The Book of Goodbyes (2 page)

Take the flowers directly home. Make no sloppy small talk with women biting into oranges on park benches. Do not leave the flowers in the car, not even if you are the kind of guy who has a sun visor and dark-tinted windows. You must never leave the flowers in the car.

If the flowers are carnations—why? Wasn't she worth roses? Wasn't there a summer bouquet with a few sprigs of baby's breath, one or two roses and maybe a lily? You cheapskate. Why are you such a cheapskate?

Leave the flowers on the kitchen table, in their clear plastic wrap, beside the blender. She will cut the plastic wrap with her favorite pair of white-handled scissors.

You buy the flowers. She cuts the stems, runs water warm, sprinkles sugar in the water, because somewhere, if you heard her correctly, somewhere before you (you forgot there was a
before you
) another man told her to put the flowers in sugar water.

None of this will happen in time. C. S. Lewis swears all of time is written on an 8 × 11 piece of paper and the paper is God. You don't believe in God, but . . . If time is written on an 8 × 11 piece of paper, all of time, if that's true, then you are simultaneously buying flowers, taking the woman from the park bench in your mouth and making love to your girlfriend while she watches a stranger pee into your commode. It is, after all, your commode. Where is your rage?

I notice you, noticing you, nostalgic for the time before you, which is her time not yours, which you would like for yours, which you would like to pocket along with the change from the ten dollar bill, since the flowers were only five, since you bought carnations, roses were ten, and though you had the ten dollar bill, you wanted something (Spinoza and others agree: “Desire is the essence of man”), a beverage, which requires going into the bar, asking the woman with the orange if she will join you in the bar. Isn't she hot in this heat? She must be.

We are getting stale. I call us stale. I can feel us getting stale and it sickens me.

More.

You sicken me.

More.

I took the flowers and I cut the stems off the flowers. I cut the stems off the flowers because you wanted me to do it. You urged me to cut the stems off the flowers and I do not regret one bit of it. Not even in the morning.

The problem with flowers and buying them is implicit in the exchange of, yes, that ten dollar bill. Times you have bartered flowers for sex? Times you have tried to barter flowers for sex? People in the world who believe in time? Time it will take for the woman biting into the orange to look up and notice your flowers?

Spinoza says, “One and the same thing can at the same time be good, bad and indifferent.” The same thing, at the same time, look up, oranges are the essence of man, biting into them is the essence of man, look up, look up. Aren't you hot? In this heat, you must be.

Affairs are amply appreciated by contemporary critics under the name of discontinuity. Affairs come into their own when we translate the whole question from structure to behavior. Affairs disappear altogether. Many affairs remain unabsorbed. The concept of the affair gives another dimension to the impact of epiphanies. Affairs in general may be analyzed according to whatever distinctions one uses in analyzing. Affairs are associated with shortness. Final affairs are an obstacle to artistic comprehension caused by the seemingly premature placing of the end. Such affairs exist in every perception that one's tentative comprehension is not complete. Such affairs depend on the convention that “every thing counts.” Affairs challenge us at a more fundamental level. Affairs are never completely resolved. Final affairs are the most extreme.

I'll tell you which panties

look good on you

psychedelic plaid

with ruffles on the waist

patriotic polka dot

the whale print is very

what's his name again?

Those would look good on you

those too, those also

I could see you

wearing those in his truck

out past the Esso station

to the field party

that one time

you got drunk

and fucked around

with some of his friends

and he cracked 6 beers

and felt old and drove

to the cemetery

and pissed on yr father's grave

here he comes round

the corner—

Are you writing about her?

I hope you're not

writing about her

If we went shopping

I mean today dammit

you could ask why

I'm sleeping with him

then push me

into the hangers

I'm not supposed

to try you on anymore

The dead walk into poems

all the time

Nobody complains

Iguazú Falls, the Argentine side, a cave,

behind the water, two tiny and courageous

finches, Bitto and Marcel, spend the day

flying in and flying out.

Bitto is most proud, daily caw, paid

vacation and space to think aloud.

He likes knowing where everyone is

and that where they are, he is far from.

He keeps his finch friends, outside,

keeps a wife, Lydia, who works domestics.

Marcel comes to the job stoically,

not as proud as Bitto, with not

as many friends. He is big, rigid,

balks at the thought of changing

for anyone, an ounce. He likes to read

the classics, Hesiod, with rules,

everything no nonsense, such as—

“Take precautions, do not dawdle,

have some brains, be honest.”

Why were they, from all finches, picked?

Bitto thinks it due to he was a great

rambler once and rambled to Uruguay

and rambled on back. Marcel thinks

it due to he was exiled, he was a great

pain in the ass once, and in front

of the Minister, called Kate a flaccid,

incompetent whore and told her

to get lost in the Arbolis.

This was his way of saying: I love you

little bitch finch. Why must you prune

the tails of others? Bitto and Marcel

live well together. They work out

the kinks, where to poo and how much

privacy to give. Bitto has even grown

a little fond of Marcel, the older,

the literate, the one who says less.

In this Bitto sees the finch he would

like to be. For now Bitto delights the people

who visit the Falls, flies in singing

weeeee
flies out singing
wooooo
.

Bitto tried to explain to Lydia

the water, wide blue, the pressure,

the pinch, the wee-woo of it,

the climax, he called it,

which ticked her off and meant

many nights of scavenging

extra tacky shit to nest her with,

a gold thread, a baby's bib.

In return, she lays a good egg.

She lets him do what he wants.

She listens to his day. “Today,

a family of four, Denmark.

The lady took pictures, the man

thought of sneaking away,

the daughter of ice cream, the son

of pillaging, something or other.”

Marcel, in a rare breach of silence,

said, “You know why all those photos?”

“The Falls are pretty this time of year?”

“She thinks if she takes enough

and if everyone is smiling and if

she places them on her mantel—”

“What is a mantel?”

“She will not be alone in the world.”

Bitto said he liked the idea of a mantel.

Bitto told Lydia he liked the idea

of a mantel, would build her a mantel,

when they grow old in the Arbolis.

Marcel flies the Falls, his left wing

aching, will there be no stop?

He cheeps for the children,

holds his poo and acts happy.

He sees that Bitto is happy

and it irks him because

to be happy requires it seems

some lying and good timing.

So Marcel cracks a seed and works

on his index of every time

a finch appears in print.

He dreams of someday turning

the index into an anthology, which all

finches will read with interest,

thereby validating his work and they

will present him on the mountain,

during the yearly festivities, where

all finches gather. This gathering

arouses in Marcel a sense of place

in the world, an ambition to congregate

with other finches, as long as they

know him by nametag only.

Once Marcel allowed himself

to be known, with Kate, on the mountain.

She asked the basic questions—

How many finches do you flock with?

Do you want to sit on my eggs?

Where do you see yourself in three days?

In the cave, Marcel thinks of Kate,

how she looked perched on the crag

that first afternoon. She liked to read

the surrealists. Her chirping

did not aggrieve him as other chirps did.

While Marcel saw himself as a loner,

a misanthrope, Kate was a weirdo too.

Giving things up, Marcel thought.

He might give things up for Kate.

Bitto did not make such sacrifices.

He kept Lydia in thick leaves.

Bitto believed in what he called

“the spirit of the moment”

which is why Bitto enjoyed

his job genuinely. Except when

the ladies of Brazil entered the cave

like this one, carrying a baby,

dropping it into the Falls.

Next an older man, with cane,

who came almost everyday, his wife

had disappeared. Next a couple

from Australia, where ten years

into a marriage, a stall, an impasse.

The cave was quiet for a while.

Bitto thought about Lydia

and building a mantel.

Bitto continued flying in

and out of the Falls, for no one,

for himself, for the spirit.

Sometimes they talked about God

and did he exist. Bitto said yes,

obviously, faith and feelings.

Marcel said no, obviously, science

and reason. Marcel said,

“I am a spiritual person.”

“What is that?” Bitto asked.

“Decency.” / “But wait!

Spiritual means a spirit. Do you

have one?” / “Do I think

there's a spirit of Marcel? No.”

“Then you're not spiritual.”

Marcel let the conversation drop.

His wings hurt from flapping.

He could not be bothered with Bitto's

spirituality, skinny little Bitto.

The closest Marcel came to religion

was when he had to humor Hesiod

who believed in theogony.

Around this time, Kate visited.

“I'm here to deliver a message

from the Minister of Finches,”

Kate said, looking awfully

subdued in her new plumes.

Marcel believed she was not

only there for that reason.

He spent each day sorting

through reasons people came

to the Falls and there was never

only one reason for coming,

there were five or six reasons,

stacked on top of each other,

overlapping each other, contradicting

each other, such that humanity

was a big den of squawk.

Marcel knew Kate must have

asked for the assignment and that

to ask for something was to want it.

“Is there anything you want from me?”

Marcel began, “Is there anything

at all I can give you? I spend

my days flying in and out of the Falls,

which is a testament to my strength,

and though I am not spiritual, I like

the surrealists, and I've tried

to write you to describe my nostalgia

for our time on the mountain but I can't

get it right since I don't think

it is nostalgia. That implies something

of the past, lost forever, and a sadness,

a gravity I don't think worthy of us.

Bitto wants a mantel to fill up

with lies and Bitto doesn't mind

because he lives in the spirit

of the moment, but I want more,

like some guidelines, and to write

the Great Index of Finches, so we

can be happy, and I just said
we
,

which is what I mean, you and me,

so if you've come here as courier

from the Minister of Finches,

and nothing more, then you can go now,

but if you've come for other reasons,

stacked reason upon reason, and if

even one of those reasons

tangentially relates to me, Marcel,

then please, speak.”

The Falls were quiet with Bitto gone

to raise feathers and Kate invisible

on Skype and lone Marcel in the cave.

“I'd rather be a zero than a one,”

Marcel thought, looking up from Euclid's

Optics
. The sun set on the lagoon

as the tourists ambled through the park.

Marcel was thinking of the rescue

of a girl from a nearby jungle and how,

to be fetched out of something,

you had to be in something and Marcel

wasn't in anything other than a book.

His screen didn't ring, his job paid in seeds,

he had no credit, no authority. He missed

Kate though he did not admit it, instead

he thought, “Why are ones so strange?

If I chirp once, why do I want, always,

another and am not content until I get it?”

Then he performed an experiment.

CHIRP, sang Marcel and tried to let be,

go on with reading. He couldn't

and before he knew it, CHIRP, CHIRP.

He felt better and looked to Bitto's empty

bed of leaves stolen from trees and wondered

what sort of feathers Bitto was raising.

“He is a liar and a thief,” Marcel thought

and knew he was right to think so,

but even lies add up to something.

The Goldfinch sauntered in, half past

six, with briefcase and insurance.

He always talked what-if-something-

happened instead of what-did-happen.

Goldie had these ideas, these grand ideas,

such as “You are only pleased when eating

ice cream,” and “In Key West,” and etc.

Marcel wished Bitto was there.

Bitto liked to take Goldie's words

and muck them so that Goldie's words

on nothingness became in Bitto's beak—

“Nothing that jizz and nothing that jizzm.”

Today, all business. “We should insure

your left wing,” Goldie said. “What if

it gives out permanently?” Marcel flapped

the wing to show it worked.

Goldie opened his briefcase, pulled papers

from it and set them on the dirt. “What if

a giant sloth lumbered in and wanted

the cave for himself and used the pages

from your books for toilet paper

and ate you?” “If I'm eaten, what do I

need insurance for?” Marcel said.

After all he was not in anything,

not in trouble, not in a bind, not in

a socioeconomic climate of anxiety,

he was just a finch. “Besides,” he said.

“I have never seen a sloth. I'm not sure

sloth exist and suppose they do, what

would an animal of gargantuan size

want with a cave of this size?”

“You never know,” Goldie said,

wetting a talon with his tongue.

It was getting late. Marcel wanted

to return to reading Euclid. He knew

what was next: the Grand Ideas

Monologue that Goldie gave and when

he delivered it, he liked his listener

to interrupt him and say, “Go on, high ship.”

Goldie began: “I got married, I lived

a long life with a wife who stopped

reading my poems when I was forty as if

I died and my poems with me.”

Go on, high ship. “So I traveled

south the country, all became hysterical

to me,
ki-ki-ri-ki, no rou-cou, no rou-cou-cou
.

I was losing my mind, and in losing it,

I realized I had nothing and nothing had me.”

Go on, high ship. “I told my biddy,

I don't love you. If I said I loved you

I meant the nothing that is.”

Go on, high ship. “I'm in love with

plough-boys and old women in wigs

and bowls and broomsticks and paltry

nudes and dwarfs.” Go on, high ship.

“I'm in love with Florida and Havana

and the Carolinas and Hartford,

but mainly Florida.” Goldie wet his talons

and bowed his head. Marcel thought

his was an old story and he an old finch.

Since he was so unhappy, Marcel figured

he should do something, become

the what-did finch. But you can't tell

finches what to become.

Later Marcel had difficulty falling asleep.

I will not think dirty things. I will keep

the brain sharp for Euclid, honest for Hesiod.

The cave was cold. Marcel saw the folds

of Kate's plumes near her breast and while

it wasn't dirty, it wasn't clean either,

what he was thinking, and Marcel said, No.

That is all that was, that is what-did.

That is done. He turned his thoughts to

Goldie, poor Goldie, wetting his talons.

The moon shone on the lagoon like

a giant sloth. Marcel fluttered close

to the wall of the cave and fell asleep afraid

and began to have his what-if dreams,

of Kate, of high ships, of twos and threes,

like all what-did finches do.