It was his eighth year at the state university extension campus as lecturer. He had no complaints about money, but he wasn’t popular with students, even by the lesser standards of this educational backwater. Although constantly on the verge of being let go, his job was safe this semester with nine fresh faces. While his teaching career was in jeopardy, his writing ambitions had faded completely.
Publishing a novel while still in grad school, he was elated with his promise, but it went nowhere. Still believing in his potential, he welcomed the teaching position but resented the imposition on his time, time he needed to write. Nothing came after that first flourish, and he hadn’t written a paragraph of fiction in years. Now he couldn’t even kid himself about how anything was keeping him from his craft. He went from writing, to writing while drinking, then gave up the writing part, slipping from writer-professor to professor-writer to professor, and currently a complete failure.
His least favorite question in the world was, “Working on anything new?” As his pen dried up, he felt like too much of a drunken fraud to maintain the bohemian artist façade, preferring drinking companions who knew nothing of his literary pretensions.
This new student was different. Alice was exceptionally intelligent, and the girl could write. God damn, she could write—a first among all his students. The other kids couldn’t write two coherent sentences worthy of a greeting card. The first story Alice turned in was brilliant, although he gave her a B, not wanting her to think he was too impressed. In fact, he was struck blind with jealousy, advising her to hold off on publishing it.
“Wait until you have more, because they always ask for more.”
No one knew better than Jenkins about not having more. He felt his first clumsy novel would pave the road to success. His second unfinished attempt at a book was less clumsy but had nothing at all to say.
None of his other pupils ever had a prayer at getting published, or so thought their bitter writing guide who had a book in print. That’s what helped him to maintain his condescension, although his perch eroded with every passing semester of not publishing. Writers wrote. He didn’t. He couldn’t.
Alice came to him after class and asked if he’d read her novel.
“I’ve never showed it to anyone, never even mentioned it to my friends. I’m too scared.”
He told her he was busy, but to send it.
He started reading it the moment he received the file and finished it in one sitting over pints at his pub. It was the best thing he’d ever read, and he wanted it. He’d make it his. When she prodded him about it a week later, he said he hadn’t had time, promising to get to it soon, all the while plotting.
“I have an exercise I want to run by you first, Alice, before presenting it to the class. Write a hand-written suicide note to honor great writers who took their own lives without leaving one behind. Make it as personal as you can,” he said. “A scary assignment, but useful.”
Alice presented him with a masterpiece, so perfect that it looked the part, ripped from her notebook of unlined paper, scribbled in red ink, and describing an unbridled anguish. She obviously had nothing to learn from him.
Her death came as a shock to the community. The note convinced authorities that her hanging didn’t warrant further investigation.
He got away with it.
“Dear Mr. Jenkins,
I regret that your project isn’t right for us. This is a subjective business; another publisher may feel differently. We wish you the best.”
His thirtieth rejection. Alice had sent out one submission query, to this same publisher. After sending out a boilerplate thumbs-down letter to Jenkins, the editor remembered a story she rejected months earlier. She found it easily as even the title was the same, as well as the word count. A couple mouse clicks, and the mystery was now a homicide investigation.
The editor-drunk abandoned her writing dream years ago but thought this done-to-death story could be her bestseller.
[Image Credit : Photo by Dima Solomin on Unsplash]
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