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They’d talked often after that, discussing plots and characters, coffee, and Kansas. She stopped thinking about serial killers altogether. In time, their conversations became so extended and regular that it was easier to work at the same table, companions in the necessary isolation of their work.
Theo stopped in at the Raven Bookstore, bought all the Dan Murdochs she could find on their shelves and ordered the rest. There was a total of six, and each night she stayed up to read as much as she could—something which Gus found amusing.
“You should make friends who don’t give you homework assignments, Theo.”
“Shut up, I’m reading.”
“Seriously…I know a bloke. Doesn’t find book reports the least bit attractive…though you may have to do something with your hair…”
“Gus! Leave me alone.”
“All right, but if you don’t get a passing grade, let me know, and I’ll give Mac a call.”
Theo ignored him. She liked Dan Murdoch’s books—they were dark and exciting, and every now and then there was a sentence or a passage that was so beautiful that she could languish in it. She felt like she was getting to know him as much through his work as his company. Though increasingly she preferred his company. On those days she arrived at Benders early, Theo found herself watching for him, and on those infrequent days he didn’t come, she missed him.
Occasionally, there was an unexpected influx of patrons to Benders—students celebrating some varsity win or an office party. On those days, Dan and Theo would give up their table and find another refuge, where they were often welcomed by that establishment’s unofficial writers in residence. In the Bourgeois Pig, on Ninth Street, Meg was writing her memoirs; in Aimee’s Coffeeshop, Larry was working on his third novel; and an entire writers’ group met regularly a few blocks away at Alchemy on Mass Street. While Theo cherished the camaraderie of this network of refugees, she was happiest at Benders, where it was just her and Dan, and the words seemed to come more easily.
Dan appeared to fall effortlessly, even enthusiastically, into the role of mentor. He was generous with his experience and, over the months that followed, progressively more candid. He told Theo stories about writings gone wrong and explained his own techniques. Occasionally, he would take her on what he called a “field trip” to show her a building or a statue or even a tree that he thought might help her add a sense of place to her work. In this way he showed her Lawrence, adding his own potted history and observations to the details he brought to her notice. Through the longer days of summer, their walks extended for hours, along the Burroughs Trail, or crossing the bridge to North Lawrence along the levee in what became something of a peripatetic tutorial.
When she was struggling with a scene set beside the Murrumbidgee River in the Molonglo Valley near Canberra, Dan took her to the banks of the Kaw.
“My story’s set in Australia.” Theo pointed out the obvious.
“It doesn’t matter where the water is. It’s the details, how the light hits the surface of the water, the smell of it, the sound of the water birds that give your writing place. It makes no difference if the place is real or one you made up… In the end it’s only got to exist in the reader’s imagination.”
Despite the great many hours in conversations during which Theo felt she was laying her soul bare and confiding her greatest hopes and fears for her writing, Dan Murdoch was, about his current work in progress, evasive. Theo observed him typing, of course, but he offered very few and only the vaguest details. She did not question him, though she did hope that he would eventually confide in her as she did in him. She hinted occasionally, to no avail. While Dan seemed infinitely interested in what and how she was writing, he remained reluctant to speak about his own work. In time, Theo came to accept that he did not need or want her feedback. The realization was made without her feeling offended or hurt. He was after all a renowned author—there probably wasn’t a great deal of insight a newly minted, aspirant writer could offer him.
Consequently, Theo was startled when he turned his laptop around to show her the sites on the web that he was trawling for ideas, the conspiracy theorists he followed as a form of research.
“You can’t be serious,” she said reading, unsure whether to laugh or be terrified. “This is ridiculous.”
“But you’re reading it.”
“Frankenstein? And zombies… They must be crazy—”
“Maybe, but it’s a less absurd than lizard people.” He laughed softly. “You wouldn’t believe how many people believe that the Clintons, the Bushes, even your Queen Elizabeth are shape-shifting lizards.” He tapped the screen. “The folks who come up with this stuff know how to write a story.” He smiled as she scrolled down to read more. “They build worlds that have just enough basis in reality to be plausible—okay, maybe not plausible but internally consistent. It’s like one of those write-your-own-adventure stories.”
“And you get ideas from this?” Theo asked skeptically.
“Ideas…inspiration…motivations, even characters…” He directed her to the comments and discussion forums. “You can check the success of a conspiracy narrative by the reactions here… It’s like a focus group.”
“But you can’t just take someone else’s theory…that’s plagiarism.”
Dan laughed. “These people believe the government is stealing dead bodies to make new people… I’m not sure the intellectual property in their paranoia will be their primary concern.”
Theo glanced at a posted pledge to shoot the body-snatchers. “I don’t know that I’d be making any assumptions about what these people might think is important.”
“I don’t take the actual theories,” he assured her. “I just use them to understand what makes a narrative work.” He pointed out a couple of posts that had incited mockery or been ignored. “See…some don’t fly. I’m interested in what it is about the theories that do take off that makes people committed to them. It doesn’t seem to have anything to do with logic or plausibility.”
Theo nodded, still reading. It was weird, but he was right. “What does WKWWK mean?” she asked. The acronym appeared at the end of several posts.
Dan grinned. “We Know What We Know.”
“From Hamilton?”
He nodded. “It binds those who follow Primus and subscribe to the Minotaur theory. The few who recognize it as a Hamilton quote assume that Lin-Manuel Miranda is one of them, possibly the Founding Fathers too.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense. Why would—”
