I've written close to 8,000 words in my novel about a washed up rock star named Mercy Maddock. My method is to write at least 250 words every morning. I remember reading something where Stephen King said that if you can't sit down and write at least five pages, you'll never be a writer. Steve, I ain't got time for that! This little excerpt is about the devil that Mercy frequently hallucinates.
...
It’s 2009, and Mercy Maddock sits outside in a courtyard at the Fig
Leaf, an upscale restaurant in downtown Chicago. A half a bottle of
Maker’s Mark stands in the middle of the table, its bronze contents
shimmering in the midday sun. He’s wearing sunglasses, and a
cigarette dangles from the edge of his mouth, his cowbody hat tilted
downward, as though he’s taking a siesta. The woman across from him
looks like Debbie Harris in a red dress, but she’s not. Mercy
mumbles something suddenly, some incantation, perhaps a
half-remembered lyric, his lips parting just enough for the cigarette
to fall down his barely buttoned dress shirt. Motherfucker
he screams, in a voice heavy with ruin. The outburst jolts the woman
awake, and her doll-like face contorts into pure contempt.
You’ve fallen asleep she says
while Mercy halfheartedly pats himself down, trying in vain to remove
the burning cigarette. Why am I even here?
He
finally manages to find the cigarette, but his sunglasses have fallen
to the table and his eyes, which are bloodshot and heavily bagged,
are visible. He stares at the
woman in confusion. What was her name? Debra? Mebra?
Is Mebra even a name?
“Where
in the hell is the waiter?” she complains. “I need a margarita.”
What is
French for waiter? Garcon? Serveur?
“Waiter-man!” he
bellows, head thrown back.
The
waiter is a man with a thin mustache and sallow completion. Rather
than an air of servility, he conjures a mood of everlasting
sullenness, as though every request compromises the integrity of his
soul. He gives the couple a look of utter loathing, then asks whether
he can do anything for them.
“Margarita,” says the woman,
barely looking at him.
“I need an aspirin, a pot of coffee,
and sure, a margarita,” says Mercy.
“Sir,
aspirin is not on the menu,” says the waiter.
“The other stuff, then,” replies
Mercy.
The
waiter does not move immediately; instead, he gives them one more
long stare before slowly turning around.
“What the fuck is that guy’s
problem?” asks Mercy.
“Who cares,” says the woman. “As
long as he brings us our drinks.”
Neither of them notices, but the
waiter pauses and turns his right ear. He
lives alone in a crummy apartment littered with half-consumed cans of
diet coke. His bedroom is covered in stamps, and the whole place
inexplicably smells of neoprene. No one besides himself has ever
entered his apartment in the past five years, and this fact bores a
holes so deep into his soul that he has fallen into said crevice, and
it is unlikely he will ever be able to climb his way out. He
prepares the margaritas himself, going light on the tequila, almost
entirely omitting the triple sec, and overdoing the lime juice with a
bottle of nearly rancid liquid.
The olives that he selects
are slimy things the color of rotting turtle flesh.
“Your drinks,” he says,
moments later.
The margaritas resemble
defiled offerings. Mercy, even in his highly-inebriated state,
recognizes this.
“Mate, what the fuck is
this?”
Mercy picks up a glass and twirls its contents, sloshing
margarita all over the table. He takes a sniff and wrinkles his nose.
“My teetotaler mum could do a better job than whatever the fuck
this is.”
The waiter replies with a reptilian stare. Mercy doesn’t look
at him. He thrusts the glass in his direction.
“Take it back, garcon. Bring us something drinkable, for
chrissakes.”
“Let’s just leave,” says the woman.
“No!”
Mercy slams his hand down on the table, spilling the other
margarita.
“It’ll take fifteen to twenty minutes at least to go
somewhere else and get a proper drink, and I’m not leaving until
the man brings us something we can imbibe without immediately
vomiting. I have given him a personal quest. This is now his life’s
work. The question is: can he do it? I don’t know, honestly. I have
my sincerest doubts. I’ll tell you what. I’ll give you a Benjamin
Franklin if you bring me a drinkable margarita. It doesn’t even
have to be good. Just drinkable. Do you think you can do that, mate?”
The waiter’s eyes have a sort of heat behind them, a smoldering
fire that threatens to erupt from his sockets. He turns without a
word and leaves. His customers are, from the viewpoint of a sad
little man, everything that’s wrong with the world. They are the
embodiment of the forces that depress him, that prevent his having
meaningful human contact. They are evil, vile, morally deficient. The
woman is a whore; the man a Lothario. The values of his youth are
gone and replaced by vulgarity and consumerism. He doesn’t
recognize the modern world, and he has no way of interpreting it. He
will present them with poison, and they will drink it with great
vigor, and then he will take their money and light it on fire before
them, a futile gesture, perhaps, but one that he must do in order to
feel like he is a force and not an interloper.
In the kitchen he grabs as
many bottles as he can find. Some of them are full of alcohol; others
are full of cleaning supplies. He pours it all together in a big bowl
along with a generous quantity of the triple sec that he had
originally omitted. The various liquids mix like water and motor
oil—there is an iridescent sheen to the thick skin sitting on
top—but he pours the concoction into a cocktail shaker and gives it
a merry shake. In the margarita glasses it festers like a poison.
They can choke on this and die he
thinks.
When
he returns, the margaritas are presented with a little flourish, as
though the cocktails are the result of honest labor and expertise
rather than a misguided attempt to demean two insufferable customers.
The woman doesn’t even look
at it—she has enough sense not to even engage the waiter at this
point. Mercy’s sunglasses
are back on his face but resting just on the tip of his nose, and his
eyes roll upward to stare at the waiter with extreme skepticism.
“The
thing about waiters, mate, is that they’re not supposed to get
offended. You suffer a little abuse, and in exchange you get a nice
tip. Do I look like the type to stiff you? Have I ever stiffed a
waiter?”
“I
don’t care,” says the woman.
“It
was more a rhetorical question,” says Mercy. “I’m gonna be
honest with you, mate. This doesn’t look like a drink. It looks
like a glass of bullshit. So that makes this the second glass of
bullshit you’ve served me today. What am I to do, eh? I’ve made a
solemn vow to not leave this establishment until I get a proper
drink, but you don’t want to play along. Who is at fault here? Have
you not violated the sacred code of the waiter? There is no honest
desire to serve the customer. The customer is an object of contempt
and ridicule. That’s fine, mate—go back and joke with the boys at
my expense—but serve me with a smile on your face, or at least an
expression of professional neutrality. You aren’t playing the game,
mate, and while as a rock star I respect that, as a customer I am
incensed. So what is the
proper reaction?”
What
is the proper reaction to a life of endless petty humiliation? The
waiter says nothing. He has nothing to say.
Mercy
is about to get up and kick the table over in an act of adolescent
rebellion—adolescent in spirit if not actuality for a man pushing
thirty—when he sees him cavorting down the courtyard. Six feet
tall, with ears dangling, his cheap fur costume a mottled shade of
pink. He smiles as he approaches, revealing large brown teeth stained
from years of cigarette smoke. It’s the eyes that really get
Mercy—they’re the brightest blue he’s ever seen, and all the
mirth they hold has a meanness to it, as though he can only laugh at
you, you stupid motherfucker. The man in the bunny suit stands right
behind the waiter and leans his head on his left shoulder and grits
his teeth. Suddenly a rancid carrot appears, dangling in between
those grimy chompers, and Mercy feels his libido draining away along
with all of his zest for life. He
hasn’t seen this bastard since the Summer Fest ‘02 when the crowd
parted like the Red Sea and the pink rabbit waltzed toward the stage,
resulting in his forgetting of the lyrics and subsequent stage
fright. Mercy doesn’t know what he is—a demon, Satan, a harbinger
of doom—but the fact that he has appeared now to perch on the
shoulder of this rebellious waiter can
only mean that disaster is coming, and he won’t be able to stop it.
“Fuckin’
blimey,” whispers Mercy. “I see it. Do you see it?”
“Just
get us the check, please,” says the woman.
Mercy
grabs his large cellular phone and pulls his arm backward. He feels
that throwing the phone at the bunny would be like pelting a lion
with a pebble, but he has always been a believer in action over
impotency, and he feels strongly that demons must be cast out rather
than fled from, lest they realize that they have the upper hand.
“Do
it,” says the rabbit. “You’ve
always been a pussy shit fuck. I know singers with more talent at the
local bordello. Your mother’s got the highest pitched voice I’ve
ever heard.”
The
rabbit has a five o’clock shadow that appears impenetrable. There
are cigarette burn marks on his pink suit.
Meanwhile,
the waiter has realized that this situation has gone amiss. There is
fear now in Mercy’s eyes, an emotion that seems inappropriate, and
he’s holding a cellular phone like a bludgeon. He
takes a step back, but there’s something behind him, some heavy,
dark force, and it pushes him forward, causing him to stumble into
the table, upsetting the margaritas and spilling their contents all
over the dress of the woman. Mercy screams—a yell of primal
horror—and all of a sudden the waiter sees stars dancing in the sky
as he lies prostrate on the concrete, blood trickling from his
forehead. Why is he here? Why do we do the things that we do? Is
there any sense in it all? He finds no answers as he loses
consciousness.
