Anneliese
ANNELIESE LOCKED HER bicycle to the rack outside the building that was the former commodity exchange.
“Hey,” said a girl with bottle-blonde hair and thick eyeliner. Her bubbly cheerfulness set Anneliese’s teeth on edge.
“Hey. Carola, isn’t it?”
“Right.” Carola locked her bicycle. “Isn’t Katja an amazing teacher? I’ve learned so much in the workshop. Are you nervous about your story?”
“No.” Anneliese had never written a short story before, but she was Katja Hart’s daughter, and writing must be in her genes.
“I’m afraid my story sucks. No one’s read it except for my mom. She loved it, but you know how moms are.”
Not all moms are created equal, Anneliese thought.
They walked together up the steps to the entrance and pushed open the heavy door. The enormous central hall was impressive with its columns and soaring ceiling. Small offices on the upper two floors opened onto a balcony that surrounded the central hall. The interior smelled musty, like old books. The geriatric elevator jerked them up to the second floor.
The others were seated at a long table: Pim, Diederik, and Saskia. A collection of manual typewriters was displayed on shelves at the back. Overflowing bookshelves lined the left wall; photos of famous writers, the right.
Katja Hart stood at the head of the table, impeccably dressed in a cream skirt suit and matching pumps. She came from a different planet than Tineke Bakker.
Anneliese had spent yesterday, the first day of the workshop, studying Katja instead of listening. They were about the same height and both petite, though Katja was curvier. Her coppery hair was pulled on top of her head, a few loose strands softly framing her face. Annelise’s was black and cut in a short, blunt bob. They both had fair complexions that burned and freckled, though Katja had masses of them, and Anneliese only a scattering.
“Welcome to day two of the workshop,” Katja said, nervously winding a tendril of hair around her finger. “We have a lot to do today, so let’s get started.” She moved around the table in a cloud of jasmine perfume and collected the stories.
“After I read a story out loud, we’ll spend thirty minutes discussing it. Keep your comments constructive and specific. Remember what we discussed in the session yesterday. Don’t just say you like or dislike something. Tell us why.”
The room darkened and rain slashed the window as Katja read the stories and then critiqued them. Anneliese felt sick. The others were accomplished writers, not beginners like her. She wanted her turn to be over—to end her agony. She almost wept when the second-to-last piece was Carola’s and not hers. Worse, Katja’s voice took on an excited buzz as she read.
When she was finished, she laid the pages on the table. “Comments?”
“Wow,” said Saskia, wiping away a tear.
“The death scene resonated with me,” Pim said.
“The imagery helped create the mood,” Diederik agreed.
All faces turned toward Anneliese. They were looking down their nose at her. Gloating. She was an imposter and didn’t belong there among the real writers. Panicking, Anneliese thought back on the workshop yesterday and mumbled that the pacing was good.
When the timer went off. Katja said, “Now for our last piece.”
Anneliese’s face burned as soon as Katja read the opening line, which had sounded literary and profound when she wrote it, but now sounded dumb. The sentences were choppy, the dialogue stilted, and the transitions abrupt. Anneliese hummed to herself, an old trick from her childhood when she felt stressed.
Finally, Katja came to the end. “Who wants to start?”
“I don’t know what the story’s about,” Pim said, chewing on his pencil.
In a just world, he would get lead poisoning.
“I don’t think Rose would say that.” Saskia pointed to dialogue on page two.
“I agree,” Katja said. “An example of dialogue that’s working is on page seven.”
Pages rustled.
“The story doesn’t get interesting until page nine,” Diederik said.
“Why is that?” Katja asked.
He shrugged.
“There’s too much backstory,” Carola offered.
Katja pondered a moment. “If the writer starts with the action, the story would be more compelling.”
Anneliese scribbled notes she didn’t plan to look at again and stared at a cookie crumb on the table in front of her. She had failed. Instead of impressing Katja, she had humiliated herself.
“Thank you for attending the workshop,” Katja said. “I hope to see all of you at my party next week.”
Anneliese slipped away to the ladies’ room to kill some time, hoping to corner Katja alone when she returned. She had expected an instant connection, a warm, cuddly mother–daughter feeling, but she had felt nothing. Katja could have been a perfect stranger. Maybe it was Katja’s workshop persona getting in the way. Maybe if it were just the two of them … But when she came back, Katja and Carola were talking, heads together like Siamese twins.
“I know an editor at a literary magazine who might be interested in publishing your story,” Katja said.
“Seriously?” Carola gushed.
“It needs editing. I can—” Katja fell silent. “Anneliese, can I help you with something?”
“No. Uh, I’ll see you at the party.”
She jerked on her windbreaker and crammed the copies of her story into her backpack. She dropped her pencil into the plastic container in the center of the table that held pencils, a stapler, an eraser, a pair of sharp scissors. She glanced at Katja and Carola, who looked as if they had forgotten her existence, and slipped the scissors into her pocket.
The sky was overcast, the sun only a silvery glow. Puddles stood on the pavement, though the rain had thinned to a drizzle. Two trams, packed full, trailed by.
She pulled up her hood and stomped through the puddles, the scissors banging against her side. The oncoming pedestrians gazed over her head or off to the side or at the ground. She was just a small, faceless figure. Invisible. She squatted next to Carola’s bike, angling her body to shield the scissors from view, and tried to push the blades into the tire. Her hands shook. The scissors slipped. She tried again, but the blades were dull or the rubber too tough. Suddenly she heard a footstep behind her and the sound of a throat clearing. She expected a hand to grip her shoulder.
Without turning around, she put away the scissors and unlocked her own bicycle. She pedaled furiously toward home, stopping once to throw the scissors into the Herengracht and watch them vanish into the murky water.