the next “great american novel” set in prescott
hey guys! my professor at YCC thinks i’m
sensitive to feedback, so i decided i will post my writing in reddit to desensitize myself. please be kind, but direct. i am hoping people like chapter 1 of my novel so much that they’ll ask me to continue posting as i write chapter 2, 3, and beyond. to be honest, a lot of my writing has been inspired by the prescott reddit page. let me know what you like and don’t like!
chapter one: the architecture of bread
“Bread,” I said, “is basically the Legos of food.”
Francine looked at me.
I waited.
I wasn’t waiting for her to respond. I was waiting because I had learned from The Good Man Project that a thought, when delivered with poetic conviction and a furrowed brow, required a certain amount of…negative space around it. Like a fine wine that needs to breathe. I didn’t want her to simply chug my idea. I wanted her to taste it.
Outside, Prescott was becoming evening.
Tuesday evening.
There was something particular about Tuesday. Monday still carried the administrative humdrums of the weekend’s negligence, while Wednesday had already begun leaning toward Thursday, which was essentially Friday in a town like Prescott. But Tuesday has a different temporal quality than Monday.
Tuesday evening belonged to people who were willing to admit they had nowhere else to be. No family to sit down for dinner with.
I took a sip of my coffee.
It was an oat milk cortado, though I had briefly considered ordering drip coffee because drip coffee would last longer as a prop in my hand. In the end, I decided an oat milk cortado, though fleeting, had a certain level of sophistication to it.
“Think about it,” I said.
Francine continued looking at me. I could tell she needed help tasting all the notes.
“Bread is modular.”
I glanced toward the front window of Cove Cafe, where a man in a faded trucker hat was carrying a pastry to a table by himself.
“You can put almost anything on bread. Meat. Cheese. Vegetables. Other bread.”
I paused and nearly chuckled. That last addition “other bread” was a joke, after all. A last minute addition to my go-to script.
“That’s the genius of it. Bread that is.”
Francine smiled politely.
I knew she understood, at least to the extend she was capable of.
Or rather, at least I knew she understood that I understood something.
I touched the edge of my Boy Scout vest.
To be clear, I’m a grown adult man. I wasn’t technically a Boy Scout anymore. I had bought the vest at an antique store in Flagstaff because it felt important to reclaim certain artifacts of an American childhood I might have had, and place them into a contemporary context. I had removed two of the original patches and replaced them with a small embroidered mushroom and a vintage-looking American flag. Something for everyone. Choose your own adventure. My vest served as a reliable conversation starter.
The vest was olive green.
It looked good against my denim button-up.
I had dressed deliberately tonight.
The jeans were straight-legged but not too straight-legged. My boots were technically work boots, although I had never done meaningful work in them, unless exploring the dark alleys of my mind counts as meaningful work.
My hair was longer on top and fell naturally toward the right side of my face, which is actually the left side of my face. I routinely flick my head to get my hair out of my eyes.
I had been growing it out for six months.
There was a discipline to this kind of thing. Like there was discipline to how I put muscle onto my otherwise too skinny frame.
People think style is about appearance. It isn’t. Style is about refusing to appear as though you had made a decision. Much like the best storytellers don’t come across rehearsed.
I took another sip of my drink.
“So bread is like Legos,” Francine said.
“Yes.”
She looked at her phone. I had to reign her back in.
“Except,” I continued, “Legos are designed to connect with other Legos.”
She looked up.
“And bread is designed to connect with everything.”
There it was.
The silence.
I felt it land between us.
Outside, the mountains were also darkening.
The Dells were probably beautiful right now.
Everything in Prescott was beautiful right now if you looked at it correctly. Gave it a chance.
That was the problem with beauty. It had become so available that people had stopped seeing it. Much like the single men in town.
I looked down at my coffee.
The foam had collapsed into itself.
I had always admired things that could do that.
Collapse without becoming nothing.
That, I thought, was what adulthood was.
The front door opened.
A woman in Lululemon leggings walked into Cove Cafe carrying a Owala tumbler. Her hair in a wild bun.
She was probably here for Singles Night too.
It was Tuesday, after all.
I flicked my hair once again, and casually leaned back in my chair as if I didn’t immediately notice her.