Something Apropos (Short Story)

            When her train pulled into the station on that cold morning, Sarah climbed up into it and found a seat in the near-empty car. Aside from her, there was only a man of about thirty, dressed in a black wool coat and gray slacks. He had a lean, hungry look, not aggressive but intensely dispassionate, and long angular limbs out of proportion to his rather average frame. He was staring relentlessly across the car and out the window opposite him, one row forward of where Sarah had settled in. When she entered, those cold, dry eyes had slid over her but just as quickly returned to whatever fixed point outside the train had bewitched them.

            Sarah gathered her navy overcoat over her legs, cold beneath a long skirt, and produced a slim volume by Kant from the recesses of her large bag. She opened the book and made attempts on it, but an agitated fidget thwarted her in each case.

            After a little while, she gave up and held the book absently on her knee, letting her eyes meander here and there without object. Whenever they happened to glide toward the staring man, he would return the look for a fraction of a second before resuming his strange vigil, his lips moving silently as though in murmured conversation with something unseen outside the train. For all that—and perhaps it was only the clean part in his black hair and the vaguely lupine handsomeness of his neatly shaven face—he did not seem to Sarah to be crazy or disturbed so much as deep in thought and self-forgetful. A sudden impulse made her rustle fitfully for a few seconds before relocating to the seat across the aisle from him.

            “Excuse me,” she said, twisting to see him from her new vantage. “I would never do this, ordinarily, but there’s something about you—and I have this thing weighing on my mind… Well, anyway, would you mind talking to me about something? Or even just listening. I mean, if you… If you don’t mind.”

            As she began, his head turned stiffly—almost mechanically, like a puppet’s—to bring his eyes to hers. His expression did not vary at all from its intent focus, but his lips fell still.

            “I will certainly listen,” he said. His voice was soft but somehow absolute, as if it could betray not one iota of doubt. “But I will not speak unless I am entirely sure that I can help. Because you seem to be troubled. And I will not do anything to add to that trouble if I can help it.”

            Sarah looked at him for a long moment before she had satisfied herself that he was serious.

            “Alright,” she said. “My name is Sarah.”

            “Eli,” said the man, and he clasped his hands and set them in his lap.

            Sarah inhaled sharply through her nose and let the breath out smoothly.

            “Okay,” she said, “the first thing to know is that this is about my work and my boyfriend. Unoriginal, I am aware.”

            “Real things are rarely original,” Eli said.

            “That’s true,” she said, and lapsed into an uncertain silence.

            “Please, continue. What do you do? What is your boyfriend’s name?”

            “His name is Tom… I’m working on a dissertation at Boston College. Kant,” she said, and waved the book vaguely in front of her.

            “What about Kant? Ethics? Aesthetics?”

            “Epistemology, actually. You’ve read him?”

            “Some time ago,” Eli said, and nodded to himself after a beat. He gripped one of the large, shiny buttons on his coat between two fingers and twisted it gently, back and forth. “Anyway,” he said suddenly, “please continue. What is this problem of yours?”

            “Well,” Sarah said, “I’ve been offered a teaching position somewhere else—the University of Chicago. I’m done with all my coursework, so it doesn’t interfere with my dissertation at all, and it’s an enormous opportunity…”

            “That’s a very good job for someone without a doctorate.”

            “Yes, well. They read a few articles I had in some of the journals…” Sarah grew pink around the cheeks and hairline.

            “Ah,” Eli said, and waited, looking at her intently.

            “So,” she began again haltingly, “That’s the crux of it. Tom can’t leave with me—he’s a lawyer at some important firm, just got the job. So, do I stay or go?”

            Sarah hung her head, a feeling of distinct embarrassment washing over her, further flushing her face and scalp with hot blood.

            “I’ll need a little more than that,” Eli said, and there was some soft amusement in his voice. Sarah was unsure if it were mockery or not.

            “Like what?” she said, lifting her head again. She rested it in one hand and fixed her eyes on his feet. She breathed deeply and finally returned his gaze. “Like do I love him?”

            “Fah,” he answered, and the fingers of his left hand flicked out in a somehow intricate gesture like a charm or some bit of sign language. “Who knows what that means to anyone else? No. Just tell me about him.”

            “He’s… driven. Ambitious. Worked his way through college and law school.”

            “Is he kind?”

            “He can be very much so, when he thinks of it, which isn’t always, but often. He’s generous, and a good friend. He likes to spend time with me. Responsible.”

            “How did you meet?”

            “Friends set us up. I’m from here, originally, and when I came back after grad school an old friend told me she had a guy for me… They’d dated for a while but it didn’t stick. She thought we’d be a better fit.”

            “And you liked him.”

            “Yes. He was sweet. He listened to me rattle on about my work and asked questions. He took me on a walk after dinner and told me I was beautiful. It was nice. It still is nice.” She paused.

            “So things are good between you, then?”

            “Yes. Essentially. We argue, of course.”

            “Of course.”

            “We fight sometimes, but everyone does. And when we do, he always tries to make peace, he—” Sarah frowned. “Whenever we fight, he buys the same bouquet. Half a dozen red roses, half a dozen daisies… He leaves them in front of my door…”

            Eli’s eyes glittered, and he flicked his fingers again on the edges of her vision. “Go on,” he said.

            “The same bouquet, every time. And he apologizes but never with— It’s just so stupid,” she said. “Like he can’t think of anything else to do. Flowers and ‘I’m sorry.’” She let a hard breath out, and looked down at the floor.

            “Why do you want to be with this man?” Eli said quietly.

            “It’s not… I didn’t mean I don’t love him,” Sarah said, reddening again. “I do love him. And isn’t that worth making sacrifices for? Worth pain and disappointment?”

            “All, das gross und schön ist…” Eli said, nearly under his breath.

            “What? ‘All that is great and beautiful?’ What is that supposed to mean?”

            “Forgive me,” Eli said. “Of course you speak German, studying Kant. I wasn’t thinking… Just a joke, for myself. Not a funny one.”

            “Alright,” she said, and let her eyes drift.

            Eli bowed his head and cocked it slightly, as though listening to something whispered.

            “I’m sorry,” he said. “You were being sincere. You say you love the man. Something to consider, certainly. But—something else to consider: Antony loved Cleopatra.”

            A quick anger came over Sarah: contempt for the opinion of a stranger, contempt at herself for having asked for it. She sat upright and set her mouth in a hard line.

            “That is a very unkind thing to say about two people you don’t even know, and one of whom you have not even met.”

            “You’re right,” Eli said. His eyes slid back into their strange, distant focus. “I apologize.”

            Sarah twisted to face forward in her seat and opened the book in her lap. She read the same sentence five times before conceding defeat and simply staring at the page.

            Some ten minutes or so went on like that, the train bumping and groaning over the rails while outside the window the muddy brownness of a snowless New England winter stretched on to the horizon.

            “I’m sorry,” Sarah said, not looking up. “I asked your opinion. I shouldn’t be upset that you gave it.”

            “That’s alright,” Eli said vaguely.

            Before long, the train was rolling to a slow stop at a little station in some suburban satellite of Boston. Eli stood slowly and steadied himself with one hand while the other slung a canvas satchel over his shoulder.

            “This is my stop,” he said. “And I’m sure this isn’t welcome—but you should go to Chicago.” He waited while the train crawled its last few yards.
            “Alright,” Sarah said, but his eyes again were caught up in the contemplation of invisible things, and as he walked away from her and off the train toward the bloody sunrise, she was not sure if he had heard her.

Okay? (Short Story)

            “Okay, so here’s what I was thinking—the first shot, the establishing shot, right? We see from his perspective as he’s driving, and it’s kind of dark, you know, we see by streetlight and headlights. Like, you see his hands on the wheel and out the windshield, but you don’t see his head or anything.”

            “How would you get that shot?”

            “I don’t know, man, strap one of those things to his head—a Go-Pro or whatever. That’s not the point. I’m just telling you the concept. Anyway, he’s listening to talk radio, and, you know, it’s real depressing stuff—the economy’s crap, war in the Middle East, that kind of thing, and then we cut to his hand turning the dial, and now it’s a top-forty station cranking out some pop song or whatever.”

            “So it’s like how entertainment is a crutch we use to avoid dealing with the real world?”

            “Well, yeah, dude, but damn it, let it have some subtlety to it. Show, don’t tell, geez.”

            “Sorry, man, but interpretation is the endpoint of all creative endeavor.”

            “Alright, alright, fine. Can I go on, now? So now we’re back to his perspective, and he’s pulling in to some mini-mall, he pulls into a spot, and he parks. He lets the song go on for a few more seconds, and then he shuts off the engine. And as he does that, we cut to a medium shot of him from outside the car, bit of a Dutch angle, right? And this is important, we time it so the sound of the engine shutting off happens exactly when the cut does. We’ve been immersed in his perspective, but now we’re invited to consider him as an object, as external.”

            “Okay, I’m with you so far. I’m thirsty—you want another Coke?”

            “No, come on, man, leave it for, like, five minutes, I’m serious.”

            “Fine, whatever.”

            “So we see him get out of the car, and then we cut to a new shot, behind him, maybe forty-five degrees from his shoulder, right? And he starts walking through the parking lot, he looks both ways, lets a car go by, all that. He’s got his hands in his coat pockets and his head down a little, yeah? Real serious-looking, like he’s deep in thought. We keep following him at that angle like a, what do you call it, a tracking shot, so we never exactly see where he’s headed, until finally he’s pushing through some door. And he’s in a fast food place. We cut back to his point of view, there, too. Looking up at the counter.”

            “That’s to reestablish his subjectivity as the controlling perspective?”

            “Yeah, basically. He looks all profound and high-minded, but he just wants some junk food.”

            “Which fast food place is it?”

            “I don’t know, man. Why’s it matter?”

            “The specificity of it is big. Gives you a sense of concreteness, really fleshes out the sort of ‘horror of banality’ thing you’ve been describing.”

            “Alright, hell. Taco Bell, okay?”

            “Okay.”

            “Wait, wait—no. Del Taco. It’s a regional chain, and it’s like a knock-off Taco Bell. That’s better.”

            “That’s real good. Del Taco’s good.”

            “Yeah, I think so. So we see him order—now we’re shooting from the floor at an angle up, he takes up almost the whole frame. We don’t hear what he says, really, just mumbles, because we have the sound of a ceiling fan or an air conditioner way up high in the mix. This is where we get our first major cut. Now we’re shooting from a booth, you know, one of those ones with the orange benches and the faux-wood tables? The camera’s at a shallow angle to the seat—not tilted, like a Dutch angle, just horizontal. The shot’s closed off to the open side of the booth.”

            “Okay, I think I like that.”

            “Good, right? So we see him slide into the booth with his tray of crap food and then start rustling in his coat pocket. He pulls out a book. I’m thinking either Notes from Underground or, like, Nausea or something.”

“Maybe, like, The Stranger?”

“Whatever, I don’t know. Something like that, anyway. So he pulls out the book and he puts it on the table next to the tray. He opens it and he holds it open with one hand, and with the other he unwraps some of the food. Oh, right, we’ve cut again, wider angle and a few feet further out. We shoot a quick top-down shot first to show the book, and then we’re going again.”

“I was about to say.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m sorry, but I’m just sort of in the flow of it, you know? He’s got the book out and we see him turn his head to look at it, but he can’t keep it that way for long. He can’t really focus, even for a minute. He lets the book close, and he sighs. We never hear him talk, by the way. This is as close as we get.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, no dialogue from him.”

“Interesting.”

“Anyway, he closes the book and he pulls out a phone. He fiddles with it for a minute, then he takes a bite of the food. Then we start doing a series of cuts where we work around like a clock, each new shot showing time passing by the amount of food eaten and the discarded wrappers and stuff, right? And when we get to behind the other side of the booth again, we hold that shot, it’s a longer shot than the others. We see another guy walking into frame from behind the camera—first his head, then the rest of him. He walks up to our main character and he says something like, ‘Hey, brother, listen, I’m out of cash and my card got declined at the gas station. I need eight bucks or so to get enough fuel to get out of here, man, can you help out at all?’”

“Happened to you before?”

“Yeah, it has—details a little different, but basically, yeah. So our guy looks up from his phone and gives the dude a long look. Cold, you know? And a little hostile. Then he fishes out his wallet and hands the guy some bills. That dude counts it up in his head, he realizes it’s the full amount, eight bucks. He says, ‘Thank you so much, for real, man, God bless.’ And he holds out his hand for our man to shake. We cut to a close-up of his face and shoulders, we see he has this sort of tight, almost pained expression. After a beat, the shoulder moves, he’s shaking the guy’s hand. We hear the other guy walking away. And then our man looks back down at his phone and we dolly out and see his right hand on the table, clenched tight.”

“Huh. Okay, so it’s like—”

“Hold on, let me finish, I’m almost done. We linger on that image for a while, and he starts breathing deeper, audible and visible breathing. We see his chest and shoulders rise and fall. And now we get another major cut to the exterior, the parking lot again. We’re shooting from in front of his car, facing the building, but the background’s out of focus. Our man is walking up, eventually getting in focus. He gets into the car, and we watch him back out of the spot, then drive off out of frame. We refocus on the building. Then we cut again, now we’re looking up and over at him from the passenger seat. His face goes from dark to light as he drives through the streetlights. The radio is still on the pop station. After a few beats, he turns off the radio, and the motion is a little bit violent, he sort of stabs at the button. A few more beats and we just watch his face—light, dark, light, dark—and only hear the sound of the road. And then we gently fade to black. So? What do you think?”

I tipped my cup and chewed on a chunk of ice.

“Well,” I began.

Rights and Privileges (Short Story)

            I opened the door of Rob’s green Taurus, feeling a little unsteady on my feet. Not drunk, although I’d had a few, but tired and ready to get out of there. We were at our friend Phil’s place—it was a party, he just moved to a new house and invited his new neighbors, the two of us, and a few other of our buddies—and it was already near two in the morning.

            “Come on, let’s go,” I said, slapping the roof of the car.

            “Easy on my baby,” Rob said. It was a joke with all of us, that Rob treated his ten year old Ford rust bucket like it was a Murcielago or something. He swung into the driver’s seat, looked at his reflection in the mirror, straightened his tie, brushed some imaginary dust off his shoulder.

            “Okay, Roberto, cool out, man. You’re just taking me home, we’re not gonna cruise for chicks.”

            “You’re just jealous, brother. Your nasty-ass tee shirt and whatnot. You can’t compare to my smoothness.” He did look good. He’d come straight from work—he did human resources at a software company in town—to pick me up for the party, looking slick in dark pants and a checked blue and white shirt. He was vain as hell, but he did make it work. I, on the other hand, wore one of several gray t-shirts and pairs of blue jeans almost everywhere, the only really pertinent exceptions being work and church.

            “Just drive, come on Rob. Vamonos or whatever.”

            “You speak Spanish like a German.”
            “I am a German.”

            “Yeah, well, that was the point.”

            I idly smacked the back of his head. He punched me in the leg, then pulled out into the street. We cruised along for a few minutes toward the freeway.

            “Hey, check it out,” I said, pointing toward a little open field on the side of the road.

            “What?” Rob asked, not taking his eyes off the road.

            “We used to play there sometimes. Against Lakewood.”

            “That right? I forgot how crappy that field was.”

            “Yeah, it was pretty bad. They were tough, though. Always gave me hell.”

            Rob laughed. “They weren’t tough, they were just crazy cheap. Played dirty, elbows and pulling on shirts.”

            “I guess,” I said, craning my neck to look backward. “But they were quick and they were smart enough not to get caught. I scored two against them senior year, though, remember?”

            “I remember that one was a penalty that Steve won for you, that’s what I remember.”

            “Well, I choose to remember around that part.”

            He snorted. “And anyway, that was at home, it wasn’t here.”

            I grunted agreement.

            “Where’s the on-ramp?”

            “One more light,” I said.

            He sped up to catch the last few seconds of a yellow, put on his blinker and pulled into the right lane. A fat rain drop splattered against the windshield in front of me.

            “Hey, it’s raining,” I said, surprised.

            “Yup,” Rob said, drawing out the syllable. Yuuuuuup. He pulled onto the ramp.

            “Don’t get all sarcastic on me. I just never expect it here. It’s nothing like Maine.”

            “You moved here when you were seven years old, brother, don’t pretend like you know anything about Maine.” Out onto the freeway.

            “Whatever,” I said, “We go back every year. I know plenty.”

            “You go back for four days in July. I don’t act like I know a damn thing about Oaxaca just ’cause my great-grandma came from there and I’ve been there twice.”

            The rain was coming down heavier now, big, hard drops pelting against the glass. It was the kind of rain you can tell is cold from the sound of it hitting the car, a sharp, solid sound like marbles falling down stairs. We were pretty much alone on the road—one or two cars going on the other side of the divider and a big truck about half a mile behind.

            I switched on the radio. Rob had it set to a college station that played jazz all day. I listened for a few seconds. Ramsey Lewis Trio. A live cover version of that song from the sixties that half a dozen bands did versions of, “Hang on Sloopy.” I’d heard it before.

            “Do you listen to anything recorded since you’ve been alive?” I asked, trying to look up at the sky and see if the storm looked like breaking.

            “Don’t knock jazz, brother, it’s America’s music.”

            “So’s rock and roll,” I said, “And blues, and hip-hop. Why don’t you listen to them?”

            “I do,” he said, “Sometimes. I just don’t—aw, damn.” A pair of red and blue lights flared to life behind us. Rob pulled off to the shoulder and killed the engine.

            “Grab the registration from the glove box, please,” he said, and suddenly his voice was tight and serious. I fumbled around for a minute, got the registration out and handed it to him. He put it on his lap. He set his hands on the top of the steering wheel and sat silently.

            “Hey, man, what’s—” I started.

            “Be quiet, please, Bill.”

            I shut up. The rain was coming down harder than ever, fast and dense. I could hardly see out of the car.

            There was a tap on the driver’s side window. I could see the vague outline of a man in dark clothes and a hat. Rob rolled down his window.

            “Good evening, gentlemen,” the cop said, and turned his flashlight on Rob. I could see by the streetlights that he had really pale blue eyes and a gingery beard.

            “Good evening, officer,” Rob said, sounding wary. He didn’t turn his head or take his hands off the wheel.

            “Do you know why I pulled you over tonight?”

            “No, sir,” Rob said.

            “Well, you were doing seventy-eight. This is a sixty-five zone.”

            “I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t realize.”

            “Well…” the cop said. “Could I see your license and registration, please?”

            “Yes, sir,” Rob said, “My registration is here on my lap and my license is in my wallet. May I reach for it, please?”

            “Go ahead,” the cop said, “Slowly.”

            “Crazy weather, huh?” I said, off-handedly. “Came out of nowhere.”

            The cop turned his flashlight to me and didn’t answer. Rob shut his eyes tight for a second, then slid his hand into his back pocket. He carefully pulled it back out, removed his license and handed it to the cop. He picked the registration up and handed that over, too.

            “Roberto Hernandez,” the cop said slowly. “From La Habra. What are you doing here?”

            “We were at a party,” I said, “Down in Lakewood. Our friend Phil, he—”

            “Have you been drinking tonight, Roberto?” the cop said.

            “No, sir.”

            “He was the designated driver,” I said.

            “Would you please step out of the vehicle,” the cop said, and waved back toward his car.

            “Wait, why?” I said. “I’m serious, he was the designated driver.”

            “Shut up,” Rob said, and he sounded angry. “No problem, officer, I’ll get out.”

            “And you, too,” the cop said, looking hard at me. I stared back at him for a minute. Rob smacked me on the shoulder. I unbuckled my belt and we both got out into the rain. The cop walked over to the trunk. Another cop had come from the car and was standing there, hands on his hips, looking military as all hell—blond crew cut under his hat, square jaw, bad attitude.

            “Step back here,” the first cop said, “And then put your hands on the vehicle.”

            Rob did. I hesitated a minute and then followed him.

            “Spread your legs apart,” the cop said. “Shoulder width.”

            He patted me down first, quickly. He took his time with Rob. The water started to seep into my socks through my flimsy, worn-out running shoes, and I thought about Rob’s immaculately shined and brushed wingtips. I turned my head to see the second cop. He stood extraordinarily still, expressionless and unblinking.

            The other guy finished with Rob after a while.

            “Don’t move,” he said, and he went over to the blond guy and said something to him, too low for me to hear. Blond guy turned his head a little bit, said something back. I can’t read lips, but I’m pretty sure I caught “probable cause” in there somewhere.

            The first cop came back, handed Rob his license and registration, and a ticket on that bright yellow paper. He straightened his cap, sternly admonished us to behave ourselves, and got into his cruiser, moving with brisk, precise strides. The blond cop looked at me and sniffed an exaggerated sniff before following his partner. Rob quietly went back to the driver side door and opened it. I brushed my by now sodden hair out of my eyes, then got back in the Taurus.

            Rob waited until the cops had pulled out and headed down the road before he turned the key. The radio came on softly, and he turned the volume up. The Dave Brubeck Quartet were blaring their way through “Blue Rondo a la Turk.”

            “Those guys were sort of assholes, huh,” I said, after a minute.
            “If you say so,” Rob said.
            The music faded  and the deejay came on to let us know that we were listening to KJazz, the official jazz radio of the University of California at Long Beach, and to remind us to tune in and contribute to their fundraising projects. Coming up next was Coltrane’s “Lazy Bird.”

            “For real, though,” I said, “That guy hassled you for no reason. I don’t know what—”
            “Shut up!” Roberto said. I looked at him. His shoulders were raised around his neck, and his grip was tight on the wheel.
            “Just shut the fuck up, alright?”
            I did. The band dropped away for a drum solo.

            “You just—you fuck things up, okay?”

            I didn’t answer him. He drove on, and the hissing of the tires over the wet asphalt began to drown out the sound of the music.

Petty Theft (Short Story)

Geraldine Cecilia Flanahan—I mention her full name because it is almost certain either that her name was the true source of her moral degradation or that her ethical failings retroactively justified the parental cruelty involved in the naming—was a thief, though not a particularly ambitious one. True, six rings, all stolen, did glitter rather gaudily on the first three fingers of her left hand, but these had all been pilfered at one go from a small vendor stall near the beach while its proprietor was distracted by an oddly aggressive border collie. Presently, Ms. Flanahan was fully engaged in another instance of mediocre banditry, attempting fruitlessly to force a yellow blouse from a Nordstrom clothes rack into her small leather purse (also stolen).

            As she worked away at this task, she failed to notice the approach of a youthful employee, a malnourished young man wearing thick-rimmed glasses and a meager beard. At length, she became at least partially aware of his presence, though she gave no indication of this fact to the young man in question. He, understandably, found this somewhat disconcerting.

            Having stood in a shell-shocked silence for nearly a minute (during which time Geraldine Cecilia Flanahan continued her vain effort to secure her prize within the purse), he finally screwed up what passed for his courage and cleared his throat. Though he had intended it to sound menacing, he was disappointed to find that the effect was actually such as to merit the title “effete.”

            Even such a one as the young Ms. Flanahan found this rather too much to ignore.

            “Yes?” she said impatiently, though she did not turn to face him.

            The employee found this to be so unnatural a response that for no small space of time, he was rendered unable to answer.

            “Well…” he said, “I mean—you’re stealing that. Right?”

            “And?” Geraldine said savagely, redoubling her efforts at blouse-wrangling.

            This riposte, so flawless in its logic and supreme in its swift and elegant force, quite crushed the bearded and bespectacled store clerk, whose name, incidentally, was Dennis. As he reeled, standing rooted in place, mouth agape, Geraldine succeeded at last in rolling and twisting the blouse into her purse. She closed it and secured the clasps. With a small, mirthless grin of triumph, she stood and turned at last to face her would-be adversary. Looking him up and down, she gave a faint snort, then strode confidently past him on her way out the door. Dennis could only watch as an inexorable ennui overtook him. He became, from that moment on, a devoted reader of Sartre.

           

            Geraldine Cecilia Flanahan walked out into the daylight. The sky was clear and the air was warm, as indeed it usually is in southern California. She was across the street from the boardwalk, and she could see many families walking along the beach, thirty-something couples and their small children, carrying balloons or hotdogs or ice cream cones. Some of the mothers looked harried, and some of the fathers frustrated, but most seemed as content as could be expected of ordinary human beings. She walked faster.

After some six or seven blocks, she arrived again at her own home, a small and cluttered apartment on the second floor of a squat and unadorned building. She locked the door behind her and set the purse down on the one chair she owned (and which, as it so happened, she did not steal). She marched to the sink and filled a tea kettle, which she put on the venerable—that is to say, rusting—stove.

            Waiting for the sound of the kettle’s whistle, she thought back to the look on Dennis’s face—though, of course, she did not know his name—as she made her escape from the store. She remained lost in this posture for no small span of minutes. When the shriek of the kettle at last punctured her little reverie, she gave the slightest of starts before retrieving a cup and returned once more to her seat.

            As she sat drinking, her purse now consigned to the bare floor, she absent-mindedly pulled off each of the six rings on her left hand. They had not been the best fits for her—she thought that, perhaps, they had been meant for a child—and they left significant imprints on her flesh. She took a sip from her cup (held in her right hand) and flexed the ring-marked fingers. They did not feel right to her, free from the familiar constriction, but somehow she thought in time they would.

Wherefore Ishmael?: Melville and the Back of God

I recall reading, somewhere, that Moby-Dick is a sort of proving ground for young American theorists. This same source, which I cannot now find nor recall, remarked that new critics like to "try their weapons on its hide." And far be it from me to break with tradition.

I have thus far finished only one critical essay for this website, on Hamlet, and from a professedly religious and even theological perspective. It is perhaps fitting that my second essay should be on Melville's masterwork (that story second only to Hamlet itself in enigma, and therefore its second also in the sheer amount of critical attention- at least, after the end of Melville's obscurity in the early twentieth century) and begin from a like vantage point. Hamlet is, after all, in Moby-Dick's bones, along with Lear and Macbeth- where better, then, to go?


Moby-Dick is among the most allusive novels in history: Melville weaves a dense fabric of symbols, each of which is grounded in a dozen sources, and each of which spins out a hundred meanings. The whales themselves are explained in light of all the contemporary zoological and natural-historical accounts available to Melville, as well as by any number of mythic and biblical references (we will allow Melville his error- intentional or not- in supposing that "Leviathan" in Scripture stands for "whale"); the defining character of The Whale, his unearthly coloration, is linked to all the different meanings and uses of "whiteness" one can imagine, and many more besides; the awfulness of electrical storms and fires is traced back to its ancient history in Prometheus and Zoroaster. And above all, Jonah; and above all, Ahab. The unwilling prophet and the wicked king: these are the chief things in the book, in these two images stand Ahab and Starbuck, Fedallah and Stubb, Man and Whale- perhaps, Man and God.

It is curious, then- is it not?- that the good prophet, the rebuker of Ahab in Bible and novel alike, the prophet Elijah, is reduced to a passing curiosity. He offers warning to the pagan Queequeg and the no-less-pagan Ishmael, he prophesies the unhappiness of Ahab and his ship, and then is gone. We meet Elijah only as other, only as outsider, only in passing. We do not know where he is going, nor from where he comes. We do not know what God he serves, we never see the tokens of his faith. Elijah! No less than Isaiah or the Baptist, the type and image of the prophet, and yet we meet him only as an eccentric on the street, speaking only for a moment and then departing. He is a tangent to the story, touching at the one point and only at the one point. Ishmael seems to forget him (Well! He forgets Queequeg, too, and rather quickly, for all his promises of union and marital closeness.); Ahab, to ignore him. What Elijah thinks of the wreck of the Pequod, we can only guess: whether he finds it worth his notice; whether he nods in self-satisfaction; whether he mourns the inexorable, fated doom, we cannot know.

Strange, too, I think, that of a book so filled to bursting with allegory and symbol, we do not always think to ask of the importance of names. For certain, Melville is not Bunyan. He does not name Ahab Captain Vengeance or Mr. Blasphemer, and the whale he does not name Evilfish or Work-of-God. But at the same time, he raises up a constellation of three names, and in them there seems much meaning, if we are willing to look for it: Ishmael, Ahab, Elijah. Ahab, of course, is the sinful king who will not heed the prophet. Elijah is the prophet. But what of Ishmael? There is some special force in that name, which we know for several reasons: the very first words of the book (or rather, the book proper), so familiar to us all, "Call me Ishmael," demand we notice it; and, after all, it would have been so easy for Melville to do without a name for the narrator at all, had he chosen, since it is no more than once or twice that anyone besides Ishmael himself is heard to utter it.

The tempting explanation of the name, as the most readily suggested by the nature of the Pequod and her crew, is that Ishmael is the orphan, or the marginalized. We could very easily construe him as the man on the edge of the desert, living apart from mankind, with every hand, as the Bible tells us, raised against him. But this is not the whole story- true, Ishmael is made to be fatherless, but he has a mother. True, he is a hunter in the wilderness, but he has a wife. And every hand may be turned against him, but that is only because he is (or will be) a great nation. No, Ishmael is not the orphaned and the desperate, or not in any unmixed sense.

But what is Ishmael? For Reformed Christians like Melville (and, incidentally, myself), Ishmael is a challenge and a riddle, a strange mystery. He is the son of Abraham, but he is not the child of the covenant. He is blessed by God and protected by him- he is even promised, like Abraham and Jacob and Moses, to be made a nation- but not in the promised land, and not by solemn oath. Paul makes of him an allegory(!) of the law and Sinai, which are blessed things, but contrasts him with gospelly Isaac, the child of promise. Ishmael is reprobate- or so, at any rate, we would reflexively think- where Isaac is elect, but what kind of reprobation is this! There is nothing else like it- Esau bears, perhaps, the closest analogy, as a passed-over elder brother who grows great, but Esau's prosperity and his nationhood are not attended by the intercession of an angel, nor by promises of God. If I may be vulgar and imprecise for a moment, Esau seems to succeed by virtue of his strength and vital force (the great hunter! the shaggy man! his father's favorite!), but Ishmael through the workings of Providence. Melville's Ishmael, too, seems preserved by the workings of God (or fate), saved alone from the wreck of the Pequod and then only by a strange and unlooked for conspiracy of details.

So what do we make of him in Moby-Dick? What is the meaning of this name, "Ishmael"? Might it be that he is a man who does not know God, but only of God? Consider the biblical Ishmael: a very young man when he is forced out from the covenant family, the tents of Abraham, where God speaks (and sometimes even visits, sometimes even eats), driven into the desert, and in that place saved from death. The central fact of his life is this divine rescue, with its attendant blessings, and yet Ishmael himself is not told of them, or not directly. Hagar, his mother, receives the angelic word, and, while she surely tells the boy, he never hears the promise and the explanation himself. He hears of God secondhand, in contrast to the patriarchs. He knows who God is, but he does not know him (in German, one might say Er wisst Gott, aber kennt ihn nicht). One might expect him to look for signs of God in the world, to strive to find him in the ways of history and happenstance. But God, after all, cannot be understood this way, or not, at any rate, by sinners such as we. The whole thought of Christendom- and especially of the Protestant world- demands that God be the revealer of himself. Sola Scriptura, solus Christus, solus Spiritus Sanctus. Even Job floundered until the LORD spoke to him.

But this effort to see God without God, to know him apart from his presence- apart, ultimately, from Christ as the true Word of God- is precisely what Ishmael is engaged in, and it is precisely this effort that leads Ahab to his final renunciation of good and God together: Ego non baptizo te in nomine Patris, sed in nomine Diaboli!* (Charles Olson, in his bizarre but potent Call Me Ishmael, despite his eager pagan proselytizing, correctly notes that Ahab names only the Father in his baptismal formula because he cannot speak of Christ, or, indeed, the comforting Spirit. Ahab can only name God as a fearsome monad, alone and alien, as the enemy of mankind. Only Starbuck does, or can, use the name of Jesus in the whole of the novel.)
*"I do not baptize you in the name of the Father, but in the name of the devil!"

Almost the whole meaning of Moby-Dick may be summed up in two passages, one from Ahab and the other from Ishmael. Having sworn the crew to his vengeance, Ahab is confronted by Starbuck, who insists that "To be enraged with a dumb thing.... seems blasphemous." He is right, but he does not yet know why. Ahab's revenge is not properly against the whale, but against what he perceives the whale to be:

All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event- in the living act, the     undoubted deed- there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me.... I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him. Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the sun if it insulted me.

Ahab has seen, quite truly as it seems to me, the hand of God in all things, mediately immediate. Moby-Dick is the very finger of God, and it is God who has, in some sense or other, crippled Ahab. (The psychologists insist that we must read the whale's attack as a castration. Well, they may be right- but still, I will bow to them and smile and say, "Nevertheless....") What Ahab hates is not chiefly the existence of evil, but that evil is evidently as much a part of providence as good. This may be an unusual use of the term "providence"- it is mostly used in reference to God's dispensing of good gifts to the world- but it is, I contend, still appropriate. It is not sovereignty to which Ahab objects, for a sovereign God could permit nothing but good, and is an attribute rather than a deed- but providence is God's activity in the world.

As time goes on, the whale develops as a symbol from God's activity to a kind of god himself. He is a divine incarnation- though the question remains, of whom? Ishmael reminds the reader that Vishnu took the form of a whale, and the mad sailor, Gabriel, aboard the Jeroboam insists that it is the God of the Shakers (that strange thing, male and female together, and with a female Christ, the Englishwoman Ann Lee, as well as the male, Jesus). Ishmael later, however, deliberately parallels the whale with the biblical God, even as he doubts that such a God can be known. And this is the second chief passage:

If I know not even the tail of this whale [for he develops at length the idea of the tail as the power or work of God in the world- the tail is the whale's providence], how understand his head? much more, how comprehend his face, when face he has none [since the whale has no nose to center the face, and his eyes are on the sides of his head, such that he has, as Ishmael points out "two backs"]? Thou shalt see my back parts, my tail, he seems to say, but my face shall not be seen. But I cannot completely make out his back parts; and hint what he will about his face, I say again he has no face.

Ishmael evokes the theophany of Exodus 33 (In the King James, "I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back parts; but my face shall not be seen") and doubts whether it can be. The whale has no face, only a tail. God, he says, has no hidden glory, no incomprehensible goodness- only incomprehensible power. Only the working of the world, in which good and evil seem to come indifferently.

The Pequod sets out on Christmas day, whether because Ahab is intent on his mission of self-exaltation to divinity (an "ungodly, god-like man"), or because its crew, like the wise men- or, better, like the shepherds- are in search of the God Most High, or because of both. The Pequod is on a voyage to understand deity and to kill it. Ahab sees in his crippling the fingerprints of God, and is intent to spit in the divine face if he cannot bloody it. But even beyond this, Ahab has an urge, a compulsion, an obsession to know the God whom he hates. He addresses himself to God in the fire: "Defyingly I worship thee." He is fascinated by providence even as he wishes to jam its inexorable wheels. And this, ultimately, is what gives the book its overall character.

Blake, the archetypical "mad prophet" of English literature, claimed that he wanted to write a "Bible of Hell," an account of the world from the diabolical perspective, and this he did in the form of his mythopoeic pseudo-epics. Melville, I believe, set out to write a "Bible of the Reprobate," the Bible as written by Ahab and Ishmael rather than Elijah and Isaac, and did so in Moby-Dick. Unlike Blake, I do not believe Melville sets himself in direct opposition to the "heavenly" (for Blake, this meant only the restrictive and the rationalistic; for Melville, it probably means something more along the lines of the ordinary good, the contented and dutiful). Instead, I think, he meant to write for those who, like the biblical Ishmael, stand near to the presence of God, who want desperately and perhaps angrily to see into it, but are unable- for what reason, only providence can tell. It is for those who have seen the tail but doubt the existence of the face. If Melville felt himself one of these, I cannot tell, but for certain, his Ahab and his Ishmael belong to that party.

Paterfamilias (Short Story)

The sound of the phone ringing woke Henry up, but it was Melanie who answered.

"Hello?" she said, and Henry rolled over to look at the red numbers on the alarm clock next to the bed. It was four-seventeen in the morning. He let out a sigh and closed his eyes tight.

"Oh. Oh my God," Melanie said. "I'll tell him. Thank you." She hung up.

"Oh, Harry, it's your daughter," she said. Henry sat up.

"An accident..." she said, and ran a hand through her long, bleached hair. "Harry, they said it looks bad," she said, and for some reason her voice dropped to a whisper as she went on.

Henry got out of bed and pulled on his clothes in the dark.

"Where?" he said at last, and Melanie gave him the name of the hospital.

It was cold enough that the steering wheel burned under his fingers, but he had not taken the time to find a coat.



Henry Callahan was a film critic, popular enough to have a syndicated newspaper column and a half-hour show on PBS. He was six feet tall, a slightly pudgy two hundred and six pounds, and had brown hair turning to gray with dark green eyes. He was divorced. He had two sons and a daughter. He had not spoken to any of them for over four years. He was fifty-nine years old and drove a blue Mercedes.



A terse exchange with a business-like nurse yielded the location of his daughter's room. It was still before dawn, before even the twilight which precedes it, and Henry was mostly alone in the halls. His stiff leather shoes made a dry clacking sound which reverberated faintly. He found the room at last and knocked hurriedly.

Leah opened the door, stepped out into the hall, closed it behind her. She pressed her head into his chest, her arms encircling his bulk.

"Henry," she said, "We're so scared."

He hesitated awkwardly. She pulled away from him, leaving small wet spots on his pale blue shirt. She wiped her eyes and gave him a quivering smile.

Henry swallowed. "Are the boys here?"

"Just Paul," his ex-wife told him. "Brian lives so far off now. He's on his way, though. Said he'd make it by six."

Henry glanced at his watch: five twenty-one. "Is it..." He paused. "How bad is it?"

"It's bad," she said in a whisper.

Henry nodded. "Can I- is it okay for me to go in?"

Leah brushed a lock of her hair- still as black as it ever was- out of her eyes. She smiled again, thinly, and gestured to the door. She put her hand on Henry's back as he went by, rubbing him gently.

Henry entered the room slowly, doing his best to mute the sharp sound of his shoes on the spotless white floor. Paul was there, sitting in a chair by the window. He looked different. His hair was clipped short. He used to wear it like a young George Harrison. There were deep lines in his face now. He looked old.

Paul didn't seem to notice him at first. His eyes stayed locked on his sister. But then some sudden move or too-loud step drew his attention, and his head snapped up. He stood quickly, cut his father off just before he reached the bed.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Paul hissed through clenched teeth.

Henry stepped back, giving ground in alarm before steadying himself and gathering his dignity. "She's my daughter," he said. "I'm here for Liz."

He looked away from his oldest child to his youngest, eyes taking in the extent of the damage. God. It was horrible. Her forehead was an unbroken bruise, more black than purple. Lacerations- glass?- spiderwebbed across her cheeks. Henry felt sick.

But then Paul was in front of him again, imposing his body between Henry and his daughter as though to protect her from some harm. "Why are you here?" he demanded.

Henry said nothing. His jaw began to work from side to side, but he didn't seem to notice it, nor the way his thumb was slowly rubbing the side of his index finger.

"Jesus Christ," said Paul, and for a moment his defiance seemed to relax. He looked in Henry's face, and his father thought he looked unbearably sad. "Why couldn't you have been different?" he asked, and Henry wasn't sure if he heard anger or pain in the question.


Henry knew exactly what he would do. He would draw himself up to his full height- Paul was always a small boy and neither adolescence nor adulthood had changed him in that regard- and summon up a gallant and wounded anger. He would proudly but nobly protest that he had always done what had seemed right to him. He would confess that he had made mistakes but insist that they were always honest mistakes, errors in judgment but not failings of character.

Then he would step forward to his son and they would throw their arms around each other and reconcile tearfully. Though, of course, they would not weep unduly. Then they would stand together in watch over Liz, joined in due time by Leah and Brian, and there would be peace between them all and Henry could put that part of his life behind forever, lay it to rest and give it an honorable burial. He would return to Melanie and his new life with a sound, untroubled conscience and a fine, manly self-regard. He knew this, but knowledge failed him. The angry dignity he counted on was not there to be found.


"I just never really gave a shit," Henry said. He reached out a hand to touch Paul's shoulder, felt his son stiffen as he did. He squeezed lightly and turned to go.

Leah caught him as he went, whispered soft, fast words of comfort and pleading, but he would not be held. He shook her off, kindly but firmly. There was nothing else there for him.

Quick and purposeful strides brought him back to the first floor. He hesitated by the entrance, but he didn't know why. Perhaps a half-formed expectation that he would find Brian on his way in kept him there, and the hope that one son might champion him against the other, mollify and soothe him, reconcile him to the presence of their prodigal father. But at last, he had to leave. There would be no miracle.


And, indeed, there was none. The days went on and on, and, at length, Liz woke up. She was always tired at first, somewhat disoriented. Henry heard the day's news from Leah, generally in the late evening while Melanie would read or watch television in bed. Time, as it does, went on, and Liz grew stronger, clearer. She would talk to her mother and her brothers, sometimes even to friends who would come to see her. And then one day she asked why Henry had not come to see her. They told her he had, and she seemed satisfied by that. But she wasn't, or wasn't for long, and a few days later she asked for him to come. It was Brian who shared the news with Henry. So Henry came on the next morning to see his daughter, and his sons were there, and Paul said nothing, but Brian said it was good to see him and Liz called him "Daddy," and that seemed good to him. He left with a promise to return, and when he got back home that night he kissed Melanie and told her it had been a good day.

On The Sidewalk (Short Story)

“Oh, shit,” Mike said, and almost dropped his beer.

I turned to see where he was looking. He had just rounded the next corner, and he was looking at something on the ground. I stepped a little closer.

“Oh, shit,” I said.

On the ground in front of us was a body. He was an older homeless guy, and he was just sprawled out on the sidewalk, spread-eagled and facing up. He was wearing an old gray sweatshirt underneath a tan overcoat, but he was barefoot and his pants were really worn out. With only the streetlight to see by, it was hard to tell exactly what he looked like, but he had a bushy moustache and close-cropped hair.

We stood for a while. I think Mike didn’t want to look at me.

“Check his pulse,” Mike said.

“Are you kidding? This guy’s probably been dead for hours,” I said.

“You a doctor? Check his pulse.”

I cursed at Mike under my breath, but I walked over to the guy and knelt down by his hand. I gripped his wrist and lifted his arm a little off the concrete.

“How do you do this?” I asked Mike.

“I don’t know,” he said, “Try his neck. That’s easier.”

“No fucking way I’m trying his neck,” I said, “The guy’s dead. He’s definitely dead.”

Mike took a gulp from his beer. He looked at his feet and then to me. He put his hand on the back of his neck.

“Well,” he said, “Should we call the cops?”

That made me nervous right away. Mike and I both had minor rap sheets already, and we were carrying a little bit of weed, not to mention Mike’s open container. We were both kind of baked. But it was late, there was no one else around, and it freaked me out a little to think about this guy lying dead on the street until all the nine-to-fivers got up for the morning commute.

“Alright,” I said, standing up. “Get rid of the beer. Where’s the bag?”

Mike patted his pockets for a minute before locating the pot on his right hip. He pulled the baggie out and shook it up and down a few times triumphantly.

“Okay,” I said, “Just keep it out of sight. I’ll take a few minutes to clear my head and then I’ll make the call. Sound good?”

Mike sat down on the curb. I plopped myself down next to him. It felt weird sitting down near a corpse. I kept looking over my shoulder at it. The guy’s feet were mangled as hell, a mess of raw blisters, dirty calluses, and discolored toenails. I couldn’t stand to look for more than a few seconds at a time.

“Okay,” I said, “I’ll make the call.”

“Keep your head straight,” Mike said.



Mike had more on his record than me. A couple months before, he had gotten into a fight and beaten up the guy pretty bad. They took him in for assault. He told me that he had called his mother and his brother first. They told him they were done getting him out of trouble. Next chance he got, he called me, but I didn’t have a job, then. It took me three days to scrape together the money for bail.

I remember seeing him come out of the holding area with his eyes glazed over. He told me he hadn’t slept more than an hour at a time for the last few days. I asked him if he had any trouble, but he never answered me. He just told me he wanted to go get a drink someplace.




I pulled my phone out and punched in the numbers.

A sleepy voice answered me, asked me, what was the situation.

“Um, I’m at Sixth and Washington—there’s, uh, there’s this guy. A homeless guy. I think, that, uh. Well, um, he’s dead. I think.”

The voice asked me, did it look like there were signs of violence.

“No,” I said. “We just kind of found him, and he was, like, lying on the ground and there was nobody near him.”

The voice asked, was there someone with me.

“Yeah,” I said, “My friend Mike.”

Mike smacked me on the back of the head.

I covered the mouthpiece on my phone and mouthed, “What the hell” at him.

“Why’d you say my name, dammit?” he whispered furiously.

“They don’t know which Mike it is, calm down,” I told him.

The voice asked, was I still there.

“Yeah, I’m still here. Yeah, I can wait. Okay. Bye.”

I hung up. Mike groaned, told me he didn’t wanna deal with cops. I told him to man up, that we were just gonna stick around for a few minutes, then the cops would take him away. He calmed down and was quiet for a while.

“You think they have funerals for bums?” he asked.

“I have no idea,” I said.

“It seems like they should,” he said. “But, I mean, who would go? And there’s no way that guy has a suit they could bury him in. And I bet they wouldn’t buy one just for him, you know?”

I said, yeah, that seemed true.

“But what do they do if they don’t give them a funeral?”

I didn’t know.

“You think they burn them?”

I still didn’t know.

“I hope they don’t just burn them,” Mike said slowly. He looked at his feet. “That’d be fucked up.”

I said yeah, and that I thought I heard the sound of sirens.