BooksBarbecue
Back Loudermilk Save as PDF
Chapters (60)
  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Personae
  4. I: Early Days
  5. One. Control
  6. Two. Doubt
  7. Three. Fate
  8. Four. Same
  9. Five. Fine Arts
  10. Six. In Loco Parentis
  11. Seven. Settling
  12. Eight. Neighbors
  13. Nine. Prospects
  14. Ten. The Lucky
  15. Eleven. Instruction
  16. Twelve. Same
  17. Thirteen. This Is a Pipe
  18. Fourteen. This Is Not a Pipe
  19. Fifteen. The Reason
  20. Sixteen. That Person
  21. Seventeen. Predictably
  22. II: Writing Teacher
  23. Eighteen. Early Poems
  24. Nineteen. Motivation
  25. Twenty. Allegory
  26. Twenty-One. Grief
  27. Twenty-Two. A Portrait
  28. Twenty-Three. Veils
  29. Twenty-Four. Soft Power
  30. Twenty-Five. Lists
  31. Twenty-Six. A Break
  32. Twenty-Seven. Elsewhere
  33. Twenty-Eight. Custom
  34. Twenty-Nine. Parity
  35. Thirty. Fortune
  36. III: Volta
  37. Thirty-One. Images
  38. Thirty-Two. A Very Interesting Young Man
  39. Thirty-Three. Letters
  40. Thirty-Four. We Prefer to See Ourselves Living
  41. Thirty-Five. Love
  42. Thirty-Six. The Iceberg
  43. IV: Your Best Reader
  44. Thirty-Seven. A Novelist
  45. Thirty-Eight. In Advance of the Broken Arm
  46. Thirty-Nine. Their Penultimate Encounter
  47. Forty. Détente
  48. Forty-One. Worlds
  49. Forty-Two. Recognition
  50. Forty-Three. Persistence
  51. Forty-Four. And Then
  52. Forty-Five. Mingling
  53. Forty-Six. You
  54. Forty-Seven. Persona
  55. Forty-Eight. Est et Non
  56. Forty-Nine. The Author
  57. Epilogue
  58. Afterword: The Libertine
  59. Acknowledgments
  60. About the Authors

“You,” Harry suddenly starts to say, “you just want to look at him, right?” The words come out, if Harry himself can be any judge, pretty slurred and battered.

The glasses person ends her disquisition.

Harry is so drunk he can’t remember what he’s just said. Anyway, has he just said something? Probably not. He decides it’s crucial to point at the bald guy’s fetal face to ensure his overture is properly received. “You like him?”

“What?” The infant frowns. The infant is sipping something clear with ice in it that is probably water.

“Ha ha ha! I’m saying”—Harry bobs his head sympathetically—“you know and whatever and stuff? He’s interesting guy?”

It’s not evident where Loudermilk is in all this.

Harry converts the pointing hand to an open palm. He keeps this palm bobbing in the air. For some reason he says, not without a certain optimism, “Yeah?”

“What?” This is the baby man again.

The infinitesimal sobering that has gone on during the course of Harry’s outburst allows one corner of Harry’s brain to function. Realization dawns. He wants to destroy himself.

Now Loudermilk is here, dragging Harry out of the booth. Loudermilk is like, “That’s such a good story, Maya!”

Maya, the glasses person, is saying something about how Loudermilk should really come with them on one of their jaunts sometime. It sounds a little like she is saying that Loudermilk should really come on her face sometime, but Harry is too preoccupied by his own catastrophic flaws to pay much attention.

Loudermilk is hustling Harry out. “That was hilarious!”

Harry is abruptly, dramatically sober.

“You’re a comedic genius, dude.” Loudermilk is slightly out of breath. Screams of inebriated college students can be heard a block over. “You know who that was?”

Harry doesn’t care.

“Fucking vivisepulture? Dude is a new breed of fuck.”

Harry doesn’t say anything.

“When are you going to get over yourself? Trust me, it was fine. You can say whatever you want to these summa cum laude nerf herders. Life to them is one eternal underwater tea party. Anyways, I’m starving. Let’s get a slice.”

Harry says maybe he would prefer home. He doesn’t feel so good.

Loudermilk surveys the bacchanal that surrounds them. “Harry, when are you going to realize nobody fucking feels good?”

Fourteen. This Is Not a Pipe

Fourteen

This Is Not a Pipe

But it doesn’t end.

The reason it doesn’t end is that there is, outside the Common Lot, on one of Crete’s municipal benches, a person sitting cross-legged smoking a cigarette. This person raises one of her bare arms and begins to wave. “Hey-ey!” she yells.

The person gets up and jogs over. “It’s me!” the person announces. She comes to a standstill before Loudermilk.

Harry looks Lizzie over. Tonight she is only subtly goth, veering toward neo-hippie.

“Hiya,” says Loudermilk.