Stranger Than Fiction

I didn't know the guy.
My neighbour did, apparently.
The block wasn't communal, though a lot of them used it that way, always dropping in unannounced, lacking plausible reasons to visit. I kept to myself. When I could. He walked in, said his name was Harry, as if, I ought to have known it. I didn't like him; I have an aversion to guys calling themselves Harry, and especially Harrys who have a v-neck sweater about their person someplace.
Harry sat in the chair, as if he'd been there before, only he hadn't, to the best of my knowledge. I waited a while as was customary when entertaining, not that I was, technically, entertaining. I was waiting for the plausible reason. Harry just sat there, rubbing his forehead viciously. When a man falls into a chair and immediately begins to massage his brow, he has either recently committed a crime, is about to commit one, or he has ended an affair or is about to embark upon one, or a combination of any of the preceding reasons.
I know men. That was an integral part of my brief, as a man.

So I permitted him the uninvited luxury of staying sat there, rubbing and contemplating: crime and punishment, the ramifications, the pros and cons, whether mandatory sentencing laws applied in his particular case, stuff like that. I turned my attention back to reading Proust, another guy who read like he'd be the type of guy who strolled into other people's apartments uninvited, then collapse in the nearest armchair or woman's lap and start going at his throbbing temples in a manic fashion. Women always fall for those 'lost in thought' type of guys.
Suddenly Harry asked if I had any wine. I didn't answer – immediately.
I was a drunk. So of course I had wine. If I'd been a writer, I might have had notebooks, but I wasn't. I was a drunk without friends, and especially the kind of friends who'd drop by unexpectedly and then ask if I had any wine. Not that this 'Harry' was my friend anyhow.
Then again, he might have been. Either previously or currently. I couldn't say for definite because I was a drunk and I lost time, huge chunks, whole slabs of the stuff. There were gaps in my memory, probably in the liver too.
I still hadn't answered Harry. Not that he appeared fazed by that. I was thinking that if I said I had wine, then this guy would take that as an inference; that maybe I wanted a drinking companion, which I didn't. I drink alone, and any serious pursuit from flying a kite to procrastination, from bank robbery to drinking, ought to be undertaken solo. Drunks have no time left over for small talk, let alone large talk. Large talk frightens me, it's a voracious eater of time and once you lose that much time you're on a fast slope to defeat, regular employment and the twelve-step program.
So I said no.

Harry simply carried on rubbing his forehead. I didn't know what to say after that no, so I said nothing and went back to Proust, and so we sat there a while in silence two-feet apart like a couple of crocheting maids. Proust was talking about drinking, serious stuff, the bastard. First Harry, now Proust.
Ever decreasing circles.
Meaningless oration.
Uninvited men.
Weekends goddamnit.

I really needed a drink. I couldn't have one with Harry sat there, brooding, and especially not after I'd just told him I didn't have any. Chinese stand off. He just sat there thinking about something. Something bad, against the law, against nature's law, something untoward, foul, ghastly – and he needed the juice to either dull that thought, or float it.
Then he said that he could murder a drink, maybe two, eight, sixteen, who knew? I was glad I hadn't fessed up to being in possession of wine right then, not to a guy hauling a thirst like that around. Then, I asked him what it was he actually wanted, excluding a drink that was, in my apartment. I have no idea why I hadn't asked this previously. It may have saved valuable time.
He looked up at me strangely, not queerly, strangely, then told me we'd been friends for just about as long as he could remember.
I asked him how long he could remember for.
After some temple-rubbing deliberation, and a chuckle, he said for about four days or so.
Thus, we had, according to this Harry, and as then unverified by any independent witness, been friends for about four days. Maybe less, certainly not more. I asked him if he was sure, that we were friends.
He admitted that he couldn't be, sure – not one hundred percent, given the black spots in his memory, but I was Marty, wasn't I?
I said no, I'd never been known as Marty, not to the best of my recollections, which I also admitted, were rather hazy at times.
“Ah goddamnit!” he yelled, startling me, and then he smacked the arm of the chair, the arm of my chair, quite aggressively. “And you look just like him too!” he moaned.

“A lot of people say that.” I responded, calmly.
“What? That you look like Marty?”
Not just Marty, anyone they think they know, Peter, Paul, Ringo, you call it.”
“So who are you?” he asked defeatedly.
“I can't recall,” I began, honestly, “no one's used my name in . . .”
“Too long?” he intervened.
“Many a moon.” I finish.

What was my name? Jesus H. Christ. No, it wasn't that, I was sure, well, as sure as I could be given the holes and multifarious missing links I was plagued with. It wasn't Virginia either, or Marcel, or Ernest or Jerome, of those I was certain, more or less.
Unexpectedly then, for me, and for him by the look on his face, he appeared to be overcome by a great notion – much like Proust, or maybe Nash the numbers guy, and he said: “How about a game of truth or dare?”
“No.” I answered, immediately.
“I dare you.” he taunted.
“I said I wasn't playing.” I reiterated.
“Tell me the truth.” he dared.
I was falling into the sinkhole uninvited guests dig. It was drink time, way past actually, the urge was on me: clammy and clawing, begging, haranguing, nesting, excavating. More holes. “Who was your first girlfriend?” he assailed me with.
“Hot Lips, that one from the hospital.” My retort was unexpected and inadvertent.
“That wasn't a woman, it was a guy, in a frock.”
I realized then, that he hadn't offered me the truth or dare before the question and that I'd been foolish to lurch into the answer . . .
“Shit!” he swore, “I didn't fucking ask you truth or dare first goddamnit!”
“I know.” I said, in a smug manner.
“Okay truth or da . . .”
“Forget it.” I said.
“Ah come on, how could it hurt huh?” he pestered.
“It'll waste time,” I said, “more time, time I don't have to spare, and besides, I've got a terrible memory, everything I say would most likely be a lie anyhow.”
“Me too,” he moaned, “so, what in the hell were we talking about, Marty?”
“Time,” I ventured, “and the lack thereof.”
“Where's it go eh?”
“Into optics.” I replied, seriously.

He sits there, rooted, apparently. I begin to twitch. Then he says: “My friend John just had a fatwah put on him.” This throws me, big time.
“Spell it.” I say.
He looks at me suspiciously, “F-A-T -WAH!” he shouts accusingly, “don't you watch tv?”
I don't. Haven't for sixteen years – I see it, I don't watch it.
“What about octopus?” he tries next.
“What about it?”
“Not it, them, what about them, you mean.”
“Then you ought to have said octopi.”
The clock ticks on, waiting for no man, dog, drunk . . . “What are you, a marine biologist? Anyhow, you ever have it?”
“What?”
“Octopi?”
His questions are becoming more and more meaningless in the greater scheme of time, licensing laws, bar stool ownership. “No.” I say, to placate him as my already withered attention span curls up and dies a dehydrated death.
“Japanese swear by it.”
He waits, seemingly interested in my response, and when none is forthcoming, he ploughs on regardless. “Crazy they are, those hari kari kami kaze sons of bitches.”
“The Japanese or octopi?”
“Both.” he muses.
He goes back to his temples for a while, then blurts: “Shit Marty, how come you don't talk any more, you used to be the real life and soul of the party too . . . once.”
“I know,” I tell him, as I begin to stand up, “Lot's of people have said the same and now if you'll excuse me, I've got business to attend to.”
“Sure, sure, don't mind me pal, do what you've got to do.” he says as he waves me away.

I go to the drawer, get my wallet, lift the coat from the back of the door, glance at him sitting there rubbing his forehead. Then take a last glance around my apartment – sparce as it is, then I open the ajar door, and go to step through it and say “See you again then Harry, maybe, one day.”
He looks up, framed in the portrait of my diminishing apartment and replies “Sure Marty, drop by any time, I'm usually home.”
“Sure.” I find myself saying as I step through my own front door and then close it gently behind me.
Then I head for the bar where no one ever asks my name.