by Lucy Ives
“They look happy.”
Alice froze. The voice was to her right.
To her relief it was an actual person. Alice’s eyes fell on a long thigh in over-dyed jeans.
“It’s funny how that’s supposed to interest someone.”
Alice glanced across the crotch of the jeans to the hem of a striped polo in shades of peach, squash, and carmine. There were ropy arms attached to this affair and a handsome grinning head.
“Sorry if I startled you,” the head pronounced. “I don’t normally talk to strangers.”
“Oh,” said Alice, squinting.
A black fly zoomed.
The male body laughed for no apparent reason. “What’s your name?”
“I’m Alice,” Alice immediately replied. She felt better, if dizzy. What a relief; he was just trying to pick her up.
“Ha,” said the body. He wanted to know what she was doing. He said that they should go somewhere if she felt like it.
It had only been a very minor incident. And now there was only a very minor incident, again. But this was to be expected. They were crossing the street, and in the wind produced by a taxi flashing across an intersection, there came a kind of crinkling, a puffiness in the depths of Alice’s left ear, and there it was once more, It said, “Fun.” Just that. Fun.
They drank wheat beers, and he was not weird.
“I just really liked your outfit,” he said. “I could tell it said something about you. Like how you carried yourself.”
He said, “Don’t think I’m weird.”
She was like, “Oh my god of course not!”
His name was Alan, and they talked for an hour about having nearly identical A names. It was a subject since it affected one’s sense of self. One frequently came first, because of the letter. If your name was Alan or, say, Alice.
Alice adopted Alan’s tone. He was casual but seemed to have standards. He was from the city, duh.
Alice glanced around the room. They were below street level, and there was a sweet and aged light dribbling in through the windows.
Alan was at Stern.
He was interested in sustainability.
He was examining her and wanting to know something or other about her “roots.”
Alice said, “Like where I’m from?”
“Sure.” Alan crossed his arms over his chest. “Since you know I’m from here.”
“Oh, yeah,” Alice said.
“So? Yeah?” Alan grinned. He revealed very straight, but also very narrow and weak-looking, teeth.
Alice got up and told Alan that she needed to use the bathroom.
In the “bathroom,” which was in fact an alcove with a sink and toilet stashed behind a pair of cabinet doors that attached to each other with Velcro, Alice began washing her hands.
She gazed into a spotted mirror that hung from a wire.
Because there had already been two minor incidents.
This was why they were, in hindsight, so very clear. They were minor, as yet. Just practical nothings. If she ever remembered this, this would be the day on which it would have started again, if it did, which it might not.
The voice was distinct.
It was low and intelligent. No, it was not precisely female. Not precisely. No. It could have been the voice of a girl, that was not impossible, but was it, really?
Alice held still.
Only if she didn’t_ _ _NO.
Only if was it the voice was it it it it it it it the one doing the talking. YOU REMEMBER. No, ? OHYes you do? SO fun pretending to ty[e oo shit, I mean TYPE when I use your SHIT.
It seemed to end.
Alice held her head. She dug her knuckles into her eyelids, scrubbed.
She was alone.
Sort of.
No, she was not alone. She could feel it waiting in the wings, as it were, there, ready to take a word from her, take it to say it again, back, back again, as you.
That was the thing, the words appeared, to hang, as, in, thin air
TIMES T1ME STIMETIM3SSSESS
Time withered. It exploded whitely across the sink
Alice swiped ineffectually at this lattice.
U LIKE ME NOW/? it wondered.
“I like you very much,” Alice whispered. “Tell me what you want.”
WHAT W4NT?
U KNOW
“No,” Alice said aloud. She tried to be conciliatory. “Or, just, not now. Later.”
TH+N WH=N
“When?”
W H EN
“S-soon,” Alice stuttered. “Soon, soon, soon.”
U PROMIS
“Yes,” Alice said. “Promise.”
When she was a little girl, Alice, or Ali, as she was at this time called, had learned she had a special gift. This gift was the ability to play with time.
The way the game went was like this: You had to choose a point and stare at it, and at a certain moment you had to think, I’ve got you, Time!
It was like catching an animal by its tail. Time pulled you through the loop, after.
And it only lasted a minute, because of the difficulty of holding on to time’s tail, but during the period during which you held on to time’s tail, nothing else could happen. This meant that nothing happened to you, and that nothing happened to anyone anywhere else in the world. And nothing happened. Nothing. Happened.
Time’s tail was burning hot. It was sharp as glass but never left a mark.
It was best if you chose something bright to stare at, something bright and very small, like the head of a screw or someone’s jewelry.
Ali sat on the driveway while her mother’s lawn mower was repaired by [. . .]
There it ends. Clare rolls her eyes. The story is—the stories are—ridiculous, and yet: they are analogues for each other, foils if not twins. They each describe vital, ineluctable forces. Monstrous entities, furred and fanged and made of words, obscure themselves by means of their enormity. They are images we cannot quite look at, glimpses of a catastrophe we convince ourselves comes from another country, another way of life; not our own. Clare’s father, Clare thinks, had he been a careless man?
It chills Clare and chills her hotly.
Today is Christmas.
She did not die.
Thirty-Two
A Very Interesting Young Man
On the first day of the year, there is a foot and a half of snow in Crete and Harry has, uncharacteristically, left the house. Loudermilk went home to The Cleaner a week ago.
Crete is a bright vault at 3:00 p.m.; air very fresh. Harry follows a squeaky path dug between banks to the downtown. He hopes he won’t encounter anyone he’ll be compelled to speak to. The few residents he sees are either over the age of thirty or under the age of ten. Everyone moves with caution.
Harry means to stretch his legs and then return to the place, get back to his notebook, but for some reason in spite of the holiday the Ground House at the center of town is open, and Harry is suddenly aware that coffee prepared by someone other than himself, for himself, though eminently affordable, would be an amazing luxury.
Harry goes in. He mutters his order to a girl with reddish dreadlocks. He receives a small coffee and pays with a twenty. Now he goes to the vacant bar along the window, lowers himself onto a stool. The snow is amber, or it is cornflower blue.
“Hi.”
Harry turns. The poetry woman Marta Hillary is standing just a foot or so away.
“Hi there,” Marta Hillary repeats. She is a poet, Harry corrects himself. She wears a black parka. The tip of her narrow nose is pink. This is an event.
Harry manages to nod. He struggles to prevent himself from losing his balance on the stool.
“I know we’ve met. Where was that, exactly? You’re not in my class?”
Harry knows that sentences exist, but currently they hover somewhere out of reach, spinning.
Marta is unperturbed. “It’s nice to see you again.” She studies Harry’s face. “I see that you, like me, have decide
d not to leave town.” She smiles. “It’s very beautiful here in winter, don’t you think? I couldn’t bear to leave. One simply has so much room, and on a day like this, I think you have to say that it’s like a prism out there.” Marta fusses with the top of her parka. She sips tea from a paper cup. “Don and Lizzie, my husband and daughter, are skiing. They’re out west. I just let them go. Just like that. Strange of me, don’t you think?”
Harry has no idea why his opinion should have any bearing on Marta Hillary’s relationship with her husband or child.
Marta continues, “So I’ve decided to stay put for the moment.” She pauses. “Oh, now I remember! You’re that psychologist, the one who knows our new star, Troy. I was sorry we were not able to speak more, the other night perhaps, or last month? I believe you are a very interesting young man.” Marta Hillary seems to press something into Harry’s gaze, and for several seconds he cannot look away from her. “Yes, now I remember,” Marta intones. “I remember I was very glad to see you. At our home.”
Marta Hillary has a paper napkin and is writing something down on it. “Here,” she says.
Marta Hillary goes out the door.
Harry forces himself to stay and consume coffee. He sits and touches the cup. He carefully folds the napkin Marta Hillary has given him and puts it in his coat pocket. The napkin has writing on it Harry does not want, for the moment at least, to read.
Harry leaves the Ground House. He walks to the library, where he checks his email. There is just one email from a real human. Predictably it is from Loudermilk. Loudermilk—also predictably—doesn’t say much. He tells Harry he hopes he’s still alive and, if so, there’s a little something that Harry could please do if Harry wouldn’t mind, and this thing is, of all things, to write to Loudermilk’s great new conquest. A log-in for an account Loudermilk has independently invented, [email protected], and an institutional address for the mark are provided. Loudermilk says Harry should make what he writes as good as a poem. Loudermilk also says, So she knows I’m thinking about her. We’re in her class next semester and need to initiate ass-kiss pronto! I’d do it myself but you know my, uh, anthropological history. Now get spastic with it, you Amish pirate you, thanks dude. There is, in addition, a brief and enigmatic P.S.: Why do farts smell? (it’s a joke).
Thirty-Three
Letters
Thu, 8 Jan 2004 22:30:32
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Happy New Year
Dear Professor Hillary,
Please excuse this email address. I hope you are very well. Happy New Year’s Greeting and looking forward to working with you next semester.
Sincerely,
Troy Loudermilk
Fri, 9 Jan 2004 17:36:05
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Happy New Year
I won’t comment on the address.
I, too, look forward to our work.
Regards,
MH
Sat, 10 Jan 2004 10:01:20
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Re: Happy New Year
Dear Professor Hillary,
Thank you for your message. That is great news.
I wanted to say I am already getting started on some poems and cannot wait to share them with you.
Sincerely,
Troy
Sat, 10 Jan 2004 13:41:08
To: [email protected]
From: whytnoise
Subject: Re: Fwd: Re: Re: Happy New Year
Dude, I can’t believe you didn’t get this one, such a classic.
Answer: so that deaf people CAN STILL ENJOY THEM
anyway i like what U R doing??
don’t see LORD OF THE RINGS til I’m bakc
Sat, 10 Jan 2004 14:10:15
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Happy New Year
I’m always here to read your work. You don’t say anything about when you plan to grace Crete with your presence again . . .
Sun, 11 Jan 2004 19:56:12
To: whytnoise
From: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Re: Fwd: Re: Re: Happy New Year
She likes you for some reason, I guess. I actually really don’t have anything for you to give her right now as far as poems go, so tell me when you’re coming back? I’ll be working till then. I’m a little confused about why I need to start doing things as you from this point of view, like with her. I guess see you.
Sun, 11 Jan 2004 20:01:11
To: [email protected]
From: whytnoise
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Fwd: Re: Re: Happy New Year
dude chill. i’ll be back in a day. then we can talk. its really weird basically writing email to yourself, by the way . you should try it sometimes
Sun, 11 Jan 2004 20:01:31
To: [email protected]
From: whytnoise
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Fwd: Re: Re: Happy New Year
also DO NOT NEGLECT THY HILLARY
super super important
do not pass go do not collect 4100 lick butt now
Sun, 11 Jan 2004 20:21:59
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Happy New Year
That is fantastic, Marta. You’ll hear from me in a few days provided weather doesn’t screw flying up.
Mon, 12 Jan 2004 12:48:02
To: [email protected]
From: whytnoise
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Fwd: Re: Re: Re: Re: Happy New Year
Haha. nice. good thing my dick is as big as you make it sound
Mon, 12 Jan 2004 12:50:01
To: whytnoise
From: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Fwd: Re: Re: Re: Re: Happy New Year
I’m pretending you didn’t just make me read that.
Mon, 12 Jan 2004 13:10:41
To: [email protected]
From: whytnoise
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Fwd: Re: Re: Re: Re: Happy New Year
pretend all u want
Thirty-Four
We Prefer to See Ourselves Living
Harry is starting to comprehend what he wants a poem to be, what a poem is for. He recognizes, too, that he might do this work anyway, even if he had zero readers. It’s convenient that there is an audience, since this means there is a manner in which he can function, relative to society. (As if he wanted to! Still, the thought is not without its comforts.) This is identifiable behavior, the composition of poems, not nothing. Harry trots over to the library. He encounters the silty, electrified images of Apollinaire. He thinks about the various tortured ambitions of modernists to represent the present. Harry thinks how words are objects. People make use of them without seeing them, without tasting them, without attempting to feel their hard and glossy limits.
Harry knows he wants to create a long poem. Write is, by the way, not the correct verb. He wants to assemble the poem, like a staircase. It should be a perfect and purposeless machine and it should depict the world, what has become of the world, through its intelligent arrangement of word-objects Harry has unearthed, a reporter writing about “ops tempo” or someone saying the phrase “Connecticut friends.” He doesn’t know why certain groups of words appear to him with a lasso around them, a magic circle alerting him to their pertinence. Some words mean so much more than they mean to mean.
Anyone could write the poem he wants to write, Harry thinks, if only they were willing to see what he sees. But they aren’t, and it isn’t even personal.
For now the major fact of his existence is the change in his place of residence. At firs
t he’d been beyond irritated by Loudermilk’s suggestion that he think about getting some kind of part-time job. Loudermilk had barely been back from the East Coast for three days before it seemed like he couldn’t shut up about it. Loudermilk was pretending to see things about Harry, like that Harry wasn’t showering with much frequency and was maybe subject to twitches and tremors and that Harry was, Loudermilk had on one occasion observed, at this point not beyond relieving himself in a Mountain Dew bottle taped under the card table in his room at a convenient angle, and so on. To which Harry had replied that the problem was not so much his as the house’s, the lack of properly secreted bathroom facilities, in case this wasn’t already sufficiently obvious to an all-knowing virtuoso of life like Loudermilk. Which remark Loudermilk had parried to the effect that this wasn’t really stopping Loudermilk, in case Harry hadn’t noticed, which, what with Loudermilk having been back for at least thirty-six hours at that point, Harry had to admit that, yes, fine, he’d definitely had a chance to admire Loudermilk’s enthusiastic employ of the plumbing and had Loudermilk been feeding on a constant diet of asparagus and decomposing horse flesh for the last week?
Loudermilk had very calmly and sweetly requested that Harry consider shutting the fuck up. Loudermilk said that he had an idea. He said that he had something that he wanted to show Harry. He dug around in his backpack and extracted a folded printout, which was revealed to be a poster: