Novella:

In descending order, alphabetical

By Pablo D'Stair

[Part 6]

Even with the bit in his coffee and the quick, probably double, shot he had taken-and he has a bit also in his flask his pant pocket-of the bourbon to get him stable, and with the enthusiasm of having thought up and actually typed some bit down before he forgot it, cramped the page of paper in his coat pocket and retyped just that alone out to a new sheet left in the typewriter, he was more or less nothing but a derelict, at the moment, looked like a homeless junkie, he had absolutely no doubt, his eyes were nothing at all or were some swirl of sponge wrung water and chips of bone, each time he blinked there was a swash, a song of grapes being stood on.

He felt impossible, was the only way he had to put his feeling into words, he felt impossible and there were no words to tell him.

The two level Borders Books And Music, the corner one, would not be open for another forty-five minutes and the only toilet he knew was back the way he came, a coffee shop, and he was not the kind of person to walk all that way to a coffee shop just to use the toilet, it was a murk of a day, the light was more or less dead grass on the brown of the stagnant water of the rest of the sky, the air and all of it.

He would pip pop, snap on the balls of his feet in order to keep his inertia, his energetic rake of an attitude up, and also to convince himself that his stomach definitely did not hurt, not at all, and he felt light, the hour or so of forced vomiting to clear out whatever remnants of lingering alcohol and marijuana had done what it was supposed to do.

He walked to a little area that was always more-or-less deserted, especially at this time of day, stood at an angle to the wall and nervously urinated, eager to have it done but a bladder that took its time about emptying.

This new line, he was thinking, this new line this new line, it gave him some verve, because it showed him that he had plenty of ideas, he was not so flat, was not just a discard like he had been getting worried, so it was really just brilliance, this taking a synopsis, which he sort of was thinking of as a 'libretto' now, building up from it, it would allow access to these abstractions he had flailing blind inside him, blind and screaming loud, so many things he had for people to say, but like the clags of piano in the background of a song, those blunt brags of what did not fit melody but that made the piece.

He was in the process of thinking about some songs like what he meant when the handclap of a dog barking clut clut clut came at a stern gnash, right at him.

There was a lousy dog, no leash, mangy looking mongrel, right there and barking at him, its head a crick in the direct line of the urine that was in a puddle around his shoes, a sweet little hush hush of odour and bubbles into the divots of the ground.

He stared at the dog, but nothing much happened except it barked and barked, growls and odd blinks to its eyes like it would get distracted in blips, suddenly remember to bark at him.

He walked past the bookstore and told the homeless woman that he only carried a debit card when she tried to beg off him, or otherwise he would love to give her some money, even saying "I would seriously like to give you some money, but I don't have it except a card" and a touch to his pocket like that proved it, and her face just looked like rubbish, like waterlogged wood that was cramped with eggs insects had forgotten.

He took the paper from his pocket and read the line, he had assigned it to a man called Remus, probably he was still muddy with his hangover waiting for the breeze of the coffee and Bulliet to get him clear, and Remus was because he had Bob Dylan, The Basement Tapes, in his head, the line reading, written at a crooked crack "What it is people realize is that all of us, in the end, we'll all know everything about all of us because that's what it is, a human being, it's that, we're not just one thing, no, we're everything about us, no matter what we want to hide behind things from."

Stared.

It was still good, but he'd forgotten the rhythm, or he might not have written it right, it seemed to him that what he had liked about it, in his head, thinking it, was what he took for some sort of odd ordering to the words of one of the phrases.

He stared.

That's what it is a human being seemed odd, but not so much.

The paper went into his pocket, because he could bother with figuring it out later, the point was clear enough, though, although it would have to be in some plain context, ran the risk of being interpreted out as meaning some nonsense about the afterlife, he didn't mean that when people die they learn everything or anything so pointless, he just meant people, living life, it's unavoidable, everyone is just there for people to pick through, scraps of paper with scribble scrabble on it to misinterpret, but it'll all be pawed over, he'd be thumbed, and so the thing is to know this is true, get past the squirming, because everybody had to do that, just the same.

All there were in the sky were a few clouds out, lurking around back there, but not really doing anything, they didn't seem stuck with weight, just like they were avoiding everything, squatting and not even facing each other, like they wanted to all seem the most alone they could manage, nothing at all great about that.

**********

As soon as he was at the top of the escalator, it would be right around whatever that shelf was, and a kick from his flask, just because he was antsy, for whatever reason nervous now that he was in the store, now that he was about to get to work on this idea he felt as though he was a shoplifter, as though people were regarding him negatively, and he kept reminding himself he didn't need to pretend to be doing something, he was a person and with every legitimate right and reason to be in a bookstore as any other person might have.

The shelf turned out to be some random bit of the History section, bulky heaps of books, but he could not tell what the common thread was, walked more toward the bathrooms but didn't want to try at the door in case a key was needed, took a tap from the water fountain, it was all warm and soft like spit sucked from drool to a pillow, then a dig at the flask, two swallows because the first one was hardly anything and certainly not enough.

The store was the way he had it all pictured in his head, no one of consequence there because most people were out at work, the clerks on duty were just doing the part of their day that was quiet and not really anything, like work hadn't really started, quiet conversations, all of it.

Really, he knew what he was looking for, but didn't know where the books on Cinema were and didn't know would the directories be in the same spot or was there some other place for those.

Some bald little guy asked him did he need any help and so he just asked and after a few minutes had decided on the film directory he wanted and moved to the café area, lumped the big volume down and then his coat over his chair so nobody got the idea to bus the table, move the directory, while he ordered an espresso shot and walked around sipping at it, having added some bourbon, he was a little twinge sorry he had, but it was too late to do anything about it and the hot of the espresso, this made something chocolate tasting of the bourbon, had to be careful the mixture wouldn't drift him into napping.

This time just right into the bathroom and stood in a stall, not locking the door or anything, as he was tall enough he would be seen by anyone entering and either way he cleared his throat all the time so as not to take any chances, one way or another. It was probably just because the one from the previous night had been one, but he had it completely entrenched that he needed to find some horror movie synopsis to use, there was a lot to be said for the idea as he was doing a play and so couldn't mess about with the ordinary run of tricks that a horror movie did, it was a very abstract place to let his thoughts cringe and stumble around him, wayward, and he wanted that, wanted a wayward energy to the play, which he kept accidentally referring to, he just realised, flushing, as a film, he wanted a lost, senseless sort of pitching forward to it, horror fit this well, because horror was about being lost, he would have to make it linguistically lost, a horror of language, a rot of words that broke like hungry, flesh bare bones.

Across the way, he saw that another person had taken a seat at the café and like someone with no sense at all, raised by hill-people, had chosen a table close to the table he had set his stuff on when all the time there are something like a dozen free tables, he had figured most customers at this hour would take the seats by the window and so had chosen a seat just there by the crease of the wall, never counting on some absolute moron like this to get at the same thing.

So downstairs and out front and a cigarette and looking at a group of people from one of the clothing stores milling in front of the window glass of the shop front, two people inside the window arranging things, these other workers outside must have been tapping directions on the glass. An older guy, mumbled up in a beautiful tweed suit, said "Hello" really pleasantly to him before passing into the bookstore and he said "Good morning," in return, really quite pleased by all of that.

A horror play, a play of encroaching dread, of nerves, of shivering doubt, it had to be from a horror idea, so this would cut it down. And there was no reason to call it A Horror Play, after all, it would be a big mistake, when he thought about it, because it shouldn't carry any suggestion to the reader, and he had to remember to be careful, not to get too clever, he just needed to sneak off the three four sentences and it was all.

In honesty, there was no need to have sat to the table as he had no notebook on him, he should have been quick and the humidity, even though it was cold, was smirking at him, it seemed to have teeth that were sloppy from laughing, laughing so long the spit had turned to cubes, gummy, ground down into slops of puddles, stringing up and down with the bite of each mouth open slurp of a laugh of a sound.

The nice old guy was already out the door, again, just some few magazines, small sized, no bag and this time didn't say anything, was off that way, but he did not feel like looking that way, a lot of traffic now at the lights, headlights on because of the overcast, that twitch of light colour like a spit floating in water, excruciating, all of it, his hands were clambering around anything in his pocket to grip, and he breathed out what should have been a belch but was just a sore cough.