YOU: Let’s talk about success.
ME: All right. Yours or mine?
YOU: I’d say yours. After all, I’m dead.
ME: Success means nothing to the dead?
YOU: No. We’re free of that rat race. We don’t have to live anymore with those two imposters, success and failure.
ME: I like that. “Those two imposters.” Who said it?
YOU: I thought I just did.
ME: But before you. It’s not original with you. Or me either.
And it wasn’t. Caleb stuck his pencil in his mouth and thought.
He was back in his office, back at his game of words. This usually went better after dark, but a rainy day was almost as good as night. A green grayness filled the city like aquarium water. Falling rain continued to strike the patio outside his window in perfect splashes that resembled tufts of grass. Caleb wondered if this bad weather would last through Friday. Wouldn’t it be awful if he had to cancel his party?
“Those two imposters, success and failure.” Where had he heard the phrase? It sounded good. And not just good, but true. He bent over the notebook again to see where the phrase would take him.
ME: I’ve learned firsthand that success is not entirely real. It’s never complete. No matter what you get, you want more. But failure is an imposter too?
YOU: Like success, it’s only temporary. And all in the eye of the beholder. What feels like failure to you is going to look like success to someone else.
ME: That’s something I still don’t get. That there are people out there who think I’m a success. Who envy me.
YOU: The only complete failure is death.
ME: But you’re dead. Is it really so bad?
YOU: Not half as bad as being sick. And I suspect it’s not half as bad as starving or being an alcoholic or a paranoid schizophrenic or getting persecuted by Stalin’s secret police.
ME: This isn’t helping me.
The downstairs buzzer buzzed.
Caleb cringed, then sat very still. He wasn’t expecting anyone. The mailman would leave packages in the foyer. A messenger would come back later. He remembered his last unexpected visitor.
He waited. There was no second buzz.
He relaxed and went back to the dialogue. But the voices in his head were gone. There was nothing now but gray pencil words on green-tinted paper. He thought a moment and a new question came to him.
ME: So what did you think of Toby? Was I unkind to him?
YOU: You’re asking me? The dead boyfriend?
ME: You were always more experienced in the kiss-the-boys-and-say-good-bye department.
YOU: All right then. You want my reaction? In the game of love, we all need to be slapped now and then. Especially when we’re young. When we think we’re the center of the universe. It’s part of our romantic education.
ME: So you’re saying I did the right thing?
YOU: I’m saying you should have hurt him more. Slapped him physically and emotionally. You should’ve caressed his heart, then pinched it. Kissed it, then drop-kicked it like a football.
ME: Where’s this coming from? You were never cruel when you were alive. Not knowingly.
YOU: But now I sometimes wish I’d hurt you knowingly instead of accidentally. A deliberate kick is more real and intimate than an accidental one. But you should understand that. You’re the man who wrote Venus in Furs.
ME: But I identified with the husband, not the wife.
YOU: You wrote the wife awfully well. You must have wanted to slap me around a little. Too bad you never did.