The Writer

The Writer

By Kim
Dallmeier

Published by Kim Dallmeier
at Smashwords

ISBN
978-1-4580-4257-6

Copyright 2010 Kim
Dallmeier. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1

It is hard to explain how
it all began. She came into my life like a Storm.

Her name was Joy, and she
was 19. Her dreams were chaotic and inspiring. She drew me into her
life, to her, like the moon to the sea: there could be no other
way.

The first time Joy and I
met was memorable. She burst into the bar, covered in snow,
refusing to wear a hat in a blizzard: she complained they flattened
her hair, disregarding the effect of snow on it instead.

We were university
students, doing what the young do: reinventing and deconstructing
the world. We were Revolutionaries, Existentialists, and
Idealists.

She sat at our table, and
ordered a drink.

“I’m right!” she exclaimed
to a young man that had followed her in.

“If everyone hung out
their clothes, instead of using their dryers, do you know how much
electricity we would save?” She went on.

“How much?” he
asked.

“A lot!” she
exclaimed.

“Maybe you could dip your
socks in water to save on ice too…,” he added, teasing
her.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she
said, sitting back.

He grinned. He looked
vaguely familiar to me. Since he knew most of the people sharing my
classes, I assumed he was in one of them too.

As the evening progressed,
people came and went, and Joy took no notice of me.

I was enumerating the
reasons in my head of why a woman like her would never be
interested in someone like me, when she smiled.

“
You’re right,”
I blurted out.

“Sure am,” she said,
leaning towards me. “What are we agreeing about exactly?” she
asked, taking a long swallow of her red wine.

“The dryer thing” I said,
trying to get my voice across the table. “Every bit counts,
right?”

The more we spoke, the
more I felt we were alone in the world.

“You shouldn’t smoke” she
said, “It’s bad for you.”

I laughed.

“I’m Joy, by the way,” she
said.

“Ben. It’s nice to meet
you.”

“Are you an accountant?”
she asked.

“Why? Are you calling me
boring?”

She laughed and looked
away, finishing her glass.

“Another?” I
asked.

Her hair was dark and
lush. For a second, I imagined my hand going softly through it as
her head rested gently on my shoulder. I wanted to hold her in my
arms, have her fall asleep next to me. I closed my eyes and took
another long drag of my cigarette, as though nothing else mattered.
I exhaled, and realized that she was now standing.

She threw a piece of paper
at me.

“If you’re ever bored,”
she smiled. Then, Joy was gone.

I picked up the paper
airplane, as though it were made of gold; little did I know that I
was holding my entire future in the palm of my hand.

Chapter 2

I ordered a coffee:
black.

A month had passed, and I
still had not called Joy. Whether you called it stage fright or
pure idiocy, it did not matter to me. I wanted to hold on for as
long as possible to the dream of being with her.

I knew that the moment she
would see me again in daylight, minus the alcohol, she would turn
around and never come back.

Yes. I was going to stay
in this illusory state for as long as I could. The brain was a
funny thing this way. You could pretty much convince it of anything
you wanted, if you tried hard enough.

In a psychology class, I
had learned that if you smiled into a mirror while upset, you would
feel better shortly. Apparently, the brain could not tell the
difference between a genuine smile and a fake one. Since I felt I
was in a relationship, my brain was not about to convince me of
otherwise.

I held the cash receipt,
behind which Joy had written her phone number, gently between my
fingers. I studied the piece of paper as though a test on its
content awaited me: red wine, avocados, Kalamata olives, baguette,
brie, vine tomatoes, salmon, and the list went on.

I imagined myself dining
with her on a beautiful terrace late at night, a candle flickering
between us. I was not a wine drinker myself, but in these
fantasies, I did not need to be.

I smiled, and folded the
paper away, putting it safely back into my wallet.

I was packing my books and
bag, when she arrived. Dishevelled, wiping snow off a newspaper,
Joy made her way to a corner table.

I unpacked my bag, and
ordered another coffee. I looked at the time. It was close to 10am,
and I only had class in the afternoon. I could afford to help
serendipity. I coughed.

She took no notice of me,
even after I dropped accidentally my book.

I was in the middle of
doodling on a matchstick man, when Joy appeared at my
table.

“Are you always this
clumsy or did your third cup of coffee helped?” she
asked.

“Uh,” I stared. I was
always this eloquent put on the spot. “Hi,” I finally managed to
say.

“Hey,” she said, sitting
down, smiling. “What are you up to? An artist I see…”

I folded the napkin
away.

“I didn’t know you came
here,” I said.

“Why would
you?”

My mind went blank. She
laughed. “You never called me…”

“I figured you had slipped
me a Chinese take-away number, and I already know a good
one.”

She smiled. “Nah, it’s my
real number. We should do something together some time.”

“Yeah, I’m totally up for
that.” I felt like a cooing 14-year-old girl, and regretted
instantly using the word: totally.

“I mean, sure…” I said,
trying to sound manlier this time.

She laughed, looking away.
“You have any plans today?”

“No. Why?” I asked. It was
always good to be open.

“You want to see a movie
at the Palace for a dollar? They have a bunch of oldies playing
this afternoon,” she said. She opened the newspaper and pointed at
the showings: “Blade runner?”

I was in love, all over
again.

Chapter 3

Montreal, in winter, is
freezing and lasts forever. When the calendar hits January, you
pretty much get minus 30˚ weather every other day. With the wind
factor, you might as well be sunbathing somewhere in the
Arctic.

Now, what if I told you
Joy and I walked five or six blocks in a blizzard to get to the
Palace and I never felt the cold. My face froze. The Tip of my nose
froze. My toes froze, and I felt absolutely nothing.

Maybe it was Joy, maybe it
was the frostbites, one way, or the other I felt no pain. Not until
we arrived at the movie theatre, and I started thawing, that is.
Now, that hurt. Imagine colonies of ants biting you until they
decide to heat up like hot plates. No, make those mutant fire ants,
who adapted to our crazy Arctic weather trying to colonize
me.

“What are you thinking
about?” Joy asked.

Oh, I am only pondering
about mutant insects crusading over my body, you? “Nothing,” I
said.

“You look totally freaked
out…”

“Just happy to be here,” I
said.

“That’s your happy face?”
Her wide-eyed look made me laugh.

She bought our tickets. I
got us popcorn. We found seats.

The movie was great, but
the company was better.

I held my breath so many
times; I thought I would pass out. First, I leaned my arm slightly
against hers, and held my breath. When my fingers touched hers
accidently over a popcorn kernel, I held it again. I wanted to
freeze this moment with her, capture it, and pin it to my
wall.

When the movie ended, it
was time to take the metro home: we were heading in different
directions.

I decided to walk her to
her train. We went down the escalator in silence. The moment I saw
the lights of the metro appear in the tunnel, I started sweating,
almost panicking. Should I shake her hand or kiss her on the cheek?
I had no idea!

The train stopped and the
doors opened. As she went in, I stood there, staring. She turned
around and smiled. She grabbed my arm and pulled me into the train
with her. I had no idea where we were going, and I really did not
care. I would have followed her across the Galaxy to the Restaurant
at the End of the Universe, if she had asked me to.

“Is that your happy face?”
she asked.

I smiled. “Nah, I’m
totally miserable right now.”

“Thought so,” she
laughed.

We sat and watched the
stations go by.

Chapter 4

It was 9 o’clock when I
looked at my watch. We were making our way slowly to her place. The
night was young. The street held more trees than cars, a privilege
rarely seen in the middle of town.

From the outside, the
house did not look like much: reddish brown bricks piled on top of
each other, framed by some strayed frozen branches of a dying
tree.

She climbed the steps
first to unlock the door. As it opened, a familiar warm sweet scent
escaped through the crack; one which would become a smell I would
come to associate to Home.

The first thing I noticed
when making my way through her house were the tall cathedral-like
ceilings made out of golden wood, and the rich red bricks that
composed the walls.

The front windows, which I
found to be quite ordinary late at night, became stained glass
masterpieces stretched to the ceiling the next morning. They were
simply extraordinary.

How does an Art student
afford such a luxurious place?

Next to the hallway, on
the left, was a lounge with leather sofas. She had shelves on each
side of a fireplace, which extended to the ceiling, filled with
books, a mixture of odd art pieces and new age gizmos. Incense was
the smell I had recognized from the entrance hall:
Jasmine.

I walked slowly along the
hallway that stretched through the entire house. Peering now to the
right, I found her bedroom, which I dared not enter, and a small
bathroom. At the end of the hallway was her kitchen and to the left
a small studio, within which she painted and sacrificed random
pieces of wood in the name of “Art.”

I walked to the backdoor,
peering at a small balcony where an exhibit of dead plants was
exposed, one of which decorated with Christmas ornaments. Her
second-floor apartment towered over various neighbours that seemed
to all share quite conveniently her backyard.

“Are you living in a
commune?” I asked.

“Huh?” Joy
replied.

“Well, there seems to be a
huge collection of tables and chairs in your backyard…”

She laughed. “Yeah, that’s
our communal terrace. We all share it. All the flats you can see
use it. Therefore, a while back, everyone started bringing down
whatever chair and table each could find, just so that everyone can
use it together whenever we want to… It’s actually quite
neat.”

I smiled back.

“So, tell me again what
you do?”

I did not actually
remember telling much of anything about me. I nodded.

“I’m a writer…” I started,
“Well, no. I’m not a writer yet. I just mean I enjoy writing and I
study literature. I’d like to be a writer someday.”

“You’re either a Writer or
you’re not.” she said.

“What do you mean by
that?”

“Do you need to write
every day? Do you think about what you’re going to write next? Does
it consume you?” She was waving her arms around now, barely
containing herself. She started getting up, as though she needed
more space to explain what she was trying to get across.