BY DAVID PARTINGTON
Copyright is held by the author.
1.
Greg
PHILLIP WAS immersed in the Orations of Cicero when he became distracted by a man in his doorway playing air guitar.
“I wanna rock!” said Greg, accenting his words with a dramatic swing of his imaginary long hair.
Phillip sighed. He’d seen Greg, his housemate at the University of Toronto residence, like this before. “I thought you had a statistics exam tomorrow.”
“What did book learning ever get anyone?”
“Quite a lot, actually . . .”
“Well, you can keep it! I’m done. Music is my life from now on. I need to hit the road, play some stadiums, and show the world what the Greg-man is all about.” He played a muscular riff on his air guitar, making appropriate sounds with his mouth, ending with a sneer he’d been practicing in the mirror.
“Good God — you can’t even play a musical instrument,” Phillip objected.
“No problemo. First guitar lesson is Monday morning.” He pumped his fist, then went back across the hall and began noisily packing up his posters of Jimi Hendrix, Eddie Van Halen, and other boyhood idols as he prepared for his imminent departure. “I’m blowing this fire trap!” he shouted defiantly over his shoulder as he carried the last of his belongings out to his car.
2.
Jenn
Phillip’s girlfriend, Jenn, was approaching the townhouse residence just as Greg was making his grand exit. She held the door for him.
Though the two had rarely spoken, Jenn was intrigued when Greg told her about his ambitious plans.
“Let’s just say I’m going places — big time!”
“Good for you.”
Greg held up his hand for a high-five, but Jenn thought he was waving, so she just waved back and said, “See you around.”
After padding up the staircase, she tapped lightly on Phillip’s open bedroom door. Jenn had known Phillip since they were both English majors. Now she worked in a bookstore with an apartment across town, and he was a grad student.
“I take it you’ve heard about Greg’s latest folly,” said Phillip, rolling his eyes.
“Oh well, at least he’s doing something with his life,” said Jenn, who sometimes felt as if she herself was spinning her wheels.
“Yes, he’s doing something; he’s making an ass of himself, as per usual.”
“Well, everyone can’t be a great intellectual like you.”
“No, you’re quite right. If I seem nonplussed, it’s because only last week he told me he wanted to become a ‘stock car’ driver, whatever that is.”
“How’s your thesis coming along?”
“Ah, well, in the words of Lord Frederick Leighton, ‘Genius knows no hurry.’ I’m not a little man, Jenn. The world will hear my thunder soon enough. You get uncouth ruffians like young Gregory who are all sound and fury, signifying nothing, but you and I — we’re cut from a different cloth.” He was standing now, his feet more than shoulder-width apart, looking imperious as he surveyed his imagined future.
Jenn had seen him strike this pose before, typically in front of all the hardcover books on his shelves, looking as though he’d stepped out of an ad for somebody’s whisky. The tweedy-scholar routine that had once made her weak-kneed was beginning to feel played out. She didn’t mention that, however, saying instead, “It’s so wonderful to hear you talk — just like dialogue in a play.”
“Would that it were.”
Phillip now steered the conversation to a masterwork he was dreaming up: a book he would write once he finished his thesis. “The idea,” he said, “is to turn the tables on everyone who has thwarted me, using satire to unmask them and thus let the world see what ignoramuses they are.”
“What’s it going to be about?”
“It will be about everything. And it will be about nothing. Don’t you see — the whole universe is trying frantically to gain my attention in the hope that I will give it a mention. It’s almost too sublime! I see it as a trilogy, sort of like Dante’s Divine Comedy — though his opus was, dare I say, neither divine nor a comedy.”
“Yes, you’ve mentioned that before,” sighed Jenn.
Leaving the student residence that evening, Jenn returned to her apartment. There, she made some chamomile tea with honey and traded her boots for ballet flats. They seemed to go well with the bandana around her head and the puffy shirt that reminded Phillip of one of Tolstoy’s peasants.
A yoga mat was rolled up in the corner, waiting for the day when she had learned the Sanskrit names for all the asanas she planned to do. Shelves made of planks and bricks displayed books by Margaret Atwood and Leonard Cohen. But, as was true in her life generally, Jenn felt something was missing.
Taking out a copy of Plath’s The Bell Jar, she set it down artfully on the vintage wooden crates and sheet of glass that served as her coffee table. At first, she liked the effect, but then she decided it was overkill and put it back.
3.
Sky
As Jenn walked to the bookstore the next day, she noticed a slender young man with a scraggly beard and Doc Martens standing on a corner with a metal box at his feet. Priding herself on her compassion for street people, she stopped and opened her shoulder bag.
The man, who had looked detached and unwell, perked up when he realized that someone was about to make a donation. “That’s right, spread the love,” he said. As she fumbled for money, he discreetly turned his head away. That’s when she noticed that he had his hair in a bun.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, intuiting that he was probably some sort of performance artist who wouldn’t want her charity. She returned the bag to her shoulder.
“No, I welcome donations.”
“I’m confused. Are you a performer?”
He pointed to a cardboard sign near the metal box, on which he had written unevenly in felt pen the cryptic words, “Showtime(s) – always. Forever.”
“Ahh. So this is a performance right now?”
“That’s a professional secret. If you want to see more, check out my Instagram page. I’m @skywanderer.'”
“Sky Wanderer?”
“That’s me.” And that was almost true since his legal name was Steve Wandursky.
Jenn introduced herself and added, “I like your hair.”
“Chicks dig the man bun. I’ve been working it for a while now, but I may shave my head, and maybe get a nose ring.”
“Woah!” Jenn felt at the very edge of her comfort zone talking to someone as out-there as Sky. At one point in her life, she had considered getting a tattoo of a rose on her ankle — plus, she sometimes burned incense and had a black-and-white Diane Arbus photograph framed in her kitchen — but Sky’s wildness was clearly in another league. Jenn loved the idea of being so urban and edgy that she could connect with such a person. Pulling out her phone, she followed Sky’s Instagram account on the spot and notified Phillip so he could follow it as well. “Do you ever post videos of your performances?” she asked.
“No, never.”
“But wouldn’t that help your career?”
“I could perform in front of thousands of people, but why should I? I don’t have to prove anything. I do what I want when I want.”
“Ah, you’re so free!”
“Hell yeah. Free as the wind.”
She was visibly impressed by his spirit but thought she might be able to help him with his image. “Did you ever think of wearing a knitted hat?”
“Like a toque?”
“Yeah. One often sees street performers on YouTube wearing knitted hats. I’m thinking it might give you kind of a deep, ‘old soul’ look. You know, like someone who has seen the sadness of the world and is soldiering on.”
“Ahh. I get what you’re saying. Actually, I have a hat like that, but it’s in my car.”
Until that moment, it hadn’t occurred to her that he lived in his car. Now she felt bad for him but drawn closer. She plopped a handful of bills in his box and gave a little bow, saying, “Namaste.”
That evening, Sky drove to the upscale suburb where he lived with his parents. He opened the box of cash and showed it to his mother.
“Look,” he said proudly. “I found someone who appreciates what I’m trying to do. Who says there’s no money in being a performance artist?”
“Your father and I.”
4.
Phillip
Though Phillip had permitted Jenn to make him an Instagram account, he’d never used it, not wanting to encourage anyone to do anything whatsoever on social media. He was therefore annoyed when Jenn suggested that he follow Sky Wanderer and saw that she’d not limited herself to liking his pictures but went so far as to use heart emojis on all of his comments.
He found it particularly galling that she could be so taken with this Sky person, who appeared to be a vagrant, while seemingly unimpressed by his own planned novel that was destined to make him a player on the world stage. Pretty rich coming from someone who said she admired ambition. Then again, if Sky’s ambition was to die in a gutter, maybe she’d found her man.
Jenn often dropped by in late afternoon, but this time she’d called ahead very formally as if she was going to make an announcement. Phillip could put two and two together. Sitting at his desk of dark-stained wood, purchased from The Bombay Company, he turned a five-inch resin bust of Sophocles over in his hands and braced himself for what was to come. There was just time enough to work his anger to a pitch when he heard her knock. He stormed down the stairs.
Flinging open the door, he said, “Enter,” very coldly, then retreated to the living room. Jenn followed him. Turning around sharply to face her, he went on the attack. “I know everything!” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“What do you mean, ‘what do I mean?’? Do you take me for a fool? You think I don’t know what’s going on?”
Jenn lowered herself to the couch, not looking Phillip in the eye.
“Jenn, old girl, it appears you underestimate me. I’ve put up with you all this time. I’ve put up with your smooth jazz, your spider plants and your crystals, your Rod McKuen, and your tattoo…”
“I don’t have a tattoo.”
“You thought about it, though. Don’t deny it.”
“What’s this all about?”
“Methinks you know perfectly well.”
“Oh, you thinks that, do you? So typical. Just cram it!”
“‘Cram it’? What’s gotten into you?”
“Look, I just want to be free. Can’t you understand that? And maybe I found someone who makes me feel that way.”
“Aha!” He’d successfully extracted a confession but was visibly crestfallen. Bowing his head, he looked away. “Well, go then. Just go. I hope you and Sky will be very happy in your new life. To wit: sleeping in alleys and eating out of dumpsters. I’m disappointed in you, but so be it.”
She stepped out the front door, then stopped and turned. “Wait. Sky? You think I’m interested in that street performer?”
“Who else, pray tell?”
Greg stepped up to the doorstep and put his arm around her. “C’mon, Babe — let’s rock and roll!”
“He’s going to be famous!” said Jenn, admiring her new man — who flicked his tongue like Gene Simmons.
***
David Partington’s short stories have been published in The Bacopa Literary Review, Jake, Power Cut Magazine, Ruth and Ann’s Guide to Time Travel, The Literary Hatchet, Roi Fainéant and elsewhere (nothing famous). Since his retirement as a kangaroo keeper at Toronto Zoo, he’s been able to stay out of trouble while spending very little money.
