“Saving reviews is the mark of a beginner.” There hadn’t been many since 1978, and those had been less than kind. The last had pronounced sentence: Tired rehash of traditional themes by one of the genre’s Old Hands. Fie hadn’t finished a book since then.
James French-inhaled. “Don’t see many books since 1978 here either.”
“Whole next shelf.”
“Looks like reprints mostly.”
“My books are considered classics. They’re kept in print.”
“What a load of bull.”
“Why don’t you go take a spin in your Porsche?”
The remark was in poor taste, and he decided to play his tape of Rebel Without a Cause by way of apology. And then he remembered how she had cried when the cops gunned down Sal Mineo. Maybe he should get some work done instead.
The stereo and the word processor were both still on when he returned to his study, and there was a sheet of paper in his typewriter with 1 typed across the top. He studied all of this in some confusion. He cut power switches; cranked out the blank sheet of paper, carefully placed it in a clean manila folder and dated the tab.
He sat down. Maybe he should listen to a tape. Something that wouldn’t remind him of her. He turned his stereo back on. The tapes were buried under a heap of unanswered correspondence, unread magazines, unfinished manuscripts on the spare bed. He sat back down.
It might be best to make a fresh start by tackling an unfinished manuscript. There were a few, several, maybe a dozen, or more. They were all somewhere on the spare bed, hidden beneath one overturned stack or another. He’d paid fifteen bucks for the brass bed when he’d moved in, twenty years ago. Spent two days stripping the multi-layered paint, polishing with Brass-O. Five bucks to Goodwill for the stained mattress and box springs. They’d slept together on it their first year together, until he pulled down a big enough advance to convert his former housemate’s room into their bedroom, pay for a proper double bed. He’d always meant to sell the single brass bed, put in proper shelves instead.
He never slept in their bedroom now. It held her clothes, her pictures, her scent, her memories.
It would be an all-day chore to sort through all the mess to find just the right manuscript whose moment had come. Best to tackle that tomorrow.
He pulled out an abused legal pad, wrote i across the first yellow page.
His stomach was hurting now. That made it hard to choose which pen to write with. He thought there might still be some milk left.
He drank a glass of milk and then a cup of coffee and smoked three Winstons, while he waited for his muse to awaken. The living room walls were hung with the same black-light posters they had put there when they’d first moved in together, back in the late ’60s. He supposed that the black lights still worked, although it had been years since he had switched them on. About all that had changed over the years were occasional new bookshelves, growing against the walls like awkward shelf-fungus. They were triple-stacked with books he really meant to read, although he hadn’t been able to finish reading a book in years.
I can’t see you because of your books, she had warned him on occasion, from her chair across the room from his. And then he would stick together another shelf, try to clear away the confusion of books and magazines piled in the middle of the living room, try to explain the necessity of keeping copies of Locus from 1969. In another year the pile would grow back.
My books are my life, he would tell her. Now that she was gone, he had grown to hate them almost as much as he had grown to hate himself. They were memories, and he clung to them while hating them, for memories were all he had left of his life.
It was getting dark. He glanced toward the front door, thinking it was about time for the cat to show up to be fed. He remembered that he hadn’t seen the cat in weeks.
Time to get back to work. He would write all night.
The cigarettes started him coughing again. She had nagged him to see a doctor about that cough. He treasured the cough for that memory of her concern.
He drank a glass of water from the tap, then remembered that her plants needed watering. She had left him with her plants, and he tried to keep them watered. He was crying again by the time he completed his rounds with the watering can. That made the cough worse. His chest ached.
“What you need is to stop feeling sorry for yourself,” Elvis advised him. “Stop moping around this dump. Go out and get yourself a new woman.”
“Too old for chasing tail at the singles bars,” he protested, reaching around Elvis to select some pills from the medicine cabinet. Shitty street speed they sold now only made him long for the good old days of Dex and Ritalin and black beauties.
“Never too old to make a comeback,” The King said.
“Who says I need to make a comeback?”
“Shit. Look at yourself.”
“You look at yourself, dammit! You’ve got an extra chin and sleeping bags under your eyes. Try to squeeze that stomach into one of those black leather jackets you slouched in back when I was trying to grow sideburns like yours.”
“But I’m not getting any older now.”
“And I won’t grow up either.”
“It’s not the same thing.”
Street speed always made him hungry. He ate half of the cheese sandwich, felt vaguely nauseated, and had a swallow of Maalox with several aspirin.
He really ought to take a break before getting back to work. There was nothing on television that interested him at all, and he wondered again why he paid for all the cable channels that were offered. Still, best to have access; there might be something that would inspire him — or at least fill the empty hours of pain.
He could watch a tape. The trouble was that the tapes were unsorted and unlabeled, stuffed away into boxes and piled together with all the other debris of his life. He could dig through it all, but then he would run the risk of pulling out a cassette of a film that was special to her. He would never watch To Have and Have Not again. Best just to turn on Cable News and let it run.
He put the rest of the cheese sandwich out for the cat, in case he came back during the night. His stomach was hurting too much to finish eating. Despite the Maalox, he felt like vomiting. Somehow he knew that once he started vomiting, he would never stop — not until all that he spewed out was bright blood, and then not until he had no more blood to offer. A toilet bowl for a sacrificial altar.
There was inspiration at last. Vomiting was back in vogue now — proof that great concepts never die.
While the fire was in him, he brought up the IBM, instructed global search to replace “kiss” with “vomit on.”
That was more than enough creativity for one day. He felt drained. It was time to relax with a cold beer. Maybe he could play a record. He wondered if she had left him a little pot, maybe hidden away in a plastic film canister.
But film canisters reminded him of all the photographs they had taken together, frozen memories of the two of them in love, enjoying their life together. He was too depressed to listen to a record now. Best just to sit in the darkness and sip his beer.
Janis Joplin was trying to plug in one of the black lights, but she needed an extension cord. Giving it up, she plopped down onto the couch and grinned at him. She was wearing lots of beads and a shapeless paisley blouse over patched and faded bell-bottoms. From somewhere she produced a pint of Southern Comfort, took a pull, offered the bottle to him.