CHAPTER 13

 

Jenny walked out of the college building and was about to head for the subway when she saw Slater down the road, his long black coat flapping behind him. “Adrian!” she called, but he didn’t appear to hear her and continued to stride along the sidewalk. She ran after him and caught up with him just as he was turning the corner. “Hey,” she said, and then took a couple of deep breaths.

Slater grinned at her. “You’re not a jogger, then,” he said.

“Are you okay?”

“Sure I’m okay. Why wouldn’t I be okay?”

“You got thrown off the course. How can you be so calm about it?”

Slater chuckled. “He can’t do that. It’s not in his power. I’ve paid for the course, I’m doing the work, he can’t throw me off just because he doesn’t like what I’ve written. We’ve got a little thing called the First Amendment, remember. He can’t throw me out of an educational establishment because of something I wrote.”

“He seems to think that he can.”

“Yeah, well I went in to see the Dean and she’s going to set him straight. To be honest, if anyone is at risk of being shown the door, it’s Grose. The Dean’s none too happy with him.”

“You can see his point, though.” She clutched her laptop bag to her chest.

Slater frowned. “You’re not serious? You can see the way he’s gunning for me.”

“Well, you did sort of start it, making that comment about repetition.”

“But he does repeat himself. Over and over again.”

Jenny grinned. “Which is also repetition, isn’t it?”

Slater tilted his head on one side like an inquisitive budgerigar. “What?”

“Over and over. That’s repetition. It’s like Pete and Re-Pete sitting on the wall.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Jenny smiled. “Pete and Re-Pete are sitting on a wall. Pete falls off. So now who’s sitting on the wall?”

“Re-Pete.”

“Okay. Pete and Re-Pete are sitting on a wall. Pete falls off. So now who’s sitting on the wall?”

“Re-Pete.”

“Okay. Pete and Re-Pete are sitting…”

Slater laughed and held up his hand. “I get it,” he said. “How old are you? Ten?” He nodded at her laptop bag. “So what did you think of The Basement?”

“How do you know it’s in my bag?”

Slater smiled. “I saw you reading it at lunch. I was going to go over but you seemed so engrossed that I left you to it.”

Jenny patted her bag. “Can we go for coffee?”

“That sounds ominous. Are you breaking up with me?”

Her mouth opened in surprise and then she realized that he was joking. “I’ll buy,” she said. “You got them last time.”

They walked together to Starbucks and this time Slater grabbed a table while Jenny fetched the coffees. She frowned as she stirred sugar into her coffee. “Can I be honest with you?” she asked.

“You can be frank.”

“Frank?”

“It’s sort of a joke. You say “Can I be frank” and I say “You can be whoever the hell you want” and we both laugh.”

“But I asked if I could be honest.”

“I was rewriting your dialogue as we went along. It’s a thing I do. In my head.”

Jenny finished stirring her coffee and put down the spoon. “Sometimes I can’t tell if you’re being serious or not.”

“Generally not,” said Slater. “But go on. You can be Frank. Or Ernest.”

“Honest,” she said, opening her bag and taking out the thumdrive he’d given her. “I’ll be honest.” She pushed it across the table towards him. “I might say something that you don’t want to hear.”

“Oh dear.”

“I don’t mean that it’s not well written. It’s brilliantly written. It grabbed me from the first page and I read it in one sitting.” She sat back in her chair. “It’s a fast read, lots of pace, and the dialogue is perfect. I really could hear their voices.”

Slater smiled. “There’s a “but” coming, isn’t there?”

She nodded. “It was just…” She shrugged. “I don’t know what the word is. Bleak? Soulless? It has no heart.”

“No heart?”

“No one in it has any redeeming features. I think that’s because really there are only three characters of any weight – Marvin and the two cops. And you can’t empathize with any of them.”

“Why do you need to empathise?”

“Because you have to be rooting for someone. And you’ve no real sympathy for the woman in the basement because you never really get to know her. She’s just a victim. But because you don’t care for her, there’s no ticking clock, no race against time to save her.” She frowned. “You’re not annoyed are you?”

Slater smiled easily. “Of course not. I wanted your honest opinion.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Sorry? Why?”

“Because I’m not saying it’s the greatest book I’ve ever read. Because I’m picking it apart.” She smiled sympathetically. “You don’t mind me being critical, do you?”

“I want honesty,” said Slater. “If you hate it you hate it. I’d rather you look me in the eyes and say that than pretend you love it just so as not to hurt my feelings.”

“Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t hate it. I found it fascinating, and the writing was great. It really flowed. It was hard to put down, it was as if you were dragging me through the story by the scruff of the neck.”

Slater smiled, obviously pleased.

“The problem is like I said, you don’t empathize with anyone. And there’s no happy ending.”

Slater chuckled. “That’s life, Jenny. Any story that ends with a happy ending hasn’t really ended. It’s like when Snow White rides off into the sunset with Prince Charming, you know it’s not really going to end happily ever after, the chances are that before long she’ll put on weight and he’ll be off having affairs with Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. There are no happy endings in the real world, Jenny. You know that.”

“You are the cynic, aren’t you? The thing is, if you don’t have a sympathetic character then you don’t know who to root for.”

“So you’re saying you need the writer to tell you who the hero is? I don’t agree.” Slater picked up the thumbdrive and put it into his backpack. “I didn’t want any of the characters to be sympathetic,” he said. “That’s not what I was trying to do. I wanted to see if I could write a book in two viewpoints, one in the first person and one in the second person.”

“That worked brilliantly,” she said.

“And then I wanted the big twist at the end, which calls into question everything that you’ve read up to that point.”

“And that worked too,” she said. “I never saw the twist coming. But I’m not sure that the average reader is going to like the fact that there’s no one to empathize with. Have you shown it to an agent?”

Slater shook his head. “There’s no point. You’re right, it doesn’t fit the mold of what sells. And it’s too short. It’s not long enough to be a stand-alone book. I mean what would it be at best, a hundred pages? A hundred and twenty? Who publishes books that long? No one.”

“So what was the point of writing it? Was it an exercise?” She picked up her coffee and sipped it.

“I’m going to publish it myself,” he said. “I don’t think a traditional publisher will touch it. So I’ll do it myself.”

“That’s a good idea,” she said. “John Grisham self-published A Time To Kill and look what happened to him.”

“John who?” asked Slater. Jenny was about to answer when she realized that he was joking and she put a hand up to cover her mouth. “But only when the time is right,” he said. “I want to finish the book I’m working on now. That’s going to be the big one. My break-out book. I’ll publish The Basement on the back of it.” He sipped his coffee, then wiped foam from his upper lip with the back of his hand. “So tell me about your book. The romance. How’s it going?”

“Slowly,” she said.

“You’ve finished the first chapter?”

“I’m not happy with it but I’ve moved on. Dudley says I…” She stopped herself but it was too late, Slater was already grinning at her. “Don’t look at me like that,” she said. “He’s read it and he was offering me some advice.”

“So you won’t tell me about your work but you’ll show him?”

“He’s running the course, Adrian. He’s going to be marking me.”

Slater chuckled. “This course isn’t about marks. It’s about producing a book. At the end of the day it’s the books that we write that matter, not what marks Grose gives us.”

“I need the marks towards my degree,” said Jenny. “Don’t you?”

“I don’t give a shit about a degree,” he said. “I just want to write a book that’ll sell a million copies.”

Jenny laughed. “Come on, Adrian.”

“I’m serious,” he said, staring at her intently. “Education doesn’t count for anything anymore. All you need these days is a laptop and Google and you’ve got access to all the knowledge in the world, pretty much. And you think a reader cares if the writer of the book they’ve just downloaded has a degree or a PhD or if they even finished High School?”

“Downloaded?” repeated Jenny. “You’re talking eBooks. Not real books?”

“There’s no difference. A book is a book is a book. What matters is how many people read that. Actually, cancel that. What matters is how many people PAY to read a book.”

“So you don’t care if your work is published or not?”

“EBooks are published. All published really means is being offered for sale. I don’t care who buys my book or how they buy it so long as I get their money.”

Jenny grinned. “So you’re a mercenary, a cynic and a rebel?”

“I am truly multi-talented, yes.” He put his head on one side as he looked at her. “I know what I want, Jenny, and I know how to get what I want. Sometimes that scares people. It’s a wolf and sheep thing.”

“You’re a wolf, is that it? And everyone else is a sheep?”

“Not everyone, no. But there are more sheep than wolves out there, and they always get nervous when they know that there’s a wolf around.”

“And what am I, Adrian? Sheep or wolf?”

“Don’t you know?”

“I’m more interested in what you think I am.”

Slater narrowed his eyes as he sipped his coffee. “You’re not a sheep, Jenny. If you were, you wouldn’t be here with me.”

“So I’m a wolf?”

He put down his cup and grinned. “Let’s just say you’ve got wolfish tendencies,” he said.

“What does that mean? I’m a wolf in sheep’s clothing?”

“More like the reverse. You’re a sheep in transition.”

“I’m not sure if I should be offended or not.”

Slater laughed. He looked so much more handsome when he laughed, Jenny realized. More often than not in class he had a slight frown, as if something was troubling him, and usually there was a blank look to his eyes as if his mind was somewhere else, but sitting opposite her in the coffee shop he was totally focused on her and so much more relaxed. Without his trademark RayBans she could see that his eyes were a deep blue and had a girl’s lashes, long and black. His skin was so smooth that she kept having to fight the urge to reach out and stroke his cheek. “I really would like to read your work, Jenny,” he said. “I can tell from talking to you that you’ve got talent.”

“You’re just saying that,” she said.

Slater shook his head. “I’m not like that. I don’t lie. Life’s too short.”

Jenny sighed. “I don’t know,” she said.

“You don’t know what?”

“If I want someone to read what I’ve written. You might hate it.”

“But if I did, I’d tell you why I’d hate it and I’d probably tell you how to improve it. How’s that a bad thing?”

“It’s not, I suppose.”

“Exactly. But I can promise you one thing, you’ll get an honest opinion, and that’s more than you’ll get from Grose.”

“Dudley’s honest with me, he always has been,” said Jenny, quickly. Too quickly, she realized, and her hand went up to cover her mouth.

“He wants to get inside your pants, Jenny. You must know that. And you must know he’s married.”

“Why are you so mean?” she asked.

“I’m honest. I tell it like it is. He’s a fifty-one year old man who hasn’t written anything of any substance for almost twenty-five years. You’ve heard the old saying, right? “Those that can, do. Those that can’t, teach’. That’s exactly where Grose is. He wrote a couple of decent books when he was younger but for whatever reason he hasn’t been able to repeat it. So now he teaches. Which means that we’re being taught by a writer who can’t write, which when you think about it is a pretty pointless exercise.”

“So why did you enroll on the course?”

Slater shrugged carelessly. “I wanted to spend some time in New York. I wrote The Basement while I was in LA and I wanted to check that I’d captured the city. And I wanted to get feedback. That’s about the only good thing about the course, the fact that we get to critique each other’s work. So, will you show me your work in progress?”

“You’ll be gentle with me?”

“I’ll be honest,” he said. “And if I hate it I’ll be honest and gentle.”

Jenny reached into her laptop bag. There were several small pouches on the inside and in one of them was a small green thumbdrive. She took it out and slid it across the table to him.

“Don’t forget my burger,” he said.

“Burger?”

“The burger with The Basement on it.”

“Sorry,” said Jenny. She fumbled in her bag, found the thumbdrive and gave it to him.

“What are you doing this evening?” he asked.

“Why?” She realized she was sounding defensive and she forced a smile.

“I was going to offer to take you for a drink, that’s all.”

“Rain check,” she said. “I’ve got to get some writing done.”

“Haven’t we all?” said Slater. “I’ll hold you to that rain check.”