 In 2000 Stephen King published his memoir/craft book "On Writing." Somewhere around the middle of that book he discussed his method of writing from a situation rather than a plot. As an exercise he then concocted a potentially suspenseful situation and invited those interested to "...write five or six pages of unplotted narration..." and send them to his website. I gave it a try and wound up beating the odds, much to my astonishment.It made me sincerely wish I'd spent a little more time proof-reading the piece ('week' for 'weak' arrggg!!!) or at least thought up a title. From October 2001 to the following summer the winning entries (typos and all) were posted on King's website. For the first few months there was a comment window attached to each story. My effort received a hundred or so "reviews," most of them on the positive side. My favorite was from Stephen King himself, who said: "Not bad..." then offered a mild critcism of the story's structure. I also got my name in zillions of newspapers, from The New York Times to The Kuwait Times, thanks to an Associated Press piece about the contest. That was fun while it lasted. So here's the story for anyone who's interested. I've added a title, fixed the typos, but left the structure alone. Ha! David froze, holding the tab of the Sleepy Time tea bag between his thumb and finger, the pouch hanging at the end of its string like a severed testicle. The voice on the answering machine belonged to his ex-sister-in-law, Marci. She was fourteen. "I heard mom talking on the phone," Marci went on, and it sounded like she was chewing a stick of gum. "Anyway, I don't think she plans to call you. Like you're out of it now? But I think you deserve a warning. So: you're warned. Bye!" The recording clicked off. David stood in front of the sink piled high with dishes, and for a moment he couldn't move. The sink was indicative of the whole house since his divorce, since Jackie left. Besides the dishes there was laundry, clean and dirty, strewn across the sofa. Giant dust kitties prowled the hardwood floors. Mold in the shower, and some kind of super mold grew in the toilet. Katie's toys occupied almost every square inch of floor space. Except for her favorite, a three foot long green snake which she seemed never to let go of, clinging to it like a shipwreck survivor hanging onto a floating piece of debris. He stared out the window above the sink. The backyard looked normal. The grass was too high, but even in the good years, what few there had been, he hadn't been big on yard work. Katie's swing-set stood out there washed in the rain, looking brand new. A footstep creaked on the floor above his head. David looked up, his mouth open as if that would help him hear. Was it really a footstep? It could have been the house settling. It could even have been his imagination. Between working full-time at the factory and taking care of his daughter it seemed like he never got enough sleep. Being a single parent was hard. He was tired all the time, so tired that he sometimes felt he was half dreaming the cheesy melodrama of his life. So maybe he heard a footstep upstairs, or maybe he was only afraid that he heard one. He dropped the tea bag in the sink and moved to the doorway into the dining room. He cocked his head, listening. But it wasn't what he heard, it was what he smelled that made his heart lug over in his chest. Bon Soir. Really, it had struck him as soon as he stepped in from the garage a few minutes ago. But it was so faint he had barely registered it. Now it seemed obvious and unmistakable. If it had been a sound it would have been a crash of cymbals. Jackie's favorite perfume. That goddamn scent. Jackie wasn't the only woman who wore it, of course. By way of a cruel coincidence, so did Marie, his girlfriend. As things had deteriorated at home, David had found himself leaning more and more on Marie, an office girl at the factory. And she leaned on him, too. They had a lot in common, bad marriages to difficult people and a deep sexual loneliness that both resisted alleviating in each other's arms. They had been "good." But what about the emotional affair they had conducted? David couldn't kid himself. He hadn't actually slept with Marie, but in a way that he was loath to admit, the sex was a mere formality, a coda to the accomplished fact of his infidelity. It was cowardly to claim, even to himself, that Jackie had driven him to her. And Marie wore Bon Soir. He inhaled it whenever he kissed her. (In their game of too-far-not-too-far, kissing had been on the borderland. Unless tongues became involved, at which point they had crossed the border without passports). Since his divorce became real, tongues were okay. But Marie was still married so they didn't sleep together. It was only a matter of time, though. Lately Marie had been dropping broad hints that sleeping with him was not such a taboo idea any more, and she just might surprise him one of these days. Definite footsteps creaked across the floor above him, and then someone was on the stairs. From where David stood, looking through the arch into the livingroom, he could see part of the handrail where the stairs came down to the entry, facing away from him. A pale hand appeared on that rail, sliding along it, and then Jackie came around the foot of the stairs and faced him. "There you are," she said. She was wearing some kind of green shift that stopped above the knees. It looked institutional. Her legs were naked, the knobs of her knees showing prominently. There was a red blemish near her left ankle, so vivid on her white skin it drew his gaze from across the room. "What are you doing here?" he said, his voice squeaking high on the second syllable of 'doing.' "Maybe I wanted to see what kind of pigsty my daughter was living in," she said. "What happened at the hospital?" She didn't answer him. Instead she started moving in his direction, and David's eyes flicked to her hands, which were empty, thank God. He had a visceral memory of the knife. He had come home one evening, late as usual, and his mouth cottony with the lies about over-time he was preparing to tell. Jackie had been waiting for him, sitting naked on the sofa, her ribs showing under deflated breasts, her eyes like a lemur's in the dim light. She had been at herself with a steak knife, cutting hash marks in her thighs like a condemned soul adding up the endless days in hell. He made to grab the knife, and she turned it on him, the blade slicing neatly through the web of skin between his middle fingers and then stabbing into his palm. She pulled it out, her eyes gleaming. Before she could stab him again he twisted down hard on her wrist. But there was no knife now. "I wanted to surprise you," she said. "But I guess I'm not the only one with big ideas." "What are you talking about?" She blinked, and it seemed to shuttle her thoughts onto a different line. "Where's Katie?" she asked. "Where's my baby?" She moved up to him as she talked, halting with her face only inches from his. She was nearly his height but almost cadaverously thin. He had made love to her hundreds of times. He remembered holding her hand in a movie one summer evening, laughing with her. "Well?" she said. "Katie's at a birthday party. I was going to take a nap." "That's idiotic," she said. "You're a grown man." She touched his cheek with cold fingers. "You know you made me crazy, David. Crazy. I really thought I was paranoid or something. I guess it goes to show you." She leaned in and kissed him on the corner of his mouth, then slipped past him and went into the kitchen. "I'm so hungry," she said. He heard the refrigerator open, bottles rattling in the door. "God," she said, "where's my baloney?" When she kissed him something had been missing: Bon Soir. Jackie wasn't wearing it. But the scent was present. Moving woodenly, David walked over to the foot of the stairs. Behind him, the sounds of Jackie rooting in the refrigerator for baloney, the only food he ever knew her to eat during the last two months of their marriage. A pair of black pumps lay at the foot of the stairs. They would have been the first things he saw had he entered the house by the front door instead by way of the garage. A few steps up a black skirt lay like a detached shadow. David let his gaze travel higher. After the divorce and Jackie's hospitalization, Marie had made a point of asking for a key to his house. She said it would be a good idea, in case he ever needed her to be there for Katie. You had to have an emergency person. Marie wanted to be his emergency person. He began climbing the stairs, his legs heavy and weak. Her blouse lay in the hallway of the second floor, one unbuttoned sleeve draped over the top riser. He had to stop, try to gather his strength. He knew what he would find if he continued on. Marie's stockings and bra would be in the hall, and then outside his bedroom door her lacy panties. He knew because that was exactly the surprise Marie had promised him. But he didn't think he could make it all the up the stairs, let alone down the hall to his bedroom. His legs were so weak, he was probably going to have to sit down right where he was. From the kitchen Jackie shouted: "Did you eat it all or what!"
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