Enclosed please find (Please! Please!) a manuscript you deem completely without merit or potential. I sincerely hope you can reject me as soon as possible as I am faced with a deadline of sorts. Here's my dramatic situation: under the terms of a recent court order signed by the Honorable Judge Francine Kleinschmitt, 2nd District Court, City of Lake Charles, I must "vigorously pursue any and all avenues" which might lead to the publication of my novel, Stations of Love. Judge Kleinschmitt defines the progress of this pursuit in terms of rejection. Specifically, in order to avoid being held in contempt of court, fined and jailed, I must submit at least six letters of rejection from literary professionals every thirty days. This is the part where you come in.

Understand that Kleinschmitt isn't some fan trying to prompt me to literary greatness. She's just eager to ship forty percent of any proceeds from my writing straight to Brenda, my recently exed-wife, and her attorney Jeffrey, who's been filing more than legal briefs with Brenda, if you catch the key I'm singing in.

Kleinschmitt thinks I'm stalling, waiting a while before making an honest effort. What she doesn't understand is that rejection's a way of life with me, a hobby like building bird houses or painting by numbers. She doesn't realize I could wallpaper West Texas with all the bad news that's come through my mailbox. To complicate matters, the good judge wasn't at all pleased with how I handled my big "success" a few months back, when the Under the Rainbow Review accepted an excerpt that got sent out about a billion years ago. Once I got over the shock, I wasn't too upset. I realized they only paid two contributor's copies; so, via certified mail, I shipped one copy to Brenda. How the cover got ripped off I'll never know.

Now that my circumstances are clear, I have to ask a special favor. Back in my college days I was assistant editor on Millipede: The Literary Journal of a Thousand Voices. Truth be told that's where I met Brenda. (Whatever else I may think of her these days, she's always been a hell of a good reader.) Anyway, I know what it's like to have those towers of manila envelopes cluttering up your office. And like you, I dreaded the times I felt compelled to write a personal note to accompany the standard rejection form letter, struggled to think of something kind to say that was also the truth. I'm mentioning all this because of a troublesome stipulation in that court order. Anything rejected with a form letter doesn't count. So the thing is, I need you to go to bat for me. I require a dated, signed rejection on company letterhead. Two originals would be ideal, as I could then keep one on file. Kleinschmitt needs to confirm these are legitimate rejections. She wants specifics, no doubt eager to read them by the fireplace in that big old house she lives alone in. I understand the gigantic hassle this will be for you, but in an effort to minimize your workload, I thought I'd point out a few things in the manuscript:

Larry, the main character, is weak-minded and unlikely to be sympathetic to many readers. His decision to stay in Kirbyville is clearly motivated not by his love of Laura, as suggested, but by his fear of striking out and making something of himself. He acts out of the belief system that if he does good things, good things will eventually happen to him. That worked fine for Forrest Gump, but readers simply won't buy it from someone who's not retarded and funny looking.

Laura's devotion to Larry despite his series of catastrophic failures strains the boundaries of credibility. Perhaps she'd be supportive through his bouts of pseudo-alcoholism and the bankrupting of his landscaping firm, but after his blunder burns down the trailer, does Laura have to actually hold his hand as they stand in the ashes? This reeks of sentimentality. (That's exactly the kind of thing Kleinschmitt would love to see: "This manuscript reeks of sentimentality.")

Two Christmases ago we were visiting my family in Ohio and I accidentally threw away the only draft of chapter four. Brenda spent three hours in the garbage plowing through turkey guts and wrapping paper until she found it.

There are eleven misspelled words in the first chapter alone as well as numerous comma splices. Apostrophe usage is spotty at best.

The extended descriptions of the natural world, especially those concerning the park Larry and Laura take walks through and eventually make love for the first time in, are self-indulgent and call attention to the writer. Loaded words like "lush" and "blooming" lose all meaning because of overuse. The reader is likely to cringe when Laura suggests holding the wedding under the weeping willows that line the river. Actually I'm the one who suggested an outdoor wedding, but Brenda's allergies would have gone haywire.

Similarly poorly conceived and executed is the Easter parade in the penultimate chapter. Larry and Laura's big fight, including her melodramatic declaration "Our love is dead," seems contrived, and is clearly little more than a set up for what follows. While having an Easter float hit a little girl in a bunny costume may be visually intriguing, her miraculous resurrection, complete with concerned members of the Kirbyville High School marching band huddled around her, comes across as uninspired and heavy-handed. Note the following passage: "Larry and Laura stood side by side, like two dead statues that couldn't move or touch. On the street in front of them, the bunny girl gazed longingly into the clear spring sky, as if she knew she might never see clouds again. Then her eyes closed peacefully. A bloated tuba player started to cry. Somewhere a lost dog began to bark. A lonely church bell chimed. Laura's hand slid into Larry's and he folded his fingers around hers. The bunny girl blinked and one of her fuzzy white paws twitched twice and the air filled with life and possibility."

In court Brenda testified that this scene was based on a childhood experience of hers involving a mockingbird that seemed dead until she warmed it between her cupped hands. Then it fluttered to life and flew off. Though this was a total lie, I found her tale strangely moving.

In addition to the overall saccharine tone of the novel, the point of view switches several times, freely entering Laura's mind in some instances while in others inexplicably avoiding her thoughts. This is especially true in moments of intimacy. For example, when Laura's high school love reappears in chapter five and offers to steal her away to Hollywood, her rejection of him is a forgone conclusion, yet the reader has no idea why she is so dismissive of the offer. Why so quickly refuse the chance at her childhood dreams of acting? Laura's loyalty to Larry seems insufficient rationale.

It's kind of ironic, but that Easter parade scene was once Brenda's favorite. I read her the whole chapter in bed the night I finished it, and I remember how her eyes softened and her breath went light, as though she was being...I don't know, transported? Like my words had lifted her above the weight of our crappy cars and the lady downstairs who beat her kid and our 18.9 % Visa bills. That's one hell of a feeling. Maybe it was all just in my head, but it seems like nights I read to her our love making was different somehow, sharper. Nights like that you're plugged into something primal and pure, something essential. Something you miss.

Brenda writes too — poetry. And before we got married she used to read it to me some nights. Her inner landscape was populated by deadbeat dads and latchkey kids, lovers lying back to back with their eyes wide open. As her work grew darker she became protective of her rough drafts. If I wandered into the back room while she was writing, she'd dial down the computer screen, and she started keeping her poems on a disk she buried in her sock drawer. That disk was something I should've subpoenaed. Who knows how much evidence I've missed.

I can't be sure Brenda's mockingbird story was a lie. Maybe she told me and I forgot it.

I should mention the considerable support I've received from many in the publishing industry. Only a few have sent just form letters, and some have misguidedly included encouragement, even praise. I trashed the letter from White Pine Press because the editor went into the manuscript's "barely submerged potential" and claimed the second half "crackled with energy." He apologized for not having space for it in his spring line-up. That guy just didn't see the bush for the berries.

Much more on board were the enthusiastically negative responses that came in from certain New York agencies. Not to be too pushy, but the following are near perfect examples of the kind of rejection I'm hoping for:

"Unremittingly optimistic. Almost fairy tale like in its simplicity and naivete."
     --Carl Thayer, Stanford Wilson Artists United

"...hard to imagine any mature adult reading this with any degree of believability."
     --Amanda Dmuchovsky, Pearson and Associates

"All foreplay and no sex."
     --Celeste Donahue, Carson Literary Alliance

"Perhaps you should consider turning this into a screenplay for The Family Channel or Disney."
     --Gene Williams, Williams & Williams

(Thank you Mr. Williams! Kleinschmitt ordered me to send a copy to both, so soon I'll have rejections from Pat Robertson and Mickey Mouse.)

In fairness to the manuscript, I suppose overall it may be a little on the upbeat side. But in my own defense I must point out that the work underwent a major revision during the first year of our marriage, the happiest time of my life. I was graduated and feeling lucky to be assistant managing at the Books-A-Million. Brenda was starting her last year of undergrad at USL, talking about Ph.D. programs in Poetry. Things weren't perfect or anything, but we had it better than a lot of couples.

I suppose the first signs of trouble appeared after we moved into the house on Sixth Street. This was after the novel had been out to maybe a dozen places and back again. Despite these failures, Brenda convinced me to keep trying and even got me to work up some of the better passages as excerpts. She put all her energy into getting me published. In hindsight her enthusiasm seems even stranger because she had begun to lose faith in herself about this time. Only three of the seven grad programs she applied to had accepted her, and none had offered an assistantship. I remember the Saturday that she got her rejection notice from LSU, her first choice. Right after she read the letter she stormed Office Depot with the Visa, mailed out fifty copies of a ten page excerpt I didn't even like. "Carpet bombing," she explained. "It worked for Schwarzkopf."

The worst memories, the flashbacks I'd pay cash to have burned from my brain, involve coming home from the bookstore after Brenda was already back from school. Days she'd already gotten the mail and seen those self-addressed stamped envelopes returned home like beaten carrier pigeons. She'd leave them unopened on the kitchen table, pretending she didn't recognize her own handwriting. And when I'd come in she'd always greet me at the door, always hug me and ask how the bookstore was. Always with that smile.

It got so bad that I took to driving home on my lunch break just so I could intercept the postman and steal my own mail. I'd sneak my stash back behind the mall, park behind Sears, and read my rejections with the engine running. Then I'd pitch them into the open mouth of the industrial size dumpster as if I was getting rid of evidence the FBI might be after.

Now this went on for quite a while, and you might wonder if that kind of constant bombardment had an effect on my confidence. I will admit those days brought a certain reduction in the faith I had in my writing. After all, my hopes had been high. Some very good readers had thought well of early drafts of this piece. Brenda in particular had felt publication was a strong possibility. This was years ago, just before we'd started dating. She was the first reader I gave a "completed" draft to. We met at O'Toole's and went through her reactions over a pitcher of beer. I remember she told me she found it "uplifting and inspirational." When she went to the bathroom I scribbled those words on a bar napkin and saved it, tucked it away in the pages of the manuscript. After we got married I used to imagine showing the napkin to her on some distant wedding anniversary, the two of us laughing at how far we'd come together.

Under oath, Brenda testified that the manuscript had "significant literary value" and that her professional opinion was that "publication is a high likelihood with the proper commitment of time and resources." Those weren't her words. Jeffrey the lawyer told her to say those things. But it was nice to hear her say them, nice to think again that she believed in me. It'd been nine months since I heard her say anything about my fiction, and that had hardly been under the best circumstances. It was the Sunday we fought in the Lake Charles Municipal Animal Shelter parking lot. The fight disintegrated like these things do, and before long I was mocking her "martyr poetry," saying she'd probably wear a hair shirt if she ever gave a reading. I'd only said that after she told me I was wasting my time writing "Santa Claus fiction." But she regretted that, I think. That day in court, after she'd spoken Jeffrey's carefully scripted dialogue, her eyes found mine and she leaned into the microphone and said, "Really. It is a good book. A very good book. One of the best things I read in a long time." I saved that page of the transcript.

The pound parking lot. Our last scene. We'd gotten up early like we did any Sunday we weren't hung over. I'd made French toast while Brenda went and got a paper. In the "Life" section was this "Pet Corner" feature. Some purebred collie named "Shadow" was due to be gassed first thing Monday morning if nobody came for it, and Brenda wanted to go down and save it. I remember thinking about the poor guy who had to start every Monday morning off by gassing dogs. Things between me and Brenda were going sour by then; I'd spent more than a few nights on the couch and such, so even though I hate dogs I said sure. Besides, Shadow was kind of cute, even by my dog-hating standards. On the drive over I acted all cheery, like this was the best idea since multiple submissions. But by the time we got to the pound, some other couple had brought Shadow home, or so we were told by the chunky blonde in charge.

The kennel was oddly full of sleepy-eyed white couples whose breakfasts had clearly been similarly disrupted, and I had a pretty strong suspicion that this "Shadow" had simply never been. Brenda figured the same thing. She was pissed in a major way, on the verge of making a scene like only she can. I could really imagine her going after that blonde. There'd be pulled hair and cracked nails. But instead Brenda huffed off, and just as I was about to follow her, I heard this crazy barking that made me stop.

I can't explain it, but that barking called me back into the crowd, through all these people eyeing up the dogs that were working the system. Dogs that sat and wagged their tails and longed for love like lined up orphans, eyes wide with the mad notion that somebody might actually want them.

My barker was housed in the cell at the end of the hall, next to a steel door painted sky blue. He was some kind of mongrel mutt, marked by a dark patch under his chin and a tail that had seen better days. Brenda and I watched him. He'd hunch curled up in the corner for a minute, then spring and charge the cyclone fence, foaming and snarling, retreating only after he'd backed off whoever was looking. Here was one dog who knew why he was in the kennel at the end of the hall. A dog that knew what Monday mornings meant. But despite that, he was changing the script. He was never going to give another snot-nosed brat the chance to slide behind Mommy's leg and say, "But he's so ugly."

I said to Brenda, "Let's take this one home."

She wanted nothing to do with this dog and thought I was being sarcastic. But I was dead serious. I'd had a vision of Larry and Laura saving this dog, turning its whole life around, bringing it on trips to their special park where it would snap Frisbees from the air and chase children squealing with delight. I wanted that dog to be in our lives. When I told Brenda this she shook her head and bolted. By the time I caught up with her we were in the parking lot, which became the setting for our final fight. We went at it and eventually she dropped that line about my "Santa Claus fiction." There was a long silence. A couple came out with a puppy straining against a red leash. Brenda said, "Look. I'm sorry. But I just can't do this with you anymore." Then she got in the car and drove away. Just to show what a sick twist my mind can take, I stood in the center of that parking lot thinking, "This is when I get my epiphany."

I waited for half an hour, then called a taxi.

It's not hard to imagine how things went from there, a montage of the worse kind of clichéd scenes: The awkward meeting at the grocery store. The terrible hour with the counselor. The Wednesday night that went too far. The series of drunken phone calls. The morning she showed up crying in my doorway. And finally, the lunch where she told me she had "seen somebody about filing the paperwork."

But somehow me and Brenda skipped the scene where we talked about what had gone wrong. That's the one question I wanted to ask her on the witness stand, the one question that keeps me studying the static after the national anthem ends our broadcasting day. Because in all this time, Brenda's never really told me why.

This is crazy, but last week a manila envelope was forwarded to my apartment. I pulled it free of the mailbox and saw my name in Brenda's handwriting. Almost immediately it registered that this was simply one of the long lost rejections coming back from the Office Depot/ Schwarzkopf batch. But I couldn't keep from fantasizing that it contained a message from Brenda herself, and I settled onto the steps with all my midnight wonderings and I imagined what she might write:

Dear Aspiring Husband,

Thank you for submitting yourself for inclusion in my life. I understand the time and effort you put into your life and appreciate the opportunity to consider it. To begin with, let me point out the many favorable qualities I do see. You have an optimistic tone and a crisp style, along with a fine instinct for light-hearted humor. However, you remain surface level and seem unaware of your own emotional center. What really matters to you? Ultimately, I just don't believe in you as a character.

Because of this I'm going to take a pass here. But please don't feel bad. This is not to say someone else might not find many appealing qualities about you and your life. It's just not for me.

Fondest wishes,
Brenda

I've got that manila envelope, still sealed, in a box in the back of my closet. It keeps company with the official letters Jeffrey sends over and the page I saved from the transcript and Kleinschmitt's court order and copies of my rejections and yes so help me God even that stupid tattered napkin from O'Toole's. I have poured over those pages absolutely certain that waiting somewhere is a theme, a moral, an answer. But none of this matters. That story is over.

Before I close I want to thank you for the time you spend with my manuscript. And although I'm confident you'll have no problems finding ample evidence for rejection, I hope some passages are somewhat appealing. As hokey as that little girl miraculously coming to life at the Easter Parade may seem, I'm not ashamed of the section. And I don't think my handling of Larry and Laura's first night alone is all that sentimental. After all, people still make love in parks; they have to.

Though I know I've already asked you for a lot, could I trouble you with one more favor? If maybe you like one of the scenes, or find something engaging in the text, could you jot out a quick letter, separate from Kleinschmitt's of course, mentioning what you liked and why? I'd really appreciate any positive comments, even the briefest of notes.

Who knows, maybe in the midst of all these legal shufflings, I might accidentally paper clip such a note to some court document that Brenda's eyes might fall across. Despite all that's happened I know she still cares for me. Deep down. (What I said before about Brenda and Jeffrey, I made that up. Brenda's not like that.) I can imagine Brenda smiling when she sees the note, when she wraps herself in a quilt on our old pullout sofa bed and warms with the memory of what it was like to believe in the book and believe in me. And who knows, maybe she'll find herself wondering about the need some people have for rough drafts, and the way stories can transform with revision.

Many thanks for all your time and consideration. Looking forward to hearing from you very much.