This Last Day
written by Larson / Barbour
This Last Day
The city sat indifferent to the deaths of its inhabitants. It did not care, nor notice, nor even have the slightest control. More often than not the city was to blame. And today another man would die, partly because of the indifference and anonymity the city provides. He would not be the only one who would die in the city today, but this is his story.
Lying with his face half buried in his pillow, his clothes half on from the night before, Elliot’s half sleep brings him little solace; it is the thin sleep reserved for drunks and insomniacs. He presses his face, smashed and crooked, deeper into the worn pillow. How could anyone sleep with all this buzzing? “Damn flies!” Elliot screams and erupts from his bed flailing for anything he can hurl. His hand closes around a whisky bottle procured from the corner store the night before, and he hurls it into the vicinity of the buzzing. It bounces off the dresser and knocks over the nearly finished bottles of the second cheapest wine and whiskey from the night before last night, and the night before that. And before that. The fly and his companions begin buzzing again.
Of course they thrive here. They find Elliot’s apartment a wealth of life for themselves and their great companions the cockroaches–moldy scraps of food littering the room. Sugary alcohol still drying in the bottom of the bottles. One fly sits pondering his plot in life as he licks the grime off his feet on the dried and shriveled jade plant in the corner of the room. He is happy. The only others the flies share the room with are Elliot’s demons themselves. And they have all grown quite attached to this ONCE great teller of stories. Elliot does not see the demons, heavy as they are, they are invisible and elusive. He sees the crumpled sheets of paper. His failure written on each one. He sees an empty chair next to the typewriter. He sees the lingering smoke and empty bottles. Constant reminders of his distraction and ineffectuality. Elliot swings his legs over the bed, fishes a crumpled cigarette from the soft pack in his breast pocket, lights it, and exhales despair into the room.
The room has always been there. It was clean when she was around, but ever since Elliot’s love walked out the door, humming the melody she always had on her lips, it had gradually slipped into its disheveled state. It was as if something broke inside him; all he could do was sleep. Elliot dreams of that day often. At his typewriter, with her standing behind him, her arms draped around his neck. Her smell of almonds and lavender enveloped him. Her cuffed jeans and her red shoes with the ankle straps. The look that always shone through her blue eyes, “The world is ripe, it’s up to you to pick it.” She wanted him to come with her and join in her journey through the world. She was built to love and appreciate everything around her. But it couldn’t happen in this small room, shades drawn, his back always facing her as he hunched at the typewriter. “Please come,” she asked endlessly. Holding all of his emotions behind his eyelids he watched, as she with a somber smile and a hum, walked past his door marked with the #314 and into the elevator. Her turning and mouthing, “I will love you…” , was the last thing he saw before elevator took her down and spit her out onto the streets of the city where she would become just another stranger. Another passed glance or echo of shoes on the pavement.
He had sat in the chair, staring at the blank page, trying to figure out what was happening, when he realized he had lost her. He had lost her. He sprang up and ran to the elevator, but it already had descended to the street below and did not return. He hit the down button. He still felt her voice singing her melody. He pressed it again and again. He could still smell her. Feel the weight of her arms. Again and again he hit the button.
Even after the repair, he would enter the elevator car but it would never descend with him on board. No one could begin to understand this oddity. But there it was…His one love had left, and he would never be able to follow. He would sit in the machine for hours on end, damning whatever caused him this despair. He finally resigned himself to the stairs, and as he climbed them he could hear her voice echoing in the stairwells, Mmm…mmm…mmm…..mmm. Entering his room he would collapse onto his bed while hearing her voice echoing in his mind. Mmm…mmm…mmm…..mmm.
Outside his room The City waits. It breathes with people moving, machines grinding, the wonders of transportation. People move horizontally, then vertically. They are below the surface, they are above the surface. The City breathes and waits. If someone dies, someone else will be born. The City is immortal….
Outside the streets are wet and his eyes are wet because he is drunk again. His mouth is wet, there is the burn of the whisky, but then again, there is always the burn of the whisky. Somehow this dark bar with split red vinyl stools is better than his room. There are people here, there are ideas here, people to understand ideas.
“I know!” he screams, “I know how it will end…”
One hand is holding an empty shot glass and the other is clasped on the back of a man who seems familiar in his brown tweed jacket, but lacks the look of friendship in his eyes.
The old man looks at Elliot and says, “How can you know the ending if you don’t even have a beginning.” His face breaks into a smile, and the man throws back his whisky. Elliot realizes he has no teeth.
“The beginning doesn’t matter, it’s the end that…” He can’t finish his sentence before the bartender, Miss Valerie, comes over interrupting him.
“Hey Elliot! Quit yelling or I’ll toss you out!”
“Just telling my friend here how it all ends. You see, the city knows how.”
“Elliot, you’re scaring my customers. There’s no one…” Elliot doesn’t hear the rest, he is sliding off the bar stool onto the floor.
Waking violently, Elliot screams out loud with despair over and over without knowing how or why this escaped his body. Overcome with emotion, he passes back out.
The dream is of her; it’s always of her. The first time they’ve met. Its fall and the streets are golden. He’s on another date with another woman who bores him. His best selling novel Don’t Forget Where the Sun Sets has brought him acclaim, money, and bewilderment. For some reason beyond him, the whole world seems to think this is the greatest book a young author can write. He feels like it was luck. He and his date, Miss Elaine, are at a theater. She’s mad her hair is messed up from his motorcycle. He’s bored by her drama and trivialities. He knows she’s in the bathroom, so the whisky in front of him has his attention.
As he sips the amber liquid off the ice, he hears the sound of deliberate movement all around. Looking behind him, he sees women moving between the tables of onlookers on their way to the stage. The band begins to play and he dives back into his drink, finishing it off. When the ice hits his teeth, he feels something he never has before: a warm hand on the back of his neck, a touch that immobilizes him. He could do nothing but freeze with the pieces of ice in his mouth as a woman so beautiful, and just so… so right, sauntered around to face him. Everything disappeared around him. He doesn’t notice anything but this one woman dancing until the night was over. Miss Elaine was gone, the waiter gone, patrons gone, dancers gone. Just her. Her eyes stole him from everything else. It was the most amazing moment of his life. He keeps his eyes on her and doesn’t move again till she came back to him. That night, this dancer grabbed onto him on his way out the door.
She stepped off his motorcycle into the elevator in his building and into his arms. Her smell was so strong, her arms felt so real, and yet, he was fearful. He pleaded with her not to touch the button to his floor, this was always where the dream dissolved. But her hand reached out and as the dream faded to a dingy grey, “Please come”, she repeated over and over again. But he is in front of his typewriter now, unable to move, to turn to her and he can hear her fading voice as she walks down his hallway. Mmmm…mmm…mmm…mm.
He awakes screaming in pain…
Outside his drawn blinds he knows the city is waiting. Waiting for his next novel. Waiting to destroy him through his vices. Waiting for more blood to pump through its veins, more people on the streets, more accomplishments, more downfalls, more stories, more, more, more. The city will do anything to stay alive.
Like so many mornings before, he passes these dreams beyond his consciousness, forgetting the pains of sleep. Remembering the melody she always sang on her lips. Warming a pot on the stove and drinking his hangover away with coffee, he prepares for yet another day with his typewriter. He stares out the window, watching cars fly past on the road, three stories below. Where is this city taking them? He forgets once again to water the jade plant his love gave him on his birthday. He swats at the flies attacking his coffee, his means to enter the waking world again. Over and over again, his memories run like a mobius strip: the pictures of dancing, newspapers, birds, mountains, churches, mothers, fathers, love.
“How can you love it all?” He turns and sees the crooked painting on the wall, reminding himself for the hundredth time to straighten it.
“She loved it all.”
“And I loved her.”
He makes his bed with the sheets tucked in at the foot of the bed, like she always did.
“She loves me”.
He then quickly pulled the sheets out.
Now setting out towards the typewriter… Ideas of the world turn over and over in his head. Sprouting into an amazing beginning with no end. Her melody always present. Papers ending up crumpled up on the floor. Stories that could have once been great, now turn up unfinished. Writing… The melody keeps entrancing Elliot. The single calming element in this process. It is all he can think about. But it leads nowhere. Writing…
Crumple…
Writing…
Crumple…
Writing…
Crumple.
The City waits. There is always The City outside the walls of your room. It can offer you what you want, what you don’t need. It doesn’t know it is alive, but it is. It lives because the people let it live; it is an extension of them, their hopes and failures. But it has grown too much and the people no longer control it. It does not care if you live or you die, only that you do one or the other. It is waiting for you to decide…
His tiny room gets Elliot nowhere. Frustrated, he takes for the stairs down to the back door and to his favorite whiskey spot.
The city is ready now to take hold.
Meeting a bum in the alley, Elliot offers a smoke for a drink. But the man just offers him the bottle.
“No smoke needed…. ” says the bum. “What kind of man are you if you can’t share your addictions?”
Elliot downs a swig.
“Look around… time is running out,” the bum cackles.
Elliott thrashes out at the man, only to find an old cardboard box marked fragile in his place…
Elliot walks down the alley, glancing back every few steps. Nothing there, but bottle still in hand. He takes down the rest and throws it back at the faded brown mess. But the bottle just bounces off the pile of garbage, stirring up the rats searching for dinner. He stumbles over his own feet and hits the hard, wet pavement.
Picking himself up off the ground, he stumbles over the curb and sees Miss Valerie pouring drinks through the window of his bar, The Pacific Inn. He has seen her in his apartment before. Only in the dull of the morning light, never knowing how she got there. She looks the same through the windows. He wants more whisky and to feel as if someone has known him. He’s on the stool again and it smells like beer has spent years working its way into every crevice of the small bar. The flickering lights never quite seem to get comfortable. Hoping she can get him back to his apartment, Miss Valerie pours him a double. He drinks it down right off. He’s got to get his love’s song out of his head. Mmm…mmm.
Another drink…
Mmmm…mmm….mmm…
Another……..
Then there is silence, but it’s the wrong kind.
The mouths of the other patrons are not open, but he can feel them screaming at him with their eyes. What is it that he’s done? He looks around himself, and finds some broken glass and peanuts on the floor where his old vinyl stool used to be. The stool had found its way into the old jukebox across the bar, but Otis Redding still sings through the speakers. Some of the lights sway back and forth between him and that misplaced stool. He turns to the side, and there is Miss Valerie coming at him. He slips on the wet ground, and falls down on the peanuts and glass. He feels his gashed hand fill with warm blood, but feels no pain. She is yelling at him and conducting a few of the other regulars to get him out the door. They oblige happily, as they think any one of them can be taking his place of desire with Miss Valerie. All of these men flexing their muscles at once shove Elliot across the floor and onto the street. Now the city has control; whatever it offers, Elliot will take.
He picks himself up off the ground and looks down the block at the black and white sign that says “Liquor”; if that isn’t a sign he doesn’t know what is. He takes a celebratory drink off the bottle he got from Miss Valerie, and jumps in the cab headed towards the waterfront.
The cabby asks what the commotion was back there, but his only reply is a pull off the bottle. That’s when the cab halts quickly. Elliot’s right arm is dripping blood into a pool on the seat. He smiles when he sees this, because he can’t even feel it. When he looks up, there is a gun pointed at his face. “Get Out!” Elliot shoots his hand up and quickly grabs it away. BANG. The gun goes off, the bullet straying off to the side and pummeling through the back seat. The cab driver rolls out of his seat, running down the nearest alley. Elliot holds onto the gun staring down at his pooling blood wondering how he wasn’t shot.
Slowly, a tenuous crowd gathers a safe distance from the car. Elliot moves from the back seat around to the front of the cab, dripping blood onto the street, holding the gun with his other hand. Everyone was silent.
He turns to the crowd yelling, “What kind of man are you if you can’t share your addictions!” The bottle flies from his marred hand at a group of men in suits.
He sees the gun in his other hand and stares down confused. The wail of approaching sirens can be heard in the distance. Losing his breath, he sets the gun on the ground in front of him, turns and gets into the driver seat. Immediately the crowd clears from the front of the cab and Elliot punches the accelerator.
He flies through the streets as fast as he can push the other cars out of the way. He hits some of them, misses others. He can see the fireworks lighting up red and blue in his rear view mirror. He doesn’t know where he’s going, he just wants to be safe. He just wants the weight of her arms, and the smell of lavender and almonds to envelop him.
He opens his eyes and sees blood on the steering wheel. He sees a ticket booth on the hood of the cab, red carpet, broken glass, and shattered beams of wood. Has he been here before? He opens the car door, and as the front door of the theater slides off the hood of the cab, a flush of memories comes over him. He remembers first meeting his love. He remembers her arm in his as they walked out the front doors he has just crashed through. Mmm…mmm…mmm…mmm.
As the police cars pull up to the theater, he runs down the center aisle and through the back of the stage. He goes straight out the back door right onto the waterfront. He sees the city looming over him. He feels for a moment that he is outside of it, that he has escaped it. He remembers always loving the sloshing sound of water against the shore. He remembers walking on this boardwalk with his love, feeling the possibility of anything he wanted. He remembers closing his eyes and feeling the mist of the sea on his face and the warmth of her hand in his. On the pier, as the city waits and watches, he puts one hand into his jacket and closes his eyes. He hears her voice humming, Mmmm.. mmm… mmmm…mmmm. He can hear the boots of the police running down the pier. He hears them shout to take his hand out of his jacket slowly and get down on his stomach. He hears her voice Mmmm.. mmm… mmmm…mmmm. He hears the click of guns cocking. He knows what he will do.
In the end, as he jerks his hand out of his jacket, he remembers his love. He remembers the smell of a blown out match, a freshly opened wine, the forests of Montana, the ink of his typewriter, the winning home run, the last page of a good book, his favorite apple pie, running into a loved ones arms. He remembers his time of believing in himself, and the possibilities love brings with it. This love can go on forever. In the end, he laid in the water after the bullets had ripped through him, knowing that his memories happened: that they were real and that he was real. Looking up at the city through the water, as his breath escaped him, he knew those memories could never be taken away. He finally escaped the monster that had stolen his life.
This is the place he’ll live forever.