First 10 pages

CHAPTER 1


Colt Tagan’s heart was in a strange place. He was the kind of man who walked around, not in our world, but in his very own. Unfortunately, it took me almost forty years, a broken engagement and a stray child to realize this fact. Tagan was my friend and I don’t know if a bigger compliment can be given to anyone.
Tagan had a funny way of walking. He walked as if watched at all times, as if an entire crew of camera men followed him, documenting his life. He loved people, but he never showed it. He used to say, if someone really inspired him:
“You are worthy of songwriting!”
He said that to me a couple of times, but I only remember two of the times. The first time he told me was in my office. There was a big blackboard in front of my desk and Tagan would often scribble odd equations that made no sense at all on it. Sometimes he turned towards me, asking:
“Does this look right to you, Dave?”
I looked up past my reading glasses; first at him, then at the blackboard. Some people would probably have been convinced that he had written something advanced, but I was pretty sure it was gibberish.
“Yeah, that’s absolutely correct,” I told him.
He nodded, his tongue sticking slightly out of his mouth.
“You know what, Dave?”
“No, what?”
“You are worthy of songwriting, Dave.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“But I’m pretty sure you’re wrong. This right here,” he said, pointing at the most obscure line in his ‘proof’. “I’m pretty sure that there should be a minus sign here. You might be worthy of songwriting, Dave, but you’re not all that good at mathe’natics.”
He acted like that a lot. He had this self-imposed image that he was a genius. He then put his headphones back on, erased the writing on the blackboard and started from scratch.
He was an odd son-of-a-bitch, and I wasn’t always nice to him. He wasn’t always nice to me either, but he didn’t necessarily know the line between nice and honest. The truth is that he wasn’t the only one amongst the two of us who had a self-imposed image of brilliance.
Tagan annoyed me at times to be honest. He was in my office all the time and it bothered some of my co-workers. He had a real job to do at the institute, but he was unreachable when he wasn’t in my office. As the janitor of the place, it was his job was to keep the premises clean. When he polished the floors with the enormous orange floor-buffer, Mick Jagger screamed into his ears through his headphones. He came in earlier than me, so I often met him in the hallways, but when he was the janitor, he’d only greet me with his eyes or sometimes not at all. I’d tap his shoulder, but he’d just reply with:
“Not now Dave, I’m busy!”
A simple ‘good morning’ would be easier, but he preferred it the other way. Then, at lunch, he would come into my office when I was just about to leave for the cafeteria.
“Can I borrow your office, Dave? I have a proof to prove!”
It was impossible to hear the difference in his pronunciation of the words ‘proof’ and ‘prove’. It sounded comical, but I remember it often annoyed me.
“Yeah, sure, go nuts,” I said.
And he did, too! When I came back, there was such a heavy dust of chalk in the air that I had to cough my way back to my damn desk.
“’The hell have you been doing in here?”
He looked at me as though the answer was completely obvious. Then back at the blackboard, and then back at me. I knew what he was going to say, so I usually beat him to it.
“Oh yeah, I see. You proved that… that thing that you wanted to prove.”
“Well not yet, Dave. It’s clearly uncomplete.”
‘uncomplete,’ was the only word running in my head, and that annoyed me too.
“Right,” I said, sitting down at my desk, disappearing behind my glasses, the sound of clacking chalk continuing all around me. After an hour or so, he would typically say:
“I need to consult someone about my work.”
Then he just left. I knew what he wanted me to think, but I also knew what he was really doing, and that was the reason I never sought him out during those hours of the day. He cleaned the toilets, although it didn’t make any sense to do it during the afternoon. I never asked him about it, but you’ve got to expect quirky people to have quirky habits. I once saw him do it, that’s how I know, and when he saw me that time, he looked at me in such a shameful way that it made me walk away, never mentioning it again. I remember making a cruel joke once:
“Yeah, and then he goes to consult the crapper concerning his proofs. Quite fitting, if you ask me.”
Then we laughed, and I swear I don’t even remember who I told the joke to. I just know that I never repeated it. It’s easy to make the world laugh if the victim is obvious. Being funny is a matter of distancing yourself from people. Tagan was never funny in that way, because he didn’t know not of the word ‘demeaning’. He probably even couldn’t spell it, and although he sometimes said degrading phrases about people, he never meant it in the way that a mean, deliberate person would. Yes, “You’re worthy of songwriting”. That was his highest compliment.

“How long have you and Samantha known each other?” he once asked me. I was sitting in my office, eating an apple. The question shocked me because he rarely mentioned Samantha.
“Well, we met the second year of college, you remember that. So that would make it twelve years, I guess. Yes, twelve years.”
“Does she make you remember dates? Like in the TV?”
He never said ‘Like on TV’ or ‘Like in the movies’, but always ‘Like in the TV’. He never even seemed to watch TV, but he always cited stuff from it.
“Yeah, she does, but I remember them well. I even know her mother’s birthday.”
“When is that then?” he said, biting his lip. He was provoking me and he knew it.
“The 17th of April.”
“And her own?”
“Well that should be easier, right?”
“Well yeah, I’d imagine.”
I shook my head, laughing at his sudden change of character. He liked being Colt Tagan, but he also enjoyed other characters. I hated when he was stubborn, though.
“The 29th of July,” I answered, still smirking at him. I threw away the rest of the uneaten apple.
“Ah yes,” he said philosophically. “The day the music died.”
“I’m pretty sure that happened during winter. You know, that plane crash?”
“I don’t mean that music, Dave. You’d be surprised, if you knew what I really meant.”
And I was surprised. What would I be other than surprised? He just told me that the birth of my fiancée killed music. At least that was how I understood that fact at the time.
“Are you going to take her last name?”
“Yes, we’re merging our names.”
“Really?” Tagan said, suddenly turning to the blackboard. He erased something in a corner and wrote:
“David ____________ Rossfield”
“That’s right,” I murmured, again beginning to feel slightly annoyed.
“And if we insert her name, we get!”
I noticed him choking a bit.
“Worthington,” I reminded him, and his head rose up immediately.
“David Worthnothing Rossfield”
He seemed satisfied, and none of us noticed the typo at first.
“That concludes that!” he exclaimed, his excitement rivaling that of Archimedes’ ‘Eureka’. He actually greeted me goodbye, which meant that he was happy. He took his tweed jacket off and hung it on a knack just by the door. I had given him that jacket once, and he only wore it in my office. It had two brown patches at the elbows. I actually got it for him as a joke, but he loved it. He stopped at the door for a while, probably pondering some stupid idea that would never leave his head in any coherent way. He was a tall, handsome man, and he had the most honest eyes in this world. They were a bit crazy too. They were in two different colors; a blue one and a green one, and I swear he could make two distinct looks by closing one of them. His hair was always neat. He once blabbered about how he cut it himself, but I didn’t believe it.
Then, as struck by lightning, he regained focus, mumbled something and left, closing the door behind him without a single sound as he always did.