Smith tries to make a Commix writer out of the poet Kowalski
Time: Stamped at the bottom of this file
Place: Not important
When I met Steve Kowalski, he was wearing David Bowie’s expressionist clown outfit from “Scary Monsters,” but there were immediate problems with this, as, for one, Steve wasn’t gesturing forward-wise with a cigarette in his left hand into another dimension. Neither of us smoked, so no correction was possible. Plus, there was a legal ban on smoking in public places.
Flashed a picture of Kowalski walking along a negative primordial shoreline, a two-pronged structure sticking out of the water, left there by a higher intelligence many years ago to become a misunderstood relic that had never helped humanity, leaving the aliens’ wishes unfulfilled (maybe they should stop trying to help us evolve), with his mother, who was trying to convince Kowalski of the negative consequences of certain bad behavior – she was neither lecturing, nor imploring. He listened attentively and respectfully as they walked along.
“Why not Aladdin Sane,” I asked Steve.
“That’s just glam rock makeup,” he said. “There’s no real identity.”
I knew The Thin White Duke was out of the question, as his memory had been invoked without being named in The Hunched Cornish’s last piece in that other-dimensional place on this website called “The Checkout.”
I thought about the Diamond Dog, but then we already had a dog-man, or a man-dog, who would change first into more of one, then into more of the other, and seemed to do little more than wear a fedora and trench coat in his man phases, read newspapers, mostly the near-defunct Kyiv Poster, and insinuate his contempt for fools with a Hanna-Barbera cartoon-dog laugh.
“Well, what about… the Low guy?”
“Too depressed and severe. I don’t like the idea of wearing gothic punk underground cloaks.”
“Um, Lodger?”
“Yeah, I thought about him. Nice suit, but ultimately too chaotic and self-destructive.”
“Maybe the self-destruction is a result of the chaos…”
“Hmmm…”
And then I heard:
The Sun Machine is coming down
And we’re gonna have a party
A-a-ha…
“No, no, no,” I said to myself, gritting my teeth and shutting my eyes hard, trying to drive it out of my head.
“Hey, John, is anything the matter?”
“Ah, no, no, Steve… Okay, go right ahead. What’ve you got?”
We had both ordered large cups of hot black joe, Arabica ground, the way I like it, and were sipping them at our leisure, coolly blowing the residual steam out of our mouths. I think Steve ordered what I did to accommodate me, but was determined not to show it. He had gotten lipstick on his cup.
“Well, okay…”
He had out a worried and much-abused MS in hard copy, pages sutured together with multiple staples, crumpled, entire sections X-ed out and rewritten in penciled interlineations. His hand trembled slightly as he started to read it.
“There are these two tough guys and they walk into a diner and –”
“Tough guys – what do you mean by tough guys?”
“What do you mean what do I mean?”
Steve grew cotton-mouthed from nerves. His lipstick was cracking. He was taking larger swallows of coffee in ever-quicker succession, desperate to tongue-wash the wetness onto his lips.
“Well, are they just tough guys, or are they, you know, gangsters, or –”
“Oh, um, I think they might be something like killers.”
“Killers? I mean, that makes them gangsters then, doesn’t it, Steve?”
“Um, I don’t know, John. I mean, there are gangsters, and then I think there are killers who are separate and get hired by gangsters for special jobs.”
“But Steve, there are killers within gangsters. I mean, they are part of a particular mob and their specialty inside that mob is to kill.”
“Oh, ah, maybe, I don’t know. Maybe I can sort of write that into the story.”
“Okay, go on. What are their names?”
“Oh, ah, I don’t have names for them yet.”
I looked down at the MS that was shaking in Steve’s hand and then forced a dramatic moment of silence. Then I said:
“Well, okay, then, Steve; I’ll just imagine them without names for now. And you said they came into a diner? What diner – where?”
“Um, I’m not quite sure yet. Maybe a diner in Kansas somewhere.”
“Well, why Kansas, all of a sudden? Of all the places you could’ve picked, why did you have to pick Kansas?”
“Ah, I don’t know, John, I guess I was just reading, ah, reading. Ah…”
“Reading what?!”
“I don’t know, John, I don’t know – I forgot. Maybe I wasn’t reading anything at all. Really, I don’t remember. I couldn’t tell you why I all of a sudden seemingly out of nowhere decided the diner was in Kansas.”
I could see he didn’t know what to do with himself, or that he just wanted to recite some poetry. He was looking down at his MS, but as though he wasn’t seeing it. His hand had stopped shaking. It looked like he might have wanted to simply get up and leave. I understood I had to calm down.
The Sun Machine is coming down…
“Nooooo!!!”
“John, what’s wrong? Is there anything I –”
“No, no, I’m all right. Okay, go on. It’s sounding pretty good so far. So these two guys walk into a diner, and then what happens next?”
“Well, they, ah, it’s really early in the morning, see, and so there’s nobody else in the place, and they sit at the counter on high, red-cushioned, spinning stools screwed into the floor – as opposed to any of the seating available in the body of the establishment – and the guy behind the counter comes up to them and –”
“The guy? What guy? Is it the owner, or the cook, or –”
“Well, it’s sort of both. I mean, he owns the place and he cooks for it too. It’s real early in the morning, and so maybe the cook he has hasn’t gotten there yet, or –”
“No, sorry, Steve. Any cook in a place like that I think should actually be there before the owner – you know, to get things going in the kitchen.”
“But, John, how’s he going to get in there if he doesn’t have the keys?”
I had to admit to myself that Kowalski had gotten me. He was right. What owner of a diner would ever entrust his cook with the keys to his place, a business, a commercial establishment that was all about making money, no matter how loyal and trustworthy that cook seemed?”
So, perhaps half-conceding the point, I said, “Yeah, well, maybe they should at least be there at the same time.”
“Okay, maybe, John. I’ll try to get it into the story.”
Kowalski was visibly calmer now. He wasn’t trembling. His mouth was no longer drying out. He wasn’t reaching for the coffee anymore out of desperation, but was slurping it again nice and slow, like he had gained a measure of control, mastering himself, growing in confidence. Maybe I didn’t like that too much, I’ll have to admit, but maybe I also realized that was the way it had to go. Now it was Kowalski who continued, without me prompting him to it.
He said, “So the guy behind the counter comes up to them and –”
“What did he look like, Steve, what was his name?”
No sooner had I asked him than for some reason I regretted it.
“On both counts, John, I don’t know. I’ll try to work it into the story.”
He waited. I got the hint. “All right, Steve. Sorry. Just go on and I’ll try not to interrupt again.”
Kowalski was very forgiving by nature. In fact, I don’t think he had taken offense at anything I had said. He went on as though nothing had happened.
“Okay, so the guy behind the counter walks up to the two tough guys who had just walked in and were sitting on the stools, and he says –”
“What were they wearing, Steve?!”
“One was wearing a double-breasted light-gray suit that had some shine to it, like a gloss, and the other one was wearing a dark-gray suit, regular cut, light-absorbing and matt. They both kept on their fedoras.”
He waited. I was thinking, ‘…beautiful, excellent…’ and made no further sound. Kowalski went on:
“And so the guy behind the counter says, ‘Good morning, gentlemen.’ And one tough guy says to the other tough guy, ‘Hey, did you hear that? Bright boy here just said good morning.’ And the other tough guy says, ‘Anyone who can tell the time of day the way he can has got to be some kind of bright boy.’ ‘Yeah, a real bright boy. Isn’t that right, bright boy?’ ‘Well, ah, what can I get you gentlemen?’ ‘Say, did you hear that? Bright boy just asked what he could get us.’ ‘He must be a real bright boy.’ ‘Yeah, who else would ask what he could get us at 8 o’clock in the morning?’ ‘Only a bright boy.’ ‘A real bright boy. Maybe we should start asking bright boy here some of our own questions, so as to let him get to the bottom of this mystery.’ ‘But he’s a bright boy.’ ‘A real bright boy.’ ‘So maybe bright boy can figure it out himself?’ ‘No, I think we should ask bright boy one or two questions.’ ‘All right, let’s.’ ‘Say, bright boy. What else would people want when they walk into a diner at 8 o’clock in the morning?’ ‘Um, uh… breakfast?’ ‘Hey, did you hear that? Bright boy here says breakfast.’ ‘A real bright boy.’ ‘Except I don’t know if he’s saying so, or asking so.’ ‘That’s because he’s a bright boy.’ ‘A real bright boy.’ ‘Is that right, bright boy? Are you saying breakfast, or are you answering the question with another question?’ ‘I, uh, uh…’”
As I listened, I heard the poetry, the music in what Kowalski had written. For prose, maybe there was too much. But it was still good. It rang and it sang, like the way Charles Bukowski described the work of a certain writer he admired, whose name I can’t remember, in his novel “Ham on Rye.”
I let Kowalski keep talking, reading from his manuscript, by now comfortable, enjoying himself. I didn’t have the heart to tell him The Commix only took real stories about real people in Kyiv.
And then I wondered where Kowalski had come from. I tried to remember he had sort of sprung from the frustrated will of Jack Step in the midst of a tormented moment of reflection and great mental anguish suffered by Step in connection with the pact he had renewed with Johnnie Walker.
As Kowalski read, I allowed myself to look out the big window. We were also sitting in a diner, at a table, and it was also early morning – a Sunday, if I’m not mistaken, which would have made this just yesterday. There were only a few people walking by as the sun brightened on the pavement of Bessarabska market and square, known in common parlance as Bessarabka.
I looked far across the main street Khreshchatyk, which ran parallel with us. Perpendicularly, there was Taras Shevchenko Boulevard, running down into Khreshchatyk and ending. At the bottom of the boulevard’s descent, there had once stood a statue of Lenin, leaning and gesturing directly this way. Now, there was only a vacated plinth. The country was at war with Russia, one of the biggest military powers in the world. A monster. Ukraine had none. The only thing left to do was to write.
Oh no… not me… I never lost control…
You’re face… to face… with the man who sold the world…
I let it go.
Filed by John Smith, September 22, 2014