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A Fiction by Pat Nolan Copyright © Pat Nolan 2014 No poets were actually named in the writing of this fiction with the exception of dead poets who serve as historical or literary markers as is often required of dead poets. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales is entirely coinci- dental. Many thanks to Robert Feuer for his patience, diligence, and eagle eye. Also to the editors of Otoliths, Parole, and Dispatches From The Poetry Wars where excerpts from this novel were published. nuallainhousepublishers.com Nualláin House, Publishers Box 798 Monte Rio California, 95462 USA “. .it is characteristic of American genius that the casual eye does not easily distinguish it from charlatanry. Purity of intention lies at the center of American achievement. Mod- ern American writing is about honesty. The American tradition is to offer discovery, not virtuoso performances.” —Hugh Kenner “A satisfactory novel should be a self-evident sham to which the reader could regulate at will the degree of his credulity.” —Flann O’Brien “For every ten jokes you acquire a hundred enemies.” —Laurence Sterne day 9 week 56 month 146 year 286 day “A man of letters is the enemy of the world.” —Charles Baudelaire Carl Wendt smoked distractedly in the haze of red neon and the small spotlight illuminating the entrance to the bar. Smoking inside was banned by law. He’d been admonished for his politically incorrect habit more than once. “Please don’t smoke in here.” “I can’t be in the same room with you if you smoke.” “Smoking is bad for your health.” “No smoking.” “That’s a smoker’s cough if I ever heard one.” “It’s like kissing an ashtray.” “You could use a mint.” He’d heard them all. The air felt wet, on the verge of drizzle. The tip of his nose was cold. He sucked in smoke and stared at the brake lights and headlights prowl- ing the street. There were no open spaces to park on the entire block. He wore a tan sports coat over a pair of faded jeans. The tight fitting blue polo shirt had a small stain where the bulge of gut started. He but- toned the top button of the coat and thrust a hand into his pants pocket. He had enough change for another drink he figured. He blew out harsh smoke. He should quit. Then he’d have more money for drinks. But drinking and smoking went together. They were the addictive behavior twins. Rough gray stubble accented the square of his jaw. He hated shaving, but disliked beards and the sartorial attention they demanded even more. Besides, those disposable razors he favored cost an arm and a leg so he shaved at most every other day and today was one of the off days. He was about to flick the butt away when two younger men stepped in front of him. The one with the goatee looked familiar. He did the talking. “Carl? Carl Wendt? Hi, Russell Kennston, we’ve met before, briefly.” “Oh right. What’s it? Russ?” [9] “Russell, yeah, it was at the Michael McArdle reading a couple of months ago. At the library?” “Yeah, Mike’s a good poet.” He dropped the butt onto the sidewalk and scraped his toe across it. “You going to hear Mitchell Tjantor read tonight?” “Who?” “Mitchell Tjantor, he’s reading tonight.” “Oh, yeah, at the. .” “IZA, Inter Zone Arts, yeah. We’re on our way down there now. I can’t believe how far we had to park.” “Five blocks,” his companion, a round-faced sandy haired man with a complexion to match, offered as if he were providing the answer to a quiz. “You going?” Goatee’s eyes brightened in anticipation. “Oh, yeah, yeah.” Wendt coughed into his fist. “I was just gonna stop in here for a drink before I went down.” He sized them up. “You wanna get a drink?” Sandy and Goatee both glanced at their watches and then at each other. “Yeah, sure, we have time, we can be a little late.” Goatee was the decider. “Morgan Tilson is the opening reader, and I can miss most of what he’s got to say,” Sandy spit nastily. Wendt pulled open the door for them and they strolled in, innocents to a gingerbread ale house. At the bar, the bartender nodded to Carl and then eyed the two younger men. He wouldn’t have to card them. Carl turned to Goatee. “You buying?” Goatee was taken aback, but smiled. He took out his wallet and peered into it. “Yeah, ok, I’ll buy you a beer.” Wendt waved away the offer. “Uh, beer upsets my stomach.” He turned to the bartender. “Jameson, water back.” Goatee went with a beer, as did Sandy, and placed a tenner on the bar when the drinks came. “That’s twelve for the drinks,” the bartender insisted. An embar- rassed silence followed while Goatee reached for his wallet. Sandy in- stead pulled out a couple of crumpled bills from a pocket of his jeans. “Wait I got the two bucks,” he squawked generously. Wendt held his glass up with “cheers.” [10] “Yeah, so like what are you writing these days? I mean besides your column in the weekly. Getting any new poems published? I read that piece of yours in the Bookman Institute’s newsletter. The one on the function of charlatanry in American literature?” Goatee was going for broke. Carl took a long slow sip from the small glass. He was going to have to perform for his drink. He watched over Goatee’s shoulder as a large man in suspenders rose from the bar and lumbered toward the hallway for the men’s room. He’d have to think of something else. “Oh, yeah, well, that’s an old essay. I wrote that almost fifteen years ago.” A girl in a parka hood with fur trim was watching her boyfriend play pinball and taking furtive sips from his bottle of beer. He looked back into Goatee’s eager face. “But I got a couple new things with a publisher in El Lay. A monograph on the Comics and Poetry collection at the Sanderson Estate Library, a big catalog, with a shit load of color plates. PS Press up in Portland is going to bring out a selection of mis- cellaneous writings in the fall, you know, book reviews, some of my col- umns, essays.” He was boring himself and the little glass was empty. “Hey, that’s great. You doing any readings any time soon? I heard you once before, at State. But that was like, what, three years ago?” Goatee hadn’t touched his beer. “Oh, yeah, when my book comes out I’ll probably do a reading in North Beach.” “Good, good, I’ll keep an eye out for the announcement.” Wendt looked at the small empty glass and then at Goatee. “So what is it you said you do? Russ?” “Russell. I teach at City College. Literature, creative writing.” Carl took a closer look at Goatee as if his unlined face would reveal the depth of knowledge of someone so young. “You’re a college professor?” “Part time.” Goatee glanced nervously over at Sandy. “There aren’t any full time openings around here, but I’ve got my CV at a couple of universities back East and the Midwest so.” He shrugged as if that com- pleted the sentence. Sandy smiled wanly, a hint of foam on his upper lip. Wendt held up the empty glass. “Drink up, boys, I’m ready for an- other one.” Goatee’s look of semi-adulation turned to panic. He frowned at his wristwatch as if it had just bit him. “Yeah, well, we better get going. There should be a big crowd to hear Tjantor. We’ll want to get a good [11] seat.” Goatee waited, expecting Wendt to say something. “You com- ing?” Wendt waved him off. “You guys go on ahead, I’ll catch up. I gotta pay my tab.” The two pushed back out onto the street, Sandy on Goatee’s heels like he wasn’t moving fast enough. The bartender came down to remove Goatee’s untouched beer and Sandy’s single quaffed draft. “Ah, I’ll take care of these, they didn’t even touch them.” Carl pulled the change out of his pocket and deposited it on the bar. “You think I got enough for something from the well?” The bartender looked over the array of coins expertly and nodded. “Yeah, I think so.” “Old Overshoe.” Carl spoke jocularly. “Yeah, Old Overshoe,” the bartender laughed. The thing about Wendt was that even at his age, he still had most of his hair. It was easy to pick him out in a crowd, a battlement of steel gray in the precise crimp of a natural wave. Irma stepped down the concrete steps in front of the old warehouse that housed Inter Zone Arts. Carl turned when she called his name. He smiled. “Irma, the mermaid.” “Must you be so infantile?” In his mind Irma Maurice wore a slinky gold lamé sheath and smoked using a long cigarette holder even though she always dressed stylishly, never outlandishly, and she didn’t smoke anymore. “You got a ciga- rette?” “I don’t smoke.” She opened her brocade clutch and extracted a box of filter tips. “Don’t let Philippe see me give you these.” “Can I have the box”?” “No, just take one.” She snatched the box back looking over her shoulder.

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