She got him. Her tight condensed body, good hips, tiny breasts, short legs — he sent her an e-mail later with the salutation, My Dear Truncated Turnip — electric mind, crackling and sparking. Yeah, there was an occasional short circuit, smoke and burnt wires, but her killer smile, dimpled highlights, green eyes, man, they lit up a room.

Yes, Annie looked good for 50. She spent a lot of time on a clunker of a bike she pedalled everywhere with a burdened, swaying motion he would recognize two blocks away, her legs pumping like pistons. And she jogged with a seniors group almost every morning. On the run at 6:30, so she could get to her computer by 8:30. Yeah, she had a lot of energy that woman. Her small body was in shape.

Evan taught screenwriting once a week in the weathered meeting room of a faded downtown library, a dusty anachronism with a card catalogue and librarians just this side of senile. He liked to teach and he liked the library.

Workshops are an intimate endeavour, eight or 10 adults around a table and Evan had learned early on how to work the room. Most people liked nothing better than to talk about themselves and Evan exploited that to break the ice, get to know them, get to know what in their life could be mined for story material.

“My name is Evan and I’ve been doing this for a few years,” he would say, “and so far I have succeeded in killing no one. Workshops, however unfortunate it might be, are about work. And since you’re all grownups and there are no credits or degrees involved, the amount of work you do is entirely up to you. I will not be sending notes home to your parents or partners.”

He always said his lines with a straight face, see who was with him, who was receptive to his charms, who smiled, laughed, or gave him the long, cold stare. He discovered he liked having an audience to play to, he fed off their smiles, their laughter, their questions.

Heterosexual men would be the hardest sell. They trusted the least and needed to impress the most. Evan had to prove he had a bigger dick, measured in screen credits, sense of humour, knowledge and proving himself non-threatening to their egos.

“What do they want, what do they fear, who do they sleep with?” he said. “My mantra for characters. That’s where the stakes are and your characters’ sex lives or lack of, is indicative of who they are. Put it on the wall in front of your eyes. Carl, tell us about your story.”

Carl had wedged himself into a tight T-shirt, maybe two sizes too small. He was short, a wispy goatee hung from his chin, pointing to his impressive pecs and arms. Probably a gym rat.

“I work in a garage,” he said, “you know, changing tires and working their diagnostic computers, aligning wheels. Cars are all computers, now. But I thought it would be a cool story, this gay guy working in this macho grease pit, everyone talking about horsepower and CCs and this one guy, just likes cars and deals with all these swearing, smoking homophobes, staying in the closet, pretending, talking like the rest. You know, every time a woman comes in, ‘like to see what’s under her hood’ or ‘Wonder what she does zero to 60 in,’ and this guy just likes cars but has to pretend he’s het. I don’t know. I thought it would be kind of interesting, the contrast of who he is and who he pretends to be.”

“That’s fascinating,” Evan said. “Do you have the story?”

“Not yet, I thought I could work on it here in workshop,” Carl said.

“Find the arc, find his journey, where’s he going,” Evan said. “And why he’s afraid to come out. Bring us into the garage. Use the jargon, use the sounds, bring the audience into this noisy, greasy, all-male world. Show us the reality of a place we think we know. And don’t run from the politics. Who’s the boss? What’s the pay like, working hours. Everyone can relate to working for the boss. Don’t be afraid of that. What you take for granted the rest of us don’t know so use it. It’s a great idea.”

You had to win them over, almost one by one, encourage them, point out they were all different, jack up their confidence. And self deprecation was a great tool. This time he aimed the tired line straight at Annie, sitting in the middle across the table, smiling, entranced, even eager.

“William Goldman, one of Hollywood’s most successful screenwriters, wrote a book called Nobody Knows Anything, meaning exactly that. I can’t teach you what’s good and what’s bad, I can’t teach you how to write, I can only discuss with you the basics of three-act storytelling going back to Aristotle and the foundations of Greek tragedy. I might make suggestions as to how a character might need more definition, how a story might need a clearer arc, but I warn you, pay as little attention to me as possible.”

That was usually enough to bring most people onside. And on this particular fall evening, it was enough to hit a home run with Annie. There was an older, heavy woman, Helenie, walked with a cane, scribbled compulsively in a notebook, remnants of Greece in her accent, who laughed and she and Annie exchanged glances. Evan knew it was going to be a good group. They would come along for the ride.

Give workshops to adults, leavened with a touch of charm, a little humour, and usually one woman a semester will make her feelings known. An e-mail, a smile, too much attention. Evan imagined to them he was a writer. If they had a window into his bank balance they would see he enjoyed a little disposable income, enough to pay for habits good and bad. A plane ticket to a beach now and then, moderate indulgences like Cantonese lobster in Chinatown and a new lease on a Mazda every four years. But they knew only he had written films and plays, had hair and no belly to speak of. And he made them laugh and, occasionally, think. They didn’t see the man with the aching back who often wondered if he was teaching ‘cause he wasn’t doing. Or maybe he needed an audience and any kind would do. The class clown several decades down the road.

When times had been good with Danielle, their domesticity a sea of relative tranquillity, a few laughs and lots of tumultuous sex, he would mention her to the groups early and often. “I saw this with my girlfriend” or “My girlfriend writes and we were discussing” … No misunderstandings, though if he was clarifying his lack of availability to them or him was a question he never asked himself. But when Annie walked into the room, his domestic congress slipped his mind.

Annie watched his every gesture, listened to every word, eyes ablaze. And almost as soon as she walked into the room that first night, he was smitten. Maybe it was the flirtatious air about her. Or maybe it was time for a change. Home life kept drifting from fractious to psychotic.

Last couple of years, Evan had often found himself naked on crisp cold sheets of hotel rooms with participants in the workshop, a habit he came to late but a habit he had grown to enjoy. They were all grownups and there was no degree at the end of this predicated on their availability. And he never made the first move. The couplings in the overlit rooms on stiff linen came guilt free. He wondered about that. Sometimes.

“It’s all about compartmentalizing,” Roberta had said, her head and mane of blond curls draped across his belly in a room at the downtown Delta. They had gone from the workshop to the bar to the elevator. “Danielle is in one place and we’re in another. I kind of like where we are right now.”

“It’s about living,” Evan said, still breathing hard, stroking her hair. “About living as much as you can in the little time the big guy hands you. What you and I have has nothing to do with Danielle.” To prove the point she moved her head down his belly and there was nothing more to say.

Evan smiled at the intrusion of the memory as he watched Annie. She liked the students, was open to their opinions, engaged in the discussions, loved to critique their work.

“It’s great that this man collects hunting knives and seems obsessed with his collection, a good visual element, but I have no clue as to why he suddenly would stab his neighbour,” she told Brian, a 40-something journalist who worked the trade mags. He was riveted to her every word. So am I, Evan thought.

“If he’s homicidal, we should have some inkling of it, some foreshadowing, I think; otherwise, I don’t believe it.” Then she flashed Evan a shy smile. He reciprocated.

“Yeah, Brian, Annie’s probably right,” Evan said. “Maybe give us a taste of his predilection for evisceration, and we’d find it more credible. Good film writing is about making the incredible credible.”

But he wasn’t looking at Brian, he was still looking at Annie who was looking right back.

So he played to her, waltzing in front of them, imitating a beautiful scene from The Human Stain, Gary Sinise and Anthony Hopkins dancing on the porch under incandescent light at night in the dead of winter.

“Movement,” he said. “It’s motion pictures. Give your scenes motion. Don’t worry about long shot, medium shot, close-up; let the director worry about that. Your job is to give him something to work with.”

He was waltzing around the table, his arms around thin air, his eyes on Annie, wondering if he was making a fool of himself but she was smiling. She was impressed. And that had become his job this workshop. Impress Annie.

He had taken to the workshops not as a way to make a buck. He had enough money, at least these last few years, a novel experience, stoked by non-stop work. But he liked the teaching — it made him think. He liked meeting new people, he liked the stage it offered, and, of course, the potential of sexual conquest. Though as one young woman had told him as they came down the elevator of his favoured Downtown Delta late one night, his legs a little shaky, his dick sore: “I was really proud I was able to seduce you.”

It hadn’t taken much effort. She was gorgeous. Turned out to be seriously bipolar, mad as a fucking hatter, but then that was part of the charm, wasn’t it? Normal was a bore. Who needs sane when you can crawl between the legs of crazy and wonder what surprises awaited you?

Was there anything more fascinating than a beautiful woman, her shining eyes millimetres from his, their hips locked, he bestowed with the wondrous honour of pleasing her?

A guy he had worked with once compared him to a dog chasing a car: “You run after it but once you catch it you don’t know what to do with it.” But those days were gone. He knew exactly what to do with it and had no compunctions about doing it.