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LIVE FROM THE CUTTING ROOM FLOOR
by Joseph E. O’Leary
copyright © 2002

Ludlow Press Short Fiction

Live From the Cutting Room Floor

He set the glass down on the table slowly, as if he were worried about breaking it. It was a sturdy whiskey glass, and full, sure, but certainly not heavy enough to break, or even crack, the glass table top, an inch and a half thick, quite sturdy itself. But still without the coaster I guess he was worried. Not really worried, that’s the wrong word. More like cautious, or with restraint. But it wasn’t pleasant either way, the look on his face and everything. I couldn’t check my watch, couldn’t, couldn’t let him catch me. I guess you can tell by all of this he had a real look on him. He wore his facial expressions, always, and this one was kind of a mangled, bitter gin smile, something he had just pulled on, and those eyes, those same beautiful eyes, straight locked on me. I’d say his lips were quivering but when I think of quivering I think of a kind of spastic event, whereas these lips, coming across as the only part of his face not pulled on, not tight enough, had a real breath of a pulse about them. There was no noise between us, only the sharp sound of the glass touching the table, then the other side of the glass touching the table; other than that it was our own little bubble. It was weird though, because the bar had gotten pretty crowded in the time we’d been there and there were a lot of people getting lit, and the jukebox, you know. We heard it, well I heard it, but it didn’t get through. It got through, I mean, but it didn’t have any effect. Like no matter how loud it would have been it wouldn’t have been the other heads in the place or the juke, it would only have been the sound of his lips doing that breathing thing. And it was like that, it was the lips, because when he responded to what I’d said to bring him to this everything shut off and it was only his voice:

“Well, my first reaction is to say that it’s probably bullshit, though after all is thought through I’m sure it will turn out to be something believable, or something where it is at least believable to think you have convinced yourself is true. But for you to tell me, well, you know how much I appreciate articulation above all. So why tell me? If you’re telling me I assume you think I care, and when and from where did you come to that conclusion? Do I have some stake in the matter? Am I expected to speak of it?”

His voice did not rise once. I was aware of him raising the glass and taking a sip. I’m sure it happened, because there’s a sip gone and his lips had stopped.

“I’m being defensive, sorry. As you know this comes as quite a shock to me. The last thing I expected was for you to come to me with this. It doesn’t exactly change everything, or enough even, but it does change some things. Minor details, but minor as in the sense that some Roman writers and thinkers were minor, minor as far as any of our issues could possibly be minor. You know my odd way of thinking about this. What does it change. For one thing, it changes what I’ll think of the past two weeks, especially last Friday and then it changes this coming Friday. That’s the day after my flight. That’s after the last shoot.

“This means I have to be here. I can choose not to be here but then here, as in Chicago, and there, as in Toledo, as well as you and I, all become different things, with different meanings and different, completely different, representations in my memory. This will alter significant parts of my way of being able to associate specific things with other specific things, something that will change my average day of existence negatively, for the foreseeable and potentially, as far as I can see, permanent way. Then I stay and by staying accept what you said as truth, and knowing what I know, by that, I’ve also recognized certain things that will irreparably alter my average day experience. Negatively only in the sense that I proclaim and believe with as much truth as I would believe or disbelieve for that matter what you said, I believe that I am not only perfectly happy, I am happier than I have ever been in my life. Not terribly mature happiness, some people would say but the kind of happiness that I had as a kid, the kind of happiness you think you’ll have upon growing up. Happy about the things that I’ve always wanted to be happy about. It’s a terribly close and personal happiness.”

I didn’t see it again. I missed it, I mean. I must have been staring at the guy at the bar, off to the side. But there was another sip or two gone from the glass gone. The guy at the bar had a lit cigarette and was ashing it constantly. Just rocking it back and forth, thumb flapping the filter real quick. When I finally did see his face again, I could imagine what Lucy felt like shooting him, nothing like that, but I could feel what she felt, I could see that his face was a good shot, that this would have been a good still to have had, I could see it through her eyes almost. A shot of the glass on the bar, stop motion, every sixty seconds or so. Back to his face, yeah:

“So if she’s thinking she wants me to do this again, while of course I have a choice the answer is just a decision of breaking off one engagement or the other. But there I am turning the choice upside down and as a loss. Rather than a gain, by choosing one. I am concentrating on what I’ll lose. Is that right? Maybe I am so focused on the present that would have happened without this information, even though what you just said, if true, changes what I thought would be true about it all along. I was operating under false pretenses if you will. I was constructing my immediate future ignorant of what you said. Had I known, not that it was true, at least true to you, but had I known that you were going to tell me, my perception of say my next six weeks would have certainly been different.

“So I guess what I really have to ask myself is what you said true, and from there I’ll be able to answer all of my other questions eventually, from there: What does this mean to me? Why did you tell me? What does this say about you, now? What does this require of me? If it’s true, do I ignore it anyway, thinking that my present course was proper because I had realized it previous to this and the two seem at first glance to be unrelated? Is it something that is able to be fixed if ignored, even temporarily, and on what levels can it be fixed? I came here because I liked your guys’ idea, though it would be a kickass film and wanted to be a part of it. But really I had very particular self interests at heart. It goes back to being seen. Because I’ve always felt that sooner or later if you just keep the visibility at a high level, the right people would see. Not fame for money, but fame as a return on an investment. But I told you this already, didn’t I? I know you saw the footage, it was Lucy with the camera, but I know you’ve been through that footage already and think I can guess what you cut and what you didn’t and where.”

That did it. I was now officially looking at the glass deliberately, to see the liquid go down, and it was, but I wasn’t seeing it happen. There were hints of bent elbows and pursed lips. And I think the ice is melting, messing with the levels. Maybe I did see it go down but I sure didn’t see him take it. The guy at the bar put his smoke out in the ashtray really aggressively. Maybe I wasn’t looking, but it sure felt like it. I’m looking now in any case. I should have asked him a question, any question. It would have been nice and safe and I would have been able to at lease pick out an answer. The edges seem really sharp and there’s a din building, but it doesn’t sound like noise, doesn’t sound like it’s getting louder. It’s just becoming more so a din.

“I’m saying it wasn’t being projected by me, wanting to nurture it, what you said. Now I guess what it comes down to is what you think you saw, what you think you know about what you saw, and if I wasn’t showing everything, it is possible for me to believe you, and furthermore is it possible for you to truthfully make that statement? See because for you to make that statement truthfully you’d have to be clued in to everything, and if I wasn’t giving everything up that you needed to be clued in on, then there’s absolutely no way that that statement to be true. So is that true? To know the whole deal without being told certain things? Are you content to make that bold a statement, a statement that depends so much on being taken seriously, relying solely on intuition? Or maybe this is all news to you. Maybe you didn’t know you didn’t know everything. So then now, telling you that you don’t know everything, would you care to revise your statement?

“Wait, don’t answer that. I just thought of something. Is it possible for you to revise that statement without knowing specifically what I mean? Like actual events? I could be lying, that there’s nothing I’m holding back, that I haven’t told you, and you really have no reason to believe me and therefore revise your statement. However, my telling you specific things, if there were things to be told, while clueing you in might not compel you to either revise your statement or believe me, that I was telling the truth. And would ‘certain things’ even clue you in as much as you would need to be? Oh, I know what you’re going to say, as much as I believe you would need to be in order to make that statement in good faith.”

The liquid in the glass had definitely gone down. With the melting ice cubes, its color was now pale orange. There was noise everywhere and the louder it got the more people started to fade from my peripheral. I would have panicked if the lights had gone either way, darker or brighter. But they didn’t. The noise was no longer identifiable as coming from the jukebox, or as songs, or as people in conversation. And he was looking at me again. I put my head down. I saw my nipples were hard. I was wet but I was sick and dizzy and lightheaded. I was turned on for an empty bar and nothing but the snow static din and I was breathing heavier and deeper, savoring, every progressing breath. I am sitting in a chair, the same chair I have always sat in. I am looking up, as usual, taking the shot of a heroic figure from in the front row. The propaganda shot. The podium shot. But my head isn’t down and I’m not looking at anything.

He did it, I saw him pick up the glass. He finished it. I’m positive of it. Even he’s fading. The noise stop when he opens his mouth, but I can’t see it, it’s been cut away, all that’s left of this shot is the audio and the camera. He put the glass on the counter, but I didn’t see it again. Barely hear it though it is somehow louder than the din.

 “But there’s nothing. I haven’t told you. The knowledge you seek is impossible anyway. Because as much as you thought you were saying a sentence, you were really asking a question and it is my sad duty to tell you no you don’t, you can never, not fully, because even if you knew everything, there’s no way you can know that you will always want it, because there are too many factors involved. There is too much knowledge still to be created not to mention learned. You could meet someone tomorrow that will tell you this is all wrong. What you want, what you know. There are too many others. It can never be a serious truth, only a guess. Only when I die will there be no more for me to think, experience, or do. Only then can nothing else come out of my mind, only then will the final book be written for you to read. Then you read it, and you figure out you were either right or wrong. If you’re wrong, you’ve wasted your life believing an untruth, and if you’re right, your love is useless because the thing that you loved can no longer think, experience, or do. Or what you want, for the thing you loved to give. No, that’s not the right… For the thing you love to be presented to you, in order for you to capture it.

“You love me, indeed. So I can die and you can just cut away and edit it together the way you want?”

The glass is upside down with a twenty dollar bill slipped under it! He’s gone, taken his good ears with him. I am here with my strong eyes, watching everything a little closer now that everything is back to normal, the bar has returned and so has a random top forty hit from three years ago.

If I order one for me and fuck the first guy I see I’ll be all right.

 Email: ntrainbug@yahoo.com

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