She's been talking for the past two hours, but he's tuned to a different station, believing what he wants to believe.
The publican is listening to the one a.m. lingua franca of a wreck regular. The elixir is poured, and a glass touches bar top, pressed to lips in a nocturnal kiss. The drunk's conversation resumes to the casualty at his elbow, "Listen to what I mean, not what I say."
They once called this pumpkin time--they don't anymore.
"He's not really that bad," the bartender assured. "Just comeback Saturday."
They paid a tab. He walked her home.
She hasn't said anything so he doesn't say anything.
A light was on in the front of her apartment. Their apartment.
They can't hug, so he is throwing an arm around her shoulders and she is grabbing his lower back. Silhouettes lay in the gutter, staring up at the three stars over Chicago.
Confessions strangled as they lolled on the tongue. Then dropped--all wrong. All wrong.
She left, walking up the steps to the apartment. He waited, watching the light, like a trigger, fire to black, taking all of the history with it.
2 comments:
Oh, this is grand! I love it.
Yes of course! The man is both alive and dead! Aren’t we all? This is what I was trying to say all along but I just didn’t know it. And I didn’t know how.
Let’s begin again …
The cyborg from Nantucket; or, Ahab’s Johnson (Part V)
Earlier we premised some bullshit like Ahab must attain the whale but, alas, Ahab is not the whale and that, unfortunately, is game over. But now you’ve revealed something. I’m really quite devoted to this thing: our premise was wrong. We were in the midst of arrant absurdity. In fact Ahab is the whale (and not). The whale is Ahab (and not). They’re some perverse and grotesque amalgam both partial and incomplete. When Ahab replaced his leg with whale bone he knew exactly what he was getting into.
Oh, and by the way, I quit my job.
Caleb
Science was supposed to make things simpler. Here we have a prescribed methodology where results flow linearly from data without much intervention. Science was the shortest path between the known and the unknown. At least that’s how it was supposed to be.
Nope! Turns out that’s not how it works. And they don’t tell you this either the fuckers. Everybody knows it but nobody says so. I suppose we should have known from Heisenberg (et al) but it was easier to think of uncertainty in science as something to think about not something inherent to the practice.
The poor sap with the quantum gun actually gets off easy. Sure he only has an infinitesimally small chance of living forever, a slightly larger chance of living almost forever, and a very good chance of dying soon. But at least there are only two possibilities: life or death, neither of which are terrible. Throw a third option into the mix, say debilitating disfigurement, and his universe of possibilities is not only worse but it also expands faster. Add to this all of the numerous variables and what-have-yous that we’re missing and you see where I’m coming from (and going). Despite what they have you believe science doesn’t make anything easier to understand it just reveals how hard it is.
All of this is to say that I’m starting a new job. Still in science of course, there’s no turning back now.
Tinker Toys.
Caleb
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