It Began With a File Cabinet

Jeff Cohen

There's a crazy part to this story, but you have to read all the way to the end.

Every once in a great while, even the most midlist of authors (imagine who we're talking about here) starts to feel just a little bit important. Special. Like a celebrity one step up from the dry cleaner everybody in town uses because he's such a nice guy.

It's natural; by publishing a book, the author puts his/her (okay, his) name out there. When a number of people read the book and, waddaya know, some like it, they get in touch. Conventions like the recent Bouchercon help because readers notice the name tag and stop said author to say they've enjoyed the work. That's very gratifying. Occasionally, a publishing company will send money; that's gratifying AND can help pay bills.

So it's useful every now and again to clean out a file cabinet.

It so happens that this weekend I went out and, in a weak moment, bought a new file cabinet for my office. The fact that the bottom drawer on the old one hadn't opened in three years was simply a detail. And after having given myself a two-inch cut on my right arm assembling the silly thing, yesterday was the day to replace the old with the new.

That meant going through all the contents--including those of the bottom drawer, which as I mentioned, hasn't been working so well. What I'm saying is, there was stuff in there that hadn't seen the light of day since back when we had a working government. The last time.

Now, the bottom drawer of my filing cabinet, one of three such receptacles in my office (which is something my wife would like to discuss with me), is devoted to--as you might imagine--items that are not of the most urgent priority. Including what I call "Cold Storage," which includes things like notebooks I was keeping in 1977 and scripts I wrote for movies my friend Jeff Pollitzer and I were going to make when I was in college and Pollitzer was doing whatever the hell it was he was doing back then.

Such things, held fondly in the memory, don't always hold up well in the light of 21st Century day. So after looking over a few of these musty items, I was not terribly enthused to find a folder--okay, a manila envelope--I used to keep hanging over my desk at the Rutgers Daily Targum when I was a news, and then arts, editor there during the Carter Administration. (For you history buffs.)

Sure enough, among such things as receipts for tuition payments and long pointless manifestos about the coming changes to the Targum's weekly arts section, was the very first mystery story I ever wrote. For a class in Detective Fiction I took during one of my later years as an undergraduate.

It was called "The Affair of the Stolen Cannon," (catchy, huh?) and purported to be the recounting of a local, somewhat boiled (not so soft, not so hard) detective named--wait for it--Elliot Freed, because at the time I thought having a detective named Elliot Freed was funny. When I resurrected Elliot some 30 years later, he had a new job and a different personality. And I thought the name was a place-holder, like all the character names I've ever made up.

The story isn't entirely bad, but the comments written by the professor (whose name I honestly can't remember) on the last page pretty much sum it up: "Jeff--the details, character, dialogue, etc. is all good. (Editor's note: Is they?) The solution to the mystery, so far as I can figure, is lousy."

Yeah, he had me there. 

And that teaches us (well, me) a little about humility. Think you're a big deal, wise guy? Think you're a famous author of mystery novels now? Consider this: You still have the same problems today. You just have a much better editor, thank goodness.

It's nice to have a reminder once in a while. But hopefully no more often than that. Egos are such fragile things.

And here's the crazy part: After making the transfer of cabinets, I took the old metal one out to the curb for any lucky soul who might need one. It was a little heavy and unwieldy, but I managed to get it down the stairs with very little problem.

When I set it down, the bottom drawer opened.

P.S. If you haven't seen the special video message from E.J. Copperman, please do take a look and comment! 

Comments

[ABE]

Okay. Stop teasing. Where is the rest of the story? Really.

And if you're interested, you can see my mystery story about Princeton, set during a Reunions weekend, on the Free short stories tab on my blog (Princeton's Dancing Child). I've shown you mine - may I please see yours?

Thanks.
Alicia

PS I'm serious - and curious.

[Jeff Cohen]

The rest of the story from college? Good lord, no. It's too terrible to see the light of day. I refer you to the ones I actually got published, because someone else agreed they were good enough to show to unsuspecting readers.

[Lynne Patrick]

... since last time we had a working government.
So when was that, exactly? Or is that the biggest mystery of all?