The rest of chapter one

One carbonated bubble rose to the surface of the dark liquid, then another. Patricia had another drink in front of her, and it seemed likely the drink would once again be the focus of her attention for the duration. She was surrounded now - not just two fluffy-headed and -tailed bunnies, but a whole slew of costumed young folks, babbling away.

 

What was she doing here, Patricia wondered. She had looked up National Novel Writing Month on the internet - not even needing to phone her granddaughter for computer help, for once - and was now at the “Kick-Off Party”. Somehow she had assumed more people her age would be present - what could all these youngsters have to write a whole novel about? Not that she had really listened much when a couple of the youngsters had tried to explain. It was all “Harry Potter universe” this and “exploring the possibilities of a quest into the fantasy realm I wrote in my novel three years ago” that and Patricia just did not quite get it. She had thought - oh, something along the lines of a genteel mystery along the lines of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, perhaps. If she was going to go whole-hog she might try for something like the complexity of an Agatha Christie. Or in a completely other vein, something with the charisma of Shakespeare - although she doubted she would have any of his knack for dialogue, let alone iambic pentameter. Trying to jam that into a month was not about to happen.

 

She wasn’t even sure why she was doing trying to do anything like this. A Novel? Her? She was a grandmother, a widow, and had no business being here. Not to mention that everyone else here was much younger than her - younger than her granddaughter, even.

 

She stared into the carbonation of her root beer and wondered if it would be rude, or even if anyone would notice, if she were to escape out the door now. Patricia looked up from the drink and stared wistfully at the doorway, glinting with sunlight somewhat brighter than the basement in which she was perched on a chair in a table out of the way enough to be alone but not so far that someone would notice she was by herself and come join her.

 

It wasn’t that this was a bad place to be. Not at all. Moose’s Down Under was nicely decked out for Hallowe’en, with orange pumpkin paper decorations and small candies wrapped in twisted foil scattered over the tables between the two Hallowe’en-themed candles centering the white table cloths. A life-size skeleton hung out from a coat rack between two of the booths at the back, and a green plastic zombie of the same proportions leered from between the next two. Spiderwebs clung to the advertisements for Aussie beers, and below the peppy voices of the people Patricia had come to meet were the soothingly quirky voices of the Australian-accented servers.

 

If only some of them were involved in this crazy idea, Patricia thought. Then perhaps it wouldn’t seem such a stretch to reach out to someone else in attendance. She looked back at her glass and decided to leave as soon as she’d drained it. There was nothing for her here.

 

“Hi!” piped an entirely too cheerful voice beside her. Too close: it must be addressing her. Patricia faced the intruder: a dragon, just over six feet tall. No, she blinked. The tall gentleman settling into a seat next to her was not a dragon at all, nor even dressed like one, but merely dressed entirely in green and with a tall green top hat perched precariously on his head, its four-leaf clover accompaniment dancing off at an angle opposite that of the hat. “What are you writing this year?”

 

Obviously he wasn’t about to spontaneously disappear. She would have to talk to him. “Well, I’m really not sure,” Patricia said, inwardly wincing at how querulous her voice sounded to her own ear. She tried a smile.

 

“First time, then?” the still too peppy voice responded, and she could tell from the air flow and the soft bump against the table that he was swinging his legs, full of energy. She tried not to be jealous. She missed when she had been full of energy enough to pace endlessly, to kick at things when she sat - she wasn’t terribly old, but she was terribly tired these days. Ever since Alfred died.

 

“Yes,” Patricia admitted. “I just heard about National Novel Writing Month” - she enunciated each syllable separately, clearly and distinctly - “a few hours ago, outside a coffee shop.”

 

“Oh ma’am,” the fellow chuckled, “you must be new if you haven’t started calling it NaNoWriMo yet! It’s too much of a mouthful to say it all in full each time. And it’s much more affectionate this way - suits us crazy types.”

 

“NaNoWriMo,” she repeated. “Alright then.”

 

“Are you one of the ‘someday novelists’, then? Always wanted to write one, never set aside the time for it?” The man’s face remained in a broad, genuine smile, but his eyes seemed to glint green, and she was again reminded of a dragon - despite his rather flamboyant leprechaun costume. “That’s what got me into it a few years back, although I suppose I haven’t had much time to ‘always’ want to write a novel.”

 

“No,” she answered, shaking her head for emphasis, and trying to keep a smile on her face to mirror his. “I’d never really thought about it. I’m not really even sure what I’m doing here - I just heard the words and  thought I’d come find what all the fuss was about.” She hesitated a moment. Surely he wasn’t so young he wouldn’t understand. “I hadn’t thought everyone here would be quite so ... young.”

 

“We are rather a lot of teenagers, aren’t we? Who did you hear about it from? Someone else...” Now her smile turned suddenly genuine as she caught him about to call her old.

 

“Oh no, actually. I heard it from what I thought of as a couple of young whippersnappers, to be honest.” Patricia looked around, wondering for the first time if the two bunnies she’d seen that morning were there someplace, feeling for the first time in months drawn into a conversation with someone besides her granddaughter, May. Come to think of it, May would fit right in with this group, creative and outgoing - perhaps she would suggest May try this bizarre adventure. At this point, Patricia could feel no connection with the sudden and instinctive desire to take part, to explore the potential, that had come over her that morning. Now she felt only tiredness, and the daunting chasm between her and all of the young people in the room.

 

“There,” Patricia said. “The bunnies at that far table, next to -” She squinted. Was that person dressed up as the mad hatter? He had all the fancy gear for it, the long blue coat with the burnished gold buttons and the bright brass chain of a pocketwatch, and those seemed just like tall fuzzy white ears. “Next to the Mad Hatter.”

 

“Mad Hatter?” her companion seemed confused. “Oh, you mean Jeffery - he’s dressed as an Olde English gentleman, not the Mad Hatter! And those girls are Mary and Molly - they’re twins, Jeff’s nieces. This is their first year too, and he offered to keep an eye on them for their parents. Most folks don’t like letting their kids come to events like this by themselves, meeting people from the internet.”

 

“Oh, I see.” She didn’t, really. She supposed she had found the directions here on the internet, and hadn’t known anyone here beforehand, so it made sense parents would want to supervise their children. She would certainly have wanted to supervise May. But how did the twin girls find out about this event? Were they really going to write a novel? They hardly seemed old enough to have sufficient thought in their heads for something requiring so much dedication and thought. But even though she’d let this fellow - she didn’t even know his name - draw her into conversation, she still planned to leave. Patricia picked up her glass and drained the root beer.

 

“Well, young man,” Patricia began.

 

“Oh! I’m Jamie, ma’am,” he offered her a hand with a sparkling green clover temporarily tattooed on its back.

 

“And I’m Patricia,” she smiled in return, taking his hand in her pale, veined fingers. She glanced at them, surprised once again at how much she had aged. She had been young not that long ago.

 

“Ahem,” a louder, echoey voice broke across the room suddenly. Patricia smothered a sigh: she had missed her chance to escape. Now she would have to sit next to Jamie and listen to speeches. She wondered how old he was - old enough not to have parents hovering over him watchfully - he must be old enough to be in university. Vancouver was full of post-secondary schools: perhaps he was in one. She might ask, after the speech. For now, she looked around for the speaker, spying her not far away, near the busier tables, but angled so that her body included the whole space.

 

“Welcome to the NaNoWriMo 2010 kick-off party!” The speaker looked to Patricia like an older version of May, dark-haired, dark-eyed, dimpled, short and slightly plump, but beauty radiating from her as she beamed around the room. Even similar in taste to May, Patricia thought, taking in the emerald green cloak clasped around her shoulders and the multi-coloured dress and baubles beneath the cloak. With the microphone in her hands she seemed just like a modern-day bard - Patricia caught her mind before she let herself remember Alfred in his Rennaissance Faire garb - listen to the speech, Patricia, she scolded herself.

 

“- and now that we’ve thanked everyone who has given time and energy to make today’s event and the write-ins throughout the rest of this month go smoothly and encouragingly for all of us as we type our poor fingers to death,” the speaker was saying. Patricia wondered at herself as she realized she had missed the speaker’s introduction as well as at least one round of applause for the volunteers. It was far too easy to get wrapped up in herself and her thoughts, she realised.

 

Of course, that’s what she’d wanted these four years now, wasn’t it?

 

“- welcome all the newcomers to the event and to the Vancouver region of NaNoWriMo!”

 

This time Patricia put her hands together, suddenly aware that Jamie had been glancing at her throughout the speech. Perhaps he’d noticed her lack of reaction. Patricia shook herself inwardly. She could resume her self-absorption later, if she wanted, but for now she was out at a social event, and like it or not she should make the appropriate social responses while she was here.

 

“Alright everyone, thank you again for coming out today, and I hope to see you at the official write-ins later in the month. For now, let’s talk novels!” The speaker smiled around the room and moved to one of the tables with a spare chair.

 

Patricia turned back to Jamie with a smile. She didn’t have to leave just yet. She had just taken herself to task for not responding with the right social cues - she had to redeem herself before she left. “Well Jamie, I may not have my novel plotted out yet, but you seem to be full of ideas. What are you planning this year?”

 

“Dragons!” Jamie’s wide grin was back, with none of the uncertain concern he had displayed when she had lost track of the speech. Good. “Did you ever hear the song about Puff, the magic dragon?”

 

“Yes, my granddaughter used to sing it rather off-key when she was younger,” Patricia said with a hint of nostalgia.

 

“Well, I’m not writing anything like that, but I’m calling the book Honalee anyway, after the song. I haven’t quite decided what’s going to happen, but I’m quite determined to have dragons - green ones, great and small, and perhaps a quest of some sort by a dragon to find a treasure hoarded by humans - just to turn things on its tail.”

 

“That sounds like quite an adventure!” Patricia marveled.

 

“You should come sit at one of the tables and hear some of the ideas the others have - perhaps you’ll be inspired for your own novel,” Jamie said enthusiastically.

 

“A detective story,” she said suddenly. “With a handsome Humphrey Bogart-esque hardboiled detective, just cynical enough to see through the pretty young lady... a Lauren Bacall, perhaps... only I’ll have to be careful not to let it get too close to the Big Sleep or the Maltese Falcon. My own mother loved those movies in the 40s and those were the pictures my children found for my husband and I. I always wanted to read the books, but never quite got around to it - that was surely more my dream than ever writing one - but now - yes, I think now is the time.”

 

And where did that come from, Patricia thought. She had never imagined herself in the shoes of Dashiel Hammett - and yet she suddenly pictured herself in the grand outfit of a 1940s leading lady, opposite a handsome man in a fedora with a cigarette in his mouth - surely she could write that. With a fur stole around her shoulders and - why not, she wondered? - a fluffy rabbit as a pet. Perhaps brown with a white bib and belly. She could almost feel it curling up on her lap, its powerful legs kicking just a touch...

 

“What, like a Hardy Boys adventure mixed with Nancy Drew?” Jamie asked, and Patricia shook herself free of the thought of rabbit.

 

“I’ve never read any of those,” Patricia said. “May, my granddaughter, did add a few Nancy Drews to her bookshelf, but I never had the occasion to read them. Did you never watch any of the classic films? The Maltese Falcon is one of the great Film Noir classics.”

 

“Uh,” Jamie’s smile slipped into sheepishness. “To be honest, ma’am, I’ve never heard of it.”

 

She shook her head sadly. And so great works slip into the past, Patricia thought.

 

“But come on, then,” Jamie said. “One of the others is bound to know this Falcon and have some ideas for you, or if not they’ll certainly want to welcome you to the wild and impetuous world of NaNoWriMo! I’ll even take you to my table - we managed to escape too many of the ‘whippersnappers’ you mentioned.”

 

And somehow, against her better judgment - had she not yet redeemed herself in social skills by asking Jamie about his novel, and producing some sort of idea for her own? - she found herself following Jamie to the other tables in the space.

 

The table they went to had two empty spaces, meaning there were already four people seated around it. Patricia looked around the table as she sat down, letting Jamie introduce her and trying to pay attention to the names he pointed out - Zale was the girl in the pink and red costume to Patricia’s right, then Stephan, looking more the age she had expected when she’d decided to come, in the polo shirt and jeans, and Lizzy, whose hand on Stephan’s suggested the two were together, with frizzy blonde hair, a worn down bridal gown, and zombie makeup, and finally Chance, who seemed at first startlingly handsome (Prince Charming from Cinderella came to mind - a film she’d watched with May and Alfred, years back) but then seemed to shift back into phase as another youngster, Jamie’s age, perhaps, slouching back in his chair in his black turtleneck. Patricia smiled at the table with a demure “hello,” then settled in to listen to their discussion.

 

Unfortunately, Zale had other ideas. The other side of the table got back into its discussion - something about romance novels from Chance, and Patricia blinked as she could have sworn he had bunny ears for a moment - what was wrong with her eyes tonight? She was seeing bunnies everywhere. Zale didn’t seem to want to get dragged into that again: “Patricia!” she sounded nearly as flamboyantly happy as Jamie. “Do tell me you aren’t writing a cheesy romance!”

 

“No, I rather doubt that,” Patricia said, looking over at the zombie bride facing her at the far end of the table and wondering if zombies played a role in the woman’s romance, or if it really was just her Hallowe’en costume. She looked back at Zale, wondering if May would ever sport a bright red metallic wig like that one. She hoped not, but youngsters did as they pleased, and who was she to judge?

 

When she seemed ready to leave it at that, Jamie put in, “Patricia’s just said she might write something like a 1940s detective story. Or have you changed your mind already, ma’am?”

 

“I do quite like the idea of writing for Humphrey Bogart,” Patricia admitted. “But honestly I’m not sure where the idea came from. I’d have no idea where to begin!”

 

“Not to worry!” smiled Zale. “You have...” she glanced at her wrist, where no watch waited to enlighten her. “Well, you have at least a few hours anyway. It’s only just past midday, after all. And no one knows where to begin the first time - or at least I didn’t.” A broad grin that reminded Patricia so much of the smile she’d so recently seen on Jamie’s face that she found herself glancing quickly over at him to compare.

 

Zale obviously recognised the movement, as before Patricia could even decide whether or not to ask, she answered. “Yes, Jamie is my big brother, Patricia. He got me into this, and he was far more supportive than I’d ever thought he would be - not after the years and years of his poking fun at me every chance he got. He told me last year that there was nothing to it, it was nothing like riding a bike and everything like picking a path through the woods - too many options to start with, and once you’ve picked one you can sometimes still see another through the trees and you think perhaps that one might be more fun or more beautiful or more enlightening - but in noveling you’re allowed to crash and bang your way back and forth between trails without skinning your knees on underbrush or having a park ranger kick you out of the park. Just start any which way, don’t let yourself miss out on all the forest for not being able to pass the first tree.”

 

“Besides,” added Jamie. “It’s only 50,000 words. If you mess up the first few, you’ve got enough to set the story straight and figure out your beginning properly after the month is over, but not so many that you feel you have to get them all right the first time because there are too many to revise later.”

 

“Not that you’ve ever revised any of yours!” Zale laughed.

 

Patricia looked back and forth between the two, smiling but - well - “Fifty thousand words?” she inquired.

 

The siblings both looked completely blank - the first time she’d seen either of them without a smile lighting their faces. “Well, yes. Fifty thousand words - that’s the goal. The quantitative and somewhat arbitrary definition of a novel that NaNoWriMo has adopted.”

 

“Ah,” she said. Well, 50,000 in a month with 30 days, that’s...

 

“Just 1,667 words per day,” Zale said, smiling again, this time with a more pronounced encouraging edge. “It isn’t too bad. At least - do you type?”

 

Patricia laughed. “Yes, I type! I email my granddaughter every day. She’s faster than I am, and when she visits I let her figure out what my computer needs to get it running at its best again, but I get by alright.”

 

“Well then,” Zale grinned. “There’s nothing keeping you from taking the noveling world by storm!”

 

 

 

 

The kick-off party had broken up, and Patricia felt quite pleased with herself, not to mention exhilerated. She hadn’t had the gumption to go to a party by herself in quite some time. It had always been Alfred who had been the catalyst behind their social endeavours, and she who had puttered in the garden and set them up with a computer and an iTunes account. She had wanted music so the two of them could dance; it was he who suggested they go out, once a week, and dance with a group of others. While she usually brought home books from the nearest used bookstore, he had started a book club, so that when they read books and knew at once what each other would think, they would have some other people’s impressions to take to heart.

 

But here she was, four years after Alfred’s death, finding her own social gathering. Patricia still wasn’t sure quite why she had gone, or how she had ended up comparing Jonathan Safran-Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (the last novel they’d read at Alfred’s book club) to the romance novel the zombie bride - Liz - was planning to write, with its focus on the unspoken but not the unwritten, but Patricia was pleased. She could feel her horizons expanding, and it had been too long. Alfred would be proud of her, and her eyes misted slightly as she looked around at the people she had just met and would shortly be leaving - but only for now. They had all promised to see her at the “write-in”s, although she wasn’t sure how much good they’d do her or her novel, as she only had a desktop.

 

Her novel. She had accepted it as a fact now. She was going to write a novel.

 

Strange, she thought. Chance looked just as he had when she had first sat at that table - incredibly handsome - just like the character he had described as his protagonist, sweeping the feet off dozens of ladies in rapid succession, but somehow saving his heart for just the right one - but with rabbit ears. What was with her and rabbit ears today?

 

But - the others all had them too. The dragon - she blinked twice, quickly - he was not a dragon, Jamie was a leprechaun - but he looked all dragon to her now, in the early twilight of Hallowe’en. All dragon except the greenish hued rabbit ears over his head. And Zale, with metallic red fuzzy rabbit ears that drooped and blended with her wig, but seemed somehow to flicker at the ends, as if they hadn’t quite decided their final form. Liz’s frizzed hair and poofed veil nearly hid the delicate, almost lacy, white ears sloping back from her head. But Stephan - the rabbit ears over him kept changing, first standing upright in a deep chestnut, then changing to looser spotted ones, and then another transformation into black and almost horn-like... Patricia shook her head, trying to shake off the visions of ears. It made no sense.

 

“Good night,” they were saying, looking at her as if nothing was wrong.

 

“Oh, good night!” she replied, with a bright smile. No, I am not going to admit that I am seeing visions of rabbits. They’ll think I’m batty. Battier than a grandmother planning to write a detective story, even one that’s based in the 1940s.

 

The others had already turned and started to walk towards one sky train station or another, but Zale paused. “Don’t worry too much about your beginning, Pat. If you think yourself out of it, you’ll just get stuck at the start of the path and never get anywhere. Just dive right in and you’ll be fine.”

 

“Thank you Zale,” Patricia smiled back. “Good luck with yours too!”

 

As Zale headed after her brother the leprechaun, Patricia turned up the street towards Granville and the bus that would take her home. She tried to ignore the irrepressible sensation that something soft and furry was weighing on her own hair and brushing against her neck with the faintest impression of a fur stole. She was sure it was nothing. Her imagination. She could no longer see any of the others from the National Novel Writing Month - NaNoWriMo, she must remember - event, and it was easier to be certain she had imagined, for no reason at all, the bunny ears than it had been when they had been right before her eyes. She smiled at her own mind and the tricks it played. Perhaps her mind was startled outside its normal boundaries by being out with people without Alfred, without May. No use worrying about it now. She’d soon be home and in her comfort zone again, and then her mind would resume its normal course.

 

Instead, as she sat on the cold wooden bench provided by Vancouver’s Translink, she thought about her novel. That was the one part that wouldn’t return to normal, of course. She was going to write it. She knew she would. But what would happen?

 

Perhaps something had been stolen, or perhaps someone was running a con - her mind jumped quickly to Robert Redford and The Sting - she could imagine her hero in a railroad cap just as easily as in a fedora, and perhaps her leading lady could be running circles around the cops instead of hiding from them or working with a detective on the side of the law - but no. This wasn’t her: she was a law-abiding citizen and she had no intention of writing anything that made  the law and its authority figures seem less than upstanding. Perhaps overly dedicated to their jobs, or jealous of their authority - in the Maltese Falcon the police had been none to happy about private detectives, after all - but not against them.

 

Patricia felt as if something, some movement, ruffled her hair - the wind, perhaps - and reached up to smoothe the white strands back behind her ears, feeling nothing out of place. A hat seemed crucial. Perhaps if she dug through her supply of hats she would find the right inspiration for her novel. She could do it tonight - she would do it tonight; she was to start writing tomorrow. A novel of her very own. She was sure she still had all of Alfred’s old hats in the front closet - she would find a pair, one for each of the two main characters.

 

Perhaps, she thought a touch wistfully, she could bring a bit of the romance Chance and Liz had been talking about. Zale had scoffed, but she was young, perhaps too young to treasure literary love. Next time she would talk more with Liz, find out more about her ideas and how they were going. Not that Patricia needed inspiration for romantic scenes or emotion - her life with Alfred provided ample ideas, and she thought warmly of writing some of her favourite memories into the life of a new pair of people. How would a detective react to the clues of her husband’s little notes, leading her to whatever small prize he had found for her? Or, she thought suddenly, perhaps one of those little prizes could be the object of the mystery she was sure she wanted at the heart of her novel. Oh Alfred.

 

Other thoughts toyed with her mind - what about history? Would she need to research the time or place she set her novel, need to place it between wars or in economic eras? Perhaps she could create a whole new world, as some of the younglings had been talking about before she had gone to sit by herself, before Jamie had come and helped her engage in this madcap scheme. But she had no ideas for world-building - this world was complex enough. Other thoughts, ideas jumped into view - an idea for a character, a maid who refused to enter through the front door and always dusted under furniture, a robot who got pregnant, an elf maiden racing through a forest with her bow knocked and ready, a young girl entering the military and becoming a great warrior for her lord before turning aside to take righteous quests on her own - Patricia shook her head, trying to clear it of dust bunnies. No, she would write a detective story. A Film Noir detective story. And she would decide more about her characters after she had a chance to go through her and Alfred’s hats.

 

But whatever else she decided to put in her novel, she would not put in any rabbits, she thought absently, as she stood to flag down the number 17 Oak bus. She climbed aboard, lost in thought and plot ideas, and not only managed to ignore the short-skirted and high-heeled costumes of the majority of the bus’s occupants, but also completely failed to notice the small chestnut bunny fade from reality from its position under the bench upon which she had sat.

 

Just as she - and all the others who had been at the NaNoWriMo kickoff party, whether they talked to her or not, or had chosen to wear costumes of rabbits or not - had failed to notice the whole passel of rabbits fading into and out of view in Moose’s Down Under restaurant, beneath the booths, behind the skeleton and the zombie, and lying in wait beneath the stairs to the street, near where she had said goodbye to her newfound NaNoWriMo friends.

 

 

 

National Novel Writing Month was poised to begin - had begun, somewhere on the other side of the world - and the plot bunnies were gaining in strength.