Nat, Nat, Nat, you can’t write this.
Why the hell not? It’s deep, it’s intellectual, it’s cosmopolitan, and it’s timely. What do you mean I can’t write it? I’ve written it.
It’s so unreal. How can this guy be depressed? Look at his life.
Depression is a disease. Besides, you have not gotten to the part where he’s hiding in the lobby of the Four Seasons and has sex with a bellboy.
Really.
I could make the scene about you, I suppose, and I’d have to call it Go Down, Moses.
Are you going to fill it with all sorts of literary allusions?
No, I’m trying to remain authentic here.
Dad?
Son?
I can’t keep up.
Und so weiter.
What?
Ashita wa ashita, kyo wa kyo. It’s Japanese.
That much I gathered. And it means?
A shrug.
I’ll be Murphy again. And I’m sitting with my Leica still, having just looked through the viewfinder and seen the cast and crew of the March on Washington. Nat was smoking a joint rather unabashedly. Charlton Heston was pretending not to know him. John Lewis was stepping forward to give his speech. A pigeon standing on Lincoln’s head did not know whether to fly away or shit. The phone rings and it is Douglas and he says, Donald needs you.
Donald is my patient now and so I cannot leave him there to fade into fat death without treatment. He must at the very least do so while being treated and that is where I come in. And so I walked around the corner and up the block as I have described to the building where the twins reside. The air is rife with the smell of cooking Barcisalproros and I have a sudden fleeting understanding of how Donald has gotten to be all that he is. Still, I am able to control myself and not buy one of the rolls and walk up the one flight of stairs to his apartment. The woman greets me at the door.
What is your name?
Tracy.
Is that the same name you told me last time?
Does it matter?
Not really.
Donald remains in the bed where I left him. I can’t see that he has moved, but I assume, perhaps stupidly, that he must have, at least to get to the toilet, but more likely to roll his rolls downstairs for one or twenty of those ethnically confused, fried rolls. His breathing is in fact labored and I can see why Douglas, who is standing by the window, as if a lookout, was concerned enough to call me.
Are you having pain?
He shakes his head no. I just can’t seem to catch my breath.
He is sweating and I realize that it is overly warm in the room. Would you open the window, please?
This window.
Yes. Please.
The window is opened. The noises of the street come inside. A man yells at another man, Terrence! You’s a bitch, man! But I ain’t yo bitch! The man shouts back. A woman screams, Fuck!
You need to check in to the hospital so I can examine you properly.
No hospitals. People die in hospitals.
People die in beds, too, and yet you’re in one. Okay, you’re asthmatic, I’m pretty sure. I’m going to prescribe an inhaler for you. I’d like to ask that you don’t abuse it. You might try some Claritin as well. Your eyes are red, but I don’t know whether that’s unusual for you. You’re not going to live as long as many people. That’s according to the truth.
Don’t sugarcoat it, Doc.
You’re probably allergic to something. More than likely, this room. Or yourself. Do you take drugs?
You’re prescribing them for me.
No, are you an illegal drug user? Not that I really care, but it might affect what legitimate drugs I think are safe for you.
I don’t take drugs for recreation, if that’s what you’re asking.
It is what I’m asking.
I do not take drugs. He calls to the woman. Tracy, take that prescription from the doc and go pick it up for me.
I’ll do it, Douglas says.
And get some of those chocolate-covered raisins.
You got it.
I’m feeling a little better already.
Helped to open the window.
I won’t go to a hospital.
I can’t force you.
Take a lens, Doc.
And so I do. I take a 135 mm for the Leica I have sitting on my desk at home. It is chrome and beautiful and I feel a thrill as I lift it. I consider for a second turning it down, but the thought gives me a shiver and I let the feeling, not the lens, go.
Ch’ing Yuan could not decide if mountains were mountains and waters were waters. At least he could not commit to a position. Zen is like that. Or it is?
And?
You and I exchange lines of dialogue. Each line is a trap, a misuse, and each misuse is justified by some standard upon which we have previously agreed, if tacitly. Thereby appears the nature of meaning. It is a force that hazards to subjugate other forces, other meanings, other languages. We understand this all too well and yet, and yet — well, it is like the infirmity, the defect at the base of a dam. It will hold and it will hold and then it will give up, the dam will give up. As do we all.
All this to say?
A painting may have a back, but no inside.
Where did you find so many stories, Lodovico? I don’t understand.
Of course you don’t, son. That’s what he said to me. Of course you don’t, son. That was all Ariosto got from the good cardinal. Where did you find so many stories, Lodovico?
Freud believed we never give up anything but only exchange one thing for another.
What made you think of that?
I’m not sure. I was sitting here, looking at her belly all big like that, and thinking one day one of us will be talking to our son and the other of us will be gone.
You mean dead.
I mean dead.
That’s true.
And even then, unless I want to live in a fantasy, and I’m not saying I don’t, I’ll have to give you up. Or you’ll have to give me up. But I can’t imagine exchanging you for anything.
A younger woman?
No.
You realize that Freud was full of shit.
You don’t have penis envy?
Not in the least. And why do you think this baby is a boy?