Only The Roses

“Arc?”

“Arc! You need an arc!” shouts my LA lit agent Aristotle Allen.

“…Its about…”

“Not what it’s about!” he screams in a voice that can slice glass. “Arc! Don’t you know Arc?”

“She wants undying love and….”

“You think I can sell that? Who do you think she is Madame Bovary? Fuck! Don’t you know who the hell she is?”

“I’ve written three hundred pages,” I say, irritated. “Did you read them?”

“What happens on the end?” he continues in a high pitch voice. “What is her redemption?”

“I don’t believe in redemption!” I reply, my voice rising.

He shouts. “Hollywood likes redemption!”

“Redemption is a wrap,” I argue. Redemption is a process. I leave the end open for a sequel.”

He screams. “Sales on your last book are the shits! How do you expect me to sell another book?”

“The novel was released two weeks before the pandemic and promotion stopped! It wasn’t my fault.”

“If the book was hot it would sell. Change your platform.”

“I’m a candidate for the new Senior Bachelor Show! I’m an age activist, I…”

“Stop with the age shit! No one wants to hear about age! Who wants to see an 80-year- old woman clutching a rose! Change your platform to something I can sell! Save The Vagina or something.”

An hour later on Zoom with my therapist:

“I’ve had it with the agents,” I complain to Dr. M. I continue to complain that twelve published novels later, and I’m still dealing with sexist, racist, fuck head white male agents. Not to mention I haven’t heard from Tony Krapps, the TV agent who a year ago contracted me for a Netflix series on my last book. Just before the Covid, I signed the shoppers agreement which states that when the project goes on air I get big bucks. Po Who knows what the agent whores are doing while I’m sitting here waiting for my unemployment check, and dreaming I’m a vagina.”

“Your dreams are a metaphor for your identity as a woman and an artist.”

“The quarantine forces me to feel my regrets. Face myself not as I was, but who I am. I hate who I was. I blamed my divorce, my relationships the men. I never wanted those men. I never wanted me. I never knew what I wanted.”

“When you forgive yourself you’ll have redemption.” He exchanges a sympathetic gaze.

A green light beeps. Someone is waiting for his next zoom. I click the leave the meeting button and the computer screen is dark.

I arrange pale orange long stem roses in an oval crystal vase. So confident, so glamorous, are the roses. I love them so much. The roses represent nature’s gorgeous mysteries, each petal counted, each bloom fatalistic, without guile, and only truth.

A ray of light slanting from the open window, shimmers the roses part gold, part apricot color. The roses are the key, the journey into the self, where nature lies, and fate waits.

Only the roses matter. They contain life’s arc. Your secrets are there.

BarbaraRoseBrooker/author of many books. Her latest novel Love, Sometimes/published Feb1, 2020-Post Hill Press/Simon Schuster

See her national recent TV appearances, and podcasts on www.barbararosebrooker, and on you tube. She is at work on The Corona Diaries and Other Things-

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