Hmmm…I’m curious as to what this certain something is. It’s a rough draft so I’m wondering if that has something to do with it. Or maybe it’s just the light tone of the piece, that while by no means unpublishable (I’m hoping), is not similar perhaps to what you typically read. I definitely hope for you to read the other chapters to get your feedback. Are those chapters suffering from the same je ne sais quoi of “unpublishability” infecting this one? Thanks again for your comment.
Novel Treatments / Chapter 5--Way South (Analysis)
Chapter 5
Thankfully, I stopped drinking as soon as Bean left me and returned to Troy’s with the extra key I had. Thankfully Mishka was not blasting trance music, though Troy was still gone. Thankfully, sleep came quickly after I guzzled a liter of water, ate some leftover pizza and hopped into bed.
Not so thankfully I awoke to someone kicking me.
“Dude, I was about to call your parents.”
Troy was hovering over me, smiling. I was relieved to see he wasn’t too pissed off at me for disappearing.
“What time is it?” I tried to rouse myself but felt like I was on a tugboat in choppy waters, and lay back in bed.
“It’s about 6:30 in the morning. I’m up early. I got a deadline at three.”
I groaned slightly.
“You okay?”
“Could be worse.” I rubbed my head, and though I didn’t have a headache I felt like my brain had been vacuumed through me nostrils.
“So what the fuck happened to you? I mean, I expect to hang out with you when you come for the weekend.”
“Dude, sorry. I met this guy Bean and…”
“What, have you gone gay on me?” Troy joked.
“No, long story, but I’m going to quit work and go to Brazil.”
“What are you going to do? Let me guess, you’re still drunk?”
“No, no. Remember I told you I was thinking of traveling south.”
I’d mentioned the idea to Troy in passing when I first arrived in New York, though I told him that I’d decided not to leave the country any time soon.
“Okay Brazil. For how long?”
“I don’t know. I may end up living there for a year and learn the language.”
“I’m sure your Dad is going to love this idea.”
“Yeah, well…”
“You’re not going to tell him?”
“Yeah, we’ll see. Maybe when I’m in Nicaragua.”
“I thought you just said you’re going to Brazil.”
“Yeah, long story.”
A moment later Troy returned from the kitchen with some coffee he’d just brewed. “Okay, I guess I can burn a few minutes.”
He sat down next to me and I sat up. For the next ten minutes I recounted the last forty-eight hours in New York, focusing on Bean’s grand scheme.
“The Yankee Seducers? Ha! You sure you can trust this guy? He sounds completely berserk. Kind of like you.” Troy added, playfully.
I gulped the coffee down in one sip. “Agreed. He’s anything but grounded, but I think he’s got a good heart.”
I mentioned the near fight from the day before and how he’d prevented an angry boyfriend from possibly knocking me out.
“Jesus, Matt. Just don’t get killed in Mexico or anywhere in between. This guy Bean sounds like your evil twin.”
I stood up and went to the bathroom. Blood shot, my usually hazel eyes, burned an absinthe green. My face was puffy. “What time did you say it was?”
“It’s probably seven by now.”
“Fuck! My plane leaves at nine. Or nine-twenty. Something like that.”
Troy stood up from the bed, picked up a plastic dart lying on his bedside table and threw it at a dartboard he had hanging on the wall. “Well, that gives you about five minutes to grab all of your shit and grab a cab.”
The dart missed the board, sticking in the wall. “Though, if you miss your plane and need to crash here another night, no problem.” He pulled the dart out of the wall. “And Matt?”
“Yeah?”
“Do me a favor.” The dart flew through the air again this time nearly hitting the bullseye. “Tell your Dad. Don’t just disappear in the middle of the night. Your Dad doesn’t handle stress well.”
“I will.”
In the next three minutes, I rifled through the apartment for my belongings. I thought about what Troy said about telling my parents. I couldn’t imagine just disappearing in the middle of the night, as Troy had put it. But telling my Dad that I was about to quit my job, one where he felt I was finally getting a sense of responsibility, could lead to an altercation. That I was doing it to go travel all the way to Brazil and live there off my stock profits could lead to him disowning me. Telling him once I’d quit my job, when I was thousands of miles from his wrath, on the other hand, sounded sensible.
Caught up in this turbulent stream of thought, I ended up forgetting my toothbrush, credit card, and a pair of running shoes. Luckily I made the plane just as the velvet rope at the boarding gate was being latched.
*
“You want to do what?”
It was Tuesday morning and I was sitting alone with Softtech’s sales director, Brad, in his office.
“I don’t know. I just would like to travel a little.”
I expected him to reproach me for such a rash decision, but when he smiled, leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head, I sensed he was relieved.
Ultimately, Brad had probably been wondering what to do with me. Out of inertia—I’d been sitting in my cubicle doing a mediocre job for so long—there just hadn’t been an apt time or sufficient excuse to terminate me, thereby providing me with severance pay. I provided him with an excuse.
“So, Rio, eh?”
“Yes. I have a few friends down there teaching English.” I dropped the lie seamlessly, given that my heart was knocking against my chest.
“Is that right?”
I continued the lie, liking the way it sounded, realizing that maybe it wasn’t exactly a lie—I was just improvising my own future. “Yeah, a few friends from college.”
“Don’t you need a certificate for that?”
“Well my friend has some pretty good contacts down there, and I minored in English so I shouldn’t have too many problems.” I didn’t mention anything about the intervening 6,000 miles I planned to traverse with a guy I’d just met, who went by the name Bean.
Brad exhaled a hiss of air through his mouth, grinning. “I hear there are some really hot girls down there. I remember when I was, oh, about 25…how old are you again, twenty-four?”
“Twenty-six.”
“Right. Yeah, when I was your age I had trouble sitting still. I’m thirty-four now. But in your shoes, yeah man, enjoy life a little. Go figure things out.”
I was expecting some resistance and sat dumbfounded not knowing what to say.
Brad reclined and looked above my head as though imaging his city on the hill, or wall in this case. “I hear their asses are shaped like onions.”
I wasn’t sure if this was a good thing, or some unpleasantly mixed metaphor. Actually, I was surprised Brad had said it in the first place. He’d always been professional with me, but now that I’d walked into his office to sever that connection, he dropped his guard.
“You know I went to Santiago back in my twenties,” he continued. Spent a summer study abroad. Always wanted to go back. Had a girlfriend, Cecilia or Cilia. Something like that. Cutest little thing.”
Over the last hour, I’d agonized over my decision in Softtech’s cafeteria. I imagined the side of Brad I’d heard about would rear itself. He’d remark on how I’d only been deadweight in the company. Then he’d call in Spackmann and they’d tag-team me with pent-up grips and grievances. To diffuse my angst, I’d whipped up three protein shakes from the constant supply of protein powder that the health-conscious Softtech kept to make employees happy, and I suppose, buffed. I mixed in soy milk and chugged the concoction. My stomach now roiled as I listened to my usually reticent boss tell me that woman in Brazil had asses shaped like onions.
“Well, have a great time. What else can I say? Oh, wait. Let’s get David Spackmann in here.”
A moment later Spackmann burst through the door. “What happened now? Are you causing some kind of drama, Philllips?”
“Matt has decided to live in Brazil for a couple of months. As of today, he’s tendering his resignation.” Brad said.
“Oh, that’s fucking great. I need you out there man. You’re still doing good work. That one lead you gave me from Enron is working out pretty well.”
“Thanks, but this is it. I’ve decided that I want to travel…”
“Look at you.” Spackmann’s solicitous expression collapsed into a smirk. “Ooh, I knew something was up. I even saw you buying some ticket to somewhere.”
Spackman placed both of his hands on his hips and leaned towards me. “So when you leaving?”
“End of the month. About two-and-a-half weeks.”
“Aren’t you still sick? You look sick.”
“Yeah, how you feeling Matt?” Brad asked.
“Still kind of bad. I spent most of Sunday and Monday in bed.”
“Cutting it close, Matt. You’re going to finish here and then off to Rio. Just like that.” Spackmann’s grin continued to broaden as though he knew I’d been in New York and was looking for the right moment to drop this damning indictment. “Wouldn’t it be great if we could all have your life?”
“I give him points for pluck,” Brad interjected. “You just walked in here and laid it out. That was not easy to do.” Whether Brad really felt this way or not, I couldn’t tell. But his words put me at ease, and if before I was nervous protein-guzzling wreck, I now felt like I’d grown feathers and was flying up into the clouds.
“Okay, Phillips, you still got two weeks worth of work. And don’t catch anything in Brazil, I hear…” Spackmann mimed a doggie-style position and started slapping the air’s invisible ass, “they’ve all got the hiv.”
Spackmann pronounced the disease as one word and his lower lip jutted out as he continued his pantomime.
“David back to work for you too,” Brad said sternly, before letting out a ripple of laughter.
Spackman stopped with his air-humping routine. “Oh yeah, I’m closing some big deals this Q4. While Matt’s living it up in Rio for New Year’s.”
As Spackman walked out of the office, he stopped at the threshold as though about to drop some damning accusation. “And Matt…”
I could feel the protein shake coming back up.
“Two weeks. You still owe me two weeks.” Spackmann’s voice trailed off into the corridor.
As quickly as I could, I shook Brad’s hand and headed to the bathroom. With a mixture of elation and nausea, I heaved 48 ounces of protein shake into the toilet.
For the next two weeks at Softtech, I avoided any more protein shakes, as well as any real work. Instead, I used the company’s zippy Internet to learn about the vast swathes of terra incognita that lay before me.
Belize, reputed to have the best scuba diving in the world, was no longer an impossibly remote country, but a land that was more or less on our route south. Or a “post-colonial British redoubt in the heart of the Yucatan, a short skip from Mexico or Guatemala,” as one guidebook writer glibly put it.
Unlike Belize, Guatemala was the only way south out of Mexico and would be a definite stop on our trek south. Everything was half-as-cheap as it was in Mexico and the national beer, Gallo, meaning chicken in Spanish, had a large chicken cock-a-doodling on the bottle. And in keeping with the chicken motif, the primary means of transport in Guatemala were chicken buses, which were refurbished American school buses emblazoned with giant chickens. Though one shouldn’t be surprised if someone brought a few chickens on board.
There were also the less appealing countries. Fresh from a civil war, El Salvador, where guns outnumbered smiles, seemed like the New Jersey of Central America. Honduras was bananas and malaria. And Chiapas, in the southern part of Mexico, was an around-the-clock riot of disgruntled farmers bearing firearms.
I traced possible routes, using the D-day of early February to arrive in Brazil in time for Carneval. Besides the six weeks needed to cover a continent and a half worth of land, there was a buzzing housefly in my travel plan ointment—the dreaded Darien Gap that separated Panama from Colombia. Or more specifically, a hundred mile stretch of dense jungle that was impossible to traverse, unless, that is, Bean and I were willing to spend three weeks hacking through snake-infested swamps, while avoiding frequent clashes between Columbian paramilitary troops and Panamanian marauders.
But in my cubicle, under the steady hiss of fluorescent lights, even the Darien Gap and the mosquitoes of Honduras took on a romantic sheen. And though Spackmann would sometimes hover behind me slowly mouthing—“Herpes, Phillips. Herpes”—I otherwise might have well have been on a chicken bus in Guatemala.
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AProphetForHope reviewed Version 1 -
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“Thankfully, I stopped drinking as soon…” – Your first two sentecnes don’t read well. Try -
“Thankfully, I stopped drinking and returned to Traoy’s with the spare key as soon as Bean left. Thankfully, Mishka was not blasting trance music. Troy was still gone.”
“Not so thankfully I awoke to someone kicking me.” – I see what you’re trying to do but this sentence just doesn’t read well at all.
“You okay?” – you need to qualify where this comes from. Also, I think you need to stick a little more spin on the story, flesh out the parts between the dialogue so that the world stands out a bit better. At the moment it’s just a bit full of speach.
“vacuumed through me nostrils.” – my
“I’d mentioned the idea to Troy in ” – info dump. Not needed. Let the reader fill in a few gaps and just structure your writing so that we pick out the rest.
“I thought you just said you’re going to Brazil.” – this Troy fella’s pretty sharp then. i’ve been through SA and I had to grind my brain to think whereabouts Nicaragua was.
“A moment later Troy returned from…” no he didn’t. To return from somewhere, he’d have to have gone somewhere in the first place. You didn’t tell us troy went anywhere so he didn’t. Sorry :-/ nit picky huh!
“I gulped the coffee down in one sip” LOL! this is a beautiful contradiction in terms. Which is it then. A gulp I suppose… certainly not a sip.
“I stood up and went to the bathroom. Blood shot, my usually” again it’s nit picky but you need to keep the action completely chronoligoical or your reader will lose you. You don’t mention a mirror here. I fill in the gaps but I shouldn’t have to. Matt can’t see his eye without a mirror – you need to mention it.
“grab all of your shit and grab a cab” – intentional repetition?
“Caught up in this turbulent stream of thought, I ended” – the rest of the character’s comments feel like the charatcer himself relaying what happened in his words. This sentence seems to stick out as overly flambouyant and unnatural, if you see what I mean?
“Luckily I made the plane just as the velvet rope at the boarding gate was being latched.”- you don’t need to say luckily here. you’ve made that obvious and it detracts from your writing.
“You want to do what?” – this voice comes from nowhere ansd isn’t placed by the character at all. Something like –
You want to do what?!
“Brad’s eyebrows went up. This clearly wasn’t what he thought I’d want to use his open-door policy for.” – this is a bit of a double whammy cos it places the scene slightly, gives the reader a nudge as to what might be going on here. It also places the voice and doesn’t leave the reader wondering who’s speaking.
“who went by the name Bean.” name OF Bean
“I wasn’t sure if this was a good thing, or some unpleasantly mixed metaphor” – LOL excellent!
“Something like that. Cutest little thing.” – might be nice to have a taper here. a … as Brad trails on and Matt fills us in on the interim?
” Brazil had asses shaped like onions” – I’d use this chance to throw in another amusing Brad-like comment on thier ‘tits’ or some such crudity.
“Let’s get David Spackmann in here.” – Don’t let your audience off so easy. You set the the Spackmann situation up so we could get worried about it, so that Matt worried about it and then you never let Matt worry about it. A simple ‘Shit…’ after this sentence would get a giggle from me!
Descriptions of places are great – suitably dry and witty. Good work.
Ace. I was really going with it by the end. Yeh it has bits wrong with it and it does need editing well, just to tighten everything up cos when you get it right the pages race by and Matt’s dry witt is really endearing. I love the way he’s innocent and soft but definately cinical and jaded. Keep up the good work – I’ll look for the other chapters.
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Matthewtuckey reviewed Version 1 -
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timrees reviewed Version 1 -
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It seemed to me in the first scene with Troy that Matt is rushing off to catch a plane on the start of his journey south, then we are in an office and he’s handing in his resignation with the intention of leaving in two and half weeks. That all puzzled me so I had to go back and read again, which obviously upset my enjoyment of the piece. The reader needs clarity there. Apart from that it was fine and is, in my opinion, a sketch that still needs work. I like the terse, clipped style of your writing and I’m beginning to get a sense of Matt as a person, but the reader needs a little more juice before they take the bait and are hooked into the story and want to know what happens next.
In my opinion, Matt needs an edge and the story needs a little teaser; maybe offer the reader a hint of the potential future plot or raise a question that the reader will want to see answered. I don’t know and this is only my opinion, but what you have here, I feel, is only a sketch. Potentially, this will adapt very well to a film script as is with very little work…
On the whole I enjoyed this and would be interested to read on…
I hope that helps? Cheers.
Buttons reviewed Version 1 -
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I gave you a 6 for publishable, because I felt that the story was lacking a certain something to make it publishable and buyable. I’m really sorry that I can’t specify what that is for you. I found it perfectly readable, and despite having read none of the other chapters I am still interested to find out what happens on the trip to Brazil so maybe it just says something about the types of books I buy rather than your writing!
The use of “Thankfully” in the first paragraph grated on me. Even though you were using it as part of a technique it didn’t quite work in my opinion.
Otherwise, well written. Possibly a little too much dialogue, but it’s a style that works on occasion and seems to be working here.
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