Victoria Williams: 0051

Going In, Coming Out

Frosty is bent over her typewriter weeping. Not just weeping now that I think about it. She’s screaming. She’s choking on something that she wants to say, and it’s shaking her head apart from her body. She already has scars from the last time she did this. The typewriter is covered in bloody fingerprints. So is the paper she’s typing on. It’s been there for 23 years, but she’s doing it. Doing it slowly. She’s writing her novel, one word at a time. Its title is, The Waistcoat. It is dedicated to Randall Riese. We are all players in the first act of his life. All she wants to do is produce a manuscript – something fit to wipe his nose. It is not designed for public consumption, and yet I try in vain to arrange meetings for her with literary agents. She won’t go. She won’t go in protest at the way they treated her brother. She beats her head against the keys, wailing. The printout from this reads, “GJRUDFRFJKFJ,FSDM,.” I know at this point that I am in the presence of a true genius. Sometimes, late at night, I hear distant music, and that is how I know… This lump that’s stuck in her somewhere… What good is genius when it won’t come out?