by Peter Selgin
My room was in the basement. It smelled of mold and washingmachine lint. Two cheap bookcases made of particleboard sagged under the weight of past notebooks.
“Fascinating,” said Stephen, picking one notebook off the shelf, riffling through it. “May I make a suggestion?”
“Please.”
He swallowed a pill. “Why don’t you throw them all in a lake?”
“Pardon me?”
“Your notebooks. Why don’t you throw them in a lake?”
“A lake?” I said.
“Yes: a lake.”
He said it with that twinkle in his eyes. Stephen was one of those people who could smile without smiling, thanks to that twinkle. His lips were pale and dry. His forehead skin had a greenish, coppery tinge to it. You can’t blame me for suspecting that he was a leprechaun.
He asked about the pile of paper next to my typewriter, and I told him I was working on a novel. “Really?” he said. “What’s it about?” I told him. “Fascinating,” he said. Then: “Might I give you another piece of advice?” I didn’t say anything. “You must do away with the melodramatics of the past. Give your hero a middle-class background. Where does he work? What does he do? Get some dirt and grease on his hands, under his fingernails. I want to see those dirty fingernails. Show me the town where he lives, the already-tired faces lined up at the greasy-spoon counter, eating their breakfast.” Detail by detail, chapter by chapter, Stephen went over every aspect of my novel, which I had not written and he had not read. “Yes, yes — exactly!” he would interject every now and then, responding to some idea of his. Or: “No, no, that won’t do; that won’t do at all.” He insisted that I write down everything in my notebook. In two hours I had thirty pages of notes. “Ah, the irony of it,” he said. “If I could only do the same for my novel.”
“You’re writing a novel?”
“Aye,” he said. “Trying. I sit myself in front of the machine and draw a blank. Nothing. Nada. Funny, isn’t it?”
He swallowed another pill.
“What are the pills for?” I asked.
“Pain.”
Two weeks passed before I saw him again.
“Bastard,” he said, and walked right past me.
“Stephen? What’s up?”
“Bloody bastard. Dirty fucker. Son of a bitch.” There was no stardust in his eyes.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m late for class,” he said. “Fucker.”
He kept walking. I tagged along.
“What’s the matter? Why are you mad at me?”
“You were supposed to meet me last night, remember?”
“I was?” I had no such memory.
“We had an appointment.”
“We did?”
“I got robbed, thanks to you.”
“Robbed?”
“Five hundred fucking dollars. My life savings. I left it on the bar when I went to phone you.” His pale blue eyes shined wetly. By the pitch of his voice I could tell he was loaded with painkillers or tranquilizers or whatever they were. He sounded like a tuba.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I completely forgot.”
“Ah, ya bastard.”
He walked faster.
“What the hell were you doing with five hundred dollars, anyway?”
“I just borrowed it from the bloody bank, shithead. I was using it to pay the rent on my cottage.”
“Why are you walking so fast?”
“I’m late for bloody class. Don’t ask me so many bloody questions.”
“Look, Stephen, I —”
But instead of walking to his class, he walked off campus, to a nearby bar. I followed him.
“You have no idea,” he said, twisting past crowded tables, “what it’s like to live in constant pain.”
He sat down at a table. A waitress came. I ordered us both soups and salad. Stephen ordered a double scotch on the rocks. I ordered a martini.
“Do you know what John Fowles says in The French Lieutenant’s Woman?”
I said, “No, what does John Fowles say in The French Lieutenant’s Woman?”
“In The French Lieutenant’s Woman John Fowles says that tragedy is all very well on stage, but in real life it comes closer to perversity.”
He told me to write that in my notebook. I did.
“Do you know what I intend to do?” he said when his drink had come, the sparkle coming back into his eyes, his brogue thickening. “First off, I intend to swallow a massive overdose of these bloody pills —” He showed me the pills; they were wrapped in a napkin. “Then I’m gonna set fire to the bleeding cottage that those bloody bastards are overcharging me for anyway.” The cottage was a dozen miles from campus, on Lake Candlewood. “Then I’ll walk across the frozen lake in my underwear while the damn thing burns to the ground. I’ll leave nothing; not a trace. The police will walk among the remains saying, ‘What’s this? Is this his typewriter? Is this his arm? Is this his dick?’ There won’t be nothing left, I swear. If I could figure out a way to get my car in there, I’d burn it, too. They won’t even find my name. I didn’t tell you, did I? I’m changing my name. From now on it’s Colin. Colin David McDoogle. Colin David McDoogle …” He said it a few more times, then fell asleep with his balding red head next to his soup.
That same night, in my basement bed, I dreamed that Stephen was being interrogated by an officer of the British army. In the dream, when the officer said to Stephen, “Describe your pain to me,” Stephen said, “It’s like I swallowed a fucking elephant.”
Before the school year ended, we saw each other once more. We were walking down a budding trail through the woods near the lake.
“She’s got me so damned confused,” Stephen said. He still went by Stephen then.
“Who?”
“Gloria?”
He’d never mentioned her before. “Isn’t she married?” I said.
“Separated,” he said. “That’s what’s got me so damn confused. She keeps saying she’s going to get a divorce.”
“She’s a psychology major,” I said. “A behaviorist.”
“She’s bloody smart, is what she is. Can’t resist a smart woman.”
“You like her?”
“That’s an understatement. I’d say I’m in love with her.” He turned to me. “She came to my cottage, you know. All by herself.” He said this with a wink as if it were proof that she loved him, too. “She let me cook her dinner. Don’t tell me she’s married.” He skipped a stone into the lake, then winced from the pain. “Dammit,” he said.
“You all right?”
“Ach, when will I learn?”
He took off his shoes.
“What are you doing?”
“Taking off my clothes; what’s it look like?” He stood naked, facing the water. “Coming?” he said.
“It’s November.”
“You’ll never be the same if you don’t.”
I put my notebook down and took off my clothes. We dove simultaneously. The water was like frozen razor blades. We jumped right back out and stood shivering with our balls turning blue, penises shrunken to the size of pitted olives, giggling like five-year-olds.
“There, you see?” he said.
“It feels good,” I had to admit.
“Tell me, when did you start keeping those notebooks of yours?”
“In eighth grade. My English teacher, Mr. Fesh, suggested that we keep a journal. I never stopped.”
“I see you took his advice. What about mine?” He nodded toward the lake.
“What purpose would it serve?”
“It’s like this,” said Stephen. “Once upon a time there was a very wise man. A brilliant scholar. He taught in many schools and universities and traveled around the world. He was quite well regarded. By the time he was fifty he had collected all his extensive knowledge into one great, thick notebook, and this thick notebook he carried with him at all times. And those he visited in his travels would reach out to touch the notebook, to a
dmire it and the great man who had filled it. (He was, without question, a great and learned man.) Well. One day he was walking through a village, surrounded by admirers, when suddenly a beggar in rags ran up to him, yanked the notebook out from under his arm, and tossed it down a well. Needless to say, the famous scholar was shocked, as were all the townspeople. The beggar turned to him then and said, ‘If you want it back, I can get it for you, and it will be as clean and dry as before.’ Can you guess what the great man’s reply was?”
I shook my head.
“There was none. He kept walking. And then the great man went on to become a truly great man. What you need, if I may say so, is for someone to yank the notebook from under your arm.”
I handed him my notebook. I pointed to the lake.
He shook his head. “Nah, it’s not that simple. You may find, my good friend, that you’ve got to tear the pages out yourself, one by one.”
I didn’t tear out any pages. I kept on filling them. I filled them all the way to Oregon and back. I filled them with pipe dreams, and when the pipe dreams failed to materialize, I filled then with regret and self-pity. I knew Claudette would dump me. I knew it the night I announced to her, in a winter field lit by stars and by the eyes of deer frozen into statues, my intention to leave. “It’s something I have to do,” I said. Claudette said she understood. She said it in a voice choked with tears. Did she also understand that, three months into my absence, she would not only take up with some other guy but let him move into her apartment? Still — it wasn’t her fault. I should have known better. I could have predicted it; I could have planned it. I might as well have begged for it.
Now here I am, back, lying under a chilly sun, looking up into Gloria’s dark nostrils, past the pale hairs growing there, straight up into her behaviorist’s brain. She says, “Would you like to see him?” referring to Stephen, aka Colin. “He’d love to see you; he’d be thrilled, I’m sure.”
She tells me she’s living with him at his cottage, by the lake.
“It’s strictly a roommate situation,” she says. “Nothing serious.”
“He’s crazy about you.”
“Oh,” she says. “He’s gotten over that.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. And his name is Colin. He’s very sensitive about it.”
We rode in Gloria’s car — an old Saab with a leaky muffler — up Route 7 to Sherman. The car rumbled and spluttered. Only psy chologists, I thought, drive ratty Saabs. Psychologists and middle school algebra teachers. Bourgeoisphobes. On the dashboard was a postcard with an embossed sand dollar.
“Colin sent me that. From St. Croix. He has relatives down there.”
“Really? I didn’t know that.” I held the postcard in my lap.
“You can read it, if you like.”
I read the card. Having a wonderful time, though physical condition appears to be getting worse. Wish you were here. Love, Colin.
“What exactly is wrong with him, anyway?”
“No one knows. Something to do with a missing vertebra. I think he was born that way. Sometimes it keeps him up all night. He’s almost always in pain.”
Gloria’s car smells like a ham sandwich. Also on the dashboard: one of those plastic nose-and-eyeglass masks, the kind with big, bushy eyebrows.
“I use that to freak out truck drivers who stare at me,” says Gloria.
I put it on.
“Think Stephen will recognize me?”
“Of course Colin will recognize you; you have such a distinctive face.”
By the time we pulled into the driveway it was late afternoon. The cottage was smaller than I remembered, no bigger than a one-car garage. Two big willow trees leaned over it, one on either side. Out back, I could see the lake gleaming. I heard a powerboat go by.
Colin stepped out and stood in the doorway. Wearing the mask, whistling “When Johnny Comes Marching Home,” I walked right past him, into the cottage.
“Jaysus!” said Stephen/Colin. “Jaysus!” He threw his arms around me. “How the hell are you?” I still had the weird mask on. He seemed different, frailer. He’d gone balder and grown a beard. The beard was full of gray hairs. “Jaysus!”
The cottage seemed larger inside. One room, with a loft and a kitchen. The temperature fell. Colin lit the kerosene stove, and we sat together, by its ghostly yellow glow, having drinks and exchanging summer tales of woe and glory. I told them how I’d hooked up with a jazz band out in Oregon, but me and Lester, the bassist, kept fighting, and then — having done his best to keep the peace for months — the drummer quit, and then everything turned to shit. Gloria had gotten her divorce. And Colin — well, except for having legally changed his name, he didn’t have much to report.
“Ah, it’s still the same me,” he said. “A few more gray hairs, a few more aches and pains, a few more pills. Now you, on the other hand — you’ve changed.”
“You seem more relaxed,” said Gloria.
“That’s it. More at peace with yourself,” said Colin. “More open and honest. Wouldn’t you say, Glo —” His face suddenly contorted with pain. He took a vial of pills from his pocket — he still owned the fisherman’s vest full of pockets — and swallowed three with his wine. Gloria and I looked at each other. She shrugged as if to say that this was routine, nothing to be alarmed over. Having emerged from the pain, Colin saw my notebook lying next to me on the floor. “Still lugging that thing around?” he said. “Jaysus! Some things never change!”
“It’s only been nine months,” I said.
“That’s where you’re mistaken,” said Colin. “Half a year can make all the difference in the world. It can change everything. A day can change everything! Right, Gloria?”
Gloria ran a thin, nicotine-stained fingertip around the rim of her wineglass, making it sing. We laughed. Colin ordered pizza by phone and asked me to go with him to pick it up. He took Gloria’s car. He drove terribly; he couldn’t shift. I asked him what had happened to his car. “Aye, the fuckin’ bank got it, that’s what.”
On the way home, with the pizza scalding my lap, Colin reached over to open the glove compartment. He took a stapled sheaf of paper from it and put it on the pizza box. “It just came spilling out of me,” he said. The story was three pages long, typed single spaced on stained, buckled yellow paper. It looked as if it had been used repeatedly as a saucer. “It’s the story of my life, so to speak,” said Colin. “Go on,” he said. “Read it!”
I started reading. The title of the story was “The Story of My Life.”
“It’s a love story,” said Colin, grinding gears.
“Are you in love again?”
“Am I in love again? Jaysus! Was I ever not in love?”
“Who’s the lucky girl this time?”
“The most beautiful girl in the world. A living miracle. Read, read.”
The story takes place at a table in the university snack bar. In it, the “most beautiful, sophisticated, intelligent woman in the world,” who is an organic chemistry major and whose name is Andrea Laestrygones, tells Coleman Winston McGuinness, the protagonist, that she has had a dream about him. “I had a dream,” she says to him, “and in the dream there was this little red-headed leprechaun, and the little red-headed leprechaun was you.” The protagonist, who is seated, slumps back in his chair, the words “little red-headed leprechaun” “echoing in his brain.” The second single-spaced page of the story is devoted to describing the protagonist’s multiple, incurable, and mysterious physical ailments and how he is haunted and tortured by them. “Suicide,” Coleman explains gamely to the others at the table, “is not always an unreasonable solution.” The others seated around the table disagree vehemently, saying there’s no excuse for suicide. Only one other student agrees with Coleman, a guy named Henry, who wears a beret and plays the saxophone. This, I recognize, is supposed to be me. “What do you know of constant pain, of eternal torment?” Coleman, on his feet, clutching a plastic fork and shaking it in the air, challenges th
e others. “What do you know of being an invisible cripple, suffering invisible torture? They have wheelchairs for the visibly handicapped, crutches for the lame, white canes for the blind, padded rooms for the insane. But what have they got for the likes of me? Cortisone! Tylenol! Codeine! Who are you all to tell me suicide’s a cop-out, you who have no reason to try it!” When one of the others laughs at this remark, Coleman lunges, attacking him with the plastic fork. Henry pulls them apart. But in the end it’s the pain of a broken heart that finally defeats the protagonist, who, one night, sets fire to his lakeside cottage and, in his underwear, “with the flames painting the eastern sky orange behind him” walks across the frozen lake, never to be seen or heard from again.
I lay the story down on the still-hot pizza box.
“Sound familiar?” said Colin.
By midnight the temperature had fallen well below freezing. We huddled in blankets around the kerosene stove. Gloria was the first to yawn. We all started yawning. “Time for bed,” said Colin. They argued then over who should sleep where. Colin said we should all sleep in the loft. “It’ll be warmer,” he said. There was only one bed. “You sleep in the bed,” said Gloria. “Nonsense,” said Colin. “I prefer the floor; it’s better for my back. You take the bed.” I wondered why they hadn’t worked all this out before. I sat downstairs, by the stove, with a felt-tipped pen, drawing dislocated hands and faces in my notebook, between the pages of which I had tucked the sand-dollar postcard from Gloria’s dashboard. When they had stopped arguing, I switched off the lamp, put my notebook away, and climbed up the ladder to the loft, where they were both lying — Gloria in the bed and Colin in a sleeping bag next to it. On the other side of the bed was another sleeping bag. I undressed quietly and got into it. After a while Colin spoke, whispering, describing the bubbles in ginger ale. “You’re making me thirsty,” said Gloria. “No problem,” said Colin, who got up and went downstairs. As we heard the sound of ice cracking, Gloria slipped her arm out from under the covers; her nicotine-stained fingers hovered in the air over my chest. I reached out and held the longest finger, stroking it, squeezing it in my fist, milking it. Colin climbed up the ladder with three glasses of ginger ale. When we’d finished drinking, he took the glasses from us and put them aside. And then all of us went to sleep, or pretended to.
