A Merrier Man

"A Merrier Man"
short stories
by Jake Kilroy

AN EXCERPT:

This Is All If Anarchy Had A Heart
Written April, 2007.

Darby had only tumbled home from wherever he was a half hour earlier. Catherine entered like a socialite but had the eyes of an addict, ready to burn what she loved.

.

She took off her coat and rolled up her sleeves. Darby, meanwhile, kept scribbling endless papers on the coffee table, a half-empty bottle of rum keeping him company. His black shirt was his only means of decency and his jeans were broken more than his heart would be if he admitted to having one, locked inside his chest cavity.

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“So this is how you spent your evening,” Catherine said in a stab observation.

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“Yeah, this is what I did. What’d you do? Attend some god-awful social dinner where you had to talk about the Caribbean as a resort and not as a slave trade? Oh, do tell. What minority are we blaming this month? What car is in? What stocks did you buy? Do we have a retirement plan? Are we buying an island? Wait, let’s buy one in the Caribbean and steal a man there, too.”

.

“Oh, I see you’re drunk again.”

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“Oh, I see you’re observant again.”

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“You’re too pathetic to even call an asshole.”

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“You’re too pathetic to even call me an asshole.”

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“This is a fun game. Let’s play more like it where you're too much of a whiskey dick to get your own catch phrases. Hijack something worthwhile, like a nuclear sub. But my creativity, Darby? Come on, surely you’ve driven a limozine once. Remember how comfy it was when you were a decent man? Let’s watch you fall apart over this, lying, but all is reality when you’re a writer, right, Ambassador?”

.

“Catherine, I’d tell you to bite your tongue, but your tongue is the only thing I always like about you.”

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“I’d club you with my heels, but they’re worth more than your life.”

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“Oh, but how would you be a saint painter then? You’d be considered for assault and I’d recommend the Purple Heart, but I don’t think they listen to other heroes. By the way, I’m that other hero. You, you’re a scam in a nice dress. Lay me once and I’ll be your hero by daylight. A travesty, I know, but the life I chose when I decided to go rogue.”

.

“I’d beat you until your guys poured out and I’d paint them on the walls, so you can remember when you stopped having the guts to love, lover boy.”

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Darby took champion swigs in the seconds after. He wiped his mouth and smiled.

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“Love me then! Kill me then! The same? Fine! Beat the best out of me then,” he demanded.

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“You think yourself a Polaroid Saint screaming blue into a red curtain? Fine. Then take my bruises and put them to canvas.”

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“I’m not torturing you, Darby.”

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“Ah, so you’re torturing yourself then? These paintbrushes serve as knives, eh? Well, cut me down to size and let’s see you be the bigger person. You can have whatever you take from me. You can have it all. Sweet and swell, well, watch me collapse like the Brooklyn Bridge when the saints finally when marching, when they finally played that fucking anthem and the streets were nothing but a swampy marsh of riot gear and sparkplugs to play the godforsaken songs we bent and broke on guitar the night before. I’ll be damned if I’m allowing you to be something less than a big fuckin’ explosion, Catherine.”

.

“Oh, look at you! Look at you! We sleep together a few nights this month and you think you’re the Devil’s underwear!”

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“Catherine, what the hell is that supposed to mean?”

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“It means you let bad shit happen, you ignorant poet of a fuck.”

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“You mean ignorant fuck of a poet, right?”

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“No, I meant what I said. You’re a poet, with delusions of grandeur as lofty and lusty, but you’re ignorant like a third grader who just got bum-fucked on the playground, lost his marbles and now he’s trying to thumb his way through the hallways, looking over his shoulder. But you fuck like the man you should be.”

“How’s that?”

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“Lofty and lusty, but with honesty and truth in the sheets. But hardly a good word to say about you by morning.”

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“So I’m none of the adjectives I want to exist as. Fine, give me another bottle and I’ll love you right. I’ll love you in time and on time. And even when you’re being a bitch in the morning, talking upright citizens and how relationships are what ties this snappy world to its own belt, I’ll make you breakfast. Just so you can have something in your stomach other than pride.”.“Well, aren’t you the hard-worker then?”

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“Listen, I just finally dragged my broken body home and I'm already drinking and writing fiction,” Darby said hardly above an awful whisper. He held his bottle of rum towards Heaven, nodded, and pleaded, “Be good to be, saints. Be bad to me, sinners. My sheets are itchy with lust and my heart is pulp. Dance the good fight, poets.”

.

“Jesus,” Catherine said with a sigh and matching shrug. “Could you be anymore of a senselessly damaged poet?”

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“Yes,” Darby said with confidence, tilting his bottle in brutal admiration of Catherine, dancing a wink in his left eye and a sparkle in his right. “I could actually be senseless and damaged. Maybe even deranged. Then I’d have bookshelves of poetry and stories for the hapless wanderers that should be following me to the end of this flat world.”

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“The world is round. It’s been that way forever. Stop being poetic.”

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“The world’s flat because I fucking say it is. That’s what a writer does. Drink yourself silly, Catherine, and you’d never be serious again. Drink yourself serious and you’ll kill yourself. I promise you. You’ll off yourself like you were the martyr in the Macy Day Parade. You don’t have the guts to stay alive.”

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“I’ve seen your guts. You crumble like pirate ships at war with just the sound of a blow job. I’d cripple you with just these two lips.”

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“Yeah? Well, at least I'd get what I want.”

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“You'd want more.”

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“But I can live with less.”

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“I can’t.”

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“Yeah, I don’t know who I’m kidding.”

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“Nobody. Meet me in the bedroom in five minutes.”