To date, I have received a few comments to the effect that some of my writing is incomplete and that I should, to borrow a phrase, finish the damn story!
My view has been that a story is done when it is done. See, for example, Richard Brautigan's "The Scarlatti Tilt." (Google it.) Only thirty-four words comprising two sentences, but it is complete. Sure, you could add to it, but you don't have to.
I recognize now, however, the selfishness of my view because a writer's work, through creative osmosis, becomes one with the reader. (Note the sexual imagery. I work on multiple levels.) Recall the collective disappointment with how "Game of Thrones" ended, kind of like disappointing sex, when the viewers still wanted more, more, more. (I'm doing it again. See?) One could argue that "Game of Thrones" had to end when it did because they were running out of people to kill, but that does not render invalid the dissatisfaction of the viewing public.
Thus, to save us all a lot of time, I offer the following for anyone who thinks whatever I write or wrote is too short. Just stick this at the end of the too-short story and see if it doesn't help.
You're welcome.
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It had been at least two years since he last saw her. Then, they had not spoken. The rage was too recent. The recriminations too fresh. The betrayals too raw. Then, she had merely glared at him with eyes shooting the flames of Hell. He had said nothing but had smiled slightly, relishing the moment. Then, they had gone in the separate directions their destinies demanded.
Now, there she was, walking through the park. She had not yet seen him. Even from a distance, it was obvious that she was a wrecked, hollowed-out shell of a human being, but still hot, like the day he first met her at the university, or in high school, or in the old neighborhood, or at a friend's party, or in an RV he had to drive cross-country back to the dealer. Of course, that was back when he was just starting out as a simple metal banger, or carpenter, or car salesman, or guy who builds quality homes, or Ford Mustang aficionado, or IT specialist who focused on security and had access to all kinds of cool surveillance gear, or the owner of his own business who had managed to hide the ownership of that company in a bunch of Cayman Island shell corporations that nobody knew about, or when he was just completing training as a Special Forces sniper, who could barely keep his smoldering rage under control, but learned to do so for the one woman who was worth it.
Back then, she had just been a secretary or real estate agent. That should have been his clue. Nearly every secretary he ever read about was getting boned on trips out of town by her boss, and every female real estate agent seemed to be fucking a brash salesman in the unwitting husband's marital bed when she was really supposed to be showing houses. But he was young and foolish then. He did not know the signs. Like that NO ONE who is an executive takes a secretary on a business trip. Ever. And for the female real estate agent, her commissions should have been way higher than they were for all the time she was supposed to be selling houses, especially with the real estate market so hot those past years. But wisdom comes too late to be of any use, as they saying goes.
She had seen him and walked over with a sad smile.
"You look good," she said.
He did. He had lost 30 pounds of fat and replaced it with 20 pounds of muscle. It was the time he was spending in the gym these days, surrounded by leotard-wearing floozies. His firm quads and glutes made women ovulate at a glance. And you could now bounce quarters off his ripped pecs and abs. The girls in his post-divorce, bi-curious harem certainly did. That is, if they could ever stop the cunnilingus long enough to do so, but he did not mind since that got them and him ready for another round of orgasms like he had never experienced before, certainly not while he was married to the slut. Oh, and his penis had gotten larger since the divorce. That had been a nice surprise. His lawyer never told him to expect that.
"You look like a wrecked, guilt-ridden shell of a bitch who ruined the one good thing she had in life, all for a shadow-existence of mindless deceit, motivated by a base desire for meaningless sex outside the sacred bonds of matrimony with your ex-boyfriend who you never really got over, my best friend, my cousin, my father, your boss, some guy in the next town I never heard of, and/or some guy you met at the gym," he told her. "And/or some girl or girls," he added.
"I know," she said. "I am guilt-ridden. It's my role."
"I know," he said.
They paused.
"You never gave me a chance to explain," she said.
That was true.
"Why bother?" he asked in honest curiosity.
"I have to," she replied. "I feel like I am trapped in a Pirandello play where I am compelled to say a lot of words to illuminate motivations that even I do not understand but that merely reveal my inability to accept my own selfishness."
"The unwritten rules of the forum seem to require it," she added as she looked into his eyes in a desperate desire for understanding.
"I suppose that's true," he admitted.
They stood looking at each other, wondering what could have been, had he not loved her so much that he did not detect her deceptions, and had she not been, like, a complete and total lying slut splooge-bag who was trying to get knocked up behind his back with a baker's dozen's worth of lovers.
