Roberta decided to come into the coffee shop and harass Harold again. She ordered a pot of chai rooibos and took a seat at the next table. Harold ignored her as best as he could by looking down at the keys of his computer, which made him appear hard at work.
“How’s the next Nobel Prize winner?” Roberta leaned over and whispered to Harold.
Harold looked up angrily. He hated Roberta’s cheap sarcasm. She was his landlord, rich as hell, drives the most expensive vehicle while raising his rent at every opportunity. She was an elitist snob who only read books on the New York Times bestseller list and believed that only a small number of brilliant people were capable of writing good books.
“Oh, sorry, Harold. I don’t want to interrupt the next great American novelist,” and put her hand over her mouth to cover a tittering laugh.
A few months ago, Harold allowed Roberta to read one of his stories. That was undoubtedly a mistake. She went through every sentence with a fine-toothed comb and pointed out several questionable spelling and grammatical errors. She thought that the plot was weak, and the story’s premise had been done too many times before. There was not one thing she liked.
“Roberta!” the barista called, “Your chai rooibos is ready!”
Roberta took the tea back to the table and decided that it needed a little more sweetening. She squeezed the brown bear until it squirted honey and made a loud, farting sound that she had hoped would annoy Harold.
Roberta thought that Harold should give up his foolish charade and stop acting as if he were an intriguing mystery writer, a la Raymond Chandler, by wearing a trench coat and a fedora as if it ever rains in Santa Barbara.
At fifty-two, Roberta inherited a vast fortune from her father, who owned a professional Lacrosse team, and flaunts her wealth with lavish clothing and high-end automobiles. She had shoulder-length over-bleached hair, a painfully skinny figure, and a tight face from all the Botox treatments. She may not be the youngest and prettiest woman in Santa Barbara, but she sure as hell was the richest.
She had been Harold’s landlord in the Mesa for the last five years. He once was a successful plumber who had his own business. He dreamt of becoming a fiction writer since his early days as a plumbing apprentice. His father, who was also a plumber, discouraged the idea of Harold becoming a novelist and persuaded him to pursue a more practical path. At fifty-seven, Harold decided to retire from his business, rent an apartment on a hill overlooking the ocean, and live off of his modest savings.
“Why don’t you try something that you’d be good at Harold, like fixing a clogged toilet? You can help people more with your drain openers than you could with the keys of a computer.”
Even though Roberta was well-read and collected magnificent works of art, she didn’t have a creative bone in her body. She was entirely materialistic—only concerned with what type of car you drove, where you lived, and whether you were a success or not.
“Pretty soon you’ll run out of money, Harold, and then what are you going to do? You’ll be a pauper or perhaps become one of those homeless people who live in a tent under a bridge.”
Harold ignored Roberta and scrolled down his e-mails, reviewing all the rejection notices he received from the past month—Atlantic, New Yorker, Antioch Review, and The Paris Review, among other notable literary journals. He tried to be positive about all of his rejections but wished that he knew how to break into the world of published writers. The editors wrote back the same line: We are sorry that your story doesn’t fit our needs and hope that you’ll find a home for the work elsewhere.
He drank his cappuccino while telling himself not to be discouraged; rejections are not failure. Not trying is failure. He believed that all writers go through hard times; even the great ones like William Faulkner and Stephen King have had numerous rejections along the way.
He looked up at Roberta, who was smiling at him in such a condescending way that it made his stomach churn. He had thoughts of strangulating her with one of her imported silk scarfs, stuffing her into the trunk of her metallic blue Bentley, and driving it off a cliff somewhere in Lompoc, thus ending the evil injustice that she represented to the world.
“When the day finally arrives when I’m successful, Roberta, you’re going to feel sorry that you mocked me when I was struggling. You’re going to feel awful that you weren’t supportive.”
“Does that mean you won’t autograph your bestseller for me?” Roberta said with a sly grin.
“Nor will I give you a free copy or mention your name in the acknowledgments. Why can’t you ever be positive for once? Why can’t you give me some helpful suggestions on how to get published instead of berating my work?”
“Harold, don’t be naive. Everyone doesn’t have a chance to do great things, and as far as you, like it or not, you don’t have the talent to become a successful writer. I’m not one of those people who will sugarcoat the truth, Harold. I’m telling you for your own good.”
“I not only have talent, Roberta, but determination. I work on my craft every day and, although I’m not a Hemingway or a Faulkner yet—maybe, just maybe, I’ll get there one day.”
“Harold, you’re one helluva dreamer. No matter how hard you try, my deluded tenant, you’re not going to be another William Faulkner. And from what I see, you’re not even going to be a mediocre writer. You sit around and contemplate your navel between sips of cappuccino while fantasizing about all the admiration you’ll get once you win the Nobel.”
“You may not think I’m working, Roberta, but a lot is going on up here,” and he tapped the top of his head. “I’m working on a great story for the New Yorker as we speak. It’s a humorous, inspirational piece with a lot of bite.”
“Yeah, what is it called?”
“Leaky Faucet,” said Harold. “I write what I know.”
It took much strength for Roberta to keep from bursting out in laughter.
“That’s an interesting title,” she said while pulling back her bleached hair and tying it with a black scrunchie.
“It’s based on a true story, Roberta. It’s about a gritty Philadelphia plumber who quits his profession to write poetry. He’s an intelligent and sensitive man despite having a blue color job and a less than desirable circle of friends. Slowly, through his poetry, he unveils his hidden genius to the world and gets rid of his snakes and plungers for metaphors and meter.”
“Sounds like a real winner,” Roberta said sarcastically, nearly choking on her chai rooibos.
“Never mind,” said a furious Harold, and he got up from his chair to get another cappuccino.
“No matter what I tell you, you’re going to think it’s a lousy idea.”
Harold spent as long as he could, chatting with a flakey barista about a recent Bob Dylan concert he attended at the Santa Barbara Bowl, hoping that Roberta would get the message that he wasn’t interested in any more of her put downs.
Roberta stayed for another thirty minutes and eventually got tired of humiliating Harold. When Harold did look up from his computer, it was to stare onto State Street, watching the tourists walk by and wondering about different ways he could end Roberta’s life. He could send her a letter bomb, light her house on fire, or put arsenic in her chai rooibos. Harold sat distracted with a pencil to his jaw, feeling angry with himself for sharing his story, Leaky Faucet, with someone who didn’t appreciate his talents. Because of Roberta, he felt like crap about his writing and couldn’t concentrate.
“When you decide to give up that pipe dream of yours,” Roberta said, pointing to his computer, “give me a ring. Quite a few hot water heaters in my apartments need to be replaced.”
Harold’s anger burned like a furnace. “Not on your life, Roberta. I’d rather dance with a saber-toothed tiger than practice plumbing again.”
“Oh, well. I tried to save you,” said Roberta, picking up her Gucci bag and making annoying clomping sounds with her Prada heels as she left the coffee house.
A month later, Roberta would mysteriously disappear. She had gone to New York for a few days to visit a friend and never returned. Her sister had called the police, who questioned Harold not too long after.
“When was the last time you saw Roberta Westin?” asked the detective who vaguely resembled the old TV detective, Columbo.
“At the Coffee Cup on a Wednesday afternoon, about four weeks ago. She was drinking tea and not acting any different than normal.”
“Did she tell you anything that could help us locate her whereabouts?”
Harold couldn’t help but smile at her disappearance and secretly hoped that she had a particularly gruesome demise. “No, officer. She didn’t talk about going anywhere. We just chatted about my writing.”
“Thank you, Mr. Blevis. I think that will be all. Sorry to inconvenience you.”
At the request of her sister, who strongly suspected Harold of foul play, the detective returned two weeks later and questioned Harold again.
“I’m sorry to bother you, Mr. Blevis, but are you sure you don’t know anything else to add about Ms. Westin’s whereabouts?”
“No, sir. I’m afraid I don’t.”
“What was your relationship with Ms. Westin?”
“I was her tenant.”
“Did you have any arguments with her or resent about anything that she had said to you, like say, your alleged writing career?”
“No, sir. She made some good suggestions. I thought that she was trying to be helpful.”
“How was your owner-tenant relationship?”
“Fine. I paid the rent on time and never complained. She didn’t have any problems with me as far as I know.”
“You have no resentment about her raising the rent periodically?”
“I don’t like it, but I understand it’s a business.”
“Mr. Blevis, Roberta’s sister said that the two of you had major conflicts over your story ideas in the past?”
“Sure, we disagreed. But I understood where she was coming from. Roberta has strong opinions and felt that I should quit writing novels and go back to a career as a plumber.”
“Do you have any thoughts of harming her for some of those strong opinions?”
“No, detective–certainly not. I have no ill feelings toward her, if that’s what you’re implying?”
About six months later, Harold received a letter in the mail announcing that his rent would be increased by over twenty-five percent, and, at the bottom of the typed page, was Roberta Westin’s signature. When he realized that nothing tragic had happened to her and that she was still alive, Harold felt an overwhelming sense of disappointment.
Mark Tulin is a former therapist from California. He has two poetry books, Magical Yogis and Awkward Grace, and The Asthmatic Kid and Other Stories due out in August of 2020. You can follow Mark at Crow On The Wire.