Paul (a work in progress)
Fitzgerald couldn't hold a flame to him if he wasn't 67.
He keeps a quarter that he spins on the table while he talks on the phone to his ex-wife and his girlfriend and someone who might be his daughter or sister. We count the times he says the words money and Chicago.
Let's get some beer! we say and he stands up. Of if you're going, could you get some for me? I don't care what kind. Here's four dollars. Thanks so much! His voice shakes but we shrug and say sure. Two of us leave and the other two stay behind. He talks with us until his phone rings again. Later on in the night we sit at his table. He talks about music and Chicago and his wife, Nina, and his friend Nora who we think is his girlfriend. We can't really tell though.
The only thing I care about with you boys, is the music any good? he interrupts one of us. We respond politely: my music? Yes, of course, and so we explain our music. The title of our new album is Your and he laughs in our face. That's ridiculous! That's so fucking stupid! We know he's being a jerk but his laughter is contagious. We laugh at him, and then wonder away when he finds an acoustic guitar and plays what he can.
The next night we pass him a joint. Is this what college kids do? You do drugs? We laugh at him. None of us are taking classes right now. Later he snaps his fingers at one of us and we turn on him, angry: Did you just snap at me? Who do you think you are, my dad? Then we turn away and laugh,incredulously.
He looks down, dejected. His eyes are red and droopy, almost dripping. Are they dripping? We don't think about it. Later he stands up, enraged about the assassination of John Lennon. He can't stop laughing as he yells about the CIA and we laugh along at him, at the up-in-arms stance and the red, watery eyes.
Things are getting too intense for me, one of us says, and Paul goes inside. When he comes back outside the next day he has decided he is the authority on the patio. He gives us nicknames: Ty and Ky, Benjie, Hannah pronounced with a round a instead of a flat one. He doesn't smoke any more of our weed.
A few days later three of us leave. He disappears into his room and we disappear into our headphones and collages and groceries. Without the other three we're as empty as Paul is, and when we see him snoring on the couch we ask ourselves why we bought him that first six-pack. We've heard stories of him trying to pee on walls and forcing his wife to talk on the phone with teenagers since. He went wild, but now he's in a lull again. An obvious depressive. And so we try to write about him.
We just end up writing about ourselves instead.
