A Pen

In the back of a Louisiana bar and grill, Angelica’s, sat a man in a red corner booth with his hand pressed against his accordion-creased forehead. He held a cigarette between his fingers as he pushed his pensive skull as a blue ink pen danced over a white-paged notepad. Jeremiah stood at the front of the bar and grill and admired the esteemed prowess and frightening diligence of his greatest inspiration, Miles Alabaster.

Jeremiah held the manuscript of his own novel, a second draft; which had revised by his father and best friend for this night. He slipped through the evening crowd, further away from the gentle sounds of French music filling the room with the magical romance of uninterpreted lyrics. Jeremiah walked up to the polished round table and entered into the imposing presence of Miles.

Jeremiah held his breath and prepared his introduction when suddenly Miles, without looking, held out his large, dark hand, releasing the blood flow back in his scalp from his stiff fingers. Jeremiah stuttered but willed himself to offer his own writing into the hands of the infamous Miles Alabaster. Miles threw the manuscript on his table and stuck the ballpoint on the cover, signing the first few waves of his signature before stopping.

He bent the stack of papers towards him and glared at it. “What the hell is this?”

Jeremiah swallowed and started his rehearsed greeting. “My name is Jeremiah. Jeremiah Leeland. I’m an aspiring writer. Do you mind if I sit?”

“No.” Miles said gruffly.

Jeremiah smiled gratefully and sunk into the booth. “Thank you. I’ve been working on—”

“I said no.” Miles said forcefully. He shoved the manuscript across the table back to Jeremiah.

Jeremiah watched his dreams fly back towards him as the cover page slipped off and fell to the floor. He bent down and picked it up. “I’m sorry, I guess I—”

“You should be,” Miles stated as he took a hasty draw of his cigarette and whitened the flesh on his temple with his fingers and looked over his writing. He immediately dismissed Jeremiah’s existence and wrote fantastically on the page.

Jeremiah paused, biting his lip and looking down in despair. He had rehearsed a rejection but not blatant denial. Something in him decided he would die trying to start a conversation with Miles; preparing to be chewed out, degraded, or possibly beaten – as was the notoriously vicious personality of Miles Alabaster – and he cleared his throat.

“Would you consider reading my story, Miles?” he asked patiently.

Miles closed his eyes and sighed heavily. “No. Go.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s not good,” Miles scribbled intently as a brilliant thought emerged.

“Well, you don’t know that. You haven’t read it.” Jeremiah was very proud of his quip and began memorizing the conversation, as if he would retell the moment he was discovered by the great Miles at Angelica’s Bar & Grill.

“I can hear it in your voice. You have no idea how to write nor what to tell.”

“I may not be as good as you, but I think what I have here is worth—”

Miles slammed his pen on the table and rubbed his eyebrows furiously. “Why do you want to write?” Miles inquired pessimistically. “Have you considered what’s important about what you say? Or are you just desperate to be heard?” He stiffened his fingers and tapped his writing aggressively. “This is a craft. This is art. This—” he lifted his page, crinkling the sides as he clenched his grasp, speaking passionately, “what people read is the only escape from their lives. A marriage that’s spiraling down the drain; a teenager who’s contemplating her own suicide; a man who wakes up each morning and shakes his fist at God, wearing himself out until he has to sleep so he can do it all over again – that is why art exists. To say something. And to me, you don’t appear to have anything that’s worth saying.”

“That’s quite an accusation,” Jeremiah said in a choked voice.

“If you don’t believe that about what you write, that you can reach the dying spirits of this world, then don’t ever lift a pen, and don’t ever tell me to read your story.” Miles lifted his pen, touched the paper with the end, and then looked under his brows at Jeremiah. “Do you believe that?”

Jeremiah thought hard. He debated if he should persist and keep his promise to die trying or if perhaps he would never get through to Miles. But this was to be the story of the adversity he had never had – the adversity he lacked. The kind he feared yet needed. “I can.”

“You do or you want to?”

“I am. I am that good. Maybe not like you or other writers but—”

“The second you keep telling me you’re not as good as someone I will never think you are.” Miles leaned forward dauntingly; he pointed his finger and accosted Jeremiah. “A writer can tell a story about anything. And he’ll make it the most important and invigorating story about that subject he can, because he believes he can write anything. Can you do that?”

“I can.”

Miles ripped the page off the notepad and tossed aside. He tore out a second page and flung it at Jeremiah. He threw the blue pen on the table and watched it roll on top of the torn page. “Prove it.”

“Right now?” Jeremiah asked in disbelief.

“Right now,” Miles pierced Jeremiah’s soul with dangerous eyes.

“What should a write?”

Miles pointed at the pen. “That.”

“A pen?”

“Tell me a story about that pen. Move me to tears with a story about a blue pen.”

Miles was serious. He took a judgmental puff of his cigarette and watched Jeremiah squirm. Jeremiah scratched his ear and stared at the blindingly white page; with its perfect, bold, red lines that crossed across the loose leaf paper and dared him to match the talent of Miles. He fiddled the blue pen in his hand and gripped it as he normally would, though sweat had now wiggled the pen freely between his forefinger and thumb.

Jeremiah thought for a moment, praying that divine inspiration would strike him and prove to Miles he was capable of the impossible challenge, but he knew the longer he took the more Miles’s intrusive doubt would be reinforced.

Jeremiah wrote the first thing that came to mind. He scrawled with little confidence, pushing through his artistic insecurity as he held the promise he would, one day, tell the story he became a writer.

Before Jeremiah even concluded Miles bent over the round table and snatched the unfinished story from underneath Jeremiah. He skimmed it, quickly. Jeremiah gulped, fearing the worst.

Miles crumpled the page and dropped it on the table. He waved sharply for Jeremiah to hand the pen back to him. Jeremiah did instantly and watched it stick to Miles’s hand like it was his own finger.

Miles swiftly conjured a story, refusing to stop. It poured out of him like golden honey. He dropped the pen, ripped the page out, and stuck his fingertips on the top of the page shoving it towards Jeremiah. Jeremiah took it from Miles’s fingertip grip and read the story:

From my blue ink you’ve read the poetry of my heart, claiming to admire these verses, all without reciprocating yourself. The first blue words you read kissed you while we were foolish and young, and they’ve watched you grow into the darling angel I have always known. And I wait for your blue reply.

With my blue pen you hold the confession of my soul, yet you hide my love in the bottom drawer of your desk. Would you rather have the pen than me? Shall you marry my words and kill its author?

For years my love has dripped colorless, coloring the letters to fill your life; and here I lay each night alone. I held my hope between my finger and thumb, praying it might find a chorus to sing you into my life; yet here I stay eternally devoid of your touch.

My note, the last blue words you will read, I hope you cherish dearly, as I have you. This ink runs dry as does my love. I exhausted my one life for you, never to have you. Take this pen, as you never took me. When you wonder when the next blue-lettered note arrives, when you read my printed black name in the obituary, will you love me then or will you bury what’s left of me in the bottom drawer, as you always have?

Jeremiah slowly lowered the page from his eyes. He looked up at Miles, who held the cigarette between his pursed lips, inhaling and lighting the ash fiery red. Jeremiah extended the story back to Miles, who met him with a stopping hand.

“You don’t want this back? This is remarkable.”

“I can write that any day,” Miles said plainly.

“How… how did you do this?”

“Because I know I can.” Miles reached to his left and repositioned his first page of writing back on his notepad. From the way Miles resumed writing and in his body language, Jeremiah knew their conversation was done.

Jeremiah folded the story and put it in his pocket. He stood up from the red leather booth and held his manuscript. He took his thumb and flipped through the pages. Jeremiah left Angelica’s that night, but he knew he would return one day to meet Miles Alabaster in the back of that bar and grill again. And the next time Miles would read his story.