James turned on the water until it was good and hot. A mist clouded the mirror. He wiped it clear with a towel.
He stared into the mirror. Nothing stared back.
The Growth of Alan Ashley
BILL GAUTHIER
One of the goals of the Borderlands series is to discover new writers. Although Bill Gauthier tells us he’s sold a few pieces to some small press ’zines, we fully intend to claim him as our discovery. If his first appearance in hardcover is any indication of how good this guy is going to be, we know you’ll be looking for him in the future. (And by the way, his Mom is really proud of him, too …)
A
t five-thirty, his alarm clock’s radio came on and the radio personality spoke to a caller about world affairs. Alan Ashley’s eyes popped open. What day was it? Wednesday. The interview! The morning show began at seven. His segment was supposed to be at 7:30, right after they came back from commercial and local news. Alan’s new book had just been released and was already predicted to be the rage this season, every bit as popular as his movie this past summer. He looked forward to speaking with the morning show anchor again.
Alan noticed the growth near his right ear while shaving. A smooth bump that resembled a blister but would not pop. He ignored it, finished getting ready, and left the apartment.
He drove himself to the studio where the morning show was aired. Traffic was bad and he was afraid he’d be late. Alan entered the building and went to the elevator. He blocked out everything around him, though. The morning show was done at ground level so the crowds outside could watch. The elevator stopped on the fourth floor and Alan stepped out.
“We need that report by eleven, Alan,” the producer said, too busy to stop and formally greet him.
Report. Must’ve been talking to the newswoman before Alan arrived and had mixed up
report
with
autographed books.
Alan sighed and walked toward the green room. It was rather small, considering how popular the morning show was and how many guests were usually on, but Alan didn’t complain. He plopped his briefcase down.
(When had he picked it up?)
It has a new manuscript for your editor in it.
(Yeah, that’s good.) and flicked on the computer. He looked over the walls of the cubicle—
green room
, he corrected himself—and saw no one. His watch said 7:30 and he sat.
The morning show anchor waited for the signal and began with the intro. A few seconds later, Alan was on, chatting with the anchor. It was amazing that this book, just like his last one, was selling off the shelves. How could he explain it?
“I can’t,” Alan said, looking at his shoes, fashionably modest. “I just write the best story I can.”
The anchor smiled, amazed, and asked about whether the success of the latest movie might have had an influence.
“It’s possible, I guess,” said Alan. “The thing is, though, I don’t really notice. It’s as though I’m two people sometimes. One worries about the movies, one about the books.”
The morning show anchor reminded Alan that he’d also acted and produced, as well as directed the movie.
“I guess, then, there’s more than two—” Alan began to say when movement out of the corner of his eye made him turn.
Gina stood at the opening of the cubicle, a tote bag dangling from her shoulder, her jacket still on. Her eyes were wide as she stared at Alan, a bemused smile on her face.
“Who’re you talking to, Alan?” she asked.
His right leg, which had been resting on his left knee, dropped. The thing near his ear itched and Alan scratched at it, his face heating up. He looked at the clock in the corner of his computer monitor. 7:37 AM. He’d expected Roland—the producer—to be here, but no one else usually got here until closer to eight. Especially Gina, who had the cubicle beside his. She continued staring at him, expectantly.
“I was thinking aloud,” he said.
Her stare didn’t falter. Neither did the bemused smiled. “About movies and books?”
“Yes.”
“And you write what you can?”
It felt as though his heart, stomach, testicles—
everything
—turned to concrete and fell.
“It looked like you were talking to someone,” she said. “Like you were being … interviewed.”
Alan was on his feet before he realized he was going to stand, and he reached out, hands trembling.
“
Please
,” he whispered. “
Please
don’t say anything to anyone. Sometimes I—I—”
Gina shook her head and stepped toward her cubicle. The smile was gone, replaced with something else. “Calm down, Alan. I won’t say anything.”
“My career, my life, would be ruined. Please—”
“I said I wouldn’t say anything. I won’t.”
She disappeared behind a cubicle partition. Alan thought about following her, making sure she wouldn’t say anything to anyone, but didn’t. Instead, he sat and his thumb went to his mouth to be gnawed. It was bound to have happened sooner or later. Reality, like a giant monster from an old Japanese monster movie, destroys everything at some point. He’d had to hide these lives for twenty years, since the kids in seventh grade began making fun of him for acting out his stories outside. Something he’d spent his life doing all of a sudden taken from him.
No!
a voice in his head demanded.
Stay focused. Roland wants that report by eleven, do it by ten. Go out for lunch. You have a meeting with Scorsese about his new movie.
Alan tried to push the voice away as he wheeled his chair closer to the computer. He realized his wet, bleeding thumb was no longer in his mouth, but near his ear. His hand rubbed at the growth. He made a mental note to keep an eye on it.
T
hough the lunch meeting with Scorsese went very well (the great director wanted
Alan
to play a hitman in his next movie … time permitting, of course) Alan’s heart sunk as he walked past Gina’s cubicle. He stopped and stepped back, looking in. The photographs, art magazine clippings, all personal affects were gone. The back of his neck prickled with the feeling of eyes on him. Alan turned. He barely glimpsed Gina and Francine’s heads disappearing behind a partition several cubicles away. Then came the sound of laughter trying to be suppressed. Alan’s eyes went to the floor and he went back to his cubicle. He spent the rest of the afternoon trying to work, though he swore he could feel the eyes of many people looking at him. A disturbance in the Force, perhaps.
Your adoring fans,
the voice reassured him.
A
lan watched Larry King and Charlie Rose. He watched Letterman and taped Leno. He watched Conan O’Brien and taped Craig Kilborne. Lying in bed after the shows, listening to talk radio, he watched light travel across his ceiling from cars speeding up and down the street. The thing near his ear had gone from itching to burning, but not too bad. It was there but he’d become used to it.
The voices from the radio alarm clock didn’t penetrate Alan’s mind, not this night. He remembered the look Gina had given him. That smile—no,
smirk
. He remembered that smirk. He’d seen it in school as a boy and then as a teenager. That smirk that people gave to someone who was strange to them, outside their narrow view of the world and how it should be. Someone who didn’t fit the “typical” mold. The Phantom of the Opera or Quasimodo or even Carrie White. He swore he’d never see that look again. Yet, here he was, fifteen years after high school, eleven after college, having been looked at like that again. The shell that had been so carefully built around him, that had protected him those long study hall periods and gym classes, that had comforted him after girlfriends had found the notebook with the movie lists and poster designs he’d made and noticed the dates, that shell with its intricate ornamentation had been taken down years ago. He’d realized he’d never meet a woman with his kind of imagination. Never. They’d never truly understand him. That was fine, he could live with that. But now, when he was supposed to be safe, supposed to be okay with himself, that goddamn motherfucking
look
.
Alan sat, tossing his legs off the side of the bed. The growth felt bigger to him but he ignored it as his overactive imagination, hypochondria. It worked both ways, imagination did. The thing that could produce great Art—films, music, literature, paintings, sculptures, and so much more—could also be the genesis of fears, anxieties, paranoia. The radio personality asked him about the rumors of the new Scorsese movie on the heels of the novel’s selling more copies than anyone ever had in one week. Alan opened his mouth, ready to answer and stopped. This wasn’t right. For Christ’s sake, it wasn’t right. He was thirty-two years old and should
know
better. It was purer if he kept the fantasies separate. A movie actor/writer/producer/director, that was fine. A novelist/screenwriter/and sometimes-maybe-if-they-let-me director was fine. But not together. Sure there were those people who lived those lives, but it was better to separate them.
The growth near his ear burned and itched but it faded as Alan Ashley, novelist, chatted about his new novel. He
was
on a book tour, after all.
T
hursday and Friday passed. Both days were hell for Alan. He went to work early, just as he always did, and felt the change in the office as Thursday progressed. There were whispers. People seemed to pass by his cubicle more often than normal, peeking in as they went like people new to cubicle work often did. The voice in his head told him it was because they’d heard his radio interview this morning on their way to work but Alan tried to ignore the voice. Also, the growth was larger.
More of the same on Friday. Alan hoped the weekend would quiet the whispers down. Maybe being away for two days, getting on with their lives, they’d forget about what Gina had seen and reported.
Gina. That lying bitch. She said she wouldn’t say anything. That fucking lying cunt. He had the mind to—
To what?
the voice asked.
You want to go down in history like Fatty Arbuckle, O.J. Simpson, and Robert Blake?
Alan calmed himself.
Throughout Friday, it felt as though the growth were on fire. The pain pulsating from it seemed to send a high pitch buzzing through Alan’s head until his brain ached. The afternoon was a waste. Nothing got done. He touched the mouse slightly every time the screensaver came up, but never actually did anything. No reports were written, nothing was analyzed. Yet, he forced himself to stay later than everyone else so he wouldn’t have to go through the nightmare he’d gone through Thursday, of standing in an elevator with his coworkers as they smirked, stealing glances at him through the corner of their eyes.
He got home Friday night and crashed on the couch. He watched the
E! True Hollywood Story
marathon. Maybe it was time to end the fantasies. Maybe it was time to grow up and stop living false lives, begin living a real one.
But how do you want to go out?
the voice in his head asked.
Who does what?
The musician was mostly dormant unless a really good song came on the radio, so he would be easy. The writer would be tough right now and so would the actor/producer/director.
Alan stood, took his Springsteen CD, and put it on. He rocked to it, rocked to Aerosmith and Billy Joel. He ended with Elton John and then waved to the audience. By the time he got to the limo, reviewers were hailing this first concert of the tour the best concert he’d ever given. He played and performed as though there were no tomorrow. One reviewer even wrote that they didn’t know how he’d be able to make a whole tour with that kind of energy. However, Alan the musician wouldn’t need to worry. The private plane he was on went down in Idaho. The famous rock ’n roll musician, Alan Ashley, was dead at thirty-two.
T
he writer took to drinking. There was no booze in Alan’s apartment, he couldn’t hold it, but there was plenty of Diet Pepsi. At a benefit, Alan drank. He was supposed to speak that night and he went to the podium. The growth’s burning, itching, humming, was almost too much to handle and Alan suspected he felt like a real drunk.
“Thank you for inviting me to speak to you this evening,” Alan said, trying hard not to slur his words but knowing they would still come out that way. “I just got word, tonight, that my book has sold more copies in such a short period of time than any other book by any other author. Maybe I celebrated too early. Fuckit.”
Alan went on for almost two hours. He babbled about the life he’d created for this fantasy, how he’d run with street gangs and had gotten secret access to all sorts of lifestyles. He talked about the art of writing and the commerce of publishing. He went on until he finally passed out. Alan lay on the worn carpet, the growth pointing toward the ceiling. It ached. Throbbed. Sent out waves of sound through his head. He pushed himself off the floor, went to the bathroom, and looked in the mirror, staying in character. How had he gotten to his hotel room? What had he said that night?