the last chapter of my novel

I started writing it on the way back from Sweden and I'd really like to get back on it. I just got Word again, so this should be now possible. I have it very mapped out, I've just been lazy regarding this.


I am not going to provide the context of this, but I want you to know in my mind this is a movie
Bradley = Brad Pitt
Hope = Zooey Deschanel


ENJOY YOUR SUNDAY

Chapter Seven

Bradley reconsiders

The students of Brockson University were restless, in Class 304, Literature of Pre-Industrial Revolution America and England. They twitched in their seats, hit their pens against the tops of their desks, snapped their gum if they had it moving about in their mouths, loudly hit the back of other students' seats.

"Hey!" Rose Hawthorne, an all-too-good scholarly girl with a long red ponytail and tightly cut sweater, yelled at the handsome Jack Morgan, who sat directly behind her. For an answer, he offered up a smile.

"Sorry, hun." She blushed.

"It's okayyyyy."

           

The real biting question on every student's mind was where is Professor Witherspoon? He should have been here fifteen minutes ago.

Yes, the new arrival on campus, the fresh blood and meat of the pitiful English department. No one really came to Brockson to learn writing or what torment Emily Dickinson went through in her attic, after all. They came to Brockson for science and the English classes that were offered were full of students that needed them to clock out requirements.

There was a handful of writing majors and they could all look forward to careers at Burger King and Wal-Mart when their tenure as students were over. Or, maybe if they were lucky enough, that privelege of the intellectual elite, that shelter from adulthood, grad school.

"Okay!" Hudson Jones, a tall and likeable African American boy in the front row turned over his shoulder. He wore a midnight-colored hoodie with a rival university's name emblazoned on it, and no one batted an eyelash. School spirit was not the status quo at BU (and don't confuse it with that other one). "I say he doesn't show up in another five minutes," and here he squinted at his Rolex, draping his beefy arm. "And I say we GET THE FUCK OUT."

           

There were some muted cheers and a chorus of various agreements. Everything, running the gamut from the overzealous "yeah!" to the anxiety-ridden "now hold on just one second" could be heard, bouncing off the walls of the classroom.

Hudson nodded, pleased with himself. He liked to think himself a thoughtful rabblerouser. His role models? The late Dr. Malcolm X and the great Kanye West.

Little did the students know, however, that outside the classroom was indeed a Dr. Bradley Witherspoon, who listened on and was quite besides himself with devilish contentment. This was the test he had always put all his classes through, when he started up with them. The good old late-on-purpose test. And it hadn't failed him yet.

Maybe just one more moment. He brushed some non-existent dust off his arm. He worked on his smile. He plucked a spare, unsightly hair out of his Easter Island chin.

One student, indeed, did try to test the waters. A small boy wearing an oversized plaid shirt like it was a Snoop Dogg video in 1994 banged the door open with the breadth of his weak body.

"...oh." He found himself looking into the eyes of Bradley Witherspoon, who couldn't have been more flattered with the fact that he had caught one student taking his bait. One fly inspecting the honey.

"Hello there," Bradley coughed. "Do you know who I am?"

"Not the professor?" the boy gulped. Bradley pursed his lips, drawing this out for as much as he could.

"Who, Dr. Witherspoon?" The boy gave a wary nod.

"I couldn't be that debonaire asshole. I could dream about it, I could fantasize about it, but...oh wait. What does it say on my birth certificate again? Bradley Truman Witherspoon? Get back in the classroom before I fail you for the duration of the semester." Bradley's normally joking, youthful voice took a sharp and vicious turn. The boy nearly squeaked.

"You can't do that! I can w-withdraw if I w-w-want to!"

"And I can use your transcripts to wipe my balls. Move it!" In a jerked rush (jerked being another key here) the boy sprinted back into the classroom, leaving the poor door to suffer in his aftermath.

Bradley was very happy about this. With his chest as puffed as ever, he waltzed into that classroom. He waltzed like a Roman general proclaiming a new territory for the emperor. Give unto Caesar...

"So we finally meet!" Dr. Witherspoon (now he was, officially) threw his attache case down on his new mahogany desk, in which professor after professor had used throughout the length of the day. So it wasn't exactly his, no. "Sorry to keep you waiting, but you know. I'm not from around here and well, see. I got lost!"

He propped his body up against said desk, smirking the whole time. Everyone in that classroom knew he hadn't gotten lost. Everyone in that classroom knew he was just being a douchebag. Well, except Nellie Wilson, and she would be getting a D that semester, not her first.

"I don't know if you've done your homework on me- what, with the internet and all, this isn't really something I'm not used to. Yes, I do tend to shop around, from assignment to assignment. I've never been offered tenure. I've never been at a school longer for a year. Columbia, Pitt, Georgetown, Yale, Skidmore. Ah, Skidmore was good to me."

He was aware of the intrigued eyes of the coeds before him, measuring his body, entranced by his hair and jawline.

"I've been offered teaching assignments abroad....spent some time in France, Germany, England, Japan, Canada. But I'm not sure we'd term Canada abroad, since isn't it like an hour from here to begin with?" A few students giggled.

"So what brings me to Brockson, in the middle of no where...Amsburg, Penn-n-sylvania?" The syllables danced off the tip of his tongue, where many things had danced before.

There was a silence:  a total absence of sound. To drop a mere pin then would have been a travesty.

He shrugged.

"A friend, a need for a change. I'm going to be open about my dirty laundry. Come on! We all have it! You do, I'm sure!" He pointed to a pretty tanned blonde girl in the front row. She was like one of those unfortunate souls that find themselves, bulleted with beads of saltwater at a marine show. She blushed crimson.

"It was simplicity. It was easiness. Yes, I took the easy way out! But you won't get that option from me. Nope. Welcome to hell."

There was one supressed moan that reverberated through every body in that dank classroom.

His class then became one long tirade about George Eliot and why Middlemarch would be required reading. In truth, he hated the book and hadn't finished it until five years ago. But his pupils would be none the wiser. Hell, that kind of shit wasn't even accessible onratemyprofessor.com. The toils of one Bradley Witherspoon, a private ordeal.

"Are there any good bookstores around here? Besides the campus one. I know that's shit. Unless I want an atlas and who uses those anymore?" Bradley inquired outloud before the last five minutes had been used up.

"Um, there's a Piece of Heaven?" Rose offered. She was constantly eager to impress figures of authority and Bradley was like, well, climbing Mount Everest for her.

"A Piece of Heaven? That's a terrible name for a bookstore. Unless they're selling stictly Saint Augustine or Thomas Aquinas, and I hope to God," Bradley rolled his eyes at the name of that meaningless diety. "they're not."

"It's a good bookstore. You should support independents."

"What, like the political party? Do you see them winning any elections? I'll check it out." Dr. Witherspoon shifted his weary eyes up to the weathered clock. Another class of nitwits, another bunch of degree-seeking mongloids. "You guys can go on and get out now. Make sure you read the first chapter and familiarize yourself with Eliot's backstory. Interesting lady, if I don't say so myself. Not really. Go."

Fate makes fools of us all. Bradley Witherspoon, no matter how self-assured, good-looking or qualified he was, proved to be no exception.

He didn't own a car. This was a conscious choice as much as it was out of convenience.

"You should really get a car," Scott said once as he picked up Bradley from work. "I don't want you to think I'm going to play the Morgan Freeman to your Miss Daisy for the next several months."

"Please. You'd make a pitiful black man."  Scott had scowled. But more often than not, even though Bradley was fond of prattling on about how he was "saving the environment" and "reducing my own carbon footprint," he ended up giving Scott a call to haul his ass here or there. Lucky for Scott, he didn't have much going on. Still, though.

He didn't mind walking on days when it wasn't too cold or rainy and this day it was neither. So off he embarked into town- everything in Amsburg was within walking distance from the other, and the bus was unreliable and poorly run- his Chinos waving in the wind he created. His attache case was draped over his other arm; he lived a virtual stone's throw from the campus he worked at. He could see it from his bedroom window, and he often gazed at it, bored, while rubbing his navel in the early morning light and thinking of the past.

"Pathetic," he'd mutter to himself, and then go pee.

He thought of Elizabeth fleetingly- he thought of her at moments where she was suddenly a word stabbing his temples- but not with much attachment. Just with the pleasant images and sensations of her near-perfect body. Yes, Bradley had been with a lot of women, and he could say that. He had seen the 3.6s all the way to the 11.4. Elizabeth? Well, she was a nice, round 10. And you could divide that in half.

He also thought of Hope. Like he did. He hadn't run into that skin-crawling imp yet, and now he was about to.

At that very second, Hope was monitoring what she was convinced was an old-woman-shoplifter in her aunt's store.

"Nobody shoplifts here, Hope!" Aunt Sherry had squawked in the past. "Quit being so paranoid."

But Hope had her suspicions this time- that rotund purse, those furtive glances, the fact the woman seemed to be feeling every book's spine she touchd for a cancerous lump.

A literary mammogram.

Sebastian was helping a little girl find a tale of Nancy Drew and one of her many adventures; Olivia was in the bathroom staring at herself hatefully. They all felt far away from her. It was like at night, before sleep, hovering around, when she became an isolated star. It was a cold sensation inside her chest she didn't much like.

That was to be ignored now. Now:  the old woman. The old bitch who wanted to rape those books.

"I won't let it happen," Hope breathed so slightly. The old woman turned and looked at her, bemused. Her own face was a blank page, with nothing meaningful written upon it. Her whole life and nothing meaningful had been written upon her.

"Can I help you, young lady?" she asked. Hope swallowed.

"Yes. Leave the books alone and get out." The old woman gasped.

"You can't be serious!"

"I am so, SO serious." Hope shirked her shoulder. "You should leave before I lose my temper."

"Sherry never behaves this way! Why I am just an elderly bystander..." and as the old woman went on, the books she had been hiding in her bag fell to the floor, due to one awkward misstep. The color in her face vanished, if there had been some to begin with (not much).

"Oh shit." The old woman wanted to cry. She could sense the sobs that were lodged in her throat. Hope pointed her accusing finger at the findings.

"You leave now and I won't call the cops on your ass."

"I have such a record. Don't tell Sherry. It's all the online gambling..."

"Out!" The old woman scurried out, her bottom lip quavering the whole way out the door. Upon hitting the world waiting outside, she broke into wails.

Hope did not hear them, though. And she wouldn't have cared anyway.

On her exit, anonymous old woman bumped shoulders with the impressive physique of Bradley. He entered the bookstore like a god whose arrival had been predicted years ago in some ancient text.  He nodded his head at unacknowledged entities.

The woman-child-orphan he unknowingly sought was only aisles away. Olivia was still in the bathroom, this time gabbing with Ben on the phone. Aunt Sherry was working the cash register and beaming for whatever unnatural pleasures kept her going in this relentless life. Hope would not share the shoplifting factoid with her; she wanted to shelter her aunt from life's crueller angles.

"Middlemarch, Middlemarch," Bradley mumbled to himself, stroking that chin.

There was a shelf designated "classics." While some may say this was an objective term, these were the books that everyone could say "oh yeah that's a classic" about. Dickens, Hemingway, etc. Think of the books you were forced to read as an adolescent when the last thing you wanted to be doing was reading.

"You need any help there?" Sebastian came strolling by. The girl had evacuated the store, insistent that the Nancy Drew she was looking for was not available. In reality:  it did not exist. She was confusing her fanfiction with reality again.

"Hmm, not so much," Bradley shrugged. In truth, it was like he could smell the testosterone oozing from Sebastian and was simply uninterested. It was like gelatin slipping from his oversized pores.

"I'll be at the counter. Give me a holla." Bradley twitched. The hearing of that word...

And it was then that Hope saw Bradley. She saw his back first, but she shook, like pre-orgasm. She just knew. Maybe on some level, she could even smell the testosterone. And it burnt her nostrils.

"Sweet Jesus." She knew this day was coming, centuries in advance. One could only stay hidden SO long in Amsburg, after all. If Hope was not a stronger girl, she would have collapsed on her kneecaps. Fortunately for us and the sake of her self-pride, she was.

On the back of his neck, Bradley felt something. It was like unnatural summer heat for that time of year. It lit a fuse inside of him. He stopped ogling books like a voyeur watching couples necking and began to turn. He began to turn to Hope.

Bradley saw her, in the golden light that was trickling in from various windows, and he reconsidered every thought he had had regarding her in a negative way. At that moment, Hope appeared a sheepish, unorthodox angel on his horizon. Bradley reconsidered.

"Fuck," he said, mouth opening to a perfect "o" shape.

"Shit," she replied, intrinsic to her as ever.

He stepped forward to her. It was like learning to walk again. Something we adjust to as infants and constantly refer to.

"What are you doing here?" she asked, arms dumb and useless at her side.

"What, are you the bookstore gestapo? I can go where I want to go," he retaliated. The romance of the moment self-imploded.

"I work here!" Instantly Hope regretted her sentence. She froze.

"Oh, you do?" Bradley grinned. His teeth, of course, could blind the blind (even more). She winced and wondered if she could see her reflection in them if she peered closely enough.

"Don't come stalk me now. I fear you actually would try that and I have enough problems..."

"Woman I have a life. But it's an interesting tidbit."

And Bradley did not even know her name. But that never stopped him before.

"Can I ask you out or is that improper of me?"

Hope's eyes bulged out. Something you think only possible in cartoons but not really. They bulged out, like someone was pressing her organs inwards and the only thing those eyes could do was spring out. Pop.

She took an extraordinarily long pause to process this.  In the duration of that pause, just a half a dozen things could have happened. Buy a house, burn it down, give birth, profess your love, get a terminal prognosis.

She leaned against the comfort of the bookshelf (not unlike Bradley) for support. She had been asked out several times before now and never had this sort of reaction, ever. Very few people, in the history of modern humanity, had.

"I need a moment," she finally said, raising her hand up like she was fighting something.

To Bradley, this was all very perplexing. He wasn't used to women jumping out of their skin to be with him.

"Okay..." He raised an eyebrow and remembered one of the young girls he had picked up shortly after arriving in Amsburg. She was Hope's antithesis.

"I JUST LOVE SHOTS," the squeaky blonde had said over the racket at the bar. "CAN WE DO MORE?"

"Sure we can!" he had urged and handed her the shots, which were contained in test tubes. How classy. Grace Kelly would approve.

Hope opened and closed her eyes. She planned on feigning a headache.

"I think I'll say yes," she breathed. "The last time I was at the cemetary, and that wasn't that long ago, I felt like all the graves were talking to me. You know? Like trees in a forest, when they kind of whisper things. I know that sounds dumb but that's how it felt."

"What were they saying, schizoid?"

"You're young, you're young."

Hope was not making this claim up, either. She remembered how it had been, in front of her parents' tombstones. Those slabs of emotionless granite and marble with words (just words and names) carved right into them. She had turned her head and observed the countless rows of one after another, unique and yet so alike. Dating from the present all the way, seeping back into the mid-1800s when Amsburg was just a hamlet with the hope of something more keeping it going, during the midst of the fabled Industrial Revolution.

She had heard a wind rustling through the leaves of the nearby trees. At first, it had just been a wind, like any other normal autumn wind. But then.

"You're young, you're young."  The graves were begging her to live her life, for them.

Hope imagined going on a date with Bradley, just even once, would be doing precisely that. It wasn't paragliding or cliffdiving, but an experience nonetheless in itself.

"Well, I can see you're not an octogenerian. Or, I just hope you've kept your age very well." Bradley thought the red lights in his mind should have flashed. Crazy bitch! Crazy bitch! But no. These situations, for better or for worse (more often, for worse) tended to provoke something in him, something excitable and something adventurous. It was like a shark sensing blood in the water- he needed to go to that place.

"Maybe that's just it. I feel ancient sometimes."

"Absolutely?"

"Only partially."

"So?"

"Yes. I'll go out with you," she exhaled and her small chest heaved.

Like he had when he was a schoolboy eager to impress anyone, especially a pretty girl, Bradley broke out in a grin as infectious as a bad case of herpes. Foreshadowing.

"That is beautiful. That is really swell. That makes me coming here to pick up a George Eliot book totally worthwhile."

Hope wrinkled her nose.

"That's almost enough to make me reconsider my affirmation."

"So you're not a fan either, I take it?"

Hope started walking. She wanted to continue with her business, but the heat was rising in her cheeks. Her hands ran across the tops of the books she passed on by.

"Too dry and long. If I wanted that kind of thing, I'd go to Russia."

"And have you ever been to Russia?"

"Nope. But it's a dream. A faraway dream."

"Same here. I mean, I've been to a lot of places....not to brag. Well, I kind of am." He bounced those shoulders up and down.

"I have not been anywhere." Hope was quick to respond. She didn't miss a beat. It was something that had always made her bitter.

"Well get on that. Like the graves told you," and here Bradley worked hard to suppress a chuckle. "you ARE young."

"Ha." She was aware of his attempt to gently mock her, but she didn't take it into the legion of her heart.

The door then to A Piece of Heaven blew open. You would have thought it was a bomb going off behind it, left by a member of some displaced terrorist organization that thought Amsburg was a metropolis worth, well, terrorizing.

But it was no bomb. Instead, it was Ben.

"Where is that cunt!" he barked, and by cunt he meant Olivia. Who else?

"Who is that clown?" Bradley asked Hope, who took him by the arm then, guiding him like a child that was lost in the supermarket.

"That's the piece of shit that Olivia is attached to, genitals to genitals. Don't ask me why, I have a hard time understanding her."

"Olivia?"

"Think the more neurotic version of me."

"I barely know you, girl. I couldn't call that neurotic, but judging by how you acted earlier..."

"I'm not a cunt Ben! Don't talk about me that way! I have self-respect now!" As if self respect was something you could buy at the drug store and apply to all your childish wounds.

"Yeah RIGHT. You are a cunt. You're a backstabbing cunt!"

"This gets better and better," Bradley whimsically noted, his brow furrowing.

"What makes you say that?" Olivia released a shaky sob. She looked like her narrow body would explode out of pure, physical rage.

Ben held up his cell phone:  clearly, the smoking gun.

"Your texts! Bitch, make sure you're sending them to the RIGHT place!"

"What are you talking about?!" Olivia was holding herself up now against the wall. She might collapse otherwise.

"See what I mean? Much more neurotic."

Bradley shrugged carelessly.

"Still means nothing to me."

"WHO'S ALVIN?" Olivia gasped then, like he had suckerpunched in the non-existent gut.

"You...you weren't supposed to get that!"

"Well, obviously!"

Let's take a moment to describe Ben. Someone didn't tell Ben that Kurt Cobain had killed himself or Courtney had killed him or the government had maybe killed Kurt Cobain. He had long greasy hair unevenly cut that hung above his shoulders in a Jesus-like fashion. If his face was kinder, the comparison to the late messiah (not of grunge rock, either) could be made. But his face wasn't kid. It was sharp and full of lines, long before their time had allowed them to set in properly. He dressed like an art school drop out, paint from God knows what and stains from God knows what else decorating his used, secondhand clothing. His body was lanky and covered in a coating of fine, blondeish hair. And under those soil-ridden clothes was a body cut like a diamond. Some girls were drawn to him, stupidly. There was something in him they just wanted to clean or correct, or something about him they just wanted to use to dirty themselves up.

It wasn't like Olivia needed someone to dirty her. Her mother had done enough she was safely wrapped up in the flesh and goo of her womb.

"Alvin is nothing! Ben! We just Frenched!"