Vignette from a story in the making (vol. 2)

I can't believe I'm coming into the last week of my sabbatical. It's flown by so fast. I fought tooth and nail against taking unpaid time off, but have found that the leisurely life suits me quite nicely, thank you. (I originally wrote "the life of leisure suits..." and it cracked me up. So I changed it.)

I've done a little freelance copywriting and turned some down. And these clients were whatever the opposite of humorless, pedantic and anal-retentive is (all this time in leisure suits has affected my once-commanding use of the American English vocabulary), but I've come to realize it's not something I enjoy. Maybe I'm just gun-shy after bad client experiences, but I'd rather focus on editing and telling stories during the summer and autumn of my career. :)

Must have been six months ago that my mama called me to tell me my aunt's best friend's wealthy employer in Wilmington wanted to write his memoirs and was looking for an editor, but he wasn't quite ready to get started at the time. Mama thought it would be a wonderful way for me to make money during my impending sabbatical and I agreed and told her pass my information back up the chain to him.

During the second week of April, I was home screening calls and got a message from an elderly gentleman with a gorgeous, honey-dripping, old-money, Southern accent. He introduced himself and said he lived in Wilmington but was from Raleigh forevah; in fact, his family was the fourth family in Wake County. He was writing a book about his life and needed an editor and (my aunt's best friend) had said I was just wonderful at it. He gave me his name (I'm going to call him R) and said it would be fabulous if I could call him back.

That was on a day I was just beginning to feel leisurely, so I decided to think about it some. Called him back the next day to ask him exactly what he was looking for in an editor and get him to tell me the scope of his project. Instead, he spent almost an hour and a half telling me amazing, almost unbelievable stories about his life growing up here in Raleigh before going on to live a life in the spotlight and traveling around the globe in a whirlwind in a lifetime that now spans 77 years. (Details would, of course, make this entry more interesting, but we're now locked into a proprietary agreement, sorry.) I swear the man didn't stop to take a breath, much less let me speak. And, though I kept the phone to my ear, I stopped really listening 45 minutes in. Wandered around my house, made a grocery list, played with the cats and reminded myself to ooh and ahh and agree from time to time. He never asked me the first question about me or my qualifications.

We made arrangements to meet in person in the suburbs of Raleigh before he went to meet with a client. I asked him to send me a sample of his manuscript to peruse so I could get a scope of the work needed in order to give him a quote, though he never once asked me about my rates. He sent me the entire manuscript, which I wasn't about to spend time reading without a contract. I did read the first three pages and edited them.

I took with me to our meeting a printout of those pages with my (plethora of) changes tracked, a menu of services/rates for him to peruse, along with a personalized contract thinking we'd talk business and charges. Instead, I spent close to three hours at the Olive Garden in Cary looking at snapshots dating from the 1930s to the present, piles of magazine clippings about his career and life, and listening to his stories. Like I wrote before, he was wearing me out, not letting me get a word in edgewise, and I just wanted him to say yea or nay to the charges and let me go. I thought I had an out when the waitress came to clear the plates, but he ordered dessert with two spoons and kept talking. Finally, when the bill came, he asked me to give him all the info I'd brought, telling me he'd look over it when he got home and would get back to me. I didn't care if he didn't sign on at that point, my head was pounding and I wanted to get the hell out of the chain restaurant and the beige suburbs.

He got a to-go cup of water with no ice and beckoned me to his new-model, top-of-the-line, European convertible to meet his little dog. He opened the door and I said, "Hello, pretty girl," to the perfectly groomed, white Bichon yapping at me. I was about to walk away, but R said, "She wants to give you a kiss." Remember, gentle reader, that I am not a dog person, but remembering my Southern manners and professional sensibilities, I leaned over and let her give me one quick lick on my cheek. I backed away toward the baby wipes I keep in my own car and R was still talking to me as I opened my door. "Read over the terms and let me know what you decide to do," I called out, cutting him off. I pulled around the corner and used three fresh baby wipes, leaving one side of my face without makeup a la Victor/Victoria before pulling myself together to drive back to civilization inside the Beltline.

A week went by and I slipped further into my feral, do-nothing lifestyle. I had no office to go to, Steve was out of town and I was in the habit of sleeping from 3:00 until 7:00 twice a day. R left a message on Monday to say he'd looked over the agreement and was ready to sign and asked me to call him. I got his message a few hours later and picked up the land line to call him and got, instead of a dial tone, a crackling sound. Tried calling the land line from my cell phone and only got a busy signal. It was close to my 3 p.m. nap and I could not be bothered with the stress of contacting the phone company, so I didn't.

The next morning was a Tuesday, cleaning day, so I picked up the house and cleared out before Susan came over and I had to get out of the way. Went to Borders to waste some time and my cell phone rang. I was extremely embarrassed; very few people have that number as I only have my phone to make outgoing calls and hate nothing more than a ringing cell phone or cell phone conversation in public. Sent it to voicemail and went about my perusing, but it immediately rang again. I saw that it was my mother calling a second time and panicked thinking there was a medical emergency in the family, so I ran outside and called her back.

"R is freaking out that you haven't called him back, and he had (my aunt's friend) call (my aunt) to call me to tell you to call him immediately!" "Oh, good lord," I thought, because he'd waited a whole week to get back to me, but I assured her I'd call him back.

And I did, from my car, in the Borders parking lot. He told me he was ready to sign the agreement. "Great," I told him, "Mail it to the address on the agreement and we'll get started." He proceeded to talk for another 15 minutes before I begged off, blaming a weak signal.

Later that afternoon, my mother called me back after having gotten the report back down the gossip line. "He LOVES you," she told me. "Well of course he does," I told her, "Most of my friends are gay men." But, I told her, I don't do well when being told to jump on command, as I am in charge of work projects I take on. I never did do well with demurring to authority, much to my sainted mother's chagrin.

I spent three hours the next day reading the manuscript. I started out with my red editor's pen, correcting spelling and grammar. It took me 15 minutes to get through one page and I left it bleeding profusely with red ink. So I decided the best approach would be to soldier through the first round just getting a feel for the stories and not marking up mistakes. They were amazing and I laughed out loud over and over; but the prose was completely horrible.

Wrote R an e-mail telling him that, in my professional opinion, his manuscript would need a total rewrite instead of an editor's touch. I wrote him that I'd be willing to do it, but if I did, we'd be looking at months instead of weeks of work and gave him the option to beg off, as it would be much more expensive than what I'd guesstimated in the quote I gave him. Told him I'd hold off on any further billable work until I heard back from him.

Took R a few days to check his e-mail, as he's from the (very) old school. He wrote back and basically told me to do whatever it took, he didn't care about money, just wanted to do it right. So I e-mailed him back telling him I wanted to meet with him and record an interview with him. Asked him when he'd be available and told him I'd come to Wilmington at his convenience.

Crickets. For four weeks. Over that period, I became even more feral, enjoying my time doing nothing at all. I rankled at leaving the house for doctor, hair and even spa appointments (lest that sound like I'm accustomed to such things, a friend and I both had gift certificates and made an appointment for a girls' day out). I didn't want to do anything work-related, but I had R on the back burner and stressed out about him, even though I was waiting for him to contact me. Eventually, I decided I wasn't interested in pursuing the project at all and wanted to fire him as a client, but I couldn't, as my mother, my aunt and her friend all had a vested interest in it.

So I sent R an e-mail about a week ago, stating that this was basically last call. Told him I needed to interview him and would be in town this past weekend for a family reunion and that I could interview him then or just send him a bill for time spent. I held my breath hoping he wouldn't contact me, but on Thursday, he did.

He invited me to his home for a chat. I agreed, but set some ground rules: I would send him a set of questions to help me fill in narrative gaps, I would lead the conversation, and I withheld the right to interrupt him if he went off on a tangent. He agreed and I sent him the set of questions.

Steve and I went to my family reunion at Sunset Beach yesterday and had a wonderful time (Steve saw his first alligators). We went back to the house and hung out with my mother and I told her how I'd really lost interest in R's project but was planning on meeting with him today. "Just do it for the money," she told me. "You only want me to do it so you can hear about his home," I teased. "You're going to his home?!!!!" She was really into it then and made me promise to tell her all about it.

We spent the night in Wilmington last night. This morning before going to R's house we went to a Starbucks and I had a venti double-shot plus energy to get me through. We rehearsed the plan: Steve would take me there, go to the door for an introduction, then go hang out with my aunt before coming back to rescue me in exactly two hours.

At the appointed hour, we pulled into R's driveway. We knocked on the door and heard the Bichon yapping ferociously, followed by "Eat 'em up, girl." R led us into his formal dining room, where he had boxes stacked about, papers and pictures strung across the table. "Have a look around," he said, sitting back down at the table as the dog took her place beside him.

The house was built in the '90s for coastal living, but the furniture, rugs and wall hangings were from centuries past and crafted in Europe and Asia. Like I said, I wish I could provide more details here about R's story, but let those suffice for now.

Steve excused himself. R and I sat down at his dining room table and I turned on my digital recorder. "Introduce yourself to the recorder so I can make sure the sound is right," I told him. "Do what?" will always be the beginning of my audio history with R.

R has been interviewed by reporters from social and fashion rags from around the world, but it's been years (I've seen his clips {including the mod leisure suit line he did} but couldn't find anything on Google as his heyday was in the 50s and 60s), so I had to remind him to let me lead the conversation. He was very eager to answer the questions I sent him and was eager to show me he'd been working on the answers. I had to tell him to slow down and let me lead up to them, but I saw how excited he was and told him I was glad he did his homework and would give him a gold star on the exam.

He'd get to telling a story and get ahead of himself. "Hold on, sweetie, we need more," I'd tell him. "You're in charge," he'd say back, waiting for me to take notes before taking him back to the story.

When we got to the end of the list of questions, I told him we had another 15 minutes before I had to leave and asked him to fill me in on anything he thought I should know. And he took off talking. He told me about one of his classmates at the private school here in Raleigh who was a professor of English at N.C. State. "That's where you teach, isn't it?" he asked. I told him I went to graduate school at State but wasn't a teacher. As he flew into the next bit of his narrative it struck me that he'd just asked his first question about me.

Steve showed up to rescue me at exactly the appointed time. "I have to go," I told R as I packed my recorder and notebook into my portfolio. "Let me show you both just a couple more things," he said. He proceeded to show us both more pictures from various boxes and folders stacked on and around the dining room table.

"We really need to get back to Raleigh, R," I said, trying to make my break.

"Wait, let me give you these," he said, digging out some yellowed clips. "I don't feel right hanging onto those if they're your only copies," I said, trying to escape. "You don't understand," he replied, "let me show you something." With that, he led us to the garage and showed us more stacks of boxes of his clips and memories.

After the tour of the garage, I thanked him and said we really did have to go. "What do you need me to do for now?," he asked after rattling off his intercontinental schedule for the next month. I told him I had everything I needed for now, but he asked me to give him more questions (homework) to work on. I just wanted to get out and go home to Raleigh, so I told him I'd send him a list during the next week.

R followed us out to the car, still talking. We nodded, agreed, reminded ourselves to ooh and ahh, and drove away.

Steve intuitively picked up on the fact that I was a little too burned out from chatter to talk, so I didn't do much of that on the two-hour drive back to Raleigh. What I was actually doing during that drive was digesting the picture of R standing in his driveway, in front of his home full of "stuff" he calls it, priceless antiques and works of art the rest of us would call it, with nobody but a little dog to talk to.

R's life has been a beautiful, brave and breathless one, full of adventure and unbelievable wealth. But he's spending his twilight years without a partner to share them with.

He's got me, though. And I am a feisty, loyal thing. We're going to get his memoirs published and they will rock. Oh yes. Nobody will forget R as long as I'm on the case.