About Three Years Later…
Denby thinks too much. Other than the ability to live my life the way I want, she’s my favorite thing, but I have to face it, she’s a thinker. Oh, on the outside she’s as serene as wildflowers on a rolling hill, with blue-sky eyes and a dirty-blond breeze. Inside? Her brain’s a dark electrical storm.
Like right now, we’re at The Rat. The whole point of being here is that there’s nothing to think about. That’s why people come. Yeah, they come to see me, but it’s also about not thinking, not studying, letting the air out of your shoes. No one cares what you do, long as it’s legal, and, hey, if it’s not, just take it out to the alley. It’s The Rat!
But Denby? She’s not sitting ten minutes when she reaches behind the coffee bar and grabs the card deck that time forgot. Hey, I love games. Life’s a game. I’m a game. But I know she’s up to something else. Only, what?
She slips them out of the cozy cardboard and I can’t take my eyes off her. I’m logjammed with her and the cards. Then she makes them all face the same way, which is anal even for Denby. I should know. We’ve been together, what? Two years? She’s perfect except for this… this… thinking.
I try not to watch. I let my gaze wander through the wonderfully dim open room full of brown round tables and disaffected teens. Everyone’s thought-free, sipping java, hanging, looking forward to the steam from my music machine.
The damn cards call me back, though. The abstract reds and whites mess with the table browns and bad-lighting yellows. Bit by bit, row by row, I sit and watch her card house grow. No metaphor, an actual house of cards.
“What are you doing?” I finally ask.
“Playing a game,” she says, her sky-eyes riveted on her hand’s machinations. “You like games, right? This is a game, that’s a game?”
“Yeah… so?”
“So I’ve been thinking about this poem we read in English class, by someone named Rumi. It’s all about games. It reminded me of us. I even memorized it:
Since we’ve seen each other, a game goes on.
Secretly I move, and you respond.
You’re winning, you think it’s funny.
But look up from the board now, look how
I’ve brought in furniture to this invisible place,
so we can live here.”
She gives me a smile and a wink.
I quit school, but I’m not dumb. I get it. That’s what she’s been thinking about, moving furniture into that card house. It’s a metaphor for commitment. A commitment from me to her. I bet she was waiting for me to ask, so she could recite that poem and suck me into the same conversation we’ve been having for months.
How many times do I have to tell her that long-term planning is not where I’m at? It’s unfair to keep bringing it up, not Rat-like. Denby is not one with The Rat.
“Well, I’ll tell you,” I say. “All you’ve got there, Denby, is a skyscraper for ants. And I’m sure there are lots of other ants ready to commit and commute to it, get ant-jobs with ant-benefits, lead lives of quiet ant-desperation, ant–day in, ant–day out, until an ant–particle collider wipes ’em out and they spend their final ant-moments wondering what the ant-hell it was all about. Or maybe they just eat their dead. I dunno. Who can figure bugs? But I am not one of those ants, okay?”
“They shut down that collider, remember?”
“They’ll build another, I’m sure. Not that it’ll do Rivendale’s unemployment rate any good. You know how many people lost their jobs? See how silly it is to plan?”
She ignores me. Keeps building. Worse, she starts whistling.
I have to knock it down. Not out of anger, or revenge, but from a selfless need to liberate Denby from this notion that it’s somehow important to build and plan things, like card houses and relationships.
It’ll take time. I’ll have to wait for the right moment. Knock it down too soon and it won’t matter. She’ll expect it, and then she won’t care. If I wait too long, though, she’ll be finished, and then she won’t care either. And if she doesn’t care, what’s the point? It’d be like writing a love song after you’ve forgotten you were in love. I have to wait for the moment she cares the most, then yank it away from her.
I wait for a sign to tell me the time is nigh. Finally, it comes: the last card, the last one she has to place to finish her house, happens to be a joker. The only one in the deck, too. I know, because sometimes I play poker with the owner, Po. No worries. I’m here. I’m the missing joker.
I stand like I’m going to the can, but only walk two steps away. I face her back and give myself a moment to appreciate the scene. She’s beautiful. Her arms are spread, bare elbows on the table. The loose flaps of her kelly green shirt form enticing armpit hollows, perfect for my needs. The tip of a black and emerald tattoo in the small of her back juts from the lip of her jeans. Her sneakered foot taps, trying to burn the excess energy in her body so she can keep her hand steady for that one… last… card.
In silence, I wave my hands over my head. I’m the main attraction here, so The Rat’s many heads slowly turn to me. There are times, like this, when The Rat becomes a single creature; loner stoners, dreaming emos, chic-geeks, and lock-and-stock jocks, all melting into one big blob. I know that creature well.
“What are you up to?” The Rat wonders. “Will you make us laugh again?”
I nod toward Denby and the card house. In true silent-film comedy fashion—Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton—I widen my eyes and wickedly rub my hands together. The Rat grins. The Rat understands. The Rat wants it, too. It’s Trickster’s business.
Trickster is the Clown-king, the god of messing things up to remind us that nothing lasts. I used to hate him, back when I lived in the suburbs with my parents. These days, I like to think we’re buds, that I am the herald of his truth, that it is better to break than to be broken.
Only Po, The Rat’s Barista/Keeper, rolls his eyes at me as he stands behind the coffee bar. Buzzkill. Thinks he knows what makes me tick, what makes me tock, but really, I’m the one who gives this place myth and meaning. I’m the one who started the rumor that this place was originally called The Rat because of the giant momma rodent living in the basement. Even Po bought into that one. So let him roll his eyes. The momma rat is real enough. Po brings a gun whenever he heads down there.
Hee-hee. Denby’s too wrapped up to notice how the world has subtly shifted, how everyone’s staring. But, hey, when you’re thinking too much? Anything that doesn’t involve anxiety’s object—gone. Dead as the dead themselves. That’s when the Clown-king comes to mess with you.
Index fingers out, I cry, “Hail, Trickster!” and jam my wiggling index fingers into the soft spot below her armpits. The results? A slo-mo explo, like the Hiroshima A-bomb, only there’s no lasting damage to the environment, no mutilated survivors or increased cancer rates. The plastic-coated rectangles erupt into the air. Denby lunges forward, a laugh escaping from her mouth before she can swallow it. A stolen laugh. Better than a stolen kiss.
It is done. Oh, Denby, I’ve wrested you from the tyranny of your own hopes and wishes, set you loose in the greater world! Behold the wonder that is me!
Or not. Slo-mo stops. Real time resumes. Airy sounds rush in where fantasies fear to tread. From behind, I see Denby’s cheeks burn with realization. She rises, spins toward me, and pounds her fists into my chest so hard I can imagine the bruises.
“Son of a bitch! Bastard!” she says. After that, her screams go wordless. Just the raw feeling rushes out of her mouth, vague vowels that make my eardrums crackle.
Words of explanation gurgle up my throat like water from a tap, but, let’s face it, I’m screwed. She’s stronger than she looks and angrier than I’ve ever seen. What to do?
I… laugh. I can’t help it. The Rat laughs, too. When she realizes they’ve all been watching, surprise and hurt mix with shame and she storms off to the bathroom. She’s so loud that despite the ringing in my ears from her screams, I hear her feet pound on the floor boards.
“Oooo…,” says The Rat, like the kid sister I never had. As in, “Oooo, you are in trouble now!”
Ah, The Rat. They don’t just think I’m an asshole, they know it. I don’t disagree, but I also like to think (a) I’m not just an asshole and (b) assholes have their uses.
I follow her. I’ve won the game, but I want to be sportsmanlike. In an odd moment of theme coordination, the ladies’ room door has a tile on it with a stylized card-deck queen. Much as I love signs from the gods, I hate signs from the owners.
The Rat gasps as I open the door and walk in.
So here I am in the ladies’ room, impressed at how much cleaner it is, how it doesn’t smell as bad as the one we Men Must Use. It’s a one-woman space, so the only privacy I interrupt is Denby’s, and we both know she wants to yell at me some more. She looks at me, card-red around the eyes.
“Why? Why’d you frakking do that?”
I think about saying sorry, but I don’t, since neither of us would believe it and I never apologize about anything anyway. No commitments, no regrets. Instead, I laugh again, hoping she might join in. She doesn’t.
She turns from me, like she can go hide in the sink. I pull her back, saying “Hey, hey, hey…” as if that’s an explanation. When she faces me again, I feel the heat of her rage coming off her in waves.
“Hey, hey, hey,” was all I had, so I fake something. I talk so fast, I kind of hope it’s real. “It was… an answer to your poem. You want to build things but… what’s the point if everything falls apart?”
She doesn’t skip a beat. “Bullshit. You just like breaking things.”
“That, too.”
She sniffles, wipes her face, looks down. I look down, too. I don’t know what we’re looking for.
“You love me.”
“That, too,” she admits. “But everything falls apart, right?”
Ow. Nice one.
“I’d like to be alone now,” she says.
“Sure,” I say. A beat, then, “Oh. You want me to leave?”
She rolls her eyes. At least she didn’t punch or scream.
“That was a joke.”
“So are you.”
“I like to think I’m more of a parable.”
“You wish. You know, you could be something special if you grew up, if you ever bothered writing one of your songs down, or finishing one. Until then, you’re a joke, a bad joke, like the guy who walks into a doctor’s office with a duck on his head.”
I give her the punch line. “And the duck says, ‘Doc, can you get this guy off my ass?’”
“Exactly,” she says, not smiling. “I graduate this year, and I know you love me, but I’m not spending the rest of my life hanging out at The Rat with someone stuck on my ass, got it? That’s my poem, Wade Jackson. Take us seriously, take yourself more seriously, or we’re over. How’s that hit you, Clown-boy?”
I blink. She nods, reading something in my face I’m unaware of.
So I leave.
I should feel chastened, but I don’t. I don’t believe for a second she’ll leave me. I suspect that’s what annoys her most.
I snag my guitar and sit on a stack of wooden platforms, the kind the delivery guys move around with forklifts. They’re called pallets. Po calls them a stage. I like to call them the Center of the Universe, so I can feel better about where I’m singing. Alone at the Center of the Universe, I strum and mumble to myself, working on a little song about life as a duck with a person stuck on his ass.
Po, knowing Denby got the best of me this round, smiles. Funny guy. Thin, nearly hairless. Bits of African, Asian, Anglo-Saxon all shoot out at you, depending on his expression or the way the light hits him. “Mixed” is an insult; Po’s an “intersection” of humanity, rich and strange. He’s like a mythical creature.
He doesn’t pay much, or at all sometimes, but neither of us really understands money. Mostly I get to sleep in the storage closet upstairs and swipe sandwiches, as long as my singing brings people round. And it does. I’m not a huge star, but I bring in a fair crowd. Po won’t admit it, but I think I keep the place in business.
I even have a stalker of sorts, Ant. Not the bug kind referred to earlier, but short for Anthony, his name, and for antennae, which he has. His fashion claim to fame are these two ultralong locks of bristly red hair he keeps stitched together in what he thinks look like dreadlocks. He’s always jerking his head, making those antennae shimmy and shake, as if he can’t look at any one thing for long. The guy has the attention span of a flea.
The first night he came in and heard me play, he said, “You’ve got to record, man! Get some MP3s out there!” It was easy to distract him. I just said, “Hey, look at that shiny light!” and he’d stare at that for a bit, but eventually he’d turn back and say again, “You’ve got to record, man! Get some MP3s out there!”
Took ages to explain what Denby still won’t accept, that I don’t do studio because I never play the same thing twice. I don’t think Ant believed me until he came by regularly for about a month and kept hearing different songs. Now, Ant’s someone who struggles to stay in school. Should be graduating, but he’s a year behind. His doting mom keeps hiring tutors for him, but none of them ever work out.
Not that he doesn’t enjoy life. Give him a rubber band and he’ll amuse himself for hours. Lately, he and his high school homeys have been taking turns seeing how many pennies they can catch off their elbows. They play for money and the kitty gets pretty big. Ant’s king of penny catching. He wins so often, it’s like his salary. He’s so damn proud of it, he talks about it like it’s an Olympic sport. That he can focus on.
Denby slips out of the bathroom, hoping no one will notice. I can’t let that happen. I stand at the mike and clear my throat into what I like to call the Unsound System, because even when it works it’s awful, and because I’m fond of naming things.
“This is for Denby,” I say, “who worries too much.”
And I sing:
Oh, I know I burst your bubble,
Brought down your house of cards
Dunno why I’m so much trouble
Or why we’re so at odds.
The world comes crashing down
And there’s nothing left to see no more
But Denby all around.
Each time I build a sentence
The words get swept away
I only want to talk to you
But don’t know what to say.
’Cause when I see you smiling
My world comes crashing down
And there’s nothing left to say no more
But Denby all around.
It’s kind of an antifolk thing, not too inventive melodywise, but I strain my voice just right on the end notes. It sounds so full of feeling I even get a little choked up myself. Am I full of feeling? Dunno, but it has the desired effect.
Denby leans against the wall, teary eyed but for different reasons than before. When Ant starts a standing ovation, Denby comes running, jumps, and throws herself at me. I barely get the guitar out of the way before we fall backward on the stage. My chest still hurts from where she pounded me, but not so bad I don’t forget about it when our lips meet.
I turn my head sideways and look at The Rat. It’s on its feet hooting and hollering, Ant the loudest. Maybe I did mean it.
Either way, life’s a game and I won this round. Pulled a song out of my ass and it pulled my ass out of the fire with Denby. Things fall apart, then they come together, but you can’t plan it the way Denby wants. Her days could be more like mine if she went with the flow instead of against the current.
Speaking of currents, a strong one steps in, ruining the mood, big and meaty and kind of dumb. His name’s Alek. I can smell his leather duster and too-much cologne all the way from here. He stands behind Ant, not applauding, not smiling. We both know what he wants: the money I owe him. Two hundred bucks. It’s the end of one game and the start of another.
“Gotta go,” I whisper in Denby’s ear.
“What?”
I nod toward Alek. She knows the score, so she stands, not too fast, adjusts her clothes, and makes herself scarce.
I rise and nod at the crowd. I even bow. I take a few slow steps toward Alek, like I’m going to talk to him, then run like hell out the front door. Hakuna matata.