By Joe Mallon

MICKEY FLAGGED DOWN THE WAITRESS. “Two more coffees. Black.” 

“I don’t want another coffee.”

Mickey pulled out a pack of Camels, tapped it, and lit up a smoke.” Too bad. You got one coming.”

“You can’t smoke here.” The man crossed his arms.

“For Christ’s sake, it’s the fuckin’ patio.” Mickey took a long drag, raised his head, and released the smoke off to his left.

“Still.” He waved the smoke away. “I’ll have to take this jacket to the cleaners.”

“Why?” Mickey took another drag.

“That tobacco stench. It’s the only way to get it out.”

“Huh.” Mickey scratched his chin, pondering. “I’d have to take every fuckin’ thing I own to the cleaners. Hire a cleaning crew for the apartment.”

“Maybe so.”

Another drag.

Mickey leaned forward, squinting. “So, tell me again. Slowly. So I can absorb it.”

“I’m best writing about death. People dying. Murder mysteries. Thrillers,” the man said.

Mickey tapped the lit end of the smoke. Ashes fell onto the red-brick patio. “That’s because it’s the only books you like. The only ones you read.”

The man shrugged. “I like a lot of books.”

Mickey snorted. “You only read murder books. Thrillers. C’mon. Baldacci? Connelly? Jesus. What about Vonnegut? Camus?” He reached down, grinding the butt into the brick. “Christ.”

The man leaned forward. “Murder mysteries. It’s all that matters to me. What about Hammett? Chandler? The Postman Always Rings Twice? Classics. Murder mystery books sell because readers want to see someone die and the crime solved. Finis.”

Mickey lit up another smoke. “No. Everyone dies. You gotta follow your books past the ending.” He jabbed the cig at him. “That’s what thriller writers don’t get. Everyone dies. Every fucking person in your book dies at some point after your book ends. But you? You ignore it. All you guys ignore the future.”

The man shook his head. “My characters live in the limited number of pages I give them. Except the person murdered.”

He doesn’t know what he’s going to do. Guy comes up to him with a .45 Glock and sticks it on his forehead? Fucker’ll take no for an answer. He’s a guy who’s going to get his brains blown out if he doesn’t. In your book, he lives.

Mickey shook his head. “Characters? You got no characters. That’s all bullshit. You got people. Someone gets killed in the first chapter, maybe before the first page. Then your hero solves the case. End of story. Nice tidy ending wrapped up with a cute ribbon. Predictable. The reader doesn’t know or care what happens to anyone else after that book is over. Brings it right to his local used bookstore for the ninety-nine-cent credit.”

The man leaned back in his chair. “They’re ageless. And you kill people in your books, too.”

Mickey laughed. “Yeah, sometimes. But I got a reason, see? Protagonist kills someone? He struggles with what he’s gonna do—or not do—for the first few chapters before he offs the guy. Then struggles after he offs the guy. Like in Camus’s The Stranger. And look at Dreiser’s An American Tragedy. He plans on murdering his girlfriend. Things get fucked up, she falls out of the capsized boat, he lets her drown as he swims to safety. Murder? You tell me. But everyone else thinks it’s murder. Now that’s literature. Conflict. Complexity. Emotion.”

The man shook his head. I’m telling you; my guys are characters. Like Murder in Berlin. Everyone knows my main character, Jason Steele, man of action. Cold as ice. He’s in six books.” Leaning forward, he tapped the table. “My readers know him.”

Mickey took another inhale, letting the smoke blow out through his nose. “Jason Steele is dead. Or maybe he decides to become a vacuum salesman and give up the life of a ‘cold as ice man of action.’ But eventually he dies. Your reader doesn’t know. And worse, doesn’t care. The other characters? They’re dead. All of them. Eventually. But nobody gives a shit because they die after the final chapter. And they ain’t characters. What’s a fucking character? Like that short fat guy with a missing pinky in Murder on the South Side. ‘I’m the kinda guy who don’t take no for an answer,’ he says. Then he holds up his pinky. Correction. What’s left of his pinky. What the fuck is that?”

The man sat upright, raising his voice. “He’s my main character. He guides the reader through the story.”

“Then it ain’t a story. He ain’t believable. Because that short fat man? He doesn’t know what he’s going to do. Guy comes up to him with a .45 Glock and sticks it on his forehead? Fucker’ll take no for an answer. He’s a guy who’s going to get his brains blown out if he doesn’t. In your book, he lives. Everyone knows he’s going to live. He tells you he’s a tough guy in the book. Who else is going to narrate if he’s dead? Then he gets his brains blown out in Chapter Fifty of a forty-nine-chapter book. But the reader don’t know that.”

Mickey flicked the second cig onto the parkway. The man shook his head.

“Me? I kill some poor bastard in Chapter Five. Then my protagonist has to struggle. ‘My God, what have I done?’ What about his wife and kids? Or maybe he says, ‘Good riddance.’ But you don’t know what he’s thinking. You have to see the journey through with him.”

The waitress walked past them. Mickey eyed her up and down. “Hot, huh? You see that rack?” His eyes followed her as she passed.

 The man rolled his eyes. “And thirty years younger.”

Mickey turned and raised his eyebrows to him. “She smokes.” He inhaled from the depths of his belly, smiling, closing his eyes. “Smell that? What you think she does with those ashes?” He opened his eyes, staring at him. “You gonna tell her to keep the ashes off the fucking patio?”

“Maybe I will. Maybe Jason Steele would say, ‘Those ashes you flicked. You’re a rule breaker. I like that in a girl.’ Better line than you’d come up with.”

Mickey rolled his eyes. “Jesus. Whatever.” He leaned forward. “Look. When my book is finished at Chapter Forty-Nine? Life goes on for the poor sucker. You’re left to ponder whether he grows old and grey, content with his sorry life. Or maybe kills himself in Chapter Fifty, or Fifty-Five, or ad infinitum. But eventually? He’s gonna die. It’s left to the reader’s imagination to ponder and examine and argue with some guy in a coffee shop about the protagonist’s psyche to determine the future of his life. Now that’s a book. A book with real characters. No neat and tidy ending. Conflict. Complexity. Emotions.”

“That’s a dumb-ass theory.”

Mickey pounded the table. “No. The dumb-ass-theory guy is your Fat Man. That’s a character? And who gives a shit that he’s fat?”

“The reader wants to know what he looks like.”

“Bull. The reader can make up his own mind what the guy looks like. You know what your reader should want to know?” Mick leaned over. “He should be asking what kind of a dumb ass says he won’t take no for an answer. Fucker deserves a bullet in the head for saying shit like that. Who talks that way?”

“Good characters.”

“Hmfff. My ass. The guy who deserved to die? Fuckin’ authors for writing horseshit like that”

The man stood up. “Watch it. That line’s in my book.”

Mickey waved him off. “C’mon, take it easy. Sit down. Drink your coffee.”

The man rubbed the life back into his hand. He took a breath. “I’m the kinda guy who don’t take no for an answer.”

The man did as he was told. “Murder on the South Side sold a million copies.”

Mick stared at him. “Say the line.”

“How many copies of The Sparrow did you sell?” the man asked, smirking.

“Say it,” said Mickey.

“Read my book.” With a delicacy that only a man wearing a bow tie could accomplish, he said, “That will make a million and one.”

Mickey reached across the table, grabbing the man’s left wrist. “Do what I said.”

The man stared at his wrist. He looked up at Mickey. “Did you break twenty thousand?”

“Fuck you. Say the fat fuck’s line.”

The man rolled his eyes. “Jesus.”

Mickey squeezed. The man winced.

“I’m not shittin’ you.”

The man’s wrist turned purple, veins sticking out. “Christ. Okay, fine.”

Mickey smiled. “You sure about that? He squeezed harder, like a tourniquet getting another twist.

“Yes, yes, just let go of my fucking wrist.”

Mickey laughed as he pulled his right hand away. “Man. My hand hurts more than yours, I bet. You know how hard it is to squeeze like that?”

The man winced as the left hand dropped on the table. “You’re crazy, you know that?”

“Open and shut it a few times. Gets the circulation back.” Mickey’s face went dead. “Now say it.”

The man rubbed the life back into his hand. He took a breath. “I’m the kinda guy who don’t take no for an answer.”

Mickey smiled, hands open in front of him. “See what I mean?”

“It’s a good line.”

Mickey snorted. “It made me roll my eyes. Made me laugh.”

“Book’s a best seller. The line works.” The man leaned forward, hands on the coffee table. “The Sparrow. Your other ‘literary’ works of fiction. Give me the sales numbers. Am I right on the sales numbers? Twenty thousand?”

“It’s fucking art.”

“So, you’ll be a millionaire when you’re dead?” He laughed. “Or do we find that out after the last chapter?”

Mickey’s eyes narrowed. He smiled. “Let’s try an experiment.”

He reached behind him. Into his waistband, behind his untucked shirt. He pulled out a Glock .34. Stuck it in the middle of the man’s forehead.

“Say the line.” Mickey’s face turned stone cold.

The man didn’t move. He stared at Mickey, a mixture of fear and disbelief in his eyes.

Mickey racked the gun. The recoil smacked the man on the forehead.

“This isn’t funny.”

“Not supposed to be.” Mickey licked his lips as he pressed the gun harder into the man’s head.

“C’mon. Put it down.”

“We all die. Now or later. Say the line.”

The man shook his head. “No. You’re not going to shoot me.”

Mickey ran the gun across the man’s forehead, making the sign of the cross. “You sure about that? Say it.”

The man’s hands gripped the table, shaking. His breath came in heaves. “I’m not… the kind of guy… who takes no… for an answer.”

Mickey pulled the gun away, unracked it, and put it on the table.

“See? You’re not even a short, fat guy missing a pinky.”