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19
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Ed's arm slowly began inching downwards. Finally his hand fell open, letting the spoon he had been holding fall to the floor. The spoon made a fairly loud noise on impact with the floor.
Ed's head shot straight up from the noise and he looked around to find himself alone in the kitchen, spaghetti sauce smeared all over his face and spaghetti noodles stuck on as well, dangling. He looked to the clock on the wall to see that it was eleven o'clock. He sighed and realized that he had only been asleep for a few hours, so he still had the rest of the night to catch up on his work for Mr. Brinkl--
His eyes passed upon the window to see that it was light outside. Ed swallowed, having yet another revelation, yet this one was not incorrect as the last one had been; it was not eleven o'clock at night, but eleven o'clock the next morning.
Ed rapidly brushed at his face, trying to get the mess off of him. He got to his feet in a hurry and made his way over to the typewriter. He had wasted so much time now and he was behind schedule.
The previous working time Ed had only completed a 'sad' total of thirty pages. He was supposed to be done at least eighty pages by the end of the day. That meant he'd have to work extra hard to make up for his mistake of sleeping.
As Ed was lowering himself into the chair in front of the typewriter, the phone rang. Ed looked in its direction, annoyed. He waited a couple of rings, waiting to see if Kathy was going to answer, but after she did not, he assumed that she was out shopping, so he got up from the chair and stalked over to the phone table.
He lifted the receiver and placed it to his ear. "Hello?" He asked, impatiently.
"Edward," Howard Brinkley replied from the other end.
Ed gasped and straightened out. "Oh, hello Mr. Brinkley! How are you?"
"Well, that depends. How is the script coming along?"
"Oh, it's coming along very nicely. I started working on it yesterday and I've got about thirty pages done so far. I know it's not much, but I'll have eighty done by the end of the day, I swea--"
"You wrote thirty pages in one day?" Mr. Brinkley asked, impressed.
"I know, I know. It's not enough, but I said that I'll have eighty done by the end of the da--"
"Are you kidding me, Edward?"
Ed raised an eyebrow. "Um... no. Why?"
"Edward, I've had writers give me thirty pages a week. Thirty a day is considered very good in the business! But I'm sure you know that."
"Uhh... yeah. Okay."
Howard laughed. "Well, then to answer your question, I'm doing very well now that I know how much you've done."
Ed smiled. "Glad I could be of assistance."
Howard laughed again. "Anyways, I just called to ask. Keep up the good work! Oh, and you should come over again sometime, my wife simply adores you! She's been nagging me to invite you again."
Ed could feel his face turning red.
"When can you make it?"
"Umm... next Thursday?"
"Okay. That's fine. See ya Thursday, Edward. Oh, and tell Kathy I said hi."
The line clicked and Howard was gone. Ed gulped and pulled the receiver away from his ear. As he was about to replace it, he saw it was smeared with spaghetti sauce from his face.
Ed sighed, placed the receiver down on the table on its side and went into the kitchen to get a dishtowel to clean up his sauce. He returned to the receiver and cleaned it off, then went back to the kitchen to put the dishtowel away.
He placed the dirty dishtowel down carelessly on the counter and turned to exit. As he took a step forward, he struck the spoon he had dropped, slipped, and toppled to the floor on his back.
Ed let out a cry and winced in pain, rubbing his throbbing back. He tried to rise, but the pain was so great he could not even move. His eyes went wide, realizing that he had thrown out his back and Kathy was not home. Worse than that, he wouldn't be able to get to the typewriter to write!