Gargoyles (15 page)

Theo had not become a writer. But neither was he jealous of writers, though Oona had accused him of this that night as he punched his bed between fits of lovemaking, cursing Ott. Oona assured him over and over that Ott hadn't made a fool of him, that Theo had stood his ground. Yet all through their relationship, whenever Theo tore into any writer, living or dead (which was his job as a student of literature, after all), Oona would say to him, simply, like it was truth, “You're jealous.”

He'd given it a try. But it was almost as though he was too smart for creativity. It was like he knew too much in advance,
his brain a wary seer that predicted a mistake before it was even made. Theo saw this but could not stop it. Every good idea was analyzed to woodenness before it was typed down and, after several years of such trying, he quit. But he was not jealous. He'd admitted to himself without terror that the part of him that in childhood had been able to “make stuff up” was hidden from him, or lost. It was not a big deal. Intellect had overcome a certain instinct, a certain spontaneity. That was all. He was not jealous.

Eyes. Theo remembered where he was. Ott was staring at him again.

“. . . and the scabrous fur falling in handfuls from Marty's dog Mica drove Lulu nearly wild . . .”

When Theo met his eye, Ott turned back to his pages. But it did indeed seem he was not reading at all. Theo hadn't heard the crisply onomatopoetic
flip
of a page in some time now. Ott was merely talking. Or had he memorized his stuff? Was that possible?

“. . . it was birds she wanted. Birds. Birds! Flight. A pet at home in space. Not the mud blood bone tongue of dogs . . .”

Theo checked his watch. Ott had been reading now for almost a half hour. A decent reading lasted forty minutes. An excellent reading lasted thirty.

Theo hoped Ott would at least be decent. He waited for voice intonations to rise to a final peaking sentence. He recalled one poet he'd hosted who had read on and on, almost an hour and a half. It was always lesser writers who read longest. Once they lucked onto a stage they refused to let it go. Toward the end, over shuffling feet, the poet had read faster and faster, his face pale. Another thing about readings, Theo decided now, was that writers deserved whatever they got.

“. . . on his sixteenth birthday Marty received from his folks a truckload of dirt dumped in the back yard. He was invited to level it and plant the vegetation of his choice . . .”

So Ott had memorized this stuff. He was definitely no longer reading. He stared at the ceiling, or over the heads of the audience. And at Theo.

“. . . as far as the more exotic plants went, all he got was a single cantaloupe the size and shape of a cat's head, those sleekly flattened and sinister planes . . .”

On and on and on. The reading approached the hour mark. The next time Ott eyed him, he would look pointedly at his watch.

“. . . it was Lulu's magic with flowers that seduced him. She could entice from dirt blooms the likes of which no one thereabouts had seen, blooms so huge with colour they shrieked, were almost frightening . . .”

On and on. Perhaps Theo slept. Because, when it came, the shout from several rows back had the effect of jolting him awake.

“Not this time, Ott!” a man yelled. A chair scudded on the floor.

Theo turned with everyone else to see a young fellow with wild hair stumbling out of his row. He wasn't looking at Ott. He made it to the aisle and stomped out of the church, mumbling.

Ott watched the retreating man. His voice rose as if following him out the door.

“Well. Suddenly, one day Marty just stopped growing things. He just gave up. Woe to him. Big mistake.”

Ott looked down again to his pages, though Theo was certain now he wasn't reading.

“. . . his new hobby was no more than a distraction for his failure at flowers . . .”

“You win!” someone yelled just behind Theo's head, making him jump. “That's enough! You win!”

Theo turned. A hefty man behind him stood, red-faced, pointing at Ott. He held a suitcase. The airplane tags dangling from the handle looked fresh.

“I'm out of it!” the hefty man yelled. He shoved his way out of his row and clomped puffing out of the church.

Ott read calmly on. A tiny smile lifted the corners of his mouth.

“. . . distractions, one after another, blocking all light from a life. The travel, the TV and brownies and cookies and more of Auntie Em's chili and cornbread and, my goodness, Marty spun like a top in his search for the next wee thing to fill his skinny time . . .”

Theo wondered hard about leaving. He heard others get up, some quietly, some with a grumble. He heard whispers of grievance, of attempted mutiny. He thought he could hear one man softly weeping.

Theo didn't want to leave. He realized he was enjoying himself for the first time since it had started, over an hour ago. He looked at his watch. An hour and a half ago. Which was enough, he joked to himself, to make any man cry.

He sat back in his chair. Perhaps Ott had a kind of cult following, people who travelled to all his readings, like fans of the Grateful Dead. Theo swivelled and checked out the audience. About a third had gone. The remainder looked to be of two types. One group seemed confused. They sat politely but wanted to leave. This strange author had gone on far too long, they seemed to be thinking. The other group was more resolute, angry, used to it. They looked dug in.

“. . . there's a twist to this tale, that will without fail, save us from ruin, as sure as the mail . . .”

God, the maniac was rhyming now. Theo listened. He heard iambic and dactylic, enjambment and inversion. Marty and Lulu kept popping in and out, as if to keep up the pretense of a story. But it all made a sort of sense, Theo thought, it seemed to be about something almost vital. Almost, well, personal. One's dirty underwear, or something. Theo could not put his finger on it. Whenever he thought he had, he realized he'd missed the next bit, the next clue, and his logic fell apart.

“. . . Marty went to bed. Marty slept all night long. Marty got up. Marty washed. Marty looked out the window. He said, Hello Mr. Sun. He had a good breakfast. Good Marty. Where was Lulu? Good Lulu. Lulu was not there. Lulu was not with Marty . . .”

This was some kind of challenge, Theo decided. The church was now a quarter full. A dozen people. One man was snoring loudly, but it sounded fake, a provocation. Ott kept going, looking perfectly at ease. Twenty minutes later the snorer left.

“. . . Lulu sat in her kitchen too. Picture a split picture. He and her, staring at their phones. Lulu's phone is off the hook. She knows that Marty knows it's off the hook. And she knows that Marty knows that she knows that he knows. And she knows that Marty knows that she knows that Marty knows that she . . .”

Theo looked up. He had decided. He no longer considered Ott a profoundly irritating human but rather a kind of natural force. An unclimbed mountain whose obstacles were boredom and spite. Ott walking in and opening his mouth had been a challenge from the start. An arrogant dare, a slap in the face with verbosity's gaudy white glove.

Theo would meet Ott's challenge. Whatever the game, Theo was going to win.

By midnight, four hours since the start, only Theo and one other man were left. Theo turned his seat around to study him. He was young, thirtyish, dressed in a blue track suit. He looked in shape. He looked prepared. He sat erect, eyes closed. He was either asleep or in the bosom of some Eastern discipline.

Theo listened and didn't listen. Ott was now into Marty's childhood.

“. . . with a pure innocence, Marty squished the frog. He was as innocent as the frog itself whenever it long-tongued a bug. Now it was frog's turn to be a bug, Marty's to be frog. Sacred teeter and totter. Profane reason had not yet intruded on Marty . . .”

Theo drifted in and out. Sometimes he sought daydreams so as to escape Ott's words, some of which nonetheless slipped in and poked him. He tried to recall Oona but couldn't, not her face. Parts of her body, yes. Which perhaps summed up their time together. He could recall the feeling of being inside her, as distinct from being inside other women. He could recall her voice too, he'd loved her voice. They'd had some good times. Lying in bed, no hurry, savage in their desire, no plan to life. How long you could sustain that kind of life was of course the whole —

“Marty oh Marty oh Marty!” Ott shrieked, imitating Lulu's voice. It sounded like Olive Oyl in
Popeye
. “How could you how could you how could you . . . ?”

Theo thought of problems at work. Funding cuts for low enrolment courses. A tedious faculty in general, older types who talked Chaucer and Pope even in the lounge. Lately Theo had been admitting to himself that he didn't much like his job. To admit that about his life's work was, well, horrible. But how many people truly liked their work? In their heart of hearts
how many? The word itself was tiring.
Work
was synonymous with struggle.
Struggle
was onomatopoeia for
work
.
Work
was anathema to
play
. By definition work should not be liked.

One-thirty. Oooh, he'd be tired tomorrow. He had to prep a lecture. Virginia Woolf. Stream of . . . Jesus, he should just bring the class here, this loon would probably still be at it. Ott looked depressingly fresh.

“. . . No, I said, ‘Lulu, will you MARRY me?' That's what I said. I didn't say, ‘Lulu, you scare me.' Why the hell would I say that? Because I do I do I do want to marry you . . .”

At a quarter to three Theo jolted upright at a crash behind him. The fellow in the track suit had toppled, chair and all. He lay on the floor and didn't move. Perhaps he was dead.

Theo announced in wonder, “Just
me
now,” somewhat helplessly stating the obvious.

“Please don't interrupt,” Ott hissed at him, glaring before turning back to his paper. “So Marty decided to read a book. What to read was always a problem because his library was so vast, taking up four walls in one room, and six walls in another . . .”

“Come on!” Theo yelled, out of anger and fear both. “What the hell! Let's go home!”

“Be quiet or I'll ask you to leave . . . Books stacked on the toilet back, up to the ceiling. Books filling the cellar, inured to the cold floor. Last time he was down there he'd plucked an obscure Tolstoy from the mouse dust and shouted
Da!
like an overt Russian and curled up with it, on the spot, for two days and nights . . .”

Theo flopped back into his seat. He was sweating. It was the middle of the night. Rain pattered on the roof of the church.
His dog would be whimpering in his spot under the eaves. His class tomorrow would be a disaster.

Theo stared at Ott. The writer was clinging to his lectern for support. He was holding his chin up, fighting gravity. He was definitely tiring.

“. . . the King of Persia had amnesia,” Ott trilled in a raspy attempt at a little girl's voice. “. . . and tried to rob the store. Apackalips, apocalypse, he went back again for more . . .”

The lunatic was rhyming again. Theo stood up. He waggled a finger, groping for words.

“You just made that up. It doesn't count.”

Ott stopped and looked up at Theo. His brows rose in supercilious innocence.

“This is my novel-in-progress. Please don't interrupt.”

“A novel? You're saying this is a novel? Okay, where does that Persia thing fit in? And what does it mean?”

“It was Lulu's rhyme. She is a child and she's skipping. You think a child's rhyme must . . .” Ott pronounced the next word as if it crawled with maggots “. . .‘mean'? You an English professor?”

Theo said nothing.

“Be quiet or I will be forced to stop.” Ott paused like a shark before the fatal bite. “Would you . . . like me to stop?”

Two very distinct sides of Theo's mind had a quick, shocking fight, and the perverse side won.

“Of course not.” Theo had his own sense of timing. “I came all this way.”

He watched Ott for a sign of disappointment or fear, but saw nothing. Ott merely continued. He wore the tiniest smile.

“Lulu wound her skip-rope in a tight figure eight and went in for lunch. For fuel. For the past ten minutes her nostrils had been wide and ripe in anticipation of her daily Velveeta . . .”

Oh, but Theo was hungry. Ott must be too. Expending all that energy. Look at him, still bobbing his head for emphasis, still gazing out at a crowd that wasn't there. The rain had stopped. His voice rang louder in the silence.

Oh, my. Crazy, crazy. Ott, Ott, wouldn't stop, wouldn't stop and wouldn't drop, talking till his head went pop. There, put that in your “novel.” I can do drivel too, Mr. Writer. Why am I listening to you, not you to me? Old old Anthony Ott, drops his trousers on the spot. Behind the dais lurks a penis. Against the podium he bumps his scrotium.

Why the hell had he given up on writing, anyway? Maybe he should try again, quite the analytical maze. Right, quit his job at his age. He was thinking crazy. Oh, it was late.

“Would you like to go for coffee?”

Ott had spoken to him. He had stopped reading and asked a question. He had distinctly said, Would you like to go for a coffee. Theo sprang to his feet and punched his fist in the air.

“Yes! Coffee!” he shouted. “I win! Me! I win!”

Theo stood teetering. He grinned, puffing. Ott was watching him. A smile rose like sewer water.

“Please shut up,” Ott said calmly, smile peaking in a sneer. “Don't interrupt.
MARTIN
has just asked
LULU
if she cared to join him for coffee. It's pivotal.”

Theo stood breathing through his mouth. He stared past Ott into the velvet-curtained gloom of the empty stage. Ott cleared his throat and continued.

“. . . ‘Java preference where we go?' Martin asked of his love. ‘It shouldn't mocha lot of difference . . .'”