I had to make a creative writing portfolio with a 1'500 word short story in it. This is what I came up with. I wanted it to be a kind of small town narrative voice, and in my head I immediately set it in Maine. razz

Anyways, I really like this story, I think it could be much longer indeed.

Let me know what you think.

Secret Life

The bell above the door jingled merrily, the door opening with summer behind, moving briskly as if late for an appointment. Following on its tail, a tall man with his hair clumped together with sweat came in, fanning his hat in front of his face.

“Scorcher, ain’t it?” Bobby Devoe asked conversationally, not looking away from the coffee machine he was refilling.

The man sat down on the stool next to mine, looking flustered and irritable. I understood perfectly, the heat was insurmountable, inhuman; tortuous, even.

“Yeah, it’s too damn hot if you ask me.” Pausing, he rubbed his hand down his face, wiping off the thin sheen of sweat that had formed on the walk to the café. “Gimme anything, as long as it’s with ice.”

I turned to him and greeted him amiably, kinda curious about him as he was new in town, and I hadn’t had the pleasure of his company yet. He nodded back at me, reaching for his pocket once more, and as he did, I saw his paper open at the page the whole town was talking about.

“That’s a hell of a thing, ain’t it?” I asked, gesturing towards his paper.

He turned to me, knowing without question what I was talking about, even though he must have missed me pointing at his paper. He was all wide-eyed and loose in the face, and I knew then that that article had been playing on his mind some.

“Yeah it is,” He muttered, laughing a little perplexedly, “Imagine that. The man was rich, absolutely stinking rich! Yet he lived like a gutter rat under that bridge for… how long?”
He put his paper on the counter, meaning to scan the article for a time span on that man’s unbelievable secret, but before he could begin I interjected.

“Twenty years, or close enough anyway.”

The man whistled appreciatively, his eyes far away with his mind, which was still stuck on the basic fact that an incredibly rich man had lived under a bridge like a drunk.

Bobby Devoe came up then, looking miraculously sweat free and incredibly, smiling contentedly as he handed the man a coke that had to be half ice.

“Ah, thank you so much, Mr.Devoe.” Taking the glass of coke, he smiled at Bobby and handed him his money, before turning his attention back to me.
“Anyway” he continued, “I wonder what made him live under a bridge like that, when he could’ve had what he wanted a thousand times over.”

I sat silently for a while, eyes cast down at the counter, thoughtfully crunching up an ice cube from my own drink, thinking of the man under the bridge as I had once known him.

“I dunno, Mister, but maybe… just maybe it was some woman. Maybe she took his heart in her hands and treated it like scrap paper.”

I had his full attention now, whether I wanted it or not. He was completely the story’s creature, his eyes totally fixed on me, as if he could draw the information out of me by staring until the world ended.

“You knew him?”

“Yeah, once upon a better time.”

Mesmerised, he scooted his stool closer to mine, reaching for his coke and taking a big gulp, his eyes never once wavering from their hypnotised attention.

Sighing, I took off my glasses and began to polish them on my shirt, thinking of how to begin.

“Half the country’s journalists must have tried to get information out of me, they kept pestering and nagging, going on and on, forever waving money in my face. But I didn’t give ‘em nothin’.”

Chuckling, I put my glasses back on my face and turned to the man, looking closely and seriously into his face.

“I didn’t tell them, but I’m telling you, so listen close.
His name was Peter Brunswick. Me and him were never real close, but he took his friends where he could find them. You see, he was a real ruthless businessman. You had to be, but the gossiping housewives of the town were ignorant of that fact.”

*************

Peter Brunswick is twenty-five years old, walking down Trinity Road beneath the blistering blanket of heat that smothered the town. His briefcase swings in his clenched fingers as he strolls, smiling in spite of the sweat rolling down his face in fat streams. Not many people walk past him as he moves towards his business, Brunswick Construction, but those he passes he greets amicably. Despite his amicability he gets no more in reply than a grunt or a half-hearted wave not even past the waist. This seems to roll off him like water off a ducks back; his smiling face and cheerful eyes don’t change. The business side of construction is a cutthroat business, and he had gotten a lot worse than rudeness in his time.

One might wonder how a man could keep a smile on his face when most of the town thought him cold hearted and treated him as such, but the reason was simple. Too simple for the sneering gossipmongers to believe, but that didn’t change the simple fact that he had all a man really needs to be happy: a woman waiting for him in a place he could call home.

His woman was what kept him smiling under the suffocating heat and the muttered words behind his back, whispered by the entire town. It was his woman who kept him standing; it was his woman who brought him crashing to the ground.

Even when they first got together, Peter was surprised that he had managed to get such a woman. She was a woman with a sultry beauty about her, the kind of woman who dripped sex appeal just walking down the street. But, even in his surprise, Peter did not question her motives for going with him; he simply counted himself lucky and enjoyed the ride.

Thoughts of betrayal, or hidden reasons for proclaimed love did not even cross his mind as he pushed the door open and entered the blessedly air conditioned building; his thoughts were occupied by clients, fleeting thoughts about his lunch, and of course: his woman.

The day was ordinary in its substance: Maryanne, the receptionist, clattered on her keyboard, the janitor buffed he lobby floor, all was well with the ordinary.

And so they would be for the next ten minutes.
Those ten minutes consisted of all the everyday mundane tasks that a person fulfils in the working morning: greeting the work colleagues, sitting down and arranging your papers just the way you want them, switching on all your equipment. Even the letter sitting name up on his desk was in the norm.

Humming tunelessly, Peter picks up the letter and opens it, not thinking about bank statements or wives with ulterior motives, his mind was a free thing, floating freely without any consideration of the world in front of him.

He opens the letter.
At first his face remains the same picture of contentment that it had been all morning, before his eyes have really had a chance to register what letters and words swarmed on the page.

Then, reaction sets in: his mouth tightens and his hands clench, bending the letter on the horizontal. His eyes thin, and his tightened mouth writhes, revealing gritted teeth.

“No. This isn’t true.”

Abruptly, he slams the letter face down on the desk, staring at the blank side, eyes now wide and unbelieving.

“She… she wouldn’t do that to me!” He cries, but what he hears in his own voice tells him that part of him believes that it is.

To Peter Brunswick, it is as if a thick, roiling cloud of unparalled darkness has just covered not just the sun, but all suns, all universes. The safety net, the woman, has turned out not to be very safe at all, for it is a pit of snakes that writhe and bite, all of them with her face.

Brunswick gets up, and to him everything is moving past in slow motion, it is as if the air has become a thick, unresisting glue.
An eternity passes for Peter as he moves out of the building; everything is so slow and mucilaginous that he expects to see individual motes floating in the air, spinning dreamily.

In reality he is almost sprinting back the way he came, crashing back through the door and onto Trinity Street, the disapproving glances of the few strollers go unnoticed. His face his wild with fear and rage; those he passes don’t see the face of a man, they see the face of a rabid dog.

After a thousand centuries, or so it seems, Peter reaches what he once called home. His rage overcomes his fear when he sees the luxury of it in a new, hateful light. A sound almost like a growl comes from his throat, and he charges into his house.

********

The man was so transfixed by the story that it took him a while to wake up and realise that I had stopped talking.

I let him chew on what I told him for a moment, drinking the last of my Coke.

“Well?” He said finally, his voice rough and animated, “What happened?”

“Like I said, Peter and I weren’t best pals, so he didn’t’ tell me exactly what down with his wife, but you can figure it out.
That letter was nothing but a bank statement, but to him it was a lot more; you see, his wife had taken a largish sum out, a large enough sum to whisper of what she was up to. Peter went home and yelled some, let’s say, and eventually he either figured it or got told that she had married him for his money.
I remember the last thing he said to me, before he went and lived under the bridge.
‘Hal,’ he had said, looking lost and forlorn, ‘the whole town judged me because of what I did in business. They judged me by my money. I thought Julie was the only one who saw past it, but I was wrong. No one has ever judged me for the man I am, the money must be too big for ‘em not to look at.’
‘What are you gonna do about it?’ I asked him, not really expecting an answer. But he gave me one, alright;
‘I guess I’m gonna have to become a poor man, and then every man and woman can judge me for what I am.’
And that’s just what he did, fella, simple as that.”

Without allowing him to reply, I got up, putting my own hat on my head and tipping it to him. Before I walked back out into the scolding heat of the day, I saw that that story would always be with him, that it would never be far from his mind. I knew because I knew what the look felt like, I had worn it myself, and I know that Peter Brunswick has never been far from my mind.

Copyright Amy Botterill 2006