If any of you out there have read, or are actually
a fan, of my two novels
The Librarian and
Wine Clerk…well…then I guess I have a
treat for you. I’m currently working on a third installment of the Rand Wyndham
saga (I’m kidding…it’s not called a saga…assholes call things sagas) entitled
The Poet. The book takes place when DOUCHE MOTHERFUCKER was still running for
president and hadn’t yet brought his highchair antics to official government.
What I’m posting today is what is currently Chapter Twenty Three in a rough
draft version of the novel that I have going. For those of you who like Rand…enjoy…for
the uninitiated…hope you enjoy. For those of you who hate Rand…na na na na……
TWENTY THREE
The blizzard came. It was this
record two-foot storm that blew in on a Friday evening, and killed everyone’s
weekend. It was the biggest snowstorm in decades; the biggest snowstorm during
the warmest winter on record. Even so the orange-faced billionaire and other
republicans were using the blizzard to claim that climate change was a hoax.
Airports were closed. Roads were blocked. Emergency vehicles only. We waited
for the frogs to fall from the sky, and the political spin to make snow angels.
All I knew was that it had been sixty degrees at the beginning of January, and
three weeks later we were freezing our asses off and buried under two-feet of
snow.
The goddamned
boiler in my shithole building had burst the day of the storm. I woke up to no
heat and no hot water, and the snow and wind duking it out for supremacy out my
window. Larissa was staying with me because waiting out the blizzard at my
place had initially seemed a better option than the two of us being stuck in
all weekend with Millicent Xiao, her bat shit roommate. Then that boiler shit
happened. And it had gotten so cold, so fast; we couldn’t even fuck it was so
cold. We couldn’t shower lest we be submitting ourselves to some kind of
ancient torture. At least we had food and strong drink, which I was taking
medicinally during the course of our horror. Booze warmed me up. It fortified
me. I wasn’t so sure I could say the same for Larissa.
“How
are you even out of bed?” she asked me from the warm tangle of sheets. I was
sitting at the machine trying to get some writing done in the cold. Three pairs
of socks and the hardwood floor was still numbing my feet. I could see my
breath inside. I was still stuck on the line I had a sick feeling in my stomach.
“I’m
a sadist by nature,” I said. “Hence my fascination with your dildo collection.”
“Ow.” I looked
back and Larissa was holding her head. She looked pale in the soft, yellow glow
of the small bedside lamp. “I meant how are you even out of bed with what you
drank last night.”
“Any morning I’m
not leaning over the shitter I consider a victory and an opportunity not to be
squandered.”
“Why
do you drink so much?”
I
shrugged. “Maybe I’m scared shitless of something. Or I can’t face the truth.
Most likely I’m your run-of-the-mill weak degenerate who falls into any habit
to pass the time, and I don’t like crossword puzzles or chess.”
Her
mouth made that familiar bubble. Larissa sprang from my bed and bolted for the
door. She barely hit the bathroom light and flipped the toilet lid, before she
was face in and expelling those demons into the ice cold water. “God,” she
said, after a few rounds of vomit and a hearty flush. “Why don’t you ever
flush!”
I
was a yellow let it mellow kind of guy in a world full of water wasters. Still
I should’ve showed decorum. I got up from my chair. Fuck writing anyway. I went
into the bathroom and Larissa was on the floor clutching the bowl, her jet
black hair all in her face. She was dressed in black pajamas and that hooded
hot pink sweatshirt with the skull and crossbones. I felt terrible for her.
“Are you all right?”
I asked.
“Does
it look like it?” The she rose and hurled into the bowl, motioning for me to
get the hell out of the bathroom. I stood in the hallway with the door half
shut, feeling like a fucking creep. “So cold,” Larissa finally said. Then she flushed.
“Can
I come in?” I opened the door without her responding and found the poor girl
fetal on my bathroom floor. I wished I’d had the foresight to mop it. But what
people didn’t know about home décor didn’t hurt them. “Get you a glass of
water?”
“How
much did we drink?” she asked.
“The
usual trapped in a freezing apartment during a blizzard amount.”
“I
can’t.” Larissa rolled on her back. “Rand, I seriously can’t keep doing this.”
She
held out her arms and I pulled her up from the bathroom floor. She was an
intoxicating blend of morning breath, vomit, cheap Chilean wine, and whatever
that vegan chili she’d made had been full of.
I walked her into the living room, which had become a cold, dark shell
with that boiler being out. The coffee table was a landscape of remote
controls, books, wine bottles, dirty wine glasses, and receipts I’d been too
lazy to toss. All of our blankets were still on the couch. Larissa crawled in
on her side, and I covered her up with everything. She still shivered.
She had strength
enough to turn on the television to one of the 24/7 news networks that she was
hooked on. The orange-faced billionaire was on the screen. He was bloviating
about Mexicans or Muslims or The Blacks, as he called them. It was hard to
tell. The hate permeated the cold room. America felt like it was ending outside
and on the television. I didn’t like
the country, but I didn’t want to see it go out like this. Good Christ, I
thought. I might actually vote. That orange-faced fuckwad had made yours truly
a patriot.
“This
monster is going to make me sick again,” Larissa said. “How can people follow
this guy? He’s like listening to Hitler…and maybe that’s not even fair.”
“I
hate to tell you,” I said. I pointed at the television where the orange-faced
baboon was mocking a crippled reporter. “That’s your next president.”
“He
can’t be.” Larissa lifted her head to glare at him then promptly put it back
down. “He’s got no chance.”
“That
orange-faced ghoul is the perfect American.” I watched him shouting on the TV.
“He’s boorish, he’s willfully ignorant, he’s sexist, racist and xenophobic,
which is quite the hat trick by the way, and he’s wealthy. Americans love the
wealthy. What was it that Steinbeck said…”
“I’ll
move to Canada,” Larissa said.
“You
ever been to Toronto? It’s like New York if you take all of the fun and
excitement out of it.”
“What
will be left here?”
“Riots,”
I said. “Bloodshed. The Constitution in tatters. I sat down on the couch and
Larissa put her legs on my lap. Intimacy was so easy for her sometimes. “He’s
got as much of a chance as the rest of those GOP domestic terrorists. Plus they
keep giving him all of this news coverage because of that reality show he was
on. Americans are inherently stupid. And they like tough talkers. We’re just
seeing the Republican end on this. Wait until the average voter decides.
Democrats are just a dumb. They’re pouty. If they don’t get their candidate
they’ll stay home…and this asshole will win.”
“Independent
voters will never buy this,” Larissa said.
“I
was an independent voter,” I said. “I used to think that meant independent of
thought. A kind of liberated political spiritualism. But really it just means
being a confused, thumb-sucking jack-off with no real moral fiber. We’re headed
toward a cliff, kid. Best pack a parachute.”
“Ow.”
She held her head. On the TV the orange-face demagogue continued to rant about
making America great again. He had no ideas. He had no solutions. He made no
sense. He sounded like most of the poets that I knew. Yet his crowd hooted and
hollered like he was the second coming. “I can’t watch this.” Larissa shut off
the TV and we were mostly in the dark. I turned on a lamp. Outside that demon
beast’s dog bark echoed through walls and windows. “And, again, I seriously,
like literally, can’t keep drinking like this.”
“Then
stop doing it.”
“You
enable me,” Larissa said. “I swear when I think of you you’re always like
pouring something.”
“Life
is hard,” I said.
“You’re
a librarian.”
“Each
person has their own hell. And I’m not forcing the poison down your throat. You
see you’re young you don’t get it. It doesn’t matter the job. What wears you
down is the repetition, the sameness; the act of doing the same thing day in
and day out. You’ll see when you’re my age.”
“Rand,
I’m thirty-eight.”
“What?
I thought you were in your twenties.”
“What
made you think that?”
“Um.”
I had no good answer. “The hair dye?”
Larissa
kicked her legs off of me and got more fetal. Then she started crying. “I had
things I wanted to do this morning. And I have to teach this afternoon…if the
trains are running again.”
“You’ll
feel better by then.”
She
looked up at me. “That’s not the point, Rand? The point is, blizzard or no
blizzard, all we do is spend the weekends drinking. We don’t go out. Not to
movies. Or dinner. Mackenzie and Jackson and everyone went out to celebrate his
book and what did we do? We went home to freeze.”
“What
sort of madmen go drinking when there’s a blizzard warning?” I asked. It was
all well and good if Larissa didn’t want to drink. But this was starting to
feel like a character assassination. It was too early in the morning for a
character assassination. I always scheduled my character assassinations for the
late afternoon, or when I knew I’d see Mackenzie and Jackson.
“Friends
do things for friends,” Larissa said.
“Up
until a few years ago I was a touch fuzzy on friend protocol,” I said.
She
gave me a sarcastic look. “You never had friends?”
“I
follow the golden rule. I do unto others as I want done to me.”
“And
that is?”
“I leave people
the hell alone.” Larissa gave me a disgusted sigh. “So what’s your solution?”
“Maybe
dinner out?” she said. Larissa sat up on the couch. She didn’t seem so sick at
that moment. “Maybe…” But then Def Leppard rained down on us from the apartment
above. “Is that Pour Some Sugar on Me?”
“I
think so,” I said.
I
got up from the couch and headed back toward the bedroom. As expected Chico and
Molly were performing the morning ritual upstairs and their next door neighbor,
Gerhardt, had found his usual way to join in. At least they’d found some way to
keep warm. Chico and Molly and Gerhardt were making America great again in
their own way. Loud music and fucking. It was a typical morning for yours
truly. But Larissa had never experienced it. By some grace of God the few times
she’d stayed with me the heathens in the building had been quiet. At least the
noise had tabled our conversation. I didn’t want to hear about what a bad
boyfriend I was on top of being an incorrigible drunk. On cue that fucking dog
barked from across the street. I had a sip on my cold coffee and toggled my
computer mouse. I had a sick feeling in
my stomach was still glaring back at me. I finally deleted it.
When
I got back to the living room Larissa was pacing, wobbling really, and holding
her head. “How do you live like this?” she said.
“Wall
punching and ceiling smacking,” I said. “You see I got this Bobby Bonilla
baseball that I like to…”
“No
wonder you don’t get anything done.” She continued pacing. Admittedly the music
was loud and bad. The fucking in the bedroom equally an abomination. But they
did stop. Life at casa de Rand wasn’t a noise-fest all the time. “I like can’t
even deal with this.”
“I
hate Def Leppard too,” I said. “Back when all of those white kids were
listening to hair metal I was a rap and R&B man myself.”
“The
noise, Rand,” Larissa said. She
clutched her chest. “I have that one guy upstairs, and Millicent isn’t a
mute…but it’s not like this.”
“Why
don’t you sit down and I’ll get you some tea,” I said.
“Stop
trying to ply me with beverages.”
“Hey,
I do what I’m best at.”
Larissa
sat on the couch. She looked like she was going to cry again, and I wanted to
avoid that at all costs. I hated when women cried. I hated when they cried over
me. I wouldn’t mind it so much if a woman cried over me because I was a grand
lover departing, or because I was so benevolent and sweet in my gestures. But
women usually cried around me because I was a fuck-up. I made them drink too
much. Or I insulted their character. We didn’t go to movies or to parties. And
I didn’t do these things on purpose. They just happened. Would if I could I’d
take Larissa to more dinners and to parties. I’d take back every gratuitous
drink Larissa had the other night and pour them down my gullet. I’d sacrifice
myself to the porcelain God to save her the misery.
Larissa got up
from the couch and started gathering her shit. Her shoes and coat anyway. The
orange-face demagogue was still on TV pointing and shouting. He looked like he
was going to blow a blood vessel. He might as well have been in my apartment
for all his bluster. “Are you leaving?”
“I’m
going outside for a smoke,” she said. “And to kill that dog across the street.”
She shook her head. “Did you know that last night was the first time you said
you loved me?”
“When?”
I said.
“Exactly.”
Larissa
went out the door. Well…shit, I thought. Our first fight. I sat on the couch.
It smelled like a weekend held captive. I shut the television off and just kind
of sat in the moody, amber lamp light. America was waking up. Voices were
passing on the street, and people were shoveling the snow they hadn’t gotten to
the previous days before. A car alarm sounded. Boats moaned from the estuary.
That dog barked again. Obviously Larissa had spared its life.
I turned on the
radio. The classical station was playing B’s Egmont Overture. It was too
serious for the morning, but one never shut Beethoven off. The Beethoven ended,
and the morning news came on. One hundred people murdered in Syria. There was
death in Yemen. The blizzard had killed thirty people. Forty-five people,
twenty of them kids, died in a capsized boat off the coast of Greece. Refugees
were being attacked by right-wing groups all over Europe. The orange-faced
billionaire running for president of the United States came on the air saying
he could shoot someone on the street and not lose the nomination. He said
authoritarianism was good. That was when I shut the radio off, and waited for
Larissa to come back in absolute silence.
When she opened
the door she just glared at me. A subtle hate was forming in her eyes. I
couldn’t handle hate. Not Larissa’s, not anyone’s. I just wanted to feel warm.
“I think we should think about moving in together,” I said.
“Oh Rand,” Larissa
said. She shook her head. Then she walked down my hallway and shut the door to
my bedroom.
So…I wasn’t an
ideas man. Sue me.
