Thalidomide Characters

My character Marty who lives in 1980 thinks that he should buy a brand spanking  new red 1981 Ford pick-up truck.

I want him to buy a used 1968 Dodge camper van that was refurbished by an RCMP officer in 1972.

He sees himself bombing up and down the highway in his new truck impressing all his drinking buddies.

I say he could have sex with his girlfriend, Jen, in the bed of the Dodge van.

He says he can have sex with her in the back of his new pick-up which is a crew cab.

I say maybe he should ask her about that first.

He says she’s kinky enough to like it.

I say that if he buys the truck, he will throw a wrench in the story and I will never get it finished and doesn’t he care about my literary career?

He says it’s his story, what he does is none of my business and he never asked to be written in the first place.

I threaten to write all the money out of his bank account.

He says it’s too late, that he already took all the money out and now he’s got a big wad of cash in the front of pocket of his jeans.

So that’s what that bulge in your jeans is, I say.

Don’t be gross, he says. You’re old enough to be my mother.

I ask how he took the money out of his account without my knowing about it.

He says it happened the night I fell asleep without turning the computer off, that as long as the computer’s on and I’m not touching the keyboard, he can do whatever he wants.

What happens when I turn the computer off? I ask.

He says a big weight comes down in the middle of his chest that holds him in whatever place I left him until I come back.

           

Now you’ve brought it up, he says, maybe you could be a little more considerate about where you leave me. He says he didn’t appreciate being left down at the Old Town docks waiting for a cab for eight months.

Eight months? I say.

Yeah, eight months, he says. It was fucking cold and you shut it down before I had a chance to put on my toque. I got frostbite on my ears over that.

Oh, I say. That must have been when I got my new computer and I wanted to let your story rest while I worked with some other characters in another story.

Other characters, he says. I’m standing there at the docks freezing my goddamn ears off and you’re out whooping it up with other characters.

Suddenly I feel like the worst kind of uncaring author, the kind of author who spawns half-baked, malformed characters with gimps, brain tumours or missing legs who are then left to fend for themselves. Thalidomide characters.

I sit and look at the screen.

Marty lights a smoke, turns his back and walks toward Jackfish Ford.