Daniel Davis-Williams
They told me they'd leave if I told them a story. I started to say it all started in 1986, when I was prematurely born a day before Chernobyl, but they stopped me. Start in media res, they said, or else we'll withhold dinner and switch your heels again.
So it all started eighteen years later, when I moved into this apartment with my then-girlfriend, I said while taking my boots off just in case, but again they cut me short. Stop saying it all started. Nothing starts, they said, unless we say so.
An hour after they entered I asked them to leave. An hour was all I owed them, according to etiquette. They'd already finished the dip and the freezer would need a couple hours to make more ice chips. I cracked the door and ogled the open weather and asked if they needed sunscreen for the road, or maybe a parasol, which I had here in my hand, a recent purchase meant for someone significant, but they'd changed that plan, like everything. The sky was swept clean, just for them, I said, to leave.
They said they'd accept a dab of sunscreen when it was time to leave, but that would be later, and the future unforeseen. Then they motioned for the remote and made me watch the season finale of a show I'd never started. During a bathroom break, they praised my darling second-story studio in its darling California dingbat. What shame to waste those ocean views on a single occupant!
Stop telling us the stuff we already know, they ordered. We remember the leftover dip and ice, the umbrella you pretentiously call parasol, the sun which was not so uncluttered as you now claim, and The Wire. I asked if perhaps they'd like me to sing. They huddled.
Maybe tomorrow, they said.
I waited for them to fall asleep. Then I waited to see what medications they took to keep themselves spry and attentive, and saw nothing. I suggested they take a nap while I bleached the bedsheets and possibly screamed for the police. But they said they would rest when they were dead, but only figuratively dead. The real thing could wait.
You're misquoting us, they yelled. We're mortal and well aware. I showed them my notes, but they took the binder and said to continue the story from memory, the secret to worldly success in things like novel writing and trivia.
I asked if they could at least chew with their mouths closed while they ate my pistachios, but they thought this was part of the story and kept interrupting with ostentatious nut cracking.
And naturally they'd someday die, I said. They were only human, like me, who hadn't slept since Tuesday and now counted each lost hour as a new layer of sag in the bags under his eyes.
They were two men, gray, with duffel bags I never saw open. Once, when curious, I tried to unzip one of the duffels, but they caught me and justly scolded me for being a nosy host.
This has turned into digression, they said. One of them stood from the couch and raised the back of his hand. We want a story, he said, not political analysis.
Tell us about your emotional state as we barged through your front door and raided the kitchen cupboard. Tell us about the smell of our lambskin jackets and the moss on our teeth as we drank your last beer and didn't offer you Thai food even though we'd ordered for three. Tell us how much we tipped the deliver guy. Tell us a story in sincere language, and if there isn't a plot we'll lock you in the loo again and continue to use it like last time.
It all started after they were taken away, I tried. They thought I lived alone. But really my wife was working, and I sent her a text before they confiscated my phone. And she sent for help. And the cops came. And the invaders were roughly cuffed and shoved downstairs. And the cops dutifully forgot to protect their heads as they were swiftly bent into the back seat.
Same ending, continued: I confronted my neighbor Ted. In as understanding a tone of voice as possible, I asked why he hadn't called the police when it was clear I was taken hostage. They once sent me out to check the mail, I pointed out, and forgot to remove the ball gag. I asked him if he could hear my voice now as I stood before him, and if so, why he hadn't heard it then.
My neighbor answered that I'd always seemed strange, and in a free country like these United States, people can have guests for as long as they please, and even banging on the wall wasn't a crime in most countries, except maybe Communist Russia, and look what happened to them.
Stop right there, they said. None of this has happened yet. Again the hairy back of a hand, tilted and raised. We want a truth, they said, not speculation. And true stories have middles, but all the sudden you've leapfrogged to the end, as if you were in a rush and wanted us to leave. Rude!
And go make us another cocktail, they said. The refrigerator just made that grinding noise it makes when the ice is ready.
And then it was media res. Things weren't going well and maybe never would. My guests were too thirsty. I slipped away from their gaze to get my neighbor Ted's attention, but they caught me pounding SOS in Morse code on the walls and justly punished me for forgetting the setting.
It was late November. Across the window swept a red pendulum of leaves.