Elise Bentley was having an excellent morning.
She'd gotten up early, she had a new outfit for the day and she'd managed to get her makeup and hair just perfect. She even was thrilled to discover that her favorite fast food place that served breakfast hadn't actually run out of stuff by the time she'd gotten there for a change. As she entered her office, she checked her watch, and saw the time. She smiled. In just an hour or so she'd be meeting with Boris Wachowski, and hopefully have a new, and extremely talented, poet on her hands for her literary magazine. Yes, Elise Bentley was having an excellent morning. Boris Wachowski, however, was another story entirely. *** "My back is killing me," Boris said, groaning as he lowered himself into his chair at the kitchen table; he sipped the coffee from the mug Whittle placed in front of him and then added, "I really wish I could just get one of those titanium spines you read about in medical journals." "Are you taking Chrissy to school or am I?" Whittle asked, and both Boris and Chrissy looked at one another, then looked back at Whittle. "It's....Saturday," Boris said. "It is?" "Yeah." "...oh. God I guess I've been kind of off lately," Whittle said, sitting down as well, "jeez. I had no idea. Well, in that case, do you wanna go with me to the salon and get our nails done?" "Okay!" Chrissy said, sounding excitable. Just then the front door opened and Father Krickett walked in, in his casual clothes. A salmon colored button up shirt with the collar done and black slacks with brown loafers. He stopped at the table and looked around at everyone, smiling politely. "Good morning," he said. "Mornin'," Boris replied. "What's everyone up to for this weekend?" Father Krickett asked, taking a seat beside Boris. "I'm taking Chrissy so we can go get our nails done," Whittle said, "What about you two?" "I got nothin' planned," Boris said, "Actually might even just go back to bed and lay down. My back hurt so much." "I brought your mail," Father Krickett said, plopping it down onto the table, "and resting isn't an option, because you have an appointment." "I...I do?" Boris asked, "...is it with death?" "No! Jeez!" Father Krickett responded, laughing loudly, "God no, just...open this and read it." Father Krickett slid a letter into Boris's hands and waited. Boris hesitated at first, then carefully ripped it open and slid the letter out. He unfolded it, leaned back in his chair and read it to himself. After a few moments, he was finished, and he had to reread it just to believe it. Finally he lowered it, looked at Father Krickett and grimaced. "This can't be real, right?" "Indeed it is, and I'm taking you," he replied. "What is it?" Whittle asked. "A literary magazine wants to meet with Boris about his poetry," Father Krickett said, "I submitted some stuff for you and it seems they're interested, so we have a meeting this afternoon." Boris was without words. Somehow this was both what he'd always wanted and also what he'd always feared happening. He didn't know whether to slap John or hug him. Eventually, he did neither, and instead got up to go get dressed and brush his teeth and hair. Whittle also left to go get dressed, leaving Father Krickett behind with Chrissy at the table. "Can I ask you a question?" Chrissy asked as Father Krickett buttered a piece of toast. "Of course," he said, biting into it and chewing. "...are you like a guardian angel?" Chrissy asked, "I mean, I know you're not dead, but...you seem to watch over Boris a lot more than an ordinary priest would, and it's..." "Sweet?" "Creepy." "Fair. To be honest, we have a complicated relationship," Father Krickett said, clearing his throat, "um, I...I'm not really sure I know exactly how to explain it, but...he's the sort of man that I would have fallen for romantically had he been my age. He's funny, he's driven, he's constantly changing, but more than anything else, he's kind. He comes off as gruff, sure, but in the end, he's a real loving person who cares deeply about those around him." "So...what you have is romantic?" "No, of course not," Father Krickett said, "I'm a part of the church, and he's much too old - nor do I think he's queer - but overall I still feel protective of him because of that. Let me put it this way, do you have a teacher you have a crush on?" "Yeah," Chrissy said, scooting her eggs around on her plate and blushing, "yeah, Mr. Lacks. He's my science teacher. He's really handsome and kind, and we like a lot of the same science stuff. Why?" "Because it's kind of like that. A person you obviously can't be with, but can fantasize about being with, you know? As a kid it's normal to have crushes on people older than you, and that doesn't change with age. I've found plenty of men older than me attractive. Boris just happens to be a special case in particular because I know him." Chrissy nodded and shoveled eggs in her mouth, then chewed and swallowed before pushing her bangs from her eyes and looking back at John and cocking her head to the side. "Yeah?" he asked, buttering yet another piece of toast. "...why do you stay with the church if you can't be with someone, especially if you can't be with someone in particular because of the churches beliefs? That seems like giving into their bigotry," Chrissy said, making Father Krickett think for a moment. "Because, in all honesty, if I didn't have the church, I wouldn't really have anything," he finally said, just as Boris came back out, ready to go. The two men said goodbye to Chrissy and then left the apartment, leaving her alone to think about the state of the world. To Chrissy, if she couldn't be with someone she loved because someone told her it was wrong, she'd be with them anyway. Your happiness should never come at the expense of someone elses comfort. *** "Why do you have a baby monitor in your office?" Dennis asked, picking it up and jiggling it a little. "It's so I can listen to the other higher ups and see if they turn someone down during their meetings, and if they do but I think the writer is worth saving, I'll swoop in after the meeting and snag them anyway," Elise said, not even looking up from her desk. "Wow, that's pretty underhanded of you," Dennis said, setting the baby monitor back down. "Well, we are in corporate america," Elise said, making Dennis chuckle. Dennis strolled across the room, his hands shoved in his pants pockets as he looked at the art hung on the walls and eventually he flopped down in the chair by the window, looking outside. "So..." he said, "you think this guy is really worth it?" "I think that nobody gives the elderly a chance to prove their worth," Elise said, "and I think that alone would be good publicity, but I also do think he's a pretty solid writer and poet, yes. You know me, man, I don't just pick people for fun unless I really think they have something worth sharing." There came a knock on the door and her assistant, Niah, poked her head into the room. "Um, they're here," she said, before leaving. "Welp," Dennis said, getting up, "I'll go gather 'em. Let's see what it is we're working with." Elise cleaned her desk off a bit, refilled the candy jar on the desk and then adjusted her hair a little using her compact. She snapped it shut and slipped it into her coat pocket as the door opened once more and Dennis, Boris and Father Krickett walked in. The three men took their seats - Dennis back in the chair by the window, Boris and John in seats across the desk from Elise - and Elise smiled at them all. "Thank you for coming in to meet with me," Elise said. "Thanks for being interested," Boris said. "How could I not be? After reading some of the stuff that was sent in, I immediately knew I had to meet you," Elise said, cupping her hands on the desk and leaning forward, smirking as she asked, "have you been writing poetry for a long time?" "Very," Boris said, "I started doing it to court my wife, and then I did it to help my daughter fall asleep. Eventually I gave up because I had to get a paying job and nobody was interested in poetry, so I just...put it on the backburner and only wrote a few pieces in private here and there over the years, often to satiate my own emotions." "Well, nobody may have been interested then, but we are now," Dennis said. "Boris, can you just tell me...why do you write poetry over general fiction or even genre fiction? What is it about poetry that pulls you in?" Elise asked. "I guess," Boris said, crossing his legs and thinking, tapping his nails on the arm of the chair, "...I guess because it's harder to convey exactly what you mean in a medium that's reserved for dialogue and plot. Poetry is pure form, pure feeling. It's the closest thing we have to expression of the soul verbally. People talk a lot of shit about purple prose in writing but that's almost all poetry is sometimes, and it's all the better for it." "You really know your stuff, I'm impressed," Dennis said. Boris smirked at this, nodded in his direction, then continued saying, "and I suppose it also was a way for me to work out my internalized issues about myself, my life, my family at the time. It was helpful. Sure, I wrote things for my wife and daughter, like I said, but I also wrote those things for myself. It was like writing it made it real. Like...like feeling it wasn't enough, and I had to somehow bring it into the world another way." "...interesting," Elise said, "Well obviously we're interested. We run a slew of magazines here, but I overhead the literary magazine called Scope, and I'd love to have you write a few pieces and see how it works out, if you're interested, of course." Boris chewed his lip and thought for a moment, then straightened up and, pulling his hat off, rubbed his balding head. "I just have one request," he said, "if I do this. I don't want to be paid for the pieces. I want what I would get compensation wise to be sent to charities for disabled and terminally ill children. That's my only stipulation." "That sounds fair, if you really wanna do that," Elise said. "Besides, who knows, maybe we'll find another way to pay you anyway," Dennis chimed in. "That's admirable, but not entirely necessary," Boris said, as he and Father Krickett started to stand up, ready to exit; as he tossed his scarf around his neck, Boris added, "you know, I always wondered what it'd be like to be a professional writer. I always wondered if I'd feel any different than I did beforehand. Turns out it changes nothing except your expectation for failure to be publicly visible." And with that, he smiled and exited the room, Father Krickett on his heels, leaving Elise and Dennis sitting there, utterly dumbfounded. Dennis finally stood up, scratched the back of his head and shut the office door before turning on his heel and looking back at Elise. "What a weird old man," Dennis said. "I love him," Elise said, grinning from ear to ear. *** Sitting in the diner after their meeting - Boris having ordered a stack of waffles even though it was well after lunch now and John having ordered a lambchop - the men were both uncertain of how to feel about what had just transpired. Boris felt like he should thank Father Krickett, after all, it was his persistence that got Boris the offer, but Boris also felt slightly irritated that he hadn't simply left well enough alone. Now he had expectations to let down, and that made him all the more nervous. Last thing an old man needs is higher blood pressure, he thought to himself. "So," Father Krickett asked while cutting into his slab of meat, "any idea on what you'll be submitting first?" "Yeah, a piece entitled 'People Should Mind Their Own Business'," Boris said snidely, "based on actual recent feelings." "I deserve that I guess," Father Krickett said, chuckling as he lifted a piece of meat into his mouth and chewed, pointing his fork at Boris, "but I just hate to see you squander potential while you've still got it. When we first met, you said you felt like you weren't doing enough with your old age, that you didn't want to just die and have the last part of your life read like a todo list. Woke up. Got dressed. Read the newspaper. You said you wanted to do things with the time you had left, be someone better." "I did say those things, but when the chips are down, and the moment comes, it can quickly remind you how terrifying it is to try and attain a legacy that will outlive you. I caused a lot of pain and grief to people, albeit not purposefully, and I'm scared that what I write will only hurt people further." "It's not like you write cruel things. If anything, it'll help. I mean, think about how many people, even years from now once we're both dead and buried, might come across your work and think 'finally, someone who gets how I feel!'. They'll be appreciative that you took a stand however many years prior to make your feelings known, so that they could feel known later on." Boris thought about this for a bit, then nodded. "Fair enough," he finally replied, pouring more syrup onto his waffles and cutting into them, adding, "but that doesn't make it any less frightening or daunting a task to undergo. Creativity isn't like a faucet you can just turn on and off, I've gotta be in the right frame of mind, the right emotional place. That's why deadlines and I never worked out." "Be good enough for the publisher to fight to keep you onboard and you can forego any deadlines," Father Krickett said, "Let me tell you a story. When I first started preaching, like seriously preaching in this church here, I was told that we do things by the book. A strict set of rules. Here's how we word things, here's words we avoid using, here's phrasing that people expect to hear, and if you didn't follow these rules, then you were considered an unreliable asset. A dangerous asset, even. But the thing is, because I went around those, preached my own way, and as a result got a lot of people coming to sermons because of the way I preached, the church couldn't outright fire me. I was bringing them people! I was worth something. How I preached was worth bending their precious little rules. People like other people who don't play by the rules, especially if they're doing it for good reasons and not selfish ones." Boris leaned back and chewed his waffle bite, then swallowed. He looked around the diner and thought about how he hadn't been writing well lately, how he hadn't felt very good about his work these days, and how he'd love to change that. Perhaps now this was the chance to do so. "Well," he finally said, "can't make my life any worse, can it? Just seems unsettling, like it's a challenge. Good things never happen to me, because when they do, they're followed by even worse things, so it's almost as if the universe is daring me to accept this. And I'm gonna, cause at this point, what more could the universe do that it hasn't already done?" "That's the spirit," Father Krickett said, as they clinked their glasses together. *** Ellen was laying in her hospital bed the following day when the door opened and Boris entered. She put down her book and looked at him, somewhat surprised and somewhat confused. He pulled a chair around and seated himself beside the bed. "Dad? What are you doing here? I don't have any therapy today, and you didn't say you were gonna come visit, so-" "Do you remember when you were a little girl and I used to read you poetry?" he asked, and she smiled. "Yeah, I do remember that, actually. Not very well, but faintly," she replied. "Then let's make some new memories too," Boris said, pulling out his journal and turning to a certain page, "I recently got an offer to do some poetry for a literary magazine and I'm trying to work on some stuff. For a long time I thought that perhaps the way I viewed the world was what was wrong with my writing, and it turns out I was right. I shouldn't say how I see the world. I should say how I wanna see the world. What I want the world to be." Ellen smiled warmly, and reached out, holding his hand. "By the way, all the money is going to disabled or terminally ill children, so I'm not even doing this for financial compensation." Ellen felt like she wanted to cry. She was still, admittedly, having trouble remembering who her father had been, but the man she was looking at she was becoming proud to call her dad now. "I hope you like this, I wrote it a few weeks ago," he said, "It's gonna be my first submission for publication next month. It's called 'Polly'."
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Golden Years follows the exploits of a bunch of old people in a retirement home as they try to have fun, relax or come to terms with the soon to be end of their lives. Archives
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