An Unfinished Story(14)
This new novel could be good, though. To change it up and catch his readers off guard, he’d decided to write a period piece. He wanted to explore life in the twenties in St. Pete, those days when Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe were allegedly sneaking around in their affair, and Frank Sinatra was crooning and chasing women at the marina in Tierra Verde.
Best of all, he knew this story was the right one because he was giving back to the city that had blessed him with his first novel. In return, he’d write another love letter to St. Pete, a novel oozing over with the magic of his beloved city. The premise was that a bootlegger was trying to escape his ties to the Mafia and become an honest man. His agent had said the book might be a bit off brand but that he could sell it. His agent really meant, “I’ll take whatever I can get at this point.”
After putting on one of his favorite Paco de Lucía albums, he lifted his fingers and straightened his back. It’s time, he thought. With the effort of attempting to lift a car by oneself, Whitaker tapped the first key. Because the story would be in first person, “I” was a logical choice.
I.
I am.
No. Terrible verb.
I walked.
Even worse.
I ran.
Whitaker nodded his head.
I ran through the wild.
“What is this, Whitaker? You ran through the wild? No, no. You’re a bootlegger and a family man. Everything you do is for your family. And you just want out.”
Paco wailed on his flamenco guitar as Whitaker typed: I want out.
Ah, there it is. I want out. Who is he talking to? A crime boss. An Italian. Matteo.
Whitaker said triumphantly, “I want out, Matteo.”
There, he did it. He’d written the first line. “Thank you for the soundtrack, Paco.”
Feeling like he’d broken the tape at the finish line of a race, he pushed back from his chair and raised his hands in the air. “Victory,” he said. “It’s a start, Whitaker. It’s a start.”
Taking a break, he ambled to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. In place of the capers, cornichons, freshly caught fish, farmers market vegetables, and fine cheeses of yesteryear, the fridge was now a wasteland of items fit to make quick-and-easy meals. Heinz might have agreed to sponsor him if he’d asked. After processing the realization that he needed to toss out half of it, he fumbled around until he found a carton of Chinese food that was a few days old. How many days, exactly, he wasn’t sure. After a positive assessment, he grabbed a fork and dug in. No need heating it up. He was just looking for a little fix, something to stop his stomach from growling.
Halfway through, as soy sauce filled his taste buds, he said with a mouth full of food, “Coffee and cold moo goo gai pan. Couldn’t pull this off when I was married. There’s that.”
Noticing the time on the range clock, he felt frustrated that the hours were getting away from him. He wanted to get more writing done and treat himself to an hour or so of video games before this family thing. Every part of him wanted to call his brother with an excuse, but Riley would never let him live it down.
He cast an eye toward the door leading to his office and then to the hallway leading to the living room. Write more or kill zombies? Internally justifying his choice to kill zombies, he prided himself on finally getting that first sentence. Sometimes the first sentence was the most difficult.
Whitaker moved a wrinkled shirt out of the way and plopped down onto the black-and-white houndstooth sofa his parents had handed down to him. They replaced their furniture far more often than they needed to. He set the Chinese food down and grabbed a controller. Pushing a button, the game started, and in no time he was dropped into a foreign future world where his avatar was wielding a giant gun. With this level of technology now available, who said gaming was for kids only? He circumnavigated a boulder and climbed a hill. The zombies started after him, screaming wildly as they jumped and flew around him. Whitaker pulled the trigger and let his automatic weapon wreak havoc on these decaying meat bags.
As the dopamine began to satisfy Whitaker’s brain, a knock came at the door.
“Ay dios mío,” he said in Spanish, the language he often slipped into when he was angry. Also fluent, his ex-wife had started the habit and had truly mastered it by the end of their marriage.
Whitaker paused the game as a zombie was making a run at him. Shaking his head, he said, “Qué tipo de persona molesta a un hombre el domingo por la ma?ana?” What kind of person bothers a man on Sunday morning?
He eyed the front door. Wasn’t everyone supposed to be at church? Slinking lower on the sofa so that he couldn’t be seen through the window next to the front door, he lowered the volume and returned to battle.
Chapter 5
NO, THANK YOU, GOODBYE
The knocking didn’t stop. Someone out there was determined. Cinching his robe tight, Whitaker crept across the house to a window in the dining room. He peeked and saw the back of a woman with light-brown hair and long, tan legs waiting on the stoop. Who in the world? Perhaps someone interested in pushing her religious beliefs. Or someone selling something. With those legs, probably the latter. Either way, he’d better answer it and run her off, or she’d just come back at an even more inopportune time.
Whitaker walked to the front foyer and cracked open the door about two inches. “How can I help you?”
She was about his age. The rims of her glasses reached from her eyebrows down to the bottom of her nose. That was the style these days, Whitaker thought. She wore a romper with thick stripes of white and faded blue that fit tightly around her skinny waist. He attempted to stop his gaze from descending again but took a quick glance all the way down to her bright pink flip-flops and painted white nails. Whitaker pulled open the door even farther.