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We had another conversation about his bookstore. Well, he talked. About neighborhood and community. About how people had failed him. The crush of the small businessman. He was on a loop. I knew that loop myself. It was enough that I had been in a holding pattern for the two years since I graduated college. I could not bear to watch it in someone else. It is a terrifying thing, to face yourself in someone else.
Finally I said, "I kind of feel like I need to sleep."
"I just want to crash anyway," he said. "So that'll work."
"No, I mean alone," I said.
He looked over at the closet.
"Listen, I'm kind of between places," he said. "I don't even care about sleeping with you. You don't have anything to worry about."
The final indignity: he didn't want to sleep with me in the first place. He just wanted a place to sleep.
"I could crash in there," he said. He pointed to the closet. "Not just tonight, even. For a while."
"I could crash in there," he said. He pointed to the closet. "Not just tonight, even. For a while. I could pay you a little bit of money." He pulled out a fistful of bills from his pocket.
The mushrooms started to kick in. He looked like a wolf.
"I mean, otherwise it's the streets for me," he said.
"I can't do it," I said.
"It's cold out," he said.
"I think you should go." It was completely urgent that he leave.
"It's not like anyone else is using the closet," he said.
"My clothes are," I slurred. "My clothes live there. They live there." His hair was mussed. Were there pointed ears under there? "You have to go." I got up and opened the door. "Right now," I said.
He sat there and stared at me. Everyone had betrayed him. His world had collapsed and he had fallen into a bottle and all he wanted was a place to stay. He said, "Well, what if I don't want to go?"
He didn't mean it, though. I can tell you right now it was not a threat. It was a plea for mercy.
But I couldn't hear it that way. Something was wrong with me then. And it wasn't just the drugs.
"Then. I. Will. Scream."
He left. He went down to the lobby. He hovered in the cold for a while. I know this because he kept buzzing my apartment. By then I was scared. "Just go," I said into the intercom. He gave up after fifteen minutes. I called a friend and went and stayed with her at the big group house three blocks over. "I met a crazy man," was all I said, and we snuggled together under her covers until we both passed out.
In 2001, the Speakeasy burned down in a two-alarm fire, but it carries on as a national internet-service provider. Things happen like that in Seattle. It's a pioneer town; people survive and transform. Now everything is slick and new. Last time I was in Seattle, the downtown was all chain stores and the homeless were relegated to the waterfront. I didn't look for him, though I thought of him. He knew so much about books. He's fine now, I believe that. Someone took him in and helped him to get his act together. Someone. But not me. n°
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Jami Attenberg is the author of The Kept Man and Instant Love. She has written for Jane, Print, Nylon, Salon and The San Francisco Chronicle. Her novel, The Melting Season, will be published by Riverhead Books. Visit her at jamiattenberg.com.
