The Ring: Draft 5, Day 5

Metal pots and lids fell and rang against tile. I didn't look up as I turned another page. This story was about an actress who ate only pink foods and was now 79 pounds. I studied the picture and wondered if a gallon of strawberry ice cream would fit on her plan.

"I'm okay!" Glen yelled.

"Good to know!" I called back. I sipped my skinny hazelnut latte and grimaced at the foam. I hated foam. I should've gone to the Starbucks on 52nd. They weren't foam whores like the girls on 57th.

"Do you want bread tonight?"

I looked at the actress with the seventeen inch waist. "No."

"Potatoes?"

The woman's collarbone looked as if the skin was just a tight bag keeping the bones in place. "Uh uh."

"Are you wanting red or white tonight?"

What I wanted was to get back to Glance. I had to organize the photo room so I wouldn't leave Jeannette waiting for an hour again, trying to find a shot of Julia Roberts taken in a Donna Karan dress in July 1998. "Black. I'm subsisting on coffee tonight."

"You got it!"

Glen was good to me. Not for me, though. He wasn't a guy I saw buying me my denture cream when I was laid up with a broken hip and complaining how the kids didn't call us anymore.

Outside, the cherry jingle of bells reminded me it was almost Christmas. Glen's white box of an apartment didn't give the smallest hint that Santa was coming in two days.

"Dinner is served!"

I put my coffee cup on the glass and chrome coffee table and shoved my tired mouth muscles into a smile. Glen held a white platter, his white skin against the white dish, white chicken breast on top of white rice. All of it in a white room.

We sat and he ate. I pushed food on the plate and checked my Yahoo account. Then my Gmail account. Then Facebook.

"I think the chicken could use a little more tarragon," he said.

"Sure." I set down the phone and adjusted where my blouse, a fuchsia silk, gaped between two buttons, a turquoise bra peeking out.

"I was thinking we could do the Christmas thing this year."

Some of the tired in me didn't feel so heavy. "Yeah?"

"Yeah." He stabbed another bite and forked it in. "I'm thinking we could meet up here, order a gut-busting amount of Chinese, maybe watch Kill Pussycat Kill. I own the director's cut."

"Sounds tempting." I picked up the white coffee cup holding the dregs of Colombian Roast. I wiped at the brown ring it left behind on the glass tabletop. I grimaced, preparing myself for the last, grainy swig.

I grew up in Maine, where the winters were long and cold and dark, but Christmas was celebrated with white lights, evergreen wreaths, and trees you cut down yourself. Chinese food was for days you didn't want to cook, not days that where cooking was a mandatory rite of passage, a day that meant you had at least three days of a packed fridge, wax paper covering full plates rotating in the microwave.

I pulled out my cell phone and checked my e-mails again.

"There truly is no more satyric comment on society than Kill Pussycat Kill." He speared chicken onto his fork and went on about a movie that meant nothing to me.

The inside of my mouth needed to be washed out. I pushed up from the bar and went to the coffee table, picked up my foam drink, and drank the last of it. It was cold and had too many bubbles, but it did the trick. A light tan ring marred the table. I left it.


NOTE INSERTED AFTER I WAS DONE WITH DRAFT #5: I was tired tonight and so only worked on this briefly. I brought in Kill Pussycat Kill because I remember watching this pretentious movie with some pretentious people in Brooklyn when I was 23. But at 23, you're allowed to try your hand at pretension. However this guy is early forties. Pretension should have left the building by now!

--WHAT'S BEEN CUT WITH NO PLACE TO GO RIGHT NOW--

Nothing. Nothing seems precious anymore or fits with where I'm going.

The Ring: Draft 4, Day 4

Metal pots and lids fell and rang against tile. I didn't look up as I turned another page. This story was about an actress who ate only pink foods and was now 79 pounds. I studied the picture and wondered if a gallon of strawberry ice cream would fit on her plan.

"I'm okay!" Glen yelled.

"Good to know!" I called back. I sipped my skinny hazelnut latte and grimaced at the foam. I hated foam. I should've gone to the Starbucks on 52nd. They weren't foam whores like the girls on 57th.

"Do you want bread tonight?"

I looked at the actress with the seventeen inch waist. "No."

"Potatoes?"

The woman's collarbone looked as if the skin was just a tight bag keeping the bones in place. "Uh uh."

"Are you wanting red or white tonight?"

What I wanted was to get back to Glance. I had to organize the photo room so I wouldn't leave Jeannette waiting for an hour again, trying to find a shot of Julia Roberts taken in a Donna Karan dress in July 1998. "Black. I'm subsisting on coffee tonight."

"You got it!"

Glen was good to me. Not for me, though. He wasn't a guy I saw buying me my denture cream when I was laid up with a broken hip and complaining how the kids didn't call us anymore.

Outside, the cherry jingle of bells reminded me it was almost Christmas. Glen's white box of an apartment didn't give the smallest hint that Santa was coming in two days.

"Dinner is served!"

I put my coffee cup on the glass and chrome coffee table and shoved my tired mouth muscles into a smile. Glen held a white platter, his white skin against the white dish, white chicken breast on top of white rice. All of it in a white room.

We sat and he ate. I pushed food on the plate and checked my Yahoo account. Then my Gmail account. Then Facebook.

"I think the chicken could use a little more tarragon," he said.

"Sure." I set down the phone and adjusted where my blouse, a fuchsia silk, gaped between two buttons, a turquoise bra peeking out.

"I was thinking we could do the Christmas thing this year."

Some of the tired in me didn't feel so heavy. "Yeah?"

"Yeah." He stabbed another bite and forked it in. "I'm thinking we could meet up here, order a gut-busting amount of Chinese, maybe watch something on IFC. What do you say, Val? It's a date?"

"Sounds tempting." I picked up the white coffee cup holding the dregs of Colombian Roast. I wiped at the brown ring it left behind on the glass tabletop. I grimaced, preparing myself for the last, grainy swig.

I grew up in Maine, where the winters were long and cold and dark, but Christmas was celebrated with white lights, evergreen wreaths, and trees you cut down yourself. Chinese food was for days you didn't want to cook, not days that should've been filled with cooking, laughter, and the possibility of sleigh bells.

"So you're with me? Hole up here and boycott Christmas?"

The inside of my mouth needed to be washed out. I went to the coffee table, picked up my foam drink, and drank the last of it. It was cold and had too many bubbles, but it did the trick. A light tan ring marred the table. I left it.

"Glen, I'm so not with you."


NOTE INSERTED AFTER I WAS DONE WITH DRAFT #4: Draft #4 had me looking to find the realism--and the "why am I writing this?"--as I revised. I had My Girl (we now know her name's Val) a little too mean to be realistic, so I cut back on the meanness. And through what was being said, what WASN'T being said, and what was being noticed, I started to figure out how to create subtext. The end is currently a placeholder, but the sentiment is what I'm going for.

--WHAT'S BEEN CUT WITH NO PLACE TO GO RIGHT NOW--

Nothing. Nothing seems precious anymore or fits with where I'm going.

The Ring: Draft 3, Day 3

Metal pots and lids slammed onto tile. I turned the page of my magazine and started reading about an actress who was now 79 pounds. I studied the picture and looked for any helpful tips.

"I'm okay!" Glen yelled.

"Good to know!" I called back. I sipped my skinny hazelnut latte and grimaced at the foam. I hated foam. Idiot Starbucks girl.

"Do you want bread tonight?"

I looked at the actress with the seventeen inch waist. "No."

"Potatoes?"

The woman's collarbone was as defined as any skeleton's I'd ever seen. "Uh uh."

"Are you wanting red or white tonight?"

What I wanted was for the night to already end. "Red. And bring the bottle."

Bells made a cherry little jingle outside. It was annoying. I took myself to one of Glen's long narrow windows and found a two-horse carriage bumping its way down the street. Hope they thought the ten minutes of cold wind and horse farts was worth the fifty bucks they'd forked over with a dopey smile.

"Dinner is served!"

I put my coffee cup on the window sill and turned to see Glen holding a white platter. His white skin against the white dish, white chicken breast on top of white rice, reminded me of the white skin all over his soft body.

We sat and he ate. I pushed food on the plate and checked my Yahoo account. Then my Gmail account. Then Facebook.

"I think the chicken could use a little more tarragon," he said.

"Sure."

More chewing, more checking.

"I was thinking we could do the Christmas thing this year."

I stopped scrolling. "We never do Christmas together."

He cleared his throat. "Thought we should start. It's been, what, three years?"

I pushed the plate away. My birthday had been in Bora Bora. Valentine's Day had been in St. Maarten's. Tropical would be a good change. "Okay. So let's discuss this. What did you have in mind?"


NOTE INSERTED AFTER I WAS DONE WITH DRAFT 3: When I read through Draft #2, it struck me that My Girl was a little mean after Glen drops the dishes. I wanted to run with that. I also cut the exposition that showed setting...but didn't help story. Still working toward an ending, but it's more clear to me today than it was in Days 1 or 2.

--WHAT'S BEEN CUT WITH NO PLACE TO GO RIGHT NOW--

Nothing. Nothing seems precious anymore or fits with where I'm going.

The Ring: Draft 2, Day 2

NOTE INSERTED AFTER I WAS DONE WITH DRAFT 2: I had an idea where I wanted THE RING to go, but now my girl wants what she wants--not what I want. She's stronger than I first imagined, and she has motives that I didn't know she had while I wrote Draft 1. "Ian" is now "Glen" because it fits his personality better. Can't you just see a "Glen" being allergic to snow? I can't imagine that with an Ian, who's out in the snow shoveling for three hours and then having the energy for a spirited romp afterward.

Metal pots and lids crashed behind me, but I stayed where I was. One day a week, I didn't need to set the table, make a meal, or clean up. I wasn't about to throw away my one day off by being helpful.

"I'm okay!" Glen yelled.

"Good to know!" I called back. I didn't lose my place in the US Weekly I had brought with me as I took another sip from the skinny hazelnut latte glued to my hand. When Glen cooked, I knew to bring sustenance so that I wouldn't look at his gray microsuede cushions like they were petite fours. I also knew to bring my own entertainment. Glen wasn't a TV guy, and his only reading material was The Economist and James Joyce.

"Are you wanting red or white tonight?"

Milk. Chocolate milk. "White whine sounds good," I called out instead. He liked it, and I was trying to give it a try. In this relationship, there were a lot of things I was trying to give a try. In a city where the girls outnumbered the guys two to one, I had to be.

Outside, bells jingled. I looked out one of the long, narrow windows in the long, narrow living room. A horse-drawn carriage trotted outside, a red blanket over its passengers, red leather harnesses adorned with gold bells over its horses. I touched the glass, tracing the outline of the family with smiles and hot chocolate. I wanted to be those people, but Glen had a slight allergy to the cold, and would be beet red in less than five minutes.

"Dinner is served!" Glen walked out, an overlarge white plate in his hands. His white skin against the white dish, white chicken breast on top of white rice, reminded me of the white snow I was missing out on. A girl from Maine misses snow, even when she curses it.

"It looks great," I lied. His mother's chicken was as dry as the rice it nested on. The green beans had the opposite problem: as mushy as a jar of toddler green beans.

We sat at the stone counter that attached the kitchen to the dining room. It was the only place to sit in the 400-square foot apartment. And for $4,200 a month, Glen had the privilege of living in a shoebox overlooking Central Park. But it had views that would make any real estate agent climax. "I was thinking about Christmas."

"Yeah?" I asked around a mouthful of yuck.

"I was thinking we could spend it together."

We'd been going out for two months. Holidays weren't part of the relationship equation yet.

"What are you thinking," I asked, trying to buy time.

"I was thinking here. You, me, some Burl Ives on some vinyl."

So far, it wasn't a no.

"Maybe Mom's chicken."

And there was the no.

I drank some wine to get the chicken out of my throat. "I'll have to see how the next few days pan out with Jeannette."

"When are you going to just quit?"

"When I want to go back to Maine and work in a bookstore for the rest of my life." I had Plan B all mapped out. Bookstore, colonial house on a cul-de-sac, two kids born 18-months apart. But between Plan A and Plan B, I'd have to kill myself first.

NOTE: Still looking for an ending. We'll see where Draft #3 takes me!

--WHAT'S BEEN CUT WITH NO PLACE TO GO RIGHT NOW--

It was only a few days until Christmas, but I wasn't going to be with family this year. Jeannette needed me to get the last of her gifts messengered to the appropriate New York designers, PR people, and celebrities that had ever graced or thought about gracing the pages of Glance magazine.

I hadn't seen family for two years. When you were the assistant to the assistant to the editor in chief of a major women's magazine, you didn't leave the island too much. Unless it was to deliver a present to a private plane in New Jersey.

It had been a week. Jeannette had yelled at me in the elevator four of the five days. She'd made me re-make her coffee at least eight times for each one I attempted. I'd gotten to shop for her godsons' Christmas gifts. Toy stores are not happy, magical places the week before Christmas. They are what the Dungeons of Hell must be like.

I flipped through his latest version of The Economist with one hand, my other hand cupped around the skinny hazelnut latte I'd grabbed on the way over. I wasn't an Economist sort of girl. I was a People or Us Weekly girl. But he didn't like talking about celebrities, and so I had learned to talk about the one or two stories in this magazine that didn't make me yawn.

We'd been together for two years, two years of Sunday night dinners where I sat and flipped and yawned and he made his mother's chicken and green beans. I hated green beans, but I ate them. I was thirty-seven. At this stage of the game, I ate green beans. I read The Economist. I wore my hair long when I knew I looked better with short. Because it made him happy, which made me happy.

Two years of compromise and lip biting, but they were two years well spent. A woman who was thirty-seven and still wanted, at minimum, three children, couldn't hold out for Fabio. Not someone who looked like him, but someone who acted like the character he played in all those romance novels he'd been on: strong, kind, passionate, loyal, and just jealous enough to be romantic.

The Ring: Draft 1, Day 1

DRAFT 1

He fussed in the kitchen and I flipped through his latest version of The Economist with one hand, my other hand cupped around the skinny hazelnut latte I'd grabbed on the way over. I wasn't an Economist sort of girl. I was a People or Us Weekly girl. But he didn't like talking about celebrities, and so I had learned to talk about the one or two stories in this magazine that didn't make me yawn.

We'd been together for two years, two years of Sunday night dinners where I sat and flipped and yawned and he made his mother's chicken and green beans. I hated green beans, but I ate them. I was thirty-seven. At this stage of the game, I ate green beans. I read The Economist. I wore my hair long when I knew I looked better with short. Because it made him happy, which made me happy.

Two years of compromise and lip biting, but they were two years well spent. A woman who was thirty-seven and still wanted, at minimum, three children, couldn't hold out for Fabio. Not someone who looked like him, but someone who acted like the character he played in all those romance novels he'd been on: strong, kind, passionate, loyal, and just jealous enough to be romantic.

Ian was no Fabio, but he was a good Ian. Forty-two, never married, two-bedroom loft apartment with views that would make any real estate agent climax a bit.

"The red or white tonight?" Ian stood beside the chrome-and-glass coffee table, a bottle of each in his hands.

I liked milk. But that wasn't the answer that would make him happy. "White."

He looked down at the story I had stopped on, one focused on why people married other nationalities. It was the only story that hadn't acted like Ambien on m. "That was a godawful article. It was a Psychology Today article at best."

"