Almost

[PeterL]

This the first half of a story about which I am uncertain. Any opinion would be appreciated.

Almost, in a Coffee Shop

"It's slow in here this time of day, especially in Summer, just Jill and me and, usually, one or two of the people who do some work with their coffee. When it gets slow like this, I can sit back and review my little piece of the world. Mike's Coffee and Lunch may not be much, but it keeps me alive, and sometimes it's fun to run. Not much happens here. except breakfast, coffee, and sandwiches. The specialty coffee places and the fast food joints squeeze me, but some people still want plain bacon and eggs and an honest cup of coffee. Mike ran off at the mouth like this every time anyone let him. I don't mind much. I just grunt agreement now and then, and sometimes he doesn't charge for the coffee.
"It's only really busy for a couple of hours in the morning and from Noon to about 1:30, and I close up at 2:30. Yep, just breakfast and lunch." He continued.
I heard the door shut, and both of us turned to see who might have come in. A woman, dressed nondescriptly, walked to a back table where a man was working at a laptop and sat.
"Jill, John's waving from his table. He must be running low." Mike called to his waitress, who was at a table by the cash register stand a gazing blindly out the window. I guess she didn't want to listen to Mike all of the time.
"John's my resident novelist." Mike commented.
Before he got any further, Jill started back toward the counter, and Mike walked over to the coffee urn.
"Baklava for the lady and two coffees." Jill ordered.
"The lady? What lady?"
"The one who just came in and sat with John." Jill answered with a quizzical glance.
"Maybe I need glasses, but I don't see anyone else there. What's she wearing, camouflage?"
Jill just gave him a look and took the coffees and baklava to the table. As she approached John's table, the woman looked up from talking to John, glanced toward us, and smiled warmly at Jill, as she set down the coffee.
"Oh, yeah, It must have been the way she was sitting." Mike commented.
With that over, Mike went back to gabbing about his coffee shop. I went back to grunting agreement when it seemed appropriate, but I kept an eye on the woman sitting with John. She wasn't especially attractive; her mouth was too wide, but she had a nice smile, and her eyes didn't look right, but she looked interesting and pleasant. She seemed to blend in with the wood paneling, but I still don't see how even Mike could have missed her wavy, black hair.
After a while they left, and I decided to go do some work for a change.

Over the next few weeks, I regularly saw them at the corner table, talking and laughing, or John typing while she spoke. They became part of the late morning scenery, so I didn't pay much attention, except when she laughed in her musical way or told John, "Leave it in." She was about 5'7", usually leaning forward in the chair when she talked with John. She wore loose, neutral colored clothes that blended in with the background, any background, so it was easy not to notice her, except for her hair and the warm smile that she usually had.
When I was still there when she left, she never failed to look straight at me with a wide smile and wink. I wondered what the wink was for, but I enjoyed the smile.

Two

It was an ordinary Wednesday morning, I was sipping my third cup and listening to Mike run on about a baseball game, his team lost, when a fairly tall woman came through the door. She hesitated and looked toward the corner table. There was no one at the table. Then she turned toward the cash register, where Jill was sitting. She was pleasant to look at with light brown hair below her shoulders and a nice oval face; she wouldn't win a beauty contest, but I wouldn't complain. She sat down across from Jill and started gabbing excitedly. After a minute, Jill came to the counter and got coffees for the two of them.
"Ellie is really excited about what John is doing these days." She commented, then returned to where Ellie sat.
I could just barely make out what Ellie was saying to Jill, but it was more interesting than Mike's monologue.
"It's wonderful. John is so brilliant, and he isn't writing thrillers anymore. He's writing a beautiful, psychological novel with beautiful images, and fascinating people. And he's writing poetry again, just like when I met him. I think that it's about lost innocence, or something like that." Ellie gushed.
"I hope it's better than his thrillers. They were interesting, but not very thrilling, more like mysteries." Jill commented.
"Did he let you read the one about the plague?" She asked.
"Yes, I read most of that one."
"He worked so hard on that, but it didn't work right for him. If he keeps at what he's doing now, he'll have something wonderful. He didn't let me read much, but it was so sweet."
"Then in the bottom of the ninth with two out, they got a three run homer that ended the game." Mike continued.
I decided that it was time to get back to work and paid for my coffee.

[PeterL]

This is the second half.

Three

A couple of weeks later, I was having my ten o'clock coffee, my report from the last consultation was finished, and I didn't have another until three in the afternoon, and Mike was in the kitchen. Ellie came in. This time she looked lost. She looked toward the table where John usually sat. It was empty, so she turned toward the table by the cash register stand where Ellie sat and went there and sat with Jill.
"Have you seen John today?" She asked as soon as she sat.
"Not today, Ellie." Jill answered. "What's up?" She asked. "Coffee?"
"Please." She replied, and Jill came to the counter, filling her cup along with Ellie's.
Ellie poured in cream and three spoons of sugar before taking a sip. Then she started to talk.
"I'm getting worried. He used to spend most mornings here, writing, but he's been taking rides to different places, and he's been going around talking to himself. He has an imaginary friend, that he calls Thena. I think that he's losing it. He's taking his invisible friend everywhere, and the invisible friend is telling him more than just what to write. She's telling him all kinds of things, how to live his life, how to treat me, what to wear, where to go.
"At first I thought that the invisible friend was another way for him to think about characters and whatever, but he's acting as if she really is there. He has long conversations with this invisible friend. I don't know what to do.
"He used to chatter with me about what he was writing, but he's doing something different, and the invisible friend is working on it with him, and he hasn't told me anything about it."
"I don't know what you should do either. If he really is cracking up, he'll have to see a shrink, but it might just have to do with what he's writing." Jill said.
It went on like that with Jill sounding sympathetic, when she could get a word in. Eventually Ellie finished her coffee and left. Hmmm, I wondered: Is Ellie even more blind than Mike?

Four

I was about to leave, so it must have been close to eleven, when John's lady-friend came through the door. Her face was red, either from anger or crying or both. She stopped brieshe fly just inside the door and looked around, then marched toward the counter. There were file folders in her left hand.
As she neared the counter, I could see that it was both, and she was still close to crying.
"Not here either." She quietly screamed. She turned toward Jill and Mike and said. "I think he finally went 'round the bend. He disappeared. He didn't come home last night. This morning I found this on his desk." Shaking the papers in her hand. "There was a note that says that he went away with his imaginary friend. And he printed out what he has been writing. Here, take a look. This is what his invisible friend had him write." She tossed the folders on the counter.
Ellie looked at me, held out a paper to me, and said. "You know about the law. Does this mean that I can sell these, if a publisher will buy them?"
I'm not a lawyer, but I have copyrighted enough things to know a little about copyright law, so I took the paper and read. It specified that John Peele granted all rights of ownership to Ellie for his written works Passages of the Gods and Almost. It looked like a writing that would pass the legal specifications of section 201, so she owned all rights to them, and I told her so, but I suggested that she see a lawyer and go through the formal registration process, just to be sure. While I was doing that, Jill was looking at one of the manuscripts and Mike was eyeing the other.
After a few minutes and half a cup of coffee, Ellie tried to smile and asked. "So what do you think?"
Jill made a face. Mike nodded and said. "I'm not the expert, but I can read it, and it makes sense. It looks like he is telling the story of writing that." He waved toward the folder that Jill had.
"This one is gooey poetry." Jill made a face again and slid the folder to me. "You can try it."
It said Passages of the Gods on the outside of the folder. I started at the beginning. It was bloody awful, endless quatrains of sweet, idyllic poetry with plenty of imagery about nothing in particular. I went to the middle, an it was more sweet, idyllic poetry about nothing. The last few hundred lines were more of the same. When I read a few thousand lines of verse, rhymed or not, I expect that it is imitation of an ancient epic or a similar modern versification. If it had just been about ordinary things, it might have been good, but this dog wasn't about anything: no plot, no characters, no theme, no nothing, except sweet imagery, scattered mythological references, and miscellaneous metaphors. A text randomizing program could have done as well. This is a typical sample.

Warm Sun smiling over the green sward,
Sweet Breeze sweeping over wood bench,
Europa on Zeus' unsheathed sword,
Smooth skinned was the well loved wench

Dinner flying over fluffy trees
Duck diving in wind riffled waters.
Fresh leaves float lightly on the soft breeze,
While rosebud pink nymphs flit through flowers.

Edited down to the best two hundred lines, it might have been readable, but this was quite enough to make even a Vogon puke.
Mike was starting to get ready for the lunch crowd, and I had completely blown the morning already, so I looked at Ellie, who was silently sobbing into her coffee, and I took the other folder. The title on this was Almost. This was vastly better. It was a straight forward account of how John had met Athena and been convinced to write that drivel. It wasn't that long, so I stayed for lunch and read all the way through. It looked like John had realized that. The poetry was pretty bad, but it was the experimental non-narrative that he was trying to write. He started with an interesting concept, worked it through, and discovered that it was a blind alley. It was a damned good story, but it wasn't quite finished. Maybe he'll finish it off when he returns.

After the last page was a piece of what felt like vellum or parchment with handwriting was inserted with this piece of blank verse.


AFTERWORD

Determined was he, writing to create
What was derived from no prior art,
Or craft, or ken; but everything by
Man or Gods created is built upon
All that has been built and dreamed before.
From the time when Grampa first invent'd Light
The lines here written could have been foretold,
But Grampa prefers to watch things play out,
Than calculate each wee cause and effect.
The story of the effort is better
By far than the sleepsome, honey'd, idylls
Ideal scenes, like sex, are better lived
Than read about in the words of another.
As for the author, you won't find him.
When he learned that I had fooled him,
To far parts he quickly fled, far from friends
And critics all. Look for him next Spring,
When embarrassment becomes dull with time.
Fool to think that I, funny Thalia,
Was actually the wise Athena.
We will laugh from this for eons to come,
But John will get due credit for his part.

So I will end here to spare the words and
spare the calves, you should know that all is well.

Thalia

[Nighteyes5678]

I'll get to this after class... ^_^

[Beautifull]

it is beautifull...
just keep writing and don't be so uncertain...i bet this is far better than mine...

i wonder what's going to happen next...