The two opposing powers were already bitter over each other’s failures in the Third Anglo-Dutch War and even during the war, both were distrustful of each other. Even though both hoped to create a Dutch puppet state, using the enormous Dutch mercantile assets to gain world trade dominance, each expected that any moment the Dutch might surrender to either one of them, but greatly feared they wouldn't be the main beneficiary. This suspicion led to the defeat at the battle of Schooneveld and the battle of Texel, which if won, would have successfully invaded the Netherlands, forcing peace. Once former allies through the secret Treaty of Dover, they both found themselves now enemies. The Royal Navy was still licking its wounds dealt by the Dutch, but was ready to go back to war against the hated French.
“Ugh…”
Robert Barnes ripped out the paper out of the typewriter and crumpled it, and threw it into a wastebasket a few feet away and promptly missed, the wad of paper hitting the rim and bouncing back onto the floor. He spinned in a circle in his chair and stopped facing the window with a view of the Boston skyline. He turned back to his desk and leaned back, making the leather crack.
“Arg…” he groaned under his breath.
His secretary’s head peered in from the door in a way that her hair fell at an angle.
“Something wrong honey?” she inquired.
He sat straight and eventually leaned forward to his desk.
“Oh, nothing is wrong Molly. It’s just this book…it was interesting in the beginning but now I just lost all interest…Plus Jake wants a draft of at least 50 pages on his desk in New York by tomorrow. I barely have 10. Plus, this doesn’t have the feel of a good book. I mean its just facts! Why must history be so...boring?”
He groaned again before covering his face with his hands. By now, Molly had stepped into his office and sat in front of him in a chair.
“Yeah, publishers can be that way but you know…they’re only publishers because they aren’t cut out to be authors. I mean come on! Being a publisher…” she laughed, “Why be a publisher when you can be an author and write works of art? Why be a critic of the art when you can make the art? Right? Plus I think he’s a bit uptight about being a publisher...Who cares about the publisher? What readers care about is the writer. It’s the writer’s name that is on the cover of the book, not the publisher. Lets see him write a book. Just keep going with this. If not, you can always scrap it and write another book. Go back to writing fiction. I loved your first book, 99 Days in New England. Was kind of sad to see Albert die after expecting him to escape his debtors but…”
Robert peeked out from the gap between his hands. Soon, he pulled them away and gripped the edge of his seat.
“Yeah I guess you’re right…maybe I should go back to fiction…Thanks honey.”
With that last word, Molly got up out of the chair and walked back outside to her desk. Robert’s eyes glanced across his desk to pictures of Molly and their son, William outside their house in the suburbs. He glazed at the clock on the wall behind the typewriter and even though it was just 1 PM, he decided to go for a walk. He got up out of his chair and put on his coat and hat before leaving his office and turning off the lights.
“I’m going out for a walk honey.”
“OK” she said from behind a book. A Farewell to Arms he saw it was.
Hemingway, that short-tempered bastard. Why can’t my books sell like his? he thought as he went out the door, closing it with a high tinkle sound from the bell at top. He went around the corner and stopped in front of an elevator and pressed the button. Soon, it came up and the elevator operator opened the gate for him to step in.
“Ground floor please.”
When they got down, the operator once again opened the gate for him to get out and Robert stepped out of the glass doors framed with steel and into the busy streets of Boston.
Its not as crowded as New York he thought as he walked with the crowd with no destination in mind.
But then again that’s a good thing. He recalled being pushed and shoved by New Yorkers as he made his way to John’s office. On the corner, a newspaper boy was harking out his wares.
“US calls for diplomatic actions against the USCA! Warns against massing troops on the border of Yucatan state!”
He went over to the boy and bought a paper.
I wonder how’s life in the South USA? Or should I say Mexico? He had been taught from his schoolteachers that Mexico had ceased to exist by the early 1900’s due to the Second American-Mexican War but his late father still used the old name and like him, had taken up calling extinct countries by their old names.
Might as well call Germany Prussia he thought. He folded the paper back up and tucked it under his arm while he walked to a park nearby. He sat down on a bench and opened the paper to a random page. In a corner was an advertisement for tourist for the Great Lakes Confederation. “Come see Lake Michigan!” it boomed over a picture of a beach with a fleeting image of a city to the left that he assumed to be Chicago.
Soon he was finished with the paper and left it on the bench so someone else could have a go at it.
Shouldn’t be a waste he thought. He started to walk up the street but he glanced at his watch and saw that half an hour had passed so he turned in the opposite direction and started for his office. This time, he walked up the stairs instead of taking the elevator and by the time he reached the 9th floor where his office was located, he had broken into a slight sweat. He opened the door with the familiar tinkle and saw that his wife was still reading. With the sound of the bell however, she looked up.
“Back already?” she asked.
“Yeah. Any calls?”
She looked at her notepad and nodded.
“Yeah…Tim said he wouldn’t be in today. A bit late if you ask me after all, almost 5 hours had passed before calling in
sick.” She winked at the word.
Robert chuckled. “Yeah…” He turned in the direction of the aspiring author’s office, door shut and lights off.
I wonder if he got any work done…He had been working with him on the history book and was working with the Revolutionary War.
“And where’s Jake?”
“He’s on vacation in the GLC, don’t you remember? His wife is expecting too. Should be due in 7 months if I recall correctly.”
He remembered the ad for tourists in the paper. “Really? Guess more leave for him and his wife then.” He frowned at the thought.
But if I am going to go back to fiction, it won’t be my problem anymore. Don’t even know how I got cajoled into this job anyway. Oh right. The pay made available by the government of the NER and my extensive knowledge of history. He laughed to himself that drew a curious look from Molly. He went into his office and began thinking on a new book.
Maybe an alternate history novel…a what-if New England hadn’t succeeded from the US. He remembered reading Men Like Gods by HG Wells a while ago.
Or, I could write about a man who had lived through the Socialist Crisis of the 1900’s or the Economic Crisis of 1929… He dwelled on the thought for a while and decided to think up a plot for the second thought. And so begins a new chapter of my life. He laughed at that too. The absurdity of that phrase used by an author.