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TEARJERKER by Daniel Hayes
Of course, even within the theater of my own mind, it never really worked out that way. Instead, the more I thought about it, the more it became a tale of how the one who wants to control the other ends up mystified by his own lack of self-discipline. And so there's that nasty little realization, without a punchy epiphany to make it palatable, that bank presidents are probably just stand-ins for our own worst impulses. It's always worked that way for me: fantasies, once imagined and then wound up like spring-loaded toys, have a way of taking off in unpredictable directions that make reality seem tame in comparison. And, in a roundabout way, that's always been the surprise and the fun of writing fiction-a lesson about how manipulating and controlling words is neither possible nor especially desirable. Years later, after the introduction of ATM's and other financial niceties, I sat at my computer one day and imagined a failed writer named Evan Ulmer (the name came to me almost instantaneously) who abducts a big-time editor at a New York publishing house. (In revenge? In frustration? Am I Evan? Could I be?) In any case, things don't turn out the way Mr. Ulmer imagines that they will, any more than they follow the original dictates of Mr. Novelist banging away on his computer. You think you know someone-Evan Ulmer, protagonist; or Robert Partnow, editor and abductee; or Promise Buckley, fellow writer and romantic quarry-but then you find out that really you don't have a clue. And so what happens next is… what happens next. About the author Daniel Hayes is the author of KISSING YOU, a collection of short stories. He lives in San Francisco, California. |
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When
I was much younger, I used to have fantasies of abducting people.
Actually, it was always just one person-a bank president. At the time,
bank presidents seemed very important and powerful to me, akin to
present-day CEOs. Every few days I'd walk into my bank and I'd see him
sitting behind his big desk: white, pasty, and overweight. In any number
of ways, he and his existence offended me and my notions of
self-discipline. And so I imagined abducting this man and putting him on a
diet and an intensive exercise program. I also planned on quizzing
him-good grades exchanged for food-on the particulars of Marx, Engels, and
Feuerbach. I'd set up a small library. I'd release him a few weeks later;
and, against all expectations, he'd actually thank me.