The Everborn - Nicholas Grabowsky [30]
He simply awoke, his finished work before him, a shower beckoning, his impatient employer at the front door.
It had been 9:00 p.m. then.
An entire morning, noon, and evening had swept by.
And Andrew Erlandson had things to do, places to go, asses to kiss.
And a shower to take.
***
Ralston Cooper was seated on the black leather recliner in the living room of Andrew’s apartment. His attentions riveted now from the room’s eccentric environment to the vivid rock images of MTV on the projector television.
That’s the place for me, Ralston maintained, the crystaline line of meth he had snorted before his arrival maintaining the rhythmic flutter-tap-tapping of his black leather-booted right foot against the shag carpet. Rock videos, man. Not books all my life, no siree Bob. ‘Specially books written this way. He gazed down upon the thick black and white of the manuscript in his lap, its pages corralled by a topless cardboard stationary box. I wanna be known for something I knew I did myself for a change. Although, fame and fortune for this writing shit is still heaven and a bag of chips...
With the exception of the flickering T.V. light, the only illumination in the room was from the single lamp protruding from a clamp situated on a shelving fixture above Ralston’s recliner. This annoyed Ralston; it was the brightest Andrew allowed the room to be regardless of time of day. The man lived his life like a reclusive elderly mole for godsakes. Ralston was also for that matter accustomed to space, and with the princely sum he typically paid Andrew for his literary services, he’d expect the fool to at least lounge in spacious luxury.
And then there were the books... shelves streamed across the expanse of wall space, filled with diverse volumes of both fiction and reference and whatever else could conceivably be of interest or fancy to Andrew enough for such a library. All Ralston could see of this was uselessness and wasted space, but then again Ralston had never been much of a reader.
At least the furniture bore a dose or two of extravagancy, though the dismal redundancy of matching black common to every piece suggested images of a lived-in funeral parlor. The drapery of the patio doors echoed the apartment’s somber shades, and Ralston could never recall them being parted, regardless of day or night.
The air conditioner to the right of the drapes hummed softly, its mild currents of air providing salvation enough for the mock—novelist/rock star wannabe to maintain his sanity.
But it wasn’t Ralston’s place to condemn or criticize, and he often managed to ho-hum the apartment’s claustrophobic eccentricities away. He simply carried out his scheduled visits, lingered long enough to get what he came for, awarded Andrew in advance for a job well done with a brisk pat on the back and an envelope with a pre-agreed cash sum. He’d then return to his Brea home for a celebration screw with his girlfriend, to an anticipated publishing deal, movie deal, drug deal, cancelled band rehearsal, whatever his life brought him into doing as long as there was convenience in doing it.
The hell with Andrew, really; whatever Andrew Erlandson chose to do with his allowed earnings was Andrew Erlandson’s choice, in Andrew’s own little erratically reclusive mole-like way.
Besides, it was Andrew’s agreement.
Andrew’s work for him was a constant reminder of this agreement. The reasons behind it all were to Ralston both a shady mystery and a profoundly divine miracle. But he dared not question; questions and answers were not only excluded from the deal....
....they might conjure up horrifying atrocities that were embedded in both their pasts, the sort of things Ralston would far prefer lost within his past, the things which might remain still within Andrew’s secretive present.
There, diagonal from Ralston, mounted and