By Russ Heitz, russheitz.com

Norman Poder wrote children’s books. His life was quiet, peaceful, uncluttered. He did not lust after gazillion-dollar advances from his publisher. Nor did he crave a scarlet Ferrari, or a penthouse in Manhattan. The thought of buying a ninety-foot yacht never entered his mind. And the best seller list was something he rarely glanced at. Until he met Clarissa.
She was the new girl in the typing pool at Morton-Smith-Skideaux when Norman arrived one grey October morning with a neatly printed manuscript tucked inside his beige vinyl briefcase.
Clarissa was thrilled. Not with Norman. He seemed rather dull and lifeless in his brown time-shiny suit and owlish glasses. What thrilled her was the fact that he was a writer, the first ‘real writer’ she had ever met. She was even more thrilled when she learned that Norman Poder was also an unattached bachelor.
Clarissa was not thrilled with the books Norman wrote. Talking squirrels, grandmotherly bunnies and trips to Uncle John’s Farm were all very nice. However, they did not fit her image of what a ‘real writer’ should write. But never mind, she thought, all he needed was a little guidance.
Norman Poder did not have much experience with women. So it is not surprising that he found Clarissa completely overwhelming. She was taller than he was, heavier. Not a bad figure, a little too generous in bust and hip, perhaps. An over-abundance of eye makeup. And a billowing lavender cloud of perfume that hovered over everything.
What overwhelmed Norman the most, however, was the way Clarissa talked. Which was all of the time.
Thirty seconds after signing the contract for another talking bunny story, Norman found himself being maneuvered rather forcefully out of the legal department, down the hall, and into the elevator. Clarissa insisted that a get-acquainted coffee break with just the two of them was absolutely essential.
“We simply must have a celebration,” she bubbled. “After all, it isn’t every day that a writer signs a book contract!” Her unnaturally long eyelashes fluttered frenetically, like butterfly wings in a hurricane.
For forty minutes, Norman listened stoically as Clarissa’s endless chatter echoed among the mauve walls of the empty cafeteria. Several times he tried to slip a word in edgewise but it was hopeless. He soon started glancing around, looking for a savior. But the only other person in the lunchroom was a grumpy-faced waiter and he was filling sugar bowls. Finally, however, Norman felt an enormous rush of relief.
Henry Skideaux, the company’s second vice-president, was tilted inward through the lunchroom doorway. His dark eyes were filled with smoke and daggers. When he saw Clarissa, the daggers turned to bloody swords.
Clarissa’s eyes snapped to her watch the instant she saw her boss. She blushed, grimaced apologetically at Norman, and heaved herself out of her chair.
“Gotta go, Normie,” she purred. “Henry needs me.” As she hurried away, buttocks jiggling, she waggled a chubby index finger over her right shoulder. “See you sooo-ooon!” she trilled.
Norman blinked at his empty coffee cup. He would not deliver another manuscript to M-S-S for at least six months. Clarissa would surely be gone by then. Henry Skideaux could not possibly put up with that kind of aggressive aggravation.
Much to Norman’s chagrin, however, he didn’t have to wait six months. Clarissa appeared at the door of his small second-floor walk-up in West Philadelphia exactly one week later.
“Normie!” she squealed when he opened the door. “How lovely to see you again.”
She threw her arms around him right there in the doorway and smothered him in her bosomy décolletage. Then she thrust him away abruptly and held him at arm’s length, blue eyes aglitter, white flesh bobbling.
“I just happened to be in the neighborhood,” she gushed, “and I thought to myself, you simply must stop in to see Normie. You don’t mind if I call you Normie, do you? Mister and Ms and all that business sounds so stuffy, don’t you think? I’m a Ms myself, Ms Tillburg, although I used to be a Missus—divorced now of course—but I would much rather you call me Clarissa, or Clare, that’s what Walter my ex always called me. The rascal just up and left me one day, I never did find out why, another woman I suppose, someone slinky and eighteen with long blonde hair and a teensy voice, may I come in?”
Befuddled, Norman was shouldered aside as Clarissa charged into the room. Showing a bit of thick milky thigh, she crossed her legs as she settled onto Norman’s tiny crushed-rose sofa. With a wicked smile she patted the cushion beside her.
“I promise not to bite,” she grinned.
Norman sat down obediently.
Clarissa laid a pudgy hand on Norman’s bony knee and started in.
“Your being a writer must be very exciting,” she said, her eyes darting around the small living room with both interest and disapproval. “I mean, what with big cars and yachts and cocktail parties and jetting all over the world. I know how you writers are, oh yes I do, I’ve met quite a few at the office, you know, and I’ve read all your books, too. How many are there? Seven, I think, and all very cute. I’m sure the kiddies just adore them.”
Her eyes latched onto his. “But frankly, Normie, if I may be so bold, I think you are wasting your talent on children’s books. You should be writing best sellers.”
She jabbed a ruby-nailed index finger into Norman’s hollow chest repeatedly, emphasizing each example. “Adventures, mayhem, demons, horror, and sex. Lots and lots of sex. That’s where the money is.”
Norman was at a total loss to explain—even to himself—how it happened, but within two weeks Clarissa had taken over his apartment. Four weeks later she married him. Six weeks after that she moved
him—them—into a plush high-rise condo that overlooked the Philadelphia Museum of Art. And by the first of the year Norman was hard at work on a steamy new ‘adult thriller’.
“Now we’re finally getting somewhere,” Clarissa said with jutting jaw.
The next two years flew by in a swirl of work. Between stories for Jack & Jill, Golden Press and Morton-Smith-Skideaux, Norman worked on three different adult suspense novels. Actually, it was a collaborative effort. Clarissa supplied the ideas. Norman did the writing.
First there was a book about four well-endowed twenty-something sisters—identical quadruplets—who opened a massage parlor in Las Vegas and secretly practiced witchcraft on the Mafia moguls who controlled most of the gambling casinos.
The next novel was about a devilishly handsome ex-airline pilot who bought a rambling adobe castle in an Arizona ghost town and turned it into a sex therapy rehab center for strung-out Hollywood starlets.
And then he wrote a nail-biting epic concerning a Playboy Bunny who joined the CIA, became the lover of an Arabian sheik and single-handedly smashed the al-Qaeda terror network.
Thirty-seven publishers, including Morton-Smith-Skideaux, turned the novels down. Flatly. Resoundingly.
Finally Clarissa located a small paperback house in Grizzly, Montana. The editor, a part-time cowboy poet named Cheyenne Slade, agreed by phone to look at the al Qaeda Bunny story.
“I will not FedEx it,” Clarissa announced. “It’s much too valuable for that.” Norman raised a questioning eyebrow. Clarissa shrugged. “I’ll deliver it myself, of course.”
First there was a long tedious flight that was broken up by five stops, five plane changes, and countless security checks. That was followed by a bumpy swaying Greyhound ride along narrow mountain roads. A lurching fume-filled taxi completed the final leg to Grizzly, Montana. But it was all worth it. In less than four hours, Clarissa had steamrolled Cheyenne Slade into accepting Norman’s al-Qaeda Bunny story.
To Slade, the book was mostly a tax write-off anyway. Nationwide, it sold thirty-nine copies and got one review. The Rabbit Breeders Monthly of Crockett, Kentucky, called it a “filthy, filthy book.”
Norman was disappointed by the failure but not surprised. Clarissa was not surprised either. She was outraged.
“It’s that yokel Slade,” she said, stamping her chubby foot. “He simply does not know how to handle your talent. No hype. No Opra Winfrey. No gossip column blurbs. I can’t find a copy of the book anywhere, not even on Amazon!”
She waggled a finger and winked an eye. “A different publisher, Normie. That is what we need. And that is what we’ll get.”
If the first two years of their marriage were busy, the third year was frantic. Clarissa had become even more determined to turn Norman into a ‘real writer’ once and for all.
And Norman tried. He really did. For twelve, fourteen hours a day he made notes, planned chapters, ripped up pages and started all over again. On a diet of Maalox and ink-black coffee he aged ten years and lost twenty-seven pounds.
Clarissa never looked better. She beamed and hovered and pushed her husband forward, day by day, minute by minute. Finally the new book was finished.
“This is the one, Normie,” she said, her teeth clamped together tightly. She held the skimpy manuscript in both hands. “I can just feel it. Can’t you? It has Best Seller written all over it.”
Another suspense yarn, The Great San Francisco Trolley Hijack did slightly better than Underground Bunny, but only slightly. One reviewer suggested the author try children’s books. Another called the novel ‘flat’. The third and final review—a six-line blurb in Transit magazine—pronounced the book ‘uninspired’.
Confused at first by yet another setback, Clarissa became hostile, then petulant, then moody. While Norman went doggedly back to his laptop, she sat in the kitchen, hour after hour, unnervingly quiet.
After three weeks of brooding, Clarissa snapped her pudgy fingers one Thursday afternoon and then slammed out the front door. When she got home six hours later she promptly went to bed. The next morning the silence ended. The plan was ready.
She rushed a bleary Norman Poder into the kitchen and sat him down to a well-spread table and plunged ahead, blue eyes blazing
“You know how I feel about book reviewers, Normie. I think they’re all a bunch of Dingbat Dodos. Because they don’t know what they’re talking about. Any of them. Well, maybe I was wrong. Not about all reviewers, of course. I still think ninety-nine-point-nine percent of them should be laying bricks or plumbing toilets. But one was right, one out of a thousand, maybe, but we must give credit where credit is due.”
Banging pots, dropping forks, spilling salt, Clarissa hurried on. “Remember the critic in that bus magazine? Called you uninspired? That’s hard to take, I know, but I thought it all night long. And you know what? He’s right.”
She paused for a breath, fussed with a pan of soft-boiled eggs and then charged forward again.
“It’s this city,” she announced. The egg shells exploded under her knife. Hot egg yolks geyser-ed into the air. “Philadelphia is a creative vacuum, an intellectual desert. There is no vitality here, no life, no ambiance, just dirt and noise and crowded streets.”
“Here, eat,” she said, clattering a small white porcelain bowl across the table. “I know what I’m talking about, Normie. I’ve done some reading and I’ve done some research, too. Do you know where the real writers go?” she said, dashing salt into Norman’s bowl. “To live, to work, to get inspired?”
Whirling around like a kitchen dervish, her voice got shriller by the second.
“Not Greenwich Village, not Maine, not Paris, not even California. Not anymore. No sir. For your information—I was reading all about it at the library—they’re all moving to Florida. That’s right! By droves they’re going. And do you know where in Florida? Do you know where the hot spot is? The real center of creativity? The writing capital of the whole state? The whole country?”
Norman stared at her, a yellow oozing spoon before his mouth.
“Sarasota,” she said firmly. “That’s where. Steven King lives there. At least he used to. Tim Dorsey. John D. McDonald. No, he’s dead. But he did live there when he wasn’t dead. Whatever,” she hurried on, “the point is, most of the great mystery writers live in Florida. And that’s where we’re going to live, Normie. Because the only thing you need is some inspiration. And that’s exactly what Florida has. Palm trees, sunshine, the Gulf of Mexico, beaches, yachts, everything. It’ll open up a whole new world for you, Normie. I just know it will. And I even found the perfect Florida town.”
Clarissa breathed a deep, satisfied sigh. She looked over Norman’s head, out the window and into the smoggy Philadelphia air. “We’re moving to Sarasota,” she said dreamily.
Norman stared at his large wife for a full thirty seconds but said nothing. When the mascara-ed blue eyes came back into focus she said, “Eat, Norman, your eggs are getting cold.”
Since Clarissa married him, Norman had earned very little money. The talking squirrel stories were getting buried beneath reams of sex and blood that didn’t sell. So when they got to Sarasota they had to settle for a modest, two bedroom rental near a Wal-Mart Super Center. It wasn’t Casey Key. It wasn’t even Siesta Key, but they were in Sarasota. The tennis court, the silver Rolls, and the ninety-foot yacht would all come later, as soon as Norman wrote a best seller.
While Norman was wracking his brain for an idea, Clarissa began sniffing out the addresses of every well-known writer in the state of Florida. Then she checked every bookstore, as well as every paperback rack in every drugstore, bus terminal and airport within a hundred miles. She also checked the bookstore chains. All of them.
Three weeks after they arrived, Clarissa rushed into Norman’s cluttered study with the results of her survey. She demanded an answer. “Do you know how many Steven King novels are stacked on book store shelves right this minute? In this town alone?”
Norman gulped down another shot of banana-flavored rum, studied the jigger for a moment, and then knuckled his stubbly chin.
“Of course you don’t,” Clarissa rushed on. “So I’ll tell you. It averages out to eighteen in Barnes & Noble, twenty-one in Books-A-Million, and at least seven or eight at both Wal-Mart and Target. Believe it or not, What’s-his-name’s News Agency downtown at Five Points has twenty-three different King paperbacks all lined up on one rack. Twenty-three! Not to mention an armful of hardbacks. Bringing in God knows how much money every day. And you should see the house King lives in on Casey Key. I swear it’s a beachfront castle. Must have cost him twenty mil, probably more.”
Clarissa stopped, gave her husband a long thoughtful look and then pinched his pale cheek. “Horror, Normie,” she grinned. “Suspense, mayhem, and horror. Lots and lots of horror. That’s where the money is.”
A year later, Norman’s first horror-mystery novel was released: Rocky Gibraltar, Hired Assassin.
It was not a best seller; but the sales and reviews were not half bad. And Norman was very pleased.
Clarissa was not.
“One book,” she said sadly, shaking her head. “In a year’s time? Rumor has it that Sean Flannery does a book every two months, and he lives in some cushy glass-walled condo.”
With a sisterly pat on the shoulder Clarissa told Norman it was time to get back to work.
This time, however, Norman could not get to work. Try as he might, the second Rocky Gibraltar novel refused to hatch. No setting, no plot, no victim. The more he struggled and thought, the less he came up with. Before long, the strain was starting to show.
Norman started spending hours in front of the TV, wearing nothing but a baggy pair of grey boxer shorts. His stubble turned into a scroungy beard. A half-empty bottle of banana flavored rum was always at his elbow. Several times Clarissa even found her husband in the back yard at three a.m., staring up at the stars.
Then things got even worse. Norman started getting grumpy with her—of all people!
Over and over Clarissa asked herself, “Why is he acting like this?”
She was behind her husband one thousand percent, always had been. With her support and guidance his career was finally on the upswing. The future looked perfectly bright. All systems were go. So what was the stupid problem?
She thought for a moment. Surely he couldn’t be upset about her hints. Although heaven knows they deserved a swimming pool much more than the Doones who lived next door and were retired and not wealthy and certainly not artistic. And yet they were planning to have a pool installed, right in their own backyard!
No, Clarissa thought, Norman couldn’t be angry about the pool. Because she hadn’t been talking about it that much, just every now and then, as an incentive, to spur her husband on to greater heights.
But the more hints she dropped about a pool, the less Norman appeared to care about it. Nor did he seem to care about anything else, for that matter, not even about his next book. Finally, overwhelmed by frustration, Clarissa decided, No More Missy Nice Girl. It was time to take off the white silk gloves. It was time for an ultimatum.
“If you don’t write another book,” she stormed, “and build me at least one little itty-bitty swimming pool . . .”
She paused for effect and then peered at her husband through narrow slits. Finally she shrugged. “Well, then,” she said distinctly, “I’ll just have to leave you. It’s as simple as that.”
Her eyes had turned to blue steel orbs. “I’ll fly back to Philadelphia,” she warned. “I’ll get my old job back with Henry Skideaux. And I’ll start all over again.”
She snorted. “But don’t forget the consequences. If I leave, your so-called career will come to a screaming shrieking halt. It’ll be finished. Over. Kaput. No more Norman Poder.”
She crossed her arms over ample flesh. “It’s your choice, Normie,” she said simply. “Fame and fortune with me? Or a dead end street alone.”
Norman did not actually respond to the ultimatum but it seemed to Clarissa that things finally started to improve after she had delivered it. She was especially hopeful when the men from Sunny Day Pools started pounding stakes next door in the Doones’ back yard.
It wasn’t like Norman to be hob-nobbing with construction workers, but at least he was doing something. He called it research. Clarissa called it loafing.
Slowly, however, she finally began to relax. Because Norman had finally stopped growling at her. And—after all his chit-chit with those hairy-chested hard-hatters—she was absolutely certain of one thing. Norman was definitely going to build her a pool.
Nor could she ignore the endless pounding Norman was doing on his keyboard. Or all the inkjet cartridges he was going through. She was certain now, for sure: a new best seller was in the works.
Next door, sitting beneath a tangerine tree, the Doones too were glad to see Norman outside again, walking around his own back yard, a clipboard in his hands. They didn’t know him very well, although Scotty Doone, his wife Jan, and Norman had shared a six pack one Saturday afternoon while Clarissa was out researching book stores.
“Nice sort of chap,” Scotty had said to his wife, his accent clipped, lilting. “Quiet, mild mannered.”
“Too bad we can’t say the same about her,” Jan said, pursing her lips.
Jan had watched for weeks as Clarissa followed Norman in and out of the house, chattering ceaselessly, waggling her index finger at him. “No wonder he looks so pale and thin,” Jan had said to Scotty, shaking her head sadly.
The day the backhoe came to dig up the Doones’ back yard, Scotty and Jan went away on vacation. They thought it would be fun to leave for awhile and then come back to their brand new pool.
When they returned a week later they found Norman standing next to their springy slip-free diving board. He was fully dressed in cargo pants and a green polo shirt. There was an oversized shot glass in his raised hand. The glass was empty.
Scotty and Jan looked at each other for a moment. Then Scotty clapped Norman on the back. Jan gave him an awkward hug. And they all told each other how glad they were to see each other again.
After talking excitedly about the sparkling new pool, the new blue-grey flagstone patio, and the new, exuberantly productive banana plants, Jan casually asked Norman how Clarissa was doing.
Norman told the Doones, sadly, that Clarissa had suddenly left him. She had decided to go back to Philadelphia, Norman said. He didn’t know when—or even if—she’d return.
“Well, that’s too bad,” Jan said, more surprised than sorry.
Norman said he guessed she had just gotten tired of waiting for his success.
Despite Norman’s doleful tone of voice, what Jan saw in her neighbor’s eyes was not sadness, but relief. She could understand that. For Norman’s sake she hoped Clarissa would never come back.
As summer passed, the Doones swam in their pool nearly every day. Occasionally in the afternoon they would see Norman stretched out in the sun or reading under his silk oak tree.
Bachelorhood, the Doones agreed, was definitely agreeing with their quiet little neighbor. Every time they saw Norman he looked more fit and tanned than ever before. And his writing was obviously going very well, too. They could hear his keyboard clicking, and his printer groaning, late into the night, every night.
Leaning over the low chain-link fence one Sunday morning, coffee cups in hand, the Doones asked Norman what his new book was about. Norman smiled mysteriously and told them they would have to wait and see. And how, he had asked politely in return, did they like their new swimming pool?
“Very much,” Scotty said, rolling his rrrs. “Had some trouble the first few weeks, during the rains. Drain backed up or something.” Scotty shrugged. “But whatever it was, it went away.”
By September, Norman’s new book was finally finished. Jan cheered and Scotty pounded him on the back. To celebrate, they split a six pack of Coors while Norman explained the politics of publishing. Later, Scotty suggested they all go for a swim but Norman regretfully declined and then left. He still had some work to do, he said, on a pile of galleys e-mailed from his new big-name publisher.
Much to the Doones’ amazement—and to Norman’s as well—when the book was released it shot straight to the top of the New York Times Best Seller list. Five magazines battled for serialization. Three book clubs sued each other for exclusive rights. Reader’s Digest had already released a condensed, large print edition. And Norman was invited to every cocktail party and charity ball in Southwest Florida.
Soon after that, Norman Poder moved away. Months later the gossip columns had him living in France on a sleek new yacht.
Scotty and Jan couldn’t imagine that, not the Norman they knew. But they were happy for him, wherever he was, and they wished him well.
The Doones seldom thought about Clarissa. “I suppose they got a divorce,” said Jan. “Maybe so,” said Scotty. And that was the end of that.
Though not much of a novel reader himself, Scotty would glance at a book review every now and then. When he did, he thought of his old neighbor. One evening, while he was thumbing through a tattered copy of Newsweek after Jan had gone to bed, he was surprised to see a familiar face peering out at him.
The beard was new, the hair was longer, the face was fuller, but it was definitely Norman. The picture accompanied a review of his most recent best seller, the third one in two years.
Dated two weeks after the novel had been sold to the movies, this review was the most glowing one Scotty had ever read. Grinning with pride, he skimmed from line to line. “Great new talent . . . grippingly suspenseful . . . incredible authenticity . . . a crowning achievement.”
Then, as Scotty read on, the burgeoning pride he felt for his old neighbor suddenly drained away. In its place, an icy chill ran down his spine.
“With his latest Rocky Gibraltar mystery, The Deep Blue Pool,” the reviewer had written, “Norman Poder has finally established himself as a master of the crime-suspense genre. It is a good thing he has chosen writing as a profession. If he had chosen murder instead, our law enforcement officials would have their hands full indeed! Who but Poder could devise such an original method of disposing of a corpse—beneath a swimming pool, no less. Under eight feet of water and poured
cement . . .”
Scotty did not read the rest of the review. His hands felt cold as he went to the garage. After stuffing the magazine deep into a trash can he went back into the house and crawled into bed. When the sun came up he was still shivering.
It was a year before Scotty went swimming again.

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