Craig corners me to confess a feeling for Lydia. So I pretend Lydia means nothing to me. That I highly recommend her.
He says, The human being can’t live too long with uncertainty. It prefers failure to uncertainty.
Lydia says then, There are so many fucking mediocre artists in this country.
Then, to me: I suppose youre writing that down.
Max says to me, I can’t believe how polite youre being. What, should I start throwing furniture?
Cause a scene, man. This is your moment to shine. Wilf comes over to me and says, So Tinker’s gone, hey? Yes.
Max: He was a dog especially loved for doggy acts.
Wilf: He was a dog’s dog.
Wilf has strong forearms. And a willingness to try on a woman’s pillbox hat.
Boyd Coady’s television is still in the living room.
30 I wake up alone and open the blinds to the city. The harbour is frozen shut. Iris and Helmut have flown to Miami to study a sailboat. I’m the kind of man who craves to be alone, but once alone, I crave company. It’s as though I’d prefer to live in a tough situation than to live in a vacuum. I’m thinking that I have to learn to live alone, but what I really need to learn is how to live with someone else. Happiness seems impossible.
I sing the saddest songs I know, Hank Williams songs. I cook some eggs and brew a pot of tea. Tea is far better for a hangover. I can feel the corners of my mouth drooping in sadness, and I laugh at my sadness. I can examine and appreciate my own emotional torment. Luckily, I’m not a man prone to moroseness. If it were not for my buoyant constitution I would slit my wrists in the bathtub. I would.
I have been reading writers who say, essentially, that we’ll be food for worms soon enough, so make sure that what you are living you love. And it’s true there was too much anguish and ruin with Lydia. And Lydia seems a far sight happier with that asshole. He’s not an asshole. He’s such a great guy he must be an asshole. No one can be that perfect. I bet he has a hole in his heart. I bet Craig is emotionally cold. Assholism is relative. It proves the theory of relativity.
I gotta leave this place. I gotta start over. I’ve used up everything here. I have to let the city go fallow.
31 It’s the last party of the year and every one I love is in Max’s house. The women are dancing in the kitchen. Wilf says, When women dance with women I get happy. I have to force myself to keep my eyes off Lydia and Craig. I ask her before midnight and she says yes she may be a little in love with Craig. Can she be in love with a chunky man with a little scar at his lip? Do I mind seeing her with him? I ask, Are you doing an Oliver Squires? and she says, Gabe. I never thought of Craig until it was over with you.
She has been going to his house to watch rented, subtitled movies. She did not want to watch foreign movies with me. She claimed they were too hard to follow on a TV. But it’s the man, not the film you watch, who makes the difference. She is willing to concentrate for Craig. Fair enough.
I stand by a window and realize that love is not constant. Though I love Max and Maisie very much. I would kill myself to save them. I would do the same for Una and Eli.
Maisie says if you take care of the moment then regret will not creep into your past.
But always there is, circling around us, a sense of unfulfilled grasping. A moment winks like a black locomotive, harnessed fire, sitting impatiently on its haunches, forever primed to lurch and devour. And I’m getting older. My feet hurt, a wrinkle in my earlobe. When you are out of love you become disappointed with the weight of your body. Baths are good.
I’ve decided to leave St John’s. I will head west and look for a desolate, foreign place. All that can happen to me here has happened.