Her Words Were Vivid ...

Gus Collins' Triple Fantasy

The Short Short Demise of Bill Morris ( or the untold widow )

By Gus Collins

“There's not a good opening line”, thought Bill. Three Chapters in, and still, not a single opening line to the story Gus said he was telling. For thirty years not one story from his stable was published without a strong opening line. This wouldn't do. Gus Collins was falling off, and something had to be done about it. “Writers”.

Six weeks had passed since the piece was published as an essay in the magazine. It was a promising essay. It looked like a good story. Something was not working. Maybe it was time to admit that Gus had passed his best days as an author. He probably didn't even notice the way that he threw off that line about the young murdered woman in Las Vegas, since she was 'inconsequential', according to the essay. That story wasn't big enough for Gus, and that was Bill's problem. Gus only wanted the big story, the grand characters who fit in ten thousand words, two thousand of them being worthwhile. “Writers”, thought Bill.

Bill Morris had lived in Los Angeles most of his adult life. When he wasn't there, and there were some good stretches when he was not, Los Angeles still had a certain power of intellectual attraction that kept him involved. He hated the pace of life. He hated the phony posturing for position and stature that was part of the business, but he didn't really know that until he had been gone for years and was called back, fully trained for his job and his life. Los Angeles is unlike any other media capital, because it is the entertainment capital. As much as Bill had tried to make a go of it elsewhere, the people in other cities just did not understand what being an entertainment capital entails. They made no connections between this and that, which bothered Bill almost enough to move back.

Leaving his downtown office, precisely at four thirty, Bill took the subway, like every work day. He had come to enjoy that Los Angeles had invested in a subway. It was under a mile from the Universal City station to his home, just off Lankershim Boulevard. It was like being back east, where walking was acceptable. He could read on the train which ran up under Hollywood and through the Cahuenga Pass, where traffic was always backed up at five o'clock.

Walking north from the station, just passing over the Los Angeles river, Bill was shot. It is unclear if he lived ten minutes or not another.