Dagny sat, getting the afternoon drunk on. He never used to be one to drink when the sun was out, or one to drink at home alone, but lately, he’d being doing both of those things at once. This particular afternoon, he’d started around one thirty. He was sitting in his studio, holding a low ball glass of Jameson whiskey, letting it swirl in the glass, swallowing and savoring the rich amber as it went down, typing and occasionally looking out the window towards the sun, where the planes soared through the clouds, to and from the airport, on their invisible highways in the sky, like ants marching in and out of an ant colony. Deliver me to the queen, Dagny thought. He ran one hand through his hair, which was unwashed and stood up straight on his head in a crazy fistful.
He’d been sleeping for three days, on Ambiens, there were stacks of papers and books covering every inch of the floor of his studio. There were rubbish bins overwhelmed with crumpled up papers, and overflowing with empty whiskey bottles and crushed cigarette packs. He was trying to figure out what to do with his self, this afternoon, and for the rest of his life. He had no idea what he was supposed to do. His life had no purpose. He didn’t want to get up and go to bed again each day. He wanted to write himself out of his own life as if he were erasing a character from one of his novels. Better a short story than a novel he always said. He always said a lot of shit, to no end, and it did no good, for he was still alone in his pig-pen like stink of old cigarettes, stale whiskey, sharpened pencils and latent anger.
The front door buzzer suddenly rang. “FUUCK!” He shouted, “I’m trying to work.” He staggered over to the buzzer, covered the TALK button with one ink stained paw and yelled into the wall unit box “what!”
The voice that came back was recognizable and unwanted. It was the Wallet. “Dagny let me in, I want to talk to you!”
Dagny chuckled to himself as he said ” You know, this buzzer connects to my cell phone, and I’m not home, I’m at the mall, sorry!”
The money man spoke back through the box once more ” Dagny, I know you don’t own a cell phone, and I see you through the curtains up there, besides, you hate the mall, everyone knows that! I’m not going away, I can wait out here all day!”
Dagny grumbled to himself like an old bear woken up from a particularly good dream and pushed the button that let the money man in the lobby below. Dagny went over, flipped the lock and sat behind his desk, waiting for the money man to come up. He knew exactly where to go, he had been here many times before. While he waited, he lit a cigarette. He hated the money man. The money man had no clue what it took to be an artist, he just loved to show up and wave his pocketbook around like a whip. Asshole. Dagny thought of him as The Wallet. He had a name, but that wasn’t important.
The Wallet strolled in, all smooth camel colored trench coat and silk scarf. He had come to the door and knocked, and Dagny had shouted for him to fuck off. He slipped in anyway and posted up against the wall all cool, shit eating grin on his face, hands in his pockets, fedora tipped back and all. Yes, he wore a fedora. He looked like a goddamned anarchist, or a William H. Macy character. His voice was like a razor being sharped on bone, dull and whiny. He always tried to sound casual and he always tried to insult Dagny. From the way he had his hands stuffed into his pockets, and his hat tipped back with the shit eating grin, Dagny knew one was coming.
“Jolly Ole’ Chap, still brooding, working over the issues your mother gave you when she named you after the female character from Atlas Shrugged?”
Dagny reached toward the corner of his desk, picked up his Magic 8 Ball and threw it in the Wallet’s face. The Wallet reached up, plucking it out of the air in front of his self.
“Fuck off with the Jolly Ole’ Chap shit, you sound like a community theatre player, and… at least I have a mother you goddamn Bruce Wayne motherfucker” Dagny said, mockingly.
“Me and Batman,” the Wallet said, shrugging, still maintaining that shit eating grin despite Dagny’s jab.
The Wallet stayed leaning against the door frame, looking like a bully who was slightly scared of his charge. ” How’s it going with the writing? You do realise that you’re overdue on your pages? We really need you to come up with the work we gave you the advance for.” He twisted his own neck, as if he were nervous, cracking and popping it. He leaned down, picked up one of Dagny’s shoes, turned around, cracked the door open and slid the shoe in, effectively holding the door open to the outside world by a thumb.
“Jesus, Cash Machine, what the hell are you doing, leaving the door open for a SWAT team? Fuck, sit down,” He walked over, and kicked an upholstered chair, it was white wicker with a flowered ugly cushion. He shoved it towards the Wallet with one Doc Marten. It fell over with a bang. The Wallet shook his head, refusing the chair from Dagny.
” Nope, not after last time, I’m keeping the door open” Last time the publisher’s assistant had tried to pick up from Dagny the first few chapters of the new book Dagny owed the publisher, he had been held by Dagny at gun point, and forced to write an essay on decorum. It was either that or write “I am the pain in the ass of a hypochondriac,“ one thousand times.
Dagny told him that he couldn’t leave until he did. He took the short essay option, turning in to Dagny a short essay on why Dagny’s own behavior was against all common decency, and well, it wasn’t quite what Dagny was looking for, so the publisher’s assistant didn’t get any pages that day.
Dagny sighed, “Fine you little prick, do what you like, and I’ll do what I like.” Dagny stopped, pushed his keyboard back, and kicked his boots up on his desk. He reached into his front breast pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. He lit one up, and offered them towards The Wallet. The Wallet shook his head. “No thanks, I don’t smoke. Smoking is bad for your health. Dagny, you know I really don’t want to be here, but I’m overdue on the pages. Just tell me what your progress is and give me some pages and I’ll be on my way… ”
Dagny smoked, and stared off into space. The radio blared from the corner, tinny talk radio, a daytime hate monger. The television, an old black and white with a converter placed on top like some sort of relic from a steam punk movie, sat on the corner of the desk, a black and white infomercial playing. The room was full of smoke, and garbage and globes and maps and cigarette butts and empty booze bottles. There were four long tall windows, and a large pair of French windows in the center. The top floor apartment overlooked the entire court yard. The apartment was as long as the building was. One window was covered by an American flag.
Dagny got up, went to the window and peered at the street from around the corner of the flag, staring at the street while he sucked at his cigarette.
He suddenly seemed concerned. “Man, did you see a black Oldsmobile outside when you were on the way in here, with a guy sitting in it, idling? He’s still out there, he’s been out there well over a half hour. ”
The Wallet sighed and shook his head. “Dagny, no one’s stalking you, there’s no vast conspiracy! You’re a paranoid-schizophrenic, drug addict slash alcoholic with post-traumatic stress and you’re off your nutter! You sold one book, one book! One book, with a semi cult status following and now you’ve let the notoriety and money go to your head in the worst ways. Look at the place!” He said, gesturing at the vast array of liquor bottles, empty weed bags and Ambien bottles, ” No one’s after you, you’re not Stephen King, or Anne Rice or Goddamn JD Salinger. You’re not even a good writer for crikey!”
“For crikey?” Dagny roared, “You’re not European, the fuck outta here with the pretentious affectations, this isn’t England, you’ve been watching too much PBS, get the fuck out of my apartment!”
Dagny got up, and walked over towards the Wallet, picking up a hockey stick from next to his desk on the way over. “Get.the.FUCK.out of my apartment,” He spat, pushing the Wallet by the shoulder, and opening the door with the other hand. The Wallet broke wide and made it around him in a circle, narrowly avoiding being shoved out the door. Dagny swatted at him with the hockey stick. “Get the fuck out of my apartment, you’re pissing me off you goddamn stuffed shirt monkey with a wallet for a brain!”
“Admit it Dagny, you need ‘the Wallet’ “The Wallet said “or else how would you buy all this dope and all this Jameson? Who would pay for all your psychotherapy, you blooming psycho?”
Dagny swatted at him with the hockey stick, chasing him in a small circle around the apartment, narrowly avoiding him each time they passed the door. It went this way nearly every time they met.
“Yeah well, if I wasn’t whoring myself out to the publishers for money, I wouldn’t need to get wasted in shame. Apparently, to give you guys what you want, I have to be drunk…because you’re so goddamn ugly!!! When I think about you, I write with a paper bag over your head. ”
The Wallet started to respond, but slipped on something and fell. Dagny stopped and looked on at the Wallet, helpless on the floor ” Good ” he said, ” cuz I don’t fucking like you ” He went back around to the backside of his desk and sat down, panting. He looked to his ashtray and picked up the last of his cigarette and took a delighted drag. The Wallet was on his ass in a puddle of fine linen and silk. His fedora had toppled off his head and spun on the floor like a top, slowly. He had slipped and fallen on a pill bottle. He sat up, looked for the offensive item, and picked it up for a peek. He read the label and rolled his eyes.
“By the way Dagny, I’m supposed to have a talk with you about something,” he said. Dagny rolled his own eyes in return, and stood up again suddenly, causing the Wallet to get up off the floor quickly, cap himself off with the fedora, and move away from Dagny back towards the door, all the while smoothing his trench, shirt and suit down.
“The Ambien, Dagny, it’s going to kill you. You can’t drink and take that many sleeping pills what are you thinking?”
Dagny shrugged, ” what can I say? My upstairs neighbor is a fucking ass. He plays Call of Duty all night. Sometimes he only sleeps for three hours and then he plays it again for another eight. I’ve talked to the landlord about it, but he doesn’t seem to care. Neither of them do, actually. The landlord told me he would talk to him, and then when I told him he hadn’t stopped being loud, he told me that maybe I was just sensitive. Everyone in the building is mad at me, you know, about all the weird people who keep showing up outside the building, hanging around here trying to get me to tell their futures to them or whatever the hell magic it is they think I can do. So, I don’t get any sleep and I take these pills. My business is your business man. Can’t sleep, can’t write. You need your goddamn pages right? Well there’s your answer,” he said, pointing to the empty Ambien bottle in the Wallet’s hand
“What, don’t you fancy a little Call of Duty, Dagny?”
Dagny howled with mock delight. “Fancy my ass! You know me, Wallet, I’m a man, I don’t smoke weed and I don’t play Call of Duty. ”
The Wallet looked confused. “Uh, what exactly do you call all these weed baggies then?” The Wallet asked, “aside from your advance?”
Dagny giggled, which seemed creepy coming from such a droll grown man. “Silly, I didn’t say I don’t vaporize!” Dagny told him, ” By the way, it’s about that time, wanna pull on the vaporizor? Your ass needs to calm the fuck down Wallet. ”
The Wallet sighed, ignoring the invite. “We’ve went over this before, Dagny, you need to move to a nicer place.”
Dagny stood up quickly, tipping his ashtray over with his shirt hem. “I’ll never move, I need to do my writing here!”
The Wallet gave Dagny the usual throw-money-at-the-problem-retort, “We’ll get you a new place, and you can keep this place as a work space. We’ll even help you find, and pay for it, if it will help you sleep and get some work done. ”
Dagny ground his teeth. They were probably going to break off. “A million times over, tell them no, I’m not moving and I’m not going to stop drinking and doing Ambien and smoking dope. I’ll quit that stuff if you quit being an asshole, Wallet. That means fucking never. NEVER! Now, if you don’t mind, I’ll have to say good bye, I’ve got better shit to do than sit here and talk to you, Wallet. You understand…“
The Wallet looked like he had quite a serendipitous moment there. “Yeah, like get me those pages?” he quipped.
Dagny opened his desk drawer and pulled out a big red, white and blue box of kitchen matches. He started to strike them and fling them, lit, over the desk and across the room at the Wallet. Most of them burned out mid-air, but one of them burned dangerously close to an over flowing garbage can full of scribbled on notebook paper that Dagny had set next to the paper shredder. He wouldn’t work on his computer it was too easy to hack, so everything was on paper. He shredded more than he thought of using.
The Wallet stomped at the match, trying to put it out before it ignited the trash can full of crumpled papers. The Wallet, after stamping it out, suddenly leaned down and snatched at the little metal mesh garbage can, and stuck his foot in the door he had left cracked open, and shoving the shoe out of the way, he curled his finger around the rim of the basket and took off out the door with it. In the basket were Dagny’s private notes on covert observational techniques.
Dagny didn’t realise what was happening until it was much too late. The Wallet was out the door. The race was on. He stood up from behind his desk, and immediately tripped over his own feet on the way out. He swore, and got back up, quickly, but by the time he was down the three flights of stairs to the lobby, the Wallet was already jumping over a hedgerow, onto the sidewalk and dashing through traffic across the street. Dagny watched as he opened his car door with the basket in one hand like a goddamn trophy. He carried it like some kind of puppy or something precious, as if he didn’t want to drop not one single page. Dagny shook his fist, shouting at him as he disappeared into his car, “You thieving goddamn no good Wallet! That’s my good fuckin’ garbage, I wanted that! ”
Dagny could see the Wallet’s superior smile as he put his little moss green Jaguar into gear and kicked out the jams. The winner, victorious, nodded accordingly at his competitor in acknowledgement before he made a U-turn and sped off towards the freeway.
Dagny stood there, huffing and puffing, in his all-black, phony writer’s ensemble, The Frenchistentialist, hair pushed back behind his ear, cowlick standing up at high noon, two cigarettes behind his right ear, watching as the Wallet drove away with the basket. He could hear his landline ringing from the third floor open window. Out of the corner of his eye, as he turned to go back in, he noticed the black Oldsmobile that had been parked there almost an hour ago. He turned to look. The driver was still seated behind the wheel, and he was turned to face Dagny. He started to walk that way, trying to appear casual, avoiding direct eye contact, least he spook him off.
As soon as he got near, the cars’ engine revved to life and the driver suddenly put his hand up over his face, covering it. All Dagny could tell was that it was a man. He blasted past Dagny, still on the other side of the street, too far away to try to stop him and get a better look. Dagny tried to get his license plate # and managed to get the first three letters.
He went inside and wrote the plate numbers down, making a note of the date, time, color, make and model of the car. He placed the information into a large plastic folder full of similar slips, closed it, and hid it in the “fake” bottom of a desk drawer.
He went over and punched in the key code for his voice mail. The Wallet’s voice grated at the ear piece. “Checkmate, Motherfucker, ” he said mockingly, ” Guess I’m the winner this time, Dagny. “
Dagny hung up the phone. That’s how it went.
Coming Much Too Soon: Dagny and His Dope Dealer Go to Church
Telegraph Operator in a Town with No Telegraph 