Novella:
In descending order, alphabetical
By Pablo D' Stair
[Part 9]
Though he had been watching the bored and dour lift and fall of the
woman, loitering there, her purse set on the newspaper stand and
cigarette like an almond to and from her lips, he had been thinking that
all he really needed to know was that the movie was not something he
could lay eyes on, that was all, it needed to seem far away, feeble,
needed to just seem some recluse shut in behind moulded windows who
nobody wanted to go bothering with, either way, why would that make him
feel better he didn’t bother to come up with, it just made the matter
less intrusive.
He thought about all manner of things, the woman’s dress and then
walking and glanced in a shop that sold all sorts of paper but any kind
he wanted was too expensive or you had to talk to some preening little
weirdo to get an order placed special for it, he remembered the feel of
that box of pulp paper he had once stolen from a storeroom at some
office building, wound up typing two plays on it and didn’t know what to
do with the only twenty or something sheets were left, wound up they got
lost at some point, this apartment to that, or else they were just under
someplace for all he knew, mixed in with every other piece of rubbish
imaginable.
He just wanted to see the box, the case, whatever, see it, know that
it was just something that amounted to a stain from dribble to a shirt
collar.
He was shivering and noted he could get more liquor, because that
would have to happen eventually, all of this time wasted, and he walked
afraid to turn around because of this lunch break or that going on all
around him, felt like a wart every time he waited a crosswalk out, these
humps in their work clothes all stepping in the street before the walk
sign even lit because they knew the pattern of the traffic lights and he
always waited, looking at boots, at skirts, at stockings, at shoes,
cuffs and briefcases and slung bags and the tapping kick of one umbrella
closed, plaid like the shade inside a lampshade the bulb dead, the strap
pinching shut a pink looked like burnt paper still readable.
But somewhere outside of the entrance to a general building, rooms
and rooms and rooms and rooms in sheets above him, smoking, looking
across as the little Blockbuster Video he got nervous at the thought of
approaching it, queasy, like some coward, he decided to finish off the
taste left of the bourbon in the flask, to remind himself there was
blood that drove his bones and that, either way, why should he be
concerned with what some minimum wage nobody hasn’t ever done one thing
amounting to anything thinks of him.
Strolled the shelves and pretended like he wanted something, mostly
to wait for his feet to feel warmer, the cold of them balls of pins,
soaked paper dried, sucked on and squeezed tight.
“I was wondering, I didn’t see it on the shelf, I might have been in
the wrong section, do you have Driller Killer, a movie, it’s sort of
old?”
The guy was a plump didn’t bother with tucking in his shirt, nametag
dangling from a strap over the round of his neck smeared into his chest
top, some sort of facial hair but amounting to it looked he had wiped
his face with his hand dirtied by wet grass and then stifled a sneeze,
rubbed his eyes and all of it.
“Drill what?”
Driller Killer.”
Some typing, he read the nametag and snorted when he saw the fiend
was assistant store manager.
“Driller Killer?”
“Yeah. You might not have it, a lot of places don’t.”
“No, not in stock, it’s listed, but not in stock.”
A twist of bile rose to his throat bottom with a gurgle and he let a
flat breath “Listed?”
“We have a general database, basically anything that exists is
listed, so, the film exist, another store might have it, but Online is
your best bet.”
And blah blah that he didn’t care that much, just popped in his head,
and asked for ‘Jean De Florette’ just to have something to say, but it
was too much to get the moron to spell it right, he said he would just
check and where was the Foreign section.
He already knew that the movie existed and he reminded himself that
he seemed to have to keep reminding himself of this all day long and
that he should give it up for awhile, until he was not letting any
insect in his thoughts get at his brains, that really he was still
emptying rot from his lungs from last night, Driller Killer would work
just fine and either way he still could see how it would be exceptional,
the scenes clicking black to light, left to right, an overall feeling he
wanted to evoke of like someone trying and trying and trying to fight
off sleep but all they managed to do was blink harder, bite down their
eyes, take longer to open them, see less, nothing but strings like old
cracks in everything everywhere and light bled down dark on top of
everything, such a lost lost feeling of being pointless and belittled,
art and violence would do nothing for it, nothing would do anything for
anything, art, violence, never mind, passion, nothing but eventual
collapse, sleep or some unknown quantity.
This was clap clap clap like steady enthusiasm and so he bought
himself a good tight bottle of bourbon about the size of his inside coat
pocket made taut, some brand he didn’t know and it tasted like warm ash
and melting clay, good, chocolate full of bit fingernails, it slid down
into the throat.
He thought something about the clerk who’d sold it to him, the soft
wear of her shirt didn’t seem artificial, the shift to her hair and how
her face looked bent, beautiful, like it didn’t know it wasn’t looking
up when it wasn’t, he thought she must haunt every man she ever touched
until they disintegrated and that she wouldn’t care to know it if she
did.
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