Event in Progress

Chapter Two

There was a loud knock on the front door and Christine glanced up to see the paperboy drop a stack of papers there. She waved at him and unlocked the front door, pulled the papers inside and set them on the rack. She left the door unlocked because it was only five minutes until the Café opened anyway, and then walked behind the bar to wait for the first order.

She didn't have long to wait. One of the locals, a young man who fancied himself as an author, came in. He always looked haggard in the morning, like he needed five cups of coffee just to get out of bed.

"Hi, Sean," Swan said with a smile.

McKnight wearily looked up at her. "Hey, Christine."

"You want a large Raven's Tail?"

McKnight ran a hand over his bearded chin. "Nah, today I think I'll go for something different. Make it a large Raven's Tail." He forced a laugh at his attempted humor.

Swan did the same. She had already started his coffee. Every day he came in and ordered the same thing. Made her life simple, at least, and if that wasn't exactly consideration, at least it wasn't insolence.

"You still working on your book?" Swan asked as the machine in front of her growled and made noises like a lost Gremlin.

"Which one?" he replied, his voice dry. He ran his hands over his eyes in an absent-minded manner. Despite the dark circles under them, Swan thought his eyes were his best feature. It certainly wasn't his body—he could stand to lose about fifty pounds. And his skin was pale too, despite the fact that it was summer. The boy should get out more, Swan thought.

She smiled at him and said, "One of these days you're going to have to send one of them off to get published."

Sean shrugged. "I don't know about that. I have a fear of rejection. It's why I never ask out Adam."

Swan laughed at his joke. At least she hoped that McKnight had meant it as a joke. Truth be told, Swan had a feeling that the man actually liked her. She wasn't sure how she felt about that.

* * *

For his part, Sean did like Christine because Sean was in love with every single girl he met.  So it was true that she was sometimes part of the reason he had trouble sleeping at night. He would dream up various conversations with her, and pretend that he was suave and debonair and smooth and fifty pounds lighter and a sex god and that she was a maiden fair and sweet and that everything he said made her love him all the more. But McKnight still had some grasp on reality and knew that Christine didn't love him (who could?), and while she was the type of girl that he could fall for, he made sure that his heart stayed back and he guarded it well. All the better to avoid the pain.

That made him think of the story he had begun last night. The character that he invented, Eric, really echoed a lot of his own life. Writing was probably always like that. The good writers were the writers who wrote about what they knew because certain things just never could be faked. And if there was one thing that Sean McKnight knew it was insomnia.

But writing, even about that topic, was still strange for him. When he wrote it oftentimes didn't feel like his writing at all. It felt like the demon had just taken over and spouted off whatever it wanted and he got to go along for the ride. Which was crazy, because he could still remember working on the lines and getting them just right.

McKnight blinked, realized that Christine had said something to him and he had missed it. "I'm sorry," he said with a blush. "What did you say?"

* * *

"I asked you if you wanted a paper with your coffee?"

"No," McKnight responded as he always did. "I couldn't care less about the news. I don't even watch TV, you know."

"You've mentioned it." Lord, how he's mentioned it, she thought. As if not watching TV was a writer's badge of honor or something.  "But management still makes us ask."

"Ah, you know I'd never report you."

Christine giggled, would have continued the conversation but the coffee was ready at last. She handed it across to him and he took it, brushing her hand in the process. For a second, Christine wondered if it had been intentional. Then she thought better of it. Maybe it was more Freudian on her part instead of his.

Sean took a sip from the paper cup with its cardboard sleeve to keep him from burning his fingertips, and then he sat down at the same table he always sat at. He stared out the window, as he always did, lost in his thoughts.

Christine looked at him for a few seconds, wondering what he thought about when he went off into his own universe like that. Then she shook her head to clear her thoughts, picked up the broom, and swept out behind the bar. Too much thinking was bad for you. At some point, you had to act. And perhaps if the boy ever acted, Swan thought, she would actually tell him Yes.

* * *

And McKnight was thinking about how much he wished he had courage. What he thought about was how nice it would be if he could actually give in and fall head over heals for Christine Swan and just let it all free, and how liberating that might be. But he knew that he could never ask her out for the same reason that he didn't have any real friends. Because if he asked her out, then she would become another person with Access. Access to that place in his soul where things could really, really hurt.

No Pain.

It was more than a motto for a fictional character. It was his way to deal with life too. But too much thinking about Christine wouldn't solve anything, and so after a few swallows of coffee Sean began to wonder about the plot of the new novel he had begun. He didn't have an outline for it. His first stories had been like that too, but lately he had been using an outline for everything. Perhaps those outlines were why he had been able to write two books in half a year, because when you knew where the story was going it was easy to get there. But this time, there was no outline and he had no earthly idea of where the plot would end up going.

One thing was certain. Eric was going to die. McKnight hated that. Every book he wrote had someone die in it. Sometimes more than one person. It was inevitable. Once the story took over, Sean couldn't change the outcome of it anymore than you could change a television episode when you were watching the boob tube. The story just went where it had to go, and McKnight was along for the ride like everyone else.

McKnight took another sip of coffee and thought of how very, very tired he was. His shoulders seemed to crumple a bit at that, the weight of it all bearing down on him once more. He rubbed his eyes, his tired aching eyes, and wished that he didn't have to work that day. But if wishes were horses, you could lead them to water and they still wouldn't drink but you'd have to clean up the manure anyway and with metaphors like this he'd never be published, no sir and never mind the cleanup in aisle four.

Sean knocked back a third of the coffee, felt the warm liquid slosh inside, and then made his way out the door.

* * *

Christine Swan watched him depart and felt a brief sadness for the man. She almost wished that she could go out and give him a hug, but she wasn't sure he'd interpret it correctly, and she wasn't prepared to tell him that he could be a friend, yes, but she wasn't looking for a soul mate right now.

So she just looked down at the bar in front of her and made sure everything was still straight and tidy, just in case some imp had run through while she had been busy watching McKnight and had put the quarters into the dime tray in the cash register or put the napkins in the sugar dispenser or something.

One never knew.