Laird Hunt - The Impossibly

No.

Well then sit back down.

While the pleasant part of the autumn lasted we met quite often at that café in that park, and then it got too cold.

But in the meantime, having concluded my business, my days became either days in which I was to see her or days in which I was not. During the days in which I was not I examined my tools, checked various ropes and wires, and expended perhaps more energy than was necessary in bathing. Also, I found time to lie in the middle of the floor, looking up, or not looking anywhere, or only at the backs of my eyelids.

At one point or another over the course of that first conversation I told her about borrowing the hole puncher, and about why I had borrowed it, and she said she found that charming.

Her hair grew longer, as did mine. She commented favorably upon this development, and it was not until she had countered that favorable comment with another on the same subject that was less favorable, but really only slightly less favorable, that it was cut. So you can see that it was a confusing time. Both very clear and very confusing, which is likely news to few, and perhaps even to none.

I know all about that, for example, said a new acquaintance in the old establishment, quickly switching the conversation back in the direction it had been going.

So now, at any rate, I knew, is what I mean.

Then my friend came to town.

Once upon a time, this friend and I had lived together in a very small room in a very large city with big buildings and a big river, and at night or in the early morning after we had finished working I would talk. I would talk and talk, and he would doze and doze, and then he would tell me to shut the fuck up. This arrangement continued for a remarkably long time. Once, however, upon the conclusion of a particularly tricky job, one that had gone wrong in several ways, I said something and my friend went berserk and, after a short interval, went away, and that was, or had been, the history of our friendship. Now here he was again. He had arrived, he said, near the end of a tour he had been taking and was much refreshed and was visiting me.

So.

So.

Still up to it, I suppose, he said.

John is his name.

Yes, I am, John, I said.

John clapped me on the back, told me I needed a haircut, and said, how about some dinner, I’m buying.

It was a cold night in late November, and he said he would like to have some turkey. I told him that I thought this would take some maneuvering. He said he was willing, if I was, to maneuver. I was. We did. It was an interesting night.

No, they all said.

John’s tour had taken him to several places since I had last seen him, and the quality of his hostility, when it came — and when they kept saying they did not have turkey it came — had been tempered, though I could not imagine by what. It had become a hostility, at any rate, the engine of which was a not unsubtle use of tone and syntax and carefully measured unreasonability, rather than, as preface to action, blunt volume added to a somewhat stock selection of words. I suggested at one point, for example, a chicken or pheasant or game hen substitute for the turkey. He suggested, at some length, using words like “mock” and “erudition,” not.

On we went.

No, I am sorry, we do not serve turkey, said yet another man in a white shirt and black vest with just a touch too much oil in his hair.

Yes, but do you have turkey?

No, we do not have turkey, I am sorry.

Ah, and while I do believe that you are sorry, I do not believe you do not have turkey, why wouldn’t you?

We do not, sir, have turkey, nor do I have for you any explanation.

And all I am asking for is an explanation.

Please leave.

Etc.

We did, finally, and following something a little like the interaction I have just described, get our turkey— they had some, by chance it seemed, in the freezer. Neither of us at the end of eating it entirely believed it had been turkey, but it had been called turkey with maximum enthusiasm by the man whose head John had placed in the sink, and it had been appropriately garnished, so we didn’t complain.

It was a very pleasant meal. John told me a little bit about where he had been and how long he had spent in each place and who he had spent his time with. He then told me that he was ready to go back to work, but that his line of work would now change, or would now perhaps change — he hoped so.

I raised my eyebrow. He winked.

He then quoted something that he had memorized.

Quoting was new for John.

I told him I approved.

That night he lay in my bed, and I lay on my floor.

Like the old days, a little.

It was not quiet outside the window, it was a variety of sounds, not such pleasant sounds as it occurred, so that it was not quite possible to hear the river if you had not yet heard it to listen for, and John had not, but I had and I lay there listening.

Life’s years do not fill a hundred, is what he had quoted, earlier, at the restaurant, and I was thinking about this quote, a little, as I lay there listening for the river.

John had raised his glass and I had raised a forkful of turkey and he had said, Life’s years do not fill a hundred, and I had said, who said that? and he said, no one said that, someone wrote that, so I said, who is that by? and he said, Anonymous.

We lay there.

Here was a little hard truth is what I was thinking.

I see you’re not wearing your glasses, he said.

During the time we had lived together I had slept with glasses.

No I’m not, I said.

But you’re still having those dreams? he asked.

Yes, I said.

The same dreams where you see all the …?

I nodded.

With the hooks?

They are no longer hooks.

What are they?

I told him.

That’s festive. You taking anything for that?

No.

You want something?

No.

You want to hold an event?

No.

Well, we’ll hold one anyway.

It took some organizing. Most of which, John explained, would involve rounding up a base of participants upon which the body of the event could be built. I told him about a couple of recent acquaintances, ones who hadn’t vanished. I also told him about the downstairs neighbor. I don’t know why I did this, and sometimes still feel guilty about it. But at any rate, having greeted my dismal offering with great esprit de corps, he said I could leave it all, a few details excepted, to him. He started with the downstairs neighbor and was gone for some time. This is when I heard the sounds. Did you see the neighbor? I asked when he returned, and he said, that neighbor is not coming. Then he tried in the direction of my acquaintances and, an hour or so later, said that the acquaintances, if he had, in fact, gotten hold of the right ones, would very likely, and probably in company, attend. He then set off to recruit some more.

I set off for the park.

As I have already stated, it was late autumn, but this day in late autumn it was not overly cold, and we had agreed to meet where we had always met, even though there was no longer any outdoor café, just a couple of greenish metal chairs set against the base of a chestnut tree.

Hello.

Hello.

She stood a moment. She touched my face. We sat.

It was, in fact, a little too cold, after all, with the wind, to be just sitting there, so we got up and walked around the park.

I do not know what it is about habit in those situations that builds up some sort of a diminishing effect as regards the world, so that, slowly and steadily, given that common and accustomed locus of circumstance, and a certain measure of complicity, the world’s effects on one’s person are lessened. I heard once that both actors and soldiers experience a similar phenomenon when they are playing their respective parts. We were most assuredly playing our parts. I can’t stress enough how alone in each other’s presence we had already come to be.