Chapter 50

50

I’ll be the first to admit it. I woke up on the wrong side of the bed today.

Unlike most people, I have four sides to my bed. A couple of years ago I opted to rid myself of a headboard and pull my mattress into the center of the room. I have no good reason for making my bed into an island, and in all actuality it’s more of a pain in the ass than anything else. While others have a headboard or wall to stop their pillows from falling to the floor, I lose mine over a dozen times a night. I’ve tried to buy more pillows to lessen the likelihood of finding myself pillow less at three in the morning, but the more pillows I add to the bed, the more they jump ship. This is mattress mutiny I tell you, and sooner or later they’ll make me walk the plank.

But I wasn’t talking about pillows. I was explaining the four sides of my bed and how they allow for more morning options. While other people wake up on either the right or wrong side of the bed, I wake up in several different ways that almost make the pillow problem worth it.

The right hand side of the bed, as Jamie would say, is my good side. However, I tend to disagree with that assessment. Just because my outer appears shiny and new doesn’t mean that my insides aren’t a little bitter. These days I can easily compare to menthol cigarettes. For example, you find yourself out of smokes in the middle of a nicotine convulsion. Walking by a coffee shop you notice a man smoking pleasantly out on the patio. You ask to bum a cigarette and he generously gives you one out of his pack. Paying no attention to the aroma you light it and take a drag only to find that this act of generosity is packed with menthol. Your insides sour and although you’re happy to be smoking, you’re secretly disgusted by the taste. That’s what the right side of the bed feels like to me.

The left hand side is completely awash with indifference, which I lovingly refer to as my “So-What” side of the bed. Getting up in this position means that thirty children could burn to death in a flaming bus crash and I’d still have a craving for ice cream.

The foot of my bed is where I find my truly happy days, although you wouldn’t know by looking at me. Foot of the bed days are full of introspection and are often filled with an eerie inner quiet where I may not speak more than ten words to anyone at all. These are the days when I get the most writing done and play games of chess alone. I live for these days because they don’t come around all that often.

Then there’s today’s side of the bed, the side of the bed in which you find worms in your bowl of cereal. The side of the bed where your first cup of coffee is cold and the last cigarette in your pack is broken in half. The side of the bed in which the woman sitting next to you on the bus can’t keep her fucking mouth shut and the chips in your chocolate chip cookies turn out to be raisins. You bought oatmeal raisin cookies at the store yesterday, Richard. No one likes raisins…especially you.

So without any coffee or cigarettes I stumble, half asleep, into the woods in search of inspiration. Wandering without purpose I head to the gulch, tossing those oatmealy cookies into the trees surrounding the well-worn trail. Cookie after cookie collides with the trees sending raisin shrapnel into the wilderness beyond. Perhaps those raisins will do some sort of good, sprouting raisin trees that will grow up to make some sort of pruny home from some sort of raisin loving bird.

The gulch, upon my arrival, is a desolate librarical carving into stone. The shelves, normally littered with books, are entirely devoid of literature. Replacing these works of art are thousands of volumes of cartoons pulled from the pages of such magazines as The New Yorker and Reader’s Digest. These cartoons aren’t funny by any stretch of the imagination. Its as if the person writing the caption under the drawing is actually looking at a picture of a three-legged cow instead of the cartoon that appears in print. In one particularly bad bit of humor, a man at a desk in a business suit is talking to his attractive secretary who is holding a pen and paper in her hands. Behind the executive is a window washer who is perilously close to falling off the scaffolding outside. The caption below this picture reads: “Samantha, take a memo. We will no longer be serving teeter-tots in the cafeteria.” Seriously, is this supposed to be funny?

So instead of grabbing a copy of this bit of uninspired stupidity, I snatch up a world atlas of wine and head to my usual writing desk. Only, instead of finding my desk in its rightful place in front of the “B’s”, I almost walk right into a giant opening in the Earth the size of a manhole.

If there were anyone around to query, I’d ask him or her some simple questions like:

“When did this hole get here?” or
“What the hell happened to my desk?” or
“Would you like my last oatmeal raisin cookie?”

But there isn’t anyone to talk to here, not today, so these questions are just as hollow as this gaping hole were my desk used to be.

I pull out the last oatmeal raisin cookie and toss it into the hole wondering if I’d quit having these sorts of days if I’d simply push the head of my bed back up against the wall. That would certainly end the mutiny, which would be a downright shame.

Chapter 49

49

“My words, over time, began to fray like the ends of an overused piece of rope. A writer’s mind is a narcissistic landfill of cluttered words and phrases that continually pile on top of one another until the entire head is filled with incomprehensible nonsense.

That was why I wrote. I needed to remove some of the layers of verbiage and get them out for my own private piece of mind. One they were placed onto the page they had found a new home for themselves and would no longer occupy space in my brain. Writing a novel is a wholesale swap meet. A yard sale of the mind where everything must go…and all sales are final.

Writing was my catharsis, a way to reasonably remain sane, yet fortunately people began to connect with my work and I was able to earn a living while maintaining my mental clarity. However, like every flowing river, eventually there became a blockage in the flow.

It happened after the accident. All of a sudden what came naturally for me just stopped creating itself. I’d spend hours…hell…days alone in my office staring at a typewriter whose keys had become cold from neglect. Frustrated, I turned to the bottle for inspiration, which eventually pushed me over the edge.

At first, while I was drunk, I’d feel a trickle of creativity and my fingers would stumble across the keys, forcing words into sentences and then piling those into paragraphs. Then drink would overtake me and my body would wander away from my desk and back into my ramshackle of an existence.

The next morning, my mind arid from dehydration, I’d read over yesterday’s drunken ramblings and find that the words I’d pieced together the day before were simply refuse that my mind had discarded to appease the demon growing in my soul. After a few short weeks, I had hundreds of pieces of paper waded up and littered on my office floor. I thought that leaving them there would remind me that my words had a purpose, but eventually they just became an obstacle on my way to the toilet.

Eventually, what had started as a clog developed into a full-scale dam and in the state I was in, those words filled the reservoir much quicker than one would believe. A neurotic narcissist has no business carrying around all that clutter. It chews at you until, without any form of release; it begins to eat you alive. So, to answer your question John, I write the words to heal, to survive, and to maintain some sort of normalcy. Once the words stopped flowing, so did my existence. A writer who can’t write has lost his ability to define himself, and that my friend, is just as good as death itself.”

Chapter 48

48

I’m a bit over-tired today.

This past week has been a complete mess, stressful in unique ways, pushing my constitution to the proverbial breaking point. I’ve downed three cups of coffee this morning, dressed in my robe, staring at a see through hole connected to the sky, but still my level of lethargy is at an all time high. I can barely concentrate enough to pen these words onto paper, but at least I’ve managed to clean the branches out of the kitchen sink.

Last night, late, up with insomnia. The inability to quiet your mind enough to sleep a wink is enough to make anyone a little irritable. Jamie’s out cold, a unique snore creeps out of her nose and into the humid night air. She never seems to snore unless I have insomnia. Therefore, tonight, she buzzes in my ear like a housefly.

Buzz…buzz…buzz…

I get up out of bed and head for the toilet.

Not to piss, but for some peace and clarity. I wish I had a flyswatter.

The bathroom mirror is broken at the lower right hand corner. Somehow, a few weeks ago, smack dab in the middle of March, I managed to pull down the shower rod while Jamie and I were making love. She screamed when it smashed against the mirror. It’s amazing how quick terror shrinks an erection.

Seven years bad luck?

I finger the crack now, a diversion from looking into the mirror at my sleepless face. I’m sure my eyes are bloodshot reminders that my side of the bed feels like concrete.

There is a rumbling in the sky. A spring storm begins to form in the mountains, inevitably bringing thunder and lightning down upon all of us who make our homes here. Jamie will sleep through the storm, dreaming about a valuable porcelain vase she knocked over as a child in a fancy department store. Meanwhile, I’ll count each second between the flashes and cracks in the sky.

Its nice when activities are so pre-planned.

Flash…one…two…three…four…five…

Crack.

The lights in the bathroom flicker as if the storm might begin and end directly over my toilet. If I take a shit, a lightning bolt may fry my pecker off. Perhaps that would do it and me some good. An unavoidable “fuck you” message from God.

Flash…one…two…three…

Crack.

Jamie stirs. The storm is getting nearer and she can sense it in her sleep. Her hands, which, attached to her arms, were sprawled out across the bed, clutch one another and retreat beneath her head. She fetalizes, curling up, occupying a forth of the space she had been before the cracks. I entertain the idea of crawling in beside her, clutching her demure body and sheltering her from the impending storm. But I don’t move. Instead I continue to finger the crack in the mirror, consciously avoiding the color of my own eyes.

Flash…one…two…

Crack.

It nears.

A fox came to our front door yesterday morning. He was begging for either food or loose change. Perhaps he simply needed fifteen cents to make a dollar. Perhaps he just needed someone to listen, a friendly ear. Half awake and crippled by exhaustion, I didn’t recognize the need and closed the door on the creature. I’ve been doing that a lot lately. That and fingering the crack in this mirror.

Flash…one…

Crack.

It’s here.

A flash of lightning plummets from the sky. An intense electrical shot that is sent seeking the quickest route to the Earth. How fortunate for the electricity. When I fly through the air I always seem to have a layover in Phoenix.

An elderly oak tree stands in harms way and is split in half. The right side innocuously falls into the field that surrounds that side of the house. The left side, however, fearing separation from its better half, decides to seek refuge from the storm. Like a giant who forgets his own strength, the tree falls in through the roof above my kitchen stove. The appliance is crushed, sending oven debris into the living room. If I owned fine china, the porcelain shards would have imbedded themselves into the kitchen walls. I hear Jamie screaming in the bedroom while wind and rain threatens to drown her out completely. As the elements invade my home I stare blankly, continuously fingering the fissure in my bathroom mirror while Jamie greets the eye of the storm. This is how I woke up this morning. This is how I’ve been waking up a lot lately.

Chapter 47

47

Night is falling into the Colorado sky. A sprawling canopy of stars drapes itself over the Front Range and the moon, perched high above it all, looks like it’s been sculpted with florescent wax.

John and I are sitting on his front porch; a spring breeze gently jostles what’s left of his hair. Tiny wisps of it sway like stalks of wheat to inaudible music.

I light a cigarette while John puffs his pipe. I can tell he’s chewing on a question by the way his eyes are partially closed, like the weight of what he’s formulating is too heavy for his lids. He nurtures his query, raising it from a sapling until the oak of an inquisition sprouts from his mouth. You can’t rush this process, timing is essential in these matters. Instead, I drag into my cigarette and relax back into myself.

Earlier, just after a dinner of fried chicken and potato salad, John pulled out a small sack of marijuana he saves for special occasions. A bowl of weed and two glasses of wine have my knees somewhat rubbery, but my mind is alive and engrossed by this perfect Colorado night.

Many, many years ago I would have insisted, in this inebriated state, on conversation, filling the void between substance with pointless verbal drainage. At this stage in my life, at this particular junction in the evening, I’d be content if that question John is constructing in his mind never found the water to grow.

I don’t seem to have any answers, but I find myself in serenity just the same. Pleasant quietude engulfs my insides and although my mental mindfield is still moving in a general direction, I’m oddly at peace here on John’s patio, staring at the cloudless sky above me.

I have a burning urge to listen to something contemporary. Music with a pulse that will bounce out of the speakers and reverberate against the lattice that borders this wooden porch. If it’s a perfectly metered tune, perhaps it will develop wings and escape into the night air, perching itself next to the owl who continues to carry on his conversation alone.

After a myriad of minutes seeped in silence, John finally opens his mouth to suck in the air to speak.

“You know, I used to read every word you published, every book I poured through cover to cover, especially after Mary passed. And when I felt, in those first few years, like the canyon in my heart would never fill, your stories gave me hope that one day I’d be able to breathe again. I’ve always wondered Rich, and maybe this is just the wine talking, but I’ve always wondered, if your words could save a hopeless case like me, why couldn’t they do the same for you?”

“Jesus, John,” I reply, completely rocked by such a disturbance in my current state of mind. “Well, pack us another bowl and I’ll see if I can answer that.”

Chapter 46

46

I took a break in a book tour to attend a wedding over the weekend. The marrying couple and I have known each other for years. We used to play music together in a not so foggy past.

The wedding site was a relic, an archeological wasteland filled with bitter memories. I was different back then. I was lost in the middle of nowhere and refused to ask for directions. Somewhere along the way I was presented with a map and I followed it away, only to return for such monumental events.

I hear rumors now. Someone calls on a Tuesday afternoon and reports on the family I left behind. So and so is never around anymore and your friend’s wife has captured cancer. Such and such is separating from her long-term boyfriend and whomever is practically married with a kid.

But this weekend was different. Each attendee paused their daily lives to show up and honor this holy matrimony without work or spouse to interrupt. My once close-knit group of friends was reunited and just as I remember them.

We were inseparable once. Without a care in the world, a drive-in movie and piles of popcorn drew us together, a carefree camaraderie that we thought would never end. I tried to hold on to that version of our friendship, despite the odds, but eventually adulthood takes control and begins to pull each one of us away.

For one weekend we were free. No one had a job to attend to, no school to study for. The kids all behaved themselves (mostly) and the rent checks were put off for another day. A group of friends were reunited and were truly happy.

But that was yesterday. Today I sit and watch as my airplane makes its way to the gate. In ten minutes I will board and continue on with my life as my group of friends will continue on with theirs. When Sam gets back work will consume him, his twelve-hour days make it hard for him to focus on anything else. Rebecca will have her usual struggles making rent and Charles will disappear into his world, one where he is a loving husband and father.

And as much as I’m tempted to focus on the way things were, and how far we’ve all come as individuals, I can’t help but find a hint of sadness in the way things have become. For a weekend we were perfect again, a group of friends focused on the thrill of being around one another, but now it’s Monday morning and my plane is taxiing the runway.

Chapter 45

45

“A couple of ten years ago I was attending a wedding between a friend of mine and a woman who seemed to be his perfect lady, although I’d never met her prior to the big day. The wedding was outdoors, somewhere in the mountains over there (he gestures with a hand) and in the middle of the summer no less. The groomsmen kept having to wipe the sweat out of their eyes with the sleeves of their tuxedo jackets, the heat was so bad.

But the wedding itself was flawless. It started on time, which was good because the heat would have made half the attendees melt into their chairs had they had to sit there too long. The ceremony echoed through the canyons for all to hear, or so they said. Samantha and David, the bride and groom respectively, looked perfectly into each other’s eyes and said, “I do.” Everyone was moved, some to tears, especially the best man, David’s Grandfather.

In a gesture of pure love and respect, David had asked his eighty-eight year old grandfather to stand by his side on this holy of days. You could tell how proud he was to be there. He stood up straighter and walked with more purpose than the other groomsmen who were three-fourths his age. He wore a smile from ear to ear during the ceremony and never took his eyes off the alter. Watching his face was just as rewarding as watching the wedding itself.

Vows, rings, and lips were exchanged and the newlyweds were off to take pictures while the reception began. After the first round of photos, most of the groomsmen and bridesmaids came back to the party. They began eating and drinking but David’s grandfather was nowhere to be found. Turns out, he had spent the time watching every flash of every bulb as the paparazzi of family members snapped photos. He wasn’t going to miss a second of it.

The wedding itself had started, as I said, promptly, at 11:00 in the morning and by the time the bride and groom had joined the reception, the day was nearing 2:00. The heat had risen considerably and most of the tuxedo wearing men had draped their jackets around scattered chairs. All except David’s grandfather who simply wiped the sweat from his brow with a handkerchief. I asked the man if he was hot in that tux and he simply replied with a smile, “What do you think, boy?” and then quickly changed subjects.

It was toast time. The father of the bride stood and gave a simple toast, a thank you to all who attended and a goodwill gesture to the couple. The maid of honor started crying mid-toast and scurried away from the microphone. Finally, the best man stood up for his toast, which is what I was waiting for in the first place.

I won’t recall in detail the actual speech itself. His words have faded like a photograph with the year. The essence of what he said remains however, a man who was nearing the end of his life, a portrait of a soul who was living the best moment in eternity.

And he stood there, professing undying love for David, clutching the microphone in both hands. We watched those hands begin to shake subtly at the beginning of his speech, a tremor that soon became a quake.

He struggled to the end, choking back tears while looking David squarely in the eyes and announcing that he would be giving the couple twenty thousand dollars to do with as they saw fit. Then the old man gasped and dropped the microphone, his hands shaking so violently that the thud of which sounded like a bomb over the P.A. Stumbling backwards he collapsed and heaved his final breath.”

John and I are standing in downtown Denver, watching two elderly men playing chess amidst springing fountains. I’m not sure, after twenty-two years, how the hell we both ended up in downtown Denver. We must have taken a wrong turn somewhere in Louisville.

“You told me that story had a happy ending,” I say to John after a moments pause.

“I guess it depends on how you look at it,” he replies as the man in the western shirt raises a fist and declares his checkmate.

Chapter 44

44

She’s left me in Colorado.

It was one of those fuck-all, bullshit sort of days and had been since we woke up next to each other in a run down hell of a hotel in Greeley. After paying for gas, food and lodging last night we seem to be out of money. I have three dimes and a nickel stashed somewhere in the glove compartment but I’m saving it in case we need to buy cigarettes before leaving town.

The hotel comforter looks like an acid trip at Grandma’s, only, Grandma lives in Greeley and she’s a hotel manager named Steve who is missing his right front tooth. Grandma made us pay up front before taking us to our room. Somehow Grandma could sense that we’d skip the night’s rent.

There’s a knock on the door, but it’s too damned early for any knocking. She wakes next to me, pissed. I wake next to her because she’s pissed. We’re both pissed because a bottle of whisky disappeared last night and now this knocking is hurting our dehydrated minds.

“Who the fuck is that?”
“How the fuck should I know?”
“Make the pounding stop!”
“My head is…”
“Richard!”

I get up. It’s housekeeping. I’m rude and not wearing anything past the waist. They leave. We miss our 11:30 check out time by three hours.

The rest of the afternoon is a repeat of our initial morning conversation.

We’re headed out of Colorado. She looks at me driving her car. Out of the corner of my eye I can feel her stare, but I keep my eyes on the road, prolonging inevitable conversation until I can take her gawking no more. You know that old saying, “If you don’t have something nice to say…”

“What are you looking at?”
“You.”
“Why?”
“”Because I’ve never thought of you as old before. But today…I can’t quit staring at your wrinkles.”
“Just today, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“Well I hate to break it to you Jamie, but I’ve been old since we met.”
“I just thought I’d…”
“…Be a bitch? Well now you can check that one off your to-do list can’t you?”

And that was round one.

We stop to get dinner at a roadside diner in Fort Morgan. She orders an omelet. I order a cheeseburger.
And fries.
And a milkshake.

She watches me drink my milkshake. Her lips part for attack.

“How are we going to pay for all of this,” she questions, pointing her middle finger in such a way that I interpreted her “we” to mean “me”.

I shrug my shoulders and bite into my burger.
She continues her nagging.

“What do you want me to say Jamie? That I’m sorry I brought your starving ass in here to have a decent meal? That I’m sorry we spent too much money at the beginning of this trip and now we can’t pay for this food? We’re…no, you’re eating better than we have since Nevada and you want me to apologize? Just eat your omelet and shut up.”

For the rest of dinner we eat in silence. My milkshake is runny and the fries are slightly cold. She picks at her ham like she’s dissecting a frog.

Before we’re both done I pull out her car keys and hand them to her under the table.

“Go start the car. I’ll be out in a minute.”
“Wait, we’re just going to leave here and not pay a dime? Richard, we can’t do that!”
“The hell we can’t. Jamie, we’re completely out of money. Go start the car.”
“No.”
“Jamie, this isn’t up for discussion.”
“No. I’m not stealing this food with you. I’m tired of this. Right now I’m embarrassed to be sitting across from such a washed up, pathetic old man.”

Somewhere between “old” and “man” I snap. The words that follow are not my own.

“Then I suggest you take your filthy cunt back to the kitchen and start sucking for that omelet.”

This didn’t make Jamie cry, and that was the frightening bit of it. I watched as she silently stood up from the table, nodded to me, and went to start the car. I kept my seat for a few more minutes, waiting as the waitress left the dining room.

Taking my chance I ran to the parking lot, expecting Jamie to be there, car running. She wasn’t. She's left me in Colorado.

Chapter 43

43

We…and by “we” I mean John and I, go out for breakfast. I slept amazingly well on his fold out couch, the temperature outside so warm that I didn’t bother with a blanket. After two nights of sleeping in the most uncomfortable of places, I was asleep before my head crashed into the pillow.

The waitress waltzes over to our table, and I say waltzes because her every gesture recreates a dance move on the tiled floor. She is beautiful. Her curly brown hair forms a frame around the Picasso of her face.

She is perfectly slender with young, vibrant breasts that bounce with her gait. Her shirt exposes most of her arms; a milky smooth set that passes in front of me like an ivory messenger of today’s featured items.

I look at John as if needing his confirmation on the menu wielding beauty before us. He doesn’t seem to notice her, and is instead focused on the European tour of waffles. Quickly he orders a cup of coffee, and buries his nose right back into the menu. I am not so eager to send her away.

Searching her chest for a nametag, I discover that our fair skinned waitress likes to be referred to as Julie.

“Good morning, Julie.”
“Good morning, sir. Coffee?”

Her voice is like honey. I am almost tempted to get a cup of tea instead so I could order a sentence from her and add it to my Irish Breakfast, only that I hate tea. It’s too pretentious.

“Sure, I’ll have a cup…” I pause.
“Anything else?”

I ponder the question. I find myself standing at a fork in this proverbial moral crossroad. Several thoughts compile themselves into a list.

1) The confident road: “Yes, Julie, my friend and I would really enjoy your company this evening for a pre-planned excursion. This is John and I’m Richard. What time do you get off this evening?”
2) The dirty, over eager road: “Yes Julie. I’ve been in a coma for twenty years and am dying to lick bourbon off your beautiful body.”
3) The pleasant, dismissive road: “No, the coffee’d be fine.”

On any other given day all roads would have the exact same percentage of leaving my mouth at any given time, but I can’t seem to get a verbal response out into the air. I shake my head and smile instead, watching her body salsa away from the table in search of Columbian coffee.