The Poet : Chapter 27

 

TWENTY-SEVEN

 

“And I got this little gem in the mail today.”

            Killian handed me a postcard-sized piece of heavy, cloth feeling paper. And sure enough there it was in three little sentences:

Due to scheduling conflicts beyond my control, I’m going to have to formally withdraw myself from the Needful Things benefit reading. Sorry for the inconvenience and good luck. Hope it all pans out.

Best Wishes,

Godfrey Whitt.

            “Boy is Kale going to be disappointed,” I said. I handed the dismissive back to Killian, who folded it into his flannel pocket. The paper was so fine it crackled. “Whitt is a concise asshole; I’ll give him that. And he is serious about not communicating electronically.”

            “On the other hand, his agent is an electronic wordsmith,” Killian said. “I got four paragraphs from him about how God has other commitments and such. Some European book signings that can’t be rescheduled. How the book is breaking out in Norway. Opportunities not lost. How no formal agreements were signed between Godfrey Whitt and Needful Things, so there was nothing legally binding.”

            “No contract?” I said. “Gee, maybe you are a shit businessman…and here I was thinking it was that damned Barclay’s Center and a lack of curiosity in the philistine public school system that killed Needful Things.”

            “I’m not in the mood for your attempts at humor today, Rand.”

“Oddly enough that’s exactly what Larissa said to me over Gmail.” We were quiet a moment. Something Carolina said popped up into my head. “Did you really think you were going to save the store with that reading?”

“I’m not a fool. I was never going to save the store. And I knew how much saving the store didn’t matter to a guy like that. All the same I was hoping to maybe dip my toe into promotion. Do a big Godfrey Whitt reading now, and maybe later start setting up some other readings and such.”

“Tell Henry Winkler there’s a new Fonzie in town.”

Killian gestured back to his office. “But no worries, right? I only wasted a few hundred dollars on fliers and advertising with his name on them. What’s a few more months of cold cuts for dinner at age forty-three?”

“Godfrey Whitt is an asshole,” Jackson Urban interrupted. But who knew where he was in the store amidst the boxes and discount signs tacked up on the shelves? Killian had removed Godfrey Whitt’s display. Tricia Thread’s new display remained much to my chagrin. Someone, and I’m not naming names here, had doctored it with a swastika and Hitler moustache.

            Gigi pulled her head out of her cell phone at the slightest slander of her new idol. “God is not an asshole, Jackson,” she said, to a pile of boxes stacked five deep in three mounds. “He’s protecting his brand.”

            “What does that even mean?” I asked “Protecting his brand? It’s newspeak I tell you.” That garnered the standard Gigi glare. “You kids go on and on about authenticity. Oh, this politician is owned by Wall Street. She’s a crook. She’s dishonest. I don’t want cell phone companies ruining my Pride parade. And you’re all the biggest corporatists I’ve ever seen. It’s all about marketing with your generation. Marketing and cross marketing. You’re all like a bunch of little corporations walking around mesmerized by cell phones and emoji, and all your social media outlets. You pretend to care about the world around you. Like I could totally vote third party…or like I could totally get an ice coffee.” I could feel my heart racing. “And protecting his brand? Godfrey Whitt my ass. And don’t you start calling that ball of gas God.”

“You’re just jealous.” Gigi went back to her phone. “And by the way, Rand, I like ice coffee about as much as you enjoy sobriety.” She made a face. “I can like smell you from over here. Seriously, how do you get through the rest of your day drinking like that?”

“I maintain a casual selection of memories,” I said. “And I always carry a subway map.”

I looked around Needful Things. Through an afternoon vodka fog it suddenly and completely hit me that Killian was losing his store. The place looked an empty shell of itself. Boxes here. Boxes there. Signs plastered on the front door offering thirty to forty percent off selected items. Signs on the shelves doing the very same. Signs of death. A lifetime of investment and love; now it all sat in boxes waiting to go away. It saddened me that The Asshole at the End of the Bar would never be sold here and perched on the big table that too was gone. Needful Things was the only I store I ever envisioned it being.

“Need I even ask you why you’re here on another work day?” Gigi said.

            “I’m here because I didn’t remember to go back to a meeting on useful searching tools after I went to the bar on my lunch break.”

            “When they finally fire you…again, I hope I’m around to say I told you so.”

            Jackson lifted himself up from the ground. “Why do you keep skipping meetings, Wyndham?”

            “Because meetings just get in the way of our male bonding…and wiffleball practice, Reggie.”

            “Rand wants to make sure I’m not alone at the unemployment office,” Killian said.

            “They love me down there,” I said.

            “I’m serious though,” Jackson said. “Don’t you think about the future, Wyndham?”

            “Reggie, I’m forty-two,” I said. “The only thing I think about is the past.”

            The Needful Things doorbell tink-tinkled. “Helloooooooooooooo,” Tricia Thread said. She came into the place and stood stock center amidst the rubble of closure. It had to be sixty-degrees or more outside but she was fully dressed in her beige faux-leather coat with faux-animal hair collar, faux-squirrel or something, sensible black slacks and flats. The hair was fully blonde bounce and glittered off the store lights. Tricia looked around like she owned the place. She might as well since hers was the only book selling. Then she turned to Killian and made a pouty face. “I heard about what happened with Godfrey.”

            “Yeah,” he said. “It was a bit of shock but we’re still going to do the reading. I think it’ll be good for all of us.” Tricia stood smiling and nodding repeatedly like she’d done a vat of crack on the way over. “All the same it was good of you to come by and che…”

            Tricia held up a hand. “I’m not really here for that,” she said. Her mouth opened wide like she held the key to the world’s biggest and best secret. “Actually, I’m here on good...no... great news.” She turned to Gigi. “Branford will call you later but I’m so excited that I wanted to break protocol and tell you myself because I feel so fully invested in this. The Jackalope literary agency has decided to rep your book, Gee! They’re taking The Icepersons Cometh!”

            “Squee,” or something like squee came out of Gigi’s mouth. Then it was trembling. And insta-crying. Jackson went to put an arm around her but Gigi had already fled to center-store where she and Tricia embraced and were bouncing up and down in a mix of Mickey Mouse hoodie and faux-leather. “Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God!”

            “Just act surprised when Branford calls.” Tricia looked at Killian and I. “I feel like I created her myself,” she said, as Gigi remained buried in all that faux. Poor Jackson looked dejected. “I hope this news makes up for you losing your store.”

            “I’ll always remember it when I look at my first unemployment check framed on the wall of the apartment I can no longer afford,” Killian said. But she hadn’t heard him. Tricia and Gigi went right back into another bouncing and screaming fit.

            “I’ll be in the basement if anyone needs me,” Jackson said. Then he slumped off and left.

Killian shrugged at the Gigi/Tricia tangle, and looked like a foreign agent in his own store. He started walking back toward his office and I followed, mostly because that was where he stashed the whiskey and I was due a drink. The office was in just as sad a shape as the rest of the store. Killian had taken down his writer pictures and the post cards of art. His personal effects were in boxes. On his desk sat his lowly computer and those fucking useless fliers advertising that prick of all pricks, Godfrey Whitt. Christ, I could still hear Gigi and Tricia screaming and squee-ing from behind closed doors.

“Serve ‘em up, barkeep because I need a drink,” I said, after plopping into a seat. I lifted my ass like I was going to fart. Instead, I reached into my back pocket and pulled out a bulk of paper. Then I tossed it at Killian. “Some literature to go with our brief imbibement?”

            “You break that writer’s block?”

            “Just read.”

He started going through the pages. The reaction was slow going at first. Then I got an eyebrow raise. Then two. Then Killian did that laugh-through-the-nose thing that he did, although I found none of the pages funny. He gave a few honest to goodness chuckles, before mouthing the word ouch. In the end Killian reached under the table and came up with that bottle of crown and two tumblers. I rubbed my hands while he poured.

He gave the papers back to me. “Sooooo… Larissa wrote this?”

            “I found it at the bottom of her overnight bag.” I killed some whisky. “I can’t tell if I’m offended by the story, or by the fact that she hadn’t even packed those thongs that I liked.”

            “I’m not sure what to say here,” he said. Killian let his drink sit. “It’s good to be a muse but a terrible thing to be a snoop?”

            “Between that and the poem business at work I’m thinking of becoming a monk. It worked for Thomas Merton.” I finished my drink and then poured myself another. He made no effort to stop me. I glared at those papers “Isn’t this an ass-kicker?”

            “I’m more surprised that you found this in physical form.”

            “I’ve come to realize the eco thing with Larissa is all an act,” I said. “The girl wastes more toilet paper than hooligans on Halloween…and she leaves the light on when she leaves any room.”

            “Let’s burn her at the stake.”

I pointed at the bundle of paper. “Did you read that one part? The part where I twisted my, oh, I’m sorry, where, Travis of all names, twisted his other ankle while that little red dragon gang motherfucker rounded third base?”

            “A very accurate description from what I haven’t completely blocked out from that night,” Killian said.

            “I sound like a fat, drunken asshole.” I had more whisky.    

“Creative license?”

            “It would’ve worked better with Travis being a little bit more heroic,” I said. “At least in the version I was going to write he would’ve.”

            “But did you write the story?” Killian asked.

            I put down some more whisky. Killian and his logic. “That’s not the point.”

            “It might be the entire point.” He sipped his whisky. “You didn’t write the bar novel. Carolina did. You didn’t write the wiffleball story. Larissa got that one. Honestly, pal, I think your biggest problem is that you know too many writers, and that you do too many stupid things in front of them.”

            “That’s not…wait, do you have stuff written about me?” I said. I had a sick feeling in my stomach.

            “Nothing that’ll hurt your presidential bid.”

I grabbed the story and turned some stapled pages. “But what about the part after…the…the…when apparently, I tried fucking the Larissa character, named Breah of all names, only I was too drunk…again, mind you…to do it.”

            “I barely scanned the fucking part,” Killian said. “Some things you’re just too close to in this world.”           

“Man, guys like Travis don’t fuck. They plow a chick for thirty-seconds tops. They do telemarketing work and go to chain restaurants for beers with their bros. Maybe they’re in boy bands. And having that scene in the story makes it too damned long. It should’ve ended with fat, fucking Travis alone on that cul de sac with two twisted ankles and no one there to help him up. That’s art.”

            “Or what you called December 29^th of last year.”

I finished my whisky. “I had notes for this stuff. Mental notes but they were still notes. I had large luminous plots worked out in my mind. Sure, I forgot a lot of them with the next day’s hangover, but they were there in that gleaming moment of intoxication.”

“What exactly do you do when you get up at five in the morning?” Killian dumped some more booze in my glass. “Because yelling at a barking dog and your fornicating neighbors is not the stuff of a budding writing career, Rand.”

            “America is a carton of rotten eggs and someone has to set these noisy philistines straight,” I said. I let the drink sit. Sadness and envy overtook me. I put my head in my hands. “How could she do this to me, Killian? How could they do this to me? Larissa violated me. Carolina sullied our sacred bond.”

“Need I remind you of your own little poetic gems that are circulating online and apparently in your HR department?”

            “Are you calling me a hypocrite?” I asked.

            “Calling or suggesting?”

            “You’ve been hanging around Millicent for too long…. next you’ll be calling me a misogynist.” I killed my drink. Killian withheld another. But he’d relent. “I’m not dating writers anymore. Or I’m not dating anybody. This whole mess. Poetry readings. Climate Change. Store closings. Oleg. Willy. HR. Larissa Haven-St. Claire. Legos at meetings. Orange-faced billionaires. Fucking Flaming Red Dragons.” I sighed. From the bookstore proper Gigi and Tricia started their shouting anew. “All good ol’ Rand ever wanted was his book of poems.”

            “The asshole at the end of the bar,” Killian said, whimsically. He finally poured me a spit and put the bottle back under his desk. We had some whisky. “Are you going to talk to Larissa about the story?”

            “And say what? Look what I found in your overnight bag while I was going through it to find those lacy thongs of yours to wrap my johnson in while I was masturbating to the dystopia actress because I was pissed you chose poets and hipsters over me?”

            Killian through-the-nose laughed. “It would be a start…and you sort of defiled her papers in your back pocket so…”

            “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

            And I didn’t. I’d found those papers by going through Larissa’s bag. I had no precedent to start a conversation about it, unless I wanted to go into serious boundary-crossing territory. I could claim the overnight bag as seized property but that seemed a bit overzealous. I couldn’t come out and ask Larissa what she’d been writing. Most likely I’d put the crumpled papers back in her bag and just stew over the whole business. But there was the matter of drinking. I couldn’t hold it in when drunk and I knew it. I guess I could break up with Larissa. Women dumped me all of the time without explanation. But did I want to do that? Not really. Things had been shaky lately but they’d not escaladed too badly. Room for improvement I told myself. Plus, Larissa and I ran in the same circles. Even if I wanted to, breaking up with Larissa Haven-St. Claire would be rather inconvenient at the present time.     

The office door opened. Gigi took one whiff of the room. “You’re enabling him,” she said to Killian.

He shrugged, got up from his chair and gave Gigi a hug. “I forgot to say congratulations by the way. I’ll be able to say I knew you when.”

            “As soon as you hit it big, I’m selling some scandalous story to the National Enquirer,” I said. “You and me are going to be tethered for life in some weird sexual cult.”

            “Thanks for your support, Rand,” Gigi said.

            “I expect a free copy of the book. Signed. I don’t care if it’s your name or not.”

            “Anyway,” Killian said. “Was there something you needed, Gee?”

“The landlord called.”

            He got up from the desk. “Good,” he said. “I was hoping to add legal jargon and clauses and exceptions to my day.” Killian took the bottle of whisky and locked it away in a cabinet. He put the key in his desk. Then he picked up the phone “The man salivates every time he mentions my official closing date.”

            I got up from my chair and my legs felt like J-E-L-L-O. Still a good showman could always play off his excess. I bowed to Gigi and Killian. “I bid you both adieu.”

            Then I was out into the bookstore and no one was in the place save Tricia Thread texting on her big phone in the middle of the room. “Toodles, Rand,” she said, as I staggered to the door.

            “Fuck you, Tricia,” I said. She laughed as I walked out into the gray afternoon.

            I staggered all the way to the subway station before the light came on and I realized I’d left that fucking story sitting on Killian’s desk. Shit. When I got back to Needful Things no one was in the place. Muffled voices came from the basement. When I made it into the office the papers were gone. I looked for them everywhere. Fuck it, I finally thought. I looked around to make sure it was safe. I opened up Killian’s desk and grabbed the key to his drawer. Lock booze away from me? In seconds I had the whisky bottle in my hand. I was going to purloin it but decency got the best of me. I upturned the thing and took a big old gulp. When I made it back outside, I got all the way back to the subway station before I realized I’d left the bottle on his desk. Fuck that too, I thought, descending into that stinking underground. Fuck it all. Screwing up was my one true art.