The Unfinished Manuscript

The Newsroom

Chris Jones spoke into the microphone, surrounded by the cameraman, dressed in a well-pressed suit and tie, wearing his dark brown hair slicked back and a touch of powder on his face to enhance his complexion.

“And...action!”

“The bestselling suspense novelist, Frank Salisbury, has gone missing. No one knows whether the man is alive or dead. He’s been gone since January 1, when he’d planned to come home, according to his husband, Carlos Santos.”

He went for a trip to Jamaica and was said to have returned to New York City on an American Airlines flight on January 1, yet he has not returned home for months now. Roy Connors is the police officer who has been informed of the situation, yet we have not yet found anything out of the ordinary.

Then, in a forcefully loud voice, Chris Jones stated: “Is Frank Salisbury holed away somewhere, locked into a room, finishing his much-anticipated manuscript, or has something more sinister happened to the famed author?”

That night, Chris Jones entered his modest apartment—he’d chosen to save a few dollars, determined to become a millionaire before 40—to a mountain of shopping bags from Victoria’s Secret, Tiffany’s, and nearly every other store in New York City.

He rummaged through the bags before his wife entered the rather small kitchen, determined to find the receipts, but he couldn’t.

“TINA,” he shouted without bothering to say hello.

“TINA!!! How much did this f*****g cost?”

“Do you really need to know, Chris? You want me to look good for our interview with Ohara tomorrow, don’t you?”

She flashed a smile.

“Certainly,” the man answered begrudgingly before sitting his ass firmly on the small leather couch and watching the pathetically old television he’d purchased in an effort to save money—he and his wife clearly had different priorities.

He thought to himself before guzzling a six-pack of Miller Lite and dozing off on the couch, pretending he’d forgotten to take off his shoes out of spite.

Tina Jones huffed to the bedroom and hung up the many items she had purchased with her husband’s money in an effort to make a point: She was a housewife, forever tamed, and the one thing she could do to irk her husband when he didn’t spend enough time with her—which was always—was to spend the man’s hard-earned cash, attempting to drain his account of seemingly endless resources.

He had long made a point of making his wife, who came in second in the Miss America pageant when she was in her twenties, feel small and hideous, so she spent his money in order to fill the gaping hole that had rapidly formed in her chest soon after they’d married.

In fact, she had told him for many years that she only spent his money, which he had earned working suspiciously late nights, because she wanted to look presentable for her increasingly demanding husband—ashamed to be seen with her in public—and he had reluctantly believed her, determined to pretend that he was happily married, if only in well-lit photographs.

Roy Collins, the police officer, had spent his youth attending Ku Klux Klan rallies in Texas, and he still remembered the flames of the bonfires fondly, and the chanting of what many would see as the most despicable word of the English language as he saw a black man, hanging from a tree with a noose around his neck, blood gaping from it.

He’d smiled as he’d seen the light leaving the man’s eyes.

In fact, Roy Connors had been in the papers not too long ago, in an article with the headline “RACIST COP FOUND ATTENDING KU KLUX KLAN RALLY.”

Chad Brunswick had followed the man, driving to the stix in a blue Chevrolet truck determined to get his hands on a good story, even if that meant risking his life in the process. He’d held out his camera behind a tree and had even managed to film Roy taking off his white cap after he’d entered the vehicle.

It appears that Roy Collins has been a longstanding member of the Ku Klux Klan and we have reason to believe that he still attends these rallies when he’s off the clock and no one is watching, shouting words too hateful to repeat here.

Three black men had been lynched that night.

That had been the last line of the article.

Admittedly, it was rather poetic.

Roy had thought to himself after putting it down.

It was beyond him why he’d been the one who was responsible for discovering the whereabouts of Frank Salisbury. He hadn’t bothered to investigate the case any further, praying every night by the light of a bonfire on the outskirts of New York City that the man had been brutally lynched, for he genuinely believed that anyone of African descent did not qualify as one of God’s children.

***

Chris Jones wants to unwind after his wife’s usual retail therapy and the couple goes to see Matthew Weisser.

As they enter the show and get front-row seats, they sit next to one another in complete silence, so much tension between them that one could cut it with a knife.

After what seems like an eternity, a rotund elderly gentleman with a bald head, gleaming in the light and a grey handlebar mustache— twirled and waxed to within an inch of its life—enters the stage.

“Hey there, Matthew Weisser here. Thanks for coming to the show, e’erybody!” he said with an extravagant southern twang.

“Don’t ya hate the damn women’s rights movement?”

He chuckled.

“We had it so damn good when y'all just cooked and cleaned. We could just cheat and work witht the secretary and ya’ fuckin’ needed us, gals. Now ya’ don't need us anymore. What the hell do ya’ want us to do, huh? Just here and shut up? Hell no. Stop f*****g workin’! Ya don’t need to work. My wife, Linda, she just sits at home and cooks and cleans. Don’t even need a maid!

He grinned.

Chris Jones was laughing louder than anyone, snorting and slapping his knee at the man’s apparent wit.

Tina sat next to him in stone-cold silence, a fire of rage in her stomach threatening to escape through her lips, her jaws clenched as her hands formed into fists, preparing to punch the man in the face so he would be forced to shut his mouth.

Then, Matthew Weisser launched into his next decidedly offensive joke, believing it was his job as a comedian to be risque with his humor, not bothering to check his privilege at the door as many feminists and civil rights activists had challenged to so many times, asserting that his humor was an illustration of nothing but toxic masculinity and white male privilege in a simultaneously lighthearted and dismissive manner.

"Don't ya think the police ought to kill more of the coloreds? I for one am furious that they haven't!"

Tina's jaw dropped. She got up and stormed out of the theatre, which was packed with a crowd of white men roaring with laughter at the comedian's ignorant and harmful remark. She then summoned a taxi, which she purchased with her husband's money in yet another attempt to slight him.

Later that night, Chris Jones came home, red in the face and hoarse in the throat from laughing to see his wife passed out next to an empty bottle of Pinot Noir, lying spread-eagled in the middle of their queen-sized bed.

Scratching his head, he promptly decided it would be most prudent for him to retire onto the couch, oblivious as to why his uptight wife had found the comedian's act even remotely offensive.

They were just jokes after all. She really needed to loosen up!

When she woke up, she saw an ad that their only son—Ricky Jones—was performing.

When they'd first gotten married, they'd agreed to adopt Ricky Jones with his dark skin and decidedly "white" haircut.

The kid had spent most of his life making the decision to pursue a career in comedy in an effort to foster laughter using the pain he'd endured on a daily basis growing up with n alcoholic father and a self-absorbed mother, unable to find the woman who had actually given birth to him. Unfortunately, his jokes were intentionally anti-political and he'd found a niche for himself in the entertainment industry while tarnishing the family name.

Tina was adamantly proud of her so, attending gigs without her husband's permission, but Chris Jones refused to speak to him, furous at the many jokes that compromised his forcefully polished reputation in the public eye, which he had meticulously fabricated for many years.

As usual, Chris Jones had work to do in the morning, which always took precedence over domestic matters, but Tina snuck out that night, in need of some decompression and cathartic relief through Ricky's clever insights while Chris spent the evening poring over newspapers, supposedly though she had a strong suspicion he was sleeping with his secretary—Melissa Smith.

Tina howled at her son's jokes that night.

"Damn police are always finding black men in their cars and pulling them over, determined to f*****g shoot them? They're probably just insecure because their d***s are, generally speaking, so much smaller, so they feel super threatened sexually."

The crowd roared with laughter.

Tina went home to an empty bed—her husband was working late again, apparently, or at least that's what he'd told her.

She fell into a deep slumber, sleeping better than she had in years, her heartstrings tingling with pride for the son her husband had disowned.