Nov. 9, 2024: "Write about two characters—whether they’re friends, strangers, or rivals—who discover they need each other’s help in a way neither of them expected."
“Thanks for meeting me.”
The tiny man climbed upon Edward’s shoe. “Thanks for remembering I exist. Always glad to be dredged up from the past to—”
Edward laughed. “All right, all right. I’ll treat you to drinks in that bar you like in Northeast.”
“Big spender. So what’s this project you’re so worried about?”
Edward, uncharacteristically contemplative and mild for his demographic, drew a long breath. His sternum popped quietly, and he sat up straighter on the park bench. He bent and offered Piers an open hand. The tiny man frowned but climbed onto the large fingers and let himself be hoisted onto a book on Edward’s lap. “It’s not that I have nowhere else to turn. The, ah, thing is that I’m challenging myself to find a creative solution to a problem.”
Piers sat on the tatty cloth-bound book and folded his legs beneath him; Edward shielded him from view by lacing his hands around him, leaving a respectable berth. “So I’m your little lock-pick set again? Or am I your perambulatory flash drive?” His tiny dark eyes blinked a couple times. “Tell me it’s not another de Bergerac scenario.”
“Wow, you really think very little of me.” Edward turned his head aside and gusted his breath, so as not to start yelling at his old friend. “It’s nothing like … It’s not much like that. I’m actually working on a writing project and I need a sensitivity reader.”
The tiny man shifted in his seat. He wasn’t disinterested in this, but “I would have preferred just a social call, sometime.” He smoothed his hair black, longish locks the color of old oak bark, framing his jaw to poetic effect. “You want me to show you the perspective of my people, hear the voices I hear carried in the floorboards, speak to the Great Tiny in the Sky.”
“Piers, I’m sorry. Look, I own this, okay? I should be a better friend, I’m not trying to exploit you. I’ve just …” His brow furrowed, and he picked out distant shapes on the edge of the park, slowly drifting around the sidewalk on the rim. Everyone seemed to be in overcoats at that distance, and he wondered why color had fallen out of fashion in the last several years. “I’m struggling, but you know me. I don’t like to burden anyone else with my shit. My girlfriend has to cope with enough as it is.”
“How is Cynthia?”
“Cindy. Come on.”
The tiny man shrugged, a subtle gesture in the bulky tatted-fur sweater he’d made for himself. “She sells herself short. She’s too elegant for ‘Cindy,’ and I don’t care if you take umbrage to that.”
“I can’t tell her what to call herself.”
“Does she still wear that …”
Edward grimaced. “Yes, bubble-gum nail polish. Between that and those dancing videos she does, sometimes our age difference really stands out, and … I feel …” To his surprise, the tiny man gave him a comradely thump on his thumbnail with a tiny fist.
“Hey, ride it for as long as it lasts. Fuck what other people think.” He nodded. “Of course, I’m in. Are you going to credit me this time?”
The awkward laughter made the large man’s chest shudder in an ungainly way. He flexed his neck, wishing to loosen his tie but unwilling to expose the Anthropole to public scrutiny. “It’s not a book. It’s difficult to explain.”
“Are you a CIA spook now?”
“There, that’s the credit I deserve. If only. We’re rolling out a new DEI initiative—sorry, IE—in my office, and I was out one fucking day, so of course I’m the head of it.”
Piers’s laughter chirped even over the birds in the trees behind them. “Some of your best friends are Tiny, huh?”
“And the policies aren’t much better. Oof. I get it, they’re feeling their way around in the dark, giving themselves liberties to make mistakes and learn from them. But they have the opportunity to step on a lot of … your people … as they get their shit sorted.”
The tiny man sat up and stretched his spine, stretched out one little leg in hand-tailored gabardine. “All right, well, like I said, I’m your man. And as it happens—”
“I fucking knew it.”
“Hey, quid pro quo.”
“No, no, I begrudge you nothing. This is good, it takes some of the emotional pressure off me so I can focus on getting a second job for Cindy’s streaming studio.”
“Goddess, this generation … Okay, yeah, as it happens, you would be really useful for something I’m trying to wrap up.”