TWENTY-ONE
INTO THIS FURNACE
World Premiere
Despite the last several days, like the last several months, feeling like a bad hallucination. Despite having spent the entire day wandering aimlessly around Westmount. Despite having tied his fate to Noddy. Milton was very much aware of what day it was.
It was the day. The day he came back for. Not the day to sort things out with Leonard Cohen. Not the day to finally rid himself of the walking, talking, belching, farting, swearing, screwing human yoke that was Noddy. Not the day to free himself. But the day of Robin’s premiere
He’d hoped that all this inconvenient mob-wanting-him-dead business could have been solved before the big day, but it wasn’t. “What odds,” as Noddy would say, they were going to La Baraque anyway.
Milton made up an excuse to go back to Sept-cent-sept before they went to the bar. He hadn’t had a good night’s sleep or a shower in weeks, he looked very much like he had just “crawled out of a tomtit’s asshole.”
He showered and shaved. Koel wasn’t home, so he helped himself to some clean clothes, while Noddy helped himself to the contents of the fridge.
“You ready, Cinderella?”
“I guess.”
They walked the familiar blocks to La Baraque in the balmy, late-summer evening.
Milton had lived in Montreal for not much longer than he’d lived in Newfoundland, but this neighbourhood, these tree-lined streets, these brick rowhouses with their rust-and-peeling-paint metal staircases, the fixy bikes chained eight deep to every lamp-post and light pole, the gangs of mommy bloggers with their designer baby buggies. This felt like home.
The homieness of it, the normalness of it, made it feel like everything was fine. Like those few moments upon waking. But things weren’t fine. Things were bad. Very bad.
The inevitability of his virgin death became plain as day the second they rounded the corner onto Hutchison Street and La Baraque came into view.
Robin’s premiere was a much bigger deal than Milton had anticipated.
Along with the usual jumble of choppers and hogs and other stupidly named motorcycles, there were two giant spotlights on either side of a red carpet that stretched from the street to the front door of the dive bar.
There were a dozen photographers and reporters buzzing around. Scores of ordinary, non-biker/non-mobsters were being kept behind barricades guarded by a handful of surly biker-bouncers in tuxedo t-shirts.
Franco-ska-metal blasted over speakers out into the street.
Along Hutchison, people were on their balconies watching, wondering what the hell was going on.
As Milton and Noddy got closer, a grey van pulled up to the red carpet and two men in matching grey and red overalls got out. They opened the back door and removed two large pedestals and set them next to the giant spotlights. They returned to the van and pulled out two massive crates covered in sheets. Carried the crates over to the pedestals, and when they removed the sheets, they revealed a pair of caged turkey vultures.
Wearing thick leather gloves and clear welding face masks, the two men took the turkey vultures out of their cages and set them on the pedestals, attaching a cord fastened to the turkey vultures’ legs so they couldn’t get too far, and slapped an entire raw chicken on the small platform.
Throughout the rest of the night the giant ugly birds would flap their wings to try and escape. When they’d hit the end of their short leashes they’d let out an angry, guttural, deathly gargle until one of the men would throw them another chicken.
“What in the Christ is going on?”
“It’s Robin’s new movie premiere.”
“Robin?”
“You know, Robin, the love of my life, you slept with her, I hate you because of it and everything else.”
“Oh, right. Her. She was a dead lay, b’y.”
“Yeah, you mentioned.”
“Did you know about this?”
“No... not at all.”
When they got up to the barricade, Milton asked one of the bystanders, a burnt-out hippy puppeteer in a Dear Heather t-shirt that Milton vaguely recognized, why all the hubbub for a small independent short film about birds.
“Hey, why all the hubbub for a small independent short film about birds?”
“It’s not often that Leonard Cohen executive produces a film!”
You could almost hear a record scratching.
“Pardon me?”
“Yeah, man, Leonard Cohen is the executive producer of this. No one has seen or heard from him in months, but apparently this is directed by his wife or his girlfriend or his daughter or something. There’s a good chance he’ll be here.”
“Wait, what?”
“Yeah, there were rumours going around discussion boards that he might be dead, or he might have gotten married, or might have gone back to the Buddhist monastery, or a whole bunch of things, after he cancelled his tour last Fall. He hasn’t made any public appearances in over a year. And then word got around that he executive produced this woman’s film, some Roberta woman.”
“Her name is ROBIN!”
. . .
Red Carpet
Before long Sam showed up, then Georgette and a bunch of her puppet friends arrived for their usual drink-to-the-point-of-smoking-meth-in-the-alley, then came Ruddy and Ava and Owly and Pochard and Booby and Wren and a bunch of the gang from the anarchist potluck. Koel and Lara were there too, but neither seemed particularly wowed by the whole thing. Koel did shoot Milton strange looks, like he recognized the clothes he was wearing from somewhere.
Most of the potluck gang were on the guest list, so they talked to the tuxedoed bouncers and went in the bar. It convinced Milton that he was on the list too, so he approached the smaller of the two bouncers who was still several times the size of Milton.
Milton tried really hard to play it cool.
“Hey, yo, the name’s Milton Ontario, I’m friends with the director.”
“Milton? The-fuck-kind-of-name is that?”
“Uhm... my name.”
“Well you ain’t on no list, Milfred Ontario.”
The bouncer never even looked.
“Are you sure, the director and I are quite close. I’m also friends with Leonard Cohen. Please check again.”
“What did you say?”
“Please check again?”
“No, before that you little peckerhead.”
“I said... I said... I’m friends with the filmmakers.”
“Yeah, which ones?”
“Robin Davis, and... um... Leonard Cohen.”
The bouncer grabbed Milton by the collar with one hand and lifted him off the ground.
“Don’t you ever say that fuckin’ name again, now get out of here before I get upset.”
“Gargle,” was all Milton could cough out.
Back on the ground he rejoined Noddy.
“We need to get in there, Noddy!”
“No shit, Einstein.”
“It’s Sherlock.”
“What is?”
“The saying is ‘no shit, Sherlock.’ Everyone knows that.”
“Whatever, let’s go around the back, b’y, see if we can get in there.”
Milton and Noddy coolly circled around the back of the building. The back door was guarded by another giant bouncer. Noddy tried to sweet talk him.
“Eh, b’y, buddy here has fifty-bucks for ya if you’ll let us in.”
“Take a hike you little worms.”
“He’ll also throw in a handy.”
“Get lost, turds.”
“Fine, a blowy?”
The bouncer sized Milton up, like he was actually considering it.
“Piss off.”
A giant roar rose from the crowd at the front of the bar. Milton ran as fast as he could back around to the front. By the time he got there, the commotion had died down but the crowd was still buzzing.
“What happened?”
“LEONARD FREAKING COHEN! THAT’S WHAT HAPPENED!”
“Was he alone?”
“No, he was with some brunette.”
They had to get into the bar.
. . .
Mission Impossible
Milton circled back and found Noddy down the alley sitting on a garbage can smoking a cigarette and drinking a beer.
“Where’d you get that?”
“What, this horsepiss? I had ’er in my pocket. Did you get in?”
“Does it look like a got in?”
“Nah b’y, it looks like you’re sniveling like a fuckin’ baby.”
“Leonard Cohen apparently just went in. We have to get in there.”
“No shit, Smallwood.”
“Yeah. But how?”
“Like Tom motherfuckin’ Cruise, b’y, through the roof.”
“No, I’m serious.”
“So am I!”
Noddy pointed his cigarette up at the four- or five-foot gap between the La Baraque fire escape and the building across the alley.
“That way.”
Noddy dumped out the garbage can he was sitting on and set it under the just-out-of-reach retractable ladder on the building across the alley from La Baraque—the La Baraque fire-escape ladder was missing altogether.
He climbed on top of the garbage can and reached up as high as he could but was still a couple of feet short.
He lunged for it but didn’t come close and crashed onto the asphalt. He got to his feet rubbing his shoulder and limping in a wincing circle.
“Sonofabitch! Set it back up, I’ll give ya a boost.”
“Great idea.”
Noddy climbed back on top of the can and helped Milton up next to him. There wasn’t much room for the two of them, and the can had a wicked wobble.
“Climb up, b’y.”
“Climb up what?”
“Me, ya dense arsehole. You’re stunned as my arse, Jesus. What did ya think I meant? The wall like Christly Spiderman?”
Milton put his arms around Noddy and started trying to climb him like he was the rope in high-school gym class.
“B’y, you’re as useless as a leaky pogey boot.”
Noddy grabbed Milton’s crotch and boosted him up.
“I was never this handsy with Brenda under the overpass even.”
“I thought her name was Barb.”
“Just grab the Jesus thing, would ya?”
Milton climbed until he could just grasp the bottom rung of the rusty fire-escape ladder.
“Got it!”
Noddy dropped him and the ladder and Milton clattered down to the ground. When he hit the ground, he lost his grip on the ladder and it clattered back up again.
Noddy was laughing too hard to catch it on the rebound, so they had to re-enact the back-alley sex act of getting the ladder. The second try was a winner and they climbed the fire escape to the very top.
At the top, the four or five feet between that fire escape and the La Baraque fire escape seemed more like forty or fifty feet.
Milton refused to go first, so Noddy hopped up on the rickety, rusty handrail and sprung across to the other side like nothing.
Milton began to follow, but looked down, which was forty or fifty feet, and felt himself splatting on the ground. He staggered back and closed his eyes to try and stop the city from spinning around him so fast.
“C’mon, b’y, take the fuckin’ red pill, ya pussy.”
“Yeah. Shut up. I’m coming.”
Milton haltingly climbed the handrail and half-squatted on the top rail.
“Let’s go, b’y. Jesus. We’s all going to be dead of old age before you jump.”
Milton closed his eyes and jumped.
Well, he sort of jumped, sort of fell.
He was scared to let go of the rail he was on, which wasn’t a great way to get away from the rail he was on, so he just sort of flopped across the gap but managed to grab hold of the bottom rail because the gap was actually closer to four feet than five or fifty.
Noddy laughed while he struggled to climb back up and over the railing and onto the platform.
From there the pair climbed down the fire escape to the second-storey window of what looked like a storage room. Milton tried to open it, but it was locked, so Noddy leapt up, grabbed the fire escape overhead, and swung his two work boots into the locked window.
SMASH.
His boots didn’t shatter the glass so much as just kick two boot-sized holes in the glass and cut his legs to ribbons. He managed, rather ungracefully, to swing himself back out of the shards of glass and cursed up and down as he bled through his shredded, filthy jeans.
“Lord, motherfuckin’ Christ in a Chrysler! That smarts!”
Milton took off Koel’s shoe and gingerly hammered the rest of the glass out of the frame and carefully climbed into the dark storage room.
. . .
Break & Enter
The second floor of La Baraque was a large storage room full of empty beer kegs and broken furniture bordered by a long hallway with an office at one end and a staff bathroom, with an actual door, and the stairs down to the “kitchen” area behind the bar at the other.
A group of voices walked past the storage room door towards the office.
Milton opened the door a crack to take a look. He could tell from their backs that the voices belonged to a couple bikers who ran the bar, a couple of old men, a couple of thugs, a limping Leonard Cohen, and Robin.
He nearly had a stroke.
The sight of Cohen made him nearly shit himself in fear. The sight of Robin made him nearly shit himself for completely opposite reasons.
They all filed into the office. Robin sat on the end of a couch facing the doorway and down the hall. Other than a biker with his back turned, she was the only person Milton could see.
He closed the door, leaned up against it, and slid down to the ground. His head in his hands.
“What’s on the go, b’y?”
“I saw Leonard Cohen. And I saw her. With him.”
“Who?”
“Robin, you idiot!”
“Robin?”
“Yes, the girl, you know, the one you...”
“Oh yeah, the one I fucked, that you love, that I fucked. Yeah, great rack.”
“Argh!”
“Get out the way, I need to go talk to Lenny, b’y, clear all this shit up.”
“Not while she’s with him. You’ll get her killed too. Let me get her to leave the room first.”
“Well git with it, b’y. I’m bleeding out here.”
Milton opened the door again and looked down the hall. Robin was still sitting on the couch. She was talking casually with the group of murderers she was with. She was beautiful. She wore a stunning green dress. It showed off her bird tattoos.
Milton stared for a long time.
“Ya trying to ESPN her over here or what? Get on the go with it already?”
Milton began to wave from the darkness of the storage room to try and get her attention, but it wasn’t working. He stuck his arm out a bit further and a bit further until Noddy said “fuck it” and shoved him out into the hallway.
Milton stumbled into the wall but managed to keep quiet enough to avoid drawing the attention of the well-armed killers 15 feet down the hall. It did get Robin’s attention, though.
She was shocked.
Milton stood up straight and straightened his shirt and his hair and sheepishly waved.
She smiled back.
SHE SMILED BACK!
He beamed. He blushed. Noddy stepped out beside him, bloodied, filthy, crazed. This was even more of a surprise for her. Someone in the room with her spoke and she laughed and looked away.
“Jesus, b’y. I’d totally hit that again if you don’t want to.”
When she looked back Noddy waved her out, and Noddy and Milton ducked back into the storage room.
An eternity passed before there were footsteps in the hall and a soft tap on the door. It opened and there she was, lit like an angel by the one bare bulb in the piss-smelling hallway. Milton’s heart stopped entirely.
“What are you guys doing up here?”
“Hey babe, whaddayat? No hard feelings from before. When we smashed bits. And I didn’t call. Remember?”
“Yeah, thanks.”
“Turns out Romeo here is all in love with you and shit, and I didn’t know before we fucked.”
Noddy patted Milton on the shoulder.
“All yours, Cupid. Just be sure you wrap your wiener, don’t know who she’s been with.”
Milton died of embarrassment.
Noddy spun Milton around and dug into his backpack for the gun. He cocked it, stuck it in the back waistband of his pants, nodded to Milton and Robin.
“Nice knowing ya, b’ys.”
He left the storage room and headed down the hall to the office.
Within seconds there was shouting and crashing and banging and three gunshots. Pop-pop. Pop. Bullets pierced the storage room walls and made small beams of light that cut through the darkness.
Downstairs, the gunfire was drowned out by the chaos of the bar and Franco-ska-metal.
In the storage room it was drowned out by the growing drone of blood rushing to Milton’s head as his face flushed with embarrassment.
“Hey, Milton.”
. . .
Heart to Heart
“Hey, Robin.”
They hugged long and hard.
Milton melted.
“How are you? My god, you look like you’ve aged a thousand years since I last saw you. What happened? I never heard from you again after... After we... After you gave me all that money.”
“I know, I’m sorry. Noddy... Well... Things got bad... Things are bad... It’s all bad... He’s probably dead already.”
Something Noddy-sized slammed into the wall beside them, and they both jumped. Another bullet—pop—poked another beam of light through the wall above them.
“Definitely now.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Leonard Cohen is a bad guy. I left you to bail out Noddy, and Leonard Cohen tried to kill us both, but we got away and I went to Newfoundland and hid out in grad school, and Noddy was supposed to go into witness protection, but he ended up stealing secrets from the cops that he was going to try and give to Leonard Cohen in exchange for our freedom, and he’s had them up his... uh... butt... for like a month, and now he’s probably dead, and I’ll probably be any minute now. It’s a whole thing.”
“Wait. What? Hold on. Go back. Leonard Cohen? The Leonard Cohen? Are you kidding?”
“No. I’m not. That gun Noddy has... had... that is Leonard Cohen’s gun. I took it from him when we escaped. All this money...”
Milton dumped the last couple hundred dollars in grimy drug money out of his backpack and onto the floor.
“This is Leonard Cohen’s money. Just like the money I gave you. He’s like the Godfather of the Canadian mafia.”
Robin laughed and laughed and laughed.
“Leonard Cohen? A mob boss? Are you nuts? He’s like the sweetest, most sensitive man.”
“How do you know him?”
“Uh... Well, after I didn’t hear from you for a while I came back to town to try and find you. I ended up at La Baraque and he was there sitting at the bar, so we got to talking and turns out he’s a fan of Dirty Birds and offered to help fund the completion of Turkey Vultures. He had such great insight into my work, it was such an honour just to hear him talk about it... That voice! My god.”
“You were looking for me?”
“Well yeah, I was mad you didn’t call or anything so I went back to Florida. But I got kind of lonely, I guess, or something. I missed you. Apart from the crew, who were all weirdos, and all these hundreds of creeps on the internet trying to pick me up, I was kind of lonely, and I don’t know... I have a nice time with you.”
“And then Leonard Cohen...”
“Yeah, just downstairs, it was wild.”
“You and him?”
“Yeah, we really hit it off.”
“And you...?”
“And I...?
“Did you...?”
“Did I…?”
“Are you...?”
“Am I what, Milton?”
“Are you and him a... I dunno... a couple now or something?”
“Hahaha. What? Leonard Cohen? He’s old enough to be my grandfather. That’s disgusting. And a bit insulting. He likes my work, Milton. That’s it.”
“So... you’re not...?”
“Not what?”
“Dating Leonard Cohen?”
“Ha! No. I’m not dating Leonard Cohen.”
“Not even a little bit?”
“Not even a little bit.”
“Oh thank God!”
“I guess so.”
“So... Now what?”
“Now what what?”
“What happens now?”
“Well, whenever whatever is happening next door is done, I’ll go downstairs and play my movie. You’re staying to see it right? You’ve got an executive producer credit. Thanks again, by the way.”
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world. That’s why I’m here. That’s why I’ve walked into the bowels of hell and am looking death in the eye. To see you and your movie.”
“I know you’re a poet, but you are weird as hell sometimes when you talk.”
“Well, I’m not looking death in the eye right now. Noddy probably is. And I can’t really leave this room. If they find me, they’ll kill me too. I just needed to see you. I just needed to...”
“I really think you’re wrong about this Leonard Cohen stuff. Seriously, he is the most generous and kind and brilliant man I’ve ever met. He’s a genius.”
“He’s also very dangerous. Trust me.”
“Well then what are you going to do?”
“I just... I came here to see you. I just had to see you. I just had to...”
“Had to what?”
“Had to tell you how I feel.”
“How you feel?”
“Yeah.”
“Well how do you feel?”
“I... Robin... I... Think I’m...”
“What?”
“Iloveyou. There. I said it. I... Iloveyou.”
. . .
Love is a Lie
Robin just stared at him. A smiled threatened to form at the corner of her lips but her furrowed brow wouldn’t allow it. They both looked at the dark floor.
“Geez, Milton, I’m really flattered. Really, I am. You are a great guy. But, like, we hardly know each other.”
“I think I know enough. I think I knew enough from the moment we met.”
“The moment we met? I don’t even remember that.”
“At that potluck in the fur place, with the garbage can soup.”
“There are a lot of those.”
“Anyway. That’s fine. I should go.”
“No, don’t go. Wait.”
“Well you don’t love me back. That’s fine. I’m an idiot.”
“You’re not an idiot. And it’s not that I don’t love you back. I don’t even feel like I know you.”
“But we kissed, and made out, and almost… You know. And the chemistry. I felt it.”
“That’s what kissing and making out usually feels like, Milton.”
“So, it wasn’t love?”
“It wasn’t not love. What the hell is love anyway? You’re talking like you want to get married and have a bunch of kids and grow old together. That’s a kind of love, I guess. But not even. My parents and all my aunts and uncles are divorced and remarried a bunch of times, and I’ve been in long-term things that didn’t work, and it’s not love that makes or breaks those things. It’s understanding one another, knowing one another, and being committed to work on staying together, to taking it seriously. It’s more of a contract than, like, a soulmate thing. And that might be really unromantic, but people, life is really unromantic. It’s not, like, poetry. People are beautiful but also disgusting. When we were sleeping on your floor that night, you were asleep and you farted really loud on my leg, like right on my leg, I felt it. It was so warm and gross. It was disgusting. It smelled so bad. But the rest of the night was really beautiful, in its way.”
“Oh god. I’m so sorry.”
This was not going how Milton had dreamed it up.
“It’s fine. Those things happen. It was real.”
“But I don’t want to get married or anything like that. I’m just, like, in love with you. And you’re not in love with me back. Which is fine. Seriously. And I’m really sorry for farting.”
“It’s okay. I farted on you as payback.”
“Good.”
Milton headed back towards the window.
“Milton, wait.”
“I said what I wanted to say, now I should go. I’m sorry.”
“Stay. Talk to me.”
“What’s the point?”
“The point is, that other love you think you want. You think you’re in. It’s a lie too. It’s all a lie, really. You’ve had some hormonal reaction to some pretty girl you met at a party, and you’re mistaking that boner you’ve got for her with a meaningful connection. But seriously, we hardly know each other. We’re friends, and we almost hooked up that one time, but I feel like I don’t know anything about you.”
“Yes you do. You know me better than anyone. I’ve shown you my poetry, I’ve told you things, you’ve seen me naked... almost... I’m closer to you than I am to anyone. I just spent three months on a rock in the middle of the Labrador Sea, three months, counting birds and writing poems...”
“What?”
“I’m getting my Master’s in Marine Biology specializing in seabirds, because of you. They played Dirty Birds the first day of school. It was the most haunting and breathtaking and beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
“Wow. Thanks... I guess.”
“And I sat on a rock in the middle of the sea counting birds for three months, getting shit on for three months, just writing letters and poems to you. And all those creeps on the internet hitting on you. Those were all me trying to find a way to contact you in secret. Ever since that very first day we met. You’ve been the only thing I can think of. You’re the first thing on my mind when I wake up, I think of you all day long, you’re the last thought I have before I fall asleep, and when I dream, I only dream of you.”
“Again, I’m truly flattered... I think. And I really think you have the whole Leonard Cohen-is-a-killer thing wrong. But, pining for someone on a rock in the middle of the sea, or whatever, that’s not love either. That’s, like, obsession.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s okay. I’m not disgusted or anything. It’s truly flattering. It’s truly romantic. Truly. I mean that. But it’s not enough for you to just come in and dump this on me and expect me to leap into your arms as we ride off into the sunset. That shit only happens in bad movies and terrible books.”
“And poems.”
“And poems. And it’s not real. And if it is really happening it’s probably wrong. Way wrong. Trust me. I’ve done it before. I’ve made terrible mistakes because a kiss felt nice and I mistook it for happily ever after. When really it was just a restraining order waiting to happen. Don’t fool yourself. Don’t try to fool me. Sure, you’ve shown me some poems, and we made out a bit, and all that. But you’re like an invisible man, almost. I’ve spent all this time with you, and I barely know you. I know about all these things that have happened to you. But I don’t know what those things have done to you. I don’t know what you see when you look at the world through your eyes. All I really know is how hard you work, how many knots you tie yourself up into to seem one way, or to seem normal, or to fit in, to be like everyone else. Even your poetry is all bluster and subterfuge, it’s just to seem poetic without having to actually be poetic. When you talk to someone like Leonard Cohen, the poet, not the murderer, haha, when you talk to him, you see “Hallelujah.” You hear his words and just the sounds and meanings of those words change how the world looks and it suddenly appears different because he’s given you a glimpse of what he sees when he looks at the world. The joy and the pain and the struggle and misery and sex and triumph. It’s all there. It’s a perfect piece of art. That’s what it does. It lets you walk around in his skin for a while and feel the world brush up against you so you understand everything a little bit different, a little bit better. If you let it. If you let yourself open up, and be vulnerable, and, like, free. But right now, you’re in a prison of appearances and bullshit. It’s all pretense, Milton. And that’s fine for a lot of people. It’s fine for a lot of average people. They find things they like and then drape themselves in the airs of those things and wear them around and go to parties and get laid and collect a bunch of stories to tell their grandkids and then settle down in the suburbs and become automatons until they drop dead of a heart attack at 82. They never really make anything or mean anything. They just come and go and fade away like they were never here. This city is full of twenty-something teenagers playing at poetry or whatever, that’s where they’re all headed. But there is something about you, Milton. Something that makes me think that maybe, just maybe, you aren’t the fade-away type. That maybe you can be something. Mean something.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. I can’t decide that for you. But you’re much more committed to the idea that there might be something more to all this, some deeper meaning to be found. You just haven’t found it yet.”
“Well where is it then?”
“I don’t know. That’s up to you to figure out. That’s up to you to make something of yourself. To make the world bigger by your being in it. Not to make it shrink or stay the same. I’m trying to do that by making these films. Such as they are. It’s not a lot, but it’s what I see, and what I want to show people, and share with people, and put something out in the world that’s constructive and meaningful, that connects and builds. That sows love, really meaningful love, the kind that is based on connection and understanding and knowing and responsibility and hard work and sharing what we see in each other with each other, so we are all a little bigger for it, all a little better for it, so we all live forever in each other and for each other and so we don’t fade away to nothing, so we don’t disappear. So we don’t die.”
“I don’t want to die. I don’t. I want that. What you said.”
“But it’s not a thing you pick up at the grocery store. It’s not a thing at all. It’s the collection of every second of your being and what you do with it. What direction you walk in, what you manage to carry with you and do along the way. This is what you’re missing. Poetry isn’t a party trick you play to get laid or impress your so-called friends, or whatever. Poetry, or whatever you do, is the way you plant yourself in the world, the way you pour yourself out into the world to quench another’s thirst, the way you exist and the way you persist. The way you add to it and build it up and make things better.”
“You’re... Amazing...”
Milton was about to pour his flattery all over Robin and tell her how wonderful she was, how great she looked in that dress, how incredibly smart she was, how incredibly horny her words made him, how badly he wanted to kiss her right then, take her right then, make love to her right then, but there was a loud banging on the door.
“Oh shit.”
Milton turned to climb out the window
“I was never here.”
“Milty! You bust your nut yet, buddy? Put your dick away, I’m coming in.”
Noddy wasn’t dead.
Not yet.
. . .
All Sordid
Noddy burst through the door.
“All sorted, b’ys. You two fuck?”
“I should probably, uh... get back to things.”
“Yeah. Okay. It’s... You’re... I... I missed you.”
“Yeah, I’m glad you’re back. Come down and watch the film when you guys are done whatever this is.”
Robin left Milton and Noddy alone in the dark, dank storage room.
“So, did ye guys bone?”
“What do you mean sorted?”
“I mean, did you feed her your meat?”
“No, what do you mean it’s all sorted? What’s sorted?”
“Yeah, in a minute, b’y. I want to hear about you diddling that bird bird’s bird.”
“Noddy, shut up and tell me!”
“Calm your tits, b’y. It’s all good. Lenny liked what I had up me arse, we had a few laughs, caught up. Got my old job back.”
“What about me?”
“Yeah, did you bang her or what?”
“No... C’mon, Noddy.”
“What? She do that thing with her elbow while you were going at it?”
“Her elbow? What...? No... Shut up. What did Cohen say about me?”
“Oh, I forgot to ask.”
“What? Why? What? You’re such a... Such a... Gah!”
“It never came up. Give it a rest.”
“Well I’d like to know if I’m going to get killed or not.”
“Hard to say, but probably not. Let’s go watch this chick’s flick and you can buy me a beer and tell me all about flicking this chick’s tits. She do that thing with her nose?”
“Nose...?
“Wait now, was that her or the broad on the boat with the nose thing?”
“I wish I still had the gun.”
Milton glumly followed Noddy out into the hall and down the stairs into the bar.
His soon-to-be-most-likely-probably murderers were still whooping it up in the office with his never-to-be-unlikely-probably not lover.