Adios, Scheherazade

I thought I knew what he meant, so I said, “I did?”

“It’s been tough, the last few years,” he said. “Prices going up. And that goddam highway.”

Then I understood. In marrying his daughter I’d eased his economic burden. Isn’t that wonderful? It’s what they always say, every cloud has its silver lining.

I said, trying to appear sympathetic because I felt it necessary to be on good terms with my bride’s parents even though they were as alien to me as Martians, I said, “I guess it has been kind of rough.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” he said. “Sometimes, I don’t know what to do. I can understand those Jewish businessmen in New York that burn their places down for the insurance. I can understand them.”

Why Jewish businessmen? Why New York? But he was my father-in-law to be, so I said, “Sure, I can see how it happens, a businessman gets in a bind.”

“That’s right,” he said. “That’s right. You can see it.”

I looked out the windshield, and we were turning now onto the old Montreal road, and I had a sudden numbing thought. I thought, he’s going to bum the gas station down, and kill me, and make it look as though I was the one did it.

Not too paranoid. I even looked out the back window to see if Birge and Johnny were following in the truck to help out, but of course they weren’t.

But we did stop at the station. He parked against the picket fence at the back of the property and said, “Come on,” and got out of the car.

You understand this gas station, I hope. White tile front, the normal thing, with red trim, Humble over the door and Esso here and there. Blacktop out front, and the pumps. All as grimy as the owner.

There’s a halfwit named Buck who’s Dad Blake’s only employee, and who was changing a tire when we came in. Had it mounted preparatory to taking the tire off the rim and was banging away at it with several sledges.

As we walked in, Betsy’s father patted the outer wall and said to me, “Tile. Over concrete block.”

We went into the garage part, where Buck was bludgeoning the tire. Betsy’s father put his mouth close to my ear, pointed at the floor and shouted, “Concrete!”

We walked into the office part and he shut the door and things were quiet. “Well,” he said, “you see the problem.”

“I’m not sure—” I said.

“You’re a college boy,” he told me. “You got your diploma, didn’t you?”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“You know all about this science stuff,” he said.

I considered trying to explain to him what an American Lit major is, and gave it up at once. “I studied some science,” I admitted, thinking of the biology course I’d been required to take.

“Okay,” he said. He made an exasperated gesture with his right hand, the one with the thumb. “How do I burn this fucking place down?” he said.

1

She used to be in show business in New Orleans until the pony’s platform broke.

Now what?

I’ve been wanting to use that as the opening sentence in a sex novel for over a year now, but I could never think of a line to follow it so I never typed it out before. Now I’ve typed it out, and I still can’t think of a line to follow it.

I promised myself I wasn’t going to do this. I sat around for the last half-hour pointing out to myself that every time I sit down and start writing this junk I get stuck in it and I seem absolutely unable to get back out of it again until another fifteen pages has gone fluttering into oblivion. So I said I wouldn’t do it, I definitely would not do it.

So here I am doing it. And I can’t afford to, I really can’t. I’ve only got six days left, counting today. I didn’t do anything at all yesterday, yesterday was a screwed-up day, I don’t want to go into it. Yesterday is draped over this house like a gray Army blanket, blotting out the sun, and I am here insisting I won’t notice it.

So I won’t notice it. There was no Friday this week, that’s all. There was Monday, my last day of sanity, the day before I started trying to write book number 29. Then there was Tuesday, I did a lot of writing on Tuesday, oh, yes I did. Then Wednesday. Well, Wednesday wasn’t so good either, it was Wednesday that made the mess for Friday. There wouldn’t have been any mess on Friday if I hadn’t made a tiny error on Wednesday.

I’m not going to talk about it. The world is collapsing, that’s all, but the details are a) my business, and b) boring, as well as c) not going to be gone into. Now or ever. Or ever.

Thursday. That was Thanksgiving, the kind of cheap irony of which only God is truly capable. Even a soap opera writer wouldn’t have made the day before yesterday Thanksgiving, I mean it’s pouring it on too thick.

That was the last time I wrote anything, Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, in the morning before everybody got here. Another chapter like this, that was, useless, pointless, not at all one tenth of nine hundred dollars.

It is Saturday now, it is the 25th day of November, I have till next Thursday to get a book done. A book, not this thing.