A work of fiction where a long lost friendship provides a welcome, unexpected literary spark…
by: T.E. Cowell
Saturday afternoon Robert was in his walk-in closet making a pile of all the clothes Adriana had disapproved of. A scattering of coats, sweatshirts, button-downs, t-shirts, pants, shorts, ties and even socks — roughly half his wardrobe — was steadily rising on the tan shag carpet.
Adriana was Robert’s new girlfriend. He’d met her online, and she worked for a fashion magazine — a fact that seemed to give her all the justification needed to criticize his clothes openly, though she did so with an air of detachment that made her criticism come off as impersonal, as if she were criticizing Robert’s clothes rather than Robert himself. She seemed to know intuitively what was stylish and what wasn’t.
He was nearly finished refining his closet to Adriana’s specifications when he noticed his old backpack — a substantial-sized travel pack, the kind Europeans might use on extended holiday — on the top shelf, above what remained of his shirts and coats on hangers. Robert hadn’t seen the pack in a while, had forgotten it was there, but seeing it now brought back memories. He reached up and grabbed the pack, thinking it too would go to Goodwill. It looked and felt sadly worn to him, as flimsy as a dryer sheet.
Before dropping it alongside the pile of clothes by his feet he checked the backpack’s pockets to see if they might contain anything of value. He pulled an old flask from one of the side pockets with the words ‘GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER’ written across the front, then a Swiss army knife that he was certain he’d never used. From another pocket, along with a spiral notebook that he’d jotted thoughts down on, some of which he’d later turned into stories or his attempt at stories, he found a phone number on a worn scrap of yellow paper. The writing was barely legible. Above the number was the name Dan. Robert hadn’t thought of Dan in quite some time but he had no trouble remembering the guy. He thought back to the summer he’d met Dan. He did the math, and concluded that almost a decade had passed since.
Shaking his head, Robert remembered the person he’d been back then. A different person entirely. Naïve though confident, he’d blindly believed that he could be anything he wanted to be, and what he’d wanted to be was a writer.
He wondered what Dan was up to now. Dan had also wanted to be a writer. Robert wondered if Dan was still writing, or if he’d also given it up.
They’d met in Venice Beach at a hostel. Though Dan was only a few years older, he’d struck Robert as more mature than him in comparison. Just twenty-one at the time, Robert had been on summer break from college, which, as long as he was enrolled full-time in, his parents had agreed to financially support him. For that summer, as with the past two summers, his parents had given him a lump sum of money that he could spend at his will. Giving him a lump sum was his parents’ way of teaching him the value of money. Robert always spent the money wisely, in increments, and never had to ask for more before the summer’s end.
Unlike Robert, Dan didn’t seem to have parents to fall back on. Also, Dan wasn’t enrolled in college and didn’t seem to have any plans of going. He told Robert he’d left home after high school, that he’d worked a number of minimum-wage jobs to support himself, jobs that sounded to Robert both repulsive and admirable.
Having been largely sheltered by his parents, Robert saw more differences with Dan than similarities. But Dan proved easygoing, an all around happy-go-lucky guy, casual like a surfer or a stoner, smiling and laughing at anything and everything. It was hard not to like the guy, to feel at ease around him.
They shared a room with three others in the hostel, mostly Europeans, and one evening before going to bed, both of them with a book in their hands, stumbled on the topic of books and authors, and after that it seemed as if they couldn’t run out of things to talk about. One of their roommates that night told them to quiet down, to talk outside if they weren’t about to stop, because he was trying to sleep.
Another week in Venice went by before they decided a change of scenery might be nice, so they boarded a Greyhound for San Francisco. Dan found work at the hostel they ended up staying at, cleaning the dorm rooms and bathrooms, doing some of the prep work in the kitchen before dinner. He survived off the complimentary communal breakfasts and dinners that Robert ate too, for the most part, though he was glad his parents had given him enough money that he didn’t have to entirely rely on it like Dan.
About a month after they arrived in San Francisco, Robert left to return to Portland, Oregon, the city he’d grown up in and was going to college in. The last time he saw Dan before leaving was at the San Francisco Greyhound station, where they’d walked from the hostel together. On the sidewalk outside the station, Dan looked Robert in the eye and told him to keep writing. Looking back at Dan, Robert nodded, feeling certain he’d do just that. Before going their separate ways they’d shaken hands as if sealing a promise.
Cell Phone in one hand and scrap of paper in the other, Robert stepped out onto his apartment balcony. It was a little before dinner and he was having a beer. He’d stuffed his clothes destined for Goodwill in a trash bag that he set in a corner by the front door. Adriana was due to come over around six and he was eager to show her his revised closet. He hoped it would signify to her that he took her seriously, that he wanted things to move forward in their relationship.
Twelve stories below the sounds of the city — shouting, whistling, revving car engines, honking horns — reached his ears as he pressed the corresponding numbers from the piece of paper into his phone. He put his phone to his ear and was surprised to hear ringing, and was even more surprised when the ringing stopped and a man’s voice answered. “Hello?”
Robert cleared his throat. “Uh, hi. Sorry to bother you. This isn’t by any chance Dan, is it?” He’d never known Dan’s last name, or if he had he’d long since forgotten it.
“Why, yes it is. Who is it that I have the pleasure of speaking to?”
Holy shit, Robert thought. Really? He’s had the same number all this time? He felt his heart beating faster, his armpits already starting the dampening process.
“Um, my name’s Robert. I don’t know if you remember me. We met in California, in Venice Beach oh, about a decade ago now. I was going through my closet today and happened to find your number in my old backpack.”
“Robert?” Dan said after a brief pause. “Is that really you? Of course I remember you, buddy! How the heck are you? I can’t believe this. I’m so glad you called. You probably won’t believe me but I was thinking about you the other day, wondering what ever happened to you.”
“Oh yeah?” Robert said. He tried to laugh. His armpits were definitely dampening. “I’ve, I’ve been fine,” he said. “I’ve been good. How about you?”
“I’ve been great!” Dan said.
“That’s, that’s great,” Robert said, then reached for his beer on the little table on his balcony.
They started asking each other the standard questions people who haven’t spoken in a decade typically ask, and from these questions they learned that, small world, they were both living in Portland. Dan apparently owned a house near the Alberta Arts District and was married. Robert told Dan he lived in an apartment downtown in the Pearl District, briefly mentioned his new girlfriend, then started in on his boring but good-paying job as an accountant.
“An accountant!” Dan said. “The writer-turned-accountant. Excellent! I love it!”
Robert swallowed hard when he heard this. Before Dan could beat him to the question, Robert asked Dan if he was still writing.
“I am, as a matter of fact,” Dan said.
Hearing this, something like panic started to rise in Robert. He hadn’t expected this. He’d expected to hear that Dan had given it up like he had. He’d expected to be reassured by his decision to stop writing, to be told that it was nothing more than a pipedream, an adolescent obsession, something too far from becoming a reality to ever be feasible in the real world insofar as making ends meet.
“Really?” Robert said. He picked up his beer again and took a generous sip.
“Yup,” Dan said. “Still at it.”
“Wow. That’s great. Good for you. Have you managed to get anything published?” Robert was ready to hear a reply in the negative, maybe a short story here or there, in some journal no one read, but nothing else. In the silence before Dan responded, Robert was already forming a sentence in his mind that would express first his condolences and then his admiration to Dan for having kept at it for so long.
“Yes,” Dan said, “as a matter of fact, I have been published. Not in The New Yorker, yet, but definitely in some respectable venues. I’ve recently finished writing my third novel, if you can believe it, and there’s been some talk with my agent of adapting my first one into a short film. Who knows if that’ll materialize or not, but it’s still pretty exciting to think about.”
For the following few seconds Robert was speechless. He was dumbfounded. He took another quick, graceless sip of his beer.
“Really? Wow. Holy cow. That’s amazing. Good for you. Congratulations.”
In a flash Robert remembered their parting at the Greyhound station in San Francisco all those years back. Their handshake, the intent way they’d looked each other in the eye, as if they knew something no one else knew. Now Robert felt like a traitor. A fraud. He had stopped. Dan hadn’t. It was as simple as that.
“Thanks,” Dan said. “It’s been a long road, but it seems to finally be paying off some from a financial standpoint. What about you? Are you still writing?”
Robert was tempted to lie, to say that yes, he was still writing, very much so, though without any outward success, yet. But, never having been a very good liar, he ended up answering in the negative.
Dan sounded understanding, unsurprised even. His sympathetic tone only made Robert feel worse.
Before hanging up, Dan suggested they meet somewhere soon and catch up. He asked Robert what day would work best for him, implying, Robert thought, that pretty much any day worked for him and his eccentric writer’s schedule. After some deliberation they planned to meet the following day, since Robert had to work Monday through Friday like most people, and after work he generally didn’t want to do anything except relax in his apartment on the couch with a beer or two and watch something dumb and distracting on TV. Twice a week he went to the gym after work, but other than that his schedule didn’t change much.
Dan suggested a bar not far from Burnside. Though Robert hadn’t been to the bar, he’d heard or had read about it somewhere, a beer bar that catered to the more intellectual, artsy clientele. They planned to meet there at three.
The following day in the early afternoon Robert was in his apartment, alone once more. The previous night he’d showed Adriana his revised closet and, as he’d hoped, she’d been thrilled. She’d clapped her hands like an adorable girl in a show of excitement before perusing what remained in Robert’s closet with a delightful smile on her face. When she was done, she’d asked Robert if he wanted to go shopping toher next day for new clothes, and that’s when he told her about Dan. He read surprise followed by disappointment on Adriana’s face and thought about rescheduling the get-together, but he could tell from Adriana’s expression that she was being a bit theatrical. She asked who Dan was, and Robert told her an old friend that he hadn’t seen in years. Adriana brightened at this. She told Robert she’d lost touch with a number of people over the years and said it wasn’t everyday that something like this happened.
Nervous now about reuniting with Dan, Robert cracked open a beer and crossed the expanse of the living-room to step out onto the balcony. He stood by the railing and peered down at the cars and people below. He told himself to take deep breaths, that everything would be alright, that he was a grown adult and shouldn’t be nervous in the first place. All he was doing was meeting an old friend. He should feel happy. Excited. He should be looking forward to this instead of dreading it like an exam he hadn’t prepared for.
After the beer, Robert ventured into his closet to select some clothes that he deemed appropriate for the occasion. He went with blue jeans, a black t-shirt, and a forest-green crewneck that Adriana had been merciful toward. He put the clothes on and looked at himself in the full-length mirror in the closet. He thought he looked casual, as intended. As far as Adriana was concerned, all Robert’s clothes were too casual. “It’s almost like you’re hiding,” she said to him the other day. “None of your clothes stand out.” It was clear to Robert that Adriana wanted him to look a certain way: sharp, confident, sexy. Not who he was, exactly. He didn’t know if she was right for him in the long run. Adriana was a woman he was attracted to and who he seemed to get along with well enough but she was pushier than Robert would’ve preferred.
Before putting on his shoes and leaving his apartment he called a cab that picked him up outside his building and dropped him off at the corner of Burnside and Broadway. After crossing Burnside, within minutes Robert was standing outside the agreed-upon bar.
Dan was easy to spot. Robert saw him from the sidewalk, through the bar’s large windows. Dan was sitting on a barstool in more or less the middle of the bar. He had his elbows on the counter, his back more or less straight. With the exception of his shoes Dan was dressed in differing shades of gray, a gray button-down that looked woolen and gray jeans.
Robert thought Dan looked comfortable and content. Really not a whole lot different than he’d looked ten years ago. His hair seemed a bit longer than Robert remembered and his beard more advanced, but these slovenly touches made Dan look distinguished.
Ten, then twenty seconds passed, and Robert still hadn’t made a move to enter the bar. He watched Dan sip beer from a glass, his movements casual and controlled, and the longer he watched the more nervous he became. Dan was cool and confident. He still wrote, and somewhat successfully at that.
As his nervousness intensified Robert began toying with the idea of turning around and walking back to Burnside, of hailing a cab back to his apartment. He could make up an excuse if or when Dan called and asked what had happened, why he hadn’t shown. Or he could simply not answer his phone. He could change his number. What were the chances he’d ever run into Dan? He hadn’t before. It wasn’t likely.
Robert was leaning toward this new idea, but before he could act on it Dan twisted his neck around and looked out toward the street. He fixed his eyes on Robert. Robert tried his best to smile and look at ease while Dan smiled widely before standing from his bar stool. Robert could do nothing now except act natural and pretend that he was just about to step inside.
Yanking open the door, Dan faced Robert with a hearty grin, extending his arms as Robert moved closer.
“Robert!”
They hugged, Dan patting Robert’s back a few times. After the hug Dan held Robert by the shoulders and looked him dead in the eyes.
“Wow!” Dan said. “It’s so great to see you again, buddy!”
“You too,” Robert said. He strained another smile, unable to compete with Dan’s unabashed enthusiasm. They turned and sat down at the bar; Dan started talking almost immediately.
“You look great! You’ve built some muscle since I last saw you, haven’t you? I bet you could whoop my ass.”
Robert laughed. “I try to go to the gym a few times a week,” he said.
“Good for you. You look healthy, man. I haven’t been to the gym in ages. Actually, I don’t know if I’ve ever been to a gym.”
Around Dan’s eyes were some lines Robert hadn’t seen before, but other than that the guy looked the same. Perhaps a few pounds heavier but by no means fat.
“You look pretty fit though,” Robert said.
Dan pointed out the window at a retro-style bicycle locked to a parking sign. “The streets are my gym.”
“That’s your bike?”
“Yup.”
“You rode here from the Alberta Arts District?”
Dan shrugged. “I ride everywhere. It’s only a few miles.”
Perhaps Robert shouldn’t have been surprised. Dan had been such a vagabond back in the day that it was no wonder those roots were still intact.
A moment of silence followed as they studied the beer menu, written with chalk on a board behind the bar. Robert read the names of a dozen or more beers from breweries he’d never heard of. Before entering the bar, Dan had been drinking a barley wine, which he was still working on. He recommended the beer to Robert, who looked from the menu at the dark, reddish tint of the beer in the glass on the counter before Dan. He tried to recall if he’d ever tried a barley wine in his life.
He took Dan at his word and ordered the barley wine. It tasted interesting, though he would’ve preferred a hoppy IPA.
Mellow indie music played at a reasonable volume. The bearded bartender looked around thirty. The front of his t-shirt read Say Hi To Your Mom. Though the modest crowd of fellow beer drinkers ranged in age they all appeared relaxed, thoughtful, sophisticated. No one was talking especially loudly except perhaps Dan. There were no looming flat-screens showing sports, no TVs at all. The walls were red brick.
Beers before them, Robert and Dan started talking about the past, recapping that summer so long prior when they’d hosteled together. Fun times, they agreed. Then talk turned toward what had happened to them after they’d gone their separate ways in San Francisco. Robert mentioned graduating college and finding the internship that led to the accounting position he now held. “A pretty typical story, I’m afraid,” he said.
Dan shook his head. “No story is typical. Not if you tell it right.”
Robert didn’t know what to say to this. He felt touched by Dan’s warmth, his kindness.
“Now let’s hear yours,” Robert said. “We’ll compare and contrast.”
Dan laughed, bringing his head back and opening his mouth. The kind of laugh Robert was incapable of doing in public, possibly even in private, too. He took another sip of his barley wine, which seemed to be growing on him, though he still had it in mind to try an IPA next, to see how it compared to the brand he bought at Whole Foods.
Dan started off by mentioning Amber, his wife, who he’d met at the hostel in San Francisco not long after Robert left to return to Portland. Amber had started working at the hostel as a receptionist. She, too, had apparently left home, though not directly out of high school, like Dan, but after dropping out of college.
“We came up to Portland about a year after we met,” Dan said, looking down at his glass, which was now empty. “That whole time we’d been working in that hostel, sneaking into each other’s rooms to see each other.” Dan smiled at the memory. “Anyways, we came to Portland because we thought we should check the place out. It seemed like a cool city. And it was, is. We fell for it. Something about it rang true for us. For a while we stayed in a hostel here, but eventually we found an apartment. I was working in a food co-op — still am, by the way, though part-time now — and Amber in an Italian restaurant. We were working like mad, but we stayed happy the whole time. And I was writing like mad, whenever I could. Amber supported me a hundred percent. She loved to read my writing, still does. Anyways, after a while of this lifestyle my writing started to gain a little recognition, enough to set the momentum, I think, for what followed. I managed to get a few stories published in established magazines, and a few years later won a fairly prestigious contest. Some agents contacted me after that, and the next thing I know I’m hunkered down writing a novel with a slated deadline. Can you imagine?” Robert shook his head even though he could imagine it, it was what he’d wanted or had thought he’d wanted all those years ago. Writing a novel. The journey of it, the mystery. “Meanwhile,” Dan went on, “Amber started taking night classes to become the nurse she now is. A story with a happy ending.” He shook his head. “Sometimes I can’t believe how things turned out.”
“I know what you mean,” Robert said, and at this Dan laughed and they clinked glasses.
“An accountant. I never would’ve guessed.”
“Me neither. I was always good at math though.” Robert shrugged.
“I can’t do math to save my life. Seriously. When I’m tipping at a restaurant I wing it every time.”
For the first time in the bar Robert laughed freely.
After Robert finished the barley wine they ordered another round, this time an imperial stout for Dan and an IPA for Robert. The refined chatter of the clientele blended agreeably with the mellow indie music.
“I knew you were here in Portland,” Dan said after taking a hearty sip of his dark beer, “but I didn’t have your number. It was stupid of me to give you my number and not take yours. I guess I figured you’d call sometime.”
Robert looked at Dan and, feeling some guilt, shook his head. He’d planned to call Dan and knew why he hadn’t — he hadn’t gotten a story published. Robert had felt that this piece of news would’ve been the perfect reason to call. Though he’d felt comfortable around Dan from the start, he hadn’t ever felt close enough that he could call out of the blue and talk about whatever. In Robert’s mind their friendship had never been perfectly natural. Dan had always seemed so much older, so much worldlier. It had been their interest in writing that had bonded them. But Robert never got a story published, though not from lack of trying.
He related all this to Dan, and when he was done Dan rested his hand on Robert’s shoulder and said, “Writing’s a highly subjective business.”
Robert nodded and Dan removed his hand. They sipped their new beers, then Robert asked, “When did you get your first story published?”
Dan clasped his hands together and moved his head from side to side. “Sometime after I met Amber, two years or so. We were up here and I remember reading the email and feeling like I was on top of the world. The journal was relatively unknown but that didn’t matter to me. What mattered was that someone else, someone I’d never seen before, a complete stranger, liked something I’d written enough to want to publish it. I couldn’t believe it.”
After their second round of beers Dan paid the tab, though Robert tried to get it or to at least split it. Out on the sidewalk they hugged once more, and then Dan invited Robert and Adriana to come over to his house sometime for dinner and to meet his wife.
“I’d like that,” Robert said.
“Good,” Dan said. “I have your number now too, so be warned! If you don’t call, I will.”
Robert smiled and watched Dan deftly undo the lock on his bicycle. He brought a leg over the bike and, sitting on the seat, turned once more to Robert and waved.
“Until next time, my friend!” Dan shouted before starting off, a bit shakily, down the street. Robert watched him until he was out of sight, then turned and went back inside the bar. He sat on the barstool Dan had been on and ordered one last beer.
When he made it back to his apartment, the first thing Robert did was grab a pen along with the spiral notebook he’d salvaged from his old backpack. One sentence, he thought, flipping the pages with his earlier scrawls for a blank one.
Finding a blank page, Robert closed his eyes in an effort of concentration, opened them and wrote: Feeling inspired after reuniting with an old friend, the accountant gives writing another chance.
He wrote another sentence, then another. He wrote a paragraph, and continued writing until his phone rang some time later. It was Adriana, Robert he let her call go to voicemail. He resumed writing until he felt spent, and now he had a few pages to read over later, as well as something to tell Dan the next time they met.
T. E. Cowell lives in Washington State. He’s been writing for well over a decade, and has had short stories published in a variety of different literary journals.
