Please Don't Go (20 page)

“
There’s that row of geraniums and daffodils right over there. Behind them, I’ve got fewer of each strain, but important to me all the same. A little bit of this and a little bit of that....astrids, irises, carnations, lilacs, orchids, and mums. I keep them alive, and they do sort of the the same thing for me if you want to get metaphoric and
flowery
about it. Was that a pun? Anyway, it works out well, I find. Would you agree?” Rattup smiled at Zephyr, indicating with his roaming eyes that he should seat himself in the plastic lawn chair before him. Charles sat, likewise, placing his elbows on a round glass patio table, pushing forward their usual communication device—a trusty notebook. Beside it, he placed a pencil. “The vegetables cut down on my food costs through most of the year, thankfully. I may be independent, but I’ve got a nasty budget to live by. More than that, nothing tastes better than a fresh tomato. Half of my crops are tomatoes, in fact. Cucumbers and green peppers. Celery, zucchini, and carrots. I mix and match every year, but I have my staples, especially the tomatoes and cukes. If you can keep something else alive, then keeping yourself alive just happens automatically, wouldn’t you agree?”

Why did he
, thought Zephyr,
always beg for his affirmation
? It felt as though he was validating himself through Zephyr’s mental compliance and it had grown slightly tiresome. Zephyr looked to the notebook, evaluating his thoughts for a moment, and deciding that his response was safe for public consumption. He could only assume that
she
had access to the greenhouse as well, or else Rattup could potentially escape through that avenue. “I agree. We take care of our pets. Our wives. Our kids. Our cars. It’s reciprocation, I guess. The golden rule, to a certain degree.”

“
Yes! Reciprocation. Excellent. And how is
your
ever-growing state of reciprocation?” Rattup asked of his understudy, the glow in his pinpointed eye indicating that he was speaking of Zephyr’s young lover, the saccharin sweet fairy named Jackie. Though Rattup had never met her, he had constructed a mental portrait of the pretty little thing, and it kept him awake at night.

Zephyr’s smooth face crinkled into that of an old liver-spotted codger and Rattup looked upon this morphing condition with a broken heart. The young man said, “I don’t know. Tough week on that front. Reciprocation has broken down, but only temporarily, I hope.”

“
Oh dear,” replied Rattup. “Has she scorned you in some way?” he asked, reaching out to place his hand on Zephyr’s forearm, sending a blast of discomfort through him.

“
No scorn. Just a bit of a setback to our usual steady progress. I bought a ring.”

The old man’s eyes lit up at the mention. “A ring! You’ve either gone mad or you are very much in love,” Charles said with a joyous curl of his lip. “And when are you planning to drop this shocking proposal upon her unsuspecting soul?”

“
The other night I had planned to, but that got botched. Long story, but it ends with me sitting there with a ring in my pocket and an acrimonious lady-friend. I guess it was just bad timing, not to mention that it blew up in my face from the start. She was in a bad mood, possibly that time of the month. Unconfirmed, though. She’s not to blame though, because it just didn’t feel right, regardless of what’s happened. It felt cheesy. I mean, the guy at the table next to us got food poisoning... started blasting vomit all over the place… an egg roll mud slide that washed away the mood.”

Rattup nodded, rubbing his temple as though the disastrous evening had happened directly to him and not Zephyr. “Sometimes, things need to fall into place on their own, no matter how much we force them. The constellations have always aligned in their own framework, with or without us taking notice of their spatial trajectories and insisting upon our own itineraries.”

“
You sound like a fortune cookie.”

“
You
sound like you’re jumping the gun. Wait until it’s right in your face and snatch that golden ring, boy.”

“
Now
you
sound like Salinger, which is mildly ironic. So you’re saying I shouldn’t even plan anything ahead of time? I’m not sure if I have a mechanism in me to allow that kind of reckless abandon.”

“
The moment will present itself when the moment sees best. And when I say the moment, I mean The Moment with a capital T and a capital M. Hold off as long as you can—wise words from a man who has seen it all.” Rattup winked, but Zephyr was not buying into his purported “seen it all” routine. The man had not even seen
Jaws
.

“
We’ll see. I can’t say I’m not shattered by what happened, but I know there’s a reason for everything.” Charles nodded at the comment, though his eyes stated something alternative, that perhaps awful things just happened once in awhile, and to well-intentioned people.

Rattup studied Zephyr’s face for several discomforting moments. Zephyr glanced down at the shared notebook, then at his own, where he was keeping loosely jotted notes and anecdotes on the events of the strange Rattup home. The awkward silence soon ended, much to Zephyr’s satisfaction.

“
You’ve finished my story.”

“
Yes.”

“
And?”

Zephyr shook his head, “I liked it, but I don’t quite get the point. Just to be honest for clarity’s state. The writing is fantastic. It flows beautifully. I just didn’t see an underlying purpose to the story, but maybe I wasn’t looking close enough to see one. Was it meant to be a horror story of some sort? Because it certainly didn’t start out that way. It kind of hit me from left field, all that stuff with the force-feeding. But most stories start out that way, right? You’re not supposed to see it coming, I guess that’s the
horror
of it.”

Leaning back in his chair; Rattup adjusted his eyes to the bright sun overhead, further radiated by the refraction of the greenhouse. “So you like it. But don’t get
the point
? Well, what point is there to get? Is it not good enough to be published in a grand compilation? Maybe the point is nothing more than its own existence, did you ever think
that
?” He was angry.

“
It’s very good. And I enjoyed it, like I said. I just don’t get what you’re trying to say... that women are evil, both young and old? That they corrupt the goodness of man? Maybe you were saying people shouldn’t travel to Ireland?” Zephyr quipped, grinning, but found that Rattup was not taking the same jovial path as he.

Charles cleared his throat, wiping away some mucus from his lip. He appeared to be disgusted at the openness that he had so demanded of Zephyr when they first met. He had given the first volume of
The Classics and The Moderns
with hopes that he would be critical of the text therein, and now that the critical questions were being asked, Rattup seemed unfit to handle it; a child who has just been informed that dinner must be eaten before they can vacate the dinner table. “I’m saying whatever it is that
you think
I am saying,” he said coldly. Zephyr was not at all enamored with the new edge to Rattup’s usually cheerful and boisterous personality. It was as though he had flipped a switch in the man’s brain. He should have known better about the innate sensitivities of writers, for he had those same cogs in his own psyche. Jackie had, on several occasions, confirmed this in both he and writers in general.

“
I enjoyed it,” he reiterated, but Rattup was mentally elsewhere, adrift in a quiet fury and unwilling to consider any words that may come from Zephyr’s conciliatory mouth. “Your style is unquestionable.”

A snapping noise shook Charles’ head free of his bitter contempt for Zephyr’s amateur critique. Spinning around to look behind him, through the geraniums and daffodils, he and Zephyr gazed upon a shattered pane of glass in the network of pieces that composed the greenhouse. One pane broke, and a second soon followed. After the third, it ended. Zephyr looked to Rattup, now resigned to accepting such activity in the Rattup house as par for the course. He seemed content with changing the subject for the moment, “She loves it out here, and she would do no harm to this place. It must be the cold air. She revels in smelling these flowers... can any woman resist?” Rattup grinned with his frenzied eyes, like burning apples, that occasionally emerged from beneath his outward facade. Zephyr nodded, pretending to be nonplussed by it all. Rattup continued. “Maybe next time, you can bring one of
your
stories along. I would love to indulge in the works of the youthful mind of Mr. Zipper,” Rattup said, a silent subtext in his words that he hoped to tear down the meaning, grammar, and flow of his apprentice’s works as had been done to him. Revenge would be his. Zephyr reconsidered his paranoia and whether it was genuine.

“
I’d like that,” Zephyr replied, regretting his previous truthfulness with the man. He could not hold this against him, though. It was understandable and universal. The toil of a writer is a sensitive house of cards, on the ready to be toppled by even the faintest critic.

Rattup stood from his chair, approaching his early budding vegetables and flowers. He reached out, touching the infantile branches with a tender hand. It was obvious to Zephyr that the man treasured his green leafy children. “Shall we continue...in the notebook? I have something important to ask you,” said Zephyr, cracking open Rattup’s notebook. “Have a seat,” he said, and it felt incorrect to loosely demand anything of the ancient relic that was Sir Charles Rattup. Try as he might to the contrary, for Charles’ sake, there was little liveliness in his own voice, still taken aback by the brutish response of Charles to the
Galway
review.

Charles sat down across from Zephyr again, looking to their tablet of communication.

Rattup:
Writing, so soon? You’re growing tired of my banter?

Zephyr:
No.

Rattup:
You want to know the truth behind the story.

Zephyr:
Yes. At first I thought it was Aleesha, but now that I’m finished... well, this whole thing stinks of Emily. How much of your story is true?

He looked about him, then to Rattup. “This whole thing” referred to the misty presence that was forever breathing over their shoulders, listening to their words with devilish intentions, in nooks and crannies void of the three-dimensional human eye.
If you believe that sort of thing
, Zephyr again tacked on to his inner monologue. Charles Rattup began to laugh loud and hard, frightening Zephyr with his almost knee-jerk reaction and bass tremolo. Was he laughing at the proverbial finger being placed upon Emily’s involvement? Was it really so damned ridiculous? “You’re as mad as she is,” Zephyr stated, though he had aimed to filter such sentiments. Rattup shot a nasty face of pursed lips and squinted eyes towards Zephyr, the curvy wrinkles of his face dancing in displeasure.

Rattup:
On the paper, asshole.

Zephyr:
Sorry.

He was not sorry.

Rattup:
So, my childish genius in the making, you think that this is the doing of Emily?

Zephyr:
Or the girl that Emily’s character was based on. Yes, I do think that. I know better than anybody that truth is stranger than fiction. And that all fiction is based on truth, at some miniscule level. And so I think that you are haunted by Emily, or the ghost of Emily.

A pane of glass above their heads fissured and snapped, echoing through the greenhouse in dull reverberations. Zephyr and Rattup both looked above them at the burgeoning damages. Their position had suddenly become quite dangerous and Rattup reached across the table, unfurling the tall green and white umbrella that poked through the middle of the table. At first, Zephyr had found it humorous to have such an outdoor umbrella table indoors, but now it made perfect sense... there was truly no such thing as a reasonable assumption in the Kingdom of Rattup.

Rattup:
You don’t understand the half of it, young man. There was an Emily, but her name was not Emily. There was an Aleesha, but her name was not Aleesha. You are correct in surmising that all fiction is rooted in the realities that surround us. They were as real as you and I. When the time came for such actions, I broke their little hearts, and there is no doubt about that. But you don’t understand the nature of the other side. Not just yet. It’s not as simple as your bullshit Hollywood nimrods love to create. Your phony interpretations of a world where ghosts seek revenge for their untimely murders, or to set the living world right again, or to dictate a final message to their loved ones.... HA! Have you ever thought for a moment that there is an inherent fucking evil that soaks every inch of this cursed planet? Every molecule has the tendency to do bad, and sometimes it only takes a catalyst in that molecule to unearth the vengeance of purposeless destruction. Hallelujah, motherfucker. Welcome to reality, you sniveling wart.

Who
was
this man? Zephyr studied Charles’ face for a bit of buried truth, an explanation as to why he had so transformed his personality into that of a raving madman since their previous visit together. The quiet philosophical man who had reveled in the glory of
Jaws
was nowhere to be found. In his place was a crotchety jerk with a sick desire to crush and twist Zephyr’s confidence and well-being into a pretzel. Though he had done nothing directly to him, it seemed as if Charles was on the verge of predestined outrage. All of the sudden, Zephyr felt an overwhelming urge to stand up from the picnic table, to launch spit into Rattup’s face, and to walk away for good. The old coot had never wanted to explain his story. As curious as he was to the real-world resolution of
Breakfast in Galway
, Zephyr was adequately satisfied with the condition of never seeing the decrepit windbag again. How quickly he had turned on him, and without any provocation besides his honest analysis of a dinky story older than he was.