by Steve Tesich
The Nothingness smiled at Saul like an old friend.
The Hollywood hack in Saul recognized in the Nothingness before him the ultimate rewriter, the Doc of docs.
“I can fix you up,” Dr. Nothingness said, smiling at him. “I can make you whole. I can take all the loose ends of your messy life and pull them together into a satisfying story line.”
Cromwell, smiling his smile, hopped off the desk. Limber and loose and light of foot, he took a couple of steps and stopped. Closing his hand into a fist, he threw a straight, lightning-fast jab and then snapped back his arm to inspect the wristwatch on his wrist.
“Damn,” he cursed cheerfully. “Always having to run. The traffic is probably still a nightmare, but I don’t have a choice. There’s a man I gotta see. I don’t want to see him but see him I must.
“Ah-h,” he sighed, full of despair, but delighting in the despair, “this is no way to live.”
11
They took a right outside Cromwell’s office and, walking side by side, set out down the long deserted corridor.
The yellow manila envelope that had been on top of Cromwell’s desk was now in Saul’s left hand. He had no idea when Cromwell had given it to him, nor did he remember taking it.
But it didn’t bother Saul in the least to be carrying that manuscript.
He knew, he didn’t know how he knew, but he knew, that he would not be involved in this project. It was a certainty so private that even he wasn’t privy to its particulars.
Saul’s number one priority at the moment was to get to a bathroom as quickly as possible and to hold back the torrent from gushing into his underwear until he got there.
There was a men’s room at the opposite end of the corridor, on the other side of the elevator, but although he wanted to rush there, he was prevented from rushing by his very distress.
It had not been easy keeping his sphincter tight while sitting in the chair, but it was much harder to keep it tight while he walked and at the same time tried to preserve some semblance of dignity so that Cromwell would not suspect his disgraceful condition. And so he had to take small, mincing steps.
Cromwell talked as they left his office.
“There isn’t an actress in Hollywood,” he was telling Saul, “who doesn’t want to play Leila. The agent of every superstar has called me already to relay his client’s desire to be considered for the part. And this frenzy is happening before there is any screenplay, before the book has even been published. It’s happening on the strength of the word that’s out on the book. Can you imagine what …”
He went on.
Saul was listening and not listening. Although he knew that he would not be involved in this project, the thought of Leila’s life being reduced to one more part in the career of some actress struck him as the final robbery of a woman who had been robbed of everything else in her life.
Oh, Leila, he thought.
When they reached the elevator, Cromwell thrust out his arm and jabbed the down button with his index finger. Saul, his sphincter weakening, excused himself and said that he had to go to the men’s room.
Cromwell apologized for being unable to wait. He had to get going. He was in such a rush that he couldn’t even wait for the elevator to arrive. He took the adjacent stairway instead.
“Call me when you’ve read the book and we’ll talk,” he shouted to Saul as he rushed down the stairway, relishing the rush that he was in.
12
Released by Cromwell’s departure, Saul broke into an inelegant, tightassed trot toward the men’s room.
Trotting, running, skipping, hopping. The roots of his teeth, broken and unbroken, hurt from having to go so badly. Tears of agony welled in his eyes.
He could see by the sign on the door that he had made a mistake and was entering a ladies’ room instead of a men’s room, but it was too late to change course now. Some biological countdown had been triggered by his entrance and there was no aborting it.
What does it matter? he thought. There’s nobody left in the building anyway.
He was in such a panic to sit on a toilet that the door of the stall confounded him when he tried to open it. Blinded by his distress, he couldn’t figure out which way the door opened, in or out.
Needing both hands for the job, he tossed the yellow manila envelope over his head (it missed falling into the sink by an inch) and pushed and pulled and banged on the door until it opened. He hurled himself inside, pulling down his trousers and his underwear with the urgency of a man whose clothes are on fire.
He sat down panting, completely out of breath.
There was nothing left for him to do but let go. He let go.
The bliss of discharge caused his eyelids to flutter, and then he shut his eyes completely.
That was close, he thought. That was real close.
Whatever had been tense inside him was loosening, whatever had been tight was letting go, becoming easy and open. His shoulders sagged. The vertebrae in his neck, in his spinal column, which had felt welded together in Cromwell’s office, now lengthened and stretched like Spandex. Eyes shut in bliss, he let his head roll forward.
That was close all right, he thought.
The fluid nature of his discharge, which he could both feel and hear, continued.
Must have been all those oat bran muffins I had for breakfast, he thought. And then a fruit salad for lunch. Too much roughage.
He yawned, feeling good, and then he yawned again, feeling even better.
One thing’s for sure, he thought to himself. I’ll sleep like a lamb tonight.
The toilet seat on which he was sitting was the most comfortable toilet seat he had ever sat on.
Its shape, or its proportions, he didn’t know what it was, but there was just something about it.
This is what I’ve needed all along, he thought to himself. One of these toilet seats. And then during those long nights in my apartment, when I can’t sleep, all I’ll have to do is sit down on the toilet for a while and it’ll be goodbye insomnia.
He made a mental note to get the brand name of the toilet seat before leaving the bathroom. If it turned out that it was manufactured only in Burbank and distributed locally, he could have one FedExed to New York. Or better yet, he could pick up one and take it back with him on the plane. Probably came in a discreet cardboard box. Fit it in the overhead bin.
He yawned again and opened his eyes.
The sight of all the blood in his underwear around his ankles puzzled him rather than galvanized him into any urgent action.
He looked at it in drowsy detachment.
Thank God it’s blood and not crap, he thought, as if soiling his underclothes with blood were somehow a nobler category of incontinence.
He considered panicking. Under the circumstances (all that blood) he thought he had every right, if not a duty, to panic. But the problem with panicking was twofold. In the first place, it was as if he had used up whatever panic he had just getting to the bathroom in time. For the moment at least, he felt completely out of panic.
In the second place, and this was even more germane to the whole question, he was feeling good. He was feeling so good about something. And since it was such a rare thing to be feeling this good about anything, he considered it his right, if not his duty, to just go on and feel good for a while longer.
As if making a deal with himself, he thought, I’ll panic later, in a few minutes.
Half-rising from the seat, elevating his rear and lowering his head, he peeked through the opening of his parted thighs and saw that the toilet bowl was full of blood. In addition to what was there already, he saw a thin but ongoing stream of blood issuing out of his anus and into the bowl.
He sat down again and flushed the toilet.
He hoped, but in a passive way, that the next time he looked into the bowl the water would not be nearly as bloody and that his anal bleeding, thanks to some hemostatic agent in his body, would be stopped.
But the next time he
looked, the bowl was full of blood again and the thin flow of blood was still falling from his bottom into the bowl.
He decided not to look at the contents of the bowl anymore.
I could become compulsive about this if I don’t stop, he admonished himself, yawning.
It felt so damn good to yawn.
Simply to breathe was a joy.
When he inhaled, he felt his whole chest expanding with ease. It was hard to tell which was more enjoyable, inhaling or exhaling.
I could just go on breathing, he thought.
13
He was feeling so good, good and sad, good and tired, but basically good, that he could consider the problem of his bleeding without the risk of ruining how he felt.
The way he saw it, although he was certainly not a doctor, was that he had sprung a leak somehow.
Some little blood vessel somewhere had ruptured.
A little vessel that he had been carrying inside his body was now carrying him away.
The image pleased him. The vessel and the voyager. The taking of turns of being one and then the other.
14
Out there, at the very edge of the horizon of his uncluttered mind, he saw a single sail.
He recognized it, as one does a memory, long before it was close enough to be recognized with the naked eye.
It was like seeing a distant rider on the plains in a western. Although he’s far away, you can tell it’s him, it’s Shane, he’s coming back. And the heart both constricts and expands at the prospect of this much longed-for but unanticipated reunion.
That was how it was with Saul as he watched the little sail coming toward him. It was as small as a cherry blossom petal, but growing larger.
Sailing toward him.
The image of the solar schooner had at one time inspired him to consider writing something of his own and, as such, it was a happy memory.
But at the same time it was the vessel of his unrealized longing, a reminder that he had not accomplished his task and, as such, it broke his heart, for it seemed to him now that his longing was destined to remain forever a longing.
A wave of weepy sentimentality for his (and everyone’s) unrealized dreams swept over him.
He had a good cry over it and it made him feel better. Made him feel good again. Good and heartbroken. Good and scared. But basically good. He was feeling good about something again.
Something profound but simple seemed to be happening to him without, for once, any effort on his part. All that was required of him was to not get in the way.
New ideas for his Ulysses movie came to him. He had not a clue where all these wonderful new ideas were coming from.
He wished he had one of those little portable Olivetti typewriters and some paper, so that he could record the ideas for future use.
Even one of those stupid laptop things which he had never learned to use would have been nice to have right now.
But he didn’t even have a ballpoint pen on him.
As a last resort, he hit upon an old device, used by men in ancient times. He would remember. He would remember it all.
“That’s what I’ll do,” he said to himself. “And then I’ll put it all down on paper first thing in the morning.”
It felt so good finally to rid himself of all excuses for not getting down to work.
And so he began.
15
He started with the image of the solar schooner somewhere in space. Since there were no other objects around it in relation to which its speed could be gauged, the schooner seemed to be standing still, whereas, in fact, blown along by solar winds, it was hurtling through the space-time continuum at speeds approaching the speed of light.
On board the solar vessel was Ulysses.
He looked not so much like the Ulysses of old but like a Ulysses who had grown old. The mid-thigh tunic he was wearing, although made of royal cloth and trimmed with gold, was no longer flattering to his aged figure.
There was now a noticeable and unheroic paunch in his tunic.
Gone soft were his once well-shaped thighs. Gone the spring from his step.
His thinning hair was dry and brittle and streaked with gray. A scraggly, gray-streaked beard covered his wrinkled face.
The lonely look in his eyes was of a middle-aged wanderer who had lost much that he had loved and found very little to make up for it.
His teeth were still all his, but they were not all there. Some missing. Some chipped and broken.
When he peed, as he was doing now, it hurt to pee and the once powerful bull-like torrent was reduced to a series of intermittent dribbles.
Nor did it give him any pleasure, as it once had, to hold his prick in his hand. It was as if the thing he was holding and the hand that was holding it had both outlived their days.
His sleep, when he slept, was fretful, his dreams shallow, his nightmares full of regret. When he woke up, he did not feel refreshed, nor: did he know for what purpose he was waking up.
It was as if the same wearisome day awaited the same old Ulysses.
When he paced his ship, as he was doing now, after peeing, a pain in his lower back hampered his movement. There was something lonely about the way he reached back to rub his nagging pain, as if there was no one left to rub it for him.
As indeed there wasn’t.
The single most striking thing about seeing Ulysses pacing the deck of his solar schooner was that he was alone, passenger, captain, and crew all in one.
The once-famous warrior, wanderer, philanderer, the hero of the Achaeans, Ulysses, the king of Ithaca, could just as easily have been some King Lear of the cosmos without even a fool for company or the blessings of madness to take his mind away from the wrongs he had done.
Wrongs that could never be righted.
“Wherefore was I born?” he howled.
With nobody on board his ship to address this question to, he hurled it out into the space he was sailing through, with that combination of pathos and rage that sometimes accompanies the laments of old men and undermines their grandeur.
A close-up of Ulysses, the features of his face forming a mask of anguish and regret.
He remembered it all.
His wife Penelope, his son Telemachus, his home in Ithaca. It seemed only yesterday that he had been a happy man who could look forward to a peaceful old age in the bosom of his beloved family.
He remembered his return home after more than a decade of wandering. Dressed as an impostor, a homeless beggar. Seeing his son, a strapping young man now, whose growing-up years he had missed. How tall he was. How handsome. What shoulders he had. His beloved Telemachus.
The courage of his son, as they fought together side by side against the suitors, was all that any father could have asked for in a son.
The faithfulness of his lovely wife Penelope, in rejecting all those suitors for all those years, was all that any husband could have asked for in a wife.
He remembered their reunion. The three of them. The embraces. The kisses. The tears of joy of being together again.
But in the days that followed, something seemed not quite right to Ulysses.
Home again in Ithaca, he found himself feeling not so much unhappy as not as happy as he thought he would be to be back home again with his wife and son.
Something in the manner of Penelope and Telemachus cast a shadow on Ulysses’ joy as a family man.
It was not a question of love. He loved them both with all his heart, and felt loved by both of them.
The problem was that he had loved them and longed for them both for so long that this loving in absentia had become a way of life, and a way of loving for him.
During all those years of absence, he had thought about them, dreamed and imagined scenes among the three of them. The level of intimacy he achieved in his imagination with his son and wife was astonishing for one so busy and absent from home for so long. But as often happens to family men, it seemed to Ulysses that the longer he stayed away from home, the
closer he grew to his beloved family.
It was this closeness that was now the heart of the problem.
The closeness, the level of intimacy he experienced with his wife and son could not match the closeness he had imagined with them prior to his return.
At times he felt superfluous in their company.
He knew that they both loved him, but he could not help noticing that they loved each other more. That the intimacy between them was of a special kind.
What Ulysses wanted was what they had.
He knew, of course, that the love bond between a mother and her child was a special one, accepted as such by men and gods alike. He knew that he could not expect to achieve the same kind of effortless intimacy with either of them in a matter of weeks. It was wrong of him to demand, as he sometimes felt like doing, “I am back, so love me as if I had never been gone.” He could not just drop in unannounced and expect to resume immediately where he had left off. He knew this. If he would just be patient …
But he lacked patience, as kings often do.
He wanted to hurry a process that could not be hurried.
He refused to accept the fact that he could not make up lost time. And so Ulysses, a crafty and daring king, came up with a crafty and daring plan.
There was, at the edge of their galaxy, a legendary confluence of the three mighty rivers of time where the past and the present flowed into and formed the future. If one sailed through the wormholes in space, it was neither a dangerous nor an overly taxing journey from Ithaca.
The confluence was a resort, a galactic spa of sorts, where those who could afford it went to discover the life they could have had if they had chosen a different course of action. The road not taken could be experienced there and incorporated alongside the road taken. It was the ultimate luxury of the superaffluent elite. Many became addicted to making this pilgrimage, spending their entire fortunes to live out every possible variation of their lives. Some visitors went mad due to the presence of so many parallel lives in their minds. Others, upon their return home, could not shake off a certain listlessness, a chronic disinclination toward action that stayed with them until their deaths.