Racing to the Corner

If you’ve ever wondered about my writing ‘process,’ here’s a short story that should tell you all you need to know.

1

I didn’t mean to get myself into this mess. I piddled too much I guess. So now here I am, racing to make the next corner, bullets whizzing past me like angry wasps, my little HP laptop in one hand and the other doubled into a fist so—

What? So I can pump up the run better? Go faster?

I guess that’s the conventional wisdom, but it doesn’t really make sense. Maybe a fist cuts down on wind resistance or something. I mean, as compared with an open palm, my fingers splayed as I run. But in my heart of hearts, I doubt it.

Still, there it is. My stupid left hand curled into a fist and pumping in rhythm with my legs as—

Another bullet zipped past my left ear.

Jeeze! I wish Quick and Temple and Stone would give up the stupid chase. Or at least I wish they’d shoot as accurately as they bragged about in their stupid books. I did the best I could to convey their stories, and now they’re all warped at me because I’m gonna write John Staple’s story next. At least I guess that’s why they’re bent. It isn’t like I waited around to ask ‘em once they started shootin’.

But if that is the reason, it doesn’t make sense. I gave each of them the time they wanted. And hey, John Staple’s been waiting for what, seven decades now? Well, three decades at least. He’s only 33. That’s one of the few things I know about him at this point. And I guess he’s as anxious as they were to let readers know what he’s been up to.

I’m kind of hoping when I do start writing he’ll stick to the business at hand and tell me stories about his life as a Blackwell Ops operative. I mean, I like the romance stuff as much as any other old guy does, but I’m hoping his story won’t be quite as watered-down and wide-ranging as the stories of those other three. You know, Quick, Temple, and Stone.

Sounds like a hippie law firm in San Fran, doesn’t it? It reeks of the west coast.

Anyway, some of the other operatives enjoyed occasional romantic liaisons too. And that’s fine. Life happens. But Quick, Temple and Stone pretty much waded through a deluge of women. A flash flood of women. A veritable tsunami of women.

Well, you know, if they told me the truth. But you know how guys can “elaborate” on things like that.

Of course I’ve only just met Staple, and only in passing so far. Only long enough for him to tell me his name, really. Well, and his age. And a little about his personality. But then, even after he’d given me so little information and spent like ten seconds with me, he looked pointedly at me and bulged those eyes a little and said, “Well?”

So I says, “Well what?”

And he flicks one finger toward the laptop and says, “You wanted to write my story, right?” Then he turned his hands palms-up. “So write already.”

So I says to him, I says, “Yeeaaah... you know, suuurre....” And I folded the lid down on my laptop, real careful like, and lifted the back just a little, just far enough to slip my fingers under it, and I let my pinkie finger wander just far enough to kick the power cord out of the side of it.

And something about my tone or maybe what I said caused Staple to interlace his fingers in his lap and crack the smallest smile and start to lean back a little in his chair.

And the instant he did that I made a break for it.

Only I no sooner rounded the corner outside the Hovel than I realized I was on a street in some big inner city somewhere. And the sidewalk was wide and filled with people and the street was like six lanes and filled with fumes and that nasty smell of hot tires and oily engines and honking horns and yelling drivers leaning out their windows and flipping each other off.

So the sidewalk was pretty tame, really. But only a few people were moving the same direction I was moving, and the rest of Manhattan (or wherever I was) were going the other way. And all of them were readers and critics and all of them grabbed at me as I went by and all of them said things like “Hey, when’s the next book gonna be out?” and “Hey, it only takes like three hours to read one’a your books, so how long’s it take to write one?” and the inevitable finger-in-the-nose, nasally question from the two hundred pound five year old: “Where do you get your ideas?”

And before I could steal Harlan Ellison’s “from a little shop in Schenectady” from somewhere behind me someone yelled, “There he is!” and it sounded a lot like Jack Temple and somehow I knew he was talking about me.

So I gave up any pretense of trying to lose myself in the crowd and—in drug pushers’ jargon, only cleaned up a little—I hooked it. Or cleaned up a little less, I got the flack out of there.

Of course I was still goin’ against the stream and probably half of whatever city was crowded onto the sidewalk and coming at me.

And that’s when I heard the first angry wasp zzzzip past my ear.

Whereupon I doubled my pace and folded up that one fist I mentioned earlier for whatever stupid reason.

And more angry wasps zipped past, which told me in plain English I wasn’t running nearly fast enough. So I kicked it into a gear I didn’t even know I had and raced headlong toward the corner, which still seemed forever distant.

But I still knitted my brow and wondered why none of the three had popped me in the back of the head with a 158-grain bullet yet. I mean, these are my guys! And they’re Blackwell Ops operatives! They have to be better shots than that, even if they are fictional. I mean, if they really are. Fictional. In my head, I never know well enough that I could swear to it in court.

Still, I was vertical and hookin’ it for all I was worth. And finally, finally, finally the stinkin’ next corner was Right There. I put everything I had into pumping that fist and my legs, and the next thing I knew, bam! I slammed myself around that corner—

To find myself seated at my desk in the Hovel.

What?

The laptop sat in front of me, my fingers were on the keyboard, and the chair that had been to the left of my desk was gone-zalles. Along with the character I’d been chatting with, hoping to get to know a little about him. I forget his name just now.

But someone from somewhere said, “Hey, writer boy, welcome back. So you gonna start writin’ now?”

And I frowned and jerked my head around. “Who’s that? Quick?”

And he said, “Definitely not.”

And I said, “Okay. Then it’s Jack Temple, right? I told you, Jack, you’ a’ready got four books. What, that ain’t enough a’ready?”

And he said, “Nope, it isn’t Temple either. But I agree that’s probably enough books for that crybaby.”

And I said, “Hey, don’t diss your fellow characters, all right? You might turn out to be a crybaby too. Or maybe he wasn’t. I can’t remember.”

“Sorry.”

“Aha! Sorry, eh? Then it’s gotta be Paul. And like I just told you a few minutes ago, you and I just finished your second book yesterday, okay? So I need a little time to—”

“Wrong again. It isn’t Stone. Stupid name, by the way. Is he a rock-a-billy? Get it?”

“That’s maybe the worst pun I’ve ever heard. If we’re gonna work together you’re gonna have to do better than that. And no, he isn’t a rockabilly or any other kind of musician. Well, as far as I know. And who are you again?”

Silence.

I took my hands off the keyboard and leaned back a little in my chair and crossed my arms over my chest and stretched my legs out and crossed my ankles and said, “Well I know it’s none of the women. And I know for sure it’s not Dunn or Payne or Tidwell or Gentry or Moses or any of the other one-offs. So who’s speakin’?” I paused, then sat up. “Wait—Charlie? Charlie Task? Are you back? I’ been missin’ you, dude.” I frowned. “Did somethin’ happen to Soleada?”

“No, it isn’t Charlie. But listen to you.” He mimicked me, but in a teasing tenor. “‘Did something happen to Soleada?’ Disgusting.” He wagged a hand. “Anyway, at least you’re getting warm. Charlie and I are second cousins.”

So then I smirked at that because I know better. I did a bunch of books with Charlie. He even popped in some other stories, including some of the magic realism stuff back in the day. “Um, I’ll have you know, whoever you are, Charles Claymore Task doesn’t have any cousins.”

“Yeah, right. That you know of. Like Charlie would give a mook like you the straight scoop.”

I gritted my teeth. “Okay, smartass, he has no cousins that I know of. So?”

“It’s me, moron. John Staple. C’mon, man! You only ran outta here like two seconds ago!”

And the chair materialized next to my desk again and Staple was there again. He pointed at me. “Your memory sucks canal water from all 50 states, you know that? Even that big one between California and Hawaii.”

I frowned at that whole fading-in thing and pointed back at him. “Dude, don’t do that! Like I said a minute ago, I just finished Paul Stone’s second book like yesterday, so....” I shrugged. “You know, I need a little time to decompress, a’right? Besides, I don’t know you that well yet. We gotta spend some time together, okay? Then I’ll write your story.”

That’s when I glanced up and noticed it was like three minutes before 4 p.m. “Tell you what, be here tomorrow, don’t be here tomorrow, whatever. I’ll be here tomorrow either way.”

He crossed his arms. “Yeah. And what if I don’t show?”

I shrugged. “Dude, I’m a writer. If you aren’t here tomorrow, I’ll do like I just did. I’m a writer. Writers write.”

And I wrote the final paragraph of this story for the Bradbury Challenge and recorded my numbers and shut everything down so I could go up to the house and chill for a couple hours.

*******

About the Author

Harvey Stanbrough was born in New Mexico, seasoned in Texas and baked in Arizona. For a time, he wrote under five personas and several pseudonyms, but he takes a pill for that now and writes only under his own name. Mostly.

Harvey is an award-winning writer who follows Heinlein’s Rules avidly. He has written and published over 110 novels, 10 novellas, and over 290 short stories. He has also written 19 nonfiction books on writing, 9 of which are free to other writers. And he’s compiled and published 5 omnibus novel collections, 29 collections of short fiction, and 5 critically acclaimed poetry collections.