Chapter 2: Conversations with Other Men
I manage to dodge the actual 'conversation as people' for a few good days. They also are a very odd few days.
I'm not used to having someone in the house, not used to the constant presence of another person. Not that it's constant because I send him out to find the perfect shell to put on the kitchen sill or to cycle into town for more beer or something to get him off my back because he doesn't understand much about breathing space. But sometimes he stops talking, asks me to recommend a book, and then we sit in the living room reading late into the evening, and then he asks why I recommended the book that he's reading.
He's not taking notes. I hated that. Made me feel like a specimen to be examined.
Clifton doesn't get it at all when he picks me up on Thursday as usual. Sisky squeezes into the pickup truck with us, and Clifton peers at him in confusion and asks, "Who's the kid?"
Sisky leans over, smiling madly (he's gotten those grins back now). "Sisky. Ryan's biographer!"
"His what?"
"Goddammit Sisky, I thought we agreed –"
"Ooh, can I change the radio station?"
Sisky twists the knob, looking for another frequency. Clifton stares at me, eyebrow disbelievingly arched, and I feel slightly embarrassed because I know that he thinks my fame is a worthless commodity.
"He's not my biographer," I tell Clifton, not looking him in the eye.
"Sure," Clifton says, but the sarcasm rolls off his tongue, and it's an awkward ride into town.
In the grocery store, Sisky goes crazy. I usually buy canned foods, cigarettes and alcohol. He, however, pulls out a shopping list and asks if I prefer Pink Ladies to Granny Smiths. I dig out cash from my pocket, hand him bills and tell him to just remember the booze and cigarettes, and then opt out and go to Tommy's bar with Clifton.
"So who is that kid?" Clifton asks as we drink beer in our usual table.
"Some fan, you know."
"And you're letting him stay with you? God, that's self-absorbed." He rolls his eyes.
But he doesn't get it. He doesn't understand the power of music, how Sisky and I are connected in some messed up way. Because Sisky was right – I wanted someone to hear what I had to say. Now, I'm not saying that Sisky understood anything of what I had to say, but he thought he got it. And maybe that's what matters.
"Maybe in my next life I'll be an underachiever," I tell Clifton. "I'll be a mechanic in some dead ass northeastern town and never mingle with celebrities in exclusive New York clubs as fans line up for twelve hours to see me on stage."
He scoffs. He's the kind of guy who'll bite easily but never follows through.
Sisky asks Clifton all kinds of questions on the way home – essentially interviewing him. How long have we known each other, how did we meet, what he thinks of me. Clifton looks beyond uncomfortable and says that he met me some six months ago, shortly after I bought the house, and he seems happy when we're back at the house and Sisky gets out of the car.
Sisky takes grocery bags from the truck bed and hurries inside from the cold. We watch him go.
"He's a handful," Clifton observes. "Does he even shut up long enough to sleep?"
"He does. He sleeps in the guest room."
"Right." He rubs his nose slightly. "Not coming in for a beer, I don't think. But maybe next week. Will he be gone by next week?"
