Karl Wagner - Why Not You and I?

Time to get back to work. He would write all night.

The cigarettes started him coughing again. She had nagged him to see a doctor about that cough. He treasured the cough for that memory of her concern.

He drank a glass of water from the tap, then remembered that her plants needed watering. She had left him with her plants, and he tried to keep them watered. He was crying again by the time he completed his rounds with the watering can. That made the cough worse. His chest ached.

“What you need is to stop feeling sorry for yourself,” Elvis advised him. “Stop moping around this dump. Go out and get yourself a new woman.”

“Too old for chasing tail at the singles bars,” he protested, reaching around Elvis to select some pills from the medicine cabinet. Shitty street speed they sold now only made him long for the good old days of Dex and Ritalin and black beauties.

“Never too old to make a comeback,” The King said.

“Who says I need to make a comeback?”

“Shit. Look at yourself.”

“You look at yourself, dammit! You’ve got an extra chin and sleeping bags under your eyes. Try to squeeze that stomach into one of those black leather jackets you slouched in back when I was trying to grow sideburns like yours.”

“But I’m not getting any older now.”

“And I won’t grow up either.”

“It’s not the same thing.”

Street speed always made him hungry. He ate half of the cheese sandwich, felt vaguely nauseated, and had a swallow of Maalox with several aspirin.

He really ought to take a break before getting back to work. There was nothing on television that interested him at all, and he wondered again why he paid for all the cable channels that were offered. Still, best to have access; there might be something that would inspire him — or at least fill the empty hours of pain.

He could watch a tape. The trouble was that the tapes were unsorted and unlabeled, stuffed away into boxes and piled together with all the other debris of his life. He could dig through it all, but then he would run the risk of pulling out a cassette of a film that was special to her. He would never watch To Have and Have Not again. Best just to turn on Cable News and let it run.

He put the rest of the cheese sandwich out for the cat, in case he came back during the night. His stomach was hurting too much to finish eating. Despite the Maalox, he felt like vomiting. Somehow he knew that once he started vomiting, he would never stop — not until all that he spewed out was bright blood, and then not until he had no more blood to offer. A toilet bowl for a sacrificial altar.

There was inspiration at last. Vomiting was back in vogue now — proof that great concepts never die.

While the fire was in him, he brought up the IBM, instructed global search to replace “kiss” with “vomit on.”

That was more than enough creativity for one day. He felt drained. It was time to relax with a cold beer. Maybe he could play a record. He wondered if she had left him a little pot, maybe hidden away in a plastic film canister.

But film canisters reminded him of all the photographs they had taken together, frozen memories of the two of them in love, enjoying their life together. He was too depressed to listen to a record now. Best just to sit in the darkness and sip his beer.

Janis Joplin was trying to plug in one of the black lights, but she needed an extension cord. Giving it up, she plopped down onto the couch and grinned at him. She was wearing lots of beads and a shapeless paisley blouse over patched and faded bell-bottoms. From somewhere she produced a pint of Southern Comfort, took a pull, offered the bottle to him.

“Good for that cough,” she urged in her semi-hoarse voice. “Thanks,” he said. “I got a beer.”

Janis shook back her loose waves of hair, looked around the room. “Place hasn’t changed.”

“It never does.”

“You’re stuck in the past, man.”

“Maybe. It sure beats living in the future.”

“Oh wow.” Janis was searching for something in her beaded handbag. “You’re buried alive, man.”

“Beats just being buried.”

“Shit, man. You’re lost among your artifacts, man. I mean, like you’ve stored up memories like quicksand and jumped right in.”

“Maybe I’m an artifact myself. Just like you.”

Janis laughed her gravelly cackle. “Shit, man. You’re all left alone with the pieces of your life, and all the time life is passing you by. Buried alive in the blues, man.”

“Since she left me, all I have left to look forward to is my past.”

“Hey, man. You got to let it go. You got to let her go. You know how that old song goes.”

Janis began to sing in her voice that reminded him of cream sherry stirred into cracked ice:

Look up and down that long lonesome road,

Where all of our friends have gone, my love,

And you and I must go.

They say all good friends must part someday,

So why not you and I, my love,

Why not you and I?

“Guess I’m just not ready to let it all go,” he said finally. But now he was alone in the darkness, his chest hurt, and his beer was empty.

She shouldn’t have left him.

He tossed the beer can into the trash, turned off the kitchen light. One thing to do before sprawling out across the couch to try to sleep.

He opened the upright freezer. It had only been a matter of removing the shelves.

“Goodnight, my love,” he whispered to her.