A Thriller

A Love Story

A Post modernist Story

By Chip Holbrook

(Ghost Written By Nicola Moriarty)

Good morning dear reader. I trust you are comfortable? Perhaps you are enjoying a freshly brewed cup of coffee and a bagel with smoked salmon and cream cheese. Maybe you’re wearing your midnight blue, silk dressing gown and you’re stretching your legs out on your cream, suede sofa?

Pardon me?

It’s evening is it? And you’ve got a cup of hot Milo and a slice of cinnamon toast do you? And you’re in your flannelette jimmy-jams, sitting crossed legged on your favourite orange arm chair. Oh, you know it’s past its best years, but you just can’t bring yourself to throw the old dear out.

Well, excuse me for having an imagination.

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Chip Holbrook, and I’ll be your narrator today. I see what you’re thinking. ‘Well now hang on a sec’, you say (full of indignation I imagine) – ‘Isn’t Chip the name of the author?’ Yes that’s right, take another look at the front cover, double check, stop spluttering your Milo everywhere. You’re right. Chip is the name of the author. That’s because I am the author. I am the author and the narrator. I’ll allow you a moment to get over that fact. You see, I have a bit of a problem with that whole ‘implied author’ thing. If I’m the one that slaves away over a hot typewriter stirring up a story for you, then I’m the only one you’re going to be picturing while you slurp up that story. That’s why I put that stunning head shot of myself inside the front cover. Go ahead, take a peek. Breathtaking, isn’t it? It’s okay to want me, you know. You’re only human. By narrating the story myself, I can ensure my complete control over your reading of it. ‘Death of the author’ my ass. Barthes can kiss my sweet little… well, you get it.

So, now that we’ve got that established, your all knowing author and narrator is going to get this show on the road.

Now, if I tell you that I am planning on subverting your expectations with this story, then what would you think? If I write a beautiful love story, will you expect the lovers to end up together? You’re not sure are you?

So now I can begin the story, because you have no clue of how it’s going to end, which means that I have all the power. Excellent.

Once upon a time… No, scratch that. Because what do those four words make you think? They set up expectations. You’re expecting a fairy tale. Do I look like the kind of guy who writes fairy tales? Take another look at my photo, you’ve been dying for an excuse to anyway. Right, now tell me, are fairy tales my thing? No, of course they’re not.

This is the story of Glen. No I don’t think so. Because now you are expecting to hear all about Glen. And perhaps you have already constructed a picture of this Glen. You have haven’t you? I bet he has red hair. He does! Don’t you try and deny it, your Glen has red hair. I’ll bet he’s lanky too. Well you can forget it. I’m not going to tell you about Glen because I don’t want to meet your expectations and we all know that I can’t make Glen blonde. He’s a natural red head. So let’s just leave Glen right there, playing computer chess and thinking about what to cook for his dinner tonight. Glen’s a bachelor I suppose? I thought as much.

It was a dark and stormy night. Ha! Almost had you there. Oh I laughed when I thought of that one.

Patricia Finklestein was perming her hair and it was going to change her life. You know I almost stuck with that one? Almost. Intriguing isn’t it? Who is this Patricia Finklestein? I don’t know and so you don’t know either. And why is she perming her hair? And why will it change her life? But if I tell you, then I’ll be meeting your expectations. But if I don’t tell you then I’ll be subverting your expectations. But because I’ve already told you my plan to subvert your expectations, then by doing that I’ll actually be meeting them. I don’t really see a solution here. So we’ll leave Patricia Finklestein and her newly permed hair. What’s that? You’d like me to drop her off at Glen’s place first? Oh alright, I suppose I could drop her off on the way to the next story. Do you think they’ll have sex? Tall, lanky red-headed sex? I must admit, it makes me a tad squeamish, thinking of all those lanky arms and legs, flailing about. But well, good for them I suppose. Glen’s been lonely for some time now. And Patricia Finklestein, you get the feeling she wasn’t reeling in the boys in high school. Alright Glen and Patty, you kids have fun.

Well, this is getting a little embarrassing. Four false starts and still no story to speak of. I imagine you might be getting a tad frustrated by now. It’s just that I seem to have placed some rather hefty expectations on myself, by promising that I’ll subvert yours. And so now I don’t really know where to go with this. How about a thriller eh? Everyone loves a good thriller. And then I could whack the hero at the end of the story and our hated villain could emerge victorious, that’ll be a surprise wont it? Oh, I suppose I shouldn’t have said that out loud.

I’m sorry, what did you say? Now look here, you’re going to have to speak up, don’t be shy, I wont be mad. What is it you want?

Oh you want to hear more about Glen? But he’s perfectly happy where he is, all shacked up with Perm-Patty, remember? Pardon me? You still want to check on them do you? Well! I suppose you think just because you’re the implied reader you have some sort of choice? You think you’re special? I knew I should never have brought up Glen. You know if I wasn’t trying to be all retro, writing this story on a piece-of-junk typewriter, I’d just go back and hit the delete button on dear old Glen. But fine, if that’s what you really want, we’ll go on back and see what those two crazy kids are up to.

So here we are, in Glen’s bachelor pad. And I guess (just for fun) we may as well start off like this…

Once upon a time, Patricia Finklestein walked up the front steps of the red brick building on the corner of Madison and Third, and pressed the buzzer for apartment Five-B. Glen clicked the pause button on his game of computer chess and hopped out of his desk chair to go and see who was at the door.

Excuse me for interrupting, but I was wondering, would you like me to do something about the weather too? Thought so, control freak.

As he reached the intercom and pressed the button, a massive clap of thunder sounded outside. Oh my, thought Glen. What a dark and stormy night it is! And this is how Glen came to let Patricia inside without a clue as to who she was. You see, the thunder drowned out her voice when she tried to announce herself and Glen decided to just take his chances. He didn’t receive visitors often.

When Patricia appeared at his open door, Glen had to take a moment to gather himself. Not because she was stunningly beautiful.

Because she was a woman.

“Hi,” she whispered, dropping her eyes to the floor and twisting her hands around her purse.

“Hi back,” he responded.

They stood in the doorway for a few moments longer until Patricia eventually asked, “So can I come in?”

“Of course!” Glen stepped back and Patricia moved past him into the apartment.

“This might seem like a rude question, but who are you?” asked Glen as he closed the door.

“Patricia Finklestein,” she replied, extending a hand. “And you?”

“You don’t know who I am?” he exclaimed as he shook her hand. “Then what are you doing in my apartment?”

He paused before adding in a hurry, “Not that I mind the company!”

“Funny story,” said Patricia. “I was at the hair dresser, changing my life and I suddenly had this strange feeling that I should come here. Also, a guy called Chip picked me up in his Subaru and drove me here.” She twirled a finger around a newly permed lock of hair and smiled at Glen. “And now I’d like to kiss you.”

I should pause here to explain something. You may be wondering why Patricia is being so bold. Well it has something to do with her new hair style and a little chat that we had on the drive over to Glen. But first, I need to take you back, right back to when Patricia was born.

Patricia’s mother, Petunia was never quite sure about having children. Something about those miniature hands with their jerky, little movements had always terrified her. But when Petunia’s nineteen year old boyfriend had surprised her on their one year anniversary with dinner at Sizzler followed by a night at the local Formula One Motel, Petunia was so taken that she actually believed that using a home-made condom would be a good idea. Also, everyone knew that you couldn’t get pregnant the first time you had sex, right?

Nine months and three weeks later, the newly wed Petunia was standing in the car park of Plumpton McDonalds, holding baby Patricia in her arms and waiting for her husband to bring out her strawberry thickshake and McChicken burger, when a group of teenage girls came giggling over to admire Patricia.

“Oh, how sweet!” gushed one.

“OhmiGod, I, like, totally want your baby!” exclaimed another, flicking her hair-sprayed fringe out of her eyes.

Unfortunately for her, what she didn’t realise was that Petunia was a born people pleaser. All her life, whenever someone asked her for something, she had an innate desire to comply.

Also, she had severe post natal depression.

She immediately dumped baby Patricia into the young girl’s arms, jumped into her husband’s car and drove away.

That was the last time that Patricia’s father ever saw his new wife, or his Datsun 180B. Lucky for him, he fell hopelessly in love with the young girl who stood cradling his new-born baby, so things worked out quite nicely there.

Now, the reason that this is all so important, is that Patricia inherited her mother’s compulsive desire to please. In the school playground, if another girl commented that she didn’t want her tuna sandwich, Patricia would quickly hand over her roast beef and tomato roll. At her part time job as a check-out-chick at Coles, if a customer casually mentioned how expensive groceries were getting, Patricia would usher them through without swiping their credit card.

Patricia didn’t last long at Coles.

At some point or another throughout her life, most of Patricia’s friends inevitably took advantage of this rather handy personality trait. Mostly, Patricia was okay with it, after all she enjoyed pleasing people. But one day, she woke up and things were different. Now, this may have had something to do with the fact that the previous night at her father’s fiftieth birthday bash, a somewhat inebriated uncle had told her the story of how her mother had abandoned her.

“It may surprise you to learn, young Patricia, that my l-l-lovely, little sister over there is in fact, not your real mother,” he’d slurred into her ear. “And by default, I am not your real uncle. S-s-so what I just tried to do behind the bussshes with you is not so ‘repulsive’ as you put it thank you verrry mush.”

Patricia had always thought it was odd that she hadn’t inherited any of the Portuguese genes from that side of the family.

From now on, things are going to change, Patricia decided. No more people pleasing, no mater how much I want to.

 The first opportunity presented itself that very afternoon. An old uni friend phoned and demanded that Patricia go and get her hair chemically straightened so that she could see how it looked on Patricia before deciding whether or not to do it for herself.

Patricia put down the phone, took a deep breath and then took herself to the hairdresser and asked Sergio to perm her hair at once. This is perfect, from now on, I’m going to do only the opposite of what people want me to do!

Sergio told her to come back when she had an appointment.

This was a conundrum for Patricia. If she booked an appointment with Sergio then she would be doing as she was told. But if she didn’t then she wouldn’t be doing the opposite of what her uni friend, Courtney had asked her to do.

She compromised and made an appointment with ‘Discount Hair-tastic’, next door to Sergio’s salon.

And so this is where I found Patricia Finklestein, having her hair permed by Shazza and changing her life. Of course, due to Patricia’s new view on life, I had to be quite tricky with how I worded things on the ride over to Glen’s story. Basically I told her that under no circumstances was she to knock on the door of apartment Five-B and she was most definitely forbidden from kissing the man  who lived there. Clever, right?

So, back to Glen’s apartment.

Glen and Patricia were staring into each other’s eyes (oh and do me a favour at this point, seeing as books don’t come with soundtracks, imagine that some stirring Coldplay song is playing in the background OK? And don’t forget the rain, romantically streaming down the windows). Right, they’re gazing at each other and it’s as though for the first time in their lives they’re coming to life and Glen takes Patricia’s face gently in his hands and Patricia wraps her arms around Glen’s waist and their lips are moving closer and closer together and Patricia has closed her eyes and Glen’s heart is thumping (and really it’s all quite nauseating and isn’t this sentence getting to be ridiculously long or is it just me?). And then Glen does the unthinkable: he whispers, “Kiss me.”

Uh oh.

Now let me just explain something to you about Glen.

He’s never been laid.

So, Patricia is faced with yet another conundrum and it occurs to her that doing the opposite of what everyone tells her to do is going to get difficult. Meanwhile, I’ve got this problem where I’ve told you to expect the unexpected. So what do you think is going to happen here? Will they kiss or wont they?

Well I’m not certain that I have the answer to that question. So here’s what we’ll do, we’ll just leave Glen and Patty right there where they are, forever frozen in that pre-kiss moment.

But there is one more thing I’d like to tell you before you go. Brace yourself. My name’s not Chip. Go back and take another look at the front cover. Now, see that writing in the tiny font, just below the author name? Yep that’s right, I’m actually a ghost-writer. No, no, I don’t write about ghosts. Oh, you were making a joke were you? Fair enough. Now don’t go telling me you could hear the feminine tone to Chip’s voice the whole way through, you’re only saying that because you’re embarrassed about being hoodwinked.

Anyway, maybe you might like to go back and read this whole story again, but this time, you’ll know who your author really is. And you never know, maybe this time I’ll change the ending, you see, Chip might not be a romantic, but I am.