SOMETHING WAITS (17 page)

In fact, someone once said any damn fool (or endless number of monkeys with typewriters) can write a novel. They may have been right. The novel has been called the baseball of literature for its more deliberate, leisurely pace. You can get away with some degree of verbal padding in almost anything novel length, even the novelette-- or novella if you prefer the less precious-sounding term. But the basic short story as we know it, the one Poe purportedly invented along with the modern mystery is no slacker. Just about every paragraph has to count, and be accounted for. Some would venture every word. Some would even venture the novel itself nothing more than a bloated form of the short story (I’m not among them) --that filling up that many pages is never necessary and often excessively self-indulgent, analogous to
Gunsmoke
going from thirty minutes a week to sixty to sell ad space, or
Alfred Hitchcock Presents
becoming
The Alfred Hitchcock Hour
, like just about everything else on TV after 1958. Hey, there are only 7 original jokes as the man says, right? And we all know the first rule of joke-telling: keep it short!

Those of you out there defending
War and Peace
and
Moby Dick
can comb back your dander. Let’s keep it real here, I’m not on a Dennis Miller rant, the novel clearly has its place in history and you don’t need me to tell you that (although, Melville really could go on a bit, could he not?—and then there’s those chapters from
Huckleberry Finn
edited-out for generations—and no, we won’t get into the n word here). My point (oh, here it is!) being, the short form is simply harder to make perfect. I happen to think we should all strive for perfection, do our damnedest. But striving shouldn’t mean constant self-awareness while under the muse. All we should be concerned with then is spinning a good yarn, or, perhaps more truthfully, letting it spin itself. But that’s a whole ‘nother topic.

The little tale at hand deals with its own kind of perfection, I suppose, or one man’s driving obsession with it. Obsession is, to my mind, a grand theme for a story, any kind of story in any form. One of my favorites. Hitchcock’s
Vertigo
for instance. Or Brian de Palma’s >ahem< “homage,” the thunderously obvious
Obsession
.

Hence, the two fellows you’re about to meet. Each, in his own way, obsessed. Either of whom could serve as both the main protagonist and accepted definition of a

Peterson wasn’t sure when he knew Glenda was going to leave him. It had been coming for some time and, though she never actually admitted having a lover, the signs were there, he supposed. Maybe he simply chose not to read them.

It all came to a head one cold, sleet-misted March evening. They’d been fighting. Of course. But this was the worst yet. Names were called, objects thrown. Sentiments, perhaps, irretrievably shifted. Glenda slammed from the house in tears, screeched from the drive in the cold-protesting Mazda, roared into the icy rain and out of his life. The house—their house—was abruptly empty. He was still in it, watching her fading taillights from the living room window, but it was empty. We won’t be back, her shrinking tail lights seem to say, as they vanished in a confetti swirl of snow.

The hard truth of it settled over him, a heavy hand pressing him into the nearest chair. The big house—he had never realized just how big—went cold, colder than the freezing rain drumming the roof. Peterson sat there and stared. Stared at the front door she’d disappeared through. Was still sitting there long after the storm had echoed distant. Sat and felt drained away. A husk. He wanted to die. He wanted to vanish too. He still loved her.

He sold the house as soon as possible, accepting half what it was worth; he couldn’t bear the sight of it, another night, another minute there without Glenda. She
was
the house. She filled the house. Now it was full of ghosts. He drove across town and began searching for an apartment. He wasn’t particular. Any place, any neighborhood that that didn’t immediately conjure her memory, remind him of her. He didn’t leave a forwarding address. She might try to contact him for a final, metallic goodbye. Or she might not. And the knowledge of the latter would be worse than never knowing.

It didn’t take long to find the little apartment complex on Hyatt Street: the housing market was still spiraling, everyone was renting. It wasn’t much but he wasn’t looking for much, just someplace simple and functional, to hang his hat and—hopefully one day—start getting his life back in order. His old job at the ad firm became his salvation and he buried himself in it with a will. Busy minds, he reasoned, don’t have time to anguish. Which proved an untruth. His boss, though, was delighted with the sudden rise in clients. Peterson even got a small bonus. Great. To spend on whom?

Weekends were the worst. That interminable stretch between Friday night and Monday morning--that felt much longer than the work week itself. Life had reversed its priorities. What were once looked-forward-to holidays now became periods of mental dread. He couldn’t see her parents, he couldn’t face his own, not radiating failure this way. The office became his chief link with sanity, his single reason to go on one more day, just one more day.

By the third week, the apartment was becoming unbearable, to say nothing of unlivable. His complete lack of interest in cleaning or furnishing took its toll. His old stuff was too big for the little three room hovel. He’d scrounged flea markets with desultory results: a single lumpy sofa (baby shit yellow), a small desk, a lamp and a kitchen table best described as precarious. The rest of the place, what there was of it, stood empty. Like his soul. He had the money for nicer things, he just didn’t see the point. When he wasn’t at the office, he haunted the local movie house, a soft porn palace with patrons in long overcoats above sticky floors. When that became overpowering he hit the local bowling alley. A nice-looking woman flirted with him there once. He ignored her. Also there was Harvey’s Bar-and-Grill down the block. A rough place in a rougher neighborhood. Some big guy picked a fight with him one night, mistaking him for someone else. Peterson stood there blankly allowing the man to hit him, not attempting to defend himself. The big guy finally backed away flummoxed and left the bar quickly, looking a little spooked.

One particular winter evening, he found himself trapped inside the little apartment. There was an ice storm outside, miserably cold and frigid, like the night Glenda had left him. His car wouldn’t start from the cold. Harry’s Bar shut down early due to hazardous roadways. Peterson sat within his barren little room staring forlornly out the bent and rusted venetian blinds at the falling sleet, every droplet reminding him of the last night he’d seen her, seen his Glenda. He played that final night over again in his mind, but in his new version he said different things, talked her out of leaving, slept easily against her warm back.

Four hours of this and he felt himself drifting toward a kind of psychic detachment from reality that was probably the prelude to suicide. All denial fled; something deep inside assured him he would never see her again in this lifetime…and this lifetime had grown more nightmarish than his worst dream. He stopped showering. Nearly stopped eating. Began, staring out the window, inventing ways to end himself, grim little plays featuring overdoses and hangings and his blown out brains ringing the walls red. He found himself standing before his bathroom medicine cabinet not remembering how he got there. Unfortunately it contained nothing lethal, unless a bottle of aspirin and a box of cough drops were lethal. He had no rope to hang himself (no overhead beams in the little apartment anyway) and he certainly had no gun. Also the thought of leaving that kind of mess for others to clean up seemed one more irresponsible act in an irresponsibly stupid life.

He sat stared out the alley window listening to his mindless stomach gurgle mindlessly. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten. Maybe that’s how he’d die: starvation. But his own oblivious physicality thought otherwise, kept complaining until it became painful, forcing him to the mostly empty depths of the little refrigerator: one moldy carton of yogurt and a single bottle of beer. Not even enough to get drunk with. Worse, it wasn’t even his beer. Left by the former tenant, no doubt. A long time ago, apparently: the beer didn’t have a twist off top, just one of those old metal caps stamped on at the bottling plant, the kind requiring a metal opener, what his high school pals used to call a “church key.” Only the former tenant hadn’t left a church key behind. Did they even make them anymore? He stood there holding the bottle in his hand and felt a laugh building deep down that he feared to make audible. Then he had a thought. Maybe an un-openable bottle was something more useful: smash the neck against the counter, slosh the beer across the sink, apply the jagged edge of glass to his wrist—presto, who needed a gun? Still leave a mess, though. Or wait, better yet, go through the same process but in the bathtub, let all the bad memories of the present and the good memories of himself and Glenda swirl down the drain with his life. isa His Hi His stomach growled loudly again. It was walk the slush for a restaurant or hot tub and sharp glass; make up your mind. Before he could, there was a knock at the door.

At no time during his stay in the little apartment had there been a knock at his door, nor had he even met any of his neighbors. He hadn’t particularly wanted to. Certainly wasn’t in an ebullient mood at the moment. The knock came again. Slightly more insistent? Peterson twisted the lock, drew back the spider web of paint that was the weathered door. He stood facing a wizened, bald-headed little man in the outer hall, grinning up toothlessly from worn flannel robe and week old stubble. He blinked a greeting and held out a bony hand to Peterson. “Name’s Marston, sir! We’re neighbors, I think!” He gestured, bent-backed, down the dark hall. “I’m I-E, last on the left. How do you do?” He smelled… strange. Not quite of shaving lotion.

Peterson shook the bony hand, bemused. “I’m Peterson and I’m afraid I don’t do very well at the moment.” He held up the antique beer. “Schlitz. ‘The beer that made Milwaukie famous,’ if memory serves. Fermenting in my fridge for God knows how long. And me without an opener. Life is unjust.”

The old man bobbed his wrinkled head, grinned sympathetically. “It can indeed be. New neighbors rarely have everything needed to start afresh in a strange place!” He reached into the pocket of his voluminous robe, winced once arthritically, fished a moment and withdrew up a shiny metal bottle opener. “Never use the durn things myself. See if she fits the bill!”

Peterson laughed, surprising himself; only it came as a more a startled croak, he hadn’t laughed out loud in some time. “Well, look at that! You are a mind reader, Mr. Marston!”

Marston smile gummily, waved the air in bony dismissiveness. “Always glad to help. Didn’t take no effort to conjure that ole thing up!”

Peterson hesitated, finally motioned inside. “I’ve only the one beer but think I can manage two clean glasses, will you join me?”

Marston shook his head. “Not tonight, thanks. Busy with my studies.” He glanced at the opener with a wink. “Always glad to help, though. Bring that back to my room in an hour, won’t you? Become something of a pack rat in my old age!”

“I’ll do that,” Peterson promised. The old man hobbled back down the hall. “And thanks again, Mr. Marston!”

Marston waved his hand at the air in a think-nothing-of-it gesture. Came before his room and half turned. “Always glad to help. If I don’t answer, just slip it under the door, eh? Hearing ain’t what it used to be. Sometimes get absorbed in my reading!”

Peterson shut the door, turned with the opener to the bottle of beer, was shocked at his reflection smiling back at him in the curve of ochre glass. Another minute or so, Mr. Marston, and you might have found me asleep in the tub. He uncapped the bottle. Ah well…perhaps tomorrow night….

He sat contentedly for a while sipping from the bottle, leafing through an old magazine. One thing about beer, he was thinking, properly sealed it doesn’t go stale. Not bad, Milwaukie, not bad. And before he knew it he’d polished off the bottle. Too bad. The liquid on his stomach had improved his mood a little, even aroused a mild appetite. Problem was, the fridge was as empty as his car was dead. He might be able to find a nearby market within walking distance that was still open in this weather, but in what direction did he begin searching? He’d never taken the time to get to know the neighborhood, hadn’t realized until just this moment what a total hermit he’d become. Still, he wouldn’t mind a quick bite to eat to go with the beer.