April: A Love Story

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Published by Coscom Entertainment at Smashwords.com

This book is also available as a paperback at your favorite online retailer or through your local bookstore.

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

ISBN 978-0-9734848-3-0

April

Copyright © 2004 by Peter Fox. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce in whole or in part in any form or medium.

Published by Coscom Entertainment: www.coscomentertainment.com

Cover art and design by A.P. Fuchs

www.canisterx.com.com

Edited by Rick Mohr

Text set in Garamond

First Printing September 2004

eBook Edition

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To Ric, for always believing.

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APRIL

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First

She was the worst girl I could have fallen in love with. But she was also the best girl. Perhaps the only girl.

It’s funny now as I think back to her. It’s as if I’ve fallen into something, something I wasn’t ready for, but found nonetheless. And if April were here right now she would say, Don’t worry, Joseph, shadows come, but they can only stretch just so far behind you. And if you try, for a brief moment, you can walk on past them. And she would be right. If I tried, I probably could step on past them. The question is: would I want to? Especially after her? Probably not.

I always thought my life would pan out just like my father’s. It would be the regular deal of graduating from high school, go to a college or university, and meet that one special someone shortly afterward. And from there life would go on the same way you see your friends’ lives go on, or your neighbours’, or relatives’; marriage, kids, retirement. You know, the basics.

There are different types of people. You see them all the time and, I suppose, that’s what makes this world a great place to live. So many people. So many stories. So many things that could go wrong but make us stronger.

Walking around downtown, mostly in the Exchange District—the old part of Winnipeg; old buildings, old streets—I catch myself thinking about those things, catch myself taking in the people I pass and wonder what it’s like for them afterwards, after they go home from work that day. You know, what kind of person is at home waiting for them. A guy, a girl, a dog or cat, or even if they have someone to go home to at all.

We’re all different, but there is a so-called norm. And, like I said, I thought that my life would be a lot like my dad’s. I thought I’d know what I wanted to do with myself after graduation. I really thought I’d get somewhere. But I didn’t. Not really. April told me that was okay. She said that she admired me for what I was doing with my life; I write comic books. I have an apartment, I pay bills, I do it all just like everybody else. So what’s missing, right? I didn’t know the answer to that until this weekend. Then I knew the answer was that I didn’t have April. She was the kind of girl that just got to you the way people sometimes do.

The way I see it, there are a few types of people you will meet throughout your life, with two, to me, being the most important. There are the ones that you’ll accept for who they are and how they live their lives. And then there’s the kind that get to you, the ones where, when you sit back and look at them, you can’t help but wonder what it would be like to be them. They have a certain way of doing things, certain habits, certain ways that they say their words or, in April’s case, slur their words together as if she was afraid she couldn’t say all she had to say unless she rushed her words out all at once.

I wanted to know what it was like to be April. I even told her that once. She said that I didn’t want to be her. She said that I wouldn’t like it because sometimes it was really hard.

Yeah, she was one of those two types of people. The better type. The kind that got to you.

I guess it would be better if I started from Friday and went from there. Now that I think about it, I’ll never have another Friday like it. But what days, really, do we have that stick out in memory that we can truly have again? Not many, and the ones that we do have again, we usually don’t notice. Those ones are few and far between. But Friday? Never again. And that’s okay, because it was one of the best days of my life.

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Friday

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One

When I woke up, I glanced at the clock next to my bed and saw that it was just past eleven. I normally get up around then. For me, that’s late enough. I don’t sleep well at night. Most of the time I get to bed around seven that morning, when most people are getting up for their day.

I have a balcony that runs off my small downtown apartment. It’s old and black and creaks when you walk on it. It’s nice there in the morning. Pleasant. Before bed I usually lean my forearms against the railing and stare down into the alley that my second floor apartment overlooks. It helps my mind slow down after writing the night before. I usually write from around four in the morning until seven or so. The actual writing of a comic book doesn’t take long, but it’s the distractions that stretch the process longer than it should be. I could probably bang off a twenty-two-page issue in a couple of days. Instead it takes me a couple of weeks because I spend too much time surfing the Internet while I write. And some nights the story doesn’t come at all. I go out onto my balcony on these nights, too, but instead of looking down into the alley, I look up. It’s on nights like those that I fully appreciate the Canadian night. There always seems to be the right mixture of clear sky and black clouds, especially around five in the morning when the quiet of night is dying off and the birds start to wake, and the paperboys come out and the guys who deliver milk make their runs.

I rolled out of bed, literally, to the floor onto a blanket I keep beside my bed. I find I wake up better this way. I’m tired but not tired enough to sleep. Hitting the blanket on the floor reminds me that I can still be comfortable lying there, but I wouldn’t be comfortable enough to stay there and I’ll have to get up if I’m to avoid a sore back, sometimes a headache.

I got up, went to the bathroom, and then to the kitchen across from it. I keep my laptop set up on the kitchen table. My little writing station. I figure, why not? I live alone and I don’t have many friends. And when I do have a friend over, it’s not for dinner. We usually just sit in my living room and watch TV or talk. A kitchen is as good a place as any.

I set the kettle on the stove, which is a part of the counter unit across from the table, to boil. After prepping my mug with coffee, milk and sugar, I went to my laptop and let my water heat up. I woke up my computer by moving the mouse, in turn turning off the Batman screen-saver that I downloaded over a year ago.

When I get up, I pour over the few pages that I wrote the night before while the story is still fresh in my head, just in case there’s something I need to add or fix, and correct any mistakes that I might pick up on. I check my e-mail, some of it fan-mail that people have sent me through my webpage, some forwarded from my publisher, Fantastic Stories, through the letter column that is at the end of the comic book I write, Cosmic Kid.

As a part of my small pay I get distributors copies. I’ll keep one for myself, never reading the comic itself. Why should I? I wrote it, right? I know what happens. I get to see the artist’s pencils and inks before the book goes to press, so I don’t miss out on the art. The guy I collaborate with is a freelance artist who works out of New York. We chat on MSN once in a while, always business, and talk about a question he has about the script I e-mailed him, or I’ll contact him to add more detail to a panel I described, something to enhance the story.

The comic book industry is funny. Especially when it comes to the writing. Publisher’s say they put so much stock in it and they always describe the writer’s scripts as amazing. Let me let you in on something—they’re not. A comic book page is basically laid out like this—book title and page number at the top, description of the first panel, character dialogue, description of the second panel, character dialogue, description of the third panel, character dialogue, and so on. The only trick in comic book writing, aside from having an interesting story, is the pacing of the story. The art does the rest since it’s such a visual medium. The only thing, I suppose, that transforms a no-brainer script into a work of art is what the writer puts in the panel descriptions. I’m not talking about Joe crosses the street or a stupid description like that, but rather what message or mood the writer is intending to portray within each panel. I’m talking about the little things he’ll ask the penciler to put in the background, things that tell a story of their own. Anyway, I won’t mention much more or I might step on someone’s ego.

Only a couple of e-mails came in from my fans that morning. I didn’t bother reading them since there were only a few and I could always wait until Saturday or after the weekend, when there’s a bit more to go through.

My water boiled, I poured my coffee, and then retreated to my living room where I watched TV until around noon. There’s not much for daytime television so I usually watch a couple reruns of Seinfeld I had taped from the night before or watch the week’s episode of Smallville again.

Fridays, for most people, is the greatest day of the week. It’s their last day of work and the weekend is right around the corner. They’ll go out drinking Friday night, sleep it off Saturday, drink again Saturday night, and sleep away Saturday’s hangover on Sunday. For me, it’s Friday every day. I work when I want to and how I want to. No routine. Well, not really. There have been times where I’ll sit at the computer for several hours, completely dedicated to writing an entire comic, and then not work for three weeks.

Fantastic Stories is a small press, so during those weeks that I’m not really working, though a writer’s mind is loud and ideas are always coming (my room is hidden under a blanket of scrap paper and half-started ideas), I might get a call from my editor and he’ll tell me that I should stay in that afternoon or evening because he, myself, and a few other writers and artists will partake in a conference call to discuss a project, or the crossing over of characters from one series to the next. I like those calls. I usually just sit on my couch and listen, flipping through a Maxim or watch TV with the volume on low, while the other guys go on and on about their ideas. I only speak when spoken to or if I need to express an idea that I think is so great that I just have to share it with everyone else.

My comic book work is just an in the meantime thing. My ultimate goal is to write a novel. At least one. I just have an idea for one right now but I’m sure more will come if I could just finish this first one. It’s a hard-boiled