The opening chapter of my novel, The Folly of Harvest, was accepted for publication in a forthcoming issue of an online literary journal. While I’m thrilled to have even a small part of the book making its way out into the world, the journal’s editor cut the first 3.5 pages of the chapter (“narrative throat-clearing”). I was sad to say farewell to those pages, even if it was the right choice. To make peace with the cut, I’m sharing the lost pages here for posterity.

At first, Mat hadn’t told anyone about getting fired. He didn’t want to admit that he’d lost both his big break and his agent. Worse than pride, it was hubris, but after a month without a successful audition, and with his bank account dwindling, he’d broken down yesterday and called Helen. He’d kept the details to a minimum: he needed a job. As it turns out, Mat doesn’t need an agent since he has a friend like Helen, and she managed to secure him an audition for the very next day. It’s outside the city, but it’s something. Anything but another open dance call.

“You cannot be late,” Helen had said. “The director has no time for unserious people.”

“Why would you say that?” Mat asked. “I’m never late. Unless it’s in the morning, but that’s not fair, I’m not a morning person.”

“You’ll need to take a morning train,” Helen said.

“I won’t be late!” Mat had been indignant at her lack of faith, but to be safe, he woke up extra early today to get to the station.

A robotic voice announces that Mat’s train is delayed. It’s not really his train, of course. He’s not a railroad tycoon, though he was once cast as a featured dancer in a musical version of Atlas Shrugged, or at least he would have been featured if the entire production hadn’t been canned before opening. It’s for the best that audiences weren’t subjected to an 11 o’clock number that rhymed “Who is John Galt?” with the word “gestalt”, but to lose a job he hadn’t even wanted in a show he’d known was bad had been the low point in Mat’s career. Well, until now.

It’s no surprise Mat’s train is late. On Broadway, June is bustin’ out all over, but for Mat, it’d just been a bust. Nothing in the past month has gone right. His unlucky streak might go back even further than that, but if he can manage to get out of here, his luck will change. He can almost taste it, or maybe that’s the smell of banana pudding permeating from Magnolia Bakery, a new feature of the station since the renovations. The odor is aggressive, but it’s an improvement. The station air before hadn’t been so much bakery as moist urinal cake. With nothing to do but hope the delay will be as short as Mat is, he gets in line at the bakery.

“One small banana pudding,” Mat says to the cashier. The smell is even stronger up close. It should be sickening, but he inhales hungrily while the cashier runs his card. Can air have calories? He stops breathing. His card is declined, and he leaves empty-handed. Not quite empty-handed: he’d already picked up a plastic spoon before he was exposed as poor, so he leaves with his new plastic spoon, and the memory of the sad look the cashier gave him as she handed back his card. Mat takes a few more breaths as he walks away. Air is, after all, free.

Dancers are often judged by their feet, but at the age of 33, Mat’s more worried about being judged for his crow’s feet. Despite his age, here he is, scrounging for work like a newcomer. He is going upstate, of all places. The indignity is not lost on him; he is a better dancer than this. Unless he isn’t? The proof is in the … never mind.

Mat scans the faces in the crowd, not wanting to run into someone he knows from the theater world. Ever since getting fired, Mat feels like a fugitive on the outskirts of the dance scene. Worse than a fugitive, he feels like no one without a job. He sees a flash of his mother, but he ignores her. It’s not really her anyway. For starters, she hated the city, and worse, she’s been dead for fifteen years. What would she think of him, fleeing the city? Would she be ashamed of where he’s ended up, or proud of him for doing anything to survive, to keep dancing? It’s impossible to know.

A young woman wanders the station, handing out religious pamphlets: THE END IS NEAR. Mat hopes she’s right, though not in such a global way. All the same, Mat feels a twinge of pity for her; some people wouldn’t know a cult if it spit in their eye. He should have taken a pamphlet, at least so she’d have one less to hand out, but he doesn’t have time to worry about anyone else’s troubles but his own. Besides, she hadn’t even offered one to Mat, breezing by him entirely, and he’d had the oddest sense of being invisible; unseen; unknown.

Has Mat always been in this train station? It’s starting to feel that way, but no, just this morning, he was in the dingy two-bedroom apartment he shares with two other dancers; Mat sleeps in what should be the living room, a situation so depressing that he would sooner die than have a date or even friends over to his apartment, not that he has much time for either.

Another announcement: Mat’s train is finally ready to leave. He won’t be late! He sprints down to the track, then the train doesn’t move for twenty minutes, and he is sure he will die or miss his audition or both. Finally, after every seat is full and the car is sweltering, the train drags itself out of the station. Mat gets out a book – a paperback copy of Mrs. Dalloway that he grabbed as he rushed out of his apartment – but it sits unopened in his lap while he stares out the window, too tired to read. When people are happy, they have a reserve, but Mat is on empty.

“Is it any good?” the man seated next to Mat asks with a nod toward the book.

“I haven’t started it yet,” Mat says.

“That’s okay.” The man chuckles. “You’ve got time!”

“Unless we die on this train,” Mat says. “But then really, what’s the point of reading?”

The man doesn’t bother Mat again after that, and he files the anecdote away to tell Helen when she picks him up from the train at the other end, whenever that is. In his panic, he forgot to tell Helen that his train is delayed. Too late, he tries to call her, but it goes straight to voicemail. He texts her instead, but she’ll be at the train stop before she sees it.

The train picks up speed as it heads north, and the city skyline fades away. Mat never leaves the city, never has the time nor the money. Ironically, broker than ever, off he goes, and he’s shorter on time than ever, but everyone is with each passing day. That isn’t unique to Mat, though the passage of time impacts dancers more than it does the general public, crow’s feet notwithstanding.

As the train cruises along, away from the dense concrete jungle of Manhattan, the country comes alive around Mat in his tin rocket, and though it’s already July, it feels as if summer has only just, at last, begun.