Work In Progress
Entry by: Susannah Moody
23rd February 2018
Rue de l’auteur, 2018
He stubs out the cigarette in a stained mug and pulls his battered black leather notebook towards his. Hair flopping artfully over his furrowed brow, he peruses the yellowing pages and wishes desperately that he could read his own tortured scrawls. It’s a problem, he thinks as he stares through the murky window out to a Parisian skyline. It’s a problem that he remembers the angst and the torment and the jocular prods at modern society, but none of the words that formed them. And it’s a problem that he can’t even read his own writing.
The phone rings. It’s one of those black ones with a dial that you have to spin to call numbers. He loved it when he saw it and spent half his first monthly wage on it and now hates the way it makes his fingertips slightly numb and he can’t remember how to call London. Luckily, London is calling him.
‘Steve, hi,’ he says into the mouthpiece (a phone with a mouthpiece, he had been so proud!)
‘I have been trying to call you for six days.’
‘You have? Sorry, it’s been mad at work here.’
‘Do you have any idea how difficult it is for me to keep David on board when you’re swanning around in Paris not picking up the phone and doing god knows what with god knows who and providing us with actually actually nothing?’
‘God knows whom,’ he mutters into his dusty black mouthpiece.
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
He hangs up the phone with assurances that, yes, he is worth it, and yes, he will meet the deadline this week, and yes, he has some magic on the way for Voice of London but right now it’s just a work in progress.
‘Fuck,’ he says, putting the handset back and lighting a cigarette that really should have a stronger filter.
The problem is, he thinks, I’m in Paris just 120 years too late. No chance I’ll find a rich patron or a beautiful girl with consumption-racked lungs to break my heart. How am I supposed to write anything at all?
He reaches into a holey tweed jacket and finds an iPhone – not, of course, in regular use. He swipes right.
-
He looks out from under bushy eyebrows to the dark Seine and curls his lanky frame around his second lager. It’s then that she
pops the question.
‘So,’ she says, coquettishly skimming a fingertip around the rim of her wine glass (sauvignon blanc with just one cube of ice). ‘You say in your bio you’re a writer. What are you writing?’
He straightens his tie and shifts on the wicker chair. Why do they have to make these so uncomfortable? He tries to silence the Lancashire part of his brain that misses a good old stained velvet bar stool.
‘It’s a bit experimental, a bit rogue,’ he tries. He can see he’s piqued something in her interest she can’t define. ‘I like to play with language, to upturn the conceits of the reader. It’s a work in progress but I expect to have something in the Voice of London in a week or so.’
He reflects later that he’s not really sure how this manages to get their bras on his chairs and their accumulating unanswered messages in his inbox. Post-coital smoke curling out of his lips and her figure curled in dishevelled bed sheets, he still can’t read his own words.
-
‘Mum,’ he croons into the mouthpiece of the apartment phone.
Excited babble hits his ear.
‘I’m fine. Yes, I’m eating enough. Yes, work’s going really well. They think I should have a big one in soon.’
His bare feet are cold against the floorboards. Outside, the strains of an accordion mingle with the shrieks of Montmartre tourists.
‘I can’t tell you what it’s about. It’s a secret. It’s a work in progress.’
She hangs up and he dreams of a playstation and a labrador and a pint in a Preston boozer, falling asleep on his own incoherent scribbles.
Paris was always the dream.
He stubs out the cigarette in a stained mug and pulls his battered black leather notebook towards his. Hair flopping artfully over his furrowed brow, he peruses the yellowing pages and wishes desperately that he could read his own tortured scrawls. It’s a problem, he thinks as he stares through the murky window out to a Parisian skyline. It’s a problem that he remembers the angst and the torment and the jocular prods at modern society, but none of the words that formed them. And it’s a problem that he can’t even read his own writing.
The phone rings. It’s one of those black ones with a dial that you have to spin to call numbers. He loved it when he saw it and spent half his first monthly wage on it and now hates the way it makes his fingertips slightly numb and he can’t remember how to call London. Luckily, London is calling him.
‘Steve, hi,’ he says into the mouthpiece (a phone with a mouthpiece, he had been so proud!)
‘I have been trying to call you for six days.’
‘You have? Sorry, it’s been mad at work here.’
‘Do you have any idea how difficult it is for me to keep David on board when you’re swanning around in Paris not picking up the phone and doing god knows what with god knows who and providing us with actually actually nothing?’
‘God knows whom,’ he mutters into his dusty black mouthpiece.
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
He hangs up the phone with assurances that, yes, he is worth it, and yes, he will meet the deadline this week, and yes, he has some magic on the way for Voice of London but right now it’s just a work in progress.
‘Fuck,’ he says, putting the handset back and lighting a cigarette that really should have a stronger filter.
The problem is, he thinks, I’m in Paris just 120 years too late. No chance I’ll find a rich patron or a beautiful girl with consumption-racked lungs to break my heart. How am I supposed to write anything at all?
He reaches into a holey tweed jacket and finds an iPhone – not, of course, in regular use. He swipes right.
-
He looks out from under bushy eyebrows to the dark Seine and curls his lanky frame around his second lager. It’s then that she
pops the question.
‘So,’ she says, coquettishly skimming a fingertip around the rim of her wine glass (sauvignon blanc with just one cube of ice). ‘You say in your bio you’re a writer. What are you writing?’
He straightens his tie and shifts on the wicker chair. Why do they have to make these so uncomfortable? He tries to silence the Lancashire part of his brain that misses a good old stained velvet bar stool.
‘It’s a bit experimental, a bit rogue,’ he tries. He can see he’s piqued something in her interest she can’t define. ‘I like to play with language, to upturn the conceits of the reader. It’s a work in progress but I expect to have something in the Voice of London in a week or so.’
He reflects later that he’s not really sure how this manages to get their bras on his chairs and their accumulating unanswered messages in his inbox. Post-coital smoke curling out of his lips and her figure curled in dishevelled bed sheets, he still can’t read his own words.
-
‘Mum,’ he croons into the mouthpiece of the apartment phone.
Excited babble hits his ear.
‘I’m fine. Yes, I’m eating enough. Yes, work’s going really well. They think I should have a big one in soon.’
His bare feet are cold against the floorboards. Outside, the strains of an accordion mingle with the shrieks of Montmartre tourists.
‘I can’t tell you what it’s about. It’s a secret. It’s a work in progress.’
She hangs up and he dreams of a playstation and a labrador and a pint in a Preston boozer, falling asleep on his own incoherent scribbles.
Paris was always the dream.
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