She looks at me as if I’ve just spoken in tongues.
“I’m going to ask you a question and you have to be honest with me.” The look on her face is intense and the rest of the room fades away.
“Okay.”
“Are you doing this on purpose?” she asks.
“What?”
“I mean, are you planning to write a book about a man who loses everything? Who gets his house taken away from him and has to live on the streets? Because if you are, then fine. Just let me know so that I don’t worry so much about you.”
“No,” I reply, “but it’s not a bad idea.”
She wants to smile.
“I wouldn’t put it past you.”
“At least then I’d have something to write about. Instead of this.”
“Still nothing?”
“I’ve written over a hundred beginnings. None of them have anything remotely redeeming about them. I’ve tried on my machine and on paper. I’ve even started sleeping with my Moleskine in case anything comes to me in the middle of the night.”
This is torture. Admitting it to the woman I most care about in the world is like being run over by a train. I need her to see me as talented, successful, wealthy; instead, she sees this: this failure of a man. This rice husk, this fly casing. This shadow of a shadow.
“Look, Slade, I’m worried. It seems that you’re not getting better. I mean I keep thinking that you’ll have a breakthrough but it doesn’t seem to be happening. Have you thought of maybe taking a break from writing? Doing something else for a while? Maybe get a job to pay the bills?”
“A break from writing? There is no such thing. That’s like saying take a break from breathing. Putting myself in a coma. I can’t.”
“But I see how depressed you are. Your eyes are… empty. You’re not yourself. It’s like I’m looking… looking at a silhouette of you.”
“Well, maybe that’s part of my journey.”
“I think at the very least, you should consider seeing someone.”
“Unless it’s someone who’ll write my book for me, I don’t see the point.”
“So what are you going to do? Wallow in your writer’s block till some kind of miracle happens? Do you think a story will drop down from the sky?”
“That’s the way it usually happens, yes.”
“But it’s not happening, is it?” she demands.
I know she’s right. It’s practically beyond hope. I’m lost for words, lost for everything. Desiccated.
“I have a theory for you,” Eve says, her eyes glittering, “but you’re not going to like it.”
I put my glass down, look up at her, waiting for a revelation.
“Here’s the thing,” she says, soft and gentle, like a nurse with bad news, “I think you’re stuck because you’re not giving enough, not putting enough of yourself out there.”
I feel the warm beginnings of anger but I wait for her to explain.
“You’re a taker. And you’ve been taking for a long time. And I think that you can only take so much from the universe before it closes shop.”
I laugh bitterly. There is a sad old man attached to my back.
She is infuriating, and she smells too good. Like sex and cookies.
“Look, Eve, I appreciate the concern. I really do. I am a taker. I’m not denying it. I have to take in order to write.”
I stand up and Eve follows suit.
“It’s about more than that, Slade,” her voice is rising, trying to get through.
“It’s about how you use people and then throw them away. You leach everything you can and then you crush them and trash them.”
In my imagination I have the vision of myself downing a beer, squashing the tin on my forehead and then throwing it backwards, over my head, a perfect landing in the bin. I don’t cover my mouth to burp. In reality, I sway and look at Eve with weary eyes.
“I understand that you have issues with women; that it’s very difficult for you, especially with what happened with your mother.”
I grab her wrist to stop her words from splattering on the walls and carpet.
“Don’t bring my mother into this,” I whisper, close to her ear. “This is not about her.”
It’s a lie: it’s always been about her. Everything has always been about her. And Emily.
“I just think that there are some things that you have to start facing!” she yells, “Otherwise how else are you going to get better?”
“I don’t need to get better!” I yell back. “I need to be this! The person I am.”
“Damn it. Slade, there are people who care about you! Who hurt when you hurt yourself! Why are you so fucking self-destructive?”
“It’s not about being self-destructive. It’s about living and living requires taking risks. My writing demands it of me.”
“Ha! Like almost ending up in a wheelchair after deciding to jump out of a plane? And almost dying in Nigeria?”
I wave my hand at her to signal she’s exaggerating.
“And Bangkok? You were in hospital for two months, Slade. No one even knew what had happened to you, or where you were.”
“None of that was my fault! You know damn well that I was on assignments. Would you have had me turn down some of the most important writing assignments of my life?”
“Like driving your car over a bridge?”
It had always been a sore point. I wish I had never told her about it.
“I planned that very carefully, nothing could have gone wrong.”
“It was suicidal, Slade. Everything could have gone wrong, you’re just lucky it didn’t!”
“Am I?” That was the bitter old man speaking.
Despite the evidence to the contrary, I’m not suicidal. If anything, these stunts make me feel more alive. Maybe Eve will never understand that.
Heat rushes inside of me. Part rage, part lust, my body is magnetised by Eve’s. I step closer to her, too close, forcing her to take a step back.
“You treat your life experiences like… like notches in your bedpost! I just think… that if you had more meaning in your life…”
As I advance she takes another step back. I’ve had enough. I fling open the double doors that lead into the garden as a sign for her to leave.
I have to shout over the noise for her to hear me.
“Maybe I think that meaning is overrated. As far as taking risks is concerned – perhaps you should try it sometime. You, sequestered in your cocoon of a studio. You’re hardly, as you say, ‘putting yourself out there’.”
Eve is trembling. She moves towards me. We are standing so close now I can feel the warmth radiating off her body and my senses are singing.
“It’s a gift, Slade,” she breathes, “my art, your writing. If you misuse it, it will abandon you.”
The moment has come. There will never be a moment like this again. It feels like the world is holding its breath. I am electrified. Despite the violence of my feelings I am gentle when I grasp the back of her head and kiss her.
Not a second of hesitation passes before she slaps me. The revellers nearest to us turn to look. Eve whirls away and, in her haste to retreat, misses a step down, trips and falls onto the wet grass on her hands and knees. A hush falls over the crowd. She takes a moment before trying to stand up. Someone goes over to help her. I’m too angry for sympathy, condemned to being a silhouette. A voice in my head repeats ‘it’s over’ again and again until I want to cleave my head open to release the pressure of the words.
I see a waitress out of the corner of my eye and click my fingers for a refill.
The rest of the night is a blur with missing snatches. I rebel against chaste, caring, maddening Eve by drinking enough to fell a large horse and behave as astonishingly badly as I know I can get away with. Ordinary people expect the more famous of us to be a bit strange, go a bit far, be a bit outrageous. What would Warhol be without his paranoia, Hunter S. Thompson without his Quaaludes, Johnny Cash without his philandering? We Somebodies are not expected to walk the line.