The Poser by Jacob Rubin
Author:Jacob Rubin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2015-02-11T16:00:00+00:00
• • •
The following days were spent in stunted and anxious reimagining of the scene as I waited for the suit. I kept sitting in the chair, trying it again, but it would not be right, would not work, until I got the suit. This slow assembling of my costume did seem, however, to favorably alter my dreams. As before, I dreamt that I wended my way through the backstage of the Communiqué to the greenroom, where I found Lucy with another man. This time, however, that man was me.
The morning I was to pick up the suit, the doorbell rang. I had been seated at the chair, trying a new variation, and leapt up at the sound. I tiptoed to the door and, heart loud in my ears, peered through: there appeared a dark convex shape I soon recognized as Max’s eye.
Quickly I surveyed the room. The chair, standing in its center, had exerted, it seemed, a magical pull on all nearby furnishings: the bedsheets groping at its legs, the nightstand drawn to its side. On that nightstand sat an ashtray piled high with cigarette stubs along with the silver-plated Zeno lighter, and four more unopened packs, the whole thing like a presentation on the life cycle of a cigarette.
The bell rang again. Hopping from one foot to the other, I yanked off the cowboy boots. I unnoosed the bolo tie and chucked it and the boots in the bathtub, like a drug dealer hiding his stash. Then I drew the shower curtain closed and, with one last organizing breath, swung open the door. “You found me!” I tried to make it sound happy.
Max smiled in a pained, knowing way. With a sigh, he brushed past me, entering the hotel room like a detective with a warrant. A moment later, he paused in front of the chair, taking it in, as he did all the room, with a slow-nod-deep-pout combination. His look seemed to indicate that this chair sculpture was just about exactly what he imagined he’d find here. Continuing past the chair, he walked to the curtains, parting them with a conductor’s grand, winging gesture. The midday light poured in. He pulled up the window, too. In came the whining of cars. I went for the cigarettes.
“Smoker now, huh?”
“Oh, not really,” I said. He looked at the nightstand with its four packs of cigarettes and burial mound of stubs.
I lit this new one, cupping my free hand around the lighter, a gratuitous gesture given the total lack of wind but helpful in that the act, as a part of the larger process of lighting the cigarette, furnished me with a way of speaking—urgent, no-nonsense—as if the cig itself were talking through me. “In all seriousness, I’m glad you found me.”
He sighed, looking around, and then raised his arm and slapped the side of his thigh. He seemed not yet ready to acknowledge me conversationally. “I checked the Communiqué, even Lucy’s. The Hotel San Pierre, just in case. I
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Dark Humor | Humorous |
Satire |
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