Love and Money
A short story
“Pour me another one, Adam,” John said.
“Another House lager?” Adam asked.
John nodded.
“You got it, bud.”
The bar was called O’Flanagan’s. Irish by fiat. The bartender, a mild, friendly man with a fashionable-looking beard in his 20s, was from somewhere in the Midwest.
The beer was cheap — it was what John could afford, and it did its job as well as any fancy cocktail.
The Doors played on the jukebox. “Can you picture what will be, so limitless and free,” Jim Morrison pondered.
It was a good bar, a good place to drink and forget.
John was a writer who didn’t do much writing anymore. He’d written one book, a novel called Love or Money. It wasn’t a best seller. It didn’t win any prizes. It wasn’t “short-listed” for anything. Or “long-listed.” It didn’t make any “best books of the year” lists. But it… existed. And that counted for something didn’t it?
The night his book was published, he went out drinking with a few friends and a girl he had recently started seeing. Her name was June, she was beautiful, and he loved how she looked when she looked at him. There was much to celebrate. They raised a toast to him and his book.
How long had it been since then? He tried not to think about it, but a decade was possible.
The beer tasted good that night. Life tasted good. The future beckoned, shining with a blinding light.
But it had all turned sour. He worked on a second book in fits and starts, but it never quite took shape. His publisher dropped him. Friends had faded. June was long gone.
All the good had vanished like a forgotten dream. Darkness had crept up on the golden boy.
Now, he told himself he was still working on his second book. But mostly, he worked on his drinking habit.
That night at O’Flanagan’s, a man sat at the bar, a couple of seats to John’s left, young-ish but somehow old-looking, fat, balding, a few overgrown remaining hairs partially covering his forehead in an ill-advised comb-over, his gut stretching his black t-shirt.
The fat man tried to draw John into conversation. John tried to get the fat man to shut up.
“You like music, I can tell,” the fat man said. He had a harsh, scratchy voice John found strangely ugly.
John gave just a faint nod, hoping that would end the conversation. But there was no discouraging the fat man.
“What kind do you like?” The fat man asked.
“Um, you know, rock.”
“Rock? Nah. Come on, rock is over, man, forget it. Dead and done. It’s all about hip-hop now!”
David Bowie followed the Doors on the jukebox.
I think you’re in the wrong bar, fat man.
“Um, yeah, no,” John muttered.
“Say, what kind of work do you do, out so late on a school night like this?” The fat man still wouldn’t shut up.
Without a regular job, John’s weeks and months went by without any particular rhythm or structure. Mondays were indistinguishable from Fridays.
Summer felt the same as winter, always cloudy.
He often didn’t keep track of what day it was, or even what month. The concept of time seemed hazy. For a moment, he wasn’t sure what a “school night” meant. Was it already so late?
“I’m a writer.” The truth in this statement was more a matter of identity than action. But wasn’t everything?
“What do you write?”
“Fiction.”
“Oh man, fiction? That’s a waste of time. Just a bunch of made-up nonsense. Write about the real world we live in!”
Though he didn’t wish to speak to the fat man, John couldn’t help but adding, “I wrote a book.”
“What’s it called?”
“Love or Money.”
“Love or money. That’s the thing with life, right? You can’t have it all. You have to make a choice. So, which one is it?”
“Which one is what?”
“Which one would you rather have? Love or money?”
John shrugged. He didn’t want to get into a philosophical discussion with the fat man. Still, he thought about the question.
He was back at O’Flanagan’s the following night and took his usual seat at the bar.
“You want a beer, bud?” Adam asked.
“Yeah. House lager.”
The Doors were playing again on the jukebox. “Learn to forget, learn to forget,” Jim Morrison urged from the beyond.
John looked around, relieved the fat man wasn’t in sight. The bar was quiet. It must be a school night, he thought.
A pretty girl sat at the bar, a couple of seats to his right, reading a book and drinking a glass of red wine a shade darker than her hair. She was young, probably around 30, with features that were somehow more striking for being seemingly ordinary. She wore a white dress that showed off her legs. She reminded him of someone, though he couldn’t quite remember who.
John drank his beer, stealing occasional glances at the pretty girl and her legs. She seemed oblivious to his presence. John recognized the book she was reading — “Lapvona” by Ottessa Moshfegh. He sensed an opening.
“Good book? I’ve been thinking about reading it,” John said. This wasn’t true. He had heard of the book but didn’t intend to read it. He wasn’t much of a reader anymore.
The pretty girl looked up. She gazed at him with a neutral expression.
When the pretty girl finally spoke, her voice sounded light, pleasant, and musical. “Well, I don’t much care for the plot, but I just love her writing. She writes about these ugly, grotesque people and events, but her language is beautiful. There is something about the juxtaposition between the writing and what she’s describing, it’s like it shows how beauty and brutality coexist. Not only in the same world, but even within the same sentence. And they magnify each other, rather than negate each other.”
“Yeah, I totally get that,” John said, only half-listening, mesmerized by the pretty girl’s legs. “I’m the same way. It’s not about the plot for me. I’m a writer myself, actually.”
“Oh? What do you write?”
“I write fiction.”
John sensed a subtle shift in the pretty girl’s gaze. “That’s amazing. Personally, I believe, the greatest truths can only be found in fiction.”
“Exactly. It’s through the artistic imagination that man searches for his one true soul.” This was a quote from his own book, spoken by the young up-and-coming writer who was the book’s protagonist.
“I like that. So, are you working on anything now?”
“I am, it’s a sequel to my first book. I’m calling it Love and Money.” This only became true as he said it. Before speaking to the pretty girl, his second book had no title and only a loose concept. But suddenly, he felt inspired. This book is really going to happen, he thought.
“Love and Money. That’s good. Why choose, one or the other? Well, I hope you finish it. Perhaps I could read it someday.”
The pretty girl smiled and returned to her book.
A couple of days later, John was back at O’Flanagan’s. It was more crowded than usual. I guess it’s not a school night, he thought.
He looked around for the pretty girl and her book, but she was gone. He wanted to tell her about his new book, the sequel, and how it was really starting to come along.
The fat man, though, was back.
“Hey, writer guy. How’s the book coming?” The fat man said. John drank his beer and pretended he didn’t hear him.
Later that night, back home from O’Flanagan’s, John dreamt his new book, finally finished, appeared on the New York Times best-seller list. The pretty girl from O’Flanagan’s called him. “You did it!” She said. “I’m so proud of you!”
Then she was there, beside him, but she wasn’t the girl from the bar anymore, she was June. She looked at him and smiled and she was shockingly beautiful — more beautiful, even, than she had ever been before. They were at a bar, and they made a toast. “To success,” she said. “To you.”
“No,” he said. “To love. To us.”
He put his hand in hers and leaned in to kiss her — but awoke before he could feel her lips.
