Merriton

“I got a visit from one of Roscoe’s rangers last week.”

Kit Kat was at Dora’s house, watching her paint. Dora answered, “That must be Samson. We’re sure glad he moved here. He’s the best winter ranger we’ve ever had. Did he tell you about the avalanche?”

Kit Kat watched the vibrant colors on the canvas slowly turn into a landscape of fall trees and tentative patches of snow. She replied, “No, he just babbled about John Sebastian having dibs on me like I was the shotgun seat on a pickup. Then he said something about dating my sister and warned me AGAIN about the Bowen House.”

She listened to the sound of Dora’s palette knife cutting into the canvas, creating the illusion of a forest of trees in the distant background. Her hand became still and she responded, “I’m glad you’re back, but I sure wish you hadn’t bought that house.” Kit Kat sighed, “I KNOW, I KNOW! It’s cursed! I signed at least five different legal documents acknowledging that fact.”

Her stomach rumbled and she panicked at the thought of having to use Dora’s bathroom. She couldn’t control how sudden or how violent her bowels would release and she dreaded having to ask her old friend where she stored her toilet cleanser so she could clean up whatever mess her body made. Fortunately, Dora was busy adding moss to the north side of the tree trunks and was completely unaware of Kit Kat’s stomach distress.

The scratching on the canvas stopped and Dora asked, “So what’s it like to able to make a living writing? Is it hard to keep coming up with new ideas?” Kit Kat clenched her jaw at the bloated pain in her abdomen. “Maybe being a real writer is hard, but what I do is so formulaic that the books practically write themselves.” Dora nodded. “Sometimes paintings are like that. Just ‘cause it’s easy doesn’t make it any less a painting, though. The books that are easy to write are worth just as much as the ones that were hard. Your readers can’t tell.”

Kit Kat shook her head. “I can tell. I wouldn’t be so bothered if the stories weren’t always so similar. My publisher wants every book to have three elements over and over and I’m getting kind of sick of them.” Dora’s hand hovered over the dusty pathway that she had sent winding behind the trees. “Three elements? Like what? I’ve read every one of your books and they’re always different.”

Kit Kat focused on Dora’s still brush. Should she tell her? If she did, her novels would be ruined for Dora. She hesitated, unwilling to pull the curtain away, but her best friend waited for her patiently. Her stomach growled in protest and she spoke to hide the noise of it, “Well, every story starts with an estranged couple that is reunited, stronger than ever in the end.”

Dora put the wooden end of her brush in her mouth and shook her head, so Kit Kat elaborated. “They’re usually not the main characters, although, at times, one of the people in the couple may be a love interest for the main character. “Dora removed the brush from her mouth. “Like in the Duke of Windsor’s Inheritance?” Kit Kat struggled to remember that one. They were all the same in her mind. Dora continued, “Lady Anne’s husband was lost in the war, but he returned to her, broken and disturbed right before her marriage to the Duke?”

Kit Kat laughed, “Yes! That’s it. I had forgotten that one.” Dora put down her brush and clapped her hands. “Oh! Tell me more!” Rather than ruining the stories for her friend, Kit Kat had added an element of a puzzle to them. “Well, the second rule is that there is always someone who has fallen away from the faith…” Dora interrupted, “Like Phineas in The Clarity of Spirit and Miss Saunders in The Stained Petticoats of Eliza Smith.” Dora quieted and Kit Kat continued, “They always return to the faith with renewed vigor.” Dora nodded, “Yes, especially Vicar Marr.”

Kit Kat smiled to herself. She had loved torturing Vicar Marr with a dark night of the soul. Dora lifted her brush to paint again, picking out stones along the dusty pathway and listing every character Kit Kat had given the freedom from faith only to rip it away from them before the book ended.

“Oh, and every one of your heroines is courted by two men. One of them is honorable and the other is a rogue.” Kit Kat felt her intestines clench with pain. “Yeah, that’s the third rule. Just once I’d love to write a novel for them that breaks all those rules. Sometimes couples break up for a good reason.”

She remembered the years of misery that Dave had inflicted upon her. He had never been vicious, yet he always implied that something was missing in his life because of her. She cringed at the stench of a silent fart and wondered whether she should just go home now to avoid having to use Dora’s bathroom and embarrassing herself further.

Her friend was happily tapping little flowers and weeds along the edge of the pathway, creating a gardener’s nightmare, but a very realistic wildness. “No one wants to read a romance novel without a romance. What you should do is write an Atheist Historical Romance Novel that follows the same rules, but considers Atheism a religion. That’s what you should write.”

“Dora,” Kit Kat laughed, “That’s just a normal Historical Romance Novel. MOST romance novels have no reference to God.” Dora smiled, adding more and more dandelions at the edge of the pathway until they spilled right off the canvas. “I guess you’re right. You’re so lucky that you can make a living doing what you love. I wish I could do that.”

Kit Kat sat transfixed at Dora’s painting. “Don’t you love teaching?” Dora added power lines running along the edge of the pathway. “I’m good at it, but I don’t really love it. I’ve always wanted to be an artist, but I always assumed that I couldn’t make a living at it, so I got a teaching degree as well so I could have something to fall back on. The only problem is that I spend so much time working on lesson plans that I don’t get to paint very often.”

From the delicate wires, Dora started painting tiny additions, decreasing in size up the mountain. In a flash, Kit Kat realized that she hadn’t been painting power lines. She had been adding a ski lift. Junco! Dora had been painting the bunny run at Junco Resort in the fall! Kit Kat instantly recognized the run that the two of them had seen their entire lives growing up on the mountain. No wonder the landscape had seemed so familiar!

Kit Kat marveled at Dora’s talent and languished over the feeling of never truly creating a novel as lifelike as that very painting.