DAY 4

My wife finds me surrounded by papers. She creeps up on me late in the night. It’s the only time I reserve the quiet to write. Otherwise, I am sharper in the morning. She doesn’t say a word to me. She side steps the papers on the floor like mines and curls up on the loveseat in my office, below our framed university degrees. The glow on the walls is softened blue from the computer screen.

“What are you researching?”

She breaks the circle of paper open by pulling an article onto her lap.

“A village in Lebanon.”

“Where your former wife lived?”

“My former wife never lived in Lebanon.”

I can tell she isn’t interested in the story. I sense instead she may be sparring for a war. After the rejection of my last two ­literary novels, she finally spoke her mind. She practically commanded me to write ‘easier’ stories to read. She likes thrillers, series led by feminist detectives, or those marked for every letter in the alphabet. A for About to Murder, B for Before Murder. You know, the stuff that sells. The books with colourful covers and wealthier authors in professional shots on the back. She supports me but not really. The recent pressure of upcoming physical tests may have made her point more difficult to suppress politely, that point being ‘make some fucking money with these books.’

“Your former wife is Lebanese.”

“Yes. You know she is.”

She rolls her eyes and pretends to sift through the article.

“Why don’t you write something about your family, at least?”

The ‘at least’ is the hint, of course. If you won’t write what will surely make us money, then ‘at least’ write about ­something you know, like the back of your hand, or the colour of your eyes.

She is wearing her glasses, which means she couldn’t sleep either. She doesn’t like when I leave the warmth of the bed to find a cold leather seat in the office. She curls herself up some more, her knees at her chin.

“So why are you writing about your ex-wife again?”

She prods. I giggle it away.

“This isn’t her story.”

“Whose is it then?”

“Someone else’s.”

“So you stole this story?”

“Kind of. It was offered up to me, willingly, but I took it without her knowing.”

“Her?”

I slipped. This could be the trigger point for the argument we haven’t had yet since discovering the lump in her breast. The girl I’ve never spoken about to anyone.

“Just someone I helped a while back.”

“Before you knew me?”

“Before I knew you were alive.”

Not the greatest choice of words. That’s for sure. She seems disgusted with me. In her eyes, I can read judgment for leaving her alone to think. Her mannerisms beg for a magic trick, like the queen expecting distraction from a hired fool. What am I paying you for, then, her body language seems to speak. We’re married, not divorced like you are with your other wife. Why have you escaped back into that world? Are you planning on returning to her when I am gone? Do you still love her? Do you love the son you had with her over the three children you’ve had with me?

Thankfully, an image from my research strikes her.

“Does this man kill the other for his house? Is that the only reason?”

“Yeah. It’s a border town, just like ours. Except it is war ravaged and invaded on a daily basis. One of my characters passes through it on his way to Bsharri.”

“Bsharri?”

“Yes, it’s the town where my main character resides, in secret. A village in the clouds.”

“A village in the clouds, nice.”

She’s finally on board.

“Let me guess, it’s in Lebanon too.”

She just jumped off again.

“Good guess.”

I could have easily defended the choice by raising my voice, but I have learned through two marriages that picking battles at two in the morning very rarely leads to makeup sex, especially when one of you believes herself to be dying already.

“Can I help?”

She surprises me with the softness of her voice in this offer. Deep down, I know she knows I need to write, despite what little income it procures for our children’s futures. It seems everything we do now is directed at this target. Where they will go to school in twenty years. Who they will marry in twenty years. How can we help them for twenty years.

“Am I wasting my time?” I ask her.

“Not if you are in love with it,” she says with some vinegar on the tip of her tongue.

She doesn’t ask what the story or chapter is about. She ­doesn’t ask about the characters or where they are headed in twenty years. She doesn’t even skirt around the papers mapped on the hardwood floor on her way out. She steps on them, as if on purpose, and disturbs the perfect circle from which the previous chapter emerged.

When I hear her footsteps on the stairs, I run our conversation through my mind to see if I missed the hint where I inadvertently admit I don’t love her the same. It seems every argument we have ever had revolves around this insecurity. If anything, I have never loved her more. Life happens in between fantasy, unfortunately, and it takes its own time to absorb into your bones.

“She doesn’t understand, it’s not that simple,” the Man from my Preface interrupts. He takes the seat vacated by my wife in my office. He must have descended from somewhere and cleaned up the mess because the papers are aligned again in a circle, the two of us in the middle. I don’t see him with my real eyes although I know which cushion on the couch he occupies.

“I like where you have taken The Messenger, by the way. A man who wants to die is fearlessly poetic, isn’t he?”

I agree. It’s nice to bounce plot lines and character details off of one of the characters in the novel. I suppose this is a privilege.

“Of course it is. How many authors write alone? Secluded? James Joyce liked writing in his furnace room because he lost himself in the hum of the motor. Even he needed some sound to keep him company. Hemingway preferred the life sounds of Cuba, God knows why.”

I sit crosslegged in the circle of my research trying to find the opening detail for the next chapter. I gave The Messenger a car to travel by but I’m not sure I want him to arrive in Bsharri so quickly.

“Strand him somewhere. Make him find the protagonist on foot, like a lost man on an ironic pilgrimage,” The Man from my walk-in closet suggests. He makes a good point. It shouldn’t be easy, although The Messenger is travelling in a murder victim’s car, gifted to him by the murderer himself, cleaned by the murderer’s sons, who so happened to bury the victim in their backyard, formerly the victim’s own backyard.

“You can’t let her into the story just yet,” The Man hints. He means my wife, although I feel I have already let her in. She knows the story isn’t mine, that I stole it.

“She doesn’t know who you stole it from. How you took advantage of that situation.”

How does he know, The Man from my closet? Obviously he has access to my thoughts. It isn’t fair he uses this access against me. I remind him he is my creation.

“All things created are not your own, just borrowed for your convenience, son,” he preaches in a condescending manner.

“I have to get back to the story.”

“You have to get back to your wife first.”

I hit save and nearly kick an opening from the paper circle. Life happens, and as Hemingway used to say, I was out of juice anyway.