Reid Nelson checked the time. Three fifteen. He rubbed his eyes. He had been focused with such intensity on the computer screen in front of him, he hadn’t noticed time get away. Programming had a way of swallowing his entire world.

Today’s project started innocently enough, with a small idea and a basic outline for a program. Then the features grew and he punched out code for hours; debugging, refining, and following all the threads of the program through to their ends. Everything had to be not only functionally correct, but pretty to read in raw form, flawless, and as short as possible.

Someone moved about the room directly above Reid’s den. He heard the upstairs shower come on.

Reid stepped out of his shorts and into a store-crisp pair of black jeans. The anxiety of the night ahead made him move faster than he normally would but he knew he needn’t rush; the woman always took longer than she said she would.

His stomach growled. Had he forgotten to eat again?

He pulled a light sweater over his head and stretched it down across his shoulders. It fit tight, not because it was too small a size, but he had bulked up in the months the woman had been away on her last job and he had kept it up since her return. He like being fit, he liked the freedom of movement he had, the precise control it seemed to give his body.

She would be down soon, so he maneuvered to catch his reflection in a picture hanging behind the couch in the living room, checking to see if he looked okay. And felt a little silly for doing it. He’d been six foot four since high school and his athletic build and combination of dark hair with blue eyes had always earned more female attention than he’d ever needed. But he sometimes felt insecure with this woman, like at any moment he might screw up so monumentally that she would leave and it would be a loss he couldn’t live beyond.

He reached for a bagel from a bag on top of the fridge just as he heard the shower stop. He figured they had about ten minutes before they would leave.

He cursed himself for not sleeping, feeling the pull of tiredness. One thing he didn’t want to be on a night like this one was tired, there was so much that could go wrong, too many small slips that could cost them both greatly. And he had come too far to take unnecessary risks.

Maybe he would suggest they skip tonight, he thought as he bit into the bagel and opened the refrigerator, scanning for liquids. But he knew they couldn’t put off the job. They had spent too much time on it already. It was an investment. You don’t make and investment and then walk away from the payoff.

He smelled the milk jug before taking a long drink before setting it back on the shelf and bumping the refrigerator door closed with his hip.

He had faith that he would be able to overcome his fatigue and perform. How many times had a computer been enough stimulation to keep him on edge at four in the morning? Too many to count. And the high he got from doing his paying work was more powerful, more seductive, more intoxicating and addictive than even the most glorious session playing God with the computer.

He heard the toilet flush above him.

He eyed his carrying case, doing a mental once-over to make sure he had packed everything they would need tonight. He moved back quickly to the den; he had just enough time to try out his new program. He selected Run from the Compiler menu and the program he had spent thirteen hours wrestling from his imagination came to life in front of his eyes.

He selected a few commands and brought up a bar graph that mapped his financial portfolio. He clicked on the empty space above and beyond the graph and a question box appeared. He typed a command, asking the program to estimate the money needed to hit his goal. He entered the amount he would receive from tonight’s job. A date calculated at the bottom corner of the screen. Seventeen years. It would take seventeen years to reach his goal at this pace.

He needed to move faster. The woman wouldn’t wait that long for him.

He clicked on another menu option and asked his program to calculate a faster way to his destination. A number appeared. It was large, yes, but not impossible. He’d heard of people in their secretive and fringe society getting that much even for a single job. That’s what they needed. A single job. That big.

He leaned back on the chair and heard her come up behind him. She set her hand gently on his shoulder.

“You ready to go, Noel?” he asked.

* * * * *

Posted by Steve Medcroft at 01:29 PM | Permalink

My first attempt at creating an original piece with color pencil.

Posted by Steve Medcroft at 09:48 PM | Permalink

Fifty-two year old Constance Widowmaker stowed her lunch bag beneath her desk. Her telephone extension was ringing. The display showed that the call was ringing in on the customer accounts help line. She let it ring; the small chrome clock on her desk told her she still had a minute left of her lunch break and she firmly believed that if you started to give the company a minute here and a minute there, they’d take over your life before you knew it.

And she wasn’t about to let that happen.

That the customer would have to wait, couldn’t be helped really. She had been practically forced to take the early lunch because of a new single mother that worked on the other side of her small, tidy cubicle. Because of the new employee’s situation – of her having to run her pair of no-doubt illegitimate children to or from day care – Constance had to change her lunch hour. Because she had chosen to not marry, to avoid the inconvenience and pain of motherhood, she was being punished. Was that fair?

The line stopped ringing; voice mail had jumped in to intervene.

The front-line operators should know better than to transfer calls to her. She obviously couldn’t be blamed if the customer didn’t get helped.

She was almost ready to work but it was too cold in the cavernous call center for her. They probably kept it cold because some survey somewhere told them that workers performed better when cold or uncomfortable or something. So she wrapped her cardigan around her shoulders and surveyed her booth. The phone started ringing again.

She groaned, unhooked her headset from its cradle and slowly snuggled it into place over her heavily hairsprayed coif. There was no hurry.

Third ring. She paused once more before answering and wiggled her mouse to bring her computer terminal to life. How could she be expected to be a help anyone without the computer up and running?
Fourth ring. Voice mail would pick up the call before the phone rang once more. She was tempted to let it go because she wasn’t one hundred percent ready and because the smell of other people’s microwaved lunches was overwhelming and nauseous (why can’t those suck ups take it to the lunch room instead of eating at their desks – that’s the reason there was a lunch room?) but decided to grace the caller anyway.

“American National, can I help…”

The caller cut her off. “Finally. Yes.” Bad start.

“Can I help you sir?”

“Yes. I need some information about an account at your bank.”

“The account number please?”

“Actually, I just have a question about…”

“I can’t help you without the account number sir.” She heard the breath, deep and long, on the other end of the connection.

“Zero four four, nine nine seven, eight seven six six, one zero zero zero.”

The keys rattled on her keyboard rattled as she typed. “And your name sir.”

“Christian Jones.” She heard him grunt. “No. Wait. Noel Jones. I’m sorry, no.” He read the statement holder’s name again. “Anna Noel Brantly.”

“Well which is it?”

“Noel. The account is in the name Anna Noel. It’s my wife’s name.”

“Hmmm.” The keys rattled again. “Are you a signer on the account sir?”

“No. I never knew about the account until today.”

“Well then, I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can help you with.” She smiled to herself. She would enjoy this.

“Well I don’t want to access the account or anything I just need to ask a couple of questions. Like, when was the last activity on…”

“Like I said sir, if you’re not a signer on the account, I can’t help you.”

“Listen, I just need to know…”

“I’m sorry sir. At American National, we have strict confidentiality rules.”

“Can you confirm that the account exists? That it has a balance? That it has recent activity?

“Oh, no sir, that would go against our confidentiality policy.”

“Confidentiality from who? I’m her husband.”

“And you are not a signer on the account, is that correct?”

“Yes, but don’t I have rights as a husband? Aren’t there laws in this country regarding the finances of husbands and wives?”

“Not in the country of our charter.”

“Charter?”

“Oh, yes sir. Here in the Grand Cayman Islands, the laws protecting the privacy of individuals who place their trust in the banking system override any rights you think you might have. No person but the account signer has access to any account entrusted to this institution. It is a bond not even the government can break. It is specifically why people put their money here. What that means to you sir, is that you have no rights to any account in this bank. Unless you are a signer.” She pressed the mute button on her headset, stifling a rising laugh. To think, she almost missed this call.

“So you’re saying you can release no information to me about this account?”

“Correct.” She could sense the glorious frustration in her caller, the near explosion of energy.

“Lady, you don’t understand how big of a deal this is. This account belongs to my wife and I never knew about it. I haven’t seen her in six months. You might be able to confirm whether she’s even alive.”

“And your wife obviously wanted her privacy sir. It is my duty, to my customers, to protect that privacy.”

He sighed again. “And what if I call pretending to be her.”

She grew serious. “You could try that. But you wouldn’t know her password and the account would be locked.” She could hear the deflation in her caller. The letdown. It made her day.

“Is there anything else I can do for you sir?”

All she heard next was the click of her caller’s handset being replaced in its cradle.

* * * * *

Christian slammed the phone back into its cradle and punched the wall next to the phone. He winced in pain as his hand slipped right through the thin plasterboard.

So close.

All he could think as he sunk to the floor, tears of frustration streaking down his face, was that his wife, his love, was out there in the world somewhere, waiting to be reunited with him.

* * * * *

The joy of the moment had not ended for Constance Widowmaker. She stood above the sight line of her booths walls and looked around the call center. There was no supervisor walking the floor in her section.

Good.

She pressed the ‘9’ key dialed nine to secure an outside line then dialed the West Virginia telephone number listed in the account’s contacts and notes section.

Her eyes sparkled. He heart raced with the pleasure of being able to strike back a little at a world that seemed to hold nothing but shit for her. She listened as the long distance connection clicked through a network of fiber optic lines and telephone switch rooms, snaking its way through the digital world to reach out and ring the phone of her customer.

The ring came suddenly, loudly and more clear than normal. Or maybe her perception was heightened by euphoria.

Her mood began to deflate at the third ring. Wasn’t her customer home? The fourth ring found her spirit sinking further. “Damn,” she said, disappointed, as a voice mail system answered and an electronic voice read back the number she had called and invited her, politely to leave a message.

“Ms. Jones,” she said at the tone. “This is Constance Widowmaker at American National in Grand Cayman. I’m calling as a matter of courtesy. A security measure really. Its standard policy to inform all account holders of unauthorized inquires into their accounts. I just received a phone call from a man posing as your husband, said his name was Christopher Jones or something. Anyway, he was given no information or access to the account of course so you need not worry. And if you have any questions at all, please call me at our toll-free service number and ask for me by name or ask for extension three three two nine. I’ll be on shift until four p.m. Pacific Standard Time. Thank you.”

She disconnected the call, satisfied that the message was clear and reassured that allowed someone out in the world know that she had done something of value.

Her phone rang again. She took the call immediately and put the last one out of her mind.

* * * * *

Posted by Steve Medcroft at 12:18 PM | Permalink

a.k.a. one way to spend two hours on an airplane

Is it possible that someone who has a real (not imagined) talent for writing could lose it over the course of a few inactive years? Does natural ability fester, rot, and decompose beyond the point of resuscitation?

I should write every day. I should also eat healthier and work out; lose this weight that makes me slower than I could be. Although I realize that there are limitations to what I could do even if I was a slim as Sean Yates, I know I could be faster, I could be healthier; Just as sure as I could call myself a writer today if I had just eaten writing properly over the same years that I left it unfed and unwatered, conscious that I risked killing whatever gift I started with..

So is that it? Is that the conversation that goes on in a person’s head a thousand times a day that stops them from really doing the little things that could lead to the future they would have for themselves if you could predetermine such a thing?

Could you imagine if that was how the Universe worked? That you were given a menu on your fourteenth birthday and asked to compile your future from the choices – picking a major theme for yourself – work, mate, home – and it simply became as you chose?

Even if it was known to us, even if it we knew life would play out exactly as we wanted, I can imagine that we would still find ways to sabotage it. Because that’s the human element isn’t it? Choice. Choice is the great gift for humanity from our ultimate source. Choice is a brick that we can use to build a castle for ourselves. Or a fortress.

Back to the conversation that derails the supposed futures we want to build for ourselves. That’s a choice too right; we chose to talk ourselves out of doing seemingly simple and innocuous things that could put us on these great human paths? I understand that I make these choices out of habit or for fucked up reasons (like fear of the accountability to the world actual success might carry with it) but why does knowing that not stop me at the time?

But am I making a choice or simply avoiding a choice? Can a choice be to not do something, to not act? Isn’t choice really about positive action?

For me, the choices (or avoidance of choice) I have been making about writing (or the food for that matter) bad choices lead to guilt. Guilt paralyzes creativity, kills the ability to believe that my future is interwoven with these noble and romantic occupation. My choices are deliberate stalls that go against what I say I want for myself.

I want to slim down – for a dozen reasons not the least of what it would do for my cycling and my ability to pass a mirror and not feel slightly ashamed that doing better with my body is not such a great accomplishment and aren’t I smarter than my outcome after al? Every day, I think out loud that the path to trimming down is relatively simple; modify my eating (type of foods and amount of food) yet everyday I choose the same sweet or heavy foods the fattest Americans choose for themselves.

Just the same, it hurts me to flip through the directory on my computer’s hard drive where I keep the fiction I have written in my life. There are two of the three novels there (the third, actually the first, exists on paper only and I gave it to my wife and have no idea where she keeps it presently). There are short stories there. There are outlines and beginnings of novels and fractions of poems. It’s a great collection of unfinished restarts of a pursuit that seems likely never to be finished.

How sad and stupid is that.

So why not make the choices that would achieve the goals I carry in the back of my mind and refuse to let go in the face of all evidence that I am an unworthy steward; to write every day? Why not start each morning with fruit and end with vegetables and some time stringing together sentences?

I could stare at this cursor all day and not come up with an answer that is not total bullshit.

Should I not try any more because the odds are hugely stacked against me ever turning out something that would be published? Bah! I see complete and total but published crap all the time; even catch my wife reading some horribly written yet legitimately produced novels (and I’m not just saying that from the bitter space of one who has not spitting on the efforts of one who has).

Should I not try because there’s little chance I could turn out work as good or as popular as the stuff I admire most – the John Sandford novels that get me through the numb routine of airline travel? Surely that’s too much too ask of myself. Calling my cycling a failure and unworthy of effort because at forty and with comparatively limited cardiovascular capacity I have not yet chased this year’s version of Lance Armstrong up a European col would be silly and childish delusion, then isn’t making the same comparison in writing novels an equal egotistical masturbation?

Should I not try because I don’t have the time? I know, I can even hear you laughing at that one. How much time in life is freely given to our friends in the television business? How much time allocated to the enterprise of work in the name of making a living for my family is actually frittered on tasks and distractions as useful to me and my enterprise as ass scratching?

So it really boils back down to choice, to making a choice to overwhelm the self-defeating conversation at the top of this piece. I’m not talking about whipping myself into a frenzy of positive affirmation and blind faith that if I just work, I will achieve that superstardom, that fame and fortune that corrupts the edges of my reason for doing the work. I understand that one of my motivations for writing is recognition on any level beyond myself and that need is a sickness in and of itself but the choice it to override the self-doubt that questioning my motivation always brings (the beginning of the spiral). But what I choose for myself is that since I am going to occupy twenty four hours of every day I have left in this existence doing something with the body and mind I have at my disposal, I will simply rotate in writing from now on.

What possible harm could come?

Posted by Steve Medcroft at 08:26 AM | Permalink