Mr. Personality (6 page)

“Is this where you usually write?” Leaning one slim arm on the newel post, she tilted her head to one side as she stood regarding him.

Max put up a hand to rub his aching temples. Why would the perky blonde not go away? He couldn’t think of a remark so scathing as to drive her back to the office.

“Yes. This is where I usually write.”

Nicole looked out the window. He knew what she saw. A collection of grimy buildings, their brick and stone laid out in visual texture upon texture. No pleasing view of the park. Not even another apartment dweller’s bedroom window to add salacious appeal to the prospect.

Max found himself staring after her, the mixture of exasperation, intrigue and interest that she triggered in him getting him no closer to his goal. Turning his gaze back to his empty pad, he begin turning book ideas over in his head. Before this, he’d always had a surplus of ideas bombarding him day and night. Sometimes in order to sleep, he had to get up and scribble a few words down.

If only he could recapture just one of them. When he’d worked on his last book, two different ideas had teased at him. Max wrote them down now on his pad, hoping to beat at least one of them into giving up its secrets.

The notion of personal emotional debt had always intrigued him…as did the payback individuals committed themselves to without ever realizing it.

Pete’s image flashed in his mind for a moment. Max turned his head sharply to the window, as if to dislodge the jarring image of his brother. No member of their family had ever been really intimate. They’d shared the same genetics and occasionally breathed the same air, but little more. Now, of course, Pete hated his guts.

Unbidden, thoughts of his own culpability rose up in him, Max’s throat tightening. He fixed his gaze on the building just opposite his window, his body braced against the guilt. How could he have been so stupid, so unaware—

“I’m sorry to interrupt you again,“ Nicole Cavanaugh appeared next to him, her voice jarring his ruminations.

His head snapping around, Max felt his jaw tightening. “What now? I’m trying to work here.”

She scowled back at him. “I’m trying to work, too, but these character sketches seemed to have been written by a demented chicken who happened to run across a leaking ink pen. Do you call this ‘handwriting’?”

“Let me see it.” He took the pad out of her hand. Three words were circled, each with a question mark beside it. In silence, he printed the words out. “There? Do you think your ability with the English language—such as it is—can take over from here?”

Making a face at him, Nicole retorted, “I’ll certainly do my best. And if that isn’t enough, I’ll try and figure out what language you’re
actually
writing these notes in.”

“Fine.” All of his typists annoyed him. He was accustomed to it. This woman, though, with her cheerful impertinence really annoyed him. He’d been nuts to think her likeable in any way.

Pad in hand, she went down the staircase without responding, her trim figure retreating down the hall.

Max propped his pad on his knee and turned back to stare out the window. Refusing to return to fruitless pondering of the past, he forced himself to consider the wispy, fragmented plot possibilities on the paper before him. Normally, when he started a book, his ideas took a life of their own. They unraveled in front of his mental gaze with such speed he sometimes had to rush after them.

Today, the words lay on the paper, mere lines of tracing, without spark. He studied the brick on the opposite building, his thoughts idling, circling around the central theme of his defeat. He felt defeated.

Maybe if he read over the character sketches he’d doodled six months ago. Surely, Nicole was finished with them by now.

Flinging down his pad and pen on the wide window sill, he jogged down the stairs and traversed the short hall leading to the office. Conscious of how familiar the short pile carpet felt beneath his bare feet, Max rounded the corner and entered the room.

Nicole sat with her back to the door, words filling the screen in front of her as her hands moved over the keyboard. For a moment, he felt annoyed that she should be able to do so easily what he hadn’t accomplished. When this book was through, he
had
to conquer his technological limitations. He’d be damned if he remained dependent any longer. Surely, his creative abilities could withstand some readjustment of the system. If other authors could simply type their thoughts into a computer, there was no reason he couldn’t. Later, when the book was in….

“Where are the character sketches? You’re done with them, aren’t you?”

Nicole jumped, turning to glare at him. “Jeez, you don’t have to scare a person like that! Make a little noise when you come into a room.”

Walking down the hallway towards the stairs, he heard her muttering something, but he couldn’t catch the words. His bare feet climbing the polished treads, he shut his mind’s door and tried to focus on the character outlined on the pages in his hand.

He wasn’t even sure where this character fit into either idea. In fact, the woman described in his notes didn’t seem alive at all. Max sat down, scribbling random words on his pad, in hopes that the movement of his hand over paper would jar something lose. Squinting again at the two concepts he’d been trying to nurture, he tried to lift the iron cage from around his mind and open his thoughts wider. It had to be there. He firmly believed there were an unlimited number of stories in his head, but getting hold of one…. Just one was all he needed today.

Fifteen minutes and three pages of scribbled notes brought him up against the realization that he was running in circles. Nothing new, nothing even slightly interesting. Still, he pushed the Pilot pen across the page until the words seemed too abstract to have any meaning.

Shifting restlessly on the window sill, he considered going up to sprawl on his bed. Maybe he needed a new place to write. Maybe this book had a certain portal, a singular way in which it could be poured into his brain.

Max sat thinking about going upstairs to his bedroom. Maybe he should lure his typist into some meaningless, distracting sex. Perhaps that was his problem. He’d been celibate too long.

The blonde in the office certainly had the body to make a sexual diversion sound interesting, but he couldn’t quite see her in the role of mindless anything, much less mindless sexual partner. She had too damned much character.

His lips twisting into a mirthless smile, he acknowledged the validity of his mother’s tense, acidic opinion that girls only distracted him from his bigger goals. His first pre-pubescent crush at the age of ten had earned a powerful reaction from his mother. The cute blonde girl who lived two floors up in their building was “irrelevant.” Max remembered Susan Tucker spitting out the word as if it were coated in lemon.

The summer sun streaming valiantly through their grimy kitchen windows, she had dished up oatmeal with an angry zeal that should have driven the nutrients from the grain.

“
I don’t care how ‘nice’ she seems. You’re ten years old and you have high school to finish if you’re going to get into Yale next year!”

With Max quiet at the table, Susan Tucker had gestured towards Pete, hunched silently over his bowl. “You don’t see Peter going all gaga over Jennifer Townsend. There are more important things to think of. Peter has spent the last month working his way through his summer reading list.”

It had been there even then, the subtle sense of competition from a brother who had no real bent for high academic achievement. But the Tucker seniors had pushed him, all the same. It was a wonder Pete hadn’t hated Max when they were kids. But he hadn’t.

Not then.

The image of that small kitchen filled with tension made Max wonder why he’d ever felt a hunger to connect with his driven parents. He had longed for it, though. Ached as a boy to be able to bring home the award, the scholastic honor, that would finally satisfy them. Finally make everything okay.

But Susan Tucker had died as unsatisfied as she’d been that summer morning, standing at the stove angrily making breakfast.

“Girls just get in the way,” she’d said in her harsh voice, the faint ever-present fear behind her eyes. “There’ll be plenty of time later in your life to lose your good judgment over a blonde!”

How right she’d been, Max conceded grimly. Several times over, it seemed, since he couldn’t deny his response to Nicole. He really didn’t need the distraction now anymore than he had when he was shooting for admission to Yale.

Sitting in the window on the landing, he pondered. The apartment seemed quiet, just the faint clicking of keys from Nicole’s typing. Outside, the muted rumble of cars and the occasional horn sounding from the street below. Somewhere in the distance, a jackhammer cracked pavement. He fleetingly wished he could do the same to the solid lump his brain seemed to have become.

Nothing. Nothing there.

Maybe these ideas were hopeless. He should probably stop spinning his wheels here and try catching hold of something else. Maybe the book lay waiting, fresh and eager, if he’d sift through some other possibilities.

Getting up, Max went back down the stairs, along the hall and into the office where Nicole worked. In the far corner, stood a filing cabinet. That must have been where his last assistant kept the wisps of story ideas he’d handed her from time to time.

“Have you been messing around in these files?” His voice was expressionless as he rummaged through the manila folders, unable to find what he sought. It was bad enough to have his head in a jumble, order in the filing system seemed like it should be simple in comparison.

“What?”

“Have you been moving things around?” He looked for an “idea” file and found nothing.

“Oh, yes,” she responded sarcastically. “That was the first thing I did when I came in this morning. I rearranged the filing system the way I like it. The alphabet is so out-dated.”

Max grunted. Nothing under “story ideas.”

“Listen.” Nicole watched him. “If I don’t get to interrupt you, I don’t think you should get to interrupt me.”

There
it was. His fingers closed around the file. Why would it be under “Books?” He drew the folder out, beginning to leaf through it.

“Oh, I’m forgetting,” she muttered to the keyboard. “You’re a god. Normal good manners don’t apply to you.”

“What?” He looked up from his fruitless search. None of these scraps of paper looked promising.

“Never mind.” Her smile was saccharin. “I never expected you to have any manners. Why would I, considering your behavior every time we’ve met?”

Max sent her frosty look. “Would you mind just sitting there and doing your work? I don’t need you to interact, just type.”

“Do you ever ‘interact’. I can’t see it. You probably do everything by yourself. I’m sure it saves time. I mean if you had friends, you’d have to be decent in order to ‘interact’!”

He stiffened, the file clenched in his hands. It was far too early in their acquaintance for her to be labeling him a social outcast. As a matter of fact, as his employee—sort of—she shouldn’t be commenting on his personality, at all. Never mind the accuracy of her comments. Social interaction had never been high on his list. His friends were tied to his work—Ruth and Cynthia both made him laugh and both understood his work. They were kind enough to include him into their families. Why should he bother with other people?

Wheeling around to face her, Max said, “Perhaps I need to be more blunt. Just type. Don’t talk.”

“I agreed to type for you. I never said I’d be a mute.”

“No, the agreement was that you’d do the job
to my satisfaction
if you want to get your father off the hook. I’m not feeling very satisfied, right now.”

Nicole looked at him, clearly unimpressed. “I’m going to refrain from making any guesses about your unsatisfied state—wait, no, I’m not. Up until now, you’ve obviously never found any assistants to ‘satisfy’ you. As I told you when we made this agreement, I don’t think it’s fair to expect it of me. I’m already working for no pay, except for my hotel room and your signed release. You shouldn’t be able to demand more of me than anyone else can deliver.”

“I forgot to mention that I’ll be taking a break at four o’clock every week day.” She smiled at him blandly. “For an hour. Also, I’d like to use your television during that time.”

Max looked at her without comprehension.

“You do
have
a television, don’t you?”

“Yes, but I can’t see how that concerns you or why you would need access to it during working hours.”