From: al677@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Jerry Cosyn)
Newsgroups: alt.prose
Subject: Exit Line
Date: 5 Sep 1992 19:15:23 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio (USA)
NNTP-Posting-Host: slc4.ins.cwru.edu


                               EXIT LINE
 
 
Dear Helen,
 
 
     I suppose you'll be surprised to receive this.  Somehow that
seems appropriate.  From the beginning, the one constant in our
relationship has been our inexhaustible ability to surprise each
other.  We seem to have dedicated ourselves to that single task, with
the result being, after over twenty years of looking for new and
bigger surprises, that we stumble over the conventional and routine
while excelling at oddities.  If you were inclined to write a book
about us I'm sure it would be a best seller.  Now that would be
beautifully ironic, don't you think?  To have the big break you've
been looking for turn out to be the story we've been living all these
years?  All it needs is an ending.  I know the endings have always
given you trouble, so on this one I'll help you.
 
     Our story certainly contains enough conflict to propel a plot
line along.  Raw emotions.  Ups and downs, love and petty jealousies.
And the undercurrent of mutual frustration as we both watched our
careers teeter on the verge of great success, only to fall back at the
crucial moments.  Oh, there's a story there, Helen.  And you'll know
just how to write it.  How typical of our lives that the story of our
endless failures, professional and personal, should at last bring to
us both the fame that's always eluded us.
 
     There's a double irony at work, in fact.  That I, the actor,
should ultimately be the one to write the ending, my own exit line,
and leave you, the writer, to act upon it, is a delicious twist.  A
subtle role reversal at the end.  Best seller material, I tell you.
 
     I have confidence, Helen, that you'll do it up right.  Plenty of
lurid details.  Perhaps a little literary license regarding our few
faltering attempts at affairs.  Some good steamy action, exaggerated
though it may be, will be perfect for those catchy book jacket phrases
that sell so well.  Oh, the story's all there, in a rough skeletal
form, and I know you have the talent to flesh it out and bring it to
life.  Art not only imitating, but surpassing real life.  In all
likelihood a tv movie.  And the story has been right there in front of
you, all along.  I'm surprised you never thought of it yourself.
"Write what you know."  Isn't that what you literary sorts are always
saying?  Well, this is one story you know well, requiring only a good
ending.
 
     It will come as no surprise to you that I am unable to express my
reasons for writing the ending this way.  We never could explain our
feelings or motivations to each other.
 
     When I asked you why you loved me, you never gave me a
satisfactory answer.  I know you thought it was a stupid question, and
that the answer should have been obvious, requiring no words.  You
seemed to take it as a personal affront, a challenge, that I would
even ask such a question.  You always insisted that it couldn't be put
into words.  You, the writer, lacked the means to express yourself.
But I needed the words.  Though they may have been imprecise or
incomplete descriptions of what you meant when you said "love", I
needed to hear them.  I wanted to understand.  And you couldn't
understand why I didn't, so you never knew how to explain.
 
     Our silences were always strained.  I always wondered what you
were thinking, feeling, and knew better than to ask, because your
vague and casual answers only annoyed me.  Then I'd be moody, and
you'd ask me what I was thinking, and I'd retaliate by being
uncommunicative, and we'd bat it back and forth like a weapon until we
couldn't stand to be together because the tension was too exhausting.
So one of us would storm out, or else we'd charge into battle,
spitting our anger and frustration at each other like machine gun fire
until you broke into tears, and then I'd hold you and stroke your hair
and apologize, all the time wondering what it was I was apologizing
for and how we'd let ourselves fall into the same pit of
misunderstanding again.
 
     The good times were truly wonderful, Helen.  When we walked in
the woods on sunny days, talking about books or music or the future we
would create, I loved you so hard I could feel it in my skin.  Your
smile when you were happy made me feel like I owned the world, like
nobody could do anything to displease me.  Your hand in mine felt so
warm and perfect.  And in the rare moments when you frolicked and
played like a little girl the laughter would come so easy and natural
that I would forget the cares and worries and responsibilities.  But
they were always waiting when we stopped laughing.
 
     The storms have taken their toll Helen, of both of us.  I know
you've been unhappy for a long time.  With each rejection, each buried
article, each story that failed to provoke even a two-line review, the
dream withered.  And all the bit parts, cattle calls, and miserable
scripts became chains, dragging me from hope to bitterness.  I don't
know whether it was worse watching my own career go nowhere over the
years, or watching you lose your own dream.  But I know it has to end
in style, and perhaps give you your last chance for fame.  So here's
how the ending goes:
 
     In the third act tonight, just before the curtain comes down, the
enraged wife draws a revolver from the desk drawer and fires a shot at
her adulterous husband.  The first shot misses, but as he lunges at
her and they struggle over the gun, the second shot kills him, dead,
through the heart.  I intend to replace the second blank in the gun
with a live round.  I'll see to it that the shot does not miss.  By
the time you read this, the theater will be pandemonium, and I'll have
delivered my final exit line.  Tomorrow, our names will be in every
newspaper in the country.  I suggest you lose no time getting your
publisher to buy the story.  Fame can be a fleeting thing.
 
     Goodbye, Helen.
Newsgroups: wpi.students.story,alt.prose,rec.arts.anime,rec.arts.manga,wpi.students,rec.arts.comics.misc