At too-damn-early AM the next morning, Aiden texted Stacy the new code to his security system. A few seconds later came a reply “gd luc”, which Aiden wrote off as sleepiness rather than some new text-speak convention.
He’d found the cute college student a year ago through a pet-sitting service. She had proven to be reliable at keeping the cat alive, leaving his TIVO filled with reality shows, and occasionally leaving spare clothing in his bed. They were not always articles of women’s clothing. That was why he changed his security code every time he got back.
A jogger had tipped them to the scene. Taking a shortcut through the alley, her eye had been attracted by the plastic sheeting framing the front door, billowing into tattered frosted ghosts by an errant breeze. It had taken about five steps for her to realize that the dark stain on the concrete steps was blood, and another three to grasp she had just run through more.
“Stop it,” Aiden muttered and tilted his head up to let the full blast of the shower hit his face.
Aiden hadn't slept that night. The writing hadn't let him, holding him in its grip from the moment he had stepped back into his office until his phone's alarm had gone off. In the shower words battered at his brain, and he continued to ignore them as he finished packing. Pausing in the vestibule, Aiden patted the stone statue of a raven – a quasi-cartoonish representation of Poe's Raven – next to the door. His best-friend Jamie had given it to him as a joke in high-school, and he'd lugged the damn thing around with him everywhere he moved. Saying good-bye to it before he left on a trip had become habit.
Over the past four years he’d become an expert at packing light and long – this time he would be traveling across the country and wouldn’t see home again for nearly a month. With his rolling suitcase and laptop bag, Aiden stepped out the door. The noise in his brain ceased, and with a sigh of relief he left the Ideas behind.
Security at JFK was the usual invasive waste of time, and he arrived on the other side with an hour to spare before boarding. The intoxicating aroma of coffee drew him to café with bohemian décor that attempted to disguise a large chain as a local unknown. Quad-shot-cappuccino-extra-foam firmly in hand, he walked past newsstand displays packed with hardbacks of Shinbone Alley. Aiden smiled as he saw copies tucked under arms and opened in the laps of his fellow travelers.
Settled next to his gate, he checked his e-mails on his phone, played a few rounds of Angry Birds and tried to not doze off. He got recognized and had his photo taken without permission with covertly held cell phones. A few more respectful supplicants had the courage to approach his fake leather throne to beg a word and a scribble. They called him Mr. Ruskin and clutched copies of Shinbone in tight hugs to their chest, endearing themselves to him instantly. He obliged these brave souls – he was on a publicity tour after all.
When asked, he posed for a photo with a curvy red-head. He wrapped an arm around her soft shoulders and tried to smile in a casual and yet memorable way.
“Thank you so much!” she gushed as he released her. “I have got to tell you, I loved Nothing Man! It was the best thing I’ve read in ages - made it super hard to sleep that night.” She shivered which caused interesting things to happen inside her low-cut shirt.
“Glad you liked it.” Aiden was bemused. The Nothing Man was a short horror story recently published in an anthology, in company with similar juvenilia from other best-selling authors. All the proceeds went to charity, and he’d been told that over half the people buying had done so to get their hands on his entry. Three months later, they were on the fourth printing.
When his agent had approached him with the idea, Aiden had initially been at a loss to think of anything suitable. Lover Lane had been the first real fiction he’d written. Then he’d remembered Nothing Man. It had been an assignment in college – not for an English class but for an intro to Psychology course. The Professor had asked them to put their greatest fear down in a short fiction story, and from somewhere Aiden had pulled up the “Nothing Man”.
Jamie had helped put a little polish on before the auction, but the first raw re-read of it had impressed them both. Aiden’s estimation of his college-age intelligence rose a little. Of course, it had been written a month before a certain petite brunette had crossed his path and proved him one of the stupidest men on the planet.
Aiden waited until the final boarding call to walk down the ramp and settle into his first-class seat. He put on his headphones and relaxed for the short hop to Philly.
From the moment he landed in the City of Brotherly Love it was the typical whirlwind – meeting with his agent, then a reading and book signing at one book store at 9:30am, lunch with some raffle-winner, another signing at 2 and a talk at 5, dinner at 8.
“What happened to your hand?” John had asked at dinner around a mouth full of veal scaloppini.
“It happened during the interview yesterday. The damn cat had a problem with his photo being taken.” Aiden hid the injured hand under his napkin.
“You should get a band-aid for that,” his agent said before returning to the topic of talking points for tomorrow’s radio interview.
That night Aiden slept soundly in the strange bed, and after waking and showering, made the trip to the airport. John was seated beside him this time, and would be for the rest of the tour. The stocky balding man had his laptop out, keeping his thick fingers on the pulse of his business while on the road with his biggest account. Aiden just relaxed, cushioned by the leather seat.
Days flowed by in the same pattern. Interviews, readings, signings. Fans and fans and more fans. Hotel beds, bathtub showers, restaurants, airplanes, town cars, taxis. Rinse, repeat.
It was exhausting and invigorating. This was the part of being an author he loved - much more than the writing. He lived to see the long line, the overwhelmed look in the eyes of the unprepared as they scrabbled to think of something to say. Their praise and the awe that bordered on worship, heaped upon him at every stop. It fed something within him. He returned to the hotel every night buzzing inside at the thought of doing it again the next day.
After weeks on the road they reached Dallas, and Aiden had a day of isolation. No signings, no fans, no reason to leave his hotel room. Even John was taking a vacation from baby-sitting his biggest client – he was golfing instead with a friend. That client had been invited along, but Aiden had no interest in spending the day in the Texan sun. Obviously the Lonestar State hadn’t gotten the memo that it was still March.
So Aiden cracked open a mini-bar water and finally unzipped the laptop bag he’d been lugging around this entire time. Steeling himself, he skimmed the last scene he had written that last night at home.
