Gabrielle Taylor's "Cockluck"
February 18, 2002
Auntie was behind the bar messing with the cocktail shakers and I was lying across one of the lounge chairs, my knees over one arm and my shoulders against the other, reading last week's Macleans's magazine and marvelling at how simple everything was just then. People came in and went out of the bar. Someone, male, said to Auntie, "I'll take one of those Manchurian Candidates. Did you know there are psych majors wandering Sparks Street with camcorders?"
I knew the voice?
"Why?"
"They're interviewing people about the, you know, Tuesday." He shot the Manchurian Candidate.
"Were they cute little fembots?"
I looked. He was short with short brown hair and brush-slashed thick dark eyebrows. Very thin with large eyes. He wore a lightweight dark gray-green suit and a smudgy blue and dusty green tie over a crisp off-white cotton shirt.
I thought I knew him, but I didn't.
"They were blonde. Yeah, I suppose that's as good a description as any."
"What did you say?"
"That Bush reacted in a saner way than I expected but that I still expected him to fuck up on non-war issues. That I thought he would be re-elected and that I didn't vote for him. They were happy because I'm American."
He sat down at the bar. A girl came in, blonde, with short curly hair. I'd seen her here before and knew her name was Rachel. She asked if another semi-regular named Matt had been around and then if she could leave a note.
"I have a very important but very private message to give him from this girl he likes."
The man at the bar said, "why can't she tell him herself?"
"Well, I..."
"Presumably it's bad news," Auntie said. "It's cute, in an evil sort of way."
"Believe me, I don't want to do it, but she really wants not to hurt him."
"Nonsense. It would mean she would have to take responsibility for her own behavior, which she does not want to do, so she rationalizes this method as 'nicer for him'."
She turned to the man and asked what he thought.
"She's totally right. If I was him, it'd piss me off more."
Auntie said, "If she matters to him he'll need to hear it straight from her anyhow. Whatever it is."
"Let's say you liked this girl. A lot. But she didn't like you in that way. Would it be better for her to do it in person?"
Auntie said, "Then she should have the grace and good manners to learn to decline him herself. Instead of taking advantage of a generous friend to do her dirty work. Not that I've seen this thing more than, say, four hundred times. Every time somebody tries to get somebody else to deliver bad news it seems like a revelation from God, because it's such a great idea. It virtually never works. Christ, don't you watch teevee?"
Rachel said she didn't. The man said he didn't either.
"Good excuse," Auntie said.
"I guess you're right. I guess I better go tell her to tell him herself."
"Good girl," Auntie said. "Have a cockluck on me."
She sipped it and made a face and left it on the bar and left. The man shrugged and shot it himself.
I said, "according to this article, more than one in four people looking for relationships on the internet have misrepresented themselves, primarily about age, appearance or marital status."
The man said, "so people aren't any more honest online than they are offline."
I said I guessed not, and threw the magazine back on the coffee table. I reached behind me and took a pocketbook sized copy of "The Demolished Man" out of my coat and started to read.
"...who stole the weather...?"
The man came over and sat down in one of the plump grey lounge chairs with his foot on one arm and his knee against his chest. "I just, ah, read that last term. What a coincidence. Do you, like science fiction? Do you like that book?"
"I like older science fiction. Not the really old stuff, but from the 60s and 70s mostly. Sheckley, Goulart, Biggle, Tenn, Bester of course, John Brunner. What's your major?"
"I just graduated a double major in computer science and biology. I took a science fiction and fantasy course to fill out an elective last term. The class was a joke."
"Most universities haven't quite got the hang of sci-fi, so hardly surprising. Detective, crime fiction, is an older genre and it isn't taught very intelligently either."
"The prof was new to the genre. I tried to, educate her."
"Crime fiction is just an extension of knightly mythological stories, but unlike, say, Morte d'Artur, it's regarded as second-grade because it has a structure."
"I think the perception of crime fiction is that structure is all it has."
"It's like saying the Iliad is just a love story."
"I haven't read much crime fiction. Hammett was good, even enjoyable, but he didn't really light me up either."
"Hammett's okay, but I prefer Chandler. Chandler was so indifferent to plot that when asked who'd killed the chauffeur in The Big Sleep, he send a telegram back saying that he didn't know."
"I don't know Chandler."
"Seven novels and a few dozen short stories. Big Sleep, Farewell My Lovely, Lady in the Lake, High Window, Long Goodbye, Little Sister, Playback. Then he tried to shoot himself and missed, I think."
"I've meant for some time to read him for much the same reason that I read Hammett."
"I liked Thin Man and Maltese Falcon, but found the rest a little dusty."
"I liked Red Harvest. Thin Man is my favorite."
"Try Graham Greene. He makes me want to cut my throat."
"Maybe I will. I'm also taking French. This seemed like a good place to start. Do you speak French?"
"No... I should. I'd open myself up to a lot more government work if I did. The grammar is irritating... The French mindset is generally based on what should be rather than what is. Which was really effective for Napoleon..."
Someone, a student named Hal, ordered a cockluck and came over saying, "what you need is an extended stay in Paris. Become artists in Paris, both of you. Or a writer," he said to me.
"Or a lover," said the man.
"That goes with the territory," I said. "There has to be some payoff for the lousy income."
"Writing for me is like pulling teeth. That's out. I don't like to write but I can do it well enough not to embarass myself. That's all though."
Hal said, "I had to write two papers this term. That was enough for me."
The man looked at his thin dull watch with expandable silver band and said he had to go. "Nice to meet you," he said to me. "I'm Emerson Vorace." I gave him my hand and he shook it.
"Nice meeting you too," I said automatically, and went back to my book.