“Present.”
“The faucet on your finances shuts off in twenty-one days. Tick-tock.”
“I know, Mom.”
“You haven’t had a single interview, have you?”
“I’m close. Really close. I can feel it.”
“Mmh. You know how many times we’ve heard that before?”
“I know. But this time it’s actually true.”
“Just a couple more months. Give some poor literary agent enough time to read the manuscript and sign the deal. Then that’s it. I’ll disappear. You’ll be free. You can change your name and move to a different state, like people in witness protection.”
“Twenty-one days. After that, we’ll really forget about you. Not out of cruelty—it’ll help you become a functional member of society.”
“Mom, even Jack London used to sleep on the street. And look at him now! In every bookstore.”
“Twenty-one days. Three weeks. Tick-tock.”
Silence.
Then: “Okay, Mom.”
“Your father sends a big kiss. So do I.”
“Hugs to both of you.”
“Good luck, sweetheart.”
“Thanks.”
The moment I hung up, I threw myself across the desk like an action heroine diving onto a bomb to save the world. Only instead of a bomb, it was my glorious typewriter. That conversation—humiliating as it had been—had somehow cleared the fog in my brain. My synapses lit up like clearance-sale Christmas lights. I knew exactly what my novel’s protagonist had to do.
Because this was life, right? And life boiled down to one single, brutal, indisputable truth: money. Forget love, justice, redemption. It had always been about that. The key was greed. And it was perfect. The ideal ending for the Great American Novel: a choice not noble, but human. A decision driven by cash.
After pages and pages of life, death, love, hate, illness, redemption, and every twist in the book… what was waiting at the end of the existential tunnel? A suitcase full of money.
Perfect. Bitter, but right.
I felt every gear in the plot click into place like a safe unlocking. Subplots weaving together into a perfect spiderweb.
My fingers moved faster than my thoughts. My hands on the keys felt possessed. The typewriter clattered like an old-school machine gun. Clack clack clack clack. It was war. And I was winning.
I didn’t even need to read it back.
I knew: it was perfect.
Full stop. New line. Genius.
I looked at the stack of pages on my desk. There it was. My masterpiece.
So quiet… almost innocent. And yet inside that stack was a hurricane’s fury, years of sweat, my soul wrapped in paper form.
I stood slowly, still staring at it like it might try to run away. There was something deeply wrong about stuffing it into an envelope and mailing it across the country, hoping some underpaid intern would give it a glance. It would be like capturing King Kong and packing him into a shipping crate labeled “Fragile.”
No. No, no, no. Whoever discovered King Kong didn’t stick him in a box. They went with him. Put a hand on his furry shoulder and brought him to New York in person—with a proper dramatic entrance.
