Work in Progress

After I called Jesus and listened to his plan to spring Felicia from the agententiary--I would accompany him as he made a daredevil helicopter descent into the center quad of the Paso del Norte penal facility--I lay on a chaise lounge in Lenora's backyard staring up at the nearly smog-obscured night sky.  The waxing moon was plenty bright enough to see clearly, as were the flashing lights of the lunar shuttles that kept arcing across the inverted ebony bowl of the heavens every twenty minutes or so.  Who were those people lucky enough to be heading out on the approximately 239,000-mile journey to the lunar surface?

I don't know how long I'd been dozing, having a wild dream about eluding fascist authorities who looked like extinct silverback gorillas by swinging on vines through a humid rain forest, when I was awakened by the flute-like notes of Lenora's voice.

"Sorry to be so late," she said.  "How're you holding up?"

I told her about my excitement for the day, surprise visits from both Dee and her mother, Charlotte.

Lenora said, "You've got to watch out for those two.  They're the sexual tag-team for the neighborhood lucha libre."

"I was saved from the mother when Jesus called."

"Oh?  What did he want?"

I gave her the brief description of her former student's plan to rescue Felicia from Paso del Norte.

"He can't be serious?"

"He's dead serious."

"It's a suicide mission," she said.  "Especially for you."

It did seem like sheer insanity for me to go back there.

"Why does he want you to accompany him?"

"Because I know the layout of the place."

"Far be it from me to tell you what to do," she said, "but you simply can't go."

"It does seem crazy.  But, then, I've done a lot of crazy things in my time."

"If you want to do something crazy come with me to the moon.  I have an interview for a position at the Lunar Polytechnic Institute day after tomorrow.  All-expenses paid, and I can bring a guest."

"You're kidding?  I was lying here earlier watching the lunar shuttles and wondering who gets to go to the moon."

"You do--if you want."

"Let me think on it.  This does seem a perfect escape from my current dilemma."

"As long as you let me know by tomorrow," she said.  "And don't forget:  you're sitting in on my class in the morning."



In the morning after breakfast, just as we were about to leave for campus, Lenora handed me a pair of Groucho Marx "Fuzzy Nose and Glasses"--the kind of ridiculous mask kids with stun guns used during TriggerTreat.

"You've got to be kidding?" I said.

She said, "Just until we get you across campus to my classroom."

While she piloted her black Mustang down Speedway toward the university I donned the glasses and looked at myself in the visor mirror.  Wouldn't this mask actually draw more attention than if I wore nothing?

When I posed the question to Lenora, she said, "Who cares how normal people react?  We just want to thwart the marshals with i.d.Visors.  Since I've already deactivated your Neckrochip you won't set off any alarms."

I felt a fool as we walked across campus to the Herbert Hoover Wooster LangLit Building, unable to appreciate the beautiful desert landscaping of our former alma mater--the first university in the Southwest to reach a milestone:  a student-body population over 100,000 individuals.

Lenora suggested I wear the Groucho glasses until the class actually started, and I sat at the rear of the room, wilting under the curious looks from several of the students who were already seated.

What was I doing here?  Why had I agreed to sit in on the class?  Wouldn't it be better if I got up and left right now?  But where would I go?  What would I do?  At least if I stuck with Lenora I could travel to the lunar colony, perhaps even find a way of staying there.

She started the class just after the siren signaled the beginning of the period, and I listened half-heartedly as she made general introductory comments about my book.  She talked about the modern post-modern novel, self-referential fiction, and avant-garde creative writing that actually relied upon input from the very characters within the work to determine the direction the tome would take.  Fifteen minutes in I was nearly dying from boredom when the classroom door opened and a beautiful young coed glided in.

Talk about deja vu.  It was a blast from the past, and for a long moment--while I watched the gorgeous young lady cross the front of the space to take a chair at the front left of the room--I wondered if this was a setup, if Lenora had, for some unfathomable reason, talked one of her students into doing it.  The coed brushed her long, golden blonde hair over her right shoulder, simultaneously leveling an intensely curious gaze at me.

When I looked to Lenora I saw that she had noticed my astonishment, but her reaction told me that she hadn't planned the event.  Things had suddenly turned weird.  Or were they weird because I was making them so?

The discussion about my book had just ramped up, and one ambitious male student with Hollywood handsome looks--whose ulterior motive, no doubt, was to get into his older professor's pants--said, in a voice dripping with academic acrimony, "I, for one, would like to discuss an obvious logical inconsistency in the tome, an inconsistency, I believe, that will prevent it from ever being considered among the best the literary arts have to offer."

"And what inconsistency is that, Tod?" Lenora said.

"Well," Tod sniveled, "the author would have us believe that his masterpiece is somehow a work in progress, and, yet, it's already been published.  A fait accompli.  In fact, a movie has been made based on the book.  So the question has to be asked:  how can the novel simultaneously be finished and still be an ongoing project?"

"Tod raises a valid question," Lenora said.  "Anybody care to respond?"

The gorgeous coed who had come late to class raised a shapely hand, which was attached at the wrist to an equally shapely arm--an alabaster limb as perfect as that on a marble statue.

Lenora said, "Helene?"

Targeting a withering stare at Tod while speaking directly to him, she said, "In what rulebook is it written that a work of art cannot be a masterpiece in and of itself, yet, at the same time, be an ongoing, evolving, organic project?  Some of the greatest writers throughout history spent whole lifetimes revising their novels."

"True enough," Tod replied, "but are you suggesting that this particular project--in which we all play significant parts--must go on interminably while Lee Rowe writes and revises willy-nilly while we try to lead normal lives in the interim?"

"Why don't we ask him?" Helene said, her ice-dagger tone suddenly melting into dulcimer notes.  "If I'm not mistaken the brilliant author of the literary masterpiece Utomepia is now sitting at the back of the room."

There was a collective gasp from the students as they all craned their necks to see to whom she was referring.

I looked to Lenora, who shrugged almost imperceptibly.

When I removed my Groucho glasses a mature woman student two seats in front of me said, "My god--it's him."

A male student with an effeminate voice said, "It's Lee Rowe.  It's actually Lee Rowe."

Some of the other young women seemed almost to swoon at my presence, a behavior which, while flattering, I found to be slightly embarrassing.  Could I have made them less adoring?

Lenora interrupted the commotion to say, "Yes, class, it is Lee Rowe, author of the book we're discussing.  Mr. Rowe agreed to sit in today specifically to answer any questions we might have about Utomepia--questions like those raised by Tod and Helene."

Tod viewed the mention of his name as an opportunity to address an irrelevant question to his professor.  "Weren't the two of you married at one time?" he said, snarkily.  "Weren't you once Lenora Hedge-Rowe?"

Helene took offense to the question, her voice becoming that of an ice maiden again.  "Leave it to you, Tod, to try to revive a joke that was a pure delicacy coming from the hand of a master, but is nothing more than stale bread in the mouth of a hack like you."

The mature woman student, unmoved, apparently, by the drama playing out before her, said, "I have a question for Mr. Rowe.  For no particular reason, it seems, you suddenly began employing annoying adverbs in the taglines of dialogue within the work.  Until now we were all led to believe that you chose to use the simple 'said' tag--or no tag at all--in dialogue so as to allow the reader to understand from context the speaker's emotional state.  Can you say why you've done this?"

But Helene was too wound up to abide by this line of stylistic questioning.  "For god sake, Minerva, try to see the bigger picture, won't you?  We're dealing with the fundamental basics of creation here, and you're asking questions about grammar and usage."

Lenora intervened.  "While Minerva's question is a valid one, and undoubtedly has its place, I do think we're on a level of philosophical discourse that should proceed without impediment."

Minerva looked aggrieved when Tod said, impishly, "Right then.  If we're to assume the legitimacy of the 'work-in-progress' argument, we must ask of the good Mr. Rowe if he's genuinely aware of the thin ice upon which he treads.  He's about to take this project into a realm that will undoubtedly be viewed as pure science fiction rather than dystopia.  Is that where he really wants to go?"

I said, "You raise a question, Tod, that I've recently pondered myself.  And I must admit to having reached an important crossroad.  Do I remain earthbound and deal with the dystopic realities of the society in which we live, or do I follow the impulse which takes me beyond the JunkSat Belt orbiting our planet?"

Tod seemed pleased and appeased by my response.  "Thank you for answering my question so honestly," he said.  "I must admit to having an ulterior motive to my line of inquiry.  Depending upon which way the story goes I may be taking my first trip to the moon."

"I see," I said.

Helene said, "The story is here on earth.  Our hero is being called upon to rescue people who befriended him earlier on in the narrative, writers who, like himself, have broken free of the restrictive and prosaic rule of the State.  And let me be clear:  if our hero follows the correct course of action he will, undoubtedly, be accompanied by the fairest damsel of them all."

Minerva watched the proceedings with a scowl on her face.  "I guess my question regarding style is a moot point now," she said, testily.  "Or is it?"

We all ignored her because she was threatening to become terminally annoying.

A siren wailed to signal the period had come to an end.

Before dismissing the class, Lenora said, "Don't forget the party we're having at my place tonight.  There'll be good food and drink to satisfy the most discriminating palates, and, if Mr. Rowe is agreeable to the suggestion, we might even continue with this intellectually stimulating  line of discussion."

After the students had gone, Lenora and I made our way toward an exit.  I had donned the Groucho glasses again in order to be safe, but when we were mere feet from the door a loud, shrill whistle pierced the hallway, silencing the chattering students who were making their way outside.

Turning to identify the source of the aggravating sound I saw a corpse in a wheelchair rolling wildly in our direction.

"My god," Lenora said, "it's Herb Wooster."

"Stop right there," Herb was screaming in a bloodcurdlingly high-pitched voice.  "I know you.  It's Lee Rowe, isn't it?"  He stuck the whistle between egg yoke-yellow teeth and exhaled with all his might.  "It's Lee Rowe, the Freedom Fugitive," Herb shrieked.

A marshal at the end of the hall had been alerted, and he was just beginning to move rapidly in our direction when Lenora grabbed me by the ear and yanked me out a side door.