Unfinished Novel

Everything Always Works Out And Nothing Bad Ever Happens
No one wants to know how Rocky puts on hs clothes and then his shoes and then his gun. Well maybe his gun. These things are mundane.
Rocky gets up and checks his messages, makes and little coffee and starts his day. His messages read something like: Discreet- Please Kill Blank- You will be paid -blank- millions of dollars- with all respect-blank.
Then he deletes the emails and gets to work. Not to say he doesn't consider the consequences, like any normal person would, it's just that he thinks, well what else am I supposed to do? And the matter is closed.
Killers are hyper rational people, after all.
Continuing with the morning routine and duldrum, Rocky puts on some clothes and brushes his teeth. He might shower, he might not. Such is the life of a bachelor.
Finally, acknowledging the existence of God through the natural world, he steps out of his apartment and locks the door.
From here, he might go or do any number of things. Today, for instance, he has to kill someone named Shaun Dublanc. This is on his 'To Do List'.
1.Kill Shaun
2.Groceries
That was it. Afterwards he might treat himself to a very rational movie (no popcorn) and a light rational dinner (sushi).
It was pity then, that he happened to run into Honey.
Honey was also quite a rational person. But rational people live in irrational times.
Honey was 22, single, and an aspiring writer. She would sit at her apartment window, which faced the closed blinds of Rocky's studio, and try and figure out what makes a good crime drama. Staring blankly at his blinds she would think:
Grit? Do I need more grit?
And so she would continue to type and search for her female grittiness and stare at his blinds.
Her main character, in so far as she had written, was named Bruno. He was a chubby Italian PI, who had problems with weight flunctuations. Honey used his binge eating to temper, what she felt, was the stories brutal grit: murder.
The scenes would run like this.
I sauntered over to the cop.
“Whose the stiff”, I snarl. The blue shirt flinched.
“Dunno Bruno,” He says, “Got a John Doe.”
No such thing as a John Doe, I think. Everybody's got somebody.
'Cept me. Dammit, I need a pastry, I think, but I push the thought away. No time.
I walk quickly under the police line and over to the sheet which someone has kindly draped over the unknown man. I nod to the forensics team and lean over the stiff.
Everybody's got somebody, I think and pull back the sheet.
Whoever it was, it has no face. Not anymore at least.
I turn to the nearest cop and ask:
“Where's the nearest bakery?”
Honey felt that this was truly gritty, but with a light note to attract younger readers. It also made her madly obsessed with pastries.
With each scene, each moment in prose, Bruno's hunger would grow. Honey was strict with him, however, and it wasn't until the case was solved that Bruno would find himself sitting back in his leather chair, munch a danish or eclair. For these final moments, Honey herself would buy the same treat. So we can eat together, she thought.
Thus she found herself walking down the her block and crossing the street to reach the bakery by her home. She smiled and thought of the case Bruno had just solved. It had been a tough one, one's with dames always were. This ending would be sweet, she thought.
And then she was shot.
Rocky stepped out of his building and looked across the street as a petite dirty blond did the same. He watched her for a moment, her hair bouncing as she jogged a few steps across traffic. He smiled and took a deep breath. She crossed in front of him.
Black car, rang the thought in his mind.
He heard the pop of gunshots and threw himself behind a parked car. It was a blue sedan. He pressed his back against it and removed his pistol from its holster. He sat and waited for a moment, listening. He heard a rasp of breath.
The dirty blond lay on her side beside him, her eyelids fluttering, eyes rolled back into her head. She was bleeding from a hole in her shoulder. Rocky was entranced for a moment by her, forgetting the screech of tires that signaled the exit of the hitman. He watched while her eyes flung themselves forward at him for a moment.
“Bruno...?” She whispered.
His brow furrowed at the name. He was about to ask her something, when she fainted.
Honey's mind swam in an abyss of pastries and interior monologue. For a moment, she relived the last memory, seeing the man holding the gun, looking over her quizzically. Bruno is that thin, she thought. He has a bit more pudge to him, she thought. By the end of the fever dream, she had correctly deduced that the man was not her main character. This only by chasing him down flights and flights of donut stares. She followed the clues at crème filled crime scenes. Each cop saying:
“The neighbors say that Miss Scone, here, wouldn't have hurt a blueberry.”
“Well,” She said gruffly, “She mustah had some problems with the baker because you won' be seein her on a shelf anytime soon.”
She shook her head and continued to chase the Gun Man. Her connecting her injuries with his presence. She followed him everywhere, until she finally cornered him in an old abandoned corner cafe.
“Who are you,” she asked carefully. She ran her fingers over the glass counters, the menu's expounding:
Murder- 10.50
Coffee- 2.50
Cafe Latte- 3.00
Cream and sugar available just at your heel.
“Who are you?!” he shouts back.
She started at his agression, but pressed on.
“I'm Honey. Why did you shoot me?”
He backs away and she notices a door behind him. Oh no! She thinks.
She hears a click, a phone on a receiver. He moves to the back door, opening it, filling the room with brilliant light. He turns to run and she follows him into the waking world.
Rocky was just pulling into the terminals when his passenger arrived into the conscious world. She was glazed for a moment, but her sanity seemed to snap back on when she saw him sitting there smiling.
“Who are you!” She shouted.
“I...”
“Who are YOU!?” She shouted again.
“I am, you see...”
“Where am I!?”
He looked over at her and put the car in park. He made sure to make copious amounts of eye contact, in the hopes of reassuring her.
“Why are you staring at me!?” She balked.
He sighed and turned his hands over.
“Please, try and listen to me.”
She continued to look psychologically unstable.
“You were shot just outside my apartment. The men who shot you...”
“But didn't you?”
“THE MEN who shot you, assume you're dead.”
“Why are we at the airport?”
She had twisted around to look out her window. Taxi's were moving around the parked car. A security woman was eyeballing them, counting in her head, Rocky thought. He knew she would count to a hundred and then come over and ask them to move the car. He had to get her out of the car.
“Listen, the men who shot you...”
“WHY am I at the airport!?”
“LISTEN!”
She looked at him, shocked.
“You are at the airport because you are supposed to be dead. Obviously you're not dead,” 40 seconds.
“If you don't want those men to come to your apartment and put an end to any career or spousal aspirations you may or may not have, in these, the prime years of your life, you will do what I say.”
He looked to her for confirmation that his words had pierced the reasoning centers of her brain.
She nodded, but remained tense.
53 seconds.
“Now I have here...”
He reached into his bag. She began to screech at him.
“Relax lady.”
He pulled out the boarding pass and a passport.
“Now, this will take you to Vancouver. You'll be safe there,” He removed a large bag. “These are your effects and $10,000 dollars in cash.”
“What?”
69 seconds. He glanced at the woman, who was bouncing on the balls of her feet.
“Take these and go, for your own safety.”
She looked at the items he held out to her. He stretched to lay them in her lap, but she didn't take them up.
“I need you to get out of the car now, please.”
She looked at him.
80 seconds.
“I can't.”
“Why?”
“I just can't, I don't want to.”
“You WILL die if you stay here.”
“I don't care, I want to know who shot me.”
“Why!? What good will that do?”
87 seconds.
“Peace of mind? Security? Curiousity?”
“THIS IS YOUR LIFE we are talking about! You won't survive...”
“I've survived this long haven't I?”
94 seconds.
“How!? How will you survive!?”
“You can help me, obviously.”
The woman looked the other way and began to walk to them.
Rocky cursed and pulled the car into traffic.
The real curse of being a writer, as Honey saw it, was the compulsion to write. She's was hopelessly curse with a constant stream of interior monologue and third person observations.
Honey is now in traffic with an angry man, but not any ordinary man, she thought. No! This is a man who shot me!
But that isn't right...
If he shot me, then why was he trying to dump me off at the airport?
She pondered this and continued to monologue to herself. Rocky looked out the window and tried equally hard to decide his next move. This is like having a baby strapped to my chest, he thought. I can't go out and find the guy with her tagging along.
While Honey tried to figure out another word for plan, Rocky began to plot.
“Are we stopping for bagels?” Honey asked, trying not to whine. They had pulled over and parked next to a large crowded cafe. This is good! She thought. In her mind, this seemed like the point when the assassin or what-have-you, explains his motives and tries to get rid of her. But after he sees how stubborn she is, they reluctantly form a partnership.
Who knows? She thought. Maybe I'll get a gun?
Half an hour later, she was lying face down on the table while a barista called an ambulance.
It happened like this:
Honey and Rocky entered the cafe, he holding the door, she stepping quickly through it. He smiled at her in a way that made him seem congenial and almost pathetic. She didn't understand it, but decided to move along. She ordered a coffee, he ordered a cappuccino. This didn't necessarily fit into her character scheme (Bruno, for instance only drank black coffee as he craved its bitter biting edge), but she decided to go with it.
He motioned to a table and chairs and they assumed prosthetic relaxed poses, meant to engineer trust in each other. He smiled again and looked down at his latte. She stirred cream and sugar into hers and sipped it awkardly.
“Well,” he started. He stopped for a moment and shook his head. His face tensed and he put his hands to his nose. For a moment, his head tilted back, and then he sneezed. His face bent low and his foot touched hers. She convulsed backwards and he shook his head, keeping his hand over his face.
“I'll be right back,” he said through his hand. She felt a rather ordinary repulsion and nodded to him as he stood. He headed for the bathroom.
She watched him disappear through the doors. She sipped at the coffee again and looked around her. Her hands touched her face. She rubbed her temples for a moment, feeling rather lightheaded. The world began to spin, and as Rocky escaped out a window in the bathroom, her head smacked the table like a watermelon.