The library of a mansion, night. Enter OLD MAN with a lavish fur coat.
OLD MAN: Ah, at last. Finished at last. My day of obligations. A smooth conclusion to arduous tasks. Now [removing his coat] … nnugh … now is the time for leisure. Now is the time for sedentary stillness. With a book. Yes, that is what I will do. I will take out a book.
Pause. Goes to the fireplace and lights it.
But what book? I, who in all my days of trading obligations and leisure, have acquired so many. And yet, I feel I know so few. Bah! This should be a blessing! All these printed friends-in-waiting. But this is not so. It is daunting. It is overwhelming. It is overpowering. These books make a wall unto itself. Will I dismantle its careful design so willfully? No.
Pause.
I will err toward safety … with familiarity. I do so by taking careful note of the spines. Not too loose so as to break completely apart, but not too stiff and unknowable. Woe is me, who cannot pass up the cracking of an unbent spine in an unread book. Each snap vibrates in the nerves from fingers to kidneys. But as ever, I find myself resisting, as I do all temptations to adventure. It can’t be helped.
Pause. Turns to bookshelf.
Now, what are you leading me to tonight, my friends? What … is our desti— … Oh, what do we have here?
Pulls book from the shelf. Pause.
Well, if it’s familiarity I sought then it is familiarity I have found! The Anatomy of Exuberance, by Thomas Kincaid Tinderbrook. That’s me! But I hardly remember ever writing such a book.
Flips to the back page.
“Thomas Kincaid Tinderbrook is a doctoral candidate for comparative analytical therapy at Gywnnyn Slade University. He lives near campus with his wife-to-be, Hilda, and dog, Lancelot.” There you have it. Now, for the necessary measures: bourbon or wine?
Goes over to his drink cart.
Hmm. I … think … it … shall … be … It shall be vodka, actually.
Preparing the drink.
I suppose we could be adventurous just a little! There!
Goes to his chair, settles into it, takes a drink, opens his book.
Now, at last, I shall commence my leisure.
Pause.
Oh damn it all! My obligations. How arduous they were! So much more than they are on average. What was it that so vexed me at their peak? I shouldn’t ponder it. Not now. Not in my time of rest.
Pause.
But why rest when I know that obligations are waiting on the other side of the night? Ready to pounce, to unhinge their collective jaw, and to gnash, gnaw, and gnarl at me for hours until I return home to do this all over again. A new glass of vodka, a new (old) book. The fire raging as ever.
Takes a drink.
What have I become? You’d think by my age there’d be clarity … there’d by calm … there’d be time enough to savor leisurely moments for their own sake … not because they warrant me a sense of centeredness against the brunt of my daily tasks. I thought by my age there’d be—
IDIOT [slow, monotone]: Chad?
The IDIOT appears in the back of the room standing still, but staring blankly as if lost. The OLD MAN looks around but does not see who is talking.
OLD MAN: What in the devil?
Pause.
IDIOT: Chad?
OLD MAN:Who is speaking?
IDIOT: I .., am.
OLD MAN:And who are you?
IDIOT: I do … not re … member.
OLD MAN:Oh bother!
IDIOT: Chad?
OLD MAN: There is no Chad in this house.
IDIOT: Chad … has … left?
OLD MAN:There was never a Chad here. You are mistaken.
IDIOT: Tell Chad … that I … am here.
OLD MAN:I can’t very well tell Chad—who I do not know—you are looking for him if I also do not know who you are.
Pause.
Well?
IDIOT: Chad?
OLD MAN: An idiot has found his way into my home. My home. What is this country coming to?
IDIOT: I’m not … an id … iot.
OLD MAN:Then what are you? State who you are, plainly and with confidence.
IDIOT: I do … not re … member.
OLD MAN: That is a very idiotic thing to say. And I’ve never met an idiot who could ever make a compelling argument against his own idiocy.
IDIOT: Where I … come from … we don’t … argue.
OLD MAN: Where are you from?
IDIOT: It … is … black.
OLD MAN:Does this black place have a name?
IDIOT: There is … no name … only … black and … cold and … sorrow.
OLD MAN: Perhaps this … Chad is there. He is waiting for you. He shouldn’t be too hard to find.
IDIOT: Chad can … not go … he’s not … ready.
OLD MAN: Be that as it may Chad is not here, and you do not belong here. I’m calling the police to remove you.
IDIOT: Police … cannot … help you.
OLD MAN: What will get you away from here faster?
IDIOT: Mutual … respect.
OLD MAN: How dare you come into my house, and demand respect as an equal. In no just world will I ever respect someone who cannot name who he is or state where he is from. That is too much. Too much!
IDIOT: Then I … can’t leave.
OLD MAN: We’ll see about that.
Pause.
I wonder … I wonder if mutual respect is what you make of it. Yes! If it is in my power, I can conjure mutual respect in anything.
Walks over to the fireplace, picks up tongs.
Like fire … and smoke!
Picks up a flaming log with the tongs.
Okay, Idiot. Speak. Call out your friend’s name and I will send you back to where you came from as etiquette dictates. How about over … here!
Swings at the curtains, they catch fire. The IDIOT fades from view.
Or perhaps you are … here!
Swings at the drink cart, smashes bottles, flames burst out.
Oh you are tricky for such a moron. But I’ll get—
Trips over and falls, log flies from the tongs and hits the bookshelf, which also catches fire. Struggles to get up. He chokes up as smoke fills the room.
That … [cough] … should do it.
Pause.
IDIOT [appearing next to him]: Chad.
Pause.
OLD MAN [monotone]: Bruce.
I enjoyed the story, but I’m left with the feeling that there is context I am missing regarding the characters.Report
I join @oscar-gordon’s comments.
I very much respect the “show, don’t tell” method of storytelling but the full explanation doesn’t seem to be shown here.Report
@burt-likko @oscar-gordon Speaking personally I assumed that was part of the point. “I don’t fully get this but it does interesting things to my brain” appears to be a sub-genre of short story, from my woefully uneducated in the literary short story perspective. I can tell that I like it at this length but not when it becomes a novelette (or a novella … oy the headaches such a novella can cause me), but I don’t know much more about said sub-genre than that :D. (It’s *not* slipstream, this sub-genre I can’t name, but seems to live somewhere in that neighborhood…)Report
I initially had a feeling that the protagonist was afflicted with some degenerative mental disorder like creeping dementia or Alzheimer’s but then remembered the narrative went out of its way to establish that the protagonist is in no way named Chad.Report
Or the Old Man is fully succumb to mental degeneration and has so forgotten who he is that he assumes the identity of the author because the book is familiar.Report
Oh snap! That could be it! That’s the cannon in my head now.Report
Oscar’s speculation seems possible. After all, to your point, the narrative only establishes that the old man doesn’t initially think that he’s Chad. But if the story tells of his realization that he is Chad, it seems odd to me that realization comes by way of his complete rejection of mutual respect.Report
That is brilliant. It’s my head canon too nowReport
The name “Chad” had me looking for incel references.Report
I thought it a metaphor for the 2000 US Presidential election.Report
The Old Man would have had to have gotten stuck on a wall hook or something as the fire raged.Report
Or the EO banning travelers from there.Report
It’s also reminiscent of the most recent episode of Better Call Saul, but I suspect that’s a coincidence.Report