All My Colors

by David Quantick

  “Go back to bed,” she said. “You’ve got—”

  Janis couldn’t for the life of her think what it was that Todd had to do the next morning. Pull his pud until lunch, no doubt.

  “Stuff,” she said. “Todd, it’s too late for this.” “What do you mean, it’s too late?” he slurred, and Janis realized that Todd had started drinking again after she’d gone to bed. She was very tired. Bone tired and brain tired.

  “Todd, I asked you once already,” she said. “What are you doing?”

  Todd thudded a few more books at the desk. Janis saw a second edition Bellow crease and fall to the carpet.

  “I’m looking for that fucking book,” he said.

  “What—” said Janis. Then she realized. “That book.”

  “Yeah, that book,” said Todd. “I figured it out. You jerks.”

  He sniffed. Oh great, Janis thought, he found some coke. Cocaine was hard to find in their small town, but Todd could be quite determined when it came to himself and his needs, as he was now proving.

  “What do you mean, you figured it out?” Janis sat down. She would rather have lain down, but the floor was stiff with literature.

  “You all got together,” said Todd. “One of you had an idea, to torment old Todd. Pretend you never heard of All My Colors or Jake Turner. So, you got Billy to tell that story—although knowing Billy, the poor ass probably thinks it really did happen—for bait, and then you all pretended you didn’t know the book. Messing with my mind.”

  “I have never heard of that book,” said Janis. “Honestly, Todd. Now please stop and go to bed. You’re—you’re tipsy, and somehow you think this thing is real. It’s not real, Todd.” Like talking to a child who was having a tantrum, she thought.

  “If it’s not real,” said Todd, staggering past a Herman Melville, “then how come I remember it?”

  And, before she could stop him, he tilted his head back (did he need to do this to remember things, Janis wondered, or was it another affectation) and began to recite:

  “At first, she thought she must be the luckiest woman alive, but as time went by, Helen came to realize that she was anything but that. Luck, the good kind anyway, was a commodity she was desperately in need of but forbidden, like a patient in hospital refused the one drug that might cure her.”

  Todd looked at Janis, his lips flecked with spit (or cocaine, she thought).

  “Did I make that up, Janis?” he said. “Did I just make all that up?”

  Janis looked at Todd. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a crossroads in her life was looming up. She wasn’t sure if she was at the crossroads yet, but she could see it. It didn’t look like a threatening crossroads either, the kind with a gallows at the roadside and the devil next to it. It looked like a promising sort of crossroads. But she wasn’t there yet.

  Not quite.

  “No, you didn’t make that up,” Janis said. “Because it was quite good.”

  Todd glowered at her.

  “Not great, I grant you. But it was quite good.”

  Todd’s eyes seemed to glow. His face certainly did, fire engine cherry red. He took a step forward. He raised his hand.

  Janis also took a step forward. She took Todd’s hand.

  “I want you to stop acting like a jerk,” she said. “I want you to be my husband, and be an adult. And—”

  She let go Todd’s hand and it fell to his waist.

  “—I want you to stop screwing Sara Hotchkiss.”

  Before Todd could reply, Janis had walked out of the room. She didn’t sleep long that night—it was nearly three now—but she slept well.

  * * *

  Sunday was a quiet day at the Milsteads’. Janis cleared up the mess in the living room and was going to leave the dirty glasses and crockery for Todd when she realized he’d be so hungover that he’d probably smash everything to pieces. So, she compromised: she cleaned up everything but Todd’s study. If he wanted to wade ankle-deep in the great American novel, that was up to him.

  After she’d cleared up, she went to visit a gallery with a friend, and came home about four to find that Todd had shut himself in his study and was—by the sound of it—making notes on his new book. She knew when he was making notes because he would spend hours getting everything just right—finding the perfect pencil, sharpening it, getting out his yellow legal pad, aligning everything so it was parallel to the sides of the desk—and then do jack shit until dinnertime.

  * * *

  The evening passed without incident. Janis and Todd watched TV in uncompanionable silence. Every so often, Todd would look at her with a puzzled expression as though he had something important to ask her, like where do baby rabbits come from or how do I get red wine stains out of a white carpet, but then his face would go blank and he’d stare at the TV again.

  Next morning Janis was out bright and early to buy groceries. Todd was up neither bright nor early but he too had somewhere to go. After a light breakfast of cornflakes and toast (he had never got around to discovering how eggs worked), he drove into town in his old Volvo. In a perfect world, Todd would have owned a Porsche but that wasn’t going to be happening any time soon, and beside he liked the Volvo because it was Scandinavian like Ibsen or something, and it looked like the kind of a car a writer would drive.

  Todd rarely made trips into town. Janis ran all the errands and did the shopping, and Todd met Sara in motels out by the highway. Sometimes Todd might have a night with the gang in a local bar, but money for booze came from Janis (her dead old dad still holding the purse strings) and bartenders didn’t like it when Todd started shouting. But today was special; today was writerly. Todd was going to the local bookstore.

  Legolas Books was small, cramped, and unpopular, but Todd liked it. Timothy, the owner of Legolas, was a former hippy who’d taken advantage of premature baldness and myopia to remodel himself as an archetypal bookstore-owner, complete with bald head, gold-rimmed glasses and the benevolent look of a man who has lived his life among books rather than taking too much acid. His devotion to the wholesale faking-up of whatever a bookstore should be—shelves in disorder to create the impression of too many books, cups of awful coffee to encourage chats, unnecessary step ladders and a framed, hand-written copy of the Desiderata— had extended to his own attire of moleskin waistcoat and collarless shirt. Anywhere else, Timothy would have been roughed up and thrown into a storm drain, but here in his book-lined kingdom, he could be himself with impunity.

  Timothy’s attitude to literature appealed to Todd, who had himself been faking a life in books for some years. Todd was particularly drawn to Timothy because the shine-pated bookseller had decided for some reason that Todd was a real writer, in the same way that Timothy was a real bookman. They could stand for hours, Todd and Timothy, on either side of Timothy’s counter, discussing books and their contents until finally interrupted by an angry cough from some idiot who wanted to actually buy a book. Timothy didn’t mind at all: he knew that Todd was as likely to write a great novel as he was to piss diamonds, but Todd was part of the bookstore’s color. “See that fellow, browsing among the Hemingways?” he’d say to a tourist who’d come in to buy a map, “Local author. We’re kind of proud of him.” And the tourist would feel ashamed at not being more artistic, and buy something expensive by a dead guy.

  Today as usual Timothy was behind the counter, or rather beside it, sitting on a high stool, nose in a book, ready to peer over his glasses at any approaching customers. When the shop bell rang as Todd entered, Timothy closed the book without marking his place—it was, being the first book he’d picked up, an empty notebook with an attractive marbled cover and as such had no actual words in it—and greeted Todd.

  “Good morning, scribe,” he said. “How fares the struggle?”

  Even Todd would normally have had difficulty responding to this without headbutting Timothy, but today he was hardly listening.

  “Got a specific request for you today,” he said.

  “Well,” said Timo
thy, “like it says in the men’s room—‘We aim to please. You aim too, please.’”

  He beamed at his salty sally. Todd just looked at him. What the fuck was the old prick on about?

  “I need a copy of All My Colors,” he said.

  Timothy looked confused.

  “I don’t think I recollect that one,” he said. “Is it new?”

  “Oh, not you as well,” replied Todd. “Has my wife been down here, is that it?”

  “Your wife?” said Timothy. “No, haven’t seen Janis since your last birthday. She came in and bought that facsimile copy of Tropic of Capricorn for you.”

  “You sure?” said Todd, a hint of menace in his voice.

  “Yes, I’m sure,” Timothy said, more firmly. He might be an old fraud, but he was also a nasty heartless old fraud and Todd didn’t exactly scare him. “Now what was the name of that book again?”

  Todd backed down. “Sorry, Timothy, I’m having a weird time lately.”

  Timothy was about to tell Todd that the times they were a-changing when he realized that this was a heap of bullshit too far, even for him. Instead he said, “Just tell me the name, author and publisher and let’s see if we can track that bugger down for you.”

  * * *

  A few minutes later, having searched the FICTION shelves, both hardback and paperback, Todd and Timothy were in the stockroom. A bare bulb shone above them and Timothy was consulting his ledgers.

  “Nothing,” he said. “Not the book you wanted nor anything by this Jake Turner.”

  Todd grabbed the ledger from him. Timothy took it back.

  “I know my own stock,” he said. “And I know books. If you weren’t so darned fervent, Todd, I’d be so bold as to say that there ain’t no such book.”

  But I’ve seen it, Todd wanted to say. I recall the cover—it’s a woman’s head, and she’s looking out of the cover, and her hair is like a hydra’s. No, he corrected himself. It’s a rainbow. It’s all her colors. Kind of literal, but it works. Todd found himself remembering more lines from the book. Dialogue. Plot. Even chapter titles. He said none of this to Timothy. He didn’t want the Mayor of fucking Hobbiton telling people that Todd Milstead was losing his mind.

  “Okay, Timothy,” he said finally. “I guess I got it mixed up with some other book.”

  “I guess you did at that,” said Timothy. “I’ll keep an eye out for it, Todd, and anything else by this Turner fellow, and call you if something turns up.”

  Somehow Todd knew that nothing was going to turn up, just as he knew that there would be no copy of All My Colors or any other books by Jake Turner at the local library, or the main library in the city, or the new giant bookstore out of town, or anywhere in the world. But he also knew that All My Colors was real, that he’d seen it, he’d read it, he’d owned it, for Christ’s sake. He couldn’t understand how two entirely different things could be true, but they were, and there was nothing he could do about it.

  “See you ’round, Todd,” said Timothy as Todd headed out the door. He picked up his empty but beautifully bound book. Stupid fucker’s finally gone crazy, he thought to himself as he flicked through its blank pages.

  * * *

  If Timothy could have seen Todd forty-five minutes later, he would not have changed his opinion. Todd was sitting in the driver’s seat of the Volvo, both hands clamped onto the wheel, and he was talking to himself. He had been talking to himself since he’d got into the car half an hour ago and he showed no signs of stopping.

  “Chapter Two,” Todd was now intoning, “A Sunrise and a Sunset.”

  His eyes were focused on the car’s immobile windshield wipers, but they weren’t seeing anything.

  “Helen woke that morning with a feeling she could not explain,” Todd told the windshield wipers. “She could not tell if she had ever felt like that before, but as she could no longer remember feelings or anything that wasn’t part of her daily routine, this was not surprising…”

  He stopped. A woman, passing in front of the car with her child in a shopping cart, was staring at him. Todd looked at himself in the rearview mirror and saw what the woman saw: a staring-eyed maniac, holding the wheel of a car that wasn’t moving, and talking to himself without stopping. Todd stared back until she moved on, saying something to the child. Then he addressed the mirror.

  “What the fuck,” he asked, “is in me?”

  * * *

  What the fuck is in me? It was a question Todd couldn’t stop asking himself all the way home. The answer was simple. It was a book, called All My Colors, by a man called Jake Turner, only the man didn’t exist, and nor did the book. He was going to go through all his encyclopedias of literature and dictionaries of biography and copies of The Writer’s Gazette and if necessary the Yellow Pages, but he already knew what he would find. Nothing. There was no such writer as Jake Turner, and there was no such book as All My Colors.

  So what the fuck is in me?

  * * *

  Todd got home, threw the keys in the wooden bowl by the door—once he’d dreamed of beautiful undergraduates and even the occasional professor’s wife doing the same, at swinging parties where everyone drank Todd’s whiskey and laughed at his jokes and Todd always went home with the most beautiful wife, but Todd never got a professor’s job because he’d never been published, and wasn’t that a loaded word. But anyway, it was a nice bowl—and went into the kitchen to find something to drink. As he opened the fridge, the phone began to ring.

  Todd picked up the extension. Maybe it was Timothy, ringing to apologize and offer him a compensatory copy of—

  “Todd, this is Sara.”

  “Oh, Sara. This isn’t a great time.”

  “It never is, unless you’re drunk and I’m naked.”

  “Sara, can I call you from my study?”

  “No, you can’t. Todd, I just had Janis on the phone.”

  “What did she want, a recipe?” Todd almost laughed at his own witticism, then remembered the conversation he’d had with Janis the night before.

  “No,” said Sara, “she wanted to tell me to stay away from you. I told her I didn’t know what she was talking about—”

  “Good,” said Todd, who had located a carton of V8 but was now thinking of trading up to a beer.

  “—but she knew I did, so that was a waste of breath. So, I just let her talk.”

  “I bet that was fun.”

  “Actually, it was interesting.”

  “Janis?”

  “What she said. I thought she was going to give me both barrels, and she started out that way, like she was about to scream at me and call me a whore, but then she just went calm.”

  “‘Went calm’?” asked Todd.

  “Yes,” said Sara. “She went calm. Her voice changed and then she said:

  * * *

  “I’m not going to warn you off or any nonsense like that. I’m just going to ask you to do me one favor.”

  “What?” said Sara, anticipating a Go fuck yourself. Maybe not that: Janis never swore. Go screw yourself, then.

  “I don’t see why I should be the one who has to do all the work. I want you to call the house and tell Todd I’m leaving him.”

  “You want me to—”

  “Yes,” said Janis. “I figure you owe me that at least. Can you do that, Sara? It’s not much to ask after what you did. Call Todd up and tell him I’m leaving.”

  “I can do that.”

  “Great. Oh, and Sara? When you’ve done that—”

  “Yes?”

  “Go fuck yourself.”

  * * *

  “Janis said that?” Todd repeated, amazed. “Janis told you to go fuck yourself?”

  “She did,” Sara replied. “But I think she mostly wanted me to convey to you the fact that she is leaving you.”

  “Because of us? You and me?”

  “No, Todd,” said Sara. “Because of you.” And she rang off.

  * * *

  Todd sat in front of the TV with a beer. There was
nothing on TV but afternoon soaps and even Todd couldn’t make a case for afternoon soaps having stories or characters that any writer could learn from (although one episode of As The World Turns contained more ideas, plot and character development than all of Todd’s unpublished work to date). So Todd sat there, suckling at his beer like a baby, waiting for someone to do something.

  Todd liked to tell the gang that there were two kinds of people in the world, those who do and those who don’t. Todd was a do-er and they were don’t-ers. The fact that Joe was a high school teacher, the fact that Mike had two jobs because his mother was in an expensive nursing home, and the fact that Billy was the only one of the gang who’d ever had anything published—these things were irrelevant. There were do-ers and don’t-ers, and Todd was a do-er.

  If pressed, and it was his booze so he was never pressed, Todd would have found it hard to produce any examples of doing. Janis cooked and cleaned and dealt with bills and maintenance. Todd had some intermittent income from—yes—teaching writing at the community college, but that had tailed off lately as Todd had a habit of giving outlandishly good grades to the girl students, while simultaneously putting down any talented young males (in this respect, and this respect only, Todd was an early proponent of positive discrimination).

  Generally, however, Todd Milstead was not an active man. He had designed his life to be this way, as it gave him more time for writing. The only problem was that Todd very rarely did any writing. He would get up, shower, breakfast, and go into his study. He would organize all his writing materials and sometimes even tidy his collection of authorly items: the framed and signed photograph of John Steinbeck (Todd had bought it at auction and it was signed To Beverley but hey, it was authorly), the quill-and-ink brass paperweight that Janis had thought was cute and bought for him, the inspirational Bob Dylan quote he’d typed out himself and taped to the wall—these were all the tokens of his author-ness, what Todd (but only to himself, which was wise) sometimes liked to call “the handmaidens of brilliance.”

  But once this was done, the straightening and the tidying, that was it. Nothing happened. Todd could sit there for hours, waiting for the Muse to strike. But if she was striking, it felt to Todd like she was doing so for few er hours and more pay. Todd waited and waited. He took down books and scoured them for inspiration. He quoted his favorite lines to himself. Sometimes phrases came into his head, and he would start writing them down and expanding them into paragraphs until he realized that he was just transcribing passages that he remembered (he remembered them perfectly, but that wasn’t really the point). And he’d pull the paper out of the machine and screw it up into a ball and throw the ball into the corner with the others, and then he’d pull out a copy of Playboy.