Dear Marvin

I found myself in a plastic bag next to a knife. I was surprised at the change of scenery but not entirely shocked. I had twenty five years to think about the story that had been placed in my care.

***

Marvin sat at his PC typing with his two pointer fingers, soggy cigar butt clamped in the corner of his mouth. Billy Idol’s “Eyes Without a Face” seeped up through the floorboards filling the air of the tiny apartment, adding to Marvin’s extreme agitation.

He typed “Dear Marvin Jan 11, 2000”, hit enter and got up for his bottle of Jack Daniels.

Returning to his seat, he spat out a glob of mystery material into the cup that followed him around like a dirty puppy. 

“Damn these questions,” he growled, drumming his fingers on the cluttered desk, chomping on the cigar.

I sat waiting for him to answer the question. The Dear Marvin piece was due the following morning, and he had put it off to the last minute. Again. 

Staring into the screen, he clicked clacked on the keyboard furiously and finally hit save. The stream of zeros and ones, bits and bytes, filled me up almost to the point of being maxed out, but not quite. I would be around for another few Dear Marvin pieces, I was relieved to realize. 

The surly advice columnist was an impractical man, spending his money on women and booze rather than the upkeep of his home office. But then again, he didn’t give a damn about the people writing in for his advice. His gift for gab and art of bullshit kept him afloat as he shmoozed his way through each week for his lousy paycheck. The gig was just to keep his foot in the door of the writing world while he finished his bestseller. That would be the key to the good life, or so he said to every babe he brought home for a romp on his waterbed.

Throwing back another shot of Jack Daniels, Marvin paced the small apartment like a caged animal. He opened the glass doors of his stereo cabinet and put a vinyl on the turntable. Soon the bass from the huge speakers pounded through the room, drowning out any remnants of his neighbor’s music.

The shrill ring of the phone was barely audible over the Smashing Pumpkins, ringing more than a dozen times before Marvin finally noticed and picked up the receiver. 

“Hello? Who is this?” he barked into the phone, continuing to pace as far and wide as the tangled phone cord would allow. 

“Are you kidding me? You’re here?” Marvin screamed with rage. “How many times have I told you not to show up at my place?” He slammed the phone down, grabbed his leather jacket and stormed out of the apartment.  

The following morning Marvin sat at his PC as usual. All was not status quo, though. Marvin had deep scratches running along his left cheek, and the skin beneath his bloodshot eyes was sallow and puffy. The cigar was clamped between dry, cracked lips. He wore the same Aerosmith jersey from the day before, stretched and misshapen on his body.

After sliding me into the disk drive, he quickly typed in the command ‘format’, and the data that I held so dear was wiped clean. I was surprised but not entirely shocked as Marvin was a tricky one, always jumping into his next big idea.

He began to type, but not the Dear Marvin piece that was once again likely to be late. Instead, he crafted a story about his worst enemy, a woman who threatened to expose a sinister secret they shared. She had appeared in the rough draft of his novel as a side character, but this was something entirely different. This story was typed quickly, a far cry from Marvin’s snail-like pace of creativity, with a feeling of both urgency and panic.

As his two pointer fingers click clacked on the keyboard, I recognized the details of the unfolding scene. Billy Idol playing in the background. The phone ringing incessantly. The dashing out into the night. Marvin was writing a work of nonfiction based on the events of the previous night. I had never saved such a story before and wondered if perhaps he was trying his hand at journalism.

The tale grew horrific as the characters came to life on the monitor. Their hushed words quickly escalated into angry shouts. Threats and accusations got tossed about as Marvin pulled the woman into the dark alley. He had reached his limit as the whiskey swirled around him, mixing with her ever-growing demands. He took out the knife.

***

The story of the murdered prostitute in the alleyway aired on the 10:00 news several nights in a row during that frigid January of 2000. An article appeared in the same newspaper as the Dear Marvin column. No one knew who the woman was, and there were no suspects or witnesses. The case went cold.

I continued saving that data, reading and rereading it for twenty five years while sitting in a desk drawer. Marvin had never completed the story. There was no satisfying “The End” typed onto the screen and saved. There was no hardcopy printed with Marvin cursing up a blue storm while the holes on the side of the perforated paper missed the sprockets of the printer. 

Then suddenly all those years later, the desk drawer opened. I was roughly pulled out and passed around a crowd of policemen. 

“What have we got here?” the officer studied me with puzzlement. 

“Maybe a confession?” his partner suggested.

“Wouldn’t that be something? Marvin always said he left a confession, but I never did believe that S.O.B.”

“Throw it in the box. We’ll find an old computer somewhere.”

“Yeah, those floppy disks are totally obsolete. It will be a trick to retrieve whatever is on there.”

I was placed into a plastic bag and tossed into a box next to a knife. A dirty cigar butt and that damned cup that followed Marvin around like a dirty puppy landed on top of me.

“Amazing what a little DNA can prove,” the officer said while closing the lid of the box marked “Evidence”.