‘I thought about that comment for two whole weeks,’ he said, still facing forward. ‘She’s wonderful, that girl. Love everything about her. But can I really be with someone who is destitute of opinion? When we’re together, it’s all I think about!’
Charles took a deep breath. The bartender and I looked at each other.
‘I decided I couldn’t take it. This doubt. . . I had to end it.’
‘You broke up with her,’ said the bartender. No reproach: Charles was calm.
‘No. … No, I didn’t break up with her. I loved her too much. I came home one night after work, sat down on the couch and . . . planned my response.’
‘So, what did you do?’ I asked.
‘Willy, what did I say about interrupting? I’m getting to that.’ He stared down at his beer for a long moment. Then he looked up, as if awakening from a deep reverie.
‘Do you know why we tell stories? . . . Evolution, my friend. Or morality. It’s all about cause and effect. Information. Stories are interesting because they have hidden information in them, messages for how to behave.
‘Think about it—every story has conflict and resolution. There must be conflict or what you have is . . . documentary. You must have conflict, a problem the audience might find themselves in. But there must be resolution. How to solve the problem. What did the characters do, and where did it go? Wilson decided he’d take the job as city planner.
‘And then he builds a day care right next to the airport; all the bloody buggers have to learn sign language! It’s interesting because we can see the cause and effect – which of his doings led to what results. Ergo, if we find ourselves similarly, we know how to behave.
‘Of course, if there’s something I wanted for you, or some important lesson I wanted to teach, I could just say, “Willy, my boy, if you can’t distinguish between right and left then you’d better not become a town planner!” But the problem with that? You wouldn’t listen! We don’t listen to each other; it’s not in our nature. But if I tell a story, Willy, a story, hem, hem!’
With a talon hand, Charles scratched his chin. I struggled to see the connection with Abbey.
‘I couldn’t tell Abbey about this dissatisfaction of mine. I couldn’t. She was sensitive, you know, always crying over roadkill. I didn’t want to hurt her. But I couldn’t hold my silence.’
‘So?’
‘So, I stitched up a fucking story, boys. Keep up! I engineered a cunning narrative to implicitly imply my dissatisfactions without actually stating them. At the story’s heart would be my central message! I began research – newspaper clippings, discourses with the postman. It had to be perfect, or else I’d be stuck. So, I thought out this story.’ Charles revealed a flash of hubris. ‘This is how it goes.’
‘Girl—Carrie Carlyle, works for a film distribution company; she markets films to the cinema. Relatively happy; she lives a contented life. But there’s a pernicious protrusion in her steamrolled-smooth existence. She can never quite crack it. She’s twenty-four and three months old. Her cat’s name: Snozzlebert Cumbercooch.’