The Fan Letter Read Online Free PDF Page B

if the machine worked at all….
    Taking a pen and scratch pad in hand, she let out a sigh. “Now what's wrong?” she wondered as the machine clicked and the first playback began.
    There was a long pause, and then an obviously confused woman said something in a foreign language. As the sound of the phone being slammed down, Leslie rolled her eyes, pen still poised. “C'mon, people, I'm hungry,” she muttered.
    Beep . Click. “Leslie, this is Phillip Beck….”
    Leslie dutifully wrote down the name Phillip Beck on the scratch pad and continued to listen to the message. Suddenly she froze mid-word as the deep, oddly-familiar voice continued and she recognized the name.
    “…I wanted to tell you I received your script….”
    Her tiredness flew away and her heart began pounding in her chest. A shrill “EEEK!” more than likely startled the people living in the apartments next to her.
    Fumbling with shaking hands, Leslie turned up the volume and a wide, silly grin spread over her face as she stared at the answering machine.
    “…suggest you go novel form and….”
    “Novel? How!?” she found herself yelling at the machine.
    “…and the books do well….”
    “Where? Wait!”
    “…the picture was great. Bye now.”
    Listening to his phone hang up, she just stood there, motionless, as static continued coming from the machine. All of a sudden she sprang into motion. “Oh, I don't believe it! He called! Phillip Beck read it! I have to call Janice! I have to call Anne! I have to call Renee! EEEK!”
    Quickly dialing, her best friend Janice answered and was confused at the half elated, half hysterical Leslie on the other end. “Jan, guess who called! You'll never guess. Listen!” she demanded to her now-amused friend.
    The message replayed and now Leslie heard a shrill “Oh my god!” come through the phone.
    They both began chattering excitedly and neither could hear or care what the other was trying to say. Finally running out of steam and laughing now, they both came to the same conclusion: This was an exciting event in their humdrum lives. A movie star, a television celebrity, someone famous had called Leslie!
    Leslie was on the phone for another two hours replaying the tape for her different friends who had known about her writing as well as those she knew were fans of “The Time Police” television show. She came to realize that she was being asked the same question by all of them: “What are you going to do now?”
    At first that stumped her. She wrote the stories. They were sent to the show. The actors read and liked them. That was it. She hadn't thought it out past that. What was she going to do next?
    “I guess I'm going to rewrite my stories after I finish CHATEAU REX. What's novel form, anyway?” she asked all of them.
    “I dunno.”
    “Me, either,” Leslie responded, becoming a little more deflated each time she asked the question.
    She had told Janice she hated rewriting.
    “Get used to it,” blunt Janice had advised.
    Even though Leslie and her friends didn't know exactly what would come next, they were all unanimous about one thing: Phillip Beck was one terrific guy. He was now endeared to them. He took some of his valuable time and contacted one of the outsiders. To the fans of “The Time Police,” he had now become their favorite actor. To them, he was now being referred to as “Leslie's Actor/Friend.”
    In the days that followed, after Leslie came back down to earth, she started doing research on novel writing at the library. The only difference she could see between a novel and what she had already written was, basically, the length. That meant one thing: Rewrite everything.
    She hurriedly finished her favorite story so far, CHATEAU REX, in which the Professor abducts Jane and falls in love with her. It was short—way too short—but now she had plans for it later. Leslie made a duplicate copy for “her actor” the next day at an office supply store, and then sat down to