Blocked

By PB Rippey

            She picked up after the fourteenth ring and he asked, “What are you doing?”

            “Qué?”

            “Tell me,” he said, resting the phone between his shoulder and ear.  Hands free, he lit a cigarette extracted from a slim wooden box used by his father and grandfather for exactly the same purpose. “What are you doing?”

            “Excusez?”

            He exhaled smoke, saying, “Tell all.”

            A sound like a tiny deck of cards being shuffled. 

            “Don’t sigh,” he said.  “Just tell me.”

            “Nein.”

            “Please,” he said.

            “Nicht!”

            He glanced at the clock over his computer.  Nine p.m. and thirty-two seconds. The city’s best restaurant was within walking distance of his condo.  Tonight’s special, he knew, was halibut with braised fennel and sweet cipolinni onions.  After dinner, he could stroll the safe, pleasant westside pavement to Barnes & Noble, the attached Starbuck’s serving eye-popping espresso until midnight.  Or there was always home. He adored home. He could wander the rooms of his two story condo and feel instantly soothed by all bare, bright walls and bookshelves stocked in hard covers only. He liked spending time in the sunken living room, before the floor to ceiling windows, staring at those passing, at what they wore, how they moved, how they managed the loop of a dog’s leash with one hand, or two hands. And there was nothing nightmarish about remaining exactly where he was, seated comfortably in the leather office chair before desk and computer, the tortoiseshell cat on his lap purring and plump, warming his thighs, the alarms in his condo set, no one permitted entry unless he allowed it, squinting suspiciously at the video monitor in his marble foyer.  Sucking deeply on his cigarette, he also knew that he was not the only writer in Santa Monica without an original idea.

             “Please, tell me what are you doing,” he pressed.

             “Ready?”

            “Always,” he responded and she made a scornful sound.

             “I was looking up the definition of synapse in my dictionary,” she said. “Buh-bye.”

            “Wait,” he said and the cat, offended by his tone, stretched her claws into his jeans.  “Read me the definition,” he said through his teeth. “Please?”

            “I can’t,” she said.  “I am extremely busy and important.”

            “Read it.”

             “Um, okay. Listening?”

            “Always.”

            Suddenly he heard a toilet flush, glug, subside—and flush again.

            “Listen,” she said. The drone of a vacuum cleaner swept around the receiver of her phone, then swallowed it. A door banged repeatedly.  She screamed. Then, silence. Four minutes passed.  He counted the minutes on his clock.  One, two. Three…

            “My dictionary is inept,” she said flatly. “Do you hear me?”

            He blew a clumsy smoke ring to the track lighting. “I’ve never had an inept dictionary.”

             “No tools are decent tools unless you fork over the dough,” she snapped.

            “Explain.”

             “Carpenters, chefs, rock guitarists, accountants—grave diggers—brain surgeons—I repeat: no tools are decent tools unless you fork over the dough. It’s about getting the job done, isn’t it, Sherlock?”

            “And dictionaries are—” 

            “Inept unless you fork it over,”  she said.  “Where did you get your dictionary?”

            “I inherited my dictionary.”

            “They always made them good back then,” she scoffed.  “It’s a beast, right?  Coffin-sized, crammed in encyclopedic explanations?”

            “Well—”

            “Guess where I bought my dictionary?”

             “Is this a loaded question?” he asked, worrying his cat’s whiskers until she snapped at his finger.

             “The ninety-five cents store.”

            “Oh.”

            “Guess how much it cost.”

            “Ninety-five—”

            “Two dollars twenty-something.”

            “How dare they.”

            She said, “Are you diabolical, or just stupid?”

            “Neither.” The tortoiseshell cat’s claws stuck him so hard, tears swarmed his eyes.  He pushed her off his lap and she stalked from the room, twitching her tail snootily.  “Are you saying,” he asked, lighting another cigarette, “the store advertises falsely?”

            “It’s not about the ninety-five cents store!” she said. “Duh.”

            “But—”

            “Words for the layman,” she carried on, “some needy layman, somewhere—words for the panicked immigrant, the precocious child, the poet with no bank account whose previous dictionary was destroyed by tiny, hatched and burrowing moths, this desperate person purchases a cheap book promising definitions.”

            “The dictionary?” he asked.

            She didn’t speak for five and a half minutes.  In the hall, the tortoiseshell cat dug in her litter box. He heard grains scattering across the black and white checkered tile.

            He stubbed out his cigarette in a granite ashtray, lit another. 

            “The Common Man’s dictionary lacks,” she said eventually. “Take synapse, okay?”

            “Okay,” he said, rummaging through the desk drawer. From beneath stapled stacks of credit card receipts, he pulled out a gold broach shaped like a butterfly, the spread wings coated in tiny, fern green emeralds, a piece so gaudy it was strangely beautiful. 

            “Snot...so...spillage,” she muttered and he heard pages rustling.  “Splatter—that’s a lark!  Spillage and splatter each label a corner of the Common Man’s dictionary—I’ll dog-ear them for when I need a laugh in the midst of hell.”

            “What hell?”

            “Sportscast—spread-eagle—I’ve never hyphenated spread-eagle. Have you? Squeeze...stereophonic...stillborn...hm...wow...”

            “What?”

            “Strapless!  Sweet-and-sour...tampon—oops, too far.”

            He set the broach on the keyboard of his laptop. The gems shimmered in the multi-colored glow of his screen saver.

            “Syphilis,” she said.  “So many ‘i’s. Always thought more ‘a’s.”

             The tortoiseshell cat jumped up on the desk and studied the broach, her tail jerking as it did when she watched birds through the living room windows.  How would I spell tortoiseshell? he wondered.

            “Syntax,” she said. “Here it is. Remember that day in the meadow, lounging in freak sunshine and sweetgrass with our pens and notebooks?  We argued, as usual and as usual over words. I looked up the definition of syntax when I got back to my digs, an hour’s worth of furious running later.  I was vindicated and lonely.  The sun shone so well, though, before you started your damaging lecture.  The sun was amazing, highlighting those pretty blue things, you know—la—lay—lupine—lupine kissed by bone-white butterflies.  Exquisite.”

            “We argued over a bottle of Chateau Margeaux and a deflating wedge of Morbier.”

            “Snob.  Sycophant.  Slag,”  she said.

            “You’re having a good time now,” he said and she didn’t speak for seven minutes. 

             The tortoiseshell cat yawned, then touched her nose to the broach. She jerked as if she’d received an electric shock. Tail frizzed, she glared at him.

            “You’re blocked,” she said, “aren’t you?”

            “Completely, but that’s not why I called,” he said, adding, “I called to see what you are doing.”

            “You called because you’re desperate,” she said.  “Speaking of dentists—”

            “Yes?”

            “I had some trouble over Thanksgiving.”

            “What?”

            “Root canal,” she said. 

            “That’s too bad.”

            “He told me—my dentist—that if I was dumb enough to eat a nutty caramel I deserved teeth falling out of my mouth and a root canal. Nice guy, my dentist. He drives a cherry Jaguar and lives in a pre-fab mansion overlooking a golf course overlooking the ocean and he keeps his mastiff in his hall closet.”

            “What?”

            “Some of his life I dreamed up,” she said. “The cherry jaguar, the mastiff.”

            He ground out the cigarette. “What else was dream versus reality?”

            “My teeth falling out of my mouth. And the nutty caramel. I haven’t had a nutty caramel since my father died. He was into hard, my father.”

            “Must have been a lousy Thanksgiving,” he said, eyeing the cigarette box.

            “I passed out from the painkillers, right in my plate of turkey and mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce up my nose.  I terrified my family. They thought I’d expired. It was fun pulling clumps of yam out of my hair. I’m writing a poem about root canal—a very long, narrative, time-consuming poem. I’ve been writing for days, days. What,” she asked, “were you writing before you became blocked?”

            “Drivel.”

            She was quiet for two minutes.

            “Look, I have work to do,” she said. “My new poem…”

            “You’re blocked,” he said.

            “Nerve.”

            “So you’ve told me.”

            “Nerve.”

            “I heard you—”

            “We were talking nerves!”

            “Oh,” he said.  “Right.”

            “The synaptical.”

            “Synaptical,” he repeated, trapping the tortoiseshell cat’s tail in his hand—she  stared at his fingers, outraged.

            “Is synaptical a word?” he asked, picking a cigarette from the box.

            “Not according to my worthless dictionary.”

            “Weren’t you going to read me the definition—”

            “Remember how you used to question my productivity?”

            “What?”

            “Instead of saying hello, or hey babe do you feel okay.”

            “No, I don’t remember.” He exhaled smoke, an off-lemon fog collecting in the minor glow from the desk lamp.  Moon rind, he thought. No hyphen.

            “Productive, are you being productive.  You asked the second you saw me, even if I was stepping out of the shower, dusting, or hanging up the phone,” she said. “It was insulting.”

            “I don’t—”

            “You were afraid of two things—one, that I was more productive than you, in which case your Serious Writer ego slammed every door in the house, or that two, I was not productive, in which case you were embarrassed to take me to parties, or award ceremonies, or any place privy to your talent. And who is this? My—um. And what does she do? She’s—a poet, I guess. And how many books has she published? She hasn’t published anything, much. And why are you with her? I don’t know, I don’t know. Etc.”

            “I never said that I didn’t know why I was with you.”

             “You were awful.”

            Thirteen minutes later, he broke the silence by scolding the tortoiseshell cat for scooting the broach off the table with her paw.  It landed on the white carpet, next to his foot.  He retrieved it, squeezing it in his hand, the gems digging into his palm.  He set the broach on the desk, spread his fingers and studied the tiny dents riddling his lifeline.

            “You are an extremely productive person,” he said.  “Aren’t you?”

            “Diabolical,” she said. The toilet flushed and the vacuum started up again. 

             When he heard her breathing into the phone, he said, “The professors were entranced with your work. They offered you an independent study and straight ‘A’s. My pages were ravaged by red pens.  It was exasperating.  You wrote in run-ons!”           

            “I write poetry.”

            “It scared me. Your poetry scared me. You scared me—”

            “There goes your train of thought.”

            He sighed, tossed the broach into the drawer, shutting it so abruptly the tortoiseshell cat meow-squawked, as if he’d swatted her.

            “What was that?” she asked.

            “Kitty.”

            “What did you do to her?”

            “I took away her butterfly,” he said.

            “My butterfly? The ugly gold one with the trashy green gems?”

            “Yes.”

            “You still have that thing?”

            “Of course.”

             “Do you have to be so awful?” she cried.  “I mean, lecturing when you should be paying attention, shouting when someone lying right next to you in bed, or sitting less than two inches from you in a meadow of breath taking lupine is actually listening to you and forming thoughtful replies, slamming doors whenever you get one in your hand—car doors, office doors, bathroom doors, my study door—all that is my fault?  Because I scared you?  Ooo. I scared you, so it’s my fault you’re a liar?”

             “You’ve banged your phone all evening,” he said and the tortoiseshell cat galloped from the room. “You’ve flushed me and vacuumed me. Have you listened to any—”

            “No wonder I’m single,” she said.  “It’s my inheritance. Smoking, drinking, divorce rampant in my bloodlines—my genes are mercenaries evading tripwire, completing missions, celebrating with muddy heels up on my tables, draining my whiskey bottles, emptying my secret cupboards, howling crude prophecies—”

            “What?”  

            “Unfortunately your ego is vicious,” she said. “It makes you mean and it makes you lie.  Anyway, you’re the one with celebrated syntax and a bank account.  Not me.”

            “Listen,” he said.  He held the phone up to the study door and slammed it as hard as he could.  “Did you hear that?”

            “Not very original, is it? No wonder you’re blocked.”

            He dropped the phone and paced the study for five minutes, smoking feverishly. 

            When he returned, she said, “You know what? I am scary. Be afraid of me. Be very, very morbid and horrified. And then never call me again.”

            “I think,” he said, adding the cigarette butt to the pile in the ashtray, “that you should drive over here and help me untangle my nerves.”  He glanced at the clock.  “You could be here in fifteen minutes.”

            “Oh. Now you ask?” she said.  “Why didn’t you say get your ass over here in the first place?  Why didn’t you admit right off that you want me.”

            “Because,” he said, pacing. “I’m blocked—”

            “Brain?” she said. “Heart? Work? Which blockage, Sherlock? Which?”

            He bent to his knees and peered under the desk. There was the file box, filled to overflowing with rough drafts. Hello my genetic mercenary.  “You have given me enough material for the rest of my life,” he said, head swimming.  “Please—edit me.”

            “Slag!”

            He collapsed on the white carpet. Outside the closed study door, the tortoiseshell cat meowed pitifully.

            “Please?” He closed his eyes and pictured her the last time he’d seen her, right before he slammed her into her car and she sped off. “Do you still look fantastic in black fishnet bodystockings?” he whispered.

            The dial tone droned in his ear.  For the next hour he called, but she wouldn’t answer. Voicemail never kicked in.  At some point he stood before the floor to ceiling windows in the living room, the maroon shades raised. He stared at the deserted westside pavement, chain smoking, gulping scotch from a crystal tumbler.  Whenever headlights swept the street, his heart lurched and he recalled old, powerful dreams. 

            Once, he left his post to leaf through his great grandfather’s dictionary.  Synapse was not listed, not even when he tried alternate spellings.

            He returned to the windows, ignoring the crying cat, sucking nicotine until his lungs ached.