Work Text:
The book was not going well. Frustrated, Gabriel rose at last from the dregs of his latest chapter; and he found a plate of rice and steak awaiting him on the kitchen countertop, mouldering beneath plastic wrap. Beside it was a letter on folded-up printer paper, written first in inky, blotching cursive, and finally in dry blocky pencil.
Jack - the only other person with a key to his house - had come and gone, and gone again.
Gabriel hadn't even noticed.
He scratched behind his ear, unfolded the piece of paper, and paused at all the words, cramped and uneven and stuffed on top of each other.
And he thought, Well.
It was a short letter, all things considered:
SOMETIMES I FEEL I SEE YOU SO CLEARLY . . .
DO YOU REMEMBER NEW YORK IN 99? - THE WAY THE SKY LOOKED WHEN THE FOG CLEARED THE MORNING YOUR FIRST BOOK WAS PUBLISHED - OUR OLD CONDEMNED APARTMENT - THOSE TWO LONG MONTHS IN 07 WE SPENT IN ACCRA - YOU LOST YOUR PASSPORT - YOU WIRED MY MOTHER FOR MY FAVOURITE PILLOW - I COULDN'T SLEEP WELL WITHOUT IT - IT FINALLY ARRIVED! THE DAY BEFORE WE LEFT - AND WE DIDN'T EVEN SLEEP MUCH THAT NIGHT - I REMEMBER I THOUGHT I COULD NEVER LOVE ANOTHER PERSON AS MUCH AS I LOVED YOU - I REMEMBER THE DAY YOU SURPRISED ME AT HEATHROW - I'D FORGOTTEN MY BIRTHDAY - WHEN YOU HELD ME I FORGOT HOW TIRED I WAS - (here, the switch to staccato print:) NOW I FEEL I AM HOLDING ON TOO HARD TO OUR PAST - HOPING TO RECREATE THOSE LONG AGO MOMENTS - IT WASN'T ALL GOLDEN DAYS - WE'VE HAD OUR HARDSHIPS TOO - I WILL NEVER REGRET OUR YEARS TOGETHER - BUT NOW I FEEL I AM ALWAYS LOOKING AT YOUR BUNCHED UP BACK - EVEN WHEN I'M IN THE SAME ROOM, IT'S LIKE YOU'RE NOT REALLY HERE - I TRIED TO TELL YOU ALL THIS - BUT I DON'T THINK YOU HEARD ME - I KNOW THIS IS A COWARDLY WAY OF ENDING THINGS - THE WAY YOU ARE WITH WORDS, I THINK YOU COULD CONVINCE ME TO STAY - I DON'T THINK I COULD BEAR IT IF YOU DID NOT EVEN BOTHER TO TRY - I AM JUST NOT CONFIDENT ENOUGH IN MYSELF LATELY - WHAT'S THE OLD LINE? - 'IT'S NOT YOU, IT'S ME'? - MAYBE THIS WILL GIVE YOU THE INSPIRATION YOU NEED TO WRITE YOUR NEXT BOOK! - TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF - MY ONE AND ONLY CANNIBAL - LOVE, JACK.
(Why a cannibal?
The listless expression on a waiter's face in the very last 10 minutes of his shift ... the shift in pitch of a father-in-law saying the name of the son-in-law he disapproved of ... the body language of a girl realising her two friends did not want her there on their date ... the private and public ways that people performed - Gabriel observed all of this and more; and he used it all quite easily in his work.
Jack seemed to recognise something of himself in a sex scene in Paper Magnolias - he swatted the rolled-up book - and he had atrocious reading hygiene, always dog-earing Gabriel's books, scribbling To-Do's in the blank spaces between chapters, ignoring the pile of notepads and journals that Gabriel gifted him to avoid this very thing... well, anyway: he swatted the rolled-up book atop Gabriel's head, a blush all over his face, and said, 'you eat it all up, don't you?')
Gabriel read the letter once and once only.
He dreamt of Jack that night, sitting up beside him in their first apartment bed, smoking a brand of cigarettes that no longer existed, all while it rained outside. The two of them kept talking about going to see some movie his mind had made up, at a theatre that had closed down five years before. Jack mentioned getting a tattoo of a poinsettia... Gabriel was for some reason very concerned about there being egg shells hidden in their sheets... it was all some shapeless, absurdly urgent dream plot.
He awoke alone in his room - the blinds open to the sun outside - and he saw, at last, all the gaps in the room, where Jack must have been removing his presence for weeks. Months.
I'm not ready, Gabriel thought, his heart beating so hard that his head throbbed. I'm not ready.
How long had Jack been ready? How long had Gabriel simply stopped observing him?
He spent the day tossing out all the food in his fridge and on his countertops; cleaning his kitchen, then the rest of his house. The steak was so slimy and smelled so bad he had to air out the first floor.
Then he went back upstairs to his study, and wrote the last ten chapters of his book.
He couldn't eat meat for years afterward; couldn't even look at it.
In bits and pieces, he began to write a story about two lovers - one a woman with short-term memory loss, who needed constant reminding, the other an otherwise devoted woman with an uncontrollable craving for human flesh. Each chapter, the second woman kept gnawing away at the first; and when the first woman cried out, the second would say, 'don't be frightened, my love, we agreed I would eat you.' The first woman kept holding onto her lover while she lost each of her limbs to the other woman's appetite.
This went on until the first woman was just a head, cradled before her lover's waiting mouth, all the while saying, 'why are you doing this? ... maybe it's not so bad ... I'm sorry, I'm sorry ... what's happening? ... has it always been so dark inside?'
He called it The Cannibal and self-published, since his publisher flatly refused. He designed the cover art himself and got it printed out all professional. He sent the one and only physical copy to Jack's picture perfect house in suburbia, along with a note that read: in case you need a place to write your to-do lists.
Jack sent a delighted, rambling letter back - GRIM STUFF, GABE! HAHA - and outlined all his criticisms of the book, with the keen eye of a long-time reader - I SEE WHY YOU HAD TO SELF-PUBLISH - along with picture after picture of him and his even blonder husband, and their now two-year-old daughter - much closer to Gabe's complexion than theirs - a little gap-toothed girl named Gracie.
YOU SHOULD COME BY FOR DINNER SOMETIME! Jack wrote. SVEN CAN WHIP UP A MEAN STEAK TARTARE - (Sven, being the even blonder husband) - IF YOU'RE IN A PARTICULARLY BLOODTHIRSTY MOOD.
Gabriel looked at the photo of Jack marrying Sven. The look in Jack's eyes - the joy in cursive, writ all over his face.
Closely Gabriel looked at his old lover, analysing each moment of suspended happiness - the crinkled eyes, the clasped hands, the petals falling soft and colourless on the shoulders of his suit.
And Gabriel thought to himself, well.
After that, he put the letters, the pictures and his observations all away. And he did not take them out again.