Hello, Dear Reader,
I spent a couple months working on this revision and I hope it shows. Dear friend James Morrison (http://jpmorrison.com/) did me the huge favor of giving what I considered the final draft a myopic read and he found some errors and had some input that drove the finishing process. Thanks, Jimmy, for that. It, and your support and encouragement, mean the world to me.
I'm done. You're just starting: If you're of a mind, dig into this long unveiling of the first 5 chapters of the novela. It runs 26 chapters and right at 26 and 1/2 thousand words. Every Monday I'll publish one or two chapters until you, too, are done. Type your email addie up top of the blog to subscribe to updates.
The first bite is a longer one. I thought you deserved it. Hope you enjoy...
Running
By Scott Gardner Merrick
©1983 by Scott Gardner Merrick, rev. June 2020
inception
The morning’s first mile was pure pain in a package, and the package was six feet tall. Every swallow of last night’s beer seemed to have settled around his mid-section. Will’s chest felt as if it had atrophied overnight: breathing came with almost overwhelming effort.
Come on legs. Feets don’t fail me now. Jesus, each single stride had to be written up in triplicate and submitted to both houses of his muscle and bone congress before it could pass. Into the cool October morning. Toward Vasona Park.
He was counting, as he often did, and his chronometer was flashing hundredths of seconds in its gray pool of digital ripples. He could stop the blasted thing with the pressure of one forefinger on a little plastic nipple, or he could tweak another to show his lap time, making the digits at least appear to hold still while all the while the little devils marched inexorably onward under the display, awaiting still another tweak to blurt out how much time they had measured while Will was not watching.
But he just let it roll, and his footfalls sent reverberations through his whole body, and he moved on through Los Gatos.
He was leaving a hillside parking lot, just at the park’s western edge, when he hit the lap button at 800 double strides. “09:23.43.” Not a bad pace for the mile one. His sweat had now broken under his pale blue parka, his hands were no longer cold; and he knew that his second mile would be easier, faster, and definitely more picturesque now that he had entered the park. Wind rose and fell like the earth’s patient breath, billowing the tall evergreens’ robes and undressing by tantalizing stages the red and yellow-gowned deciduous sweethearts of Fall’s Ball. White fluffy clouds slid swiftly across the bright blue autumn sky, their shadows rushing over the earth like dark, caressing hands.
Slightly off-center in the long, narrow lawn that bordered the far end of his paved path, there stood a single thin tree. A little birch, or a teenaged oak? Will wasn’t very good at trees. Trees were one of the many subjects he regularly reminded himself to learn about. Seeing this one, he reminded himself yet again to investigate the topic. There it stood, alone, maybe twenty feet tall, no doubt at one time very full, now oddly poignant with most of its incredibly bright yellow leaves spread out around its thin trunk like a vibrant yellow shadow upon the dark green grass, the rest fluttering wildly and helplessly in the October wind, clinging to the branches for...what? For dear life? For old times’ sake? For the home team?
The flock of coots who filled the lawn between the tree and the lake were waddling slowly toward the water’s edge, obviously having given up on the mystery of the tree.
Will imagined with a great deal of self-satisfaction that those last brave leaves clung to the lonely little limbs in order to strengthen the spirit of anyone who chanced to see. And on he ran, so strengthened, now smiling.
He loped along the asphalt trail he was growing to know by heart, around its circle and back the way he came, once again along the cool shaded trail by the east side of the lake. As he emerged from the shelter of the trail’s wooded enclosure, the wind once more began to blast him. It had picked up.
On his way now out of the park, Will hit the long gradual rise which led to its front gate. Huge brittle leaves dragged their fingernails across the chalkboard of the asphalt road, and the runner's heel-ball-toe contact with the earth occasionally crunched a leaf or two, cracking in the wind. He was feeling good, feeling fine, smiling broadly through his cooling sheen of sweat and pushing on into the wind.
He thought of a child’s hand (his own?) held out into the stream of air out the window of a speeding automobile, the hand’s angle changing so that it rose and fell of its own accord until it settled absolutely level and cut evenly into the wind, held aloft by nature, flying a mile a minute.
He thought of a horse named Thunderbolt he had ridden in Tennessee as a boy. That horse was the fastest he had ever ridden. It loved to gallop, lived to gallop. A canter was insulting to Thunder. A lather on his blazed forehead was the first indication of his approaching the place where he lived to be. If horses smile, Thunderbolt smiled as he ran.
Will thought of an eagle he had once watched soaring along through the crisp Alaskan sky.
He imagined he smelled the ocean as he sprinted over an imaginary beach.
He smelled thick smoke, saw flames lapping the edges of darkened windows, heard screams in the night. Explosions rocked him.
He stopped in his tracks. He bent forward, both hands on his thighs. His heart trip-hammered in his chest. He felt helpless and suddenly close to tears.
After several moments and a dozen or so deep, slow breaths, he carefully straightened upright. He stood still. He took another deep breath, looked around with an uncomfortable sense of self-consciousness, feeling as though he had committed some sort of public indecency. He set out for home at a slow jog.
1—addictions
Will was addicted to running.
There are all sorts of addictions in this world, and Will Gardner had flirted with quite a few of them. He felt that he could afford the luxury of a smile today as he remembered the skinny, brittle, college dropout speed freak he once was.
Even today, eleven years after that fastest of facts, the thought of buzzing supercharged through the dark crystalline night tickled some perversely nostalgic nerve in his mind. A couple of years ago he had gotten ahold of some fine crystal methedrine and had snorted the stuff with high hopes. He had gotten off, all right, gotten buzzed, got high; but the irregular sets of jack-hammer solos that his heart played in his chest cavity scared the living bejesus out of him. You might say it gave him the fear of god. Goodbye, Speed.
Addictions. Addictions. There was, of course, Will’s long and tender relationship with the bottle.
His first job, at age 14, was hawking paper cups full of rapidly watering down iced Pepsi Cola at the Fairgrounds Speedway in his hometown of Nashville.
“Ice cold Pepsi Cola.”
“Ice cold Pepsi cola.”
“Getcher ice cold Pepsi Cola.”
And so forth.
After a sweltering Saturday night of this, he and the older guys would stop, on the way home, on a darkened side street in the shanty side of town. One brave, or stupid, older boy would enter a shack which, if was indeed a real store, bore no signs to call anyone’s attention to it. Torturous minutes later he would emerge, having laid out half the group’s earnings for wrinkled brown paper bags containing cold quarts of beer. Everybody got one, even the 14-year-old.
In the hot summer night. The bubbly bitter coldness. Had a way of growing on you.
Will’s dad, still in Nashville but not with Will’s mom, once (or was it many times?) had told him that “Every bad thing that has ever happened to me in my life was while I was hitting the booze.”
Will loved that man. Now, at age 31, will could rifle through his own file of private embarrassments, his own safe deposit box of ugly scenes, his own mason jar filled with senseless tears, his bucketful of broken dreams. Was there one of those ineradicable memories not shadowed by a smiling, congenial, well-intentioned, thirst-quenching can of beer? Or a snickering shot of tequila?
Probably not.
Addictions. Addictions. Cigarettes. Will was the only one of his parents’ four children who had taken up The Habit. Three years of Camel unfiltered. His dad’s brand. Repeated bouts with bronchial pleurisy convinced him to quit. The decision made, Will Gardner was a non-smoker. Instantly.
Addictions. Sex.
Will smiled at that one, too, but for a better reason. Some addictions are better than others.
2—living arrangements
Sarah Moore had been a regular player in Will Gardner’s life for about half a year now. She was tall, slim, wore her thick long blonde hair in a hundred pleasing ways; and she had a laugh that was memorably and uniquely hers. She shared her laughter and her body with Will often enough to keep them both pleased and happy.
Sarah lived upstairs in Will’s apartment complex, on the top floor in a bright, sunlit, one-bedroom apartment which was the mirror image of Will’s less lit one in the basement of the complex.
They had achieved a natural balance between the two abodes—the Penthouse and the Dungeon, they called them; and they split their time together almost equally between the two. That yin and yang was one of the facets of their relationship that made everything else seem to fit.
Pieces of their separate lives dovetailed into place like the work of some gentle genius of a craftsperson deity. Will loved it. He loved her. He, the poet-singer-guitarist, loved her, the actress-dancer. He the part-time librarian, loved her, the cocktail waitress. It was all okay.
*****
“Oh shit, Will,” Sarah moaned one morning as the dreaded Troll pounded across the ceiling of the Dungeon. It was 5am and Will had been dreaming of he and Sarah and Sally.
Sally was a waitress in the coffeehouse that had been the scene of Will’s most recent gig. She was dark haired, perennially suntanned, wide-grinned, and shapely in a deliciously Rubenesque way. She had two children and had recently been hinting that a third seed might be germinating. Will, in his responsible mind, thought Sally was warm and sweet, but not his type at all. His conscious mind had formed very definite preferences, all of which Sarah satisfied quite fully.
In his dream, however, Sarah and Sally and he rolled languidly naked together. Nipples and mons, clitorises and tongues, one swollen penis and three smiling mouths all merged liquidly and sensuously into one urgent roiling experience of wanton sexuality.
“Holy fucking shit,” Sarah exclaimed. Will awakened with a start, instantly cognizant of a monumental erection.
“What is he, giving an Arthur Murray dance class up there?” Sarah rolled out of the squeaky old bed and looked under, apparently searching for something. “I worked until 2 in the morning, we crawled quietly and considerately into bed at 3, you have a 9am job interview, and at 5 o’clock in the morning Leadfoot decides to go balls out for the Guinness World Record in bedroom floor stomping!” She slid open the closet with a resounding BANG. She peered within. “Where are my...,” she found them, “shoooooooes.” The final word oozed out with such malignancy that Will still only half awake, felt a twinge of concern. Most of Will, however, was still endeavoring to hold on to the spirit of his dream. There was still a chance that, in dream heaven...
WHAM. WHAM WHAM WHAM!
He sat up with a start.
Whamm wham wham wham wham wham wham wham wham wham wham wham wham! WHAM!
Sarah had her blue canvas shoes, the ones with the hard-plastic soles, pulled over her hands. She was doing a marvelous imitation of a clogdancer. Clogging across the white spackled wall. She continued along the wall with it until she climbed up onto his wooden trunk, then from there up to stand on the top of the high dresser. She had access to the ceiling now.
WHAM. WHAM WHAM WHAM! Whamm wham wham wham wham wham wham wham wham wham wham wham wham! WHAM!
Loving Sarah was not easy sometimes; but never, no, never was it boring.
3—interview
What the hell, he thought, and he tried on his biggest smile. It fit pretty well. The whole half-mile walk he had worked to chase an uncomfortable feeling out of his mind. To the remembered soundtrack of Sarah’s wham, wham, whamming, flitted by in his mind the images of fire in the dark night. He shook his head, chasing the image and the sounds away. “Get thee from here,” he said to himself, and all of it receded into the present.
If anyone had seen his face as he strode up to the long, low, red brick library building that Wednesday morning, they might have judged him certifiably wacko. His mouth stretched first to one side, then to the other, his full black moustache going along for the ride. His eyes squinted, then bulged, squinted and bulged. His nose crinkled up and flared, crinkled and flared.
He was stretching his face. This was a series of exercises he had picked up in his theater training, and he always ran through them before going onstage.
They helped his smile fit.
A kindly looking elderly lady, white hair in the predictable bun, fumbled a little nervously with the door before admitting him into the bright warmth of the town library.
“Anyone who owns a dog can’t be all bad,” she smilingly submitted.
Will, confused, cast quick glances about him until he saw outside the tinted glass door, a huge black furball of a dog. It energetically wagged its bushy tail, along with most of its hind half, and smiled broadly what might but for the posterior gymnastics be mistaken for a snarl.
“Um, he’s not mine,” Will replied, again slipping into his easy smile, “but I hope a cat will help me meet approval.”
Brief, shared laughter, the tinkling of little pieces of social ice.
“Actually, I think he might belong to the postwoman. I saw him following her earlier. You must be Miss Riley.” He outstretched his hand, still smiling. He saw, appraising the pleasant looking, elderly woman who he judged to be in her seventies. Will’s first notion of her nervousness was summarily dispelled as she glanced coolly at her wristwatch and raised a strong voice to carry past him.
“I’m sorry, you’ll have to sit in the sun for a little while longer; we won’t be opening for three minutes.”
The pockmarked young lad who had taken the place of the dog outside the glass door rolled his eyeballs, tucked his stack of books up under his arm, and awkwardly moved away from the door as Will stole a glance at his own watch. Above its calculator buttons the digital display read “8:58’20” but although it was later than Miss Riley thought, he judged it a bit early in their relationship to correct her.
“Yes,” she returned her attention to Will, “Yes I am. And you are, if my records serve me well, Mr. William Gardner. Interested, I gather, in a position with us as ‘Library Assistant.’” Will could literally hear the capital letters. “Well, William, please come sit down, will you, and we will talk.”
The following Monday Will was once again doing his librarian imitation. He wore his round gold wire-rims and a tucked in button down blue shirt with his most presentable jeans. It was strange getting used again to walking while he had his glasses on; for years he had only worn them when driving or watching a movie.
They made the floor, or the road, seem closer.
The next best thing to freedom is books, he told himself. He had not been employed outside of theater or music for six years, other than that emergency six weeks in a Missoula Montana, liquor store.
Will had come down to Los Gatos in midsummer. He had visited San Francisco once before, ironically as a fulltime librarian at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. A twenty-three-year-old whiz-kid of a public servant, traveling with his twenty-nine-year-old whiz-woman banker wife, on one of their conveniently correlated two-week vacations. Out to See de West.
Another life, long ago, far away.
He was instantly infatuated, back then, with Northern California; and so long after that other life had become a distant memory, and shortly after the road theater tour of Alaska had finished up back in May, he had just packed his Guild guitar in its new blue road case, hopped aboard the Matanuska inland passage ferry in Juneau, and eased down the Inland Passage over deep gray-green water, through spruce enshrouded islands, past cavorting sea otters, beneath scores of bald eagles, and, yes, through the Northwest rain (rain of many cadences, rain of many rhythms) to Seattle.
His buddy Dave had been babysitting his ‘65 190Dc Mercedes there, and after a few days with friends in the Queen City, off roared the great white diesel beast to creep almost blindly through and past the angry mess of the Mt. St. Helens aftermath and then to slip along Highway 1 to the finest city of them all, the city of the saint who loved the wild things, San Francisco.
And now here he was, in Los Gatos, all six feet of him and his fingers, too. Neat and tidy as you please.
His black hair was neat and tidy, too. He had left a foot of thick black ponytail in a wastebasket back in Seattle.
His moustache was trimmed and tidy, and his hazel eyes were bright and healthy. His clothing was just right for this workplace. Just a little longish, but neat. And tidy.
The next best thing to freedom is books, he told himself again. He would repeatedly do so while convincing himself that he simply wanted “normalcy” in his life. His four-month stint in Alaska had burnt him out, musical competition for work in San Francisco was insular and intense, and the club managers he had met while checking out the possible gigs uniformly replicated in their behavior that part of the human anatomy that only opens and shuts to excrete lumps of solid waste or stinky gas.
He only wanted a normal life, and Sarah for a while, and to run.
Back in June, back in June, on a hot afternoon, he had driven the beast to Santa Cruz, just drifting, wanting to check it out. Returning to San Fran he took a little side trip, pulling off Highway 17 into Los Gatos for one reason:
“Beer,” his mind said.
“Beer,” he whispered to the Beast as he pushed the ignition button in to quell its clattering old diesel engine.
“A beer, please ma’am.” he almost whispered to the pretty blonde waitress inside the elegantly appointed fern bar. It was early on a Monday night, and there were only four or five other customers.
When he slipped her three ones to pay for the Heineken, he realized he had done it again. Out of habit, he had paid an Alaskan price for a California beer. With effort, he smiled and said, “Thank you.”
He could hardly snatch back a dollar, though that would have still left a generous tip for the service of one beer.
“It’s only a dollar and a quarter,” the waitress said, “or are ya’ll tryin’ to impress a pooah lil workin’ girl, suh?” Her mock southern accent was quite well delivered.
Will knew she had noted his confusion. Not to be outdone, he leaned a little forward in his chair, gazing up into the bright clear blue eyes above him. “Well, ah ayadmit it was a mistake, ma’am,” he drawled, “but if ah can impress you with mah mistakes, just imagine the miracles ah maht be able to perfoem eon-tentionally.” He grinned widely, happily, and a little stupidly.
The fruits of this victorious moment were to be harvested naturally, in stages, over the following weeks. First Sarah’ laughter, then her attention, then her company; at last her naked body next to his. Will would later half-jokingly tell her that he knew her heart had been won in that first moment, even though the surrender of that most prized of prizes was the last to be tendered.
All else aside, three days later he was a resident of Los Gatos, California, having emptied the old Mercedes of all his belongings and piled them into the dark basement apartment. For the first time in two years of traveling, playing music, acting on the stage, and in general sowing wild oats, he lived somewhere.
The summer eased by in a bright procession of hot, clear, dry days, spent soaking up California sun beside the apartment house pool.
It seemed that most of the tenants in this, the largest apartment complex in the area, were either retirees or workaday sorts. Will and Sarah were by far the pool’s most frequent denizens. They would lay out nearly every day under the bright blue sky, sweating luxuriously, and occasionally diving into the cold, clear water to swim and to cool their lean bodies.
Highway 17 lay a stone’s throw away, just the other side of Los Gatos Creek, a constant reminder that the Pacific Ocean butted up against the land a mere twenty-five miles away, just beyond the lush, forested Santa Cruz Mountains. The constant sound of cars and trucks rushing past on the freeway soon took on the nature of something that had always been there, like the ocean, making its own place in the world, like the rhythms of the surf.
It was a summer filled with sun and with water.
It was a summer that bore the fragrance of suntan oil.
*****
For those first couple of months, Will had played around. Played music that is, in local clubs and coffeehouses, and once in the outdoor amphitheater at Old Town, in an outdoor concert. He had hounded a dozen different venue managers and had managed to build up one night a week in each of four different establishments.
Every time he played he would arrive an hour before the first set, lug in his small but heavy Peavey sound system, set it all up in the best way he could to compensate for each space’s acoustical atrocities, play three or four sets, break down the system and load it into the Beast. Finally, he would collect his forty or fifty dollars in cash from the manager.
Too often the manager would offer a review as well as the agreed-upon compensation.
Will did not mind a little criticism; God knows everybody has his own opinion of what they want to hear in a drinking establishment. It was the arrogant attitudes and mediocre musical tastes that galled him. He put out. He put out well and with polish and charm and style. He sang happy songs and sad songs and new songs and old songs and songs everyone knew and songs that he had written. His arrangements were original and thoughtful, and his stage rap was positive and friendly. Sometimes even funny.
“Don’t you know some ‘oom-pah-pah music?”
“If you want to keep playing here, kid, learn some Loggins and Messina. Our customers are the kind of people who get into Loggins and Messina.”
“You need some more Country stuff. Lotta Texans here.”
“Cut out the C&W, man, nobody likes that crap.”
Finally, tired and consistently underpaid, with his savings wilting fast, he had happened across and ad for a fulltime job in the Los Gatos Memorial Library.
He applied, thinking “The next best thing to freedom is books.” What the hell kind of freedom was there in playing music when you had to lay your soul out before swine to do it?
A breather sounded good.
So here he was, courteous and bespectacled, efficient, and enthusiastic.
And neat. And tidy.
5---running
If there were one thing that drew Will into running, it was that freak-out last September. That freak-out not only nearly scared him to death, that freak-out almost killed him.
It began with the news that Dave was dead. Dave Denny was not actually a close friend of Will’s but a man Will trusted, admired, and liked. A letter from a mutual friend informed Will that Denny had been suddenly, senselessly, and painfully plucked from this life by the indiscriminate hand of cancer.
Will was aware that Dave was ill, but the feeling he had gotten last Spring back in Seattle was that Dave’s health was on the mend. That was undoubtedly the impression that Dave, out of care for his friends or perhaps just out of expediency, had fostered. Now, too late, it was clear that Dave had known otherwise: he had seen is own death approaching, had watched it for quite some time, had made peace with it, had been ready for it.
Okay, he was dead. Will could accept that. He cried a little, more for his own loss than out of sadness for Dave; and then he called Sarah to ask her to join him for a drink. On their way out of the building they ran into Christopher, an acquaintance who lived in the apartment complex, and the three of them ended up hopping from bar to bar. To bar. To bar.
Will’s one-man wake began with a shot of Tullamore Dew with a Guinness chaser. Maybe his mistake was not sharing the weight a little. No doubt Sarah would have gladly talked with him toward working out the pain of his loss, but—partly because of Chris’s presence and partly because he didn’t really understand his feelings himself—Will couldn’t seem to bring himself to talk about it.
The night was cold, the crisp crystal cold of a Northern California autumn eve. As they stepped from the apartment building the clouds of their breaths appeared under glaring floodlights, shone briefly, then disappeared.
The three set a brisk pace through the wide alleys to University Avenue, then were compelled by the narrow University Ave. sidewalks to march single file for a stretch. Chris and Sarah chatted, Sarah filling the evening air with light conversation. She sensed Will’s moodiness—how could she not? It was almost palpable. She let him stride ahead, feeling that whatever was bothering him, he would get it out in his own time, if at all.
That odd tension continued as the trio sat at the bar on the upper level of C.P. Hannigan’s. The restaurant level below was, as usual, buzzing with activity; and the bar itself was so rowdy and loud that conversations needed to be shouted to be heard at all. Like some unique beast with a character all its own, the noise level rose and fell, built again, evened out, rose further, fell again. Sarah perched on the barstool between the two men, and the conversation continued to be primarily between Christopher and her. When Will had something to say it was sociable enough, but it was as if he were mentally stripping every sentence to the bare bones of meaning before speaking it.
His smiles were over smiled, his laughter over laughed, his silences leaden.
And he drank straight Irish whiskey with black draft stout beer as a chaser. His first drink evaporated immediately and his second survived only slightly longer. He nursed his third, cupping his giant glass of ice-cold stout with both hands like a cold man curls his hands around a hot coffee mug to warm them.
Finally, Sarah shouted above the din, “Will, honey man, you’re awful quiet tonight. You okay?”
Will tore his eyes from his beer. The frosted glass was no longer frosted. His hands were wet and cold. He returned Sarah’s concerned expression with a smiling mask, and he raised his own voice to shout back, “The nervous novice bank robber pulled out his pistol and shouted “’Aw-aw-aw-aw-right, motherstickers, this is a fuck up!”
To the laughter of everybody in their immediate vicinity, he straightened, chuckled, and was once again seemingly of this world. Kenny, the brawny bartender, brought another Tullamore Dew, waving aside payment.
Shortly it was decided to move on to Pedro’s, the Mexican restaurant housed in the low adobe building across the street. There Sara ordered nachos with cheese and guacamole and Chris a quesadilla. Will had two Dos Equis and proposed popping into Cary Nation’s for an Irish Coffee.
There was no second to that notion. In fact, it was promptly vetoed by Sarah: “I never go into work when I am not in to work. I learned a long time ago, buster,” she leaned into Will’s face, brandishing a cheesy nacho, “not to flaunt my time off if I value it.” CRUNCH went the nacho, “And I do. Value it.”
Chris had a lady-friend who worked at London Oyster, so off they went to sit at the bar there, singing old songs to the accompaniment of the grand piano bar in the corner. Sarah had a glass of white wine; Chris’s girlfriend was not there, so he ordered a Heineken and continued his conversations with Sarah. Will had two Old Bushmills and a Budweiser, and a sudden desire to see what was happening at Number One Broadway.
Hannigan’s had been loud and boisterous, Pedro’s dark and warm, the Oyster mellow and musical; but Number One was something else altogether. Bright and high ceilinged, its huge expanse was furnished with unmatched but tasteful antique chairs and sofas, all set up to create the pleasant illusion of many little rooms without walls. Plants spilled from the high rafters, filled deep shelves, and sprung from pots beside the overstuffed chairs.
Soft rock and roll music vied for what little sensory focus the assembled clientele had left to give and scores of conversations under-currented beneath that. Down the street at Hannigan’s, people had competed with the sound system (and with each other) to make themselves heard, and that was just right for the kind of place it was—a wild Irish pub. But here, amidst surroundings that were richer, softer, they conversed.
The whole place seemed to glow softly. In fact, upon entering, will had the vivid sensation that his glasses had fogged over. Only he wore no glasses.
He shook his head roughly and the sensation passed. Lingering traces of soft edges refused to dissipate around light sources.
The room was alive. So alive. Dave Denny was so dead.
Somehow, they were seated. Will ordered a double Dew. Sarah and Chris were playing backgammon. Will ordered another double. He had to go to the head. He finished his drink. Another double came before he could work up the resolve to go relieve himself. Dave. Dave liked his Irish. He did. Will’s voice arose from a deep, deep well within him. Gonna fucking go. Blow this pop stand. Play your game. Dave doesn’t give a shit. I’ll fly out the door. Get away fast. Go for a walk. Be alone. Stand up. Run for the door. Fall into, through it. I’m okay. I’m all right. Santa Cruz Avenue I can walk down Chris propping me up. I’m all right. Okay. In the dungeon. Covered with a blanket. On the sofa. I’m okay. Where’s Sarah. Sarah. I’m okay. I’m just crying. Where’s Sarah. Her place. Knock on the door. Lean against it. Sarah inside. Chris inside. Sarah and Chris. Nothing true. Nothingforevertrue. In my own dungeon. Bottle of red wine. Gallon of the shit. Drink it all up. It smells like vomit. Pour it out over the floor, over the tables, over the walls, over the sofa. Don’t even like wine. Sarah did. Did. Bitch. Nothing is true. Oh, here they are. Cute couple. Jabbering at me. Defending themselves. Only talking. World full of talk. Talk sounds like vomit. Both hands up quickly, popping Chris, side of face, side of face. Term is boxing the ears. I’m okay. I’m only crying. Tears like rust. Or bad red wine. I’m only packing. Drawer full of socks and underwear poured into backpack. Guitar. Nobody here. Fuck them. Fuck them both. Where to run. Can’t leave myself. If I sleep maybe I’ll die. I pray the Lord. On the floor. Beside the door. Sleep. My soul.
*****
Three days later, forgiven, incredibly, by both Sarah and Chris, wearing his monstrosity of a black and blue face like a badge of shame, he went out for a run and ran all the way to Vasona Park until stitches in his side bade him halt. That was mid-September, and now in the middle of December, he had not missed a morning. Running.
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Please stay tuned. One or two chapters of this 26 chapter novella will be published right here on scottmerrickdotnet every Monday until we're done here. Pop back up to the top of the blog and type your email to subscribe for reminders! Coming up next Monday, Chapter 6, "Old Folks" and Chapter 7, "dreams"
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