Tag Archives: Forty-Minute Story

“Dr. Gimmel?”

“Welcome, Michael, welcome. Please sit down.”

The two men entered Dr. Gimmel’s little office. Gimmel shut the door and settled into a large, grandfatherly leather chair, studying his guest. Michael Avey took his seat, folding his hands primly on his lap. He always wore the same suit: cheap, gray, threadbare, but exquisitely pressed.

“Of course this is very unusual,” said Michael. “I know you’d prefer to meet Mr. Jones personally to discuss his condition. Psychotherapy by proxy isn’t exactly what they trained you for, eh? Mr. Jones would prefer that as well. But of course, a man in his position…any hint of psychological weakness, even a rumor he was seeing a therapist…well, you understand.”

Dr. Gimmel frowned, upsetting a great gray mustache. He set aside his notebook and leaned forward confidentially.

“You’ve explained this before. What I’m still trying to understand is the exact nature of his condition. Tell me again about his symptoms. He feels…?”

“He feels anxious, mostly. So much responsibility, so many people depending on him. You understand. A man in his position…”

“Yes.”

“Sometimes his hands shake so much he can’t even sign his name. I’ve watched it happen. He has his secretary do it. Dr. Gimmel, if you could prescribe some small dosage, something mild to get him through the rough spots without interfering in his critical decision-making capacities…”

“He must have a great deal of faith in you. Letting you represent him like this.”

The hands parted, exploring the question. “Yes. Yes, I believe he does.”

“And I have great faith in you as well. I believe the two of us can make real progress.”

Michael grimaced, looked down. He smoothed his pant legs. “I am irrelevant, Doctor. Mr. Jones…”

“Michael, this is the fifth time we’ve met. I know there’s something you want to tell me. Why don’t you go ahead?”

“Mr. Jones would prefer – ”

“Michael, is there something you want to tell me?”

Michael Avey was visibly sweating now. He wiggled his shoulders, settling the suit jacket. Thin lips moved, but said nothing.

“Michael. You represent yourself. Do you understand? There is no such person as Mr. Jo – ”

“NO!” He leaped from his seat, turned away, leaned heavily on the back bookcase. For a long minute, neither man spoke, and the only sound was frantic breathing, gradually growing calm again.

Finally Michael turned again. His face was tight and pale. “This is very difficult. Very difficult. You understand, of course. A man…” He swallowed. “A man in my position…”

Dr. Gimmel nodded encouragingly. “I understand, I understand. Have a seat, Michael. Tell me about yourself.”

“You’re angry.”

“Yes.”

“I can tell when you’re angry because your nose turns the color of an overripe rutabaga.”

“Yes.”

“Well, I think my PR manager should project a calmer presence.”

“Noted.”

“Now hold on, don’t tell me. I’m going to try and guess the reason you’re angry.”

“Guess quickly, Nigel, new reasons are arriving.”

“Is it because I didn’t call you on Tuesday?”

“I recite a special prayer of gratitude to Our Savior Jesus Christ every time you fail to call me.”

“Is it because I sometimes experience involuntary, but not entirely unsatisfying, lucid dreams concerning the late Amelia Earhart?”

“What? No. What?”

“Is it because, at approximately 4:00 yesterday afternoon, I convened a press conference to announce that NigelCorp would cease production of integrated processors and convert its factories entirely to the manufacturing of rhinoceros hygiene accessories?”

“You’re getting warmer.”

“Is it because I thereafter led a live Sumatran rhinoceros, emblazoned with the NigelCorp company logo, onto the stage, and serenaded it with my own rendition of Paul Anka’s ‘My Way,’ in violation of federal copyright law, the Washington Convention, and basic human decency?”

“You are now extraordinarily close.”

“Is it because the rhino took a dump on the inside of your Volvo convertible?”

“Five guesses, Nigel. That’s quicker than usual.”

“I try.”

“You don’t.”

“It’s important in these situations to find room in your heart for gratitude concerning the blessings you still retain. Consider the remarkable happenstance that the rhino oriented herself so as to defecate entirely inside your Volvo whilst remaining entirely outside the same. It could have been much worse.”

“Nigel, right now I’m struggling to find room in my heart for oxygenated blood. You know why I’m here.”

“You want an apology?”

“Not in the slightest.”

“You want a new Volvo?”

“You’re getting warmer.”

“You want a new Volvo, and also, eight million dollars?”

“Three guesses that time. I’ll note it in my journal as a new record.”

“I’ll make the arrangements.”

“Thank you.”

“Gratitude is good for the soul, isn’t it?”

“Go to hell, Nigel.”

“I’d rather stay here. See if you can get it delivered.”

“I’ll do what I can.”

“The problem with lemurs,” said Dunston, “is they’ve got no financial skills.”

“Mm-hm.” I scribbled in my notebook.

“Take this fellow.” Dunston clicked his PowerPoint and stretched five twiggy fingers toward the next slide, which hovered ghostlike on the far wall of my little office. Dark patches encircled the lemur’s orange eyes. Creepy. “Seems a solid enough chap, yes? Five years old, prime of his life. Would you care to estimate his total retirement savings?”

“Mm?”

“Zero, my friend. Absolutely bupkis. This primate is a drain on his family and society. When it comes time for him to leave the workforce: disaster. A tragedy positively on the order of Lear.”

When you’ve been a grants officer for as long as I have, you get a nose for which projects really deserve funding, and which are just wasting your time. A keen unteachable instinct, more art than science. Some proposals are instant wins: you can see it as soon as they walk in the door. Others have potential, but need coaxing. Still others are a flat-out waste of your time.

And then there was Dunston.

I raised a finger, interrupting him. “Point of order.” It didn’t make sense, but it sounded smart and I liked saying it. “When you say, leave the workforce…”

“But of course. The average lemurian retirement age is seventeen, which, I might add, is a travesty in itself, but the central conundrum – ”

“What work, precisely, are they doing?”

The dusty mahogany clock on the corner of my desk counted six loud tocks in the ensuing silence. Dunston’s face turned a remarkable white, a singular purple. He sputtered: “Of all the thoughtless, insensitive, stereotypical, b-b-bourgeois…”

“What do they do, friend?”

“The nerve of – ”

“Masonry?”

“Bigot!”

“Retail?”

“Fascist!”

“Actuarial science?”

He drew himself up to a crotchety six foot six and glared a glare that can only be described as Morgothian. “By the power invested in me by the Strepsirrhine Society of Greater Antananarivo, I hereby name you Anathema to the lemur community, and overall a very disreputable sort of person entirely!” Which is the first time anyone has said that particular sentence in quite a while.

After he’d stormed out, I extended a pinky and depressed the blue button on my phone. “Martha?”

“Yeah.”

“Cancel my three o’clock, will you? I’ve developed an intense pain under my left eyebrow.”

“Yeah.”

“I’ve been called a bourgeois fascist, Martha.”

“Yeah.”

I pressed the button again and studied the northeastern corner of the room.

It was only Wednesday.

The first time I did this was fun, so let’s try it again. I’ve got less than forty minutes to write this story, start to finish, before I have to go to work. And, go!

* * *

The sound of the fires of the storm, the sound of the winds and the fires of the storm, surges and sighs in its familiar rhythm as I stride across the village square. I am a sun, and the fires circle me, small blazing planets each one of them. I have not been to this village before, but villages are all the same. They all know how to burn.

They have mostly gone, these people, fled to other places as they mostly do. Only a few screams remain and these are distant, receding on my periphery. Villages are all the same. I would stop if I could the fury of the fires, the way they wash away markets and homes, recede, and then like the tides surge back again in the pull of my gravities.

I would stop if I could. The fires obey me. But I obey another, and his gravities tug me to his orbit, and I have my storms and he has me. And the villages, they burn.

They are all the same. But not this one.

The opposite of fire is not ice nor water nor earth nor wind nor leaf but dark, and the deeping dark grows silently in the village square, not surging or sighing but only existing, being the absence of the light of the fires of the storm. The dark like the fire has its masters and orbits, and I know that tonight is the night I will die.

They call them shadows, these creatures that eat the fire, but they are wrong. A shadow is what appears when you stand before a fire.

When a fire goes out there is only dark.

I smile and sigh and make myself ready at the heart of the winds and the fires of the storm.

Thanks, everyone, for the comments and suggestions on yesterday’s post about how I’ve fallen out of love with writing (at least temporarily). A lot of the comments revolved around a common theme: don’t worry so much, and get back to what you really love about writing!

Jo Eberhardt put it like this:

But stop being so hard on yourself; stop trying to create something great. Sit down and write a poem about a buzzard waiting for a cowboy to die, or an ode to toilet paper, or a plan to take over the world using only a radish, a jar of pickles, and a paintbrush.

In that spirit, I’ve decided to write a story – right now, in the forty minutes I have before work, with minimal time to worry or revise.

And, go!

* * *

Rain slashed the concrete, soaking me under my windbreaker, rattling everywhere like the end of the world. The street was deserted – almost. I could just see him through the storm, electric eyes shining blue.

“Mark!” I called.

An old joke: ‘Mark’ was short for ‘Automaton Mark VII,’ an absurdly retro name for the highest-tech gadget in the world. He had laughed at that joke before, a human-sounding noise I could never quite unravel.

But he didn’t laugh now. He just watched me, long arms at his sides. Waiting.

“Mark!” I advanced, one slow step at a time, shivering as the water seeped through my tennis shoes. “Come home, buddy. This thing with Sharon, I’m sorry, it isn’t going to work. She doesn’t love you, Mark, she loves the spotlight. Loves having her face on magazine covers with headlines about the first interspecies romance. You have to let it go. I really am sorry.”

Too direct. I swallowed. I was terrible at this kind of thing: delicate words, broken feelings. Six years at BU had taught me to pick apart themes in medieval Asian poetry, but not to do anything useful in particular – except spend my dad’s money, on the highest-tech gadgets in the world.

Even so, I knew I shouldn’t have mentioned Sharon. Not yet.

Mark’s answer was clear in spite of the rain. His mouth moved, but the sound came from somewhere in his chest. His voice didn’t sound robotic at all – whatever that means – it just had an unplaceable accent, like he was from some nonexistent country between Sweden and Iran.

“I’ve already broken it off with Sharon.”

I blinked. “Then why…”

“I never said I loved her.”

He crossed the distance between us in long, swift strides. His plastic white face was neutral as always, a mask hiding God knows what, but he put his hand on my shoulder.

That was new.

“Yes, you did. You said – ”

“I said I was in love.” The blue lamps dimmed in his eyes, a deliberate but mystifying gesture. “I didn’t say it was with her.”

The hand fell away. He was gone before I could answer.

I swore and ran under the awning of a nearby tavern, trying to get warm.

* * *

Well, that was fun. Obviously it’s not very polished due to the time crunch, but I guess that’s the point, isn’t it? Maybe I’ll try this again sometime.