Novella:

In descending order, alphabetical

By Pablo D'Stair

[Part 8]

The young guy working the counter gave him a pen, a nice pen, too, blue ink but it hardly mattered if it was blue ink, he actually got to liking the idea of blue ink.

And trying to come up with a title, leaned over as though tying his shoe or some other ruse, not really looking like he was doing anything, poured a good bit of bourbon down into this new coffee, realised he might as well just pour in all the rest of the stuff but then decided not to because the actual buzz of even just a tremble of it to his mouth when he set off to leave would pick him up, keep his momentum steady.

He wrote down The Driller Killer, immediately crossing out the The and then superstitiously scribbled out the other two words as thoroughly as imaginable, removed the page from the journal, folded it many times and into his pocket, flipped a few pages and almost, by rote, set the words down again, knew he could be there all day with such idiocy if he didn’t just drift into some rhythm, however nowhere it went, so just did out an outline of the play would be thirty scenes, by which he meant thirty away from the studio scenes, 30 in the studio scenes, then thought the better of it, but kept the list he had numbered to thirty, just circling the even numbers and so felt the circles indicated clearly enough that those were the inside the studio scenes, fifteen and fifteen.

Wanting something though, he was staring at his handback, at the struggling veins there, how they seemed aimless and tired and terminating, more like drifts of dust in ridges, something, he didn’t know, felt very warm, stale bourbon in his gut in sloshes in coughs, the veins were like crumbs of him, crumbs of him in wet slushes.

A girl said “Hi” and he was in a drag aware that she had been loitering by the table at a few feet off for awhile, turned up and smiled, not saying anything back and right away, strange, she was in with did he want to go and have a cigarette and that she had seen he kept going for cigarettes, one time she had been sure he was just gone except his stuff was there and it was like he just kept smoking cigarette cigarette cigarette.

They got to around the corner of the shop, a smaller road, businesses the kinds were made into what used to be house fronts, people living upstairs, and he had hardly said anything but “Yeah” to the initial “Want a cigarette?” and all of it and she was worried that he was thinking that she was a dork.

“You’re not a dork,” he said, but it was a put off, that word, what sort of girl goes around and is worried that someone thinks she’s a dork she’s smoking a cigarette with him? So he just said that he was sure she wasn’t and that even if it turned out she was he couldn’t care less, dorks were fine, as long as they weren’t morons or anything, which had her laughing in a plodding, she had to laugh because he had said a funny word kind of way.

“I saw you earlier,” she said and he, in a yawn, nodded that yeah yeah he had seen her while he was listening to some music and everything.

It was all for nothing, because she was on about all manner of how she had actually gone over to the headphone he had used and tried to figure out what the CDs he had been listening to were by touching them, were they warm, had newer fingerprints and all of that on them, some kind of nonsense thing to do, even if he thought she actually did it and then how when she thought he was gone and had forgot his coat or just would be awhile she was going to have written a note and left it in his pocket.

“No no,” he said, and kept apologising as though he were right there with her in all of this blathering, “no I’m writing a play and just thinking, I just think inside of cigarettes and all one two three a bunch go off and I don’t know, have a new idea and it’s like there’s nothing else to be troubling myself with, right?

She trilled at ‘Writing A Play’ and far too animated wanted to know about it, wanted all about did he write plays and where did he go to school.

“I don’t go to school, no,” he lit another cigarette, “not anything like that, it’s not for school, I just am writing it for whatever reason, I write some plays all the time, really, or at least think about them if not write them, too.”

“I wish I could do that,” she leaned to the wall, kicking forward with her hips into a stretch that bunched her shoulders up by her ears and then popped straight up and to her toes and said “I don’t even read enough plays, but I should, I loved Betrayal.”

He just nodded and was going to say “Yeah?” but this was death, so instead just blew smoke and heartfelt said he didn’t know about reading plays, he just wrote them.

“I guess not even really reading them, I should go to plays I think, especially considering they really are on all the time, you never think about that, it’s like they’re some rare animal, but they’re not, they’re just plays.”

Something about the salt in the light today, something about it and the cramp to the sounds in the air, how they couldn’t get anywhere, it made him feel bad, bored and a bottle that had just stopped rolling or a breaking plate having fallen, broken, and now was nothing, no one had even noticed yet.

And the girl, her eyes were as though they were inverted, but as though all of a sudden, other eyes yanked and these screwed in and slapped once to stay put, terrifying, like she looked like something not seen at all correctly.

Remembering the time for awhile when he was writing what he thinks was his second play, maybe his third or one of those things he was forever starting, leaving off for wasted, that he would only use pencils and only sharpen them with those cheap little sharpeners for kids, he sort of wishes he had a pencil, more though, truthfully, because the blue ink seemed to make everything stink of urine, no sooner was something written than it seemed like it had been sitting there for two years and he was just fiddling with it again, would get nowhere.

He had a little grouping of four random lines, someone would say them to someone, that was about it and a few titles that wouldn’t work, he should just not bother with any of that for the time being, write, start a scene, he still thought it was fine to have the first thing Remus was having a cigarette while a mother, bitter, skunk, was having a terse conversation with her young high school or something age daughter, them standing like waiting on the husband, father, Remus just there, leaning on a post and hardly seeming to be listening or to even exist.

Also, he wanted to get an allure back to his thoughts about the girl from before, from when their eyes had just met, a sting like bad light, get shut of how she amounted to a pathetic loser of a person, not an idea to her she didn’t find from irrelevant nonsense any discerning person would not even want to stand near, a half-wit absolute, and she stood around all day in that posture, completely regardless of that it made her seem a dope and a second grader when she wanted to come off the alluring woman, it was like she would need her hand held and every sentence needed to start on a swelled up word after a deep breath in, everything a Wow, a revelation, so pithy, she was the seep left from a dog lapping crust food from an old plate, now, but the only recent face so he thought how it might have been more interesting had she just sat down and they could have talked about anything else, he should have gone up to her, after all,

He should have gone up with some nonsense about thinking she was someone else or whatever, anything, instead all of this, she became the sort of person inside of three conversations she would be aligning all religions as basically the same and not understanding why people didn’t see the soft connection, the sort of real pruned to almost inside out fool thought everyone listened to the same six bands and so on. He had not paid very much attention to the writing, just strings on the page, like some thread of his sleeve was loose and fell there, but a tip tap tip tap of pen tip he found it was a total of twenty five lines, so alright, he should go about twice the length, be done with it.

And there was no reason to think about Berlin, absolutely none, it droned from nowhere, a bowel he didn’t know he had, some swallow left stale he never should have made and now wafted up, turned the water in his mouth to talc while he swallowed, why in the world he was even thinking about Berlin he had no idea, but now that he had the thought it was an angry dog, roaring in all directions.

The Driller Killer, those words, he had been what? Thirteen or maybe fifteen and Berlin had said those words “The Driller Killer,” he was long fingernails working ticks into the skin of his one cheek, leaned forward, the whole conversation, but he seemed to think Berlin had been talking about ‘Slumber Party Massacre’ or something, some ‘Silent Night, Deadly Night’ or something, but had definitely said “The Driller Killer.”Nothing, nothing in his head, for all the knew this conversation was as much imagination as anything, or there was a killer with a drill in ‘Slumber Party Massacre.’

Was there?

The café was starting to titter with the valves in the throats of everyone around letting out sounds like coins being dug through, that woman had on long high socks up into her short pants that were tight down just below the knee and closed there fast with buttons one two three different colours, a different material for the strap buckle, like herringbone or something.

A cigarette did not sound particularly good, but the outside did, he trundled up the notebook, set it down, tore out the page he had written on, folded folded folded, into the inside coat pocket after he pulled it on, the notebook could choke for all he care, wake up drunk dry mouthed in hell for all he felt close to it, left it there, some college kid could have it or else it could vanish into soot.

He watched a bus and reasoned left and right about it, but it was too much of a glut hold to his face, cold bulbs of fingers, he wanted to think that it did not matter Berlin had said something about the movie or that anybody had seen it, of course they had, but it was not that, it was the fact that he could not trust himself with this, because if he chose some film from all the others at random, it was supposed to be that, that it instead was some crumb floating in him, something he knew someone had seen, literally knew, not in general, personally knew someone who had seen it, the matter was devastated, flat and irredeemable.

He wasn’t really being unreasonable, he was thinking, and the traffic signals were taking their time, strolling to change if at all, groups of crowds of thugs and fat blobs from cheap shoe stores groping around him so that he could not get a thing straight and workable, he wasn’t really being unreasonable, he wasn’t an idiot or thought that there was some kind of secret film he would find and make off with it, but really he did not know anything.

And at that moment, and it was a glare, tumor, a building passed out of sight behind another, the top swallowed by the angle sharp of the closer building and his walking, but he knew it had been holding a look on him, the window had been, the brick, and slunked away like a thief sucking a coin beneath its tongue.