Karl Wagner - Why Not You and I?

“Why don’t you answer it?” Bogey asked him. He was working his way through a bottle, waiting for Ingrid to show up.

“Might be my agent. He’s been stalling my publishers as long as he can. Now I owe him money, too.”

“Maybe it’s her.”

He ignored the poster and found the bathroom. He took a long piss, a decidedly realistic touch which was the trendiest verism in horror fiction this season. So inspired, he groped his way into his study, dropped into the leather swivel chair she had bought him for his last birthday. He supposed it was a gift.

He brought up the IBM word processor and hit the command for global search and replace, instructed it to replace the phrase “make love” with “piss on” throughout the novel. Yes, go ahead and replace without asking.

While the computer sorted that out, he fumbled with the bank of stereo equipment, tried to focus his eyes on the spines of a thousand record albums. He reached out to touch several favorites, pulled his hand away reluctantly each time. Every album was a memory. The Blues Project album he’d played while they made love for the first time. The Jefferson Airplane album she loved to dance to: Don’t you need somebody to love? And not the Grateful Dead — too many stoned nights of sitting on the floor under the black lights, passing the pipe around. Hendrix? No, too many acid trip memories.

“You’re burning out, man,” Jimi told him.

“Better to burn out than to fade away,” he answered. “You should know.”

Jimi shrugged and went back to tuning his Fender Stratocaster.

He left the stereo on, still without making a selection. Sometimes a beer helped him get started.

The dishes were still waiting in the sink, and Jim Morrison was looking in the refrigerator. He reached an arm in past Jimbo and snagged the last beer. He’d have to remember to go to the store soon.

“Fucking self-indulgent,” Jim said.

“What was? Oh, here.” He offered Jimbo the beer can.

Jim shook his head. “No. I meant changing ‘fuck’ to ‘piss on’ in the novel.”

“It’s the same thing. And anyway, it’s so New Wave.”

“How would you know? You’re past forty.”

“I was New Wave back in the ’60s.”

“And you’re still stuck in the ’60s.”

“And so are you.”

“Maybe so. But I know that I’m dead.”

“You and all my heroes.”

Back in his study he sipped his beer and considered his old Royal portable. Maybe go back to the roots: a quill pen, or even clay tablets.

He rolled in a sheet of paper, typed I at the top of the page. He sipped the rest of his beer and stared at the blank page. After a while he noticed that the beer can was empty.

The battery in his car was dead, but there was a 7-11 just down the hill. His chest was aching again by the time he got back. He chugged a fresh brew while he put away the rest of the six-pack, a Redi-Maid cheese sandwich, a jar of instant coffee and a pack of cigarettes. The long belch made him feel better.

James Dean was browsing along his bookshelves when he returned to the living room. He was looking at a copy of Electric Visions. “I always wondered why you dedicated this book to me,” he said.

“It was my first book. You were my first hero — even before Elvis. I grew up in the ’50s wanting to be like you.”

James read from the copyright page: “1966.” He nodded toward the rest of the top shelf. “You write these others, too?”

“Fourteen hardcovers in ten years. I lived up to your image. Check out some of the reviews I stuck inside the books: ‘The New Wave’s brightest New Star.’ ‘Sci-fi’s rebellious new talent.’ ‘The angriest and most original writer in decades.’ Great jacket blurbs.” James Dean helped himself to a cigarette. “I don’t notice any reviews more recent than 1978.”

“Saving reviews is the mark of a beginner.” There hadn’t been many since 1978, and those had been less than kind. The last had pronounced sentence: Tired rehash of traditional themes by one of the genre’s Old Hands. Fie hadn’t finished a book since then.

James French-inhaled. “Don’t see many books since 1978 here either.”

“Whole next shelf.”

“Looks like reprints mostly.”

“My books are considered classics. They’re kept in print.”

“What a load of bull.”

“Why don’t you go take a spin in your Porsche?”

The remark was in poor taste, and he decided to play his tape of Rebel Without a Cause by way of apology. And then he remembered how she had cried when the cops gunned down Sal Mineo. Maybe he should get some work done instead.

The stereo and the word processor were both still on when he returned to his study, and there was a sheet of paper in his typewriter with 1 typed across the top. He studied all of this in some confusion. He cut power switches; cranked out the blank sheet of paper, carefully placed it in a clean manila folder and dated the tab.

He sat down. Maybe he should listen to a tape. Something that wouldn’t remind him of her. He turned his stereo back on. The tapes were buried under a heap of unanswered correspondence, unread magazines, unfinished manuscripts on the spare bed. He sat back down.

It might be best to make a fresh start by tackling an unfinished manuscript. There were a few, several, maybe a dozen, or more. They were all somewhere on the spare bed, hidden beneath one overturned stack or another. He’d paid fifteen bucks for the brass bed when he’d moved in, twenty years ago. Spent two days stripping the multi-layered paint, polishing with Brass-O. Five bucks to Goodwill for the stained mattress and box springs. They’d slept together on it their first year together, until he pulled down a big enough advance to convert his former housemate’s room into their bedroom, pay for a proper double bed. He’d always meant to sell the single brass bed, put in proper shelves instead.

He never slept in their bedroom now. It held her clothes, her pictures, her scent, her memories.

It would be an all-day chore to sort through all the mess to find just the right manuscript whose moment had come. Best to tackle that tomorrow.

He pulled out an abused legal pad, wrote i across the first yellow page.

His stomach was hurting now. That made it hard to choose which pen to write with. He thought there might still be some milk left.

He drank a glass of milk and then a cup of coffee and smoked three Winstons, while he waited for his muse to awaken. The living room walls were hung with the same black-light posters they had put there when they’d first moved in together, back in the late ’60s. He supposed that the black lights still worked, although it had been years since he had switched them on. About all that had changed over the years were occasional new bookshelves, growing against the walls like awkward shelf-fungus. They were triple-stacked with books he really meant to read, although he hadn’t been able to finish reading a book in years.

I can’t see you because of your books, she had warned him on occasion, from her chair across the room from his. And then he would stick together another shelf, try to clear away the confusion of books and magazines piled in the middle of the living room, try to explain the necessity of keeping copies of Locus from 1969. In another year the pile would grow back.

My books are my life, he would tell her. Now that she was gone, he had grown to hate them almost as much as he had grown to hate himself. They were memories, and he clung to them while hating them, for memories were all he had left of his life.

It was getting dark. He glanced toward the front door, thinking it was about time for the cat to show up to be fed. He remembered that he hadn’t seen the cat in weeks.