Day 5

I read somewhere that it takes 66 days to form a new habit. In the interest of getting into the habit of blogging regularly, I plan to publish one post a day for the next 66 days, finishing up on October 13, 2020. Content-wise, each day's post can include anything that crosses my mind and that I hope will spark something in yours, whether poetry, prose, art, or the occasional rant. Here's to 66 days of finding something to say :)

For Day 5, I'm straying from the pattern thus far of posting poetry. Today's entry is a 400ish-word fragment from a current WIP, The Lockbeam Society. I love this scene (and not just because I wrote it) because it introduces us to Ness Lockbeam, the main character, indirectly, through Lockbeam's initial impressions of another character, Argo Kane. The perspective is limited, the dialogue is scarce, and the impression left on the reader is ambiguous. It's the kind of beginning that needs another fifty pages to develop into the start of significant plot action, but I venture to say it might just succeed in keeping a reader's attention for that long. (Note: I do plan to edit it to replace more of Lockbeam's mental narration with spoken dialogue between the two characters.)

The Lockbeam Society

I: Enter Argo

            Argo Kane was the name he gave. He’d used it for a while and he liked the sound of it. The fact that the name was not, in any legal or technical sense, his real one, had ceased to bother him long ago.

            Ness Lockbeam had asked for his name, not that he had needed it. No, Lockbeam made it a policy to create files beforehand for each man he interviewed for the job. These he would rifle through as they had their little back-and-forth, looking up to reward the anxious young man with an occasional second of eye contact here and there. Fiddling with the files made him look disinterested and in control of the situation. And it kept him from being bored. Bored of the same rambling prattle from the same empty-headed young fools who applied at the Lockbeam Agency day after day. Bored of the humdrum routine of pretending to listen to them flounder for a few minutes before dismissing them with a practiced smile and a “We’ll keep in touch”. He never followed up with any of them.

But Lockbeam hadn’t glanced down at Argo’s file even once, and it had been at least ten minutes since Argo had walked in.

He looked Argo in the eye instead, inventing questions whenever there was a lull in the interview without listening to the answers. He inventoried Argo’s features in his head as if checking off a mental list: roughly-falling brown hair, dark eyes, wide cheekbones, slight underbite, average height and a frankly unimpressive physique. You could pass a hundred men like him in the street every day without giving any of them a second glance.

Lockbeam decided right then that Argo was the man for the job. But of course, he wouldn’t settle it with him right then and there. He never did this kind of thing in a hurry.

Rising to his feet, he offered his hand with a practiced smile.

 “We’ll keep in touch, Mr. Kane.”

Argo nodded, shook the offered hand, and turned and walked out the door, closing it softly behind him.

Alone again, Lockbeam glanced at the file sitting on his desk and flashed it quite a different smile, grim and narrow-eyed. Had he been the cartoon villain of a children’s book, he would have rubbed his hands together and cackled. Finally. 

 

 

Till tomorrow,

Clara