i can't tell you why

[gollum]

hey kids. y'all have seen some of this before, but this is the final version i turned in for my creative writing class the other day. they just sorta went "uh, yeah, durrrrrr..." (not that this is anything out of the ordinary), so if you have any comments, feel free to let me know. thanks in advance for reading the whole thing. -g

i can't tell you why

apartment 312, opus 25

The smooth, nicked wood of the floor is cold against my cheek, against the rim of my ear. I lie rigid, muscles taut, fingers splayed, palms flat against the floor. I am holding my breath.

She has stopped playing, and i am afraid. I am afraid to open my eyes. I am afraid to move for fear she'll hear me.

Sometimes i wonder if sound ever really stops, or if it just follows Zeno's Paradox and gets infinitely smaller until we can't hear if it's there or not. On days like this i lie as silently as possible, trying to catch some small snatch of sound, a last remnant of an ancient song, the final reverberation of the strings of her piano after she's stopped playing. I just want that echoing sound to take with me when i'm not here, when she's not downstairs, when she's not playing.

My lungs ache with the pressure of the air captured within them. I can't exhale, though. I'm too busy straining my ears to hear the lingering echoes of what she's just
finished playing. Just when i think i'm about to explode, when the red burn of oxygen deprivation starts working its way up from my lungs to my brain, she starts to play again. I let the air seep from my lips, agonizingly slow, then inhale again.

She is playing Chopin. His moody notes hum their way up to me through my floor, her ceiling. They sing their way along the metal pipes that span the gap between her world and mine, chasing the steam and the rivers of piss and shit and all things bodily that flush through our building daily. Her Chopin quietly murmurs through the steel and the plaster and the wood that block us all, the inhabitants of this building, off from each other. For a moment, it's as though everyone and everything in this apartment building stops and listens to the sounds that pulsate from her fingers, as if the traffic out on the street below pauses for the briefest of seconds to absorb her noise.

With my eyes closed and the lights off, i can see the way her long, slender fingers move, like alabaster bones. I can see them, their dull luster muting the sheen of a well-played keyboard, pushing down the ivory keys carefully, tripping dangerously over the ebony ones. Each precise movement sends a note ringing out of the top of the old
upright her mother bought for her, back when her daddy still lived there. I remember the noise of him moving below me like the sound of a beast crashing through the underbrush. Back when they had money. Back when they all made regular noises like the other tenants.

I see her in the stairway sometimes; i pass her on the same stairs they dragged that piano up eight years ago. When we pass, i always say hello. She shrinks against the wall and murmurs something in reply, clutching her books to her chest, seeming to cower even further under her frizzy hair and her thick glasses and her shapeless sweaters. When we pass, i want to tell her how beautiful she is, how beautiful i think she is, but i'm sure it would only come across as the strange, loner, older man from upstairs making a pass at her.

What would i say, anyway?what could i say??and how would i say it? How do you tell someone you've been listening to her, that you keep all the lights in your apartment dim, that you don't play music or watch t.v. anymore because you're afraid you won't hear her over the noise? How do you explain your obsession to someone without sounding like the kind of person who ends up dirty and crazy on top of a bell tower with a sniper rifle? Besides,
i can't tell her. If i did, she'd know, every time she sat down, that i am hovering above her, pressed to my floor, her ceiling. She'd know that i am there, no matter how quiet or how careful i am. She'd know.

She'd always be thinking of me, suspended above her, and she wouldn't play so well anymore.

slum goo

When i get home, i find John sitting on the couch, sulking. I step past him, lifting my knees to step over his outstretched legs, and walk into the kitchen. Putting the groceries down, i count to ten, eyes closed, hands on the table to steady myself. I take a deep breath and open my eyes, but i am still in the kitchen, facing the ridiculously oversized wooden spoon and fork that hang on the wall. "How was your day?" i call out over my shoulder, reaching into the grocery bag and pulling out a couple of cans. I'm praying, hoping for an answer, a grunt, a sigh?anything?but receive only silence in return. "Fine, whatever," i mutter under my breath, stacking the cans up next to the bag.

I pick up an armload of cans and cross to the other side of the kitchen. Depositing them in the cabinet, i turn around and stop dead in my tracks. He is slouching in the doorway, his dark frame filling the empty space like a black hole. Without a word, he straightens up and starts to walk, brushing past me on his way to the sink. I don't move?i know better than that. He picks up a glass from the counter and turns the water on, letting it run a bit before he fills the glass. I can hear him swallowing in the harsh
silence that rushes in when he turns the tap off. The glass lands heavily on the stainless steel of the sink, and then he is moving past me and back to the couch in the other room.

I let out the breath i didn't know i was holding and go back to unpacking the groceries. I leave the ground beef and tomato paste out for dinner. Tonight i'll make slum goo the way he likes it, with the peas and without the onions.

I hate peas.

towards the melting sun

He refers to me now, my friends tell me, as his ex-puppy. I know i should probably be mad, or even mildly upset, but i can't even work up enough energy to do more than feel a little uncomfortable with it. "He's such a fucker," Arianna declares for me, taking an indignant drag on her cigarette. "Yeah," N?al sighs, "i'm glad you two didn't work out." It's not my fault, i want to say, either in protest or in my defense. It's just that i fell in love with him and he didn't even want to fuck me anymore. I say nothing, however, just continue walking along the sidewalk with them.

We are Christmas shopping downtown, our faces reflected back to us in the looming windowpanes that flank us as we walk through the crowd. N?al and Arianna start to talk about whether or not they think that N?al's mom will like the crystal figurine he bought her, but i can't help thinking of him.

We were at the beach, he and i. He was exceptionally playful on this day, darting in and out of the waves, splashing the liquid salt of the water at me, tackling me in the sand. He was touchy, physical, like he'd finally decided that i wasn't carrying a disease or a live
electrical current, like it was okay for others to know that there was something between us.

All day we slathered exotic-smelling suntan lotion on each other, and all day we lay on the blankets i'd brought and looked up at the puffy clouds, eating sandwiches, grains of gritty sand grinding against our teeth. We waited until we were so sunwarmed that we couldn't stand it anymore and waded out into the ocean until we were in cool water up to our chins, jagged fragments of shell dissolving into sand under our feet. If i were telling this story to Arianna and N?al, i would say "it was perfect," and sigh, but it really wasn't. I was too busy trying to figure out why he had changed all of the sudden, too busy trying to figure out what i had done and what i could do to keep things this way, too busy accepting the fact that this was a one-time thing to enjoy it while it lasted.

When the sun started to dip dangerously close to the extinguishing water, he tackled me. We wrestled around a bit, knocking over the little red and white cooler, spilling ice on the ground. He ended up on top of me, pinning my wrists and my legs, smiling dangerously as he held me against the sand.

This story doesn't end like you think it will, like you think it should, i would tell N?al and Arianna. It doesn't end like you want it to.

He rolled off of me, sat there in the sand next to my worn out, sprawled out body. His weight on top of me had pushed me in to my own little divot, and as i lay there, head cushioned by the smooth silt, he began to drop handfuls of sand on my belly.

I lay there as he began to scoop up the wet sand with both hands, dropping it on me haphazardly at first, and then, as he covered me, with the careful grace one would use when building a sandcastle. He buried me in a hump that reminded me simultaneously of both a beached whale and one of those Indian burial mounds my mother dragged me to see when we were still living in Wisconsin. I lay there until i was no longer sure where i ended and the sand began, until i was afraid to move for fear of disturbing the smooth hill that encased me, until i was no longer sure which way was up. I lay there, breathing shallowly, as he picked up a seashell and placed it at the top of the mound. "X marks the spot," he said as he brushed his hands against his thighs.

He squatted there for a moment longer, his long fingers wrapped around his knobby knees, then stood up and started walking towards the water. I raised my head carefully and watched him. He didn't stop like i thought he would when he reached the licking ocean, but kept walking, not missing a beat, disappearing into the water in time with the pounding of my heart. When he was up to his neck he started swimming towards the melting sun, arms cleaving the water in long, hard strokes.

I watched him till i could hold my head up no longer, then lay my head back on the sand. Above me, the sky was starting to reflect the color of the water, deepening into the blue of loneliness. I lay there, unmoving, and waited for him to come back, watching the world slide into night as the sun dissolved into the water.

I can't tell you why i didn't get up. I only know that it was for the same reason he eventually left me, the same reason the sun returns to the killing ocean night after night.


[This message has been edited by gollum (edited December 07, 2000).]

[tyledras]

its awesome gollum. your writing really moves, it hits inside the brain and resonates.

[5Cats]

I liked the second one better, more moody. But the first one had a reference to Zeno!
They're both good, dealing with complicated emotions that we've all felt at one time or another.

[jones]

First of all, you must change the title. It makes me think of that Eagles song! Yuck!

Otherwise, this is fine fine stuff. As I've said before, you've got a gift for drama and detail. Everything is very tense and tight.

take care

---jones

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