Chapter Twenty-Nine
After the coldest shower I could handle, taking Marlon for a short walk, and downing two cups of coffee, I set off to the main building, where Leonard was already waiting outside of one of the meeting rooms to host his bimonthly writing workshop.
He sat perched on the little stool that popped out of this particular cane he sometimes used. “I thought you forgot about me.”
“I could never,” I said as I speed-walked past him to open the door. “I’m going to grab the coffee and pastries,” I added as he ambled inside.
When I returned with the cart from the cafeteria, I parked it in the corner of the room and helped him place at every seat character questionnaires that he’d asked me to print.
“Did you see the pamphlet I left in your mailbox?” I asked as we sat down, waiting for residents to trickle in—hopefully.
When I’d gone through all the activity attendance records for the last year, I’d noticed that attendance had dwindled over the last few months, which was technically fine since this was a resident-led activity and not planned by me. But I felt bad for Leonard.
“I did,” he said thoughtfully. “Seems like a lot of trouble to go to just to have your ego stroked.”
“I think a living funeral could be great, actually.” Even if it sounded a little bit like my own personal nightmare.
“You’ve already done all the planning,” I said as I tore at the edge of my pain au chocolat.
“You could have the best of both worlds. The funeral you’ve spent so much time planning and then, when the time really comes, your green burial. ”
Leonard held his hand to his ear like he was on the phone. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “My service is awful.”
Just then an orderly wheeled in a woman from one of the assisted-care floors. Her eyes were far away and glassy.
“This is Wendy,” the orderly said loudly, but the woman didn’t flinch. “Her grandson said she worked in the writers’ room on Star Trek and I thought she might like to sit in on this. I’ll be back in an hour. Ring the patient care station on floor four if you need any help with her.”
“Sure,” I said with a nod. “Hi, Wendy. Thanks for joining us today.”
Her vacant gaze held steady, and her hands lay in her lap like she was a doll that had been posed.
“Long time no see, Wendy,” Leonard said, and I could hear a hint of sadness in his voice.
“You two know each other?”
“Small town, right, Wendy?” He winked at her.
The woman’s lips twitched.
I liked having the assisted-care residents come down for activities, but I hoped someone else would show up, because I couldn’t leave Leonard here to lead a workshop for a nonverbal woman who might require additional help.
I checked the time on my phone. The program started six minutes ago and it was still only the three of us.
I’d managed to avoid Leonard’s writing workshops up until now, but it seemed that my streak ended here. Maybe this would give me a reprieve from the next few meetings, and, besides, my brain needed a distraction, because currently it was a horny wasteland.
With a sigh, I rolled my chair up to the table. “Well, what’s on the docket today, Leonard?”
His eyes brightened a little as he realized that after his many invitations, I was finally sitting in on his workshop.
He cleared his throat. “Well, today, we’re diving into character.
For some writers, the story starts with the pitch or the plot and then for some, it starts with the character.
Whichever approach you take, both elements are necessary.
Take a go at this character survey to start cooking with grease.
I wrote it myself and used it for nearly forty years. ”
I stared down at the page of questions. Many of them were basic, like name, age, location, and hobbies. But some asked you to dig a little deeper. What’s hiding under your character’s bed? If they could have dinner with any dead person, who would they choose?
Wendy watched the window but seemed to be happy enough where she was, so without any remaining excuses, I focused on the page in front of me.
I’d filled out tons of things like this in college and had extensive character sketches for the cast of The Wunderkind, so it felt silly to rehash a character I already knew.
“Something on your mind?” Leonard asked.
I looked up from my paper. “I just . . . There’s this project I’ve been working on for—god, almost twenty years . . . and I need to go back to it, but I don’t know where to start.”
“It’s only an exercise, Vera. Not every creative penny must be spent on the big, serious work. You can just have a bit of fun.” He laughed to himself. “I won’t tell.”
After a moment of thought, I pressed my pencil to the paper and decided to make something up. Just for fun.
First name: Josephine (Joey for short)
Last name: Lynn
Job: mail carrier
Hobbies: calligraphy, online poker
Currently residing: Savannah, Georgia
Originally from:
Under their bed is: a box of unsent letters
Age: fifty-two
Body type:
Hair color/type:
Eyes: Brown
Height:
Dinner with any dead person: Princess Diana or her first husband
Scent:
Tattoos or piercings: the white tree of Gondor from Lord of the Rings on the top of her foot
Astrological sign: Cancer
Special features: birthmark shaped like a paw
Goals:
“Okay, time’s up,” Leonard said.
I looked up, blinking with my pencil still hovering over one of the many lines I’d left blank. According to my phone, I’d been noodling over the character survey for almost twenty minutes.
“Come up with anything good?” asked Leonard.
I thought for a moment before answering. “The potential for good? Sure. Actually good? Unlikely.”
We spent the rest of the hour going over our character sheets and imagining all sorts of possibilities. Is Josephine an empath? Did she kill her ex-husband? What if he was haunting her? Are ghosts real in this world? Who are the letters for?
We talked for so long that we didn’t even make it to Leonard’s character survey, but he didn’t seem to care even a little bit.
When Wendy’s orderly came back, she took a cinnamon roll with her and I helped Leonard pick up the rest of his sheets and pens.
“You coming back next time?” he asked.
“I think this might have been a onetime thing for me.”
“You said you had a script, right?”
“Yeah. I lost the file and it probably wasn’t working anyway.” I almost threw my survey away, but I hesitated as I hovered over the trash can before folding the paper and putting it in my back pocket.
“You know, your work is more than a file. Years ago, when we were on typewriters, you were fucked if you lost a page or even a whole stack. But you might find that losing it and starting over again is a blessing. A clean slate. Or hell, you could just write something new.”
“Maybe one day.”
“You’d think working at a place like this would teach you not to put so much faith in ‘one day.’” He huffed, his frustration growing.
“All right, all right,” I said, trying to lighten the mood. “You’ve inspired me, okay? Are you happy?”
His bushy brows rose with delight as he stood up with the help of his cane.
“So are we throwing a funeral?” I asked.
“That depends. Are you gonna write me something I can read?”
I shook my head. “I didn’t say this was a negotiation.”
“Do you really think I should do this living funeral thing?” he asked.
“I do.”
“Well, I think you can’t be a writer if you don’t write.”
Ouch. “I never said I was a writer.”
“No, but you wanted to be once. Didn’t you?”
That sunk in for a moment. The thought of Ruby the other night was fresh on my mind.
All the things she wished she would have said or done.
My own grandmother, who I was certain would never in her lifetime own up to regretting anything.
“I’ll book the community room for you,” I finally said.
“You choose the date and time. And I’ll . . . I’ll see about the writing.”
“Chop, chop,” he said as he put his papers back into his Louis Vuitton folio.
* * *
At lunch, I thought about searching for Eli. Surely we should talk about what happened.
But maybe we didn’t have to. Maybe he was right and it didn’t have to be awkward.
I wasn’t foolish enough to think that it could have been the beginning of something bigger, but the thought was nice.
Going to him now, though . . . that would just be desperate.
I didn’t want to scare him away or make this into something it wasn’t.
I opened a blank document on my work computer. I didn’t even have the proper software to write a screenplay. But I guess if Leonard could rough it on a typewriter all those years, I could live without my snazzy formatting software.
The cursor flashed on beat with my pulse.
Everyone had to start with a blank page, right? I’d gotten that far. That was something.
Forty-five minutes later, the only thing I had to show for it was the design I’d traced in my hummus with a pita chip, my own personal Zen garden.
I had just a few minutes before I had to go set up for the knickknack swap meet I had scheduled for this afternoon, so I began to type.
Dear Leonard,
You asked me to write something.
So, SOMETHING.
To be continued . . .
Sincerely,
Vera
EXT. HER HOUSE–MORNING
She finds a note on her car. It says: “I talked to the moon last night. The big disco ball in the sky. She said hi.”
November 8, 2021
Vera S.
I would join a cult dedicated to the big disco ball in the sky.