DEVELOPING IDEAS

Charlie sat calmly looking out onto the stand of poplars that screened his flat from the railway lines. A weak sun shone timidly through the still bare branches that stood bravely pointing heavenward. Leaf was late. He was considering his two new dilemmas: what to do about Petra and what was this "writer" all about. The scent of last night's lovemaking clung yet to him. The touch of her flesh had excited him and comforted him: had brought back all sorts of sensual memory - he recalled it still but it also confused him. His sensual and sexual lives, that he had thought moribund years ago, were re-ignited, re-vivified by a single evening's romping that was itself a replay of a previous life stage. Her very being, her life force, lingered lovingly. And as for what she had told him about the case - well that would take some time to integrate with his view so far.

The god voice in her kitchen (he had assumed, maybe wrongly, that it was her flat but it could so easily have been a borrowed flat, that would be typical of her) had, he had to admit, shaken him to his root (sic). Disembodied pronouncements were not his daily fare and when you're standing bollock naked in a strange kitchen and some oddball externality addresses you directly and by name it can be a bit disconcerting. But that was part of the dilemma: was it a true externality or only a pseudo externality? It was obvious, or at least became obvious to him on his way back to the scene of his continuing or, to be continued, debauchery that this guy, whatever he was was not the ur-writer no matter what else he might be. If he were then he would have known all about the Sonia episode - and he clearly hadn't written that (unless he was psychologically bifurcated and blinded and if he was then the "writer speaking to him was not the same writer who had written the Sonia episode). Perhaps this writer was another fabrication of the ur-writer - at one remove from the main action of the fictive hoi-polloi but not of them but likewise not at the level of the originating writer. Bifurcation was an option but not the only option, not even the most reasonable option: 21st century theory would suggest a written writer - a proper and complete fictive separateness. He wondered whether the writer would in truth turn up as he had been instructed. Charlie would finish his pot of coffee - would give him that long - and might smoke a couple more cigarettes before settling down to sorting out tomorrow's presentation. Give him the benefit of considerable doubt - the whole writer thing was now shrouded in doubt.

The content of his presentation began to develop in his mind - Petra had added the silver halide crystals that he had been searching for. He had a day to sort out the key points, to write the presentation, to tune it, to memorise it and to destroy the script. No trace but in his head must remain.


(TBC)