Excerpt: Portrait of the Author

November 5
Wednesday

The madness of NaNo officially kicked in around quarter past midnight between November fourth and fifth. Jenn, still jacked up from a hefty dose of caffeine, had already finished sorting her CDs according to mood and was sitting on her bed, staring at the ceiling, listening to her father and brother watch the American election on the television downstairs and trying to think of what the hell to do with herself.
Her fingers itched, but she never allowed herself to write anything else while she was doing NaNo on the grounds that it split her focus and could result with her ditching her novel in favour of something much more interesting. But writing was the only thing she did at night, short of sleeping and she couldn’t sleep with the television on in the house.
It was only day four and the brain shakes had already started.
She grabbed her old NaNo notebook from last year out of the three foot stack of papers by her bed and flipped through to the back, noting that her jotted reminders were much more organized and coherent than the ones she was leaving for herself this year.
She had one whole page devoted to her word count, going from 2’029 on November 1st (which she’d also noted was a Thursday) to 45’773 on November 26th (Monday) at which point she’d apparently gone into a complete frenzy and stopped writing in her score.
There was another page showing the ages and a brief description of every character in the novel, as well as a family tree showing how they were related to one another, and a floor plan of their house. Her notes from this year said things like:

‘Day 1: 804 /// 50’000.’
‘Day 2: 1460 /// 50’000. vd spd afd ind han bldg. Tomorrow: ?’
‘day 3: 2283 /// 50’000. 5001. change b’s name. b hayden. Bridget hanssen. Hanson? Hansen ~ msg ev re a palmer’

On the page for day four she had drawn pictures of bugs. She wondered how that had happened exactly, how she’d become so disorganized. It didn’t really matter anyway. She flipped to a blank page in her old notebook and started writing.

“I left the poor guy alone, instead going to bother Gregor, who was still working there, though he’d been promoted to the head of the advertising division. He was the only person there who would actually talk to me – him and Hampton, I guess, but I didn’t want to talk to that weasel.
“He was on the phone when I walked into his office without knocking, but he nodded towards me so I came in and sat down across from him, waiting patiently for him to get off the phone. He was the closest thing I had to a ‘father figure’ at that time and I always sort of looked up to him. He was younger than my father was when he died, though he had the same weary sort of look about him. He was beginning to look like an emaciated corpse, despite the heavy smoking and drinking. I spent a lot of time worrying about him. Still do. It’s gotten a lot worse now that I haven’t heard from him in so long.
“His office was barely big enough for two chair and a desk, windowless and completely devoid of decoration except for a large abstract hanging on one wall. I spent a lot of time looking at painting and always saw something new in it. That time I saw a blob of paint which looked like Alfred Hitchcock’s head in profile.
“That always interested me – he had no picture of family, pets, his car. Just this big weird painting. I supposed he didn’t really have anything else.
“He hung up the phone and looked at me. ‘What’s up?’
“I shrugged. ‘Nothing. I just thought I’d come down and make your job more difficult’.
“He smiled and banged his pen against his head. Everyone who worked there had some sort of tic, and that was his. ‘You’re the only reason I’m still alive’ he said. ‘I was just contemplating going up to Hampton’s office and throwing myself out the window’ He got a far away look on his face as he thought about that. I think that’s the main reason there were no windows in any of the offices except Hampton’s. To make sure the workers didn’t kill themselves. ‘Unfortunately’ he continued. ‘I doubt that would really have any impact whatsoever. They’d just replace me and get on with it’
“ ‘And you’d be dead, which would suck’
“ ‘That’s true. I have a bad feeling that this is actually hell. I’m atoning for something horrible I did while I was alive’
“That did seem to have a certain plausibility. I’d had dreams of another place, somewhere not nicer necessarily but not so… bizarre. The world felt wrong on some level, but no one could really put their finger on it. It was just unnatural somehow. ‘If not hell then at least purgatory’ I said.
“ ‘Yeah. Hell would at least be interesting.’ The phone rang. He ignored it.
“ ‘Are you going to get that?’ I asked.
“ ‘No’ he said. The jar of pens on his desk fell over. He sighed and set it back up, replacing the pens. One of the drawers popped open and the desk jerked violently, knocking his coffee over. The painting fell off the wall at which point he kicked the wall and shouted ‘God dammit, John’ loud enough to make me jump.
“He managed to catch the painting before it fell on his desk and replaced it on the wall. ‘I like that fucking painting.
“He slammed the drawer shut and set his coffee mug upright, dumping the papers which happened to catch the coffee into the garbage can.”

Jenn finished typing that up and cracked her neck. She opened her finetune account and was greeted by the sounds of The Who, and continued from there.

“ ‘I’ll go…’ I said, starting to stand up.
“ ‘No’ he said. ‘That’s okay. It’s just your father being an asshole’ There was a loud banging on the wall behind him. He turned his chair around and kicked the wall. ‘Shut up’ he shouted. ‘I’ve been working for you for twenty years, I can take a break. Consider this my vacation’
“The only times I ever saw Gregor that pissed off had to do with my father. The two of them would get going sometimes, frequently with me caught in the middle, when I would revert to a younger mind deciding that it was my fault that they were going at each other. That maybe because I considered Gregor a semi-replacement for my father was what caused it. Although, I felt that way about Gregor when my father was alive.
“ ‘So’ Gregor said, returning his focus to me, trying his best to hold his desk drawer shut, the contents of which were rattling loudly. ‘How are things up on the top floor?’
“ ‘Um…’ it was hard to talk to him while he was fighting with my father for control of the room. ‘Dull. I dunno. Do you want to go somewhere else?’
“ ‘Where?’
“ ‘Maybe downstairs?’
“He checked his watch. ‘Sure’ he said. As soon as he let go of the drawer, it flew open and everything fell out of it. ‘Bloody hell’ he muttered, but didn’t bother picking it up. He did, however, take his painting off the wall and lay it flat on the floor before getting his coat and leaving the office. ‘He probably won’t leave me alone after this’
“ ‘Well if you want to stay here and try to work it out…’
“ ‘No’ he said. ‘I need more coffee anyway. I’ll have to get Cole to clean up in there though. We should take the stairs’
“Getting stuck in an elevator with my father would have been unpleasant at best. I liked to think that he wouldn’t try to kill Gregor while there was a risk of killing me, but the sad truth is that he probably didn’t give a shit. After all, he was dead and he didn’t mind. Besides, my life was miserable anyway so why not? I would probably be happier if I was dead.
“ ‘How’s your mother?’ Gregor asked as we went downstairs.
“I thought about it. I didn’t really have an answer for that question. She’d seemed okay when I saw her that morning, but then, there was an ever present, underlying not-okayness which bothered me somewhat. ‘I think she’s depressed’ I said. ‘And that weasel keeps bugging her’
“ ‘Is that what you call Hampton?’ he asked, laughing.
“ ‘That’s what he is’ I said. ‘I don’t know, he’s got this thing for her and he’s always buying her shit. He’s kind of a creep though’
“He nodded. I knew he was still a little bitter that Hampton had taken over the company despite the fact he’d only been working there a few years. Gregor had wasted almost twenty years of his life working for my father and had only gotten as far as head of the advertising department.
“We went to the café downstairs and I bought him a cup of tea, which he insisted was better for alertness than coffee and a sandwich. He didn’t protest me spending money on him and I didn’t see anything wrong with trying to buy friends.
“ ‘How are you doing Mr. Rezník?’ Marianne asked while she toasted the sandwich, flashing her mouth full of sparkling white teeth and completely ignoring me.
“Gregor shrugged. ‘Not too bad’
“ ‘You look tired’
“ ‘I’ll manage’ he said. ‘Thanks for the concern’
“She patted his hand as she gave him his tea. He was the pathetic sort of guy some women absolutely couldn’t resist, myself included I suppose for watching Marianne making eyes at him set my teeth on edge.
“ ‘We should go somewhere’ I said. ‘Outside. When was the last time you were outside?’
“He shrugged and agreed to go elsewhere, specifically, a tiny little park a few blocks down. It was a miserable day, grey and occasionally snowing, so there weren’t too many people out and we got the best bench, right under the old beech tree, facing away from the street. There was a walking path through the park and I watched the people going by, wondering if where they were going was any more interesting than where I was.
“I wanted to tell him about the phone call I’d received the day before, and it was hard not to, but I knew that if I told anyone about it, it would cease to be special, so I kept it to myself. Instead, I just sat there quietly and watched Gregor eat his sandwich.”

Jenn checked her word count. 4’540. No too bad. She needed 8’335 to be on track, but this was at least salvageable. She supposed it paid off to do some of her work at night or something. Or perhaps it paid off to focus. Either way, she felt as if she was on her way to not sucking so much.