Ye Who Enter Here
She sat peeling almonds on the sofa; manicured fingernails working with studied precision.
I lay sprawled on a chair, scribbling invisible hieroglyphics on the table with the tip of my index finger, gazing at the bottom of a glass filled with water. Not quite an abyss but the bottom stared back, nonetheless. If I only drop an aspirin in it, I could zone out on it pretty good, I thought. Like Travis Bickle.
I’m about to start a publication, I said, not taking my eyes off the the glass.
She looked up. Really, that’s great.
Yeah, and know what, I’ve come up with a name too.
Yeah?
Jack’s Tavern.
Jack’s stubborn?
No. Jack’s Tavern. Ta-Vern, you know, as in Lou’s Tavern in Fight Club.
Oh…yeah, I remember that, that’s cool, she feigned some interest.
Yup. A holy place for all the degenerates and creeps inside my head to get some air and start a-howling. I can barely keep them in, anyways. The world — like Lou — must suffer its own realities, I said, furiously scribbling now.
She was nodding absent-mindedly.
Even got a tagline in place. It’s a…a quote by Cormac McCarthy. Goes like, there’s no joy in the tav —
Would this much be enough, what do you think?, she asked me.
I looked up. A handful of white seeds; expertly soaked and flayed. Very slowly, I nodded a yes.
She turned to me. Sorry, you were saying about the quote.
I looked back at the transparent glass of water, thinking of all the things that could have been mistaken for the phonemes in ‘Jack’s Tavern’. Like, ‘Jack’s The One’ or ‘Jack Stay Warm’, I don’t know. And yet, she only heard Jack’s Stubborn, of course.
I stopped my nervous scribblings and let out a small, imperceptible sigh, and rapped lightly at the edge of the table with two fingers. A faint trace of a ripple went through the water surface, and almost immediately, subsided to dead stillness again.
Never mind, I said.
Then, I got up looking for an aspirin.
