17Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3QdfboY5ib****Read this and other stories for free on Lyon's Lair, a new free reading app that showcases great writing. Lyonslair.lovable.app
Preparing for her next pitch, Wormwood reached out and slathered her hands generously with the Erbario Toscano hand sanitizer sitting on the table. She shivered once, adjusted her eye patch, and called the next pitch forward.
Next to sit was a weathered man with sun-cured skin and the stillness of someone used to waiting. She watched with curiosity as he carefully sat, opened a sun-burnt burlap bag, and procured his obviously water-damaged manuscript, which he laid on the table like a freshly-caught fish.
Repulsed, she peered at the wretched thing with contempt.
“Well,” she said, doing her best not to wrinkle her nose before the pitch even got started. “What have we here?”
“It’s about an old fisherman,” he said, his voice steady and gravelly, with the lilt of lapping water. “He goes out alone, and hooks a giant marlin. They fight for three days.”
Wormwood squinted with her one good eye and did some quick math. “Three days. For one fish? Is that even viable?”
“It is not about what is viable,” said the man. “It is about what happened.”
“Whoa,” whispered Harley. “That sounds like a pacing disaster,”
“I’d read it,” Tanya whispered back. “An idea that banal has to be either horrible, or genius. I’m hoping it’s genius.”
“Ok, So then what?” the incredulous agent mused. “He brings it home safely?”
“No,” he replied, calmly. “Sharks get it on the way back.”
Tanya made a small, wounded noise. “The whole thing?”
“I can’t,” Harley whispered. She put her head in her hands and silently screamed.
Wormwood set her pen down.
“So let me get this straight,” she said, perfectly controlling her tone in the eeriest of ways, “The entire book is about the man getting a fish…but then in the end…he doesn’t actually get the fish.”
The man leaned back, considering Wormwood as one not yet experienced in the ways of life. “No,” he said, calmly. “but then again, it’s not about him getting the fish. It’s about him getting the experience of the fish.”
“Perhaps I wasn’t clear,” restarted Wormwood, as she shuffled papers. “He loses the fish, correct?”
“No,” the man restated, the perfect picture of calm, “he does not ‘lose’ the fish. The fish is not an item to be lost.”
Wormwood stared at him.
He stared back.
The atmosphere around them thickened.
Off in the distance, a lone writer overcame his writer’s block, only to immediately succumb to imposter syndrome instead.
“One day you will learn, my dearest Matilda,” the man chided her, “That a man who is not defeated has not lost anything.”
In the silence that followed, Harley could hear the dust settling on the chandelier.
“That’s very nice,” said Wormwood, who was doing square breathing while very deliberately tidying a set of 3x5 cards that had been left on the table by the last pitch. “It’s also not a plot point.”
She flipped a page, found it blank on the back, and flipped it again to be sure. “So, uh…“ she wondered, “Where’s the rest of it?”
“The rest of what?” he asked flatly.
“The rest of your book.”
“The book is complete,” he said. “You have it.”
“What do you mean, the book is complete?” she said, startled. She turned it sideways to size it up. “My chihuahua, Quill, has written books longer than this.”
“It’s not about size, Matilda,” said the man, calmly. “It’s about how you—”
“Yeah, yeah,” said Wormwood, waving him away like driftwood in a summer storm. “Well,” she sighed, sounding resigned. “Has it at least got any subplots?”
“Ah, yes, there is one,” the man said, smiling as though suddenly remembering something in the summer sun.
“Great!” She said, her mood briefly lifting, and picking up her pen again. “What is it?”
“A boy who loves him, and isn’t there for most of it.”
Wormwood set her pen back down. “Of course it is,” she muttered. “Any comp titles?”
“Comp titles,” the man replied, picking up his book and turning it sideways with the practiced care of the open ocean, “are for writers who are not sure of their fish.” He sat it back down, confident and satisfied. “I am sure of my fish.”
“Yeah, you have that in common with the last pitch” Wormwood muttered. “You guys should be friends.”
Wormwood checked her antique pocket watch to find the man still had 2 minutes left in his time slot.
“Ok, look, buddy,” she sighed heavily, genuinely trying to help him. “Do you have a newsletter? Socials? Anything with engagement?”
He looked at her, bewildered.
“I have engaged with a marlin for three days without food.”
Using only her eyeballs, Wormwood looked askance at Quill and Ink, down in her purse. They had fallen sound asleep—perhaps due to the ebb and flow of the man’s voice. She dearly wished she could join them.
“This guy!” Harley whispered to Tanya. “I thought the last guy was off his rocker, but this dude is seriously in love with the ocean! Who would want to read a book like that?”
“I admit I may have been a bit hasty when I was interested in his book at first,” said Tanya. She noticed the steam coming out of Wormwood’s ears. “Ooh, she’s upset,” said Tanya. “What do you think she’s gonna say to him?”
They didn’t have long to find out. Wormwood exhaled through her nose, slowly. “Can I speak with you earnestly?”
“Everyone who speaks with me speaks with me earnestly,” The man smiled. He seemed to find some sort of humor in what he’d just said. Wormwood couldn’t fathom why, so she shook it off.
“I want to be constructive,” she began. “I was hoping the marlin was a metaphor for something I’d want to option. But you’ve made a four-hundred-pound fish into the single most expensive rewrite I’ve ever seen. The whole book is a man working phenomenally hard, alone, for something that gets eaten before he can show it to anybody.”
Far from looking insulted, the man became emotional. “Oh, thank God,” the man said, his eyes glistening as he fought back tears. “You get it. I’m so glad that you get it.”
Wormwood recoiled in horror as the man leaned forward across the table and took her hands in his, and looked deeply into her eyes, just as he had once looked into the heart of the sea. “Now I know that you truly see my work,” he said, “For that is the point.”
Leaning back as far as possible without being considered rude, and debating whether or not she should sick her chihuahuas on him, she whispered, “That’s what makes it so insulting that you handed it to me.”
Sensing her unease, the man took back his hands and settled back down into his seat.
She capped her pen. “You’ve written a novel about the futility of heroic effort, and then submitted it to a literary agent. Do you understand how frustrating this is not only to me, but to everyone who’s ever going to read this book?” She flipped it back across the table at him. “Not that anyone will, given your lack of social media presence.”
Tanya pressed her lips together, fighting a laugh. “She’s not wrong.”
“She’s a little bit wrong,” Harley whispered, snacking on some chips she had snuck in. “But she’s also, like, extremely right.”
“If you’re going to write a book,” said Wormwood, giving her final critical note, “at least bother to write a good one.”
The man considered this for a long moment, the way a man considers a swell before deciding whether it’s worth the fight.
“The sea, like my book,” he said finally, “is not always good. Sometimes it is only there. But to be there is ultimately what matters "
Wormwood took a deep breath in, and blew it out slowly through her pursed lips.
“One last question,” she ended. “Mostly because at this point, I’m curious.” She sized him up. “Why you? Why this book?”
The man stood, somehow understanding that his pitch time was coming to an end.
“Because the fish will not write it himself,” he simply stated.
Wormwood looked like she was hoping the entire book might get eaten by a shark.
The man continued. “The truth is that the fish—whether or not it gets eaten—is enough. It has always been enough. It will outlast both of us and it will not thank either of us for it. And so it must be what it is, and that is all it can be.”
Harley scribbled all of this down as fast as she could, despite not having any idea what it meant. “‘The fish is enough’ — I’m stealing that for my main character’s arc.”
“You cannot steal that,” Tanya hissed. “Not only is it his, but that man is visibly regretting every choice that led him to this table. Steal something that’s working!”
“Well, thank you for coming,” said Wormwood, ripping open a packet of sugar and dumping it into her coffee. “In the event that novellas about failure set on the open ocean ever somehow turn a profit—we’ll be in touch.”
Seemingly pleased and at peace, the man nodded once, and took his cell phone out of his burlap bag. 3 pairs of eyes stared at it, dumbfounded.
“Ah, what great news,” he said, nonchalantly. “The guys have scheduled an outing this weekend on the local lake. Fishing, beer, and talking about our greatest catches to our heart’s content. And who knows—maybe we’ll even catch a marlin.” He winked at Wormwood, knowing she wouldn’t appreciate the humor.
“That’s not how—does he know that that’s not how—” Harley sputtered.
“Shhhhhh,” said Tanya. “Let him exist in the way he needs to exist.”
Meanwhile, Wormwood leaned ever so slightly to the side and looked past the man, almost desperate to see who the next pitch would be.
In the chair by the door sat a small, straight-backed woman in a dress of faded white. Her hair was parted evenly and pulled back close, and her eyes were fixed somewhere off in the distance. Her hands were folded still in her lap around a thin sheaf of papers bound with string.
After a pitch like that, Wormwood was desperate. A sheaf of papers suggested poetry. God, did she need to hear some good poetry.
Barely taking the time to look back at the fisherman, Wormwood nodded once. “Best of luck getting a marlin, sir,” she said as she handed his book back to him. “I’m sure you’ll have a great weekend with your friends.”
As the man walked away, she took a personal moment, and took a deep drink of her coffee—eyes closed, humming to herself. Ten seconds later, she reopened her eyes, and seemed surprised to find the room was still there.
“Alright,” she said, adjusting her glasses and preparing for the lady in the stiff dress. “The lady with the poetry. You’re up! Next!”
***Read this and other stories for free on Lyon's Lair, a new free reading app that showcases great writing. Lyonslair.lovable.app17Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQXIcE9gW5o
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