The Invisible Writers' Meeting

Invisible Writers’ Meeting

Chaz Pallas

The Invitation

“Invisible Writers’ Meeting on Tuesday at 246 Robin Ln at 7:30PM,” according to a handwritten note on a three by five card pinned to the laundromat bulletin board.

Sean arrived to find an overgrown, vacant lot with scattered chairs and miscellaneous pieces of discarded furniture. He checked his watch and saw that it was the right time and wandered into the lot. As he walked among the weeds, fireflies, and broken furniture a mist appeared giving off a variety of hues and a distinct herbal scent. From the distance, Sean detected the faint, eerie sound of a Beethoven string quartet coming from nowhere wafting through the misty dusk. Cellos and violins added a mysteriousness to the mist, fireflies and discarded furniture.

He wandered around the empty lot, looking for signs of recent activity: finding none he decided to sit in a vacant chair and wait. “Not here, friend,” said a voice from nowhere.

Sean jumped back in a combination of amazement and slowly increasing horror.

“A chair just talked to me,” he said to no one in particular, slowly backing up and looking in all directions seeing only weeds and discarded furniture. “To everyone in the mystic world of chairs and weeds and unseen writers, if there are any around,” he said in a weak voice, “Hello.”

“Relax, we are here, and you are welcome as a friend. Just be careful where you sit.” A voice, deep and authoritative, said, chuckling.

“Who are you, where are you, what do you want with me?”

“We will be welcoming you into our circle of invisible writers as soon as I call the meeting to order. I’m Tomas, sort of a chairman by default. Nice to meet you, Sean.”

Sean felt a cool strong hand grasp his and he hesitantly allowed himself to be given a handshake. He felt welcomed.

“Relax, we’re all friends here even if you can’t see us. We are invisible until someone...anyone reads our words. You are invisible too, for the same reason. I’ll start the meeting shortly and we’ll ask you to give a short bio so we all get to know you. Our bios are in the library, which I'll show you later.”

Sean is Introduced

Tomas called the meeting to order, took attendance and dealt with other business such as accepting minutes and dealing with new business. Then Tomas introduced Sean and led him to the podium, an old moldy, unused coffin.

“Fitting metaphor for a meeting like the this,” Sean remarked as Tomas nodded with the hint of a smile.

Sean began telling his story: “I grew up in the New York area, a BA in history, several unsatisfactory editorial jobs, failed marriage led to a studio apartment with a microwave and evenings eating takeout, trying to write the Great American Novel. Working at a boring editorial job simply to pay the bills, washing my clothes in a laundromat, reading the bulletin board and... here I am.”

There was a moment of silence then voices whispered “Yes, yes, a thousand times yes!” faint images appeared and melted into recognizable people. Soft clapping filled the misty vacant lot and Sean felt he belonged here, among life’s failures.

There was about an hour of small talk with other unpublished writers. That served to simultaneously depress Sean and at the same time lift his spirits because he wasn’t the only failed writer in the world.In fact, as he talked and listened, he began to develop an attitude that he could rise above these people and reach publishinghood. (Look at me I’m a wordsmith!) j

##An Uncomfortable Meeting

Toward the end of the meeting a pleasant looking girl approached him, “I’m Dorry and I feel you because I am right where you are...lost.”

“Yeah, ain’t it wonderful to be in the company of failures.” Sean said with a sneer.

Dorry flinched at the aggressiveness of the sarcastic remark and looked around for somebody more welcoming. She thought she had misjudged this man and felt...wounded. He obviously felt above the others including her.

She started to move away. He reached out and gently held her elbow. She stopped and looked at him with a questioning hurt look on her face. Sean moved closer. Dorry seemed to be cautiously holding her ground. He approached barely a few inches more. She found herself welcoming his advance.

“Have you eaten yet?” Sean asked with some hesitation.

“No.”

“Shall we?”

Moving Closer in the Night

They were seated in a neighborhood family restaurant. Dorry ordered an Italian salad and iced tea Sean said, “Me too.”

Looking at each other, they simultaneously sensed an interest, a connection. It felt good. They ate slowly, simply, each looking at the other and nodding and grinning. No talking, just observing the other.

She sensed he had relaxed after his sneering remark of earlier. Earlier he was defending himself by striking out aggressively. Now, in her presence he was comfortable and gaining confidence. She was inwardly pleased that she had that affect on him.

After dinner they went for a walk in the cool summer evening. They discussed their failed encounters with agents and other writers. They both had met people who were so interesting that their personality was destined to be portrayed in a story.

After several turns around the block Sean said, “That was nice, quiet, pleasant, welcoming. We’re on the same page. Let’s meet again... like..., oh..., tomorrow?” He hesitantly suggested.

Dorry slowly smiled. She looked intently at him, into his eyes and through those windows into his being...into his very soul. She liked what she saw. “How about that Ye Olde Sandwich Shoppe on Oak off Broadway?”

He studied her and felt drawn into her innermost being and he felt comfortable there.He belonged...they belonged together...they were together. “Righto, sounds good.”

They were no longer two separate beings, they were one...needing each other and finding what they needed in each other. They discovered wholeness by becoming one... from two.

Dorry reached out and took Sean’s hand in hers with a reassuring warm strength. “'Til later.”

Then they parted. Both looked over their shoulders as they walked away, hoping to see the other turn around

They went to their separate studio apartments and lay down onto their suddenly lonely beds. The two thought of each other. They wondered what it would be like if they were together. Could they build more than just a one-night stand.

Together in Daylight

The next day, over lunch on a park bench across the street from the Sandwich Shoppe they discussed each other’s writing failures and found humor in the sameness of the experiences. “Mine was about a relationship gone sour and the downward spiral the protagonists find themselves in.” Sean started, “What was yours about?”

“Crap!” Dorry said.

“Sounds familiar,” Sean laughed. “I don’t know how to fix mine. I’m burned out on it. After several rewrites and countless tweaks, you start to convince yourself that it is good, and it isn’t.”

“Maybe we should write one together,” Dorry suggested.

They thought for a few seconds, nodded and agreed. They grinned back and forth while openly studying each other anew. They barely knew each other. Now they were building a partnership, a collaboration.

“Let’s go for a walk on this beautiful sunny spring day and see what we can come up with plot wise.” Sean suggested.

‘I write my stuff; I can’t talk it through very well. I’d prefer to type; I could go into solitary and type up a plot.”

“Go for it,” Sean said.

“Frazzano’s?For dinner.”

“Yeah, I know it well, good food there, how about seven o’clock?” Sean asked.

“See ya then,” Dorry nodded as she walked away swaying her hips, hoping he watched.

He watched.

She knew he would

Now a block apart, they both grinned.

The Commitment

Both arrived about 10 minutes early and were shown to an outdoor table near the edge of the patio. They ordered rose wine each and pasta dishes. They were looking at each other and slightly smiling. They both started talking and immediately stopped gesturing for the other to continue.

“I think we have a pretty good idea how this is going to go.” Sean offered.

“What’s going?”

“Us, our relationship.”

Dorry exhaled releasing pent-up concern. Dorry said, “Relationship...that’s what I wanted to hear, thanks...thanks for being here for me.”

“Me too, ditto, always.”

That’s a commitment, the foundation of a relationship.”

“I know.”

“By the way, I didn’t do any writing, I just lay on the couch and thought about things.” she said.

“Me too.”

“You’re so affable, you rat,” she joked and reached out and gave him a friendly jab on the shoulder.

Silence filled the void between them for a second, then both broke out laughing.

“Not only affable, in accord, in agreement, on the same unwritten page,” she asserted.

They finished the meal, started down the sidewalk and he said, “Right now I need you next to me.

“Me too.

“Your place or mine?”

Dorry reached out for his hand and started to lead him toward her place.

Virtual Cohesion

They spent the darkness of the night feeling each other and being felt. The next morning, he whipped up some eggs, bacon, toast and coffee for them from her refrigerator. She watched smiling, feeling like a guest in her own home.

It was time to start writing their joint novel. They moved a piano bench away from her baby grand over to a table which served as a desk. Dorry opened her laptop and placed it at the edge of the table directly in front of the bench. They sat together on the bench lightly touching hips and elbows as Dorry started typing a title page and prologue.

She warmed up to the story and Dorry’s typing grew faster. The story they had created, without a word being spoken between them, unfolded on the screen. He stared into the laptop screen, watching their virtual world materialize before his eyes, letter by letter and word by word. Bit by bit, he slipped entirely into the story’s landscape. His world was now a virtual world.

He glanced back at the room he left behind and saw Dorry’s gaze fixed on him through her side of the screen. He reaches out his hand; she closes closer and takes it. The air around them shimmers with anticipation.

Hand in hand, she rises, stepping off the piano bench, venturing into the uncertainty they’ve authored. The black screen behind them dissolves like starlight, replaced by a boundless magenta world that hums before them filled with possibility. They walk forward into that vivid expanse where every heartbeat inscribes a new sentence, and every breath unfolds another story...a universe unfurls before them.

A virtual magenta is in front of them. A black nothingness is behind.

##THE END