How to Develop Page 11

The Man, his Wife, his Mistress & his Lawyer

  A wife boasted at a party about her husband’s huge earnings. Unknown to the wife, her husband’s mistress was at the party and overheard her boast. Later, the husband assured the mistress he earned far less than his wife had made out. But his mistress was not convinced and reckoned he had been taking advantage of her easy-going nature. Unless he started spending some real money on her, she’d not only dump him but let his wife know what a cheapskate he’d been to her.

  Having no more money to spend on her, the man quickly fell into a state of despair.

  One night, on a barstool, he sobbed into his beer, “She wants me to spend more money on her, or she’ll tell the wife.”

  Beside him, a man leaned in close. “Bud, forgive me, I couldn’t help but overhear. The mistress causing you trouble, eh?”

  The man poured out his woes to his drinking companion.

  “Bud, I’m a lawyer. I’m here to help.”

  Liking the look of him, the husband left his troubles in his hands.

  The angry mistress disappeared completely from the husband’s life. He was over the moon until the lawyer’s bill arrived. His mistress would never have taken so much off him, not in ten years. A note with the bill read,

  Just a word of warning, bud! The last man who failed to pay my bill is still rotting in jail.

  PLAN A STORY

  If you want to enjoy the story’s surprises, read the story before this section.

  Later, we will see other ways of working with the fairy tale, but the short story will keep loyal to the tale’s plot and theme in order to show just how easily the tale can be revamped into a modern story and yet look completely fresh. Our biggest changes will be to deepen the character and strip away the obvious magic and enchantment. The time period of the story stretches over months but the story stays tight and focused just like in the fairy tale because we never lose sight of plot, and because plot and the other storytelling elements of character, POV and setting stay within the short story restrictions.

  Act 1

  Set-up

  Our modern setting is set mostly in the workplace. Diane, an IT employee, has just started at a new company.

  Inciting incident

  At a works party, Mike, her husband, boasts that Diane’s programming skills are far better than they actually are.

  Act 2

  Middle part

  Her boss gives her an assignment to do alone in a working week and emphasizes that she’ll never get beyond her probationary period if she fails at it. Diane discovers the assignment is entirely beyond her ability, and guesses this has to do with her husband Mike’s big mouth.

  She jumps at a single loud knock on the door. Enter Dominic, a small, wiry, odd man with huge hands who boasts of his programming skills and offers to do the work for her, and wants her wristwatch for his trouble. Diane knows his type and figures he can do it. After a minor protest over the watch, she gives in. She needs this job to pay the bills and Mike’s out of work. Dominic gets the work done on time and she gives him another lookalike wristwatch while keeping her own at home.

  The boss is pleased with the results of the assignment and gives Diane an even tougher one, to be done alone and in only a week, subtly repeating her threat about failure. In her own office, Diane gets a single knock on the door, and Dominic enters. He’ll do the work again but this time wants her locket. But it was her grandmother’s with her grandparents’ photo still inside. She refuses to let him have it. He insists and says he wants it now, hinting that he knows he didn’t get her actual watch last time. She protests, stating its sentimental value. But that’s why Dominic wants it. There’s the mortgage payment and her car insurance due. Without a successful completion of this project, she’ll never make it beyond her probationary period. She figures this little creep will soon tire of the locket and she’ll get it back for a payment. In the end, she gives him the locket. Why does he want it, anyway? What’s his weird game?

  Her boss, pleased with this second piece of work, gives her an even bigger and tougher assignment. Her threats are repeated but this time she promises Diane will have her job if she succeeds at her task, as the boss is moving up the ladder. Back in her office, Diane sits and waits for a single knock on the door. Dominic enters and tells her that if he does this third job she’ll become a senior manager. Diane brushes off the idea, believing only that she’ll keep her job if she gets it done. Diane has two photographs on her desk, one of her husband and one of her eighteen-year-old cat. Dominic tells her he’ll do the work and ask nothing for it unless she gets the promotion but then he wants her cat.

  She flat out refuses to agree to such a thing. Why would Dominic want it, anyway? He wants the cat because she has placed great value on it and he wants to own something of great value to another human being. She wonders if Dominic is just whacko or playing his own esoteric game with her. But Diane is over a barrel on this one. In the end, she agrees to his request because she thinks she’ll not get her boss’s job but will just manage to keep her own if the work is done successfully.

  High point

  Six weeks on, Diane’s boss has her promotion and Diane has her boss’s old job.

  Low points

  When Dominic appears with a single loud knock on her door, Diane remembers her promise. She begs him to leave her the cat; she sobs. Dominic gives her nine days to guess his nickname from schooldays. She agrees, having no choice. Dominic says he’ll hurt her here in the company, that he has contacts high up, if she reneges on this deal.

  Diane figures Dominic would have been one of those small, skinny, brainy kids the popular kids ignore except to mock. She researches some names. On the third day, Dominic laughs off her attempts to guess his name. She hires a private detective to look into his background. The detective reports that Dominic was very bright at school and that the class bully always gave Dominic a wide berth. On the sixth day, she gives Dominic her other guesses and gets them all wrong.

  The day before her final chance at guessing, her husband Mike went to her office to find her but she wasn’t there. He went to a pub near her office on the way home. He tells her what he saw there. A small fellow is sniggering away to himself, saying mockingly, ‘She’ll never get it!’ A big fellow nearby tells him to shut up. Soon, they get into a fight. The little fellow throws a single punch and floors the big fellow. Diane is hardly listening; her old cat is occupying most of her attention.

  Her husband adds that afterward the little fellow faced the bar and rapped on the counter once, saying, ‘I’m still…’ something or other. He couldn’t make out what else the little man said.

  Darkest moment

  Late the next afternoon, she hears a single hard knock on the door. Dominic enters. It’s almost half five and she must make the right guess by then or else... She makes some guesses, he laughs them off. Five minutes until the deadline. She makes more guesses, he laughs louder. Give in now? About to nod yes, she gets an e-mail from the private detective.

  Climax

  The e-mail reads: Dominic was a featherweight champion boxer in his youth.

  Diane’s mind switches gear. Her husbands’ story shoots into her mind. The pub is near the office. The little man was sniggering and saying, ‘She’ll never get it!’ and then he punched down the bigger man.

  Her gaze falls on Dominic’s huge bony hands. The class bully had avoided him at school. She’d got everything the wrong way round about him. Dominic had never been a geeky weakling. Her name guessing was all wrong. She glances at the clock. Ninety seconds to go. She makes “puncher” as a guess and a blush spreads on his cheeks. She’s on the right track. What else had Mike said? The little man had rapped the counter once and said, ‘I’m still…’ and Mike had said, ‘something or other’. Had he said his nickname? She makes some more guesses. Dominic shakes his head, but he’s not laughing. Any special reason why he rapped once on the counter? Wait! Dominic always knocked once on her door before entering. Once. One rap. O
ne knock. It was like his signature. Twenty-five seconds to go.

  One knock. A … “Single knock,” she says out loud.

  She would hardly have even been aware of saying it out loud, except Dominic’s cheeks unexpectedly drain of colour.

  Seeing the deadline running out of its last few seconds, she cries out, “Single Knock!”

  She gets it right.

  Resolution

  Dominic tells her she’s a worthy opponent. Would you really have taken my cat? she wants to know. You’ll never know now, he tells her. But the following day she gets her locket back.

  THE STORY

  Single Knock at the Door

  Part 1

  Two weeks into her new IT job, Diane and her husband Mike were invited to a works party. There, amongst the flowing wine and savoury nibbles, Mike blurted out, “Diane has great programming skills.”

  Diane closed her eyes.

  When he bragged, “She can develop a financial software package for a medium-sized company in a week,” her eyelids snapped open.

  “In a week?” someone gasped.

  “She’s a real whizz kid,” he grinned.

  Though Diane never stopped smiling at the party, you could have fried an egg off her face.

  *

  Monday morning, she was sitting the other side of her boss’s desk.

  Her boss’s bloodless lips wore a razor-thin smile. “Here’s a project I want you to do alone.” She handed Diane a folder. “You’ve got till Friday to complete it.” Her voice lowered to a warning note. “I’m on your side, Diane. It’s us women against the boys. But don’t forget the world of programming is highly competitive, and you’re on a three-month probationary period!”

  Diane nodded slowly.

  Her boss continued, “You have no idea what it’s like being a female senior manager in this company.” She made a long sigh, cutting it dead with two words of dismissal, “Good luck.”

  Back in her office, as Diane read through the folder, her hands began trembling. Finally, she dropped the folder on her desk.

  Oh, God! This had to do with Mike’s big mouth. She pulled at her hair with both hands and screamed silently. Why couldn’t he have kept his big mouth shut? He’d handed her boss a whip with which to flay her back. This project was a task for five highly skilled and experienced programmers working flat out for a month.

  In her hands were strands of her hair.

  She jumped at the sound of a single loud knock on the door.

  She dropped her loose strands of hair into the wastepaper basket, straightened herself and said, “Come in!”

  A man entered and closed the door quietly behind him. He stood with his feet apart and his arms hanging loosely by his sides. He wore a blue open-necked shirt, faded jeans and scuffed brown shoes. She’d never seen him before but guessed he was an experienced programmer though one with no seniority. What told her this was his casual, almost scruffy appearance, his slight air of petulance strangely mixed with a relaxed, confident pose, and a stare that suggested he’d never seen a woman before. He had big, deep-set, mischievous eyes that shone like dark jewels. He was five four or five, wiry of build, pale faced and wide jawed. And though his stare was boyish, the lines on his brow and outer edges of his eyes placed him in his mid-thirties.

  “Can I help you?” she asked.

  His voice was soft, “No. But I’ll bet I can help you.” He stepped forward, his eyes glowing with some secret desire, making her shift uneasily on her seat. “I know you can’t do it,” he said without preamble, and pointed at the folder on her desk. “She likes to test everyone. She likes to find out their strengths and weaknesses.”

  Diane’s brow wrinkled. “I haven’t the foggiest idea what you’re on about, Mr…?” she said sharply.

  “Call me Dominic. Like most bosses, it’s all about her.”

  Who was this little man and what did he want with her?

  Scepticism rose in Diane’s tone, “Is it?”

  “Can you do it then?” he teased her.

  “Look, I don’t know who you are, but I’ve got work to do.”

  “I told you who I am. Now I’ll tell you what I am. I’m the one behind the scenes; the one who keeps the software behind the software side of this place going.” He pointed to the folder again. “I can do that for you this week.” Her neck stiffened as she glanced at the folder. “I used to write those in my sleep,” he added. “She’ll never know it was me. I’ve helped loads of people and no one ever found out.”

  Diane had worked in IT for eight years so knew the main types in this game. She could quickly get a feel for the posers as well as the doers. This Dominic seemed like a doer. But why would he help her?

  Her voice dropped low, “Why would you help me? What do you want?”

  His dark jewel-like eyes were staring at her wrist. She touched it, felt her wristwatch.

  Dominic said, “I want it.”

  She protested, “My father gave me this for my twenty-first.” What on earth did he want with a woman’s wristwatch? “What about some money?”

  He shook his head. “I want the watch.”

  She sucked in a sharp breath. “I could buy you a man’s wristwatch.”

  He shook his head.

  Diane believed in hard honest work, but she was no fool. This folder was beyond her and she knew she’d never get beyond her probationary period if she didn’t get it done. Mike had recently been laid off from his job in a shrinking jobs market, but the bills still kept coming. She felt like a drowning woman, ready to grasp at any helping hand.

  “The work must be done by Friday afternoon.”

  “No problem. Then you give me the watch?”

  Why did he want her old wristwatch? For his girlfriend?

  She nodded. While handing him the folder, she noticed this small wiry man had huge bony hands.

  Once he’d gone, she felt helpless. What to do until Friday afternoon? She looked down at her well-kept nails. Start biting?

  *

  Friday afternoon, Diane’s boss was testing the new software that Dominic had developed and brought to Diane’s office earlier. Diane’s wrist was bare where she usually wore her wristwatch. But the wristwatch she had given Dominic was a lookalike. Her own was safely at home.

  Her boss looked up from the computer screen. “I knew you’d do it, Diane. I’ve been singing your praises to the higher-ups all week. You’d have made me look a proper fool if you’d let me down. Now I can breathe a sigh of relief.”

  Diane glanced at her chewed nails. They could both breathe a sigh of relief.

  “Now let’s show the higher-ups what we’re really capable of.” Her boss handed her another folder. “You’ve got one week for this one, too. We play for high stakes against the boys, indeed we do. But when we succeed the rewards are fantastic.”

  The folder felt like a red hot coal in Diane’s hands.

  “Until next Friday afternoon,” her boss said by way of dismissal. As Diane moved to the door, her boss added in a meaningful way, “Don’t let me down on this one, Diane!”

  Back in her office, Diane read through the folder and concluded that it was tougher than the last. She grabbed a strand of hair and twisted it round her finger. It came right out by its roots. She looked at it with tears in her eyes.

  A single knock shook the door, making her start. “Come in!”

  Dominic entered and straightaway said, “Tougher one, eh? Those with the whip hand will keep cracking it harder until they discover your final load. It’s just human nature.” He sighed with impatience, and boasted, “I can do the project standing on my head.”

  Diane merely asked, “What do you want this time?”

  His deep-set eyes focused on the locket hanging round her neck.

  “No, no. Not this.” She grabbed it defensively. “It was my grandmother’s. My grandparents’ photo is still inside. You can’t have this.”

  A little smile played on his mouth. “I want it.”

  She
took a deep breath. “Okay.”

  “I want it now.”

  She swallowed hard. Had he guessed about the wristwatch?

  “The locket really really really is of great sentimental value to me.”

  His jewel-like eyes shone with mischief. “That’s why I want it.”

  The mortgage payment had to be made and her car insurance was due next week. If she didn’t do this project, just as with the last, she’d never make it beyond the end of her probationary period, and finding another job would be hard with a recession deepening. If she gave him the locket, he’d tire of it quickly and then she’d offer him money for it back. But why did he want it, anyway? What was this weird game he was playing?

  She removed it from around her neck, and watched in despair as his huge bony hand grabbed up the locket like some creepy beast swallowing up her precious memories.

  *

  Her boss had her eyes fixed on her computer screen. “Diane, you’re a dream of a developer. This work is fantastic. You, I can trust to get the work done. But the others...” Her boss rolled up her eyes to show how ‘the others’ really were a lost cause. “Fortunately, if all goes well, I’ll soon be moving up the ladder so won’t have to contend with them any longer.” She looked up from the screen. “Look, Diane, you can be going places, too, and quicker than you might think.” She handed over another folder. “Get this one done by the end of next Friday and you’ll be doing my job in a few months. I guarantee it. On the other hand …” The light gleaming from her boss’s eyes looked suddenly cold, finishing the sentence for her.

  Back in her office, Diane never even bothered to look at this new folder. She simply sat and waited for the single knock on the door.

  When it came, she said, “Come in!”

  Dominic entered.

  “I can’t think what I could give you this time,” she said.