Issue Four: Coming October 1
Kipple
I should have answered Sam’s letters while I was in Prague. I’m not much of a letter writer, so I usually save it all up for a phone call. Except I didn’t call either.
By the time I touched down at New Orleans International, Amy was there to pick me up, cheeks wet and mascara-smeared, bottle-blonde hair matted and limp. So even before she told me, even before she collapsed against my chest sobbing her sweaty face into my jacket’s coarse wool, I knew something was wrong.
“Sam’s dead.” She wiped her nose across her sleeve, thumbed the tears out of her eyes.
“I know.” A stupid thing to say. I didn’t know. I patted her shoulder, and she hooked her arm in mine as walked down to baggage claim. “How?”
She coughed out the story in bits and pieces between tears and long looks into the distance, nothing in order. I had to take the raw footage and edit it together myself.
Sam’s writing was going nowhere, starts of poems, bits of essays, a chapbook half-finished. He and Amy had lived together for eleven months before she decided she needed space. They talked in circles, Sam sinking deeper into the blue. He finally put a small caliber pistol in his mouth and pulled the trigger. City workers found his body early Tuesday morning in Jackson Square. That was four days ago.
----
“Whose car?” A red Pontiac, not quite new.
She drove like she was out of practice, leaning forward, knuckles white on the wheel. “A friend’s. Cheaper than a cab.”
“Yeah.”
“Jerry?”
I didn’t say anything. I figured she’d talk or not. I looked out the car window. We were turning off I-10 into the Vieux Carre, the rain just starting. The city looked gray and dull, a relief after Prague’s relentless scenery.
“Jerry, did you get my letters?”
“Yes.”
“Sam said you didn’t answer his either.”
“Sorry about that,” I said. “We’d usually start filming about six in the morning and wouldn’t stop until maybe ten at night. Sometimes midnight. They kept us pretty busy.”
“Sure.”
She threaded her way to Decatur. The tourist places melted behind us, the bead shops and hot sauce venders. I’d forgotten about the litter, wrappers and cups that collected along the streets. “Kipple,” I said.
“What?” She was trying to look at me, steer with her elbows and pluck a cigarette from a pack of Winstons all at once. Multitasking.
I started to explain but slumped in my seat instead, waved it away. Nevermind.
“You’re tired, I bet. I’ll take you to the apartment, drop you off. Then I’ll take the car –“
“Did Sam—“ I stopped, sucked in a ragged breath and shook my head. “Why?”
“It was bad for a long time.”
She stopped the car and gave me the key to the apartment. Told me to get comfortable if I could. She’d be back.
----
I woke up on the couch, my watch telling me it was 3:06 a.m., my body telling another story. I was all screwed up and jet-lagged. But at least the Quarter was awake with me. I pushed open the shutters, let the flamenco music seep in from The Matador across the street. The rain had stopped although the streets still glistened oily. Cool night air and the tang of urine. Home.
Two teenagers smoked clove cigarettes right below the window, the odor sweet and cloying. Both kids wore thick, spiked dog collars. One boy, one girl.
The girl saw me. “Hey, man . . .”
I ducked back inside before they could hit me up for change.
I was awake and feeling guilty. Amy had wanted to talk, but I was still trying to get my mind around Sam. I was better now. I creaked her bedroom door open, peeked in.
Nobody there, bed still made.
I shrugged into a ragged sweater. It was cool out. Sneakers and jeans. I walked awhile. Too awake.
I made a lazy circle around the neighborhood. The Quarter was better this time of night. The daylight was an unmanageable assault of cayenne and zydeco, the constant chatter of hucksters and the tap-dancing racket of black boys with bottle caps on their soles. Too much to enjoy.
Amy was back at the apartment.
“Where’d you go?” Glassy eyes. There was something in her hair.
“Me? I woke up and you were gone.”
I slid my fingers into her hair, a casual gesture, no intent. She jerked back, wobbled on her feet. I could smell the booze now. Bourbon? “Stay still. You’ve got something in your hair.” It was sticky and cold like oatmeal.
Vomit.
Hell. I wiped my hand on my jeans.
She pulled away, giggled. “Sorry. It was the rum runners.”
“You went out?”
“I came back and you were zoned, so I found Ted and Cindy and we hit a few places.” She’d moved into the kitchen, ripped off a fistful of paper towels and wiped her hair.
“I’m awake now,” I said.
“We can still get a beer if you want.”
“You’re sick.”
“I puked it all out. I can handle beer.” She swished her mouth out in the kitchen sink, spit.
“Okay.”
We found the all night place about a block before Decatur puts on its Sunday suit for the tourists. Maybe a two-minute walk. We had beers, gave the professional bar-flies plenty of elbow room. Amy and I had known each other a long time, and I was surprised she was giving me her full attention.
I’d joked before that she was addicted to constant sensory input, and I remembered a hundred bar conversations where she’d torn napkins or built little forts out of sugar packets, listening with one ear. The fidget queen. Always coiled, ready to launch. Always chewing the ice in her drink, tapping a fork, burning straws and stirs in candle flames. She was a big, curvy, bouncy ten-year-old. Eyes green and deep with secrets.
But now she was paying attention, meeting my eyes, little touches on the arm. She asked about Prague and listened. I told her they let me direct the second unit a couple of times, went into my spiel about how this could lead to bigger jobs. A documentary on gothic architecture today -- feature epic tomorrow.
It became all about me, and I was there at the center and important.
And so we stumbled home, and her hands went places and so did mine and we eased into the bed not talking, just understanding and silently agreeing to figure it all out later.
I eased into her, and she gasped small and surprised. We found a rhythm, rocked ourselves complete and slept. The sun was just reinventing itself then, and she was pale and sallow in the dusty yellow light sneaking in through the blinds. But soft.
She turned over, opened one eye. “Jerry?”
I pretended to sleep, but didn’t really drift off until I felt her curl against me.
----
We went on more or less okay through Christmas break, and I stayed with her in the apartment. Sam’s half-written poems littered the place. I glimpsed a line here and a stanza there as I gathered them into a pile and found a cabinet to stash them.
Sam didn’t seem able to construct himself in language, didn’t know what to say or how or maybe to whom. Clichéd verse on the misery of modern existence degenerated into simple complaining. I put it all away. Out of sight.
I kept busy. No film-crew offers fell out of the sky, but I wasn’t discouraged. One of my old Tulane professors put a word in, and I picked up two adjunct courses teaching Intro to Film.
I was never really sure what Amy did all day. I inferred a string of jobs, bartender, waitress and such. But her hours defied prediction. She always had money and didn’t seem to answer to anyone. Not to me anyway. Sometimes men dropped her off in the street. Usually nice cars. One new red Corvette. I watched from the narrow balcony, saw her smile goodbyes at them.
I didn’t ask.
By February, I’d settled into a comfortable routine, a fact Amy felt was bad for my soul. She told me to blow off schoolwork, and we met her friends Ted and Cindy for beers. The four of us sat along the bar and Amy called the bartender by name (Shane) and ordered us a pitcher of Coors and shots of Wild Turkey.
She tossed the shot back, slapped her open palm on the bar. “Damn. Yeah, that’s smooth.”
Ted and Cindy drank theirs. I drank too, waited for the burn to fade before sipping at my beer.
“God almighty, man. I’m pretty fucking hungry.” Ted pawed at an empty bowl where pretzels had been once upon a time.
I wasn’t crazy about Ted. His dirty, denim jacket reeked of pot smoke. His olive green t-shirt underneath was an unfortunate collage of stains. He had long, brown sideburns and a big, gap-toothed smile that made him look a bit stupid although Amy assured me he was quite intelligent. Having switched majors at UNO nine times, he apparently knew a little about everything. And he was loud.
His girlfriend Cindy was meek and hollow-eyed. Mouse-colored hair cut short like a boy’s. I wasn’t sure about her yet, but I felt sorry for her living with Ted.
Ted grabbed a huge glass jar of pickled pig’s feet and slid it in front of me. “Hey, man, you think that stuff’s edible?”
“Do it, Ted,” Amy said. “Eat one.”
I put my hand against the jar’s cool glass and laughed. “I don’t know, Ted. I think just enjoying them like this might be the way to go. Sort of like a pork fish tank.”
“Visual only, eh?” Ted drained his beer. “Not for internal consumption?”
“It does look kind of interesting.” And it did really, a bit like a science display, organs under glass, hovering in preservative, bits of tissue floating.
“The hell with that,” Amy said. “Eat one. I will if you will.”
“You’ll get sick,” Cindy said, but her small voice dripped challenge.
“I’m just hungry enough,” Ted said. “What do you say, Jerry?”
“He won’t eat one.” Amy waved for the bartender to fill her shot glass again.
“Damn right.” I sipped my beer. It was too cold on my teeth. “I’m not killing my taste buds with that shit.”
“What taste buds?” Amy shot the Wild Turkey to the back of her throat. To Ted and Cindy she said, “He made this chicken and rice last night. Bland as notebook paper.” She nudged me, laughed.
“I don’t over-season.” I pretended to pout. “There’s nothing wrong with enjoying the food’s natural flavor.”
“That’s like trying to enjoy the natural flavor of beige.”
“You are one hilarious girl.” I finished my beer.
“I’m gonna eat one of these bastards.” Ted wrapped his arms around the jar, pulled it toward him.
When he popped off the top, the brine smell hit me, and my stomach pinched. I pushed away from the bar. Ted fished one out, put it in his mouth and scrapped the meat off with his teeth. His lips smacked against the bone, juice running over his chin.
“God,” Cindy said but smiled.
Amy moved in next to Ted, her hand dipping into the jar. She ate one too. “Not bad really.”
“Okay,” I said. “Enough.”
“I bet I can eat more than you,” Amy said to Ted.
“You’re on, girl.”
Cindy and I watched as they went back and forth, an orgy of giggling and sticky hands and brine-slimed lips. Amy was laughing so hard, she doubled over, and turned to me, her mouth open, the pink meat half-chewed, chunks clinging to white teeth.
I flinched, and Amy saw me. She laughed louder and harder, elbowing Ted in the ribs.
----
We’d had to get home quickly. Amy’s guts were cramping up.
“I’m sick. My stomach.”
“You always overdo it,” I said.
She ran into the bathroom. I heard her bowels release explosively into the toilet. She sighed, groaned.
“Close the door,” I called to her.
“Come talk to me.”
“For God’s sake you’re using the toilet.”
“Just sit outside the door.”
I pretended not to hear her and went to bed.
The next morning I read the newspaper to her, told her the Tennessee Williams Festival would be cranking up in March. She’d let her coffee cool, and was stirring in too much sugar with her finger.
“Amy.”
“Hmm?” She licked the coffee from her finger, drew her legs up in the chair and hugged them.
“I asked if you wanted to see the improv show Thursday night.” It was one of the festival events.
“Sure.” She peeled a napkin from the dispenser.
I began reading her times and prices from the newspaper but noticed she was ripping the napkin into narrow strips, twirling them into tight balls between her thumb and forefinger. In two days the napkin dispenser was empty.
----
“Hello, Ted? It’s Jerry.” I heard music and people on his end of the line.
“Yeah, man, hey. Hey, man.” Stoned. “What’s up?”
“I’m looking for Amy.” She was late getting home. It was 2:30 a.m.
“She left, man. Got a ride.”
“When was that?”
“What?” Ted said, voice slurred. “Speak up, man.” Music.
“Amy.”
“She left, man.”
Goddammit. “I know that. How long ago?”
The music flared and drowned him out. I tried again, and he said he wasn’t sure when she’d left, but I should come over because everything was great and they had a big wad of primo grass.
I hung up.
She drifted in forty minutes later, hair mussed, makeup wiped away. She smiled at me but it came out small and wan. She smelled like wet cigarettes.
“Hey.” I shuffled papers at the kitchen table, didn’t look up when she came in.
“Hey.” She dropped her purse on the arm of the couch, but it slid off, spilled her junk across the floor. She left it, looked at me. “What’s that you’re doing?”
“Student essays.”
“On what?”
“David Lean and the epic. How was the party?”
“Good. I just came from there.”
“Who gave you a ride home?”
“Ted.”
“That old Ted’s a good sport, ain’t he?”
“What?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Go on to bed if you want.”
She hung in the bedroom doorway, kicking off her shoes and nibbling her upper lip. I think I was supposed to notice her, but I kept at the essays. I had no claims on her, so I didn’t know how to tell her I was angry. But my stomach was tight with her lies.
“Are you coming too?” Amy asked.
“I have to grade these.”
“Any good?”
“No.”
----
Over the next few days we became roommates. Missing each other for meals, schedules clashing. In bed, she stopped offering sex, and I didn’t ask. She started staying up late, smoking grass and falling asleep in front of the weather channel. Sometimes QVC.
I started thinking about Sam again.
I put on a pot of extra-chicory coffee one gray afternoon and dug out Sam’s poems. They were typical and terrible but also telling. I sipped coffee, spread the pages of poetry around the apartment, on the couch, the kitchen table and on top of the television. I tried to piece together some kind of story. Or maybe I was inventing my own.
But the pages wouldn’t go together, only cluttered the apartment like litter. More of a refrain than a story, the same pitiful mantra -- poor me poor me poor me. But all the creativity and been wrung out of him, and only raw sentiment remained. It was clear that his dying relationship with Amy had been shoveled right into the poetry. He’d shoveled himself empty then eaten a bullet.
I opened the windows, let in a slight breeze, chilly and heavy with the BBQ joint down the street. I watched the street for a while, the tourists wandering experimentally and wondering where they were and if there was anything worth seeing at this end of Decatur.
I couldn’t find the letters Sam had sent to me in Prague. Still, I remembered them. He’d mentioned trouble with Amy, the distance and her swelling disinterest. But the way he described Amy was more like poetry than anything I’d found in the apartment. Maybe I felt a little tricked. Maybe the Amy I wanted had been the one made up in Sam’s letters.
I’d traded places with Sam, I guess. I was in his shoes, his apartment, in bed with his woman. It had been a mistake to move into the apartment. Too soon after Sam.
The breeze kicked up, and Sam’s poems flapped around the room, the pages mixing and matching in the swirling wind. It’s didn’t matter. Any order would do.
----
My stomach fluttered nervous at breakfast. Anxious.
Amy sat there twirling the saltshaker. I’d made eggs, toast. She’d pushed them around her plate, only eaten a little.
“What do you think about my moving out?” I asked.
“What?” I had her attention again.
“I don’t think you want me here.”
“That’s not true,” Amy said.
“We never see each other.”
“We’re busy.”
The quiet crept back. I shoved the eggs over to one side of my plate so they wouldn’t touch the eggs. Some people dipped their toast into the yoke. I didn’t.
“What’s kipple?” she asked.
“Huh?”
“You said something about kipple the day I picked you up from the airport.”
“Philip K. Dick,” I said. “I had to read the book when I was doing a paper on Blade Runner. Kipple is all the little bits and pieces of trash that was everywhere. The debris of society. They couldn’t get rid of it.”
She’d already stopped listening, poured salt on her plate, licked her thumb then dabbed it in the salt. Sucker her thumb.
“Don’t do that,” I said.
“It’s just salt.”
“Put it on the eggs then.”
She made a little disgusted noise and pushed away from the table, darted around the room gathering purse, jacket, sunglasses. “This is stupid.” She put a cigarette in her mouth, cast about for the lighter. “You’re being stupid.”
“I think I should move out.”
“Then move out, Jerry. God, do what you want.”
“I want to talk about it.”
“Later.”
She’d found the lighter, puffed her cigarette to life and was out the door.
----
I packed slowly. I wanted her to come in and see me doing it, maybe get her attention, make her stop and talk to me. I wanted her to feel what she was losing. But she didn’t come.
So I found her phone book, dialed her friends Ted and Cindy. They said she wasn’t there. I asked where she might be. They didn’t know. I said to think Godammit! Ted was too stoned to know I was being rude. He said to try Pat O’Brien’s.
“The bar on Bourbon Street?” I didn’t know of any other Pat O’Brien’s but couldn’t believe she’d frequent one of the fucking tourist traps.
“Yeah, man, sure.” He paused, sucked hard on a joint. “Some guy she knows likes the piano place, buys her drinks. He’s a real cool guy, man, brought us all a bunch of killer weed when he was at the last party—“
I hung up and grabbed my coat. I fast walked across the Quarter to Bourbon Street, paid a five-dollar cover to get into Pat O’Brien’s. Crowded. Loud with fake Dixieland piped in through big speakers.
I made my way to the piano bar, squeezed in. A guy in a green jacket said I’d have to wait for a table, but I ignored him. The piano players were banging out Billy Joel’s “Big Shot” on the twin grands. I scanned the crowd.
Three men and a woman huddled around a table in the far corner. I had to watch for a while to see it was Amy. I pushed my way between tables, and when I got there, she saw me, face dropping a bit.
“Amy.” I had to say it again louder over the piano racket. “Amy.”
She said nothing, just looked at me tight-mouthed, shook her head. I knew instantly this was what Sam had felt. Dismissal. Go away.
“Amy, I want to talk to you right now.”
The men looked up too. Now I could see their table. A little mirror with lines of white powder. Yet another thing to feed her senses. Tomorrow it would be acid or Tabasco or a kitten.
But it wouldn’t be me.
One of the men said, “Got a problem here, pal?” Rough British accent.
“I’m talking to Amy, you bag of shit.”
He tensed, started to rise.
“Go home, Jerry,” Amy said.
“Come talk to me right now. I want five fucking minutes. Is that so much?”
The man was on his feet now, tall. “She said beat it.”
I swung at his gut, and he whuffed air. I didn’t even know I was doing it, and it wasn’t very effective at any rate. He came back and popped me hard. I felt my lip burn, the coppery salt taste of blood in my mouth. I started in, kicking and punching with rage. My feeble blows flying wide.
His punches landed solid, but I hardly felt them.
A swarm of green jackets grabbed me. I remember a room of faces, turned from the pianos, watching the new show. I saw Amy. She looked at me, with pity I thought, or maybe she looked through me, past me. I’d never know.
They dumped me outside, and I sprawled on the sidewalk, jacket ripped, shirt un-tucked and bloodstained. I could feel the pain creeping into my ribs.
One said, “Don’t come back,” and I started laughing.
Don’t worry, pal.
I walked back to the apartment, took it slow.
Inside I zipped up my suitcase, but before leaving I grabbed all of Sam’s writing, stuffed the loose pages into my luggage. I didn’t figure I’d do anything with them, but I knew Amy wouldn’t appreciate the exquisite pain that had gone into the terrible poems. She would eventually trash them or fold them into origami or ball them into wads just to feel crumpled paper in her hands.
I locked the door behind me. Dropped the key in the mail slot.
On the street, it dawned on me I wasn’t sure where I was going. I laughed again, not too bitterly, thinking I’d let the wind blow and follow the kipple.