A Rock and a High Place

by Dan Mooney

  “Ever had your teeth knocked out by a seventy-six-year-old?” Joel asked in a deceptively pleasant voice, placing his solitary note and his coin on the countertop before him.

  “Sorry, we don’t accept those here,” the young barman joked nervously.

  Joel put on his trademark “look.”

  “Merciful hour,” Frank grumbled as he too his seat. “Do you practice that look in the mirror?”

  “No. We don’t all love mirrors as much as you do.”

  The barman looked from one to the other before shooting Frank a look of sympathy.

  Senior moment indeed.

  No respect for his elders, that was that kid’s problem.

  “So now we can get down to brass tacks,” Frank said, as the pints settled on the countertop in front of them.

  “Think it’s safe to talk about it here?” Joel asked. Suicide was a sensitive topic.

  “Have you always been such a Nervous Nelly?”

  “I’m not a Nervous Nelly,” Joel objected. “I’m just not as reckless as you are. Every now and then it pays to think ahead, you donkey.”

  “Donkey?”

  “Mule. Ass. You,” Joel told him.

  Frank smiled blandly at his friend as the pints of stout were delivered and licked his lips in anticipation.

  Joel understood his eagerness. The pint was pure freedom. No matter how it tasted.

  “To your perfectly timely death,” Frank proposed grandiosely, because grandiosely was how he did most things.

  “Good health to you,” Joel countered.

  It had been a long time since he’d had a pint, and he was surprised to discover he still enjoyed the taste of it, the thick creamy head coming away on his upper lip so that he had to scrub it away with the back of his hand. He knew that it didn’t really matter if it had been the world’s worst pint; he wasn’t tasting the beer, it was something else. The sitting at the bar with his friend, sipping his pint on his own time. Here no one would tell him what he could or couldn’t do, and the utter pointlessness of his existence could be forgotten in amiable conversation and the thin buzz he knew he’d have after he’d finished his pint.

  “So, you can see my point about the football jersey, right? It’s a dreadful idea,” Frank told him.

  “I don’t see why.”

  “It lacks class and dignity.”

  “You think there’s a classy way for me to kill myself?”

  “Now you’re being deliberately obtuse. I’m saying that your death should be a statement. A statement about your life. When we die, the people we leave behind talk about all the various things that we did and that’s how we’re measured. By all those little actions we’ve taken, by our attitude to life, by our personalities. If you shoot yourself in the head wearing a football jersey they’ll either think you killed yourself in your pajamas or they’ll think you’re a martyr for a football team, and honestly I can’t tell which one is sadder.”

  “Football’s one of my things, you know. It’s a thing people know about me.”

  “It’s undignified. You’re a dignified man. Your death needs to be a reflection of that, and it needs to be a commentary on society.”

  “Like what?”

  “I mean, like it needs to be a statement about how you view the world. Something artistic.”

  “I’m not an artsy person.”

  “Nonsense. Everyone’s an artsy person. It just varies by degree.”

  Joel let that sink in a little. He didn’t disagree with the position exactly. Lucey had dragged him to museums and galleries, and they had admired paintings together. He never pretended to understand the things like Lucey did; he just liked looking at them. While she talked about the artists’ specific attention to detail on faces as a way to force people to focus on them, Joel stood there thinking about how pretty the paintings were. Modern art annoyed him. And then it hit him.

  “Got one,” he told Frank.

  “Go for it,” Frank replied, sipping again from his pint.

  “I used to look at art quite a bit. I mean, not like you would. You’ve probably been in every damn museum for fifty miles. Twice. Bloody fancy scarf and all that. But Lucey used to bring me and it was mostly nice. Except for the bloody modern art. I thought I understood the why of the whole thing—I mean you can only paint so many pictures of flowers before you have to start branching out a bit. Otherwise everyone is just going to say you’re a cheap imitation of a dead fella from a hundred years ago. So they started getting all experimental, but nobody reined them in, so suddenly you’ve all these men and women making art and it’s basically just whatever they say it is, because there’s no rules anymore. Then I go into a museum with Lucey, and I sat down on this bench this one time, while Lucey is talking about brushstrokes and primary colours and all that. This security guard comes running over. ‘Oi!! You can’t sit there!’ I got confused.

  “‘Why not?’

  “‘Because that piece is worth thousands, it’s not for sitting on.’ I’m telling you now, Frank, it was a bench. A pretty ordinary-looking bench. I probably should have twigged something was wrong because it was a garden bench, and apparently that was very important to the artist, but it was just a regular bench. So I started to look around. What else here is art? There’s a crisp wrapper over there in the corner and there’s a velvet rope around it, and I honestly couldn’t tell if it was art or not. Stuck up on one of the walls was the word ‘THIS’ in giant carved wooden letters, and I get that one. This is art. Literally saying ‘this’ is art. All I could think of was, no, it’s not pal.

  “No, it absolutely is not.

  “Now, I’m no artist, I know that, but I feel like art isn’t for me anymore. It’s for young people, and fakers, and bullshitters, pardon my language, and I think I can say something about that. I’ll get that gun I was going to get for the other one. I can get a gun, by the way, no problem. If I need one like. I’ll dress myself up really nice. As nice as I can, and I’ll walk into that museum…”

  In his mind’s eye Joel could see himself walking into the City Gallery of Art, wearing his nice pinstripe brown suit, with the matching waistcoat and extra-polished shoes. He could almost feel the weight of the revolver in his jacket pocket. He saw the beautiful red-haired young woman who worked at the reception, and the curly-haired man who was the curator who bustled from room to room with special honored guests. He looked like he could have been a theatre actor, too.

  He could see all the fancy know-it-alls and fakers oohing and aahing over the various pieces of crap that someone had stuck to the walls.

  In his imagination it played out: he walked through the gallery and came to a stop right in front of the “this” and turned to the people in the room with a broad smile worthy of Frank de Selby.

  “This is not art,” he told them.

  And then he shot himself in the head and his body slumped on to the ground. The various gallery attendants would argue for the rest of their lives that his suicide had itself been both a commentary on art, and art for its own sake. He marveled at his own creativity.

  “What do you think?” he asked Frank when he had finished.

  Frank had his little journal out, and had been scribbling as Joel spoke, as though trying to capture the moment.

  “Crap,” he said without hesitation.

  “Why?” Joel asked, deflated.

  “It’s too…” He paused looking for the words. “It’s too ‘angry man.’ You’re going in the right direction, it’s just not quite right. It’s the work of a crank. A man petty enough to kill himself because art had become something he didn’t like. That’s what they’ll say, this angry old man is so arrogant that he’s going to kill himself because young people don’t make art specifically for him anymore. Its lasting impact, if it has any, will be that Joel Monroe was a bitter, angry man, and that’s not what we’re going for.”

  Joel sighed. He had thought it a perfectly fine way to go, but Frank was right. He didn’t want his legacy to be an a
ngry, bitter man who hated art. His suicide must be something that was hated and loved. Loved for its statement, hated for its brutality. It must be brutal, but not bitter.

  He hadn’t always been an angry, bitter man. He didn’t want to always be remembered so.

  At the end of the quiet bar, the young barman was staring at them incredulously. His towel held loosely in one hand, the glass he was polishing forgotten in the other. His jaw slack with shock at their conversation.

  “What?” Joel asked him. “I didn’t say I was definitely going to do it.”

  The barman stared at them and tried to laugh nervously again before going to find something else to do.

  “You might not do it?” Frank asked casually.

  “I didn’t say that,” Joel replied. “I’m definitely doing it, just not doing it that way.”

  “Why so adamant?”

  “You going to try to talk me out of it?” Joel asked pugnaciously.

  “No, not at all. I told you I think it’s a powerful statement. I just want to know why you’re so adamant.”

  “I’ve had enough, Frank. And that’s all the reason I need. I’ve had enough of this.”

  He gestured vaguely around him. He heard his own words and heard the authority in them, felt the need to remove himself, brutally, awfully, but something diluted his anger.

  Sitting in the bar with Frank, having a pint, away from the nurses and his daughter and Mighty Jim with his pointless chess games, it was difficult for Joel to drum up the depth of feeling he had known since he watched Mr. Miller die. Somehow that feeling was removed, like it was far away, like he had left it behind in the bedroom he had shared with Lucey, and far away as it was, it couldn’t reach him here.

  Instead it waited for him to come back to it. It wasn’t going anywhere. Its absence a temporary relief.

  “All right,” Frank told him with a wave of his hand, “it’s a good decision. I already said that. Powerful statement. I know better than to tell you otherwise.”

  “What would you do?”

  “I already told you, Joel, this has to be you. Only you.”

  “But why?”

  “You’ll figure that out on your own, too.”

  “Bloody mystery man with your mysterious statements.”

  “Bloody lazy simpleton who wants everyone to do the understanding for him.”

  Joel chuckled at that. Frank remained unfazed by casual insults.

  “Soon,” he told his friend.

  “How soon?”

  “My birthday’s in June. Four weeks. Seems an appropriate time.”

  “Poetic. Out on the anniversary of the day you got in.”

  Joel had never thought his birthday was important. It reminded him of times when his mother had made a fuss while his father had rated him to see how close to a man he measured. He had never measured up. He had always been found wanting. Even when he eventually outgrew the man, towered over him, broad and powerful, his father had still found a way to look down at him.

  “That’s it, then,” Joel announced.

  An end. Finally. An end.

  Chapter Nine

  The two escapees finished their pints in silence. Frank happy to sit and sup at his leisure, Joel at a loss for how to express himself when he felt both comfortable and full of dread all at once. When they were done, and had peed in the tiny men’s room at the foot of a stairs to the basement, they nodded their goodbyes to the barman, and the two slipped back out into the afternoon sunshine. The sun had come around on its way down and lit the small alleyway that the bar sat in pleasantly, though Joel knew that the light and heat wouldn’t last. Sunset was not far off.

  It had only been one pint, but the fact that they had skipped dinner for their escapade meant it hit Joel about as hard as he was expecting, and he found himself buzzing ever so slightly from the Guinness. The freedom and the alcohol and the sunshine and the thought of his impending death combined to make him giddy. Too long since he had walked about the town on his own time, he found himself excited by his consequence-free afternoon out from under the watchful eyes.

  “We’ll take the bus home,” Frank suggested, adjusting his superfluous scarf.

  “With what? We’ve barely the price of a bar of chocolate after the pints, and I don’t think they’ll accept fake coins any more than that obnoxious young barman would.”

  “Then we’ll get a bar of chocolate and take the bus home.”

  “Are you listening to me? We’ve no money for a bus.”

  He found that he didn’t really care that they were stranded.

  “We’re OAPs, remember? Free transport for the elderly.”

  He wasn’t wrong. It had never occurred to Joel that government legislation might work in his favour for once. All OAPs traveled free in possession of ID.

  “I’ve no ID,” he said as realisation struck. “It’s with my wallet.”

  “Then you get on the bus, and you pretend to be dithery and the bus driver just lets you sit down.”

  “What?” Joel asked.

  “Pretend to have a senior moment. Act goofy. Like Mighty Jim. Smile too much. Drool a little if you can. Nod incessantly. The bus driver’ll be too embarrassed to question you, and you just take your seat.”

  “He’ll know we’re having him on.”

  “He might suspect, but he’s not about to go interrogating an elderly man in front of other passengers, and if he does I’ll raise a stink. He won’t be long sitting down.”

  “I’m not an actor like you,” Joel protested, but in his giddiness he thought it might be fun to try.

  “I’ll coach you. This’ll be easy.”

  The walk to the bus stop took them across the wide bridge that held itself loftily above the broad river surging through the city, and Joel felt a remarkable sense of peace and easiness in its presence. He looked at Frank, stepping lightly beside him in that relaxed and easy manner of his, and envied his friend his casual attitude even as he admired it. Along the way Frank spoke at length about the performance required on the bus; he jabbered about tilting your head just so, and about slowing your rate of speech, about looking the driver straight in the eye. Joel took in some of it, but mostly he just enjoyed the leisurely stroll.

  “Have you been listening to a word I’ve said?” Frank asked him when they reached the bus stop which stood in front of a small convenience store not far from the river.

  “Not really,” Joel admitted, forcing himself into Frank’s airy way of speaking.

  “Right,” Frank sighed, “practice run.”

  “Practice run?” Joel asked, a little alarmed.

  “Into the shop there,” he said, gesturing at the convenience store. “I want to see you bamboozle the shop assistant.”

  Joel felt the airiness drain out of him and his mouth dry all at once. It was fine to talk about it, but another thing to put it into practice. He looked back at the small shop. There were no customers inside; it looked quiet. A bored young woman fidgeted with her phone as she stood at the counter in her shop uniform, one hand idly playing with her hair.

  “All right,” he said reluctantly. “What do I do?”

  “Go in and ask the girl if she knows where you are.”

  “I know very well where I am, thank you very much.”

  “I know that, you dolt. She doesn’t. I want you to get in there and give her a senior moment that she’ll never forget.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going in to grade your performance. I’ll be your audience. Critique to follow on the journey home.”

  Joel looked at the shop once again. She may have already seen them. Then it struck him that they may not have even registered with her. Just another two old men. He took a deep breath and walked in.

  He tried not to stand up so straight. He put a little hunch into his back, and he smiled a broad, clearly false smile. He took smaller steps, faltering almost as if unsure. As he walked in he tried not to look up immediately. It would give the game
away, and instead he looked about him as if confused. He made for the refrigerator and then stopped. He made a small noise of confusion and ambled in the direction of the aisles before stopping again. This time he looked up at her, and smiled broadly again. She was staring straight at him with genuine concern. He instantly felt bad. She wasn’t some snotty teenager whom he might feel comfortable despising; she seemed like a perfectly lovely person. Before he could change his mind and walk out, Frank strolled in and nodded, as if in passing at a stranger before immediately making for the aisles himself, like he was on a mission.

  “Can I help you?” the young lady asked in a perfectly friendly and helpful voice.

  Joel took a look over his shoulder to see where Frank had gone, only for the young woman to mistake it for confusion.

  “Over here, sir,” she said, loudly and slowly and annoyingly. The same voice the new nurses used at Hilltop, but only the once.

  Joel felt his irritation rise again. He hated when people did that.

  “What?” he said to her, practically shouting his confusion.

  “Can I help you?” she said again, louder and slower and more annoyingly.

  “What?” he shouted this time, still looking confused.

  She forced a smile at him through gritted teeth and made her way out from behind the counter to help him. The guilt kicked back in again. That was nice gesture; she could have just given up.

  “Is there anything I can help you with?” she asked, taking him by the arm and leading him toward the counter.

  “Do you by any chance…”

  Before he could finish, he spied Frank over her shoulder. The actor was grinning from ear to ear and gleefully stuffing his pockets with bars of chocolate. He treated Joel to an exaggerated wink.

  Joel didn’t know whether to bark at his friend or burst out laughing, standing there, delighted with himself as he picked chocolate bars indiscriminately from the stands and stuffed them into various pockets. The shop assistant caught him looking in Frank’s direction and made to turn.

  “Do you know where I am?” Joel barked at her, causing her to jump in surprise. He hadn’t even bothered to pretend he was confused anymore.