worried. In your account this lull lasts over a year. You’re their hope. Make them rebuild. Everyone will think they’ll be the ones to survive. We can ride on the coattails of this book and make triple the fortune on the next. And if your ‘teaser’ does come, as you say it must, you'll still have another best seller on our list before then. We’ll be rich”.

“You have to stay right here and start on it. We’ll arrange your food and supplies, anything you want, you'll get it. We’ll even get Nancy off the hook to stay here full time and live with you, if that's what you want. She'll be getting a small share now and she told me last night that she'd love nothing better than to have the barn rebuilt and the grounds, with a couple of horses to go riding, make it the picturesque manor it was long ago. You could live like nobility.

Then he stopped and looked down, deep in thought. With that last idea he was probably picturing an estate for himself on Long Island or upstate. I knew there was no interrupting that. I said nothing and fell into a similar revery.

I was pondering Nancy’s return. With her own money she could keep busy here with her own projects. That would erase all the guilt I still felt over her last departure and make our relationship work this time.

I agreed on the condition that she get five percent of all profits if she stayed. He was thinking two percent. But he conceded with a quick, solemn nod, knowing how much she meant to me, and insisted he tell her personally, as soon as she came downstairs. He probably figured he could squeeze it out of one of his many expense columns, as I never paid attention to the account books or the money he sent me.

I was careless in that regard. Since I lived my six university years on a pittance and the next two in a shack on two hundred a month, just enough for food, anything more than that seemed like useless riches. I even went back to my diet of oysters and Saltines after she left, coffee and cigarettes, my “Breakfast of Champions”.

Nancy told me several times I should see their ledgers. She said she could do that for me. This was our bedroom talk the weeks before she left, when we were deep in love, kissing half the night and hinting at marriage. She also talked of fixing up the yard and barn. She loved the outdoors, gardening and horses. But she never asked for money. She was frugal like me.

With her own money for projects here, her dreams for this place, we’d be tied together, practically married, just what I wanted. She could be outdoors working on her home improvements and I in my study undisturbed. It was a perfect solution. And from dinner on we’d be together, in each other’s arms, the hours I most missed her.

That was the whole problem with our first relationship, her trying to push me and my writing along, an impossible task for anyone and annoying to me. I could see it all clearly now and wanted to explain it to her. She was an outdoor person and I the indoor type, though pure lovers when the sun set. The last thought I had, as she strolled down the carpeted staircase, was one horse, not two. I had no desire to go riding.

She walked into the study just as we finished our reveries, still sleepy-eyed, but resplendent in her white camisole and jeans, still barefoot. Her disheveled hair touched my heart, like some waif, some street urchin straight out of ‘Les Misérables’. But I was in love. I stood up and gave her the tightest hug and kiss which she warmly returned; I don’t know how long. My manager took note of this and stood by, then quietly interrupted and told her he had an offer and wished to speak with her privately. I stepped out and closed the door, content. I knew he'd be persuasive.

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