My phone plays its little ring tune. Without looking I know it’s my editor calling for the umpteenth time this week to bug me about the overdue manuscript. I hit decline. I know the call will go to voice mail, and I can delete the angry message later.
The book, an awkward, unwieldy mess of vampires and revenants is the third in a series. The first two have been wildly popular. This one has stalled and frankly, I may never be able to whip it into shape. Because my partner, Wil, went and got himself killed in a motorcycle crash.
Nearly a year ago on an icy road in Pennsylvania, Wil flew off into an endless night taking the playful joy and laughter with him. He should never have been riding, but it was Christmas Eve and he was dead set to get home to me in time for Christmas. Get that? Dead set. Anyway, all day long the skies had lain like a dirty gray blanket draped over the frozen land. From time to time, a few desultory flakes drifted down, like the clouds were too full to hold them any longer. But the storm wasn’t supposed to start in earnest until after midnight. He assured me he would make it home with hours to spare.
As the midafternoon dusk rolled west, snow had already started to come down in fits and flurries. He knew I’d be following the weather reports, so Wil called from a diner near the Delaware to assure me that he was okay and he was still sure he could beat the storm. I tried reasoning. I urged him to go to the nearest city and take the bus. Or just wait it out until the weather cleared. He countered with, “Dammit, Alan. Don’t go all grim and grown up on me. Don’t be so damn serious. I’ve been riding since I was twelve. I. Can. Do. This.”
By nature, I am rather serious. Cautious. Before Wil, nearly everyone thought of me as uptight. But Wil brought out the child in me. I started to argue and Wil cut the connection. Only later did I realize we had skipped our usual, “Love you” closing. Less than an hour later, in low to no visibility, Wil swerved to avoid the trailer of a big rig as it swung wide blocking both lanes of the interstate. The state trooper who called to break the news described that Wil’s tires lost their grip on the road, the bike went hurtling over the guardrail and plunged 400 feet to the train tracks below. There were no skid marks. It was coming down so hard that snow would have obscured them anyway. He died instantly. At least, I could comfort myself that he didn’t suffer.
The call came just after three on Christmas morning. I haven’t written anything since. Did I say Wil was my writing partner? He was more like a muse, a coach, a whole goddam cheerleading team. His buoyant personality carried me through the inevitable periods of self-doubt.
Maybe it helped that he wasn’t a writer too. He was, in fact, an artist. A painter. He had a quirky style and had enjoyed some success in the world of gallery shows and private commissions. He brought a light hand and a playful innocence to everything, even the erotic paintings of men that had first attracted me. I bought one of his paintings at a gallery opening and later discovered I had been his first paying customer.
Wil was just starting out then. He was younger than me by nearly ten years. He’d come to the city to study art. He applied to a prestigious school and before he was even accepted, one of the panelists who reviewed his portfolio called and offered to put his work in a gallery show. I was at loose ends one night when a friend strong-armed me into going with him to the opening reception.
Wil and I just clicked, you could say. Locked eyes across a crowded room. Locked lips less than an hour later in the gallery kitchen. He moved into my West End Avenue apartment and transformed my no nonsense bachelor digs into a green and flowering place. He had grown up on his uncle’s farm and actually knew quite a bit about plants. His favorite had been a miniature white rose bush which he’d set behind the sofa where it could bask in the window’s west light.
We kept our work lives separate. He kept his small Brooklyn studio while I continued to write at the corner desk in the bedroom. But we always talked about doing something together. Like I would write and he would illustrate a book. But like so many other things that are important but not urgent, we never did get around to it. And then it was too late.
Wil had no family, so I had a small funeral, just a few close friends, and buried him on a peaceful hillside in New Jersey. A few weeks later, after the ground thawed and the world began to turn green, I went one day and planted the little rose bush next to his grave marker.
For a few months, everyone gave me space to grieve. But soon, I was getting phone calls from an irritated agent and a pissed off editor. Projects lingered unfinished on my hard drive.
The fact is, my mind froze. I’d have a subject and no way to write about it. I’d have a character but no place to go with him. I tried freelancing for a pair of guys who wrote advertising jingles, but after half dozen missed deadlines they stopped calling.
I finally agreed to meet my editor for dinner at Victor’s, a Cuban restaurant in the neighborhood. Sally talked about everything except the unfinished book. How was I doing, really? Was I writing anything at all? “I can’t,” I silently screamed, and ran out into the night. I never could. I’m a fraud and now everybody knows it.
I spent days staring out the window. Or wandering in the park. Or staying in bed in a darkened room.
I pulled out Wil’s sketch books, and spent days just looking at them. A lot of the sketches were of us. Us making snow angels in the winter. Us sitting together on the beach in summer. More faithfully than snapshots, Wil’s pencil studies somehow captured the essence of us. I had to find out why. What was it about Wil that made creating something look and feel so right?
One afternoon I pulled on my coat and wrapped Wil’s muffler around my neck. I imagined the wool still carried his scent. I rented a car and drove to the cemetery, parked on the drive and tried to remember where exactly Wil’s grave was. It was the kind of cemetery where all the markers are flush with the ground, and the snow covered everything with an even frosting. I walked up the hill toward a tall pine I thought I remembered. Was Wil to the right of the tree or to the left? I leaned down and brushed the snow off a few grave markers, but none of them were familiar names. Maybe a different tree? I looked around and saw a hillside dotted with evergreens dusted with snow. I tried another tree. And a third. Further up the hill, I saw a boy watching me. He beckoned, then dropped to the ground and began making snow angels. Angels in a cemetery, for god’s sake. Suddenly, I wanted to make snow angels. I started to jog in the direction of the boy, but he was gone.
All at once, I was hit with a snowball on the back of my neck. I whirled and there was the boy again. He had a pile of snowballs in front of him, and was preparing to throw another. I scooped up a handful of the white stuff and started making some of my own. And then my hand uncovered it. The little rose bush I’d planted on Wil’s grave was standing there in the snow, blooming as if it were summer. Out of season. Out of time.
From somewhere nearby bells sounded. I dropped to my knees and inhaled the scent of roses. The boy had gone to wherever boys like him go, but I swear I could hear Wil laughing.
I hurried home and locked myself in for three days and nights working on the vampire opus until my concentration was broken by someone banging on my door. It was Sally, worried that I may have done something.
“I have. I did,” I cried delightedly. I ushered her into my apartment and made coffee while I printed out the manuscript we had been waiting for. I handed her the still-warm pages.
I have. I did. Wil had made it back after all and I could write again. Merry Christmas, Wil.
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