Some Choices Are Not Really Choices

This week’s sentence was taken from Alan Paton’s desperate message from apartheid-era South Africa, ‘Cry, The Beloved Country’.

It was:
‘Jarvis sat a long time smoking, he did not read any more.’

Some Choices Are Not Really Choices

Silence.
Sunset, sliced by venetian blinds slashed stripes across the room, slithered over Mackinson and slipped across his desk, slid down the wall and slunk off across the carpet into the corner, painting a pot plant in shades of burnt amber.
Smoke curled and writhed, playing lazily in the bars of sunlight. Dust danced. The only movement.
Down the hall someone was playing a Miles Davis LP. Mackinson recognised Moon Dreams from Birth of the Cool. He smiled.

An old room. He liked it that way. High ceilings. Art Deco, tiger-striped maple wainscoting, green glass shades, chevrons zig-zagging across faded silk on sagging sofas.
The walls wore a stylish set of sepia photos: 1930s Manhattan. Long, low, dark-framed, panoramic skylines taken from the water: Chrysler, Empire State, Liberty; Brooklyn Bridge; the classics.
The desk bare but for a reading lamp, a bottle of good scotch, two cut-glass tumblers and the gun. The lamp stand was bronze, shaped like a dancer from the Folies, shiny in patches where he liked to rub it for luck. The revolver a 38 snub-nose police special laying next to Mackinson's hand on a thick towel which could be instantly wrapped around it as an improvised silencer.

Mackinson waited patiently, perfectly still, nonchalant, seemingly relaxed but deceptively so, in the same way a tiger might crouch and watch his prey.
His prey, a City Councilman named Jarvis, sat sweating, sucking on a cigarette as he read through the pages on his lap; face flushed, florid under a bad wig, forehead slick with the sheen of having walked up too many flights of stairs to get here. A big man unused to exercise, unused to pressure, unused to the tight knot of fear that now gripped his stomach. His rumpled suit displayed dark patches under the arms, his lank tie awry. Jowly. The Councilman looked a little like Dick Nixon might have if someone had landed a good one on that ski-ramp of a nose.
Leaning forward he gulped down a half-tumbler of scotch. Mackinson didn't refill his glass; Mackinson didn't move a muscle; he simply stared.
A crackle as Jarvis turned a page, eyes panicked, lower lip trembling. Rivulets of sweat ran down from his temples over a flabby neck, staining his shirt collar.

The gun was mostly for show but he would happily use it. He would equally happily not. The man was weak. Spineless. Loathsome. A stony stare kept him cowed. Much as he despised his victim Mackinson would gladly let Jarvis live. The mess and stink of cutting up and disposing of the body would put him off dinner tonight. Besides, he was just the messenger, Bartleby had laid it all out clear as day on those few terrible pages.

Jarvis sat a long time smoking, he did not read any more. Mackinson watched him carefully, searching his face for clues.
Eventually time, like his cigarette, ran out. Jarvis shuddered, took a deep, trembling breath and raised his wet eyes to meet Mackinson's.

Lunch

This week’s sentence was taken from Edith Wharton’s ‘The Age of Innocence’.

It was:
‘“Tell me what you do all day,” he said, crossing his arms under his tilted-back head, and pushing his hat forward to screen the sun-dazzle.’

Lunch

Central Park in the early 1960s; no mimes, no joggers, no Goddamned cellphones.
Bliss.
Sunny lunchtime in May.
Light so bright it bleached the sky. So fast it slammed into the lake and exploded on impact.
A million sparkling shards, flickering ricochets burning blind-spots, searing the retinas of anyone foolish enough to look.

Down by the lake: two guys in ties.
One lay back on the grass and breathed deep.

“Tell me what you do all day,” he said, crossing his arms under his tilted-back head, and pushing his hat forward to screen the sun-dazzle.

His companion sat looking the other way, watching office girls in summer frocks flounce through their lunch-break.
Greene peered up at him from under the brim of his fedora.

"I mean other than look at girls."

Matching grins.

"I'm a commercial artist."

"No shit?" he paused, "Notwithstanding that, my question remains."

Gray laughed.

"Notwithstanding? You're kidding! Who says notwithstanding these days?"

"I do. Notwithstanding that, what do you do all day, Mister Commercial Artist?"

"I paint those." he pointed his chin at the groups of girls. "I sit all day at a drawing board and make young housewives' dreams come true."

"Son, you know jack shit about housewives' dreams."

A guilty chuckle.

"Yeah, I know. But somebody's gotta make 'em yearn for that crap."

Greene raised his head.

"Dishwashers? Rotisseries? Laundromats? Who needs a dishwasher? That's what the housewife is for. What's she gonna do after dinner? Come and yak at her husband? Leave the poor guy alone, sweetie. Wash the Goddamned dishes."

Gray shook his head, laughing softly.

"You trying to put me out of a job? The world's changing. Housewives apparently have 'leisure time' now."

"You're scaring me, kid. Cut it out."

Gray's blue eyes met Greene's brown. He smiled.

"So what do you do all day, Mister Mysterious?"

"I'm not a cop, if that's what you're worried about."

Gray looked away, relief falling off him like sweat.

"I'm pleased to hear it. Notwithstanding that, my question remains."

Greene couldn't help but laugh.

"You've got a cheek, kid. I like that."

The younger man grinned at him, raising an eyebrow coquettishly.

"Notwithstanding that …"

"You really wanna know what I do? I hang around the park cruising for queers. What do you think?"

"Well I was kinda wondering."

"I'm a writer."

Gray nodded and shifted towards him, his fingers playing with the grass.

"So, Mister Writer man. I don't see you as a crusading journalist, rousting guys like me for the gutter press. What sort of things do you write?"

"I write short stories."

Gray looked a little disappointed.

"No Great American Novel, then?"

"Not yet. Just little slices of New York life."

Gray gazed at him for a long time.

"So what am I? Research?"

"No, son; you're just a figment of my imagination."

Greene got up and stretched. Alone but for the office girls he tipped his hat to them and strolled off through the trees, disappearing into the dappled shade.

Becoming

This week's sentence was taken from Jack Kerouac's 'On The Road'.

It was:
'I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn't know who I was — I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I'd never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn't know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds.'

Because of the length of the sentence, this week contributors were allowed to not count it in their 500 word total.

Becoming

I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn't know who I was — I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I'd never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn't know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds.

Even as I shuddered and stretched and heaved myself up off the stained mattress I had to say it aloud to convince myself.
"I am Samuel Charles Mackinson." whatever the hell that meant.

Walking to the window the linoleum, worn down to the thread in patches, felt clammy against my bare feet.
The thin curtains were the colour of a bruise. Carefully avoiding the grease-grey stains from hundreds of hands I twitched them aside and looked the world square in the sunset.

Sunset always gets me.
This one took that filthy street of run-down tenements and flophouses and made it beautiful. I blinked until my eyes caught up with the glare.
A light the colour of apricots glistened on damp asphalt, glittered off broken glass, smearing gasoline rainbows across puddles and potholes; the tangled, rusting latticework of fire escapes cast jagged spiderweb shadows over cracked concrete and hot ochre bricks.
I breathed it all in.

Rush-hour. Pavement packed with people, the roar of traffic deafening even from three floors up. Cutting through it all, the banshee screech of the el train taking the bend at the end of the street a little too fast; a blaring, roaring and clattering cacophony.
Music to my ears.

I hit the sidewalk as sunset surrendered to a bright new world of garish green and ruby neon, its hum and sputter a mile-wide bug-zapper drawing in the nightflies, drawing in Sam Mackinson.
Day shift over, the city came to life.

Corner bar. Refresher. The coffee felt good, the scotch felt better.
Burning a hole in my pants pocket the crumpled brown envelope containing my instructions for getting here and most of the wad of cash that came with them, together with the key to a locker at the bus station.

I took my time and let the crowds thin.
The depot was deserted but for a ragtag of bleary-eyed overnight travellers, backpackers and sleeping bums; a vast shed, its darkness relieved by pools of sickly fluorescent lowlighting, the whole place rank with the stink of stale piss, exhaust fumes and delays.
Rows of lockers; pale green tin. I tried to focus; the events of the past few weeks coming together like a slow-motion car wreck and making about as much sense. A psychedelic whirlwind of flickering images dizzied me:

Sam Mackinson, fresh-faced fly-boy, running CIA opium out of Cambodia under Nixon's nose; a 'deniable asset' abandoned when the shit came down.
‘M.I.A.’
But somebody it seemed had not forgotten me - a guardian angel. Hustled across the Laotian border and out via Vientiane, smuggled to San Dago, I’d hitched cross-country and now here I stood in this filthy bus terminal: dazed, exhausted … nobody.
I looked at the key. The key to my future.

Checking all round I opened the locker and took out the briefcase.
The pistol was there. The money. The apartment key. A number to call and a name: 'Bartleby'.

Walking out into the shining night I knew who I was.

The Job

This week's sentence was taken from Paul Auster's 'City Of Glass', from his marvellous "The New York Trilogy", and it was:

"Then, suddenly, with great clarity and precision, he saw Bartleby's window and the blank brick wall before him."

The Job

Then, suddenly, with great clarity and precision, he saw Bartleby's window and the blank brick wall before him.

The wall.
Always the same.
It stared him down.
Browbeat him.

The early morning sun burned the bricks a violent orange that hurt his eyes but it was not the squinting brilliance that he found intimidating.

It was the purity.
The very blankness.
The effrontery of it all.

It was Bartleby …

For blocks all around, every surface within reach of an outstretched arm was a scribbled tangle of graffiti. Layer after layer of tags and murals and adolescent brag and bluster festooned and swagged across wall and window, shutter and trashcan.

Yet no paint touched Bartleby's wall.
Ever.

The bright bricks briefly dazzled him; a malevolent, blazing tabula rubra. He shaded his eyes against their glare.

The wall was around fifty feet long and went up three storeys. Bartleby's window sat just off centre on the middle floor; a stark, black hole into nothingness.

He couldn't see in.

There were no other windows.
There was no door; at least not out front.

He stood across the street and waited as he always waited in what had once been the doorway of a laundry but was now - like so much else here - utterly derelict; trashed, tagged, beaten and left for dead.

He looked at the payphone.
The only undamaged payphone for ten blocks; it stood at one end of Bartleby's pristine wall.

He waited.

He never had to wait long. Somebody would be behind the window watching him; maybe even Bartleby himself, though somehow he doubted that.

The phone would ring three times and he would leave, returning home to find in his mailbox the familiar A4 manila envelope containing a quantity of cash and Bartleby's enigmatic instructions.

The payphone rang.
He left.

He never walked straight back to his apartment but invariably varied his route in a determined attempt at discontinuity.

Some days he would stop for latte and a bagel; others he would browse the bookstores or linger at the library; maybe buy some groceries.

Today he walked to the nearest Metro station and caught a train to the park.
At this hour there were still empty benches. He sat in the shade of a plane tree, waited for a hefty jogger to pound past and opened his attaché case.

Trying not to think of what would be waiting for him at the apartment he read a couple of chapters of Auster's New York Trilogy.
He liked these stories. He liked to lose himself in the characters' Odyssean wanderings; the repetitive interactions between strangers; the vaguely mysterious yet ultimately futile assignments that ruled their lives.
Much like his own …

The envelope was there in his mailbox.
Back in the apartment he closed the blind against the sun and poured himself a stiff scotch, then sat with the envelope on his lap and reached for his letter-opener.

Taking out the single sheet of paper he began to read.