Ice and a Curious Man

CHAPTER 1 ‘I might get the fingers to start turning flips and the language will spill like some 5 gallon box of wine’ Excerpt from ‘Ugly People’ by Shane Helnsley It’s not as if she had anything better to do for the next month of her life — just writing a bunch of redundant articles and reviews on the local music scene in St. Louis. It wasn’t that she hated her job at ‘Room’, a small, alternative entertainment paper, but it really had become tedious. Her nights would typically be spent attending shows, which never left her any time to finish her current novel. Finish... that was funny. She had never gotten past jotting down a few notes long hand in a cheap pharmacy notebook. It was just an idea in its most embryonic stages. She knew, however, that if she had found the time, she would never get around to submitting it in anywhere, anyway. ‘Too many anys,’ she concluded. Then there was the perpetual hangover. A thick skulled feeling that she wasn’t altogether certain was caused by the loud music every damn night, or the drinking she felt she needed to participate in to tolerate it. Just an occupational hazard, she supposed, while she would continue to pound them back. Regardless, she had accepted this latest assignment and here she sat, in the back of a taxi cab headed for Lambert-St. Louis International Airport. She was so preoccupied with dreading the trip that she barely noticed when the car pulled up to the front entrance. She paid the unkempt and rather unsavory taxi driver and grabbed her laptop and bag off the seat. “Excuse me, Sir. What time is it?” “Mmmeahey forhee fi.” “Pardon?” she asked, but the car squealed away before she had a chance to hear him repeat his answer. She wasn’t even given the chance to close the car door properly. She reacted by shooting him the finger and hoping that he saw it in his rear view. “Asshole!” she mumbled under her breath. She had forgotten her watch in her rush to get out of the apartment on time, but forgave herself for allowing her impending terror to steal her organizational skills away from her. She was positive that her loss of wits was only temporary and the result of a mild phobic anxiety toward flying. Mild — that was the understatement of the week. She was already two Dramamines into the game and her head felt like she was witnessing the world through a snug fitting sandwich bag. Her flight was at five after nine in the AM and she had been warned to get to the airport at least one hour beforehand, preferably two. The largest of the clocks on the wall in the airport read eight fifty, meaning that the cabby’s “Mmmeahey forhee fi,” meant eight forty-five. She hurried at full gallop through the airport trying desperately to get a good hold of her luggage, but the bags kept slipping off her shoulder. She reached the counter huffing wildly, trying to ask for directions while catching her breath. The woman behind the desk directed her to the proper terminal with a one-dimensional smile and the overwhelming stench of cheap hair spray. Marren’s hurried pace had her forgetting just how horrified she was of flying, and before she knew it she was on the plane and settling in. She glanced around at all the safety blurbs, taking note of what each said, but wanting to ignore them the way everyone else was. Everyone else seemed so calm. Too calm. ‘You’re all just too f*****g calm,’ she thought. She pulled a compact out of her bag and checked her reflection. She didn’t look nearly as flustered as she felt. Her fire red hair was still neatly tucked away in its tidy ponytail. The minuscule amount of make-up she wore seemed in place and her flushed complexion from the rush only made her radiate a healthy looking glow. The flight attendant passed by and Marren asked when she would be able to get a drink. “Not until we’re in the air, Ma’am,” she said. Marren smiled at her pleasantly, not much liking the answer but accepting it readily enough. Still, she was fairly certain that all the passengers in first class could enjoy a drink whenever they damn well pleased. Probably had a glass of champagne offered to them upon boarding. Spoiled upper class brats. Her painfully polite smile fizzled off her face as the flight attendant moved on. Marren wished she had tripped the Barbie impersonator on her way by, but kept her thoughts silent. ‘Ma’am? I can’t believe she called me Ma’am. Hey lady, I look way younger than you do. And MY t**s are REAL. Christ, why did I take this job?’ She knew very well why she took this job. It was an opportunity to break into a larger market. One published novel didn’t deliver nearly as much recognition as she had hoped and working for ‘Room’ wasn’t her idea of an exceptional stepping-stone in her writing career. She was still tightly wedged into a dollar more than minimum wage, and still a nobody. At first, she was thrilled that a large national publication wanted to hire her. ‘Literary Today’ was no small potatoes — it was the big boy of its kind. The bad ass of literary magazines. Gavin Preston, the Editor in Chief, called Marren himself, asking to meet with her. She agreed. How could she not? She wasn’t crazy. Even if he had her mistaken for someone else, which she felt had to be the case, she jumped at the chance for a meeting. She went to his big chic office and he quickly sat her down and then flung the proposition on her. She asked him if he was sure he had the right person and he assured her that he did; he then offered her the job again. This time it hit her like a pillowcase full of doorknobs and she wasn’t even able to form words in response. She just sat there staring at him, her jaw too frozen in shock to even dangle stupidly. After several long moments, she began to stutter, “I... I...”, but he interrupted her. “I know this must come as a bit of a surprise.” He smiled. “Why don’t you take a couple of days and think on it. Get back to me when you’ve decided to accept.” She had met Preston a few years earlier when he wasn’t such a bigwig. It was some kind of awards banquet and Marren was only there as a favor to a friend who had been nominated for something or other and begged her to be his escort. She really couldn’t remember the specifics, nor did she care to. She didn’t remember it as one of the more pleasant chunks of her life. In any case, now Gavin was the head man at ‘Literary Today’. He was still as friendly and personable as she remembered him to be. One might expect such an esteemed title to spawn an egomaniacal transformation of startling proportions, but Gavin was a gracious as ever. As Preston suggested, she sat on his offer for a few days, then called to meet with him again. She went to his office for the second time and was treated like she was his best friend. She found the treatment odd, but didn’t question it. The proposition, or “assignment” as he called it, sounded kind of adventurous... exciting even, but that quickly wore off when Gavin mentioned the subject matter she would be investigating and writing about. She was to fly to Dillingham, Alaska, and get the full story on a reclusive poet named Shane Helnsley. She knew the name well. Shane Helnsley started at Oklahoma State University teaching English Literature and Poetry. Although his work refused to follow any of the rules he taught at the University, it was much sought after and he had a collection of his poetry published very quickly. He was rumored to have lost his mind and run off to Alaska with little else than the shirt on his back. This only made his work much more in demand. Unfortunately, over the years he very seldom released any new work to the public, prompting every interviewer and journalist in the country on their knees, begging his agent for some answers. They were usually just given some vague excuse or thrown a table scrap of old Helnsley work. Helnsley had apparently agreed to an interview just recently, but only under his own very strict conditions. This is where the whole idea gave Marren an extreme case of the willies. His conditions were that the writer was to come alone, bringing nothing but their writing tools. There was to be no recording equipment of any kind. No tape recorders. No cameras of any sort. And... the writer was to be the one of his choosing: Marren Lang. Why in the world would Helnsley choose her? She knew she had never met the man before. Not ever. She’d never even seen a picture of him. How had he heard of her? Gavin told her that he didn’t ask and didn’t know, “... but does that really matter? This is Helnsley we’re talking about.” Marren chewed on the inside of her lip for a moment, all the rumors about Helnsley thick and all consuming in her thoughts, and then opted to just blurt out her concerns. “I’ve heard that he’s... “ Gavin stopped her with an amused laugh and then proceeded to assure her that Helnsley was, in every sense of the word, a gentleman. “Well, how do you know that?” Marren asked. “If you don’t mind me asking.” “A colleague of mine has a friend that has met him several times,” Preston said, reclining back in his cushy leather chair. “Oh, how comforting,” she said. “His agent also assures me that he’s a very well mannered man.” “Really? Well, I kind of find that hard to believe,” Marren said. “All I have to go on are all those rumors I’ve heard and read.” “Most of them, Marren, are not true. He’s a brilliant man. He’s just very... secretive.” “Yeah. That was the mildest thing I heard.” “Don’t tell me,” Gavin started, holding his hand up. “You heard that he’s a dirty old man. Completely mad and bordering on psychotic. He’s John Merrick.” “Check. Check. And check,” Marren smiled, ticking her finger off on an imaginary clipboard. “No,” Gavin said, looking altogether too sure of himself to know what he was talking about. “Don’t worry. He’s a bit... how shall I say... eccentric, but very bondable.” “Bondable?” Marren laughed. “Interesting choice of words.” “For an interesting man. Actually, Shane Helnsley is a fascinating man and I think you’ll like him. Besides, this may be the one job that’s going to push your career into high gear. Do you know how many writers would kill to be in your position right now?” “I know. I know. It’s just weird,” she said waving her fingers around spookily. “I mean, why does he want me?” “His agent says he respects your work,” Gavin answered. “But I write reviews on bands... “ “I think he meant your novel.” “What would Shane Helnsley read a smutty romance for?” Marren asked, finding that airing her question out loud only made the whole idea sound that much more ludicrous. “Maybe he likes that kind of thing,” Gavin suggested. “In any case, Marren, I really must know if you are going to accept this assignment. It is, after all, up to you, but I really don’t think you should pass this opportunity up. I hate to make you feel rushed, but we need to make arrangements... you know, travel and what not. Helnsley’s agent is pushing for this to happen now, before Helnsley changes his mind.” * * * * The flight attendant picked up her microphone, asking for everyone’s attention, then began running down the safety instructions. It was, Marren supposed, the usual spiel. She wanted to listen, but her distracted mind only half heard what the attendant was saying. She was surprised to find that she was able to get through the take off without digging her nails into the arm of the businessman sitting next to her. Actually, it really wasn’t all that bad. Once they were in the air, she decided that it would probably be best to refrain from looking out the window until they were safely back on the ground. Just the thought of glancing out the window gave her a sticky feeling of vertigo. She went to close the window blind and got a glimpse of the sky outside. Her heart pounding hard in her chest, she took a closer look, only to see that it was beautiful, especially so above the clouds.