Marlena was destined to be an author for the ages -- not some writer of middling potboilers but epic works that would be taught centuries after her death.
She spent a semester abroad in England, adopting one flavor of accent, then another, until she settled into something nonspecific beyond no longer sounding like she had grown up in some dreary Massachusetts hamlet. Renowned artists can and did come from such humble beginnings, but she wanted to be closer to the middle before she had to acknowledge that.
She studied the greats a hundred years dead and loudly denounced every author who had been so rude not to have died yet.
She slept with her literature professors, tortured, forbidden affairs while smiling with feigned innocence when bumping into their wives at the cocktail parties she had invited herself to. If they only knew how to appreciate their brilliant husbands, she could not have effortlessly seduced these men when she visited them for guidance during their office hours.
She was never seen without her tenderly bound notebook and fountain pen forged years before her birth, ready with royal purple ink. She had not written anything in her first or second year, but that seemed a quibbling matter. Anyone could write, but that did not make them authors, not if they were incapable of living an authorial life. She needed experiences worthy of ink on paper. She existed to gather material for her opus, being seen at the golden hour gazing at autumn leaves and bundled in a peacoat and muffler at the edge of frozen ponds. Though she did not consider them this, her peers had begun to whisper her a reputation for being a tortured artist, an image she worked to cultivate further.
She had tried writing, of course. She sat hours each week in a coffee shop -- not the corporate one, but one authentic and a little dingy on the edge of town -- tapping her dry nib against her bottom lip and thoughtfully hmming. The first jots were the crucial step. The journey would be ruined if she stumbled on these.
While tending to their satiation, she asked her lovers what they recommended for the first lines. They never knew. They could hardly find their way around the body of a compliant young woman, one of their true peers. They'd written, if one could call it that, but spent most of their time mouthing superiority they would never achieve. Life in the shadows of giants left their prose etiolated. As they were modern authors -- though not popular because no one who taught at a college less than Ivy League or Seven Sister could have written anything of import -- they were among those she implicitly decried. She would thumb through their oeuvre after she had spent a few weekends letting them take their pleasure from her. She had yet to be other than disappointed.
During her semester in England, she took a holiday to France, knowing she must, and fell into a tryst with an Italian boy who barely spoke English. She knew he had more to say about modern literature than any ten professors she had fellated. She guided her finger through his light tangle of chest hair, really listening to the cadence of his babble.
She was despondent to find out it was Portuguese. No one has a torrid weekend with a Portuguese man in France. It didn't scan, so she told everyone afterward that he had been Italian and had proposed marriage, but she turned him down because she was already married to her work. She did not see the harm in this lie. What was the point of being a writer if one couldn't edit and revise to suit the occasion?
Her notebook was more than a prop. It was the promise of the book she would write. In her arms, she held her future. She carried it with more concern than she could ever carry children -- she swore by the pill to prevent any slip-ups. (It would hardly do to saddle herself with the bastard child of some minor academic, and she didn't think she was apt to find the frozen sperm of a deceased antiquarian scholar soon.) She flipped the pages open alone in her room, savoring the stiff cream paper flecked with handmade imperfections. She traced her finger over the blankness as though reading in Braille the words that would one day be there.
The day it went missing was the worst of her life. She would have preferred losing a finger (left hand, pinky; nothing that would impede her writing but might give her author photo and biographies character).
She woke in a room. Not her room, of course, nor one she recognized or would visit again -- too many terrible associations -- but this was not unusual. Her travels had taught her the eventual importance of strange beds. Classiness was overrated in literary circles these days. One needed grit to give definition.
Her custom would have been to vacate before someone could return and try to talk her into abandoning her morning writing time to get to know her better. This would be impossible without her notebook. It was unreplaceable.
Worse, someone might open it and discover that she hadn't done more than practice her autograph on its first page. They would know then that she was-- The word "fraud" interrupted what she was sure would be the correct term. She wasn't a fraud. She was fertilizing the garden to come.
No one must ever see.
Marlena's search began precise and realistic. Under the bed (dust bunnies), in her bag four times (bisected stick of spearmint gum), between the mattress and wall (used tissue). She progressed to rummaging through every drawer in sight. When this did help, she cleared a spot in the center of the room and dumped all drawers. It was the only way to be sure there were no false bottoms.
There were not. Marlena took everything out of his mini refrigerator but was not so rabid she would leave the milk to spoil. The dry goods did not fair so well, poured out without triumph.
The culprit couldn't have gotten far yet. She'd just woken and was not so heavy a sleeper that she could grant another college student the appellation of "morning lark." He must still be around. Perhaps his leaving, laden with her book, was the impetus for her waking.
Crossing sitting in the direct sun of the quad was last night's conquest. Frederick looked like a stranger in the late morning. Well, more of a stranger. She knew the taste of his midnight skin, but she only discovered his last name -- Tiersen -- as she tossed his mail onto the mountain she formed in his room as though her rage here volcanic.
His dark features showed better than they had in the bar last night. He was younger. She knew he was a student. Everyone in the bar was a student or someone so far removed from studenthood that they were unmistakable: women twice divorced and men who would have patronized middle school playground if it would not put them in prison. Both groups ignored one another, waiting instead for a student stumbling drunk enough from the watering hole to be pounced upon and devoured.
She had only succumbed twice before alternating her drinks and water. (She didn't have a set drink yet. She wanted to be the sort of woman who downed bourbon straight, but she was barely one who could tolerate vodka without a mixer.)
She stormed over to Frederick, eclipsing the sun on his face. "You took my book."
He looked her over, his expression unfathomably smug, she assumed.
"Well, good morning to you too, darlin'," he said, far too familiarly, as though making her orgasm once (barely) constituted an excuse for his addressing her in such a folksy way. "What book? Are you sure you didn't leave it in my room? It's not that messy, but--"
"Oh, it is plenty messy. No, you stole it. It is my most cherished possession, and you stole it. History will remember you as a monster if it bothers remembering you at all," Marlena said. "Which it won't unless I put this in my memoirs. Which I won't!"
He snorted at her, the indignity of his exponential. "My room isn't that much of a mess. I'll help you look. I'm sure it couldn't have gotten far."
"It's an enormous mess. I told you that. A Superfund site. I tore it to shreds looking for my book, which is no less than you deserve."
"You tore it to shreds?"
He didn't believe her, assuming this was a flirty game, that she was acting hysterical, and that he only had to keep up to receive some prize. Probably sex. It was always sex with his type.
Then he registered that she had no playfulness in her. His demeanor likewise dropped.
"Why would you wreck my room?"
"My book. Where is it?"
"I don't have your damned book! Are you sure you had it last night?"
What stupid questions this boy asked. Her notebook was the last thing she touched at night and the first she caressed in the morning. She knew she had it after she made love to him until he passed out. (Alcohol may have facilitated, but she deserved most of the credit.)
"What is this book?" The implication of her turning over his room still irritated him, but he was more sensible. Or, if not that, he asked a better question.
"It is my novel. The only copy in the world. I cannot lose it."
"You bring something of inestimable value when you go to bars to hook up?"
Back to the stupid questions. At least Frederick had used the word "inestimable." That might earn him a life sentence rather than the death penalty. "I didn't go to the bar to 'hook up,'" The crass suggestion made her shudder. She considered to whom she protested and where his mouth had been ten hours ago. "Fine, if that's how you need to phrase it. What if I have a gorgeous idea at the bar and don't have my book? What then?"
"Have an unimportant notebook for bar ideas," he said as though this were not as crass as suggesting the experience that she had gifted him with her body were anything as base as "hooking up." "Or write it on your phone like everyone else."
She clutched at her chest, though her heart did not accommodate by skipping a beat. That Frederick could say this to her made her repent having let him forget to wear a condom the second time. Everyone else? Writing on a phone? He stole from her, then insulted her this brutally?
"Did you read it?"
"Did I read the book I did not know existed and which I halfway assume you are going to find under your bed when you get home -- after fixing my room? No. No, I did not."
He believed he was telling the truth about not stealing from her, so maybe he was.
"Where is my book?" She asked again, but her vehemence was now so weak that the question sounded rhetorical.
He squinted, puffing out his cheeks. He was less handsome that way, so she hoped he would do it more. Thieves -- which he might be -- did not deserve proximity to beauty, theirs or hers.
"Tell you what. I'll help you find your book. That will be my mitzvah today."
She frowned at the offer. The verbs were too weak. "Why would you? Are you being nice?"
"I'm usually nice."
"Thank you," she said, trying for a graciousness that did not come. "I poured all your cereal on the floor."
His nostrils flared, and his jaw tensed. Marlena raised her hands. They would have been useless for defense, but she reacted to coming rage by showing off her nail polish.
Then he laughed, deep and boisterous. A man's laugh from a boy's mouth. "You thought I hid your novel in the cornflakes?"
"Or the Lucky Charms, yes. I was being thorough."
"You are thoroughly taking me to breakfast -- after we fix the room," he said, standing to lead her back inside.
It was worse than when she left it. Not much worse, but some. With a cooler head, she could repent tossing every video game case on the ground, but she had not stomped on them.
At the apex of the mountain of Frederick's possessions was a glossy photograph of her book with a sticky note affixed reading, "U want it BacK? Library 8 pm. No cops."
Frederick looked up from the silver shards of one of the games, more horror than accusation.
She shoved the picture at him.
"Wait. Someone actually stole your book?'
"And trashed your room. More so," Marlena said. "I didn't break anything. I wouldn't."
He handed the photo back, satisfied that breaking his games wouldn't accomplish her sole stated purpose. He was simply glad for the mystery as it meant he could be furious at someone other than her -- not that he seemed even a little peeved at her, which unnerved her.
"We should have this cleaned up by 8. Looks like we have a date," Frederick said, lifting his phone. "I'll order delivery. You like waffles?"
Thomm Quackenbush is an author and teacher in the Hudson Valley. He has published four novels in his Night's Dream series (We Shadows, Danse Macabre, Artificial Gods, and Flies to Wanton Boys). He has sold jewelry in Victorian England, confused children as a mad scientist, filed away more books than anyone has ever read, and tried to inspire the learning disabled, gifted, and adjudicated. He can cross one eye, raise one eyebrow, and once accidentally groped a ghost. When not writing, he can be found biking, hiking the Adirondacks, grazing on snacks at art openings, and keeping a straight face when listening to people tell him they are in touch with 164 species of interstellar beings.