Sample of New Project
Looking for Beta Readers
Message and let me know if you are interested in reading the first draft of this upcoming novel as a critical reader. Here is a taste of what it is:
The Sea is Not Full
The subfloor gave a little as he stood but nothing like it used to. His knee was holding up. There were still piles of sheetrock scrap in the hall and coils and coils of romex left behind by Blue Moon. He already forgot the guy’s name should Hart ask. He checked his phone. Irving or something, he thought. No it was Irwin. Oh well. Thomas Irwin. With a unibrow and a cream Eversource ballcap. Working for Blue Moon less than a year. Needed to learn the proper subcontractor’s etiquette. Although in fairness the rewiring brief had been near impossible, since Hart refused to strip everything in the detached apartment down to stud. It meant keeping the original tin plated finish on one wall and the ceiling and repainting it with some special paint he got from the design shop in Boston where his former intern had a cousin or something. Irwin had been a good sport about it, and he’d shared Jerry’s feigned disdain for all the fancypants touches on what was a seventies ranch with an added upstairs. But he would have to give the Blue Moon office a call that he would be charging them for cleaning up the subcontractor’s mess. Just the mere fact that Hart was the landlord would be enough to ensure compliance in this town. That was the only good thing about working for Hart.
Jerry walked over to the side window, above the new frames for the cabinets. He pushed on the window casings, testing them.
Outside, an old F-150 pulled up the gravel drive. A couple descended from either side of the truck parked in the middle of the lot. The driver was a short, stout, thirty something man in a baggy Pink Floyd tee shirt with a scraggly long beard hiding a recessed chin. His partner was a similarly built woman in a flower print smock. They paused together on the gravel and looked over the house and yard and the surrounding scrub of recently cleared land on the edge of town. Just as he was about to close up.
Jerry grabbed the tool belt and the Makita and headed for the mud room and out the door. He put the things down and carefully closed it, appreciating the squeak of his new install.
“Yo, bro,” said the man.
“Hey there,” said Jerry.
“Can we have a look?” asked the woman, coming up beside.
“You’re a little late,” said Jerry, keeping a friendly tone, turning with a tight smile.
“We just got into town,” said the man. “Spoke with the office,” he added.
“Oh, well,” said Jerry.
“They said we could come up and have a look.”
“Did you sign a lease?” asked Jerry.
“Yes we have, sir,” said the man.
Jerry sighed. He put the Makita and the tool belt down again on the scraggly grass between the path and the wall.
“We’re almost done here,” he said, unlocking the door and ushering the couple inside the apartment.
The woman pressed the sheetrocked wall of the mud room with a pudgy hand as she walked through. The little man looked at Jerry with pig-hard eyes as he brushed by.
“How much longer?”asked the woman, turning and staring. Jerry walked by her.
“Probably a couple of weeks,” he said, scratching his chin. “Just the kitchen here left.”
“We’re assuming you’re the builder,” she said.
“Well, actually Hart’s the builder. I work for him,” said Jerry, turning in the entrance to the living area.
“Nice,” said the man, rolling out the drawers.
“The lady in the office said we could move in this week,” he said.
“Well, that’s not likely. I need to finish up in the kitchen and paint the whole thing,” said Jerry.
“Well then, we assume we’ll be prorating a week’s rent off the bill then,” said the woman. “That’s how we did it in Exeter, ain’t that right, Ryan?” she said. She couldn’t stop herself from smearing the veneered maple counter tops. She turned on the taps and ran the water in the sink full of sheetrock dust. Jerry had an intense feeling she would fill up the sink with water and start splashing in it with her fat hand. He hated being the spokesperson for Hart. He resented having feelings as a response to the microaggressions of strangers. But there was no end in sight, and it was indeed probably among the duties Hart expected from him to show the new apartment. Ryan and this woman, whose name would hopefully never be revealed, both stared at him.
“You’d have to deal with the people in Hart’s office in Laconia,” he said. “I don’t handle the arrangements on rent or the lease or frankly any of that shit,” said Jerry.
“That’s cool,” said Ryan.
“I don’t believe it,” said the woman.
“Sharon. The triggers, please,” said Ryan.
Sharon was her name. Sharon and Ryan. Potentially he would have to get to know them, understand them, even one day count them as part of a support network that would allow him to better weather his decrepitude in a declining country without adequate health care. Would help him understand the advances in technology necessary to shopping and mobility.
“I just wish you got the picture,” said Sharon. She stomped through the kitchen and inspected the bedroom and bath, Ryan in tow.
“Nice shelving,” said Ryan.
“Thanks,” said Jerry.
“What color will it be?” asked Sharon, pointedly staring in the distance.
“That’s a good question. I don’t really know,”
“We get to have a say, we assume,” she turned to Jerry and added.
“We like cream. Eggshell,” said Ryan.
“Well, I suggest you reach out to the office and make your suggestions there.”
“Is Hart and the state senator the same guy?” asked Ryan.
“Yes,” said Jerry.
“Nice,” said Ryan.
“He’s pretty reasonable for a politician,” said Jerry.
Eventually they moved outside, and Jerry locked the door and walked around the side yard toting the tool bag and the Makita. And then they finally pulled away in the truck out of the parking lot and through the hemlocks. Jerry breathed a sigh of relief as he turned the corner and entered the house through the front door facing the soft spring’s setting sun. His apartment on the second floor was warm from the day. The evening’s temperature drop would remind him of the recently melted snow on the remaining banks of the roads in this part of the state, the foothills of the North Country. He opened a beer and showered while he gulped from the can. The shower water drained the dirt away, and Jerry felt glad for the simple, useful way the water and soap revived him, quelling his many doubts and fears.
The sky was dark with smudges of purples and oranges below the line of storm clouds adhering on the other side of the highway. Jerry pulled into the parking lot of the 4 Aces Diner with the retro dining car and a red sign on the roadside advertising Eat Here in a faux Depression era arrow. He took a seat inside at an empty booth and observed his girlfriend Lori Lynn Marchand, called Pebbles, approach with a menu.
“Look at you,” said Pebbles. She slid the menu across the table to him in the corner by the wall.
“Skip the beer. I’m gonna stick with water,” said Jerry.
“Ooh, that’s a new leaf. How long you been coming here now, almost a year?“
“Something like that.”
“You suddenly interested in longevity? What happened?”
“I don’t know. I wanta feel grateful for things.”
“Things like what? What’s there to be grateful for? Life is shit, look at this place, empty as a grave.”
“It’s mud season, though. Right?”
“Whadda you know about mud season, mister? Where are you from, Massachusetts?
“Long Guyland.”
“Oh, yeah. Flatlander.”
He smiled to himself. He liked Pebbles because she had that effect – making him smile with her irascibility. It was a sign of her resilience. And if it was nostalgia on his part that drove him back to her night after night, the idea that attraction was something to be taken seriously as a signpost, so be it. He would pine for it as long as it didn’t get ridiculous.
He looked around, unsurprised at the lack of ambiance. A few other tables were full of the late day tourist crowd typical of the time of year - retirees on their way to open up their spots in the manufactured home parks and escape from the heat of the Sunbelt. Frail, pale ancient humans, people like his mother and father, recently passed, leaving behind their children still blinking and wet behind the ears. Like the seasons, we went from youth to old age with nothing in between, he thought.
This was still the brief summer of his life when he remained relatively coherent and relatively reflective of his impact here just before everything failed, when the burning question would become what is the shortest pain-free exit route off stage. Old age was a slow crucifixion for which the best curative was perhaps abandon and revelry. Pebbles and himself were both fighting the tide. Not exactly aligned on best practice, but there was the seed of something there, good for now, Jerry thought.
The burger and sweet potato fries were a dinner worthy of Rabelais. The juice and grease dribbled down his chin as he looked up momentarily to register the din of the place as customers rotated through. He had a refill on the Dr. Peppers and sucked at the icy slush through the straw.
Life was good. He would die. These two truths were unyielding in their eternal battle. In the meantime, Pebbles was a plus in the ledger that made him able to breathe free of the anxiety attacks that plagued him. He knew that it was like a drug. It was a dependency. It could not stand for long. The podcasts railed against it. A man must be self-sufficient unto himself at all times. But that did not work for Jerry. He hated to be alone. He was not a master of himself. He suffered from an enlarged prostate. He’d had a bump on his nose that was precancerous. Yes, he was strong. He could bench press three hundred pounds. He could pick up cinder blocks with either hand and chunk them ten yards forwards or backwards. He could tread water in the deep water, feeling the chill like death on his feet at Pleasant Pond in the old Quaker district of town for a couple of minutes before he was winded and needed to swim back to the shallow. But it was having Pebbles in his life after the separation from Judy that had quelled the anxiety. That anxiety that had made it difficult to stand in front of a classroom after fifteen years of teaching Intro to Political Theory and, in alternating years, either the Morality of Peasant Revolutions or the Tragedy of the Commons. Was his quitting an act of rashness or courage? Aristotle himself would have been hard-pressed to answer. He couldn’t blame Judy, though, for quitting on him.
“Everything okay, Jerry?”
“Great as usual. Can I give you a ride?”
“That would be very kind of you. Would you like some desert?”
“Not tonight.”
“Are you sure? The peach cobbler is very good.”
“Oh well. Okay.”
Pebbles brought a plate of cobbler and slid the check across the table. He was the last customer. Castelone came out from the kitchen and inspected the empty tables. Did he nod in Jerry’s direction? Not obviously. Jerry reached two twenties to her hand along with the check.
“Keep the change,” he said and finished the cobbler. He wiped his mouth and stood awkwardly.
Pebbles smiled for the first time as she watched him stand. The dishwasher, the Hispanic kid from the back room, was wiping down the tables.
“I’ve got about half hour to go,” she said.
“I’ll circle back around. Fill up with gas,” he said.
At the Mobil station, Jerry observed the thinning traffic in the dark on the highway. The traffic noise equated to the spin of the globe. We were all standing on this thin layer of matter, he thought. It was as deep as that. The bridge of a ship in the night. Radios were playing. Women were crying. Science and technology. Gasoline. The moon was rising in the southeastern quadrant of the sky, casting a gothic splurge of light on the clouds it revealed around it. Jerry’s heart was hidden from himself. If he examined it, what would he find? Unabated hunger, he believed. It was the hunger that spurred everything, everyone everywhere. At all times. Yet their hearts kept this essential fact hidden even from themselves in the cars and trucks whipping by in the early part of the night at these latitudes. North and south, where were they going?
Back at the 4 Aces, Jerry parked. Then Pebbles opened the truck’s door and climbed up into the cab. She was wearing the too big jeans and a plaid open shirt over a tee shirt. Her hair was loose now. He drove away before either of them spoke a word.
They made love in her room. In the other room, her younger brother watched television. He was forty-four, autistic and his favorite show was RuPaul’s Drag Race followed closely by the companion series, RuPaul’s Drag Race Untucked. He worked as a bagger at Market Basket and Pebbles got a check every month from Medicaid for home based services for looking out for him. She was devoted to her brother’s care, but sometimes wished she could get away. Jerry was important to her solely to the extent that he contributed to alleviating the weight of her responsibilities. He knew that and appreciated the fact. He tried hard to be companionable and make their friendship somewhat entertaining, not a chore.
“You okay? What’s going on in there?” he asked when she climbed back into bed after checking on her brother, Roger.
“Oh, he’s fine. I asked him to go to bed soon. That way he won’t sleep all day and miss his appointment at the doctor tomorrow.”
“No, I meant with you. In your head.”
“I’m good.”
“Are you really?”
“Yeah, are you kidding me? You offering me therapy or something now?”
“No, just checking that you’re feeling okay. This here is everything you wanted.”
“Between you and me?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s great.”
“That’s good. That’s all I needed to hear.”
“Okay. Just don’t be analyzing me. You don’t know me well enough.”
“I’m not analyzing you. I just want to help you.”
“It’s best if you just chill out and accept me the way I am.”
“I do.”
“Then why do you say you want to help me?”
“Because that’s what friends are for.”
“I don’t need you to help.”
“Well what do you need from me?”
“To be present. It’s not a utilitarian thing. We’re not meant to be here to be used by others.”
“If it’s helping, how is that being used?”
“It’s the expectation of being helped or helping that becomes a problem, sweetie. It’s better to just accept co-existence, don’t you think. I don’t expect anything from you. You’re sweet and I appreciate your company. Not what you can do for me.”
Pebbles was fantastic. He’d never take what they had for granted. But she had some shortcomings. She was far from perfect, despite her obvious physical appeal to Jerry. Mainly, she was incapable of monogamy. She flirted with every customer that came through the 4 Aces of either sex of any age over fourteen, but yet she was still jealous of his time. For instance, she didn’t like the fact that he was writing a book. Well, not a book so much as a compilation of anecdotes on his family. Jerry had gotten very deep down the rabbit hole of ancestry.com and had started writing up what he’d found out about the lives of his grandparents, great-grandparents, and as far back as great-great grandparents who had emigrated to America in the 1840s. To him it was like traveling to a foreign country, and it gave him a sense of purpose and meaning that he felt he had always lacked. But Pebbles resented the time he spent on it, and didn’t like it when he went silent in either his apartment or her house, imagining sequences in his head to later go back and write it all down. He was leading a secretive double life and when asked would say he couldn’t talk about it. It was too amorphous, too grey in his mind to put into words, just vague ideas he’d need to work out at the laptop on the desk against the north wall, looking out at the sky through the witch’s window under the sloping eaves. For Pebbles, his whole writing thing reeked of privilege and elitist shenanigans, something she was hard-wired to hate. So Jerry didn’t know. He had his doubts about the durability of their relationship. He was just trying to take her advice and live in the moment, enjoy the feeling of lying entwined in the double bed in her house, feeling her breathe as she fell asleep.
Jerry dreamed he was on a boat. And the crew made gallons of powdered milk that they stored away in vats, and when pressed, they said it was as good or better than ordinary milk in most recipes.
Jerry lay awake at dawn as the birds began to sing on the roof of the house. It was too early to get up. Pebbles snored a little with each intake of breath. The television was still on in the other room. It sounded like a news show. He heard:
“President Trump’s arrival yesterday at Andrews Air Force Base was greeted by Erica Mitchell.”
He eased himself out of the bed, trying not to make any noise.
Pebbles heard him though.
“Where are you going?”
“Home. Back to my place.”
“It’s early.”
“Yeah, I have a meeting with Hart I want to get ready for.”
“See you tonight?”
“Of course.”
Jerry drove back across the highway into the center of Stillton. The town had recently gotten a grant from the Department of Commerce for beautifying small rural districts and had replaced the street lights on the three blocks of Main Street before it crossed the Pemigewasset River in a steel arched bridge. The money left over after the streetlights had been replaced had gone to scraping and repainting the bridge and placing plastic planter pots that looked like sawn off whiskey barrels at either end of the bridge with geraniums and morning glories. The repainting had not yet begun, and it might never, he had heard. The bridge looked like it might fall at any moment, a metaphor for the state he was in. Mist was rising off the river and enveloping the bridge, making the flowers look flimsy and transient, like everything would one day run back into wilderness, all the housing, all the highways, all the plastic planters. This world had been created for a people that didn’t even believe any more in the moment they were in, Jerry thought. There was a crisis brewing and it was reflected in the bridge’s dilapidation.
Jerry made a coffee in the French press and set the cup on the desk. He turned on the laptop and stared at the document. No words had been added in several days, but by staring at it for a while he could convince himself that progress was being made. This was how writing was done; this was how Sisyphus raised the rock. It was the work of cultural warfare, even though nobody would ever read it. Jerry had no connections in publishing. His academic career had ended in a whimper and he’d left it gladly, no regrets except for the casualty of his twenty three years of marriage, for a much better life in the trades. But he thought if he had a decent manuscript, a work of creative non-fiction wrapped in the veneer and jargon of self-improvement, he might have something to pitch to the small presses, or maybe self-pub on Substack at the end of the day if nothing else materialized. That was his plan and he would stick to it, even though staring at the document in the early morning hours of a Saturday gave him no pleasure. He felt if he had one of those Apple watches and he could monitor his heart rate, it would provide the same level of sanity and purpose. And yet, and yet, he thought. This is what he did, this was his essential contribution to the ether. In no small way it was like Rosa Luxembourg writing letters about the birds and the bees while in prison. You might see it as decadent, and her captors certainly had. But there was a way that insanity was the same thing as resistance. He would resist. His insanity came in homeopathic dosages that prevented the worst of the moral decay, and it allowed him to survive in a world headed south.