mr. jones

The deadline is looming. I’ve got nothing to write about. I stare at the clock, it tells me “you better hurry up you stupid ass, your editor will be here in 10 minutes.”

I scan the shelves, looking for inspiration. I turn on the radio. I flip through a phone book. Nothing seems to have a story attached to it. Coming up with something interesting, or witty, or smart or simply filling the inches that I’ve got budgeted is almost always a breeze. But every so often, the writing elf leaves the building.

He’s gone right now, so I got outside to see if I can find him. I put sixty-five cents in the soda machine, the damn thing doesn’t spit out a Dr. Pepper. That’s gonna make me angry. I kick the damn thing. Out plops a Fresca. It’ll have to do, my pockets are only full of lint and scraps of paper with story ideas on them. Hell, why am I not looking at those bits of wisdom. I grab things when I have ideas. Profound ones they always are when they pop in there and demand to be let out. Almost 100 percent of the time, I throw the scraps of paper into a shoebox to be forgotten about. Worthless statements of fact or fiction that usually don’t jar a memory of profoundness when they’re read aloud again.

“Eggs are for suckers.”

“I love you. You love me. We don’t love each other.”

“I’ll buy you a river if you pee in it.”

“The bum has better clothes than me. I still give him a couple of quarters.”

Shit, if I had those quarters I’d be able to get the drink I wanted to get. Surely there’s an ironic tale in that somewhere? Fuck it.

I walk outside. It’s humid as shit. My clothes turn into sponges almost immediately. I can thank my grandfather on my mom’s side for a hairy back, a bald head and the ability to sweat myself into a river at the first sign of 80 degrees. Take that Wonder Twins.

I head west. Why? Because that’s the direction of progress. Of inspiration. Of the Pacific, mother-fucking ocean, man. (Use a Dennis Hopper voice there.)

My editor pulls up to the parking lot as I’m walking out of it. He sees me, waves. I don’t stop. This causes him to chase after me. I speed up. This is a game that happens every so often. If he was Faye Dunaway, we’d probably have fucked by now. But he’s not. He’s more Gabe Kaplan, without the Jew-Fro.

“Jones,” he yells, knowing full well I never respond when anyone calls me Jones. “Jones, have you filed yet?”

He also knows god damn well that I haven’t filed yet. I don’t ever file early. Even if it’s Christmas. I don’t believe in it. A good writer on deadline uses every second he’s got. You never know when one word might decide it doesn’t belong anymore. My first editor taught me that. He hated that he taught me that after a while, because I believed his fucking bullshit. He even told me one day he was bullshitting me over beers when he told it to me. “I thought it sounded like something Jimmy Breslin might have uttered,” he mused.

I thought it was something Ed Petruscwitz would say. I wonder if Ed’s still living in his double wide in the Arizona desert? Well, if he’s not, at least his memory survives to this day. And drives my editor bat shit.

He finally catches up to me after three city blocks. I’m sweating. He’s sweating. In another block is my favorite bar. I’m going to get a beer. This Fresca is awful. I don’t think I’ve ever had a Fresca before.

“Jones, where are you going?” he says as he grabs my arm from behind. He’s clearly winded from the walk. So am I, but I do a better job of covering it up.

“I’ve got to check with a source at Joe’s,” I say. “He’s supposed to meet me there in 15 minutes.”

That’ll give me 30 minutes before he calls me. I hate cell phones. Have no use for them. But they make me carry it. “So we can get in touch with you, Jones,” he always says when I scoff at the newest improvement that they hand me every six months or so. I do have a cool ring tone for when he calls me, Eazy-E’s “We Want Eazy.” It fucking drives him nuts when he hears it.

I go in the bar. It’s empty. Just the way I like it. I go up to my favorite seat, away from the televisions and not behind the taps, just to the right of them, and order a Newcastle. Jerry, my second favorite barkeep, is working the early shift. He’s reading the previous day’s paper. I point out to him that it’s yesterday’s news, and he flips me the bird. I like Jerry.

I milk my beer for about 34 minutes, well, exactly 34 minutes when a bunch of ladies in my phone scream “We Want Eazy!” I answer the phone.

“Jones, where the fuck are you? You’re deadline’s in two hours and your file is empty for today.”

“How the hell do you know that?” I queried.

“Because I went to your damn desk and looked in it.”

“Damn. You got me, boss. I just wrapped up with my source, be there in 10.”

“You damn better be!” he screamed as I clicked the phone off. I didn’t actually hear him say it, I just know he said it.

As I’m leaving the bar seven minutes later -- it’s a three-minute walk back to the paper -- I dazzling brunette is walking in. We make quick eye contact. Her eyes get wide. Mine stay the same. Just before the door slams shut behind me, I hear her yell out “wait a minute Mr. Jones!”

I turn around. She comes stumbling out the door. Her daisy-infested dress flaps in the wind. I suddenly am intrigued. She knows me. I don’t know her.

“I was told you’d be here,” she said. I was more intrigued.

“I’ve got a story for ya…”

Some days, it pays to go to the bar.