How to Stop Loving Someone

by Joan Connor

  Caspar spent days researching birth certificates. He found no T.D. Pinchinger. And this, too, he duly recorded in his novel.

  Caspar ran voter registration checks, drivers’ licenses, marriage certificates, telephone listings. Nothing. And undeterred he transcribed this as well into his burgeoning novel.

  Pinchinger did not exist. Except. Except there were the novels. The awards for the novels. The reviews of the novels. Caspar had read them all, all six. Six books in search of an author.

  He researched obit pages across the country. Still nothing, and this nothing he also recorded in his novel, lucubrating at his compact refrigerator cum desk. Not dead. Not alive.

  And there had been that sensationalist memoir by that low-Lolita sketching in autistic prose some sordid consensual S and M with Pinchinger. But the real scandal there was the writing. Nonetheless Caspar tried to hunt her down, but dead-ended at the pen name,Venus Blue. Behind the lickerish shimmer of the name, no one. Had it been an opportunistic hoax? He had laced up his gloves only to find himself shadow boxing, sparring with gossamer partners. Initials and a pen name. A planet, a goddess. And a color or an emotional condition.

  Caspar needed to think. And he decided to think at the Hobson’s Choice Diner. As he banged into the diner, he noted the neon cursive above the door, “obson’s Choice Diner.” The ‘H’ had long ago given up its aspiration and gas. Caspar spun onto a stool at the counter.

  How could he find someone who did not even exist? “Gimme a cup of Joe,” he said to Hannah. Pinchinger was no more than a series of texts. He’d contacted his publisher and gotten no response. How can you solve a mystery without a clue. Or was Pinchinger a clue without a mystery? A nom de plume, a ghost-written fiction himself ?

  Something was bothering Caspar. The waitress. What was her name? Hannah, right, Hannah. A palindrome. Anna in the middle. It was the ‘h’ that was troubling Caspar, that ‘h’ that was missing in the diner sign, the ‘h’ sticking in the office typewriter. ‘H’, that little hammock of a letter. If you took ‘h’ out of Pinchinger, you got Pincinger. Pinc. Pin. (He felt like a butterfly pinned to Nabokov’s lepidoptery board.) Pince. Pince-nez. Did that help?

  No. Caspar slurped his coffee. ‘H’, a stuck ‘h’. The Smith Corona, he needed that Smith Corona, and he needed it urgently. Caspar tossed a quarter on the counter. “There you go, doll.”

  “Wow. Thanks, big spender,” Hannah said, mopping the counter.

  “Did you know that the Egyptians trained baboons to wait tables?” Caspar asked.

  Caspar set the old typewriter on the fridge. Lois hadn’t put up much resistance when he’d gone to claim it. Even Turnkey used a monitor now. “W y did the ‘ stick?” he typed. “Pincinger.”

  He knew that there was some connection. But what?

  In the morning, Caspar set off for the library with his novel stuffed under his arm. He had research to do. That heuristic letter ‘h’, the stuck key was key to unlocking Pinc(h)inger, the Hermetically sealed, Pinc(h)inger. ‘H’ was such an interesting letter, aspirated, sometimes silent, a letter not unlike the author himself who had recently penned liner notes for a garage band.

  Caspar trundled down River Street. In Hobson’s Choice it was impossible not to note the letter ‘H’. Hobson’s CHoice. And Hero sandwicHes. And Hot coffee. And the Hotel, and Hobby sHop, and the Hourly masses at the CatHolic CHurcH, and the Hydrants, and the Hazard sign on Horlick Street, and the kids playing HopscotcH, and the Hotdog stand on Hospice Hill. How had Caspar missed it all these years, these aitches of which he was suddenly aware as if ’enry ’iggins were his secret speech coach in an encoded universe where the letter ‘h’ Hypersignified.

  The highjinks of the highhats on their high horses cHasing hedgehogs. He was drowning in meaning, a surfeit of meaning, meaning everywhere. What if everything signified? He’d noticed this week that even his food was straining to mean—mottoes on teatags, fortune cookies, bubblegum fortunes, cracker jacks with pithy adages, talking food, clamorous snacks but no decrypting device for a prize.

  Caspar banged against the huge oak door of the Hobson’s Choice library. “HusH,” the librarian said as he entered.

  Caspar headed straight for the reference section in the hieratic stillness. The shelf marked under his hieroglyphic, ‘H’. ‘h’ that ideogrammatic chair, or humped house with a chimney, home, hovel. Or a handheld scoop standing on end. Or ‘H’ a bridge between I-beams, a swing, a cartwheel of acrobatic appendages.

  He dropped a tome of ‘H’ onto the library table with his novel. Thunk, thud. He thumbed through quickly: Hermeticism.

  That was it. Pinchinger, the hermit, hermetically sealed, thrice greatest, Hermes Trismegistus. Here was his Rosetta Stone: Hermeticism.

  T.D. Pinchinger, like the Egyptian god, Thoth, was author of hermetic writings, an inventor of a new way of writing, magically sealed off from public investigation to keep the vessel of his imagination airtight and Pinchinger the author distinct from Pinchinger the person.

  In his novel Caspar penned a cartouche, circumscribing carefully inside his sovereign’s name: Pinchinger. It was all starting to make sense. It was amazing what you could see when you were looking for it.

  Caspar scribbled in his novel: Hermeticism. The cosmos has unity and is interdependent. The meaning of life can manifest in sudden divine revelation. Sympathy and antipathy unite the universe. And one key can unlock it.

  Rosetta Stone: stuck key. The letter ‘h’.

  Note to myself: it is possible that Pinchinger does not exist at all and is only the written biography of himself, a pre-written obit.

  Then he slammed the compendium of H shut and headed home.

  As Caspar entered his apartment, the phone was ringing.

  This would fail to startle in most lives, but in Caspar’s life it was extraordinary. No one ever called him. The phone was for calling out not in.

  Caspar barked in the mouthpiece, “Yeah?”

  “Is this T.D. Pinchinger?”

  Caspar paused. Kind of a peculiar coincidence. “No.”

  “Do I have the wrong number?”

  “Who is this?” Caspar asked, playing it sly.

  “Who is this?” the voice answered.

  A voice, Caspar noted, rather raspy, dry, the sound of a hasp on a clasp. “Is this Pinchinger?” Caspar asked.

  “Good God no.Turnkey here. Is this T.D. Pinchinger?”

  Turnkey. Whatever did this mean? Caspar goggled the receiver, then slammed it down.

  Turnkey was the opposite of stuck key. How was he key in all this? And why did he think that Caspar was Pinchinger? And why was Turnkey calling Pinchinger?

  Caspar twisted all night in mazey dreams about Venus Blue and Turnkey. Her back was to Caspar in the dream, but he knew that it was she. She wore a string bikini of blue velvet. Turnkey stood next to the water cooler, drooling dropped aitches; parti-colored, they swirled to the floor. Pinchinger appeared and told him to fall in love, that love was the answer to our riddling hearts. Remember Z, Pinchinger said. The importance of love in Z. You must remember; after all, you wrote it. Pinchinger’s head looked like an unfinished cartoon; he had no face.

  By the time that he woke up, Caspar was convinced that he was Pinchinger, that he had written the novels, all of them, that they were part of the text of Palimpsest, his novel, which, in fact they were, since he had transcribed them as he read them into his ongoing roman à clef featuring himself as protagonist.

  Caspar was exhausted, but he nonetheless crossed to the kitchen and emptied his wastebasket on the floor. He had to find some proof that he was indeed Pinchinger. He found envelopes addressed to occupant and Caspar Weems. Receipts for Caspar Weems. Coffee grounds, they could be anyone’s. And crumpled sheets of papers with missing aitches. The H was the thing, Caspar was certain. It was possible that he was Caspar Weems thinking that he was Pinchinger who was thinking that he was Caspar Weems. How could he be certain who he was?

  While Caspar was sortin
g through his trash, Turnkey was dialing numbers at random and asking the answerers if they were T.D. Pinchinger. Troy had decided that the assignment, so effective with Caspar, would work as well with the sot. Troy Fagan, City Desk, had stumbled upon the perfect means to coerce early retirement.

  Caspar Weems was making his way along River Street to the ’obson’s Choice Diner, stopping at every trash can to sort through the contents for clues. In a world where everything meant, he could afford to overlook nothing, no candy bar wrapper, no gas receipt. The world had gone text which he quickly noted in his novel. He was having difficulty writing fast enough—to take it all in, to record it all. He rolled along the street like wadded newspaper, more rumpled than was usual, his shirt untucked, his wool sweater a gnarl of dags.

  At last he blew into the diner. Hannah sauntered over with her coffee pot propped. “Yeah, yeah, a cup of Joe.”

  Caspar shook his head. “Skip the Java. Who am I, doll?” he asked.

  “You’re the quarter-tipper, babycakes,” Hannah said.

  “Am I T.D. Pinchinger, the reclusive cult novelist?”

  “Honey, for all I care or know, you could be the Queen of England.”

  Caspar clapped his hands flat on the counter. This did not sit well. The Queen of England? He was having enough trouble being Caspar Weems being T.D.Pinchinger and possibly Caspar Weems again.

  “T.D., eh? What does that stand for? Totally deranged ?” Hannah nodded at the pot. “Want coffee?”

  “Coffee?” Caspar was already wound up tighter than a typing ribbon. He stared at Hannah’s name tag.

  “Yeah, coffee.”

  His eyes felt glairied. He was having a vision, another Hermeticist divine transmission. The dream. Good Night Nurse, Hannah was Venus Blue. The blue tag. And it occurred to him for the first time that T.D. might be a woman like T.S. Elliot. Wait, no he was the guy. George was the woman, same last name, one L, one T. Okay, H.D. then, or whatever her name was.

  Hannah bumped Caspar’s shoulder. “Yo, Rainman, coffee?”

  Caspar stared at Hannah. Really stared. Her eyes were name tag blue. Her lips were as red as red flannel hash. Caspar slumped. Aw. He felt as if he were running all soft at the edges, albuminous like he liked his eggs. Okay then, if he was Pinchinger and Pinchinger was a woman, he was a lesbian. That was all right; he was liberal in his views.

  “Coffee?” Hannah asked again.

  “I prefer not to,” he said.

  “Suit yourself.”

  Caspar smiled coquettishly and blinked and flushed. “We’re supposed to get married,” Caspar said. “You and me. Caspar and Hannah. T.D. and Venus. I know. I dreamed it. It is prophecy.”

  Hannah stopped, pivoted and smiled, coffee cocked before her like a pistol. “A double wedding, ain’t that grand? Go rent the chapel.”

  And Caspar spun off the stool, dizzy with spinning and longing, and dashed out to do precisely that.

  Up in Marvin Gardens, spelled just like in the board game with the historical misspelling intact, an ‘i’ rather than an ‘e’, Jillian and Claude were considering adding another house to the lot. The developer had thought that it would be cute to name the streets after the game.

  “But Claude,” Jillian said, “we already have one green house.”

  Claude sipped his Martini. “For God’s sake, Jillian, try to get into the spirit of the thing. Take a risk. It’s a game of chance. Green means go.”

  “Green means greed. Go ask Gatsby. Two Kelly green houses, Claude? That is pretty dicey.”

  “You mean Fitzgerald. Go ask Fitzgerald. Gatsby starred in it.”

  “That was Robert Redford.”

  Caspar Weems’ dream had proven not to be prophetic after all. And Caspar was out the cost of a chapel and a chaplain and was pondering the meaning of a letter (not the ‘i’ and ‘e’ of Marvin Gardens) but the letter ‘h’ which now stood for Hannah and heart, and his was broken. Caspar was learning that love was not the answer to the riddling heart, but rather was the loneliest place in the universe, lonelier than a treeless lunar plain, a vastness that knew no edges, that while it could (like the letter ‘h’) confer meaning, it could also deprive life of meaning (like a stuck key). And Caspar was stuck in the key of blue and typing Hannah’s name (anna, anna) into his novel and pre-writing his obituary, the obituary of Caspar Weems who had for thirty-two years served The Glad Rag not the obituary of T.D. Pinchinger who Caspar could not be since Hannah was not the Venus Blue of his dream.

  Caspar tapped the keys. He wished that love were more like his novel, encompassing, inclusive. But love, unlike, Caspar’s art was selective. It selected one, and in that single and singular selection rejected an infinite number of other possible selections. Caspar was one of the infinite rejections. Hannah had turned him down flat. And Caspar had downed enough Xanax that he could actually be Club Med.

  And then the phone rang.

  “Yeah?”

  “Is this T.D. Pinchinger?”

  Caspar dropped the receiver. What a coincidence. Once a fluke. But twice? What were the chances? And then Caspar Weems had another aperçu.

  He depressed the button and dialed information for Hobson’s Choice. “Yes, I’d like the listing for T.D. Pinchinger,” he said.

  “We are sorry, sir. That number is unlisted.”

  “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

  Then he could be Pinchinger. Caspar capered on the kitchen floor around his fridge. Forgetting his novel, he rushed to the door. There was still a chance to woo his Venus Blue. And he could interview himself and publish it in The Glad Rag. Everything was falling into place. He paused. Perhaps he should double check, maybe look up Caspar Weems’ number in the phone book. No, because he could still be Caspar Weems and Pinchinger, right, if Pinchinger’s number was unlisted. The world, life and love, hinged on the meaning of the letter ‘h’. Hannah was the meaning. Hannah was the answer. “H,” Caspar yelled, “happy.”

  The god Thoth, inventor of writing, laughed. “Hah,” he said. Or “Huh?”

  Acknowledgments

  “The Folly of Being Comfor ted,” “What It Is,” and “How to Stop Loving Someone,” all appeared in TriQuarterly. “What It Is” also appeared in Pushcart Prize XXVIII. “Men in Brown” appeared in GlimmerTrain. “The Wig” appeared in Manoa; “The Writing on the Wall” in The Dickinson Review; “Tidewalk” in The Ohio Review; “Halfbaby” in The Southern Review; “The Fox” in North Dakota Quarterly; “If It’s Bad It Happens to Me” in Hunger Mountain; “The Landmark Hotel” in The Antioch Review; “Palimpsest” in The Gettysburg Review; and “Aground” appeared in The North American Review. It later won The Ohio Writer award where it also appeared.

  The Author

  Joan Connor is a professor at Ohio University and at Fairfield University’s low residency MFA program. She received the AWP award for her collection History Lessons, and the River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Prize for The World Before Mirrors, and was a recipient of an Ohio Arts Council fellowship. She has also received a Barbara Deming award and a Pushcart Prize. Her two earlier collections are We Who Live Apart and Here on Old Route 7. She lives in Athens, Ohio, and Belmont, Vt., with her pet Peeve, a Yorkshire terrier.

  How to Stop Loving Someone won the 2010 Leapfrog Fiction Contest, adult category.

  About the Type

  This book was set in Bembo®, a typeface based on the types of one of the most famous printers of the Renaissance, Aldus Manutius. In 1496 Manutius used a new weight of a roman face, formed by Francesco Griffo da Bologna, to print the short piece De Aetna, by Pietro Bembo.

  The Monotype Corporation in London used this roman face as the model for a 1929 project of Stanley Morison which resulted in a font called Bembo. Morison made a number of changes to the 15th century forms. Because Manutius did not originally cut an italic for the font, Morrison used that from a sample book written in 1524 by Giovanni Tagliente in Venice. Italic capitals came from the roman forms.

  Designed by John Taylor-Conv
ery

  Composed at JTC Imagineering, Santa Maria, CA

  How to Stop Loving Someone© 2011 by Joan Connor

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American

  Copyright Conventions

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a data base or other retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, by any means, including mechanical, electronic, photocopy, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  A LeapLit Book

  Leapfrog Literature

  Published in 2011 in the United States by

  Leapfrog Press LLC

  PO Box 2110

  Teaticket, MA 02536

  www.leapfrogpress.com

  Distributed in the United States by

  Consortium Book Sales and Distribution

  St. Paul, Minnesota 55114

  www.cbsd.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Connor, Joan, 1954-

  Short stories.

  eISBN : 978-1-935-24823-1

  I. Title.

  PS3553.O514255H69 2011

  813’.54--dc22 2011027710