Fennel drank Irish whiskey quickly from a plastic tumbler and smiled at his hands. Drunk on the brown, he often felt the urge to talk like an academic, full of pomp and periphrasticity. He read aloud a story from the Yale Review about lesbian painters in Mississippi. Leek was not impressed and tapped her fingers along the cracked white paint of the windowsill. She breathed a fog on a dirty pane. Outside, a stray yellow tom stalked a blowing leaf, proud and insolent over its predatory instinct. She dreamed of buying a royal feline, one that would thwart city ordinances and scare the townsfolk.
“Well, you’d like to think these bastards might come up with something… I don’t know, intriguing, eh?”
“Fresh, darling. As would make a good juice; see also no discoloration or bruising…”
“Still, this one startles a little, the idea of them down in the Belt, tongues on each other, with brushes….”
“Ack.”
No Response.
“You know what’s happening to ideas, baby? You know what happens to the printed word? Do you give two shits?”
“And that is … what?”
“The halcyon days are gone. Meddlers killed the words, television took steroids and your precious fucking books were all burned in an ugly pyre.”
“The fuck. What, why wasn’t I informed?”
“Tenjem told you, but you were drunk. For several days, as I recall.”
Christ’s sake, thought Fennel, it’s two in the morning and there is no one I can call. A trumpet is the thing, loud and reiterating. I am Chet Baker, revived and swollen, meeting the morn with this slow, dripping cacophony. Notes stretched out off the porch into the blackness, scaring off dogs and rodents in the night. Leek took some pills and slept on the couch, radiant as a dying angel, only partially covered by her favorite quilt. The house shuddered in it’s dilemma. The clocks staggered on.
When the police arrived, he was deep into the Carneval dream; a Negress fellating him as he played an incoherent samba. I am becoming the heart of the city, the pitiless Saint of Martyrs and acrobats. These panther screams are for the younger ones, my lungs provide only the finest of shows. The silver trumpet lay wrecked and lifeless in the yard some distance from Fennel. He was curled and fetal on the porch steps; from the spit valve of the horn ran a rivulet of drool.
Leek paced the garden, thinking of her soup in yonder kitchen. It will thicken, she said to her ocelot, tamed and envious. It will thicken. She trampled a bed of irises in a fit of revelation, or maybe just pique.
Coming from the jail, Leek kissed Fennel lightly on the cheek and grasped his palm. Fennel felt thirsty and disoriented. He stared at a reflection of himself in some automobile’s window, and flinched. The mid-morning sun forced a haze of sweat from his body, and he reeked of whiskey. Leek gently pulled him away from the car and toward the taxi she’d kept waiting. I know you are sorry, she said. I know.
“Are you happy?”
“I have my garden, my cat.”
“Am I… happy?”
“You’re asking me?”
“Well, I have things, too. But….”
“No, you’re not. But your things keep you occupied. Me being one of those things, along with your books and that goddamned trumpet.”
“Is this a good way to be? In place of happy, I mean?”
“As long as you don’t get bored.”
In the mirror, Fennel was indestructible, Nietzschean. He spoke to his drink in somber tones. I am not right. You there, cornered and meek Fennel, leave her tonight. Run away from this ammoniac cat-piss and mutual trust. Fennel staggered to the bedroom, leapt on the sagging mattress. I will, he chanted, the whiskey leaving brown ringlets on the sheets as it rained from his cup. Oh sweet, shitty, trembling Jesus, I will. I can’t, no… I will.
Leek met her doctor at a Southside bar. The casualness of their acquaintance frightened her; she might ordinarily flee his sidelong glances, but without his stentorian office, the menace faltered.
“I am thinking of Chicago, the L and the museums,” she said.
“It’s awful goddamned cold.”
“Yes, but he’s….”
“Have you been taking the medication?”
“Yes. Mostly. Especially when he’s gone.”
“May I buy you another drink?”
“Won’t that counteract the pills?”
“I wouldn’t know, I’m just a doctor. Besides you’re not taking them.”
“I’m sorry, I think. And yes.”
“Hmm.?”
“Yes you may buy me another drink. In case he comes home.”
Fennel returned unannounced from a two week trip to visit his hooker friend in Oklahoma. Leek fixed his favorite breakfast, Tricolore Fritatta, and cried into her palms. They didn’t speak at first, merely brushing into each other in the hallways, full of lust and tepid hate. Fennel read books and often quoted from them, the ones he felt were weighted with Faulknerian tragedy. He bought a pistol and felt ugly. He left it on the counter to act as a symbol of his disgrace, but Leek did not let on that she noticed. The nickel-plated barrel and fat bullets did nothing for his confidence, and his courage failed miserably when he thought of using it on himself. He sold it to an elderly Jewish man in his mother’s apartment building. The Jew, Albert, sighted it down the hall, and faked a shot at the boys rolling dice over by the entrance. He brought the gun down to his side and smiled at Fennel, searching for alliance in his imaginary kill.
“I’m just not comfortable around these niggers anymore.”
Fennel peered down at the boys who were talking loudly over their game, then back at Albert and the pistol. His hands were cold and sweaty when he took the bills from the Jew, busy muttering some insipid hate to himself. Outside, the breeze felt calming, and he stood for a minute in the shade. The people in his life, with their meanness and fear, made him giddy and light.
Fennel took the money and spent it on lottery tickets and booze. What do I have to lose?
