Can you guess who?

by Antonios Maltezos

Let’s play a game.

I wrote a story after watching a fascinating documentary of a famous American. Can you guess who it was? Btw… not such a good idea writing fiction about real people everyone knows. This was maybe six months ago, and I have no plans to ever try and get this published. Here are the first three paragraphs:



I stabbed the front page of last Saturday’s paper using my sharpened pencil, five times, my eyes closed; not at all worried the lead might go through the extra week-end sections and mar the lovely surface of Joyce’s dining table. Had I hurt the table I’d have blamed one of our five children, Joyce herself for encouraging their silly stick figure drawings, for correcting their spelling mistakes, unforgivable to my eyes, the illegible script barely contained within the little dialogue balloons she carefully outlines for them using the bottom of a pot of school glue.

I hold the newspaper up to the early morning light, my eyes skimming over the newsprint looking for the pockmarks I’d made. I’d picked off five words; six if the tiny pig’s tail of a stab wound was really a comet spiralling out of control joining the words senate and house.

But the children were still in my head, Joyce with her my, won’t your father be proud, her voice a steady giggle encouraging Charles Jr. to forgo the color crayons for a 2b pencil, showing him how to draw a boy’s head using a nickel. “Like this,” I’d heard her say. “I’m pretty darn sure it’s how your father does it.”