Adios, Scheherazade

“We don’t know yet,” she said. “But one will. Remember when you were working for the beer distributor and the letter came from Rod? That brought a progression of events to a stop and started another one.”

“But that old progression was intolerable,” he said. “I was married and living at home with my mother, working on a beer truck—”

“Isn’t the present progression of events intolerable?” she asked him.

“Of course it is! But that time I had Rod’s letter, I had someplace to go. This time there’s nothing but the chute.”

“Won’t it be interesting to see where the chute leads?”

“Into the cold black water.”

“Oh, that’s dramatizing. In fact, that’s melodramatizing.”

“There’s no such word,” he said.

“Well, there goddam well ought to be,” she said. “And especially for you. How do you know things are going to be worse after you’ve failed to turn in the November book?”

“They’ll drop me,” he said.

“So what?” she said.

“It’s easy for you to talk,” he said. “You’ve got this diner. What have I got?”

“About forty-five years of life, according to the Bible,” she said. “Your wife has left you, which increases your options already. You can go after her—”

“And be killed by Birge and Johnny.”

“If you want Betsy, Birge and Johnny won’t be able to stop you from getting to her. The question is, do you want her?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “That’s the worst part of it. Before this there weren’t any decisions to be made. Everything was set, orderly, determined. Now I have to make decisions, and I don’t know what I want. How can I tell what I want?”

“You can want Betsy, if you want,” she said. “Or you can choose not to want her. She’s given you the choice. She’s gone home to her parents, who will take care of her and Elfreda if you cannot, and that means you are free.”

“Exposed.”

“Free.”

“Exposed.”

“It’s the same thing,” she said.

“I’m going to stop now,” he said. “I’ve done fifteen pages.”

“You aren’t going to try to finish the Brock chapter, no matter how many pages it takes?”

“I can’t. I just don’t have the juice for any more of this, forgive the historico-sexual reference.”

“If you stop now, you have admitted defeat. You will never finish the book.”

“I don’t care. I’m too tired to worry about it. And besides, I hate to mention this, but I have to go to the bathroom.”

“Pee out the window. You did it before.”

“I don’t have to pee,” he said.

“You poor wistful bastard,” she said.

4

I don’t want to do this. I hereby announce that I am playing this game under protest.

I’d just rather do this than the other.

Welcome to the Y. Why the Y? Why this stinking room approximately six feet wide and ten feet long, with maple furniture? Why maple? A single bed, a single chair, a big-shouldered ugly bureau. A mirror on the back of the door into which I have so far refused to look and a throw rug thrown on the floor beside the bed, a bed in which I have so far had no occasion to sleep. The window, blinded by Venetians and draped by Omar the tentmaker, looks out on ugly black roofs. The sun is shining somewhere, but the late afternoon shadow of the Y lies like death on the ugly black roofs, softening their angularity but hardening their meaning.

Rod threw me out, if you have to know. This morning. He came in before I was awake, and read what I’d written last night. He woke me up and told me I should seek psychiatric help, which is nothing to tell a boy when he first wakes up out of too little sleep. And troubled sleep, at that. I had these dreams, Doctor, but I can’t remember them. Something about running as fast as I could to stay where I was.

So I suppose I was a little out of sorts, and I said one or two things I shouldn’t have. So did Rod, when it comes to that. Frankly, it is my belief he didn’t get laid after all last night, and that was why he was so short-tempered this morning.

I wonder what I said about him in the chapters he read. Have I done a Betsy again?

Speaking of Betsy, I saw Birge and Johnny. Rod threw me out, as previously reported, and I got to the street carrying a typewriter and two shopping bags, the shopping bags full of manuscript and underwear and other luxuries, and across the street was the truck.

All I hope is, when I pissed out the window last night I hope it landed on them.

Anyway, they saw me when I saw them, and they started to get out of the truck, and one of those lovely coincidences you can’t use in fiction popped up, in the form of a police car ambling down the street. I hailed it, and it stopped, and I walked over to it. Birge and Johnny got back into their truck and drove away, and I asked the cops where Grand Central Station was. They told me, and drove on, and next came a cab. Into it I popped and told the driver, “The YMCA, please.”

“Which Y?” he said.

“I don’t care,” I said.

So he brought me to this one, and I still don’t care. I’m here until I figure out what to do next. Now that I’m wanted by the cops, my freedom of movement is pretty well narrowed down.