Likes by Sarah Bynum (e novels to read online .TXT) 📗

a regular basis. In her clean car, in her damp gym clothes, she drives through the bright blue morning, feeling calm. She’s going to be right on time.

He tips back in his chair and looks at the whiteboard, where the story beats for Act One have been written in streaky black marker. They’re only two days in to breaking the Emmett Diggs episode. So far the formula has been consistent: 1960s bad guy commits heinous crimes, winds up in solitary at Attica, travels through a rift in the space-time continuum, and pops up in present-day upstate New York, where he continues his crime spree until he is tracked down and apprehended by a top-secret team of special agents. Which the network says they like; which has worked just fine until now; so why, on the first episode he’s been assigned to write, are they trying something different?

The backyard is a mess. Weeds up to his waist, cracked concrete. A tarp slung over a pile of stuff pushed up against the garage door. From the front, the house looked nice. Neat. Green lawn. Front door painted a glossy bright red. But back here it’s different. Flattened cardboard boxes, dusty grill. Plastic playhouse bleaching in the sun. Shrunken lumps of shit all over the dead grass. He hesitates, then thinks of the cars that pulled out of the driveway: a Prius, a Mini Cooper. There will definitely be Apple gear inside.

Episode 103, “Frankie Sutton”: a deadly bank robber returns from the past to take a half dozen hostages at gunpoint during a holdup of the First Niagara Bank. Episode 104, “Walter Buckley”: the notorious “Loose Cannon” bomber plants a pipe bomb in the Buffalo Field Office of the FBI. Episode 107, “Mark David Dixon”: a serial child murderer kidnaps Special Agent O’Hare’s nephew from a local playground and leaves the team a trail of taunting clues. And now Episode 110, “Emmett Diggs”: an innocent black man convicted for the grisly murder of his white fiancée emerges out of the ether and does what, exactly?

At the stop sign, she counts to five. She doesn’t want to get another ticket. And then waits a little more, because there’s Jessica, her neighbor, out walking Buster. She gives a tap on her horn and waves: Go ahead, cross the street. She isn’t in any hurry, and she’s preoccupied with a relaxing and anticipatory sort of arithmetic. How many more weeks before they can talk about getting some bids on the roof? Also, the kid needs a proper bookcase; the shelves in her room are starting to bow. The Voder-Smith family is ready to graduate from Swedish-designed particleboard! They’ll have to plan ahead for property taxes, due at the beginning of December, but if all goes as it should they won’t have to ask her mother for help this year. And if—is even to think it to jinx it? Her husband is superstitious about these things—if the show gets an order for nine more episodes, maybe they can finally tackle the backyard.

On one side of the board, possible backstories for Emmett Diggs: 1. Arthritic gardener’s son, recently home from the army; 2. Head chef in the kitchen of local country club; 3. Member of the maintenance staff at Miss So-and-So’s School. Behind each of these possibilities is the question: How does a black man in 1961 gain entry to the spaces where rich white girls live, so that he can fall in love with one, get secretly engaged, and then be accused of murder when she is found dead, raped and mutilated, on a golf course? Another question, asked only by the husband, and only in his head: How does a science-fiction guy end up writing racial melodrama? Also: How do I write this character without making him seem like all the other decent, long-suffering, wrongly accused black men who have shown up onscreen over the years?

Spit. Spraying across the glass. The barking sudden and loud. A black dog at the back door, lunging at him from the other side of the window in the door. It looks big, maybe seventy-five pounds. It looks from its light eyebrows as if it might have some Rottweiler mixed in. The door shakes when the dog launches itself, its nails scrabbling on the glass. Through the window, beyond the dog, he can see the washer and dryer, he can see sweatshirts and jackets hanging from hooks, cleaning supplies lined up along a shelf. Not too far from the back door to the shelf, the distance no more than the length of his arm, outstretched. And the dog, now that he’s had a minute to look at it? Not as big as its bark makes it sound.

We open on a couple, embracing in the dark. The grounds of a golf course roll away on all sides, the grass metallic in the moonlight. From nearby, the ticking of sprinklers and, farther off, mingled voices and the clink of silverware and glass, the warm commotion of a party. We push in on their faces, mouths locked, her skin almost ghostly against the darkness of his, his fingers black stripes moving through the pale waves of her hair. The kissing deepens, their bodies pressed close, she reaching up to slip from her shoulder the fragile strap of her dress, but with a single touch he stops her, his large hand over hers. Still kissing her, he cups her head lightly in his hands. Her eyes close; his open. A strangely empty gaze. In an instant his grip tightens, his arms contracting, a sudden twist. The sickening crack of bone. He’s broken her fucking neck! Off his glazed look we cut to titles. “Could that work?” Lenny, the story editor, glances hopefully from the showrunner to the husband to the other writers sitting loose-limbed around the table. “For the teaser?”

Only two blocks away from home, she feels her sense of well-being begin to sour around the edges.