The throw of the dice this week falls on twenty minutes before the meeting. I was standing on the corner of 43rd and Madison Avenue in Manhattan waiting for 3:00 PM.
I cannot even remember the last time I waited for a meeting;it was so long ago I used to do meetings. That may account for the trepidation and anxiousness. I was waiting to meet my literary agent. I had nothing in my handbag except cosmetics, cell phone, tissue and notepad. The chapter he is waiting for hadn’t materialized yet.
On the train from Albany I dutifully scribbled notes about possible hooks, subplots, and discoveries. It had been two days since I’d landed in New York, and settled in at Follies House. Those days were not spent writing, or romancing the countryside, I was applying my arm strength to the floors, windows, and furnishings that had been sorely neglected. Whenever we neglect a part of our lives the results are the same, they deteriorate. Whether it is friendship, wrinkles, or wood; neglect has a face of it’s own.
While I polished and wiped I thought about the chapter that wasn’t written. I was applying the sparkling results of domestic chores, to the failed writing exercises. That’s why the twenty minutes before walking into the meeting, I had butterflies as big as birds. My flushed face looked more horrified than enraptured with the excitement of Manhattan.
Madison Park is just around the corner from his office. Minor league vignettes protruded from the trees and benches, but they didn’t attract my attention as they normally would. My feet were swelling in my high heels, and the humidity was working right through my powdered face. I was prepared for a de-briefing with a panel of publishers, critics, and a disapproving audience instead of one literary agent. Had someone come up to me and tapped my shoulder I would have jumped into their arms. Preoccupied as I was, I noticed men in the city as they swooshed by in rapid purposeful succession, the suit and tie type and in the same frame, the limp defeated bench homesteaders, dragging on cigarette butts.
Ten minutes before three, I took the elevator up to the 3rd floor, stepped out, and faced the reception desk. A young woman looked up,
” Luellen Smiley.”
“ Yes.”
” Great to meet you! Frank just got back. Have a seat for a minute–can I get you something?”
“I know I’m early. Water will be fine.” Before I took a sip, she began chattering away, the kind of soothing, doesn’t have any purpose sort of conversation, that makes very new, self conscious, self absorbed writers feel relaxed.
Frank came out to meet me and shake my hand. Then he apologized for the size of his office. I sat down next to him, and noticed it was suspiciously unmarked of awards, personal affirmations, and marks of literary achievement. It was another means of relaxing the writer. All of it worked. We sat side by side and talked straight through an hour and a half. As conscientious as I was, with a note pad and pen at hand, I took no notes. After some encouragement, I blurted out, ’Frank, I’ just don’t have the hook you’re looking for,’ to which he replied, “You’ll find it. I’m sure of it.”
As I left the office, my feet returned to their normal side, my lips and eyes unclenched, and I drifted outside, and hailed a cab for Penn station.
On the train ride back to Ballston Spa all I could think of was the first page of the new chapter. I wrote it in my head and jotted a few notes. Over the next 11 days, I wrote five more first chapter pages, and shredded all of them. I returned to the mops and polish rags, and worked my way through the anxiety of not having that first page started.
On the twelfth day, which happened to be the 4th of July I stopped trying. Instead, I took a run in the country and vanished into the tranquility of upstate New York. The under-developed back roads where the absence of cars and buses enable you to see the butterflies landing on wild flowers, people pruning trees, and mowing their lawns. I yearned for a camera, as I ran past a man on his mower, steering with one hand, and holding his little boy in the other. The snapshots came to me all day long; like slices of apple pie small town America. In the front yards of Victorian homes, men flipped burgers on a BBQ, while women fussed with tableware and the children ran across the yard chasing a dog. I thought of those glass bottles you shake and snow settles on a gingerbread house.
Later in the day I joined friends for a neighborhood party and listened to conversation as fresh and unscented as bare wood. I was conspicuously over dressed, but didn’t feel malicious judgement, just curiosity, as if I was a new specimen that landed without proper introduction.
From the party, we drove into downtown Saratoga. We sat on the terrace of the Wine Bistro watching tourists’ parade up and down Broadway. Everyone had toddlers; either strapped to their backs, in carriages or strollers. Families arrived in groups, with Grandma or Grandpa in a wheelchair, and panting dogs dragging behind on leashes.
At nine we walked down to Congress Park to see the fireworks. As we entered the grounds, we had to hopscotch our way around hundreds of families, sitting on fold out chairs, blankets, and leaning on trees. The main road that runs through the park was so densely populated it merged into a blurry profile of a thousand faces.
When I took my last look out the bedroom window and went to sleep unbridled with plot twists and hooks, I realized whatever the reason I think I came here for, has nothing to do with what happened. It’s like writing; will, commitment, and a new laptop have nothing to do with it. You don’t know how or when the plot will lay down right on the page, or why a village you think you don’t belong to suddenly feels like home, or what turns out to be the right job, or the wrong mate. You just have to continue pushing the cart in the direction you think you want to go, and leave a margin of uncertainty for adventures in livingness. Any dice to throw email:folliesls@aol.com
