Page 25 of Room for Us

A professor in college once told me that fiction writers are perverse by nature. We’re addicts, voyeurs, cannibals. We chop up ourselves and the world—all the glory and pain and mediocrity—and snort the result like a designer drug. We play with the resulting high, puppeteering redemptions (and damnations) for the simple reason that we have no choice. Because of this—our addiction to the story—we struggle to find true and lasting fulfillment outside of our art.

A savage assessment, to be sure, but one I’ve found to be sadly accurate in my own life.

Case in point: I do like halibut.

Because I failed today to create a story to play with, I made Zoey Kemper my story. I was selfish, callous, driven by my addiction to dismember and understand something. So I played with her.

But what works with creations of the mind doesn’t work with people, and I learned young that seeking to understand someone else is a futile venture. Just consider the millions of people who spend billions of dollars on therapy trying to understand themselves and routinely failing. After all, how can any of us fully encapsulate the unseen tapestry of emotion and memory within us with something as limited as language?

My current problem, as I see it, is that while most people aren’t interesting enough for me to want to understand them, for some insane reason, she is. Zoey Kemper. I want to peer beneath that ready smile and see what her pain looks like. I want to know if it mirrors mine like I think it might. I want to understand.

“Say what now?”

I glare at the bartender, a kind-faced, grizzled bear of a man who probably rides a Harley and dresses up as Santa for local kids at Christmas.

“Isn’t it obvious?” I slur. “I’m having a midlife crisis.”

“Ah. Well, sorry to hear that.” He gives me a pitying look and strolls away.

I’m drunk.

In a bar called The Rooster.

With dead deer heads on the walls.

In the middle of Idaho.

“Hey, handsome. Mind if I join you?”

My bleary gaze focuses on the blonde sliding onto the stool next to mine. The details—too much perfume and hairspray, painted-on jeans, tight blouse, leather boots—get lost in the cloud of desperation hanging around her.

There’s a reason she’s here. Contrary to the science of magnetism, in life, like often attracts like. I’m just as desperate as she is, only we want different things.

For a hazy moment, I consider taking her back to the inn. Or inviting myself to her place for sloppy, regrettable sex. Only, Jack Daniel’s and I have been hanging out for a few hours, and he’s the jealous sort—I’m not sure he’ll allow my dick to rise to the occasion. And I don’t want her, anyway. Her eyes are wrong.

“No, thank you,” I tell her and hunch over my drink.

She stands with a huff. “Whatever.”

Two more drinks and some time later—fifteen minutes, an hour?—the bartender swaps my empty glass with water. I’d rather have another drink, but I can’t put the right words together. I’m tilting fast into that charming void known as blackout-drunk, my shoulders and head sagging, my ass shifting precariously on the stool.

I don’t think about Hemingway.

I think about Hemingway.

Eventually, I become aware of familiar voices beyond the void. The bartender and… what the hell is she doing here?

“Hey, Roger. Thanks for the call.”

“Sure thing. He was mumbling about roses not too long ago, and mentioned your name once or twice. I put two and two together.”

“My name?” She sounds surprised, then comes to a logical—and wrong—conclusion. “Guess he realized he’d need a ride home.”

Her eyes are dark and wide in the dim lighting, her hair a tangled corona. Garden boots over flannel pajama pants and an oversized parka zipped to her chin. It must be cold. She must have been asleep. I should feel guilty, but I don’t.

“Can you walk, Mr. Hart?”

“Not sure. And it’s Ethan.”

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