I have been starting to see the outlines of who this character is, though I still don’t know her name. That will eventually come. I don’t sweat stuff like this. Not knowing her name just means I haven’t fully worked out who she is and what I want the name to reflect about it here. It’s not a sign from the universe that there’s a problem with the character (I’ve seen some authors stress over things like this.)

During this week, I’ve been asking myself, what is her job? The Narrator (her designation for now) is a curious person who wants answers to questions. She needs flexibility so that she can have various adventures, but I don’t want her to be a freelance writer or editor. That’s not quite the right vibe.

So, I decided that she could be a former newspaper reporter, and that means she’d know how to investigate, which could be helpful to the story. But I don’t want her to currently have that job as it’s not the direction I want the story to take.

The primaries here in California took place at the beginning of June, and I suddenly realize she could be a researcher of some sort, connected to a political party. I make this intuitive leap while I’m on a walk. She’ll be hired to research the opposition and find out their dirty laundry. That feels right – she won’t be busy every single day with this kind of work but it goes well with her background.

That means I’ll have to change the material I wrote in the previous section, where it says the month is May. Deep investigation into candidate’s backgrounds wouldn’t start until after it was clear which candidates would be facing off in the fall.

This section has a lot of info-dumping, but that’s natural as I try to figure out who this character is, what drives her, and what matters to her. I’ll trim some of it away during the revision process.

Here’s this week’s section:

*

“Stop it! Stop it right now!”

I rubbed my arm, rubbing away the sharp prickle, the feel of burning embers on my skin. I glanced around but I was the only person on this stretch of sidewalk. Maybe I was hearing an argument through an open window. In a big city you often hear a small part of someone else’s life. When I was younger I’d imagine a whole life out of one building block like that. But as I got older, my capacity for imagination was more limited. Maybe this was experience or age, but I knew that whoever was shouting, “Stop it!” was never going to be able to stop it and the person being implored to stop never would stop.

I mean, unless you’re four years old, people shouldn’t have to shout, “Stop it!” at you. You should already know.

The hedge nearest me vibrated wildly and I stepped back, expecting to see a squirrel emerge but it wasn’t a squirrel. It was a small man, about the size of my hand, and he had something tucked under his arm as he dropped to the pavement.

“Stop it!” the voice came again and without thinking I put my foot down on the pavement in front of the thief and leaned down. “She said stop it.”

The little man froze and whatever it was under his arm landed on the sidewalk with a thunk. I hoped it wasn’t fragile.

The hedge vibrated wildly again and a small woman leaped out and snatched up the dropped package.

“Begone!” she shouted at the man. She glanced up at me, gave me a brief nod of appreciation, and dove back into the hedge.

The thief stood trembling by my foot and I realized I’d trapped his foot under mine and he couldn’t run off, which from the expression on his face he was clearly eager to do.

I was still leaning over him and I said in a menacing voice, “What do you do when someone says, ‘Stop it’?”

“Sss…stop it?” he gulped.

“Is that squirrel hurt?”

I straightened up and saw a woman walking a dachshund that was straining at the leash. They’d stopped a few paces away.

I moved my foot, releasing the little man, and he ran across Palms Boulevard, heedless of traffic, and jumped into a hedge on the other side.

“Guess not,” I said.

“Good.” She continued on her way, the doxie nearly strangling itself n a thwarted attempt to chase after the “squirrel.”

I continued on home, the messenger bag banging against my hip with every step.

A squirrel. Yes. Two squirrels, in fact, arguing over an acorn. Had to be. Had to be.

*

I don’t normally make myself a drink at three o’clock on a Tuesday afternoon outside of Mardi Gras in New Orleans but that Tuesday I did, a vodka Collins, a drink I’d been introduced to in my college days and never found a good reason to change.

I thought about texting Dahlia so we could make fun of my hallucination but fear that she wouldn’t think it was funny stopped me. I knew that most mental health problems occurred in people long before they reached my age but that didn’t mean I couldn’t be experiencing something like that. Every woman who lived long enough experienced menopause but it wasn’t that well studied. Basically they shoved estrogen at you if you complained and carried on.

I guess they did that for most things, if you think about it. I mean, most people my age or on seven different meds. I’d probably be on seven different meds, too, if I bothered seeing a doctor. In my experience, whatever was wrong with me either went away or there wasn’t much anyone could do about it anyway.

I moved onto my balcony, which gave me a few of the tall oak tree and the roof of the neighboring apartment building. It created a feeling of privacy, which I wanted at the moment.

My phone buzzed with an incoming text but I ignored it. I’d had enough of the vodka Collins not to want to respond to a client.

In the oak tree, I heard a pixie yell, “Go away! I told you to stay out of this tree!”

A tiny figure leaped out of the tree, chased by another tiny figure. The first figure jumped lightly on the electrical wire strung between poles and jumped into a neighboring oak.

“And stay out!” the second figure roared, lifting something—a stone? an acorn?—over its head and throwing it at the first figure. The first figure ran down the trunk of the tree.

Squirrels, I told myself and went back inside to fix another drink.

*

“What Magdalene is saying,” Arnold Prescott said, his loud baritone drowning out every other voice at the table, “is that we—”

“I am perfectly capable of explaining what I’m saying,” Magdalene Alvarez put in. Her voice was more soprano than baritone but she managed to be heard anyway. Long years in California politics had taught her how to use her lungs.

“Of course, of course,” Arnold said, holding up both hands in surrender and giving a grimace and an eyeroll that made me want to punch him. I didn’t, since assault is a felony and this crowd paid my bills. If I played it right, it would also fund my retirement, which was looking alarmingly close when viewed from this side of fifty.

“No one needs to explain anything,” I interjected. I’ve also learned to use my lungs but that’s because once upon a time I was a newspaper reporter.

Before you sold out, I sometimes heard myself think, but in reality, it wasn’t so much selling out as it was getting cut loose; the journalism industry had been in decline even when I was in college learning how to do it, but back then it seemed possible that people would figure out it was important and would therefore support it.

That naivete had supported me all the way to The Los Angeles Times, my last stop as a reporter before leaving the industry. I’d won an award or two but by the time the buyout offer came even my belief in the power of the pen couldn’t keep me blind to reality. I took the buyout and one thing and another led to this, sitting around a table with a political action committee who wanted me to dig up some dirt on the opposition’s candidate.

This was usually easy to do because politicians of any stripe are usually braying jackasses and braying jackasses generate a lot of shit, which they then step in. This is a metaphor that is also true of actual livestock, which I knew from having spent my formative years in one of the states that begin with a vowel.

~~~

Jennifer Lawler has been a writer-editor for more than twenty-five years and has published more than forty novels and nonfiction books. She is the founder of the online education company Club Ed LLC