Shifters (7 page)

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Authors: Edward Lee

BOOK: Shifters
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Locke gave this some thought. Had Lehrling hit it on the head? And if so, so what? What could Locke do?
“But that’s not really what you want to talk about, is it?”
No,
 Locke thought.
“How long’s it been since the two of you broke up? Month and a half, two months?”
“Almost three.”
“And you’re still not over it,” Lehrling observed. It was no question. “You want my advice?”
“No, I came here to look at your pretty face,” Locke said.
“You’re not gonna like it.”
“What’s the advice?” Locke nearly moaned and rubbed his temples.
“Cut bait.”
Locke winced. “What?”
“Cut bait. You don’t need the headache.”
“I can’t
cut bait,
 Lehrling!” Locke shouted. “I still love her!”
Silence.
Locke glanced to and fro, head down.
I just shouted in the bar,
 he realized to himself. Lehrling was looking at him. Carl was looking at him. The three girls at the end, and even White Shirt, were looking at him.
“You need to get a grip on yourself,” Lehrling suggested after giving the outburst some time to pass. “You need to calm down.”
“I know.”
Lehrling ordered them two more. “So what happened? You never seemed to want to talk about it before.”
But what
had
 happened? Even Locke didn’t know that. “It wasn’t anything ugly. One day she just looked at me and told me she didn’t love me anymore.”
Lehrling nodded. He poured more of the amber bock slowly into the pilsner glass. “But who knows what love is, really? Are you sure she ever loved you at all?”
Yes!
he wanted to scream. He
knew
she had. He was certain of it. That’s what love was, perhaps—not something you could define but something you simply
knew.
“I know she loved me,” Locke said, very quietly now. “Same way I know the sun comes up in the morning. I
know.
”
Lehrling, a cynic, left it at that. “Then you gotta ride it out.”
“Ride
what
 out?”
“The despair.” Lehrling’s eyes sought Locke out. “I know all about despair.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Shit, Locke, you’re not the first chump in the world to have a relationship go bust. If you let it mess up your life—in your case, your poetry—then you fail as a human being. So you ride it out. You tighten up the bootstraps and you move on.”
Lehrling didn’t understand anything. It was male pride, Locke knew, that induced these ideas. Locke felt above that, he felt superior to such a falsehood. But if he felt above it, why did he feel so low now? He finished his second draft and let the buzz kick in.
“But you’re lucky,” Lehrling continued. “You’re one up on the average guy in the same situation.”
“How’s that?”
“You’re a writer.”
“I know. Catharsis. Aesthetic reversion. It’s all a load of shit.”
“No it’s not. It’s true. And believe me, it’s the only thing that’s going to save you. Everybody deals with life in different ways. Writers deal with life by writing. We’re the most fucked up people in the world—that’s why we’re writers. If we didn’t have our writing, we’d all be in psych wards. Writing is the way we’re able to exist normally in society. I write speculative novels—”
“You write
pulp
 novels,” Locke corrected.
“And you write candyass poetry, but that’s beside the point. My novels exist in a duality. On the outside they’re just novels, invented characters within an invented plot. But on the inside, somewhere in between the lines, they’re my displacement. In between the lines, Locke, my novels are
me.
 All my perceptions, all my feelings, all my joys, sorrows, hopes, and dreams. It’s more than catharsis, Locke. Writing is exorcism.”
Locke signaled Carl for another beer.
Exorcism,
he thought.
Displacement.
Maybe Lehrling was smarter than he thought.
Or
maybe he’s just full of crap.
 Because Locke still didn’t know how to use what Lehrling had just said.
The novelist went on. “I’ve been shit on by women more times than pigeons have shit on the White House. I’ve
never
 had a relationship that’s worked. I’ve loved girls, sure. Lots of girls. And when it falls apart, it hurts, it seems like the worst thing in the world. But I get out of it every time. I save myself—every time—with my work.”
Locke was looking down, running his finger through water rings on the bar. His beer seemed to taste like regret. All of his visions, then, reverted to a whorl of memory, plummeting. He felt ruined, even after three months. And now here was Lehrling, the know-it-all rich novelist, claiming to have all the answers. Locke didn’t even know what the questions were.
“You take it out of your heart,” Lehrling continued to postulate, “and you put it somewhere else. You put it on that piece of paper that sticks out of your typewriter. There’s no other way to get away from it, Locke. You’re a visionary, a dreamer—all poets are. Everything you feel, you’ve got to write about it. That’s the only way you’ll ever get over Clare. That’s the only way you’ll ever be free.”
Free…
But Locke didn’t want to be free, he didn’t want to
get over it,
 not if freedom meant that his love abandon him forever. He wanted Clare back—the way it was—that’s what he wanted…
White Shirt inexplicably pounded his fist on the bar. “Never,” he exclaimed. He was drunk and then some. “Never, never…”
Carl plunged beer mugs two at a time into the triple sinks. “Never
what?
” he asked.
“Never fall in love with a girl you meet in a bar.” White Shirt’s bloodshot eyes drifted up. “Never—” Again he pounded his fist. “—and I mean never ever ever!”
I hear that,
Locke thought. Never fall in love with a girl you meet in a bar. He’d met Clare in a bar, in
this
 bar. He’d never forget that first moment he’d seen her…
“Never, never… ,” White Shirt stammered on.
…the impact, the
power,
 in that first single glimpse of her beauty…
“—never, never, ever, ever fall in love—”
…yes, the sheer resplendence of her…
“Like this asshole over here,” Lehrling whispered to him. “Look at him. He’s wasted, ruined, because of a girl. He’s got nowhere to put his feelings, so his feelings are turning him inside out. You want to end up like that?”
Locke glanced down the bar. White Shirt was staring up into the rafters now, his eyes pasted open, mouthing
Never, never, never…
Love was supposed to be a wonderful thing, but look what it had done to this guy. No, Locke didn’t want to end up like White Shirt. That was scary. But what scared him more was not knowing exactly
how
 he would end up.
Locke quickly grabbed a bar napkin. Lehrling said he must write about his feelings, he must take his feelings from his heart and put them somewhere else.
So be it,
 he resigned, and took up his pen.
He quickly scribbled:
POEM ON A BAR NAPKIN by Richard Locke
 
This is how I feel, my love…
in the muse of the poet, or the destitute hack.
You would love me again in the wink of an eye
if you knew how bad I want you back.
Lehrling looked on, afrown. “You’re shitting me, right? That’s not a poem. It’s frivolity. I’m talking about real work, Locke, a real communication of your psyche, not some little ditty you doodle down on a bar napkin. That’s shit.”
“I know,” Locke muttered.
Everything I write is shit.
But it wasn’t a self-condemnation. That was how any real poet should feel: that nothing could ever be good enough to be art. Lehrling was a novelist—naturally he didn’t understand. Locke wadded up the napkin and with a sigh tossed it into the can behind the bar. More of his heart crumpled and tossed away as so much garbage.
“Hey, keep,” White Shirt drunkenly demanded. “Another beer.”
Carl put a mug of coffee down.
“That’s not beer,” White Shirt observed.
“It’s the closest thing to beer you’re gonna get tonight,” Carl came back. “In case you haven’t noticed, you’re drunk.”
White Shirt shrugged. “I guess you’re right.” Carl’s eyes widened as White Shirt gulped down the entire steaming mug at once, scalding his misery.
“What do I do?” Locke pleaded.
“Write off the loss,” Lehrling said. “I told you. Forget it.”
I can’t forget it.
“Look at the facts. You fell in love with a girl. The girl dumped you. It happens every day. The only way you can preserve what you are is to forget it. And the only way to forget it is—”
“Yeah, right. Catharsis.”
“Catharsis,” Lehrling concurred. “Exorcism. Turn your feelings into art. Write the best poem you’ve ever written. Then you’ll be free. Take my word for it.”
But Locke could only frown at this emphasis of advice. The moment merged then into a hectic chaos. The three girls at the end of the bar jabbered meaninglessly, like parrots. Music beat bleakly from the stereo; it sounded far away. White Shirt resumed the forlorn pounding of his fist: “Never fall in love with a girl you meet in a bar! Never! Never!” But all Locke could see was his love. All he could see was Clare.
He felt supplanted. He felt unreal.
“Get drunk,” Lehrling suggested. “That’ll help.”
It did not help. Locke’s beer tasted like loss, like every loss in the world. He finished his second pint, then his third, then his fourth.
“That’s the spirit.”
Spirit? Do I even have one anymore
?
Locke’s eyes lifted to the window. Murky light throbbed, moving—light the color of blood. Another ambulance roved slowly down the street.
Its lights were flashing, but its siren was off.
(iii)
Arrivals?
That’s what I thought, I guess, as I stepped naked up onto the cold splintery wooden dock. I thought of arrivals. Plural. Not merely my arrival to wherever this place was, but something more complex. Many arrivals, in many different meanings.
Rebirth!
The water gives me up now, from its depths like the calm monotony of death. Am I trite to say I feel reborn? Before me the sea stretches on forever, and behind me looms the city, like an intricate, carved mesa in black, flecked in tiny lights. I feel cleansed, vibrant. I feel alive in heat against the wet, dragging, deathlike cold. In my death, I’m alive. In my age, I’ve emerged like the first second of life from the sanctuary of the womb.

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