by JT Lawrence
What he doesn’t know, of course, is that the night before the pilot visited the bartender, Paris was confiding in the very same guy. She told him that a week ago she had given her best friend, an air stewardess she worked with (pretty brunette by the name of Jo), two ‘parcels’ to post in case of something happening to her. Each were identical in contents: the aforementioned dirty photos, a copy of a dated, scribbled erotic note, with a voice-recorded message of Paris saying that she was sorry for the pain that she had caused. One was to be sent to the pilot’s wife and the other to the police. Ha! said the bartender. Ha ha! Wasn’t that just the funniest thing? It had made his evening, he said. There was now the chance that the bastard pilot he was looking straight in the eyes would see the inside of a Marrakech jail cell, Paris would probably be rescued and all would be well in the world. Ha ha! That’s what made him love life, he said, the way things kind of work themselves out. I told him I thought it was a fantastic tale and would definitely do something with it. He poured me a drink and said that wasn’t the end of the story. I started wondering if he was pulling my leg with the whole thing. He assured me he wasn’t. Then he tells me that the pilot was a bit unsteady on his feet so he called a ‘friend’ to come and collect him and, who else showed up but a doting little ear-kisser called Jo?
The End
True story! According to my friend the bartender, anyway. So sometimes speaking to people pays off. Look at Yann Martell. The Life Of Pi was Martell telling us the story of what that old codger in the tearoom in India told him. Hungry and broke, Martell wanders into a packed café and has to share a table with this old guy, who rolls into action, saying that he’ll tell Martell a story that will make him believe in God. And hey presto! Suffice to say he probably isn’t poor any more.
I must say, the pressure to speak to every obscure person I meet does pinch my balls. Most obscure people, in fact, have nothing to say at all. By that I mean they have a lot of words, but not a lot to actually say. The pain is exacerbated by the fact that I’m not really a people’s person. I mean, I don’t even really like people, in general. I find most of them a little dull and feel my finite life ticking away, when Mrs. Someone from Somewhere starts telling me what she thinks of the proponents of local trade razing the underprivileged foreign markets which depend on our currency, I have been known to throw my head back and yawn in otherwise polite conversation. You’d think that would put a sock in it but you’d be surprised at how many people don’t get the hint.
“Bungee jumping?” volunteers Eve, sipping her tea.
“Skydiving trumps bungee jumping.”
“Especially if you end up snapping your collarbone,” she smiles. We look at each other for a while.
“You bought me grapes,” I say. I can hear my heart beating.
Eve giggles. “What?”
I swallow, wipe my lips with a knuckle.
“You bought me grapes when I was in hospital.”
“It’s sad that you remember that,” she laughs, teasing me. I play along. I laugh. I take another bite out of my sandwich. The truth is out: I am sad.
Eve is tender with me and asks if I am okay.
“I’ll be okay,” I say, playing it down, thinking of the bald kids. I absent-mindedly wind my wristwatch. It’s like a nervous tic. Eve knows me too well. She dusts the crumbs off her fingers and comes to sit on the table near my chair. She puts her hand on my watch and looks into my eyes.
“You are going to be okay,” she says.
The watch was a gift from Eve when I finished my last book. It’s platinum. I find it is both a gift and a curse. A gift, because every time I look at it, I get warm twinge in my chest, thinking of Eve. A curse because it tick-tocks. Time itself is a gift-curse. Time says: ‘Look here! Here is a precious moment to do something with!’ Then as soon as you try to grasp the moment, it’s gone. And you haven’t done anything. And while you’re thinking about that, there is another moment, and then it too is gone. Cruel, like an eternal game of pass-the-parcel.
After seeing Eve I am melancholic. I seem to be melancholic more and more these days. I actively push pictures of my shuffling, slippered father out of my head. I decide to go for an evening walk to clear my head, shake some endorphins into my bloodstream.
A quick confession: I feel dirtyguilty that while Eve was outside on the phone to someone I excused myself to go to the bathroom and instead, I crept into her bedroom. I didn’t mean to do it but as I passed I caught a glimpse of her bed through the half-closed door and took a step inside. And then another step. Then before I know it I was stroking her headboard and smelling her pillow like a spooky stalker. I had picked up her perfume and was about to spray it before I came to my senses and fled the room. I worry that this is the onset of unpredictable bad behaviour. I am not a man who loses control. My whole life is based on control.
I kick a stone. I can control the stone.
I see the Munchkin again. She is sitting upright with her chest out and her paws elegantly positioned in front of her, like a Negro sphinx. She seems hardly bothered that I’m almost in her personal space so I inch closer and reach out to stroke her and again, she runs away.
My cloudy mood deepens into a thing of despair. I am empty. I feel like I’m being sucked into an existential vacuum. Usually when I hear the word ‘existential’ my eyes roll into the back of my head. Meaning Schmeaning, Life is here for Living. But today I feel like I may be missing out on something. That stomach-heavy idea you get on dark nights that maybe everyone else was right.
As I am falling off to sleep that night I hear a car purr to a stop outside my house. My eyes fly open. Oh God, I think, it’s Psychosally with that Molotov Cocktail. I lie in corpse position: paralysed. I hear light footsteps outside. I wait for an explosion, or automatic gunfire, or the ragged revving of a chainsaw. I breathe as quietly as I can. Just when I think I’m being over-suspicious I am jolted out of bed by a racket of glass shattering. I cry out. The car drives away. I run towards the noise: I need to find the bomb before it blows up and takes my house with it. I stumble in the dark, trampling the broken glass, hyperventilating, till I find the missile. I pick it up and am about to hurl it out when I realise it’s a rock.
“We are like the spider.
We weave our life and then move along in it.
We are like the dreamer who dreams and then lives in the dream.
This is true for the whole universe.”
- Upanishads
6
An Island To Ruby Water
Mood today: Much Improved. I’ve had a fantastic idea. Instead of moping around in my bandaged feet and infinite loneliness I’m going to throw a party. It will be the thing of legends. Think Malletier, think Hugh Hefner, think of the champagne-guzzlers in The Great Gatsby. I’ll have the best caterers, buy the best booze. We’ll be gorging ourselves on Beluga and Kristal, oysters and Veuve, abalone and Campari cocktails. I’ll order two hundred fresh oranges, and someone to squeeze them. I’ll invite the paparazzi, to keep them off my back about the new novel. Sifiso, too, of course, ha! He’ll never know what’s hit him. I’ll get a DJ – God knows this house is big enough for one. I’ve never really had a proper housewarming so I sort of owe it to the place. These perfect wooden floors have never been danced on! This lounge has never had the sablesticky pleasure of a chocolate fountain! My couch has never had … oh wait, it has.
Okay … so … guest list … Eve. Sifiso and his wife. Uhhh. Frank From Football. Do the hired help count?
Me. Do I count?
Oh, I can invite Francina. She’s always up for a bit of a jive. She’ll bring a few mates. It will also make me look a bit more PC, having a few friends ‘of colour’. They will probably also be the only ones who, strictly speaking, can dance. Note to self: remember to put chicken on the menu. I can invite the neighbours to stop them from calling the police at three in the morning when there’s a naked drunk bloke singing on their front lawn, setting off the sprinklers. It’s happened before. I deve
loped a nasty chest cough afterwards.
But clearly that won’t be enough if I want this party to be of gargantuan proportions. This is probably when liking people comes in handy.
I toy with a few different party concepts before deciding on ‘Moonshine’. I had ‘Poirot’ (murder mystery party: cheesy), ‘Memoirs of a Geisha’ (with attending Geishas and naked Japanese nymphs wrapped in cling film and sashimi: done, done, done), ‘Naked Lunch’ (fig leaves for all: but reckoned Francina had been through enough without subjecting her to Mugwumps and the Interzone), and ‘Monty Python’s Flying Circus’ (cheerful midgets, tightrope-walkers and fire-eaters would be fun, but it’s just not literary enough), and in the end I settled for something a bit more conservative, for the simple reason that I realised in a flash of wonder and light (yes, I was in the shower) that I am actually Jay Gatsby. A few decades late and the wrong nationality, as am decidedly un-American, but I am the man who made Fitzgerald famous. Not quite as gay (I don’t wear white suits and panama hats but I do admit to having episodes where I throw silk shirts around the room like a psychotic ballerina). And of course there’s Daisy.
I sigh at the evidence: I have an unreachable star.
It’s tempting to go as far as to say that I’ve modelled myself on Gatsby, but I know it’s not true. I was unhinging my life years before I even picked up a battered copy. Mostly it’s about being a figment of my own imagination. Meet Slade Harris, the tragic protagonist of his own life.
I have no friends and yet I am throwing an extravagant party. I have ordered 200 oranges (why 200? what am I going to do with the left over 196?) and have all but forsaken my family. As I write I create my life and the reverse is also true.
Like Gatsby, I’m a fraud. My whole life has been engineered, contrived. So much so that I don’t really know who I am or who I was or who I’m meant to be. In moments of melancholy I see visions of myself floating upside down in my pool, an island to ruby water. There are worse ways to go, I assure myself, there are worse ways to go.
7
Condemned To Being A Silhouette
The band is testing their equipment and the bar is overstocked. I had someone scrub the graffiti off the front wall but there is still a faint scar. Hopefully no one will be able to make out what it says in the evening light. I cleaned up the broken glass and taped clear plastic sheeting to where the window used to be. I make last minute checks, smiling woodenly at the caterers, feeling ridiculous in a tux, wishing someone would arrive. Looking at the sky, hoping the weather will hold out. Winding my watch. I’ve always been insecure about parties. No matter how many people RSVP I still end up with pre-party jitters, thinking no one will come. Or worse, two people will come and see through the wormhole what a sham my life is, then leave without bothering to finish their pink gin and tonics, tripping out of the front door because their eyes have rolled so far back into their heads. My cell rings and I’m sure it’s the first of many, calling to say that something better has come up and they won’t be able to make it anymore. I should just tell the caterers to leave and take their beef satays with them. The bartender can leave but I’ll keep the bar, for tonight. Maybe longer.
It turns out to be Dad.
“Slade,” he says. He sounds strange. Skew.
“Hi Dad. How are you?”
“I’m … I’m having a bad time today, son.”
I look at my watch. The party was supposed to start ten minutes ago and there’s a not guest in sight. The DJ is going to despise me when I tell him to pack up his kit.
“Really?”
Silence. Is it a bad line? I don’t have time for this.
“Dad? Really? Why?”
Oh God, I think he’s crying. I really can’t deal with this now. I smash my glass of bubbly and wonder if I should drop the call.
“Dad?”
Clearing of throat and a near-silent sniff. I can’t deal with a breakdown from Dad, not on top of mine. A bloodline of broken-down men. It makes me think of road kill on a highway.
“I know I’m an old fool …”
Jesus Christ! I motion impatiently to the bartender to top me up.
“… but I’ve been thinking today …”
I cut him off. “Look, Dad, this really isn’t a good time.”
“Oh,” he says, confused: I have stated the obvious.
The doorbell rings. The rent-a-butler will see the guest in. Hopefully it will be a guest, and not the feather-duster man. Although a feather-duster man would count, wouldn’t he?
“I mean, I’ve just got a lot to deal with right now. Sorry. I’ll call you in the morning.”
“Of course. I understand.” He tries to resolve the wobble in his voice.
“Chat to you tomorrow, then. Take care.”
Frank From Football is here in a zoot suit, with a grin as wide as an oasis.
I hit the red button and throw my cell phone into the nearest bush.
Bless you Jesus.
A couple of hours later I inhale my fifth line of coke off the dressing room table’s mirror in one of the spare rooms. I bought enough for whoever is interested and have had the waiters spread the code word. A giggling couple stumble in, kissing, then realising their mistake, stagger out again. The sixth line is smooth. I wipe my nose, check for residue. I hate the crassness of people who powder their noses in public.
The kick is cool, high, and instant.
I walk through my house and down into the garden, passing about a hundred people without recognising one. Everyone seems to be having a good time. Plumes and sequins seem to be scattered in every room of the house, and there are already people swimming in the bright turquoise nightlight of the pool.
“HARRIS,” booms Sifiso, “great PARTY!”
He slaps me on the back the way a man after five whiskies does, as if I have done something impressive. Little does he know. His wife stands next to him, matching his height. Her name slips through my fingers. I over-smile in compensation. I went to their wedding, for God’s sake.
“Having a good time?” I ask with a manic grimace. She nods and looks into my eyes as if trying to find something. A secret, or a shred of sanity.
“Where did you find the GO-GO GIRLS?” Sifiso demands, gesturing in the general direction of the attractive waitresses serving body shots.
“They’re ex-girlfriends,” I joke.
Sifiso’s wife smiles politely. I feel like an arse. I am an arse.
“I’m off to get a refill,” I say, “can I get you two anything?”
“No, brother, you’ve done ENOUGH!” says Sifiso. I look at him with a frown. Another slap on the back, which leaves me slightly winded.
“You can’t hide the secret anymore, Harris,” he winks.
I still don’t know what he’s talking about. Then: uh oh.
“It’s OBVIOUS to EVERYONE!” he yells, his ice pirouetting in his glass. “You’ve FINISHED the book! And you know it’s GOOD! Why else would you be having this amazing PARTY?”
People around us turn to face us, hands in prayer position, as if expecting an impromptu announcement from me. I laugh, awkward, and touch my glass to Sifiso’s, then turn and walk as fast as I can to the bar.
Frank is there, faithful, drinking a Heineken and chatting up the bar lady.
“Hi Frank, enjoying the party?”
“Hey buddy,” he smiles, “yeah.”
We shake hands.
Frank always has a lot of intonation in his voice. He savours saying his words. So ‘buddy’ isn’t made of two short, sharp, monotonous syllables when Frank says it, it’s more like buuuyrrr-di. Then his Yankee ‘yeah’ is a ‘Yeah!’
I order a double single malt.
“So which one of these pretty women is your lady friend?”
Puurrdy women, lay-di friend.
“Oh, I’m not seeing anyone right now.”
Frank roars in happy disbelief.
“You’re kidding me, right? I’ve never known you to not have a lady friend.”
“I suppose I’m in between relationships, then,” I say.
“Ah!” Frank says, “so you’ve got a chick on your radar.”
“Kind of,” I say, knowing it’s not strictly speaking true. Frank comes up with the strangest expressions. Sometimes talking to him is like interpreting some kind of military code. His smile is conspiratorial and he nods.