A New-Found Talent

A NEW-FOUND TALENT
Tim Schlee
I’m always asking myself, is he coming back?

Well, are you?

It’s my seventh beer at Tony’s and I’m not fit to drive but I will anyway. Sure, I might be incinerated in an explosion after a collision at fifty miles an hour, but maybe that’s just what I’m looking for.

I grab down my last beer and hurry out the door before anyone tries to take my keys. My vision is blurry and I have trouble starting my car but after a couple of minutes it doesn’t matter anyway because I’m balling my eyes out like a little friggin baby.

The police tell me you were involved in drugs. No shit. They tell me you smoked marijuana, ate shrooms, popped pills. Of course. You were so damn conspicuous about it. Like you wanted to be caught. They told me you sniffed coke, did ice, shot heroin. I have to admit I was a little surprised about that. But the surprise was definitely overshadowed by sheer misery.

No one ever expects to lose their child. When the news came I wasn’t all that surprised. I knew something bad was going to happen. Sooner or later. God, how I wish it was later.

If you ever get a chance to read this, I’d like to say one thing: Why? What the hell were you thinking? Meth? Heroin? You’re just asking for trouble.

The police tell me you started out small. You sold a joint here, a gram of coke here, but mostly you just kept it all to your own goddamn self. Just like a good little boy. But then word got around. I don’t know where you got all your shit from, but you sure got a lot of it. They tell me you became the dealer of the school. Creeper weed? No problem. Acid? Sure. Pure mescaline? Absolutely. The police tell me you had it all.

As my sniffles die down I finally manage to get my engine turned over. With my eyes full of tears and my blood full of alcohol I can’t see a thing. I see what might be a streetlight up ahead. Then again, it could be a taillight. Or a bike reflector. Whatever it is, it better move or I’m gonna hit it.

The police tell me you got involved with a local drug lord named Candy. Candy, they say, is one bad mother. When you’re a high schooler dealing for a drug lord named Candy you know you’re not where you expected. The police tell me you were possible his highest seller. The police tell me you had enough money to buy a Bentley. The police tell me this. The police tell me that. Whatever they tell me, it won’t bring you back. You’re still dead, no matter how many Bentleys you could have bought.

The police caught on to you. They tailed you, searched your stuff, talked to people. They caught you is what it comes down to. They caught you and you went to jail. The one phone call they gave you, you didn’t call me. Who did you call? None other than Candy, the one man who you thought could save your ass. Want to know what happened? Need a refresher? He came down, bailed you out, drove you off in his car and no one has seen you since.

I thought I raised you better. I guess not.

I’m standing at my front door fumbling for my keys. I don’t remember anything between the red light and here, but I guess I’m still alive. Oh well.

***

I’m meeting the devil for lunch. Her name is Elaine Clark and she’s my ex-wife. You know, your mother. As much as I love her, I still have to blame everything on her. It’s all her fault. Having a child. It’s her fault. The divorce. Her fault. You doing drugs. Still her fault.

Now maybe I’m being a little harsh, maybe not. You see, the way I look at it, she should never have married me or had a child if she didn’t truly love me and didn’t want to spend the rest of her life with me. I know, people change, blah blah blah. But I loved her and I still do and I probably always will. If we hadn’t divorced, which of course is all her fault, you probably would have grown up better. One household with two parents is better than two households with one parent. And maybe if I’d seen you more, maybe I could’ve helped out a little in the whole raising a child thing. Maybe you would have been a good kid, gotten good grades, stayed away from drugs. All that. Maybe you would have murdered me in my sleep. I don’t know. But what it comes down to is divorces don’t help.

And since she doesn’t love me and probably never did she’s just flat out evil.

We’re going to Denny’s, because she likes it and everything just has to go her way. Or else she’ll just get a divorce.

“Hi,” she says after I find her table.

“Hi.” The date, if you call it that, was my idea. I want to see her, I told her. It’s strange how quickly our minds change. Upon hanging up I nearly called her back and cancelled. Unfortunately, she stole my will in the divorce.

“You’re late,” she says, but doesn’t wait for an excuse. “What did you want to see me for?”

“I just wanted to talk.” Only a guy who’s been married would say that to woman.

“About what?”

“I don’t know. About James.” About you.

“What about him?”

“Well,” I say. “Do you think he would have turned out better if we hadn’t gotten divorced?”

“Oh, Christ! I knew it! I knew that’s what you were going to say.” She starts to get up but at that moment her food comes. Apparently she ordered before I arrived.

“Thank you,” she tells the waiter as he sets her food in front of her, but you can tell she doesn’t mean it. She only wants to leave.

“Would you like to place an order?” the waiter asks me.

“No, thanks,” I say.

He dashes off to do some other waiterly duty, leaving the two of us alone again, and I say the dreaded words that no ex-spouse wants to hear.

“I think we should get back together.” For a moment she chokes on her food before gasping a “What?” that resounds through the room, inviting others to look our way and get in our business. Rubbernecks.

“No, seriously,” I say.

“You’ve got to be joking,” she says.

“Maybe we can start over with a different kid. Maybe a new one might turn out better.”

“It sounds like you’re talking about a car! He was our child! Our child, whether you like it or not. What happened to him is as much my fault as it is anybody’s. And having another one won’t make things any better.”

“But,” I start to protest.

“I’m seeing someone else.” She’s the best I know at hitting you where it counts.

“You’re what?” I really don’t feel that jealous. Just a little surprised.

“I’m seeing someone else. We’re getting married. He proposed to me a few weeks back.”

I can’t think of anything to say so I say, “Congratulations.”

She leaves without another word.

***

It’s another exciting night at Tony’s. Eric Spruce sits in the corner playing poker with his buddies. Joe Montague watches the game with earnest apprehension. Sheila Gardner does a drunken strip-tease in front of her boyfriend. She gets her shirt off before being told to leave by the bartender. And me, I sit here at the bar, wasting one more night of my life, wishing you were here. I have to settle for Allen Vanderkamp, who sits beside me, racing me drink for drink as he attempts to cheer me up.

He’s not doing very well.

“You know what you need?” There was a pause, for a moment, where there was no noise but the quiet hum of the heater and the muffled commentators on the television, and in that pause, I thought I could live the rest of my life. But then Allen spoke and, as much as I love him, I want to punch him in the face for ruining my peace. “You need to see a therapist.”

“I’m not going to a shrink,” I say.

“Not a shrink, just a person to help you see all the good that’s left in your life.”

“I don’t know. Sounds a little cliché.”

“Lighten up.” I can tell he’s getting irritated at my reluctance to smile, to be happy, to cheer up. “Sometimes,” he says to me, real grave. “I look at your face, and your eyes, it’s like they’re telling me something. You want to know what they tell me?” He’s sniffing back tears.

I say, “Not particularly.”

“They’re saying goodbye.” He hides his face in a handkerchief. What a big baby.

I just watch the football game.

“They’re saying goodbye, man,” he says when he looks up from his handkerchief. His eyes are red from crying and I can see he means it. “Like maybe tomorrow I just won’t see you anymore.”

It’s not that his display of affection for me really changed my mind; he just looked so damn pathetic.

“All right,” I say. “I’ll go.”

***

The therapist tells me to write. He tells me to “put down your feelings on paper, as a way to exorcise yourself of your demons.” Maybe that’s why I’m really writing this, to get it all on paper. To get it out of me.

He tells me to keep a diary. He tells me he wants to read it, “if you don’t mind.”

I tell him sure, but he’s not going to like it.

And when I do show it to him he seems disturbed.

“This isn’t good,” he tells me. “Not good at all.”

“What’s not good?” I ask, as if I really care.

“You really seem to be getting worse.” He appears to care, but I’m just a few more dollars to him. He only wants to make a quick buck. “These problems seem to go deeper than I thought.”

I’m just home from Tony’s (caught a ride from Allen after the bartender took my keys) and I’m too drunk to find my diary. I have to write in it, because to not write would be suicide. But I can’t find it. I can’t find it!

Everywhere I look death is calling my name. A belt on the floor wants me to strangle myself. The bath wants me to drown myself. The toaster wants to hop in the shower with me. Death is getting closer. I can hear his footsteps. I can smell his breath.

“Finally!” I scream. I find some paper under my computer, and a pen in desk drawer. It’s no diary but it will have to do.

At first, I write about my day, about getting fired from my job, about riding home with Allen. It doesn’t work, not that it ever has before. But this time I only feel worse. Every word I write draws another tear from my eye, rips another hole in my heart. When I finish the page I crumple it up and throw it in the trash.

The pen calls for my wrist. Lusts for my eyes. Salivates over my temple. There are so many ways to kill yourself and so few ways to stay alive.

“No,” I say. I don’t know who I’m talking to. Myself, death, the pen. “This time,” I say, “I’m going to write a story.”

And I do. I write a story. A brutal story of murder, rape, drugs, and suicide. A disgusting piece of art that reads like a penny dreadful. And I wouldn’t change it for the world. Because, for once, I actually feel happy.

***

I show the story to the therapist. He nearly screams. “It’s monstrous,” he cries. “It’s fiendish and beastly and gross.”

“But it made me feel alive. For once in my life I was happy.”

“While writing this, you say?”

“Yes,” I cry.

“Well, I must admit it is rather well written.”

“Thank you.”

“But it’s absolutely ghastly.”

“I sent it to Blood Bath,” I tell him. “A local horror magazine.”

“Oh, really? What did they say?”

“They loved it.”

***

It’s been awhile since I published that story. I’m currently working on my third novel, and it’s been quite some time since I’ve even thought of James. I’m rather surprised I never took up writing before. It just comes so naturally.

After my debut short story, I wrote more and more. The stories just flowed out of me. Some I wrote in one night. Not every single one was a gem; I had to send some to quite a few magazines before it was published, and some weren’t published at all. But without a steady job, short stories just weren’t bringing in enough money. I really bit into my savings account, which was small to begin with.

When I started on The Reaper, it was a short story. I soon found out that it worked much better as a novel. It is about a serial killer who calls himself the Reaper. It’s kind of cliché driven and sophomoric, but the readers loved it. I got $500,000 for the paperback rights and I am now a full-time writer. I’m done with my second novel, but the publishers are waiting a year to release it so I don’t flood the market.

Your death was the best thing to happen to me. It inspired me. It gave me a vision.
It made me five hundred thousand dollars! Without it I would still be living in a studio apartment and working for minimum wage with a son I never see and a wife who hates my guts. She may still hate my guts but everything else has worked out. (And she divorced her second husband within a year after she caught him cheating with the baby-sitter.)

Just to rub it in her face, I sent Elaine a five thousand dollar check for Christmas. I also gave quite a sum of money to my good friend Allen Vanderkamp, for without him none of this would have come to be. And don’t think I’ve forgotten about you. I visit your grave as often as I can (which is less often now, due to book tours and interviews and what not). I love you, James. Dead or alive, you’re still my son.


I’m signing copies of my first collection of short stories, called Satan’s Lawyer, when a pair of police officers, dressed conspicuously in their blue uniforms, approach me.

“Are you Mr. Webber?” they ask.

“Yes, sir. What seems to be the problem.”

“Would you mind coming down to the station with us? It’s about your son.”

My son, the police tell me, is in Las Vegas. You’re in Las Vegas. They tell me while investigating Candy, and finding no incriminating evidence, they questioned him as to your whereabouts. James, he said, is in Vegas. They say that he says he took you to the airport the night you were arrested. Upon your request. They say that he says you asked him for a fake ID and a thousand dollars cash. Candy, being the generous fellow that he is, gave it to you, no questions asked. He hasn’t seen you since.

The police had the name on the ID and knew you were in Las Vegas but were otherwise stumped as to how to go about searching for you. In fact, they say, they never would have found you if you hadn’t been caught speeding. Checking your arrest record they found you were wanted for possession of heroin and fleeing under bail among other charges.

They tell me all this down at the station, “downtown” as they say in those cheesy ‘50s film noirs. Elaine is sobbing on my shoulder and I’m sitting here trying to figure out what the hell I’m going to do with my life. If you’re alive, where is my inspiration? If you’re not dead, there’s no point in writing. My career is over before it got started. Two novels and a collection! That’s not a career. And now there’s nothing to write about. I try to imagine pretty people being strangled by soulless sociopaths but it only makes my sick to my stomach. You ruined everything! Again!

Give me one good reason why we should take you back.

“Is he here?” I ask the police.

“No. He’s currently headed here by helicopter. Do you wish to speak to him?”

“No,” I say. “I want to kill him.”