The Ambidextrous Editor by James Bezerra.

The Ambidextrous Editor
By James Bezerra



He is called The Editor because he is merciless. And editors are merciless. Because they have no sense of beauty. And no sense of the beauty of mess. Editors hate mess. Because it’s messy.

Also, he is called The Editor because he is employed as an editor.

He is slim and always seems to be carrying something. There is always something in at least one of his hands. Sometimes a book, or a newspaper or a coffee or a set of car keys or maybe a small piece of perfect fruit. Or sometimes he is carrying a really cool leather satchel. Some people say that he always has something in at least one of his hands (especially if and when he is walking) because he doesn’t wear a wedding ring anymore and never holds anyone’s hand anymore and so his hands are always looking for something to do with themselves.

He is bald on top, but it’s that cool kind of bald because The Editor has a good shape to his head and the gray around his ears is short and trimmed and it wraps around the back of his head and makes him look like he has always been bald and was always this good at looking bald.

The Editor is merciless when it comes to editing, but also, everything else. Everyone in the whole world (and especially in the office where he works as an editor) would hate him, if it wasn’t for the fact that he was always right about everything all the time.

As enters his office this morning he is carrying a cool leather satchel in one hand and a paper cup of coffee in the other hand and he has a folder newspaper under his arm (probably so that if he dropped the satchel or the coffee cup he would immediately be able to fill his free hand with something else.

He is wearing a scarf today. And his glasses, which he always wears. He says hello to people that work in the office as he walks through the office. He is very polite. He can afford to be polite because of his reputation for mercilessness.

When he reaches his office (which has a nice big window that looks out at the window of the office directly across from his own office) he sets down the leather satchel and the newspaper but keeps the coffee in his hand because he is drinking from it occasionally.

He does morning office things like checking emails and voicemails. Then he takes a red one red pen out of a cup full of red pens on his desk and he lifts the top manuscript from a stack of manuscripts next to his desk. The manuscript is thin. He has set down his cup of coffee at this point because he has a red pen in his left hand (he is not left handed though, he is actually ambidextrous).

The Editor looks down at the cover of the manuscript and he sees that the manuscript is entitled The Ambidextrous Editor. It does not initially occur to him that it might be about him.

The Editor turns to the first page of the manuscript entitled The Ambidextrous Editor and there he sees a dedication that reads: This is about you.

The Editor sniffs a little, thinking that this is too cute of a dedication. Next to the dedication, in red ink, he writes, This dedication is too cute.

He turns to the first page of the manuscript and he reads the first sentence. This is what the first sentence says, it says:

The Ambidextrous Editor never appropriately accepted blame for his wife’s death.

The Editor sits back in his chair. The Editor looks around his office. Then The Editor leans slightly to the right and peers out through his office door. Then The Editor looks back to the manuscript and reads the first sentence again, this time followed by the second sentence. Here is what the second sentence says:

Everyone else blames him though.

Now The Editor leans very far to the right and peers very far out into the outer office. He sits back up straight and he uses his red pen to draw a straight red line through each of the first two sentences. The he reads the third sentence. The third sentence says this:

That he is guilty is undeniable.

The Editor picks up his coffee - so that he has something in each hand - and he sips from it while he leans back in his chair and looks at the third sentence. He reads it again and again, hoping that if he reads it enough the words will stop having meaning.

The words do not stop having meaning.

Remembering that he is a merciless editor, The Editor crosses out the third sentence as well.

Those were the only three sentences in the first chapter, so The Editor turns the page to the second chapter.

The second chapter begins like this:

The Ambidextrous Editor did not kill his wife so much as he let her kill herself after he stopped loving her. That she loved him with all of her heart and soul was a well known fact. In fact anyone who had ever looked at her while she was looking at him could almost see that there was a kind of thickness in the air between them, as though the love that she had for him actually changed the substance of the air between them. She loved him so much that it altered the physical state of the world.

The Ambidextrous Editor, however, had only ever loved her the normal amount.

The Editor crosses out all of these sentences too. The thin red line that he makes is almost perfectly straight and cuts right through the letters like a sharp blade might cut through the skinny black legs of animals. The Editor reads the next sentences. They say this:

The Ambidextrous Editor did not leave his wife because he had fallen in love with some younger and prettier woman or because he had fallen in love with some woman who wrote in a way that he appreciated. He did not leave his wife because his life had changed in some way or because he wanted something else out of his life. He left her because he simply did not want to be married to her anymore. He told her that in a plain way, in a flat and normal voice and with no mercy at all.

The Editor stands up now and crosses to his office door, which he closes. He sits back down in his chair at his desk and he slices a red line through all the sentences that he had just read. He reads more sentences, all of which he crosses out.

He sets his coffee cup down and switches the red pen to his right hand and he looks at his left hand. He looks at his fingers. The Editor had never liked wearing a wedding ring because he had though that it created an imbalance in his body. He had thought that it made his left hand weigh more. He had thought that the imbalance might make him lean imperceivably to the right to compensate for the extra heft of the ring. He had thought that as he walked that this might cause him to wear down the soul of his right shoe faster than the soul of his left shoe. He had thought that the tiny imbalance caused by the silver band – occurring every single moment of his every single day – might throw him off, might bend him, might disfigure his symmetry in some irreparable way.

The Editor turns to the third chapter, which explained how the wife had killed herself while she was alone. She had killed herself while she was alone and she had died alone.

The Editor strikes through all of the sentences of the third chapter with his red line. He slices through all of them quickly and mercilessly. He does this without reading most of them. The red line he makes is less perfectly straight than the lines that he had made earlier.

The fourth chapter is just a collection of things that people had whispered when they had found out that The Ambidextrous Editor’s wife had killed herself. Things that they had whispered at her funeral. Things like:

You know, she loved him so much. That’s probably why she did it.

Did you know that they didn’t find her for a week, because no one had been coming to see her because she was completely alone after he left her?

I heard that he left her for absolutely no reason. How awful is that? He could have at least had an affair, that would have been more dignified.

She loved him so much. He was all that she had in the world. Isn’t it terrible what people give up for love? She gave up her whole life just because he wouldn’t let her love him anymore.

That guy really is merciless.

The Editor slices through all of these things. He cuts through them with his hot red ink. He slashes through them at angles. His hand shakes just the tiniest little bit and so the red lines that The Editor makes seem to have the faintest peaks and valleys of a monitored heartbeat. A very small heartbeat, but a jagged one.

The fifth chapter is very short. It is about how The Ambidextrous Editor had considered not going to his wife’s funeral because he didn’t feel like it.

The sixth chapter is very long and is about how The Ambidextrous Editor decided to go to his wife’s funeral because it was an excuse to buy a new suit and have it tailored. The chapter is very long because it describes all of the different suits that The Ambidextrous Editor considered purchasing for his wife’s funeral.

The Editor severs these chapters apart, leaving wet trails of ink.

The seventh chapter describes how The Ambidextrous Editor gets a manuscript at his work that seems to be about The Ambidextrous Editor. The manuscript has an awful and destabilizing effect on The Ambidextrous Editor, whose ordered and balanced life is thrown off kilter by the manuscript that he reads. The Ambidextrous Editor tries to deny the truth of the manuscript and cross out all of the words with his red pen in order to make them go away.

The eighth chapter is about how unsuccessful this attempt is. And about how nothing that The Ambidextrous Editor ever does to try to regain his balance and his merciless detachment is ever successful and how he spends the rest of his natural life (which turns out to be quite long) walking crooked because, even though he had never realized it, his body had adjusted to the tiny weight of the wedding band that he had once worn but had since sold. The Ambidextrous Editor was never able to track the ring down and as he aged, the slight crookedness became more pronounced, until, eventually, he walked with a kind of horrible sideways hunch, like a monster who was both terrifying and pitiful all at once.

The Editor stands up from his desk and steps away from the manuscript. The Editor looks down at the manuscript. He has nearly read the whole thing and crossed the whole thing out in red. He is slightly afraid to turn to the page.

Finally The Editor wills himself to turn the page. He remains standing as he turns the page. He leans forward slightly, but does not step closer to his desk as he turns the page. The Editor turns the page.

The next page is blank.

The Editor turns that page. He sees that the next page is blank. The Editor turns all the rest of the pages. All of the rest of the pages are blank.

The Editor has the horrific realization that the story is over. The manuscript has ended. That there is nothing else. The Editor realized that there is nothing else. There is no resolution, there is no climax. There is nothing but The Ambidextrous Editor slowly growing sideways into misshapen deformity.

The Editor is enraged. He throws his red pen across the office. He rips the wet red pages out of the manuscript and he flings them around the office. He yells, out loud, as the pages flutter to the floor like broken little birds. The Editor looks around. His office is a mess now.

The Editor jerks open the door of his office, leaving behind his satchel and his news paper and his coffee cup and his pens. As he storms out, he realizes that he is walking at just the tiniest bit of an angle, that he is almost impercievably imbalanced. The Editor realizes that he has grown crooked.




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