Renee

It was nice to see that our table in the far corner wasn't taken that evening. I specifically chose Wednesdays to visit this café, since it would be less crowded and I wouldn't have to deal with people sitting at our table— though sometimes it happened anyway. I remember the time a young couple, a boy and a girl who both couldn't have been older than fifteen, took that spot. Renee just sat between them as if it were an ordinary Wednesday. She just waited and stared at me, as oblivious to them as they were to her, and didn't move an inch until the table was empty again and I could sit next to her. It didn't bother me. That was her way, and I didn't question it.

I threaded my way between the brightly-lit tables of the café, most of them unoccupied. Renee looked up from her seat of choice— the one against the wall, underneath the painting of the little girl on the stone bridge —and gave me a soft, gentle smile, the kind that only the elderly can really master. Renee didn't look old, and her hair had only a few streaks of gray in it, but I was sure that she was at least seventy. It was something I always just knew about her, and who's to say otherwise? Her name was the same way. She had never introduced herself, but I thought she looked like a Renee and she had never objected to me calling her that.

"Having a good evening?" she asked me warmly as I sat down across from her.

"It's been okay. I think the weather's getting cooler at last; that's something to be happy about." I racked my brain for some other good news to share. I found nothing. "And everything else has been fine."

Renee seemed satisfied with that. "That's nice, isn't it?"

"Hello, how can I help you this evening?" interrupted a waitress.

I absentmindedly ordered a cup of coffee to appease her; I didn't come here for refreshments, but it would have been rude not to get anything. She hurried off and Renee leaned forward again.

"Well, come on," she said, "let's see what you did this week, shall we?"

That was the line she always used. I was very fond of traditions, so of course I decided Renee had to have a few. Every week, she had opened with that request— "Let's see what you did this week, shall we?" And on that particular week, like all the weeks before it, I set my three-ring binder down on the table and opened it, thumbing to the section of my manuscript that I wanted to share with her. Back in the beginning, this was usually the latest chapter or the most recent revision of a scene. It had been almost a year since then, and now we were down to the small edits, polishing little bits of the story in an effort to improve it in any way we could. I never liked that as much, but Renee assured me that it was important. So we continued our meetings and she kept asking that traditional question of hers.

I pulled the manuscript out of the binder, then selected a few pages that I had given special attention to this past week and set them in front of me. Renee never asked to see them, of course, and never had to get up to look over my shoulder. There was no need. She would simply nod at me to begin reading, and I would do so silently, running my eyes along the lines I had written. Here and there she would make a remark like, "Don't you think that's a bit out of character for Carl?" or "I would remove that scene entirely, myself." But she always managed to finish with something like "I'm glad to see that Jennifer's character is developing" or "I thought this chapter fit with the rest of the story quite well."

Those days had long since passed. That week, it was all technical matters— "No need for a semicolon there," she said, "it was fine when it was a comma. But do break up that sentence, it's a bit wordy, don't you think?" I sat through this patiently, making notes on a memo pad as she talked. She was never impolite, and yet these kinds of statements annoyed me. I tried to tell myself that it was for the good of the novel, that this would get me closer to being published, but that mantra quickly stopped working. I read in silence and bore her criticisms with gritted teeth.

"But we've fixed quite a bit this week, haven't we?" she said to me as I finished. "Yes, I think you'll find that this chapter is much cleaner now. That should make the manuscript more appealing to the next publisher you try, don't you agree?"

"Yeah…" I said distantly. Then, for no reason at all, I decided to be honest with her. "But I don't think I want to try again. I've been rejected five times now and it doesn't matter how much I edit this thing, nothing changes."

"You're being ridiculous. Even the best authors are rejected many times before they succeed." She leaned forward and rested her arms on the table. "It's not an easy road, you know, but you're farther down it than you know and the end isn't far."

"I know. I really do know…" I frowned. I wanted to believe her, but it didn't make a difference. There was no way around the truth. "But there's nothing I can do. I'm running out of savings, and at this rate I won't last long enough to finish this. I need to find a real job. I need to work at something that will actually pay. I don't have time to deal with this novel and I'm beginning to realize that it's never going to pay my bills."

"It certainly won't if you abandon it now," Renee pointed out. "I don't know why you doubt yourself so much—"

"Because there's nothing to have confidence in!" I nearly shouted. Only by reminding myself that I was alone in a quiet café was I able to keep my voice down. "I'm not an author. I'm not even good at writing. I'm just a guy who doesn't want to take on a real job and has these stupid dreams of being famous." I shut the binder angrily. I hadn't realized how much I'd been worrying about this.

"Every artist doubts themselves at times. You need to work through it."

"For what? Week after week of pointless edits? A dozen more rejections? Nobody is going to publish this. Even if they do, it's never going to bring in enough money to support me. I'm wasting my time and you know it."

"You are not wasting your time," she said sternly, the warmth disappearing from her voice. She made as if to grab my arm but stopped, knowing that nothing would happen. "You are writing something worth reading here. Even if you decide to take another job, even if you want to find a different way to support yourself, you ought to finish this. You owe that to yourself."

"It is finished."

"Then you ought to get it published."

"I'm trying!"

"And you'll succeed. We'll keep working on it and keep sending it to publishers and before long, somebody will accept."

"I don't believe you!" I shouted, pounding on the table. A startled gasp came from my left, and suddenly a cup of coffee slammed into the table. It shattered with a crash, sending sprays of brown liquid into the air that landed on my manuscript in thick droplets. The coffee flowed towards the other side of the table, running off the edge and spilling onto the seat opposite me.

"Oh my god," the waitress gasped. "I am so sorry! I just— you startled me. I'm really sorry. I'll clean this up right away and get you another cup."

"It's okay," I said weakly, but she had already dashed off to find a hand towel. By the time she returned, my manuscript was completely soaked in coffee, but I never made a move to rescue it. It was gone the moment the cup hit the table. I finally picked it up, heavy and dripping with absorbed liquid, and threw it away so that the waitress would have room to wipe the table.

"I'm really very sorry," she said again, "I just didn't know who you were shouting at."

"That was just my muse," I told her as she wiped the empty chair under the painting of the girl on the bridge. "I talk to her out loud, sometimes, as if it helps me think about writing. I guess it must have seemed a little strange."

She didn't comment on that, but simply asked, "Oh, are you a writer?"

"No, not really."

"Just a hobby, then?"

"Yeah."

By now the waitress's towel was completely soaked, and she had to get another one. As she ran off to find that, the coffee continued to drip onto the empty chair, pooling in the spot where Renee had been sitting, and I waited at the table alone.