THE CURSOR

by

Gary Presley

The cursor blinks. Perhaps I should change the screen background color. White is paper-like, but my old word processor sported a sky blue with a white font. Is that it? I miss the blue.

The cursor blinks. Five thousand words await assembly for an article describing how wavelike properties dominate the behavior of electrons. Two thousand words delay converging to describe antiretroviral therapy.

The screen glows. My bulldog snores gently in the corner. I click on the Internet browser. Dare I? A new identity can be woven quickly from the World Wide Web. A birth certificate, a Social Security card, a new driver's license. The right paper stock. A laser jet printer. A digital camera. Too easy. Next a credit history. I am a writer. Creative nonfiction.

The loan officer smiles politely and pushes the note across her desk. Her children watch from silver frames and Dilbert stares blankly from the side of a coffee cup. I sign.

And then I sign again. The salesman grins greedily, his pinky ring flickering in the light of a fat commission. He tosses me the keys to a blood-red Dodge Viper.

I set that bad boy loose on the open road. I carry only plastic, clothes I can buy when I get to Miami. I drive all night, the headlamps burning a hole out of my past. I chase aspirin with coffee, hot and black, and eat chocolate for energy. It is 23 hours to the city of tropical promises, and I will not be denied. I intend to hook up with a hot-blooded Cubana emigré and eat salsa in a funky outdoor cafe.

Electrons can fend for themselves.

She is dark and slender, with a faint scar above her right eyebrow, and never wears a bra. She eats eggs and rice and sausage in the morning and begins her daily ration of twelve Cuba Libres at noon. Maria Elena Guiterriz sucks the passion from my soul. Two weeks leave me too weak. Too hot not to burn down, such an affair. I tire of screams and broken crockery. I quail when knives flash and there is talk of guns.

I toss jeans and t-shirts in a gym bag and cram it in the Viper's trunk. I smell New Orleans in the wind. I stop mid-trip to sniff out my destiny. I am in the bright bar of a casino in Biloxi. The bartender smiles while I sip a straight shot of Maker's Mark. I sense her aura. A woman at peace with fate. I decide to dip into her mojo. I lift $5 from her tip jar and slink off to the blackjack tables. In two hours I parlay that pittance into more money than I could accumulate in a decade of freelancing.

I decide I will live in the French Quarter and write the Great American novel.

I leave the Viper, keys in the ignition, at the edge of Jackson Square. I need it no more. I rent a walk-up apartment, one with a wrought iron balcony covered by an awning dripping with ivy and rust. My landlady is an ancient one-eyed Creole who smells of gin and old leather. I write every morning while the police scrape up drunken tourists from the gutters of Bourbon Street.

Early one Sunday I seek out café au lait and beignets at Emeril's. Bam! A stranger bumps into my chair, spilling champagne on my manuscript.

It is Julia Roberts.

She apologizes breathlessly and then reaches for the manuscript to blot up the pearls of wine. She pauses, begins to read, glancing sideways shyly once to see if I recognize her. I remain cool. I like her films, but I am angered that she trifled with Lyle Lovett's heart.

"Hmm," Julia says, offering me the incandescent smile that melts hearts and earns millions. "I've been looking for a comic novel to translate onto film. This is brilliant. Sophisticated, yet simple. Eclectic in philosophy, deeply intellectual, but not afraid to revel in the bawdiness of human foibles. Full of symbolism, for those willing to dig for it, but a rousing tale for Everyman nonetheless."

Odd. In interviews she comes across as quite dull. The woman is actually remarkably intelligent. She pauses to flip through several more pages. "May I ask your name?"

I tell her. She reaches toward me with the offer of a handshake. Her touch is electric.

I jump.

The cursor blinks. The screen is white. The bulldog snores.

§ § §

Gary Presley lives and writes in Missouri. He believes bean dip is haute cuisine, blue jeans are formal attire, and has no fantasies about writing the Great American Novel unless such work followed a career as a major league baseball pitcher. His nonfiction work has appeared in national and regional print publications and various on-line venues, including Salon.com.

Gary can be reached via email at:presley@softnet.com. .

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