“Deadline is in two weeks, Steve, and you haven’t even given me a first draft yet. What’s wrong?”
The question hung in the air as the man sat back in his chair, sighing. His hair had been more white than gray for the past five years now and, staring at his reflection upon the glass of the huge windows that formed one side of the office, he had to marvel at the wrinkles that marred his once youthful features. But it wasn’t only that face that was so familiar to him that had changed, but something behind it. Something he couldn’t quite put his finger on and yet struggled with every day from the moment he woke in the morning to the second he got into bed and shut his eyes.
Riana frowned over her clasped hands, her sharp eyes softened with concern. “What’s going on? You haven’t been yourself lately. We’ve all been really worried. Did something happen?”
“I’m sorry to bother everyone with my troubles,” Steve said ruefully, nodding at the framed photographs that adorned the office walls. “I’ve just got no inspiration left. Sometimes, I wonder why I ever started writing stories at all.”
“What do you mean?” Frowning, his editor tapped the books stacked in a neat pile at the corner of her desk. “Award winning author, Ryan Holly, world acclaimed bestseller Thomas Hall—you wrote them all, Steve. What more can an author ask for?”
“I don’t know.” If anything more depressed than he had been a moment before, the man got to his feet and went over to stare out the window at the city sprawled out below. For several minutes he just gazed at the glittering buildings and bustling streets then he returned to his chair, resigned. “But even if I’m suddenly struck by a stroke of genius, I can’t write an entire novel in two weeks.”
Riana gestured at the sleek, black laptop before her, humming softly like a contented cat slumbering in the heat of late morning. “That’s why I keep telling you to get yourself a computer.”
“I have a computer.”
“Yes, but you only ever use it for your follow-up drafts and editing, never for your rough. It would be a lot faster you know.”
“Maybe, but I prefer to write.” Taking another sip from his coffee mug, Steve set it back on the edge of the table, staring down at his calloused hands. “Somehow it just feels more personal.” Meeting her intent gaze, he added hesitantly, “Actually, I’ve been thinking of retiring.”
“Retiring?” Riana repeated the word as though it was from a foreign language, not quite believing her ears. “But your prospects are still so high! Your last book sold over a million copies! Can you really bear just giving that all up? Just like that?”
“Actually, I think I can.” There was no hesitation this time as Steve fixed her with the most focused look he’d had in days. “But I still want to write one more story. I just don’t know what it’ll be about yet. I just know that this time, I don’t want to write it for money. I’m getting along in years and I’m detached enough as it is from the mind of the public. So, just for once, I want to write about what I want, not about what they want to hear.”
But his editor was still frowning. “There’s no market for such a book.”
“That’s just it.” Steve levered himself heavily to his feet, his lined face etched with weariness and more than a little bit of sadness. “I may not remember why I started writing, but it sure as hell wasn’t because the economic market was whispering in my ears. Please, Riana, just give me three more weeks. I promise I’ll have it to you by then.”
“Well, all right then. I’ve known you for eighteen years and you’ve never let us down, but I hope you snap out of this soon. I’ll see you next Wednesday.”
With a nod and a murmured goodbye, Steve shut the door and made his way to the elevator, his footsteps muffled upon the thick, crimson carpet. Somehow, he really doubted that he would be snapping out of anything anytime soon unless it was out of this career. He had spoken of retiring several times before over the past few years, but this time he was serious. He’d known it was coming from the moment he woke up the week before, looked at the various certificates and honors that stood and hung about his apartment, and felt—nothing. Nothing at all, except perhaps a deep and unshakable tiredness.
The elevator chimed as it reached the bottom floor and the doors slid open with a hiss. His shoes clicked as he walked across the polished marble floor and exited the glass doors into the street to begin the long walk home. Yet despite what he had told Riana, no ideas were forthcoming.
Passing a flower shop on the street corner, he felt a tug on his sleeve and paused, glancing down to see a little boy. A fringe of shaggy, black hair fell into the boy’s green eyes as he smiled up at him and held out a pale blue rose. Steve thought the face familiar but before he could ask the child’s business, the boy was gone, vanishing as swiftly into the crowd as he had appeared.
“Now that was strange,” he mused, glancing down at the flower in his hand. He’d never seen a rose of quite that color. Curiosity piqued, he entered the small flower shop, making his way to the counter. “Excuse me.”
The clerk lowered his newspapers and exclaimed in delight. “If it isn’t Steve Holland! I haven’t seen you since the summer before last. How is Catalina?”
Steve looked away. “In a better place than we are.”
The clerk’s face fell and he sat back on his stool, regarding his old friend with new eyes. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. God bless her, she was one of the kindest people who ever lived.” “That’s all right.” Steve forced a smile, but something in his chest still felt heavy. Placing the rose carefully on the counter, he nodded at it. “Have you ever seen anything like this?”
Leaning forward, the clerk adjusted his spectacles, puzzled. “Incredible—that color! Where did you get this?”
“A child gave it to me.” Retrieving the flower, the author examined its perfectly sculpted petals once more, his brow furrowed in thought. His heart was pounding in his chest yet he had no idea why. It was as though all the answers lay just out of reach. “Well, I won’t impose my presence on you further then.”
The clerk called after him as he reached the door. “Would you join us for dinner on Sunday night? Mary’s been experimenting with her apple pies. They’re not quite as delicious as what you can buy in the bakery, but at least they don’t kill.”
“I’ll think about it.”
By the time he finally arrived in the hallway before his third floor apartment, night had fallen. Unlocking the door, he stepped inside and froze. Had he forgotten to turn off the light that morning? But that couldn’t be it. He never turned on all the lights at once and he definitely wouldn’t have forgotten to turn them all off if he had. He might be getting along in years but his mind was still as clear as ever.
Listening hard, he heard nothing. Leaving the front door standing open, he stepped cautiously into the living room. There was no one there. Moving to the bedroom entryway, he peered inside: no one there either. Frowning, he made his way last to the kitchen.
A young man glanced up at him from the cluttered table and smiled brightly. “Hello, Steve. I’ve been waiting for you all afternoon. Would you like some coffee?”
The old man stood frozen in the doorway, his mouth dry. “Who are you and how did you get into my apartment?”
“Why, Steve, I’m hurt that you don’t recognize me.” Pouring himself a cup of coffee, the young man motioned to the chair opposite him, emerald eyes sparkling. “I’m you, of course.”
Stumbling the few steps to the empty chair, Steve dropped down into it, staring at his visitor in dumb disbelief. But he could see the resemblance now—the particular curve of the jaw, the dark shade of green in the eyes, the disheveled look that persisted no matter how many times he combed his hair in the morning—everything about the man suggested a much younger Steve, perhaps just reaching his twenty-fifth birthday. His voice came out in a croak. “But how is this possible?”
“That depends.” The young man shrugged, resting his elbows upon the tabletop. “We’ve come to help you find your way.”
“We?” Steve repeated, wondering where all his eloquence had gone all of a sudden.
As he asked the question, a second man walked through the kitchen doorway though he had heard no one enter the apartment and seen no one but moments before. This visitor had streaks of gray in his black hair but the piercing green gaze was the same, if the set of the mouth more stern. “We.” Coming to stand beside the younger man, the newcomer surveyed Steve seriously. “Do you know what your problem is? The problem is that you’ve gone too far down to earth. Think about it, Steve. Look at us. What do you see?”
“Myself when I was twenty-five and myself when I was forty,” he replied, his mind still buzzing. But the apparitions, ghosts, hallucinations, or whatever they were weren’t satisfied.
“Is that all? Come now, since when have any of your stories been about looking at the surface of things alone?”
Stories. Pausing, Steve’s forehead wrinkled as realization dawned slowly. “When I was twenty-five—I wrote the first successful novel of my career under the name Thomas Hall. I wrote several more books after that but I wanted to turn my focus to mystery novels, the first of them being published when I was thirty-six with the pen name Jeremy Hale. Then when I was forty, I changed names again to Bryan Holly when interest in the series slackened.”
His two visitors were nodding in approval and he stopped, looking from one to the other. “Not just that,” the young man remarked, leaving the kitchen for a moment only to return with a load of books in his arms. As the second visitor cleared the table, he set them down, laying each volume next to each other. “For every name you used, you were creating a new identity and unconsciously making a copy of yourself at that time to fulfill that new identity. We are you and at the same time, we’re not. We are you from the very time and moment you used your pen to write our names in the corner of your paper. Look at all this.” He waved a hand over all the books and gave Steve a warm smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes. “This is everything we’ve done together. How is it going to end? What’s going to be the last?”
Staring down at the volumes laid out before him, Steve’s vision blurred. “But that was all so long ago. I can’t, not anymore. I’ve lost something on the way up. Catalina—she knew. It’s my fault she’s gone.”
“Your fault? Don’t be so arrogant.”
“But we’d argued about my books,” Steve protested. “She hated them and we argued and she left—left and never came back.”
His older visitor scowled. “Dry your eyes, Steve. You haven’t lost anything permanently. You’ve just gotten a bit lost along the way and we’re here to set you back on track. Don’t you remember why you started?”
Steve could only shake his head, his hands trembling uncontrollably where they rested upon his knees.
“She didn’t hate all your books, remember?” the younger man reminded more gently. “She was so happy for you when the first one came out. Remember what she told you then?”
Steve swallowed. As if triggered by the other’s words, the memories surfaced bright and clear in his mind, so vivid he thought he could reach out and touch them. “She told me it didn’t matter if the critics didn’t like it. Because…because…”
“Because?” his older visitor demanded impatiently. “Because what?”
The author shut his eyes. “Because I’d written it with heart.”
“Exactly.” The younger man smiled. “The butterflies—you can’t forget what you told Catalina. With all the fame, I know it got to your head, but you’ve already realized that haven’t you? Why you got lost?”
Steve bowed his head. He did know. And yet, “I can’t.”
Two pairs of identical eyes stared intently back at him. “Why not?”
“You don’t understand—it was my fault. Every time I try to come up with a story, all I can think about is her and it hurts so much…”
“Do you think she blames you?” His older visitor leaned across the table to peer narrow-eyed into his face. “Is that honestly what you believe?”
Steve opened his mouth to say yes but he couldn’t. His beloved Catalina had never been that kind of person, it was one reason he had fallen in love with her.
From behind his older visitor, he heard the other speak softly. “You don’t need to be afraid of your heart. I know it hurts to think of her now, but there were other times—her joy, her vitality. Is this dark hole you’ve dropped into really how you want to remember her?”
“No.”
Wiping the tears from his face with the back of his sleeve, Steve stood slowly and walked towards his writing desk. As he entered the living room, the boy from earlier greeted him with a wide grin, holding the pale blue rose that he had left by the door out to him once more. Accepting it, Steve moved to the desk in the corner and sat down, setting the flower gently beside his array of pens. Roses had always been Catalina’s favorite flower since he met her at their college graduation party. And the delicate shade of blue reminded him of the very first notebook his father had bought him when he’d started writing at the age of ten. Strange how he could have forgotten it, even after all this time; it had always meant so much to him, the fragile butterflies drawn upon the cover reminding him of the fleeting substance of dreams.
Behind him, the young man spoke up as though having read his mind. “Wasn’t that what you always told Catalina? You wanted your stories to be like that first book, to capture the butterflies without trapping them, to keep them alive with your pages and breathe life into the people who looked at them.”
“Yes.”
All around him, the living room seemed to be full of people, countless versions of his own face throughout his life peering back at him, filling the air with anticipation. He hadn’t felt so excited since—since before the police had phoned him to tell him that Catalina had died in a car crash on her way home after their fight—before that even. It was as though all his life, he’d been waiting for this moment.
“Come on.” The child came over to stand beside him as he selected a pen from his collection. “With heart this time. All of your last few books, their ratings were off the charts but your heart wasn’t in the work, was it? That’s why you couldn’t continue, you know. You don’t have to be afraid of thinking about her. After all, love’s what always made your words so beautiful.”
A new pad of paper waited before him, untouched for the past several days. And as his ten-year-old self reached out to wrap his small hand around the trembling fingers that grasped the pen, Steve began to write…
Riana had been staring at the phone all morning, almost glaring at it as she waited. It had been three weeks since that strange conversation with her best writer and Steve still hadn’t told her anything about what he was working on. He had promised to get her the manuscript by today, yet her she was still manuscript-less.
“Think about something else,” she ordered herself sternly, prying her gaze from the sleek black communicator long enough to check her e-mail. Pulling up Steve’s address, she had just started typing a very irritated message when the phone rang. Snatching it up, she hammed it to her ear. “Yes?”
“It’s Steve.”
Riana could have cried with relief—but she decided not to. “About time! So? Where is it?”
“I’ve just dropped it off at the front desk.”
She paused, frowning. “You’re not coming up?”
“I’ve been invited to dinner at a friend’s house. He runs the flower shop down the street. I thought I’d go look for a present to bring along.”
Riana relaxed. “I’m glad to hear that you’re getting out more often. It’s been a while. So can you finally tell me what the story is? What’s the book about?”
When the reply came, it was quiet and a little bit sad. But she could hear the smile behind it. “Catalina.”