He lay on top of the bed cover—there was time for a brief nap before checkout, and part of him felt like napping but his mind wouldn’t cooperate and instead of sleeping he lay thinking. Beth was quiet on their return to the hotel, more withdrawn than during their cab ride to Orville’s even. Maybe she was tired too, or processing their sudden notoriety as Logos. In the bookstore people gathered around them while also being kept from them, as if he and Beth had an invisible barrier between them and the other members of humanity in the store—even though they were all kindred souls within a dying subspecies: readers, lovers of books, lovers of literature (some). Now he and Beth and the other Logos were an infinitely smaller subspecies: not just bibliophiles but biblios themselves: living literature. Pieces of a text as enigmatic as the Dead Sea Scrolls, except with an assurance the text would be resurrected one day, unentombed, apotheosized.
Or was there something else at work in Beth’s reticence? Perhaps she was feeling the same sort of prebereavement he was experiencing. Maybe it had to do with what she was returning to, a situation and a circumstance which caused her stress, which leached away her happiness.
Rain had fallen on them in large, cold drops as they left the bookstore. He felt the sidelong scrutiny of some of the store’s patrons as they hailed a cab on the street, sheltering their purchases with the bags held close to their chests, like precious pets or infants even. Or religious relic. The rain continued its transformation of the city from white wonderland, a card from Currier and Ives, to colorless slush of steel and concrete, amid an alchemical return to solid reality.
The real was forming before their eyes, and perhaps it was the reconstitution of reality which weighed upon them, upon Beth in particular.
He looked at the digital clock on the nightstand, its numerical glow falling upon the enigmatic scrawl of pupils— on the hotel pad, and there were forty minutes before checkout. He’d shut the drapes in hopes of getting some sleep but it was a futile effort. A thin strip of gray light marked where the drapery panels didn’t quite meet. His mind was wandering among abstractions, and he thought of the strip as a demarcation between phases of reality, and each of the two dark panels on either side were the before and after of the demarcated event: the line of gray light was the moment he met Katie at a department meeting, the panel on the left was his existence before as a single man focused on establishing an academic life, as a single man who felt incomplete; the right was all that came after, the hoping, the wishing, the stargazing, the poetry, the planetarium, the laughing, the loving, the road-tripping, the church, the change, the stress, the uncertainty | the moment he discovered Elizabeth Winters, the enthrallment to her prose, S/he, Orion, Wirds, Body Cheque, Logos, everything in print, before had been directionless, Medieval verse, Shakespeare, the modernists and midcentury poets, Wilson and Gale, Ginsberg, Burroughs, Kerouac, Plath, Hughes and Heaney, Eliot and Bunting | the moment pupils— was forever etched into his skin, prior loose affiliations, opaqueness, senses of belonging with little purpose, weak fidelity to cause, but after connection, community, collaboration, conspiracy to a literary enterprise, contentment even in contours of his crumbling relationship with Katie | a sense of sympatico since meeting Beth, a kindling of a belief in kindred spirits (and therefore, logically, a kindling of a belief in souls), an ease of company where before there had been anxiety, psychic turmoil, tension—traces of turmoil and tension had begun to tendril their way in with Beth’s sudden reticence, the dampening of her soul’s radiance—so would that always be the way of trying to connect, fleeting satisfaction followed by entropic collapse, soon and suddenly | before there’d been a private identity, a quiet awareness to the typical number of acquaintances, friends and family, professional connections, colleagues, students, and his scant persona in print, a handful of editors and a nearly equal number of readers, now, though, there was some other emerging identity, some more public person recognized by strangers, considered woven within some context beyond himself.
He rolled over turning his back to the drapes and the bar of gray light. He thought about how much time and emotional energy he’d invested in trying to figure out various female partners (or potential partners)—attempting to peer beyond the veil of their outward gestures, to audit their words and actions and expressions to arrive at some accounting of their feelings, their wishes, their desires. In retrospect it appeared a foolish errand: there was no way to divine what lay beneath the surface. He suspected that much of the time they themselves didn’t know their own heart. He barely had a slippery grasp of his own.
He checked his phone, which was on silent so he could rest. Neither Beth nor Katie had contacted him, but it was time to vacate his room. He brushed his teeth, placed the damp brush in a baggie, and packed it away. He’d found space for the book and the journal he’d bought at Orville’s but it was tight. He thought: Traveling lightly requires packing tightly. At first he rather liked the construction, then decided it was more of a jingle than a line of poetry.
It was still two hours until the memorial for Elizabeth Winters. He took a last look around the room, checking drawers he knew he hadn’t used, even perusing the shower. He gazed at the tiny patch of lake he could see from his window, now streaked with rain.
In the lobby he waited in line for a few minutes behind others who were checking out. He furtively glanced here and there for Beth: she was nowhere.
He thought visiting an art museum would be a worthwhile way to use a couple of hours. The Art Institute was too obvious, and it would likely be crowded. An alternative was the Museum of Contemporary Art—he searched on his phone while waiting in line. It appealed to him. He was feeling new. He wanted to create the new. The sentiment of Adorno came to him, a sentiment which he’d taken to heart and still truly believed: In art, there is nothing new under the sun, but the true artist must try to create the new nevertheless.
Outside a row of taxis waited in the rain; it was a prime time for people to be leaving the hotel, most bound for the airport or the train station. He slushed through the sidewalk to a classic yellow cab, scooted into the backseat with his stuffed backpack and told the driver the Museum of Contemporary Art, on Chicago. It was a brief drive, mainly along the lake, which was leaden and inhospitable beyond the horizon, like the sea. It seemed ages ago that he’d shared a cab with Beth and Frannie returning from the hospital—even the trip to the bookstore had the feel of another time.
As the cab approached the curb in front of the museum an installation came into view: a large purple egg (two or three times taller than a person—an umbrellaed person conveniently walking past revealed) with the words The Maternal in metallic gold angled along its wet surface. He assumed the piece was announcing a featured exhibit.
He paid the cabbie then hurried past the egg up the museum’s steps to the front doors, where a large hashtagged phrased had been professionally inscribed on a banner: #makeitnew—Ezra Pound’s modernist mantra. He recognized the homophonic irony (or was it the appropriateness?) of the pound sign being the hashtag, an old symbol repurposed in the digital age.
He purchased his admission and checked his backpack and coat. The young woman at the desk, who was wearing colorfully ornate glasses, handed him a program and a device for his self-guided tour. The Maternal was indeed the featured exhibit in the second-floor gallery.
He took the stairs and discovered the well itself was an artfully designed space of swirling curves, perhaps cyclonic curves was better. Looking up, through the eye of the cyclone, was disorienting and he gripped the metal banister securely as he climbed. He reached the second-floor landing and entered the gallery.
The first piece in the exhibit was a free-standing panel twenty or thirty feet long, perhaps constructed of layers of glass, some of which were painted or imprinted with images of nude, pregnant women of various ethnicities. As one moved along the panel, one’s image mingled with the images of pregnant women, effecting distorted representations of the viewer as female and expecting. At the end of the panel was a plaque with the title and artist: Herspective Susanna Moshirfatemi. He passed the tour device across the red-light scanner then held it to his ear to find out more about the installation and its artist, an Iranian-American architect. The tour’s female voice spoke about the artwork briefly before a recording of the artist: So much of the world’s problems are rooted in single perspective. People view complex issues through a single, narrow lens. We must strive to see via many perspectives, to project ourselves into others’ circumstances.
The recording ended and he went farther into the gallery. To his left was a series of panels in a circular formation, suspended on nearly invisible wire from the ceiling. Viewed from outside they were blankly white but space between the panels invited one to enter the circle. The interior sides of the panels were of various colors—mint green, glacial blue, mild lilac, frozen fog, palest pink—and on each a word was painted in large, beautifully scripted gold letters: bitch, whore, cunt, slut, tramp. And a single letter was crudely painted in black on each panel: W, O, M, A, N. The placard with title and artist was adhered to the floor at the center of the circle: Gilt Helen Pirski. He passed the tour device over the scanner at his feet. The voice discussed the piece’s symbolism in terms of its shape and color choices (each shade was inspired by a well-known king’s throne room). The artist spoke: I was thinking about the marriage of language and visual elements but especially about what the word marriage means in that context. The language and the visual affect each other, yes, but one must dominate—there cannot be perfect harmony. It’s not how the cosmos operates. There are always masters and pupils—with the latter ultimately becoming the former and usurping the former.
The utterance of his word both startled and absorbed him further into contemplation of the art’s meaning. He exited the circular installation in this conflicted state of alertness and introspection, hyper attentive to his own musings. As such, he barely prevented himself from running headlong into the person outside the work of art, yet didn’t process the identity of the person until she spoke to him:
Chris.
Hi. Sorry. I was lost in the art.
It must be enthralling, said Beth.
Instantly a sense of betrayal surrounded them like a cage, as leaden with meaning as any art object, a piece imbued with enigma. Who had betrayed whom? And why? Neither knew, it seemed. He didn’t.
It’s a provocative exhibition, she said.
Yes—it appears to be. I mean, I’ve only just arrived.
I always go through exhibits backward or in random order. Otherwise I feel like the gallery is manipulating me, encouraging me to see the art in a particular way, a preordained interpretation.
A good point. I suppose I feel there was a masterplan, one whose agenda was benign, and I feel obliged to respect that design. In truth I haven’t really dissected my thoughts on such things. In my poems I place the stanzas in a particular order and assume readers will follow that design. I guess they don’t have to. They can read them in whatever order they like, or not at all, which is probably the likeliest scenario.
That’s a good point. Now I’m curious what the gallery designer’s masterplan may’ve been, but I can’t un-experience the pieces I’ve already taken in. Control-z my way back to entering the exhibit.
Indeed. Experiencing the exhibition for the first time is a one-way ticket. He stepped aside and raised his hand like a welcoming host. Please, step this way to experience Gilt (that’s gilt, without the u).
Beth stepped inside the installation. He didn’t follow. It seemed a piece meant to be experienced one observer at a time. He moved ahead in the exhibit. The works became more conventional, paintings and sculptures, and some found art, all on a small scale. Everything was interesting but he had difficulty engaging them fully. Part of his mind remained on the fact Beth occupied the gallery space too. As he went from piece to piece and cornered around partitions his eyes were only partly on the art; he involuntarily watched for Beth. Now on the opposite side of the gallery, he semi-watched her take in a final work of art—nesting dolls which instead of nesting hung from the ceiling, one above the next level below—then Beth exited the gallery, without appearing to look for him. He felt a small cut of hurt at her ambivalence. Then a small cut of self-admonishment for caring.
He remained for a time among The Maternal artworks, listening to a few more recorded bits, before deciding to leave. It was still too early to go to the memorial. He could easily find a coffee place and read for a while. On his way out of the gallery he nodded to a woman who’d brought her (presumably) three young daughters to the exhibit. The little girls were having fun with their reflections in the Herspective installation.
Downstairs, he went directly to the ticket counter to retrieve his backpack and coat. While the young woman with the eye-catching glasses was getting them, he turned to take in the view of the Contemporary’s main floor, and Beth was seated on a bench against the wall. Next to her was her overnight bag and a medium-size suitcase on wheels. She stood up when he noticed her and walked toward him.
It’s still a bit early for the memorial.
I thought about just getting some coffee to while away the time.
There’s a place a couple of blocks from the auditorium. She didn’t show him but held up her phone. She’s researched it. It’s my turn I think.
The young woman brought his pack and handed it over the counter. She paused when she saw him and Beth together. She recognized them from their Tribune photo, not him by himself, nor her, but side by side their identity as Logos was manifest. Who could say how far that photo had traveled on the waves of the Web.
I’ll call for a Lyft, said Beth as she went back to the bench for her luggage.
Thanks, he said, taking his pack from the ticket girl, whose tattoo sleeves poked intricately from beneath the sleeves of her sweater. He wondered if she was thoroughly inked from neck to toe.
It was still raining so he and Beth waited inside for their driver. They spoke of The Maternal exhibition as strangers would, sharing only their most superficial thoughts about the pieces, doing little more than describing them, wary to commit to anything even resembling a critique. From inside the glass doors they watched a silver Camry come to a stop at the curb, just beyond the purple egg and just as Beth received a text alert. Our chariot, she said, and they went out into the rain.
Beth had an umbrella but it presented a problem along with her bag and purse (nearly as large as an overnight bag) and her suitcase. He took the handle of the suitcase so that she could more easily open the umbrella. The umbrella was red with large white polka dots; it seemed strangely and inappropriately festive.
Before they reached the car, Beth stopped and turned to him. They were somewhat sheltered by the purple egg installation. She said, Look, I’m sorry I ditched you at the hotel. I shouldn’t have. It was wrong. She was looking at him through the rain that dripped from the edge of her umbrella but almost seemed to be speaking to herself, giving voice to an internal admission, a confession.
It’s ok. Rain ran cold down his neck.
No it’s not. I felt myself getting attached and it scared me. I felt like an idiot for getting attached to you. . . .
I understand, I really do. He thought of what to say, of what he wanted to say, settled for: I truly do.
Elizabeth? The Lyft driver had lowered the passenger window and was calling to them, thinking they were confused.
Yes, said Beth. Come on. You’re getting soaked.
The driver popped the trunk from inside, and he waved her to stay where she was, dry in the driver’s seat. He put Beth’s luggage in the trunk then scooted in next to her in the back of the Camry.
By the way, Beth said to the driver, you’re going to O’Byrn’s in case you’re curious. She pulled away from the curb. We have just enough time for the city’s best coffee before the memorial.
One can’t argue with the city’s best, he said.
After a moment: What did you think of the exhibition?
I know it’s pedestrian to call it interesting but it was. I don’t know that I found anything especially inspiring. Perhaps I wasn’t in the proper frame of mind for the show. What about you?
Same. I felt a lot of pressure to feel something, besides pressure. I was engaged intellectually but not so much emotionally. Perhaps I’m all wrung out emotionally. Maybe I’ll feel something from the art later, after it sinks in and my emotional well refills.
I feel an urge to write. More than that: a yearning to write, to write something great, something meaningful. I’m sure that was impacting my appreciation of the show, distracting me.
That’s a lot of pressure too. Any sense what your magnum opus will be about?
Only a sense.
They’d been stopped for a couple of minutes when the driver said, I’m not sure I’m going to be able to get your any closer than this.
They were stopped because of a traffic jam, not just a red light.
It’s backed up for blocks. Must be a big to-do at the university. Not the right time of year for graduation.
Holy cow, said Beth. Because of the memorial, you think?
Must be.
At least the rain has let up, said the driver. She slowed the speed of her wipers.
I guess we’ll have to hoof it, he said.
Just another exciting chapter in Elizabeth Winters’s book.
The driver pushed the trunk release as they slid out. He removed Beth’s suitcase and set it on the sidewalk. He took up her smaller bag and shouldered it, its strap overlapping one of his backpack straps.
She extended the suitcase’s handle. Unto the breach.
Foot traffic on the sidewalk wasn’t as snarled as the street traffic, but it was heavily congested, similar to a crowded street festival, but with a subdued vibe. There was an energy but it was the inherent energy of a mass of humanity coming together, regardless of its purpose or impetus.
Is this all due to Elizabeth Winters? Beth was rolling her suitcase alongside her, rather than pulling it, causing them to make a wider wake as they maneuvered through the throng.
She never had this sort of popularity in life, unless I’ve been mistaken all these years.
I don’t think you were mistaken, unless I was too.
The rain had transformed the snow to slush, and the foot traffic had mostly cleared the sidewalk, except for occasional puddles of slush. Beth tried to avoid them with her rolling suitcase. However, the dynamics of the crowd sometimes made avoidance impossible, and the case’s wheels would skid or slog in the mushy slush. Beth would have to exert extra force to keep the suitcase at her side and moving along.
Meanwhile, he watched for familiar faces, other Logos and especially their friends from the previous night. Everyone appeared a total stranger, hunched and wet-shouldered, and oddly quiet as they moved along alone in the crowd. He thought of Toni, the protagonist in Elizabeth Winters’s story “S/he,” when she tries to fit into a party but feels helplessly alone in the raucous crowd, partygoers shouting conversation at one another above the deafening beat of the music, or moving to it in a tribal version of teenage dance.
He also recalled the St. Patrick’s Day date with Katie in Mrs. O’Malley’s claustrophobically crowded space, and how he felt awkwardly alone that night too, among the shouting strangers and Katie, suddenly like a stranger herself, retreated into an impenetrable cone she’d constructed, impenetrable especially to him.
Now, he didn’t feel alone in this frenetic crowd thanks to Beth’s presence. Yet he experienced a kind of pre-aloneness, pre-grief at their soon-to-come separation. He’d tried to intellectualize himself beyond it. He’d tried to articulate the absurdity of the situation: the absurdity of falling in love with her, of having fallen in love in the space of only a few hours.
He hoisted Beth’s bag higher on his shoulder and took the opportunity to glance at her in profile, half hoping she would suddenly appear as someone who didn’t evoke this maelstrom of emotions, this turmoil of the heart. She did.
They came to the coffee shop which had been their objective and nearly didn’t realize it. There were so many people loitering on the walk in front of the O’Byrn’s they obscured its name.
Should we bother? asked Beth.
Let’s take a look. Maybe it’s not as bad inside.
They managed their way through the coffee crowd—excuse me, pardon us. There was nowhere to sit but the line to order wasn’t terrible. They exchanged glances then took up a spot in line. It was warm inside the shop, with so many customers packed together. Beth removed her coat and folded it over her suitcase. Her Logos pass, in a kind of periwinkle blue, hung around her neck like an amulet.
Voices babbled all around, mostly indecipherable except for the odd snippet, mostly meaningless. Their turn to order came. Three bearded and harried baristas behind the counter ground and pressed and poured and streamed as if monks on a holy mission. They ordered café Americanos, for which Beth paid, and waited as best they could off to the side.
A man came up to the counter and picked up a napkin from a disheveled stack. He paused. You’re one of those. He nodded toward Beth’s pass. Logos. He looked at him but his pass was hidden beneath his coat. So what’s your take? Murder-suicide, suicide-suicide, or a terrible coincidence?
He and Beth looked at each other.
Where’ve you two been? They found a note. The man turned away without further explanation.
Their Americanos were ready. They made their way outdoors. He held Beth’s cup while she put her coat back on without buttoning it.
What was that?
Let’s find out. She took her phone from her pocket. There are alerts.
He wanted to check his phone too but was manacled by the cups of coffee.
Beth was silent for a few moments as she skimmed the bits of news. Wow. Apparently a note was found in the pilot’s locker, Meredith Overturf, and it reads like a suicide note. I guess another pilot found it and tweeted. He said he was going to post a picture of it but so far it hasn’t apparently.
Maybe a sudden pang of decency.
Or the authorities.
What did the guy mean suicide-suicide?
Beth was still skimming. I guess there’s a rumor that Elizabeth Winters was sick—people are suggesting the plane crash was a suicide pact.
Ridiculous—the day of Revelation. She’d been planning this event for years.
Beth pocketed her phone and took her coffee. This event would’ve barely been a blip on the literary radar. Now look.
There were people everywhere on the sidewalk standing or walking. On the street the snarled cars barely crept along.
Katie’s charges of Elizabeth Winters being a publicity hound returned to him. What if she’s not dead? Who was that we saw last night at the hospital? Could this all be an elaborate hoax? Might she show up at her own funeral, Huck Finn-like?
I don’t know. Elaborate would hardly describe it.
A light rain began.
We’d better move along. It’s likely to be a zoo getting into the Dance Center.
People on the streets were mainly somberly attired, as if deliberate mourners. Beth was a sharp contrast in her coat of winter white and light hair, a blossom afloat on a murky pond. He thought of the lake scene in Orion, where the novelist character, Alice Rose, Elizabeth Winters’s self-parody, refers to herself as Persophone, queen of the underworld. Did it imply a dark vein in the author’s psyche, a tendency toward suicide? He was forever warning his students not to try too hard to connect authors’ work with the authors themselves.
Nevertheless, he couldn’t help himself. He began flipping through a catalog of Elizabeth Winters’s characters. There was the sense in “S/he” that suicide could be the fate of Toni/Tony. There is a mystery surrounding Eleanor’s mother’s death in “The Gold Rug,” but the mother is only briefly mentioned. One of Eliza’s grad students in Orion is a cutter but not suicidal per se. He could think of no one in “Pike’s Peak” or “Klimpt’s Thread” who suggests any kind of self-harm. There’s Franz, the ski instructor in “Pike’s Peak” who is in and out of rehab so often that the clinic director (badly) jokes they should install a revolving door just for him. Franz, however, is portrayed as more of a comic character than a tragic one.
Rain was falling harder by the time they reached the line waiting for admission to the Dance Center, still blocks away. Beth opened her polka-dotted umbrella and they tried to take refuge beneath it, along with the bags, but it was inadequate to the task. He held his backpack out of the rain more than himself, concerned about his newly purchased book and journal.
The sidewalks and streets in the immediate vicinity were filled, in spite of the cold rain. Somberness had been replaced with an electric, near-carnival atmosphere. The death of the author had catapulted her into a celebrity status she hadn’t known in life, beyond a core of devoted readers, and the increasingly weird circumstances regarding the way it happened, as they became known little by little, served to stoke the public’s previously unrealized ardor.
The smell of grilling sausages came to him on a gust of damp breeze. A half-block away a food truck had set up at the curb, selling lunch to the mourning multitudes. Sausages and peppers, it seemed, and fries, espresso drinks and bottled water. They were doing a brisk business.
They progressed along the walk. Shortly they saw people standing in a half circle, intently watching some spectacle. It took a moment to process. There was a young couple on the sidewalk oddly dressed for the season and the weather: he in khaki walking shorts and an Argyle sweater; she in a sky-blue pantsuit and a man’s fedora, an ostrich plume protruding from its band. She was saying, . . . don’t you dare use the phrase star-crossed, I swear to God—
He said, That’ll be some trick, since you claim He doesn’t exist, or is it postulate, Professor? (Professor was said sneeringly.)
Oh, are we using titles now . . . Grad Student?
The young man threw down the coffee cup he’d been holding. Empty. And stormed off.
The semicircular crowd and some of the Logos in line applauded appreciatively. His and Beth’s hands were full. The two were actors (likely theater majors at the university) doing a scene from Orion. The grad student came back and waved to the crowd to acknowledge their response, while his partner curtsied in her pantsuit.
Three young people dressed all in black, including berets, rushed up and handed umbrellas to Dr. Sands and Bryan Hefferkamp. The trio in black were The Poets of course, who function as the Fates in the novel. The First Poet, a young woman, blond ponytail, willowy, began miming climbing a ladder. She climbed in place for a full minute, always gazing upward, before The Second Poet said, You realize we’re not mimes, we’re poets. He was stocky, bearded, reminding him of the nurse in the ER. That’s right, said The Third Poet, a woman whose reddish locks were nearly too closely cropped to see beneath her beret, our messages to the world are not so overt. They require more teasing and less certainty. Yes, like life itself, added The Second Poet. Why is that? asked The First Poet, still poised on her imaginary ladder, one black Chuck raised as if resting on a rung, hands gripping air at head level. Poets Two and Three exchanged quizzical looks, each looking for help from the other. I’m not certain, said The Second Poet scratching his beard as if absentmindedly. We must be sublime, offered The Third Poet. Must we? said The First Poet, relaxing from her pose on the ladder. Yes, said The Third. Poets must make appeal to the subject’s soul more so than their mind. That’s right, said The Second. We must speak in the language of the Great Mystery, the Universal Enigma. I.e., said The Third Poet, the Sublime. Ok, said The First, where was I climbing? What specifically was I climbing? You were climbing up, said The Second, specifically on a ladder. A ladder? That’s not very specific. All right, said The Third, helping out, an extension ladder. The First shook her head in a slow emphatic no. Not even close. Well, I have to be close, said The Third. Ladders are ladders pretty much. Tell us then, please, said The Second.
Before she can reply, a voice speaks from the crowd: Jacob’s Ladder. That’s right, said The First Poet, vindicated. The fellow who spoke stepped forward. He was dressed as an academic, tweed coat, narrow woolen tie, but wearing a miner’s helmet and carrying a pick on his padded shoulder. It was Foucault of course; this was the dream sequence from Orion. The poet wishes to ascend to the heavens, said Foucault (with a faltering French accent), but it is not merely for divine inspiration, to return to earth with Promethean fire. Rather, he desires to establish his dominance as the purveyor of truth and thus insinuate himself into the State apparatus, to become an instrument of control via his eloquence. Poetry as propaganda. Foucault switched on his helmet’s lamp. It is a simple matter of applying the archeology, he declared, self-satisfied. Foucault balanced the miner’s pick against his leg long enough to light a Gauloises and inhale deeply.
Enter Baudrillard, whispered Beth. They’d been inching along in the line while watching the street performance.
Forget Foucault! railed Baudrillard from the crowd. He stepped forward, dark pants, wrinkled white dress shirt, black tie hanging stained and limp from his neck. He wore an old television, minus its insides, as a kind of helmet, his face where the screen should be, rabbit-ears as insect-like antennae, one extended farther than the other. The face inside the TV wore a thin mustache and black-rimmed glasses. Forget Foucault, he repeated (his French accent better). Old news is no news. If people no longer know the allusion it has shed its effect, like an exoskeleton to be blown away on the wind, blown to oblivion. Only the now matters, and it matters very little, because the now quickly becomes the then and its power is depleted to zero: a battery which flares once and then is instantly dead.
The residue of control remains, asserted Foucault, even if the knowledge has become obsure.
Nonsense! cried Baudrillard. I shall seduce you with the bright and beautiful moment, the sexy and sensational instant, and you shall be powerless against its empty charms. He began to loosen his tie even further and move his hips as if beginning an alluring dance. The crowd began to whistle and applaud. See? said Baudrillard from his TV helmet, an improvised line.
How dare you! seethed an indignant Foucault, raising the pick-ax. Baudrillard grabbed his adversary by the shoulders and they began to mock wrestle on the sidewalk.
He and Beth moved with the line to a point where they had difficulty seeing the actors through the crowd. It was no matter. They knew how the scene ends, with a snowy-haired Derrida coming to break up the dispute. It was the critics dream sequence from Orion, an abridged version of it at least. In the novel the argument between Foucault and Baudrillard continues for thirty pages before erupting into a bareknuckle boxing match. It was one of the scenes in the book which made him fall in love with Elizabeth Winters. What other contemporary novelist would put such an absurd scene in their book, aimed at such a miniscule audience? A writer, it would seem, who could only achieve a wider audience post-mortem—a fact which Elizabeth Winters may have understood. To what lengths would a writer go for an enthusiastic audience?
Rain thrummed loudly on their shared umbrella. He imagined his purchases from Orville’s were getting wet even though they were folded inside the store’s plastic bag and stowed inside his backpack. It was all right. A little water damage would only add character—like a dueling scar or a trick knee from the rugby field—and prompt him to recall this moment, on the crowded sidewalk in the weather with Beth, deep within her own reverie.
“The Artist Spoke” is an excerpt from Part V of Ted Morrissey’s work in progress, “The Isolation of Conspiracy.” Other excerpts have appeared in Floyd County Moonshine, Lakeview Journal, Adelaide (two excerpts), and Central American Literary Review. He is the author of seven works of fiction, most recently the novels Mrs Saville and Crowsong for the Stricken, winner of the International Book Award in Literary Fiction, as well as the American Fiction Award, from Book Fest, and a Kirkus Reviews Best Indie Book of 2017.
