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.
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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.
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