Heaving Bosoms by John Wegner

An English student drowning in campus identity politics has an existential reckoning when she starts working for a best selling author whose novels are full of heaving bosoms.

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The gulf coast breeze blew gently through the rusted mesh on the screened porch. Del could hear the June Bugs and mosquitoes plinking against the wire as the wind cooled the evening's sweat off his chest and arms. He took a sip of bourbon and saw her across the courtyard. The moon at her back illuminated her body through the sheer, white fabric. He'd been expecting her.

She was a beautiful woman running a small motor court somewhere between Beaumont and the middle of nowhere. He stood when she opened the screen door. She flicked her cigarette into the yard and leaned against the door frame, her silhouette accomplishing exactly what she knew it would. He let his eyes wander over her, taking in the curves her clothing barely concealed. Nothing left to the imagination, he thought. He held out his hand and led her inside. Their first kiss was slow, languorous. The bedsprings let out a slight moan as she pulled him to the mattress.

'The first time Billy Danforth touched my breast, my nipples stayed erect for an hour,' she said breathlessly, her chest heaving under his gentle caress. 'I was embarrassed.' Her breasts strained against the robe as Jack slowly pulled the belt and the fabric slid open. Kissing her neck lightly, his hand glided over her stomach to spread her robe open.

Ellen felt her cheeks blush as she typed.

"Read that back to me dear." She did.

"I'm almost certain one of those sentences is from a movie. You know you're getting old when you can't tell your own fictions from someone else's. Do you recognize the line about erect nipples?"

Ellen looked up from her laptop. Mr. Hackman was sitting in what he liked to call his "smoking chair." She shook her head no, unable to meet his eyes.

"No matter. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so says our Mr. Wilde. We'll worry about my plagiaristic tendencies in revision. Let's return to our sordid encounter, shall we? Perhaps we can have more bosoms heave before the day ends."

Ellen smiled as Mr. Hackman picked up the story. He quoted more writers on writing than any professor she'd met. After an hour, she could hear his voice flagging and his pauses grew longer. There were times when she'd see him gazing into the distance, "watching the character" he'd tell her. Other times, like now, he was simply "worn ragged by the narrative."

"I think that's enough for today. Let's hear what we've written." Occasionally, he'd stop her and they'd edit a word or sentence, but mostly he listened.

"Would you like to stop for the day, Mr. Hackman?"

"As Mr. Hemingway told us, always stop while you are 'going good.' Let's give our subconscious time to fill in the blanks overnight. We'll decide tomorrow if we met our goal." Ellen closed her laptop. "Now. Tell me about your work."

Ellen was a PhD student drifting between a creative writing dissertation and a critical examination of post-feminist ideologies in neo-liberal American fiction. Basically, she told her roommate, she couldn't decide if she was talented enough to write a novel, or if seven years of graduate school prepared her to write a dissertation. "There aren't any tenure track jobs, anyway," she said. "We're all here so we can work as adjuncts for Southern New Hampshire University."

So far, Ellen had five stories of a proposed thirteen story collection about a Chemistry PhD candidate tentatively named Misty Luminol who worked as a stripper to pay her tuition, half a novel about a woman from Del Rio, TX living in New York working for Random House, and three chapters of dissertation discussing Elizabeth Strout, Jane Smiley, and Jesmyn Ward. She didn't have an introduction and couldn't think of a strong theoretical link between the authors. She had published one short story and read at two conferences, but her faculty mentor was getting impatient with her inability to focus.

Mostly, though, she was poor. Not in the way her roommate or her colleagues in graduate school were poor, either. Ellen's classes were filled with white kids suffering from manufactured suburban angst, gender-binary people with bad haircuts buying baggy men's suits at Salvation Army, and students of color trying to convince themselves they suffered from postcolonial oppressions and rhetorical microaggressions while they let Mom and Dad pay their rent and tuition. Last year she overheard a bell hooks wannabe who claimed she was "part Jamaican, all lesbian, and a fierce womyn" tell a white male creative writing student he should drop out because "we're all tired of living in the anglo-slipstream of oppressive colonialism you represent." Her parents were both medical doctors from Dallas, and she'd never worked a day in her life. She refused to capitalize letters or use the Oxford comma because they "were tools of the oppressor." In workshop, everyone was scared to offer critiques of her stories for fear of being labeled racist, misogynistic, homophobic, or microaggressive. Ellen thought her depictions of poverty and racism read like something out of a Sociology textbook or The Pursuit of Happyness and her female characters were a weird mix of Octavia Butler and Halle Berry in Swordfish. She'd spent a gap year in Italy, for god's sake. The only time she knew hunger was when she was intermittent fasting.

The white guy she attacked, on the other hand, was a first generation student whose dad drove a garbage truck, his mom had died from cancer, and he was working two jobs while teaching adjunct night classes to pay his tuition. Not that Ellen said anything, of course. Her outrage was tinctured by her own socio-economic imposter syndrome. There were no doctors of any kind in her family, and she didn't know what a gap year was until she got to graduate school.

There was nothing particularly traumatic about Ellen's childhood. Her parents worked hard, and they were happy to see her go to college. They couldn't help her with tuition, but financial aid, student loans, and part-time jobs paid the bills. When she told her parents she was going to major in English, they thought she would get a teaching degree, move back home, and they'd help raise grandchildren. Ellen, more or less, assumed the same thing. I'm meandering my way into adulthood, she told a friend at their five-year high school reunion.

In what she now calls her "cliché phase," Ellen met Jake. He was a GA in her sophomore American Literature course and led study sessions once a week to discuss the course readings. She'd never met anyone as passionate about equity and women's rights to sexuality and identity. He could quote Kate Chopin, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Fanny Burney from memory. Simone de Beauvoir and Gloria Steinem books were on his nightstand. He voted for Hillary and wore a "Nevertheless she persisted" T-shirt to class once a week. During study sessions, he ignored the men and asked the female students their thoughts, following up with praise or gentle corrections meant to help them perform well on the exams.

They started dating after the class ended. She would have gone out with him the day they met, but he told her he "couldn't take advantage of the power dynamic inherent in the teacher-student relationship." He was writing his dissertation over Gerda Lerner's Creation of Patriarchy and interrogating how misogyny has become embedded in the literary canon as a way for "white men to deny their homosocial and potential queer tendencies, as Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick might say."

He didn't want to chain her to a marriage contract, but he was happy when she chose to start her graduate degree while he finished his PhD. "The only path to equality is through economics," he told her, "so we must be equally credentialled." About halfway through her first literary theory class she started doubting his reading of both Lerner and Sedgwick. She didn't say anything in case she was wrong, but she wondered how his dissertation topic was approved. When she came home one day and his clothes were gone, she wasn't surprised. "I've met someone," his note said. "I respect you too much to cheat. You can have the coffee pot, but I've taken the panini press."

And here she was. She'd followed a guy to graduate school and was too far in debt not to finish at this point. Maybe, she thought, if I keep digging I'll find the buried treasure.

When her faculty mentor offered her the chance to earn some money working for an older writer in town, Ellen figured she had nothing to lose. "He's a bit of a celebrity, or, at least, he was back in the day," she told Ellen. "You can look him up yourself, but he wrote primarily noir and pulp novels, although he had a collection of short fiction and a novel that gained some notoriety. He's an underrated writer and too many of his critics react simplistically to his work. There's an assumption that anything popular is poorly written. His novels are not." She handed Ellen his address and phone number. "When he called, I told him I'd mention the opportunity to you. If you're interested, call him. He's willing to pay $30 an hour. Working with him might help you find some direction."

Ellen was definitely interested in the money. Walking across campus, she opened Leon Hackman's Wikipedia page on her phone. Most famous for his third novel Circling the Night, many critics considered him America's lesser known Raymond Chandler but more highbrow than Mickey Spillane. He started writing before John Banville became Benjamin Black and well-before J.K. Rowling dipped her toe into murder mysteries. Some critics, Ellen read, credited him with proving literary detective novels could sell well. Circling the Night had been made into a film directed by Alan Sharp and won a couple of minor awards. Other novels had been optioned for film but none developed yet. Hackman, Wikipedia said, quit his job teaching to write full-time when he sold the movie rights. His detective fiction always sold well, but he also wrote a novel that was shortlisted for the National Book Award and was a Pulitzer finalist. His collection of short fiction Love is a Four-Letter Word was long-listed for what used to be the Man-Booker Prize. Those were the only two non-noir works listed. He retired from writing, Ellen did the math in her head, 15 years ago.

His career wasn't without controversy, though. When he was invited to speak at his alma mater and the university where he used to teach, the Gender Studies faculty and students protested and started an Anti-Heaving Bosoms Campaign. "In Hackman's work, women are objects to be ogled, raped, or murdered," Wikipedia quoted the protest leader. Hackman's only comment about the protest was that he liked their signs. Early in his career, he'd been a ferocious alcoholic, divorced twice, and accused of promoting a "masculinity based on sexual conquests and violence. He's all thud and blunder and no craft, a hack appealing to readers who lack sophistication" one reviewer wrote, directly contradicting other critics who praised his "deft and nuanced use of language." Still, Ellen thought, his books sold well and were still in print. Hell hath no fury, she thought, like a creative writing professor with no book sales. Ellen needed the money more than she cared about his past.

Mr. Hackman answered on the second ring. When she introduced herself, he sounded happy to hear from her. "Oh yes. Dr. Richardson said you might call. She's such a dear friend and one of the few readable scholars left in the academy. She spoke quite highly of your abilities. Let's meet before you agree to work with me." He paused. "I'll pay you for your time, of course, but you'll want to hear the job description and hours. What time can you come by in the morning? My only agenda items during the day are medicine and napping. " Ellen had trouble processing that Dr. Richardson spoke so highly of her.

When they met, Mr. Hackman's politeness raised Ellen's feminist hackles. He held the door for her, called her dear, and asked more than once if sex and violence "bothered her sensibilities." Ellen was no prude but she enjoyed condemning 1980s horror movies for their gratuitous sex and violence in her film classes. She found most rom-coms equally offensive, in fact, but at least Matthew McConaughey was easy on the eyes. She didn't actually care what people watched, but trendy opinions were less work in graduate school. By the end of their second meeting, though, she'd heard him call his housekeeper, his plumber, and his doctor all "dear" and she realized he had no idea what anyone's name was, and he wasn't worried about her delicacy. He needed to know that she could focus on her work if he spent 500 words describing sex scenes, erections, and breasts that strained buttons and, at times, credulity.

When she left after their first meeting, he didn't say anything about her coming back. Most of their conversation, in fact, had little to do with her ability to type or the hours she could work. Instead, he asked what she was reading and writing. She hadn't defended her unwritten dissertation yet, but his probing questions felt like an exam that might decide her fate.

"He said he'd call," she told her roommate. "I felt like I was on a blind date with Harold Bloom. He was polite, but he had to answer his own question about indeterminacy, post-World War Two angst, and their impact on narrative metafictions in American novels. I was like the coyote when he realizes he's sprinted off the cliff. Let's find an Acme Brick so you can bonk me on the head." They were sitting at the kitchen table drinking wine. Her roommate was in the American Studies program, working on a dissertation titled tentatively "Sensual Slavs: Femme Fatales, Pol(ish) Dancers, and the Sexualization of the Cold War in the Eastern Bloc." She chose the topic, she admitted, because there was a limited amount of scholarship to wade through, and she liked watching bad 1970s European television. "He knew everyone I mentioned and quoted some of them to me." Ellen shook her head. "He probably doesn't think I'm smart enough to type his detective novels."

"Come on, Ellen. He's the boob guy, right? How much can he expect? Although," she pointed to Ellen's chest, "more cleavage might have helped."

When he called, he told her he was delighted "such a promising young woman" was willing to work "with me." Ellen noted the preposition and gladly accepted the job.

After two or three weeks of typing for Mr. Hackman, Ellen put her expensive education to work and downloaded the thirteen scholarly articles written about his novels. Out of curiosity, Ellen also searched for her program's long-tenured creative writing director and the university's "celebrated, award-winning novelist Faye Pritchard." Pritchard had not carried a heaving bosom sign during the protest, but she clearly indicated her support of Hackman's critics in classes and department meetings. The MLA Database didn't know she existed. Ellen found some reviews online, but she wasn't sure a starred review in the Des Moines Register counted as "celebrated."

Ellen searched the stacks and found Pritchard's novels. When she opened her debut novel Out of The Womb and Into the Kitchen, the spine cracked such that Ellen was sure she was the first reader to open the book. There were no heaving bosoms, but the opening description of the protagonist's birth was more graphic than anything she'd seen in Mr. Hackman's work.

Ellen didn't read all the articles on Hackman. If I was that dedicated a scholar, she thought, I'd be finished with a dissertation by now. She did, though, read an article that argued "Hackman is much more than the tits and ass man his critics claim. His male characters are Carveresque in their apathy toward the world, but they are also willing to find epiphanic moments in everyday relationships. Unlike most noir writers, Hackman's women are well-rounded characters, and not simply because many are 36-24-34 Pamela Anderson look-alikes. His women are sexually empowered and willing to openly pursue those desires."

Ellen's skepticism about such a claim was challenged when the writer noted that "Hackman's novels, like most great literature, challenge our desire for epistemological certainty in an ontological era of identity politics." The other articles she skimmed offered similar high-praise for his characters, the precision of his language, and the compassion with which he wrote about queer men, Blacks, and other people of color. One critic argued Hackman was one of the first to treat his gay male characters with the same dispassion as his heterosexual detectives. "Gay sex in Hackman's works throbs with the same intensity, passion, and beauty as hetero sex. In Hackman's novels, sex works as a metaphor for alienation and doubt about the modern world independent of which bodies are pressed together."

"I'd love anyone to use that kind of language describing anything I wrote," she told her roommate. Instead, she was drifting both epistemologically and ontologically, and "I've not pressed together with any bodies lately," she half-joked.

After a month, Ellen worked up the courage to ask Mr. Hackman about his writing process. "I'm sure you know, dear, that Milton wrote much of Paradise Lost in his head overnight and dictated his lines to his daughters. I dream in stories, and I couldn't ignore Del's plight any longer so I decided to get his tale on paper."

Recently, she told him she'd been writing short stories again. She'd abandoned her Chemistry Stripper PhD, Dr. Crystal Pipette as she'd taken to calling her, and started writing about a young woman trapped in a world of her own apathy. "She might not be beautiful like Jessica Fontaine in your novel, but she feels like she's stuck somewhere between Beaumont and the middle of nowhere. Or, I guess, she's hoping the Catcher in the Rye keeps her from dropping off the cliff into adulthood. Between watching Sharp Objects, reading Sally Rooney, and typing your novel, though, I'm not sure if I'm copying or creating." She hesitated. Mr. Hackman was looking at her. Deeply with piercing eyes, she might write. "I've taken all these creative writing classes and my professors keep telling us to make it new or unique. They all ask about craft and intent, but..." Ellen's voice faded and she looked at her lap. Sheepishly, she might write. Clichéd, she thought.

"The slush piles are full of stories crafted uniquely just like all the others," Mr. Hackman said. "Our Mr. Hammett, a vastly underrated writer, once wrote that 'When a book, any sort of book, reaches a certain intensity of artistic performance, it becomes literature.' Your goal, my dear, is to find your voice and tell the story you find most interesting with all the intensity you can muster." He paused. "Ms. Didion told us 'Writing is the act of saying I.' Focusing on craft and establishing axioms might offer job security for Creative Writing professors, but our goal is to write about the human heart, the one thing Mr. Faulkner said was worth our time and energy." He leaned forward in his chair. "My Wikipedia page says that I quit teaching when I sold the movie rights to Circling the Night, but I was already leaving the university. To write or sell insurance. Anything but continue the travesty of teaching writing. Cormac McCarthy told us that 'teaching writing is a hustle.'" He nodded his head in agreement. "Dr. Pritchard was hired shortly after me. We formed a workshop group with some colleagues at other universities. This was back when we mailed copies of our work to each other via the US Mail. In an early draft of a novel, I wrote that a character called his sister a 'bitch and a cunt.'" Ellen flinched. For all the sex and violence in his novels, Mr. Hackman rarely cussed in print or in person. "This was back when I was drinking and my nerves were often as raw as my characters. I spent more time in bars than home. This character was a horrible person with no redeeming qualities, but he was based on a man I knew around town who, in fact, spoke to his sister in such a fashion one night. She hit him with a pool stick shortly thereafter." He smiled at the memory. "I saw her in the grocery store the other day. Some people live in spite of themselves.

"The writing group included Dr. Pritchard and two others who still hold teaching positions today, even though one of them hasn't published a novel in 25 years. . ." He stopped. "That's undeserved pettiness on my part." He shook his head. "Forgive me for stooping so low." He took a deep breath.

"They wrote, seemingly as a group, that I 'hadn't earned the right to use cunt' and they thought I needed to soften the character because 'we need to see his humanity so he's believable.'" Mr. Hackman chuckled and settled back in the chair. "They also objected to a scene where a woman initiated and enjoyed anal sex but refused to take off her blouse. 'Not realistic,' they wrote in the comments. They should talk to wife number two." He sighed. "I realized I wasn't writing for people who only wallowed in the mud and muck of humanity's detritus on the written page or silver screen. Good writers write their reality. Larry Brown, Ray Carver, Joan Didion, Jayne Anne Phillips, Jesmyn Ward, Kate Dolye, even the ancients like John Milton - they tell the story they know, not the story someone else thinks they should know. I was leaving teaching because I despise the literary gimmickry touted as craft by too many creative writing teachers. Too much of what we see published in literary magazines and scholarly journals is a disgrace to prose. Pomposity for the sake of pseudo-art. People writing about themselves for themselves." He smiled and reached a hand to pat Ellen's knee. "You asked about process, though, not the rantings of a grumpy old man. I dream in stories, but honestly, dear, in my youth, I wrote and revised every day. As you know, some days are better than others. Some days the characters reveal themselves and other times they hide, but at the end of the day, we try to offer an honest day's work for what we hope will be an honest day's pay. Writing, for me, was always about perspiration, not inspiration. When we've told the story we know, we go learn something new and write more. Writing is, if we listen to our Ms. Didion, 'an aggressive, even hostile act.' If you want to write, my dear, you must learn to unleash your 'secret bully' and demand that your audience 'listen.'" He leaned back in his chair. "Most importantly, we write what we know for people we'll never meet. Remember that your reader wants you to tell a story worth hearing about characters that matter to them."

Ellen left both elated and confused. She saw, for the first time, some of the passion and anger from Mr. Hackman that she'd read about. Early in his success, she read, he got in a fist-fight with a man at a book signing who cut in front of a young woman, and he wrote a scathing review of a colleague's collection of short stories, calling the stories "pedantic at best" and questioning the publisher's judgment.

"Sounds good," she told her roommate, "but what if no one wants to hear my story?" She looked around the apartment. "I'm not sure I care about my characters these days. Why would anyone else?"

Her roommate was dumbfounded he'd read Kate Doyle. "He's too old to be that hip," she said. "He sounds right, but those are the privileged rants of an old white dude, aren't they? Can you imagine if Pritchard had done some of those things when she was young? There's a reason some feminists seem perpetually angry at the publishing industry. Although, I did try to read the novel you brought home." She picked up Pritchard's novel and flipped to a page near the front. "Sheesh. I'm a woman and feminist but even I don't want to read 25 pages about a bloody cervix and an 'engorged straining vagina torn between duty and the uncertainty of giving birth.' Whatever that means. She calls birth 'a journey down the death canal' and the cervix as the last moment of true freedom for her protagonist before she's 'buried under the bloody miasma of toxic masculinity.' Too much melodrama and mixed metaphors for my taste. I'll take my Eastern European pole dancer crushing some guy's skull between her legs in the name of communism anyday."

Ellen worked with Mr. Hackman five days a week for at least three hours a day. Most of the time, she typed while Mr. Hackman told her the story, but there were some Mondays when he had handwritten pages for her. Some days they'd work three or four hours writing and revising. She'd never had this much money in her bank account.

Ellen felt invisible in graduate classes but word got around she was working for Mr. Hackman. Most of her friends and colleagues were so wrapped up in their own work, they didn't care what Ellen was doing. Her roommate was ecstatic, mostly because Ellen could finally pay her bills on time, but she also enjoyed hearing Mr. Hackman stories. She even started reading his novels and told Ellen after a few beers one night that she considered "changing my dissertation topic to something like 'That's the Way the Boob Bounces: Leon Hackman and American Post-War Identity.' He's a better writer than I expected." Ellen felt a vague sense of satisfaction and pride.

About halfway through the semester, though, Ellen noticed that the Students Without Boundaries contingent kept whispering and looking at her during their weekly graduate student meeting. They didn't have a president or leader, per se. In their club by-laws, they "recognize that leadership and elections lead to privileging certain voices over others. Instead, meetings will occur whenever two or more like-minded people feel protected enough to speak. Decisions will be historicized and contextualized and reaffirmed as necessary." When Dr. Goodwin asked if there were any comments, the whole group stood. The bell hooks wannabe held a sheet of paper in her hands.

"We are deeply disturbed by the willingness of one of our colleagues to engage in an act of aggression against the womyn and non-binary members of the program. In order to move forward intellectually and professionally, we must continue to devalue the voices of white, straight, and cis male authors." She looked at Ellen with a smug sense of self-satisfaction. "As members of erased and oppressed cultures, we object to any intended or unintended attempts at reinforcing homogeneity in art and legitimizing the racist, colonialist, and sexist canon of the past. Our brave sisters of all genders once challenged the heaving bosoms of modern detective writing on this campus, and we rise to express our belated support for their past protest. We suggest the department investigate this blatant endorsement of harmful ideology and consider revising the rules of employment during graduate school to ensure all members of the program feel safe and protected." They all sat down in unison and looked at Ellen. Synchronised protesting, she thought.

Ellen looked at Dr. Goodwin, wondering how he kept his expression neutral throughout.

She slid her notes and laptop in her backpack and stood. "Your writing is derivative and boring, and so is your pseudo-intellectual support of a silly protest from 25 years ago. Gender is complex and you don't get to own the definition just because your parents pay all your bills, and you can afford to be self-righteous about how other people earn money." She made herself stop and breathe. "Gender and identity are an amalgamation of bodies and life experiences filled with subconscious urges, sensations, and behaviors, some of which are shaped by language and culture and some, like dark skin and various body parts that may or may not be eroticized by ourselves or others, are genetic." Ellen started to walk out of the room and stopped. "Our bell hooks tells us," Ellen emphasized the pronoun, "'Writing and performing should deepen the meaning of words, should illuminate, transfix and transform.' Your performance does neither."

In the hall, Ellen leaned against the wall. She could feel her eyes water and her breath quicken. Where did that come from, she wondered.

"You skipped the microagression and went hard core macro," her roommate said when Ellen told her about the meeting. They were having a glass of wine. Ellen was alternately mortified, proud, embarrassed, and she secretly wished someone had taped the whole thing so she could show Mr. Hackman. "Since when did you read bell hooks?"

In the morning she had an email from her faculty mentor asking her to stop by the office. "Immediately."

"I'm obligated to tell you that Leisha has filed a formal complaint against you after yesterday's meeting. She claimed," Dr. Richardson looked at her computer screen, "that you 'deliberately attacked and undermined her rightfully protected speech' and that 'standing was a blatantly aggressive and militant attempt at intimidation.'" Dr. Richardson read a few more sentences that claimed Ellen's language was homophobic, racist, and antisemitic. At some point in the conversation, Ellen thinks she was also accused of being hostile to Jamaicans, but she was willing to admit she spaced. I better not let anyone know I don't like jerk chicken, she thought. Elitist censorship in the name of justice. She looked up when Dr. Richardson stopped talking.

"You can choose to respond to the complaint or not. Dr. Goodwin was at the meeting and wrote that there was 'an equivalent exchange of ideas that speaks to the health of the program,' but we are required by HR and Federal Title IX laws to address the issue to ensure you're aware of our university's 'dedication to inclusivity and equality.'"

Ellen started to speak and then stopped. She looked at Dr. Richardson. "If I don't have to respond, can we consider this meeting addressing the complaint? I promise I'll not tell the truth in a graduate meeting again."

Dr. Richardson smiled. "I'll notify Human Resources that we've discussed the issue. It is, as your Mr. Hackman might say, sometimes 'perilous to speak truth.' Your collection of stories is close to complete. I'm glad you abandoned the stripper. How are your revisions coming along?"

Ellen knew, instinctively, that Mr. Hackman was almost finished with his novel. They were spending more and more days revising. At first, she found the process tedious and dull, wishing they'd develop new material. "Our pencils, Nabokov reminds us, should outlast our erasers," he told her one day. "We bring our pride to each word. Revision and precision is a sign of respect for our readers. We must invest in them if we expect them to invest in us."

They hadn't written the final chapter. Ellen, in fact, noticed they were moving slower with each session, and Mr. Hackman ended their work sooner and sooner. Shortly after what he started calling her "Joan Didon moment" of asserting her "I," he asked if she knew how the novel would end. "You've been here since the beginning. Del could be your brother, friend, or," he winked at her, "your lover at this point. Why don't you write the final chapter?"

Ellen sat dumbfounded and a little embarrassed. She had, in fact, begun picturing Del when she touched herself and almost called out his name during sex one night about two weeks ago. She'd met a guy at a bar near campus. He'd been at the meeting when she'd "put her career on the line saying what the rest of us were thinking." Normally she avoided one night stands, but she had just enough loneliness and wine to let him take her home.

Ellen stared at Mr. Hackman. "I can't... It's your..." she trailed off. He smiled. "Dear Ellen. Dr. Richardson sent me two of your stories." Ellen was sure she audibly gasped. "I sent some line notes back to her with my agent's name. You should trust yourself." He reached out and patted her knee. "Let's take tomorrow and the weekend off. Come in Monday with the final chapter in Del's journey of truth and discovery. Heaving bosoms are optional." He smiled.

"Holy shit." Her roommate repeated herself. They were both stunned to silence.

Del knew he was in over his head this time. Jessica Fontaine had played him for a fool. He knew now, of course, that she didn't own the motel, but he did wonder if the sex was part of her plan to manipulate him or a way to pass the time. He watched her standing near the pier. Her shorts cut high enough he could see why men did what she asked. She twisted and waved, her tank top stretching in the summer heat. She hadn't seen the broken lock in the boathouse yet or discovered the missing bag. Even from across the courtyard, he could see she wasn't wearing more than what he saw, and he knew she wasn't carrying any weapons other than her body. Del wondered if he'd hear his mattress groan one more time before he called the police. He walked toward her, careful to keep his loaded gun hidden in his pants.

Monday morning, Ellen stood outside Mr. Hackman's door waiting for the courage to turn the knob. She'd spent the weekend writing and revising and slept in fits and starts. The chapter felt good, and she thought she treated Del and Mr. Hackman's characters with respect. "What if I'm a hack?" she said to her roommate on the way out the door.

"Come in dear. You can't stand on the doorstep forever." Ellen assumed her spot and Mr. Hackman settled into his chair. "Let's see how our novel ends."

He'd thoroughly enjoyed her ending. Ellen and Mr. Hackman met for a few more weeks, revising and editing the manuscript. His power of recall, she noted, was amazing. There were nuances about the way characters spoke, or phrases Ellen repeated from early chapters, even the location of the pier that "seemed problematic based on what we wrote in chapter four when Del first discovers the bloody shoe in the hydrangea bush." The day Mr. Hackman sent the final manuscript to his editor, he let Ellen hit the send button.

Her days bled together once the job ended. She dedicated herself to her own stories, hearing Mr. Hackman in every revision and decision. In her last story, she even snuck in a heaving bosom that only marginally fit with the narrative. The day she pushed send on her own manuscript, Ellen stopped by to see Mr. Hackman. His housekeeper answered the door. Her face told Ellen all she needed to know. "He passed in his sleep, dear." Both of them choked back tears. "He so enjoyed your visits. You were such an important part of his last story."

She knew, she told her roommate, she was being selfish. "He would have been so happy and asked all these probing questions I couldn't answer." Ellen felt the tears on her cheek. "But really, I wanted to hear him call me dear one more time and listen to him tell me a story."