(no subject)
You might forget your manners
you might refuse to stay
And so the best that I can do is pray
Seymour didn’t get to sleep. He lay in his bed and tried not to think of the empty bed in the same room.
He hears the knocking on the floor above. Audrey. Ready to start her shift. He lets her keep knocking. He only gets up when she stops and he realizes she could be calling the cops.
“What’s wrong?” Audrey asks him when he opens the door, her gaze sharp and worried.
“Dad’s gone.” He should say where. Her gaze is telling him to. For a moment, he wants to tell her exactly where. Then a future behind bars - without her - swims in front of his eyes.
“To Phoenix,” he adds. “To see Mama Mushnik.”
“Oh. Okay. Weird how he didn’t tell me.”
He hadn’t thought about that. “I just heard myself. Last minute thing.”
“Families,” Audrey murmurs distractedly, still watching him. “Is…is there something else?”
“I can’t do this.” He swallows, pauses, turns and walks back into the shop. “I can’t run this place while he’s gone. He never…shoulda left.”
“Well, it’s just for a few days, right?”
Seymour winces.
“It’s longer,” Audrey guesses, and he wants to scream NO at her, he wants to master his face so it never slips up again. She becomes alarmed. “Oh my God, is your grandmother okay?”
“Y-yeah.” It’d be better if she weren’t. “No.” He wracks his brain for something that sounds horrible. “Cancer.” The point is: “Dunno when dad’ll be back.”
“Cancer,” Audrey murmurs sympathetically, resting a hand on his arm. “I’m so sorry, Seymour. Here, Seymour, you go downstairs and take a day off, okay? I’ll deal with things here.”
Seymour shakes his head. “No. Dad’d kill me.” He glances at the plant and feels, to his sickened amazement, a giggle welling up in his throat.
“Then take a nap for a few hours or something, you look like shit.” Somehow Audrey makes even the word ‘shit’ brim with concern.
“I can’t.” All the tenseness is spilling out of him. It’s not right - not normal, what he’s speaking, how he’s speaking it - it’s too much. “I’ve got to stay here, work the store, be-be-good, for dad. I’ve got to try.”
She puts her hands on his shoulders and takes a deep breath. “Seymour….” Tears well up in her eyes.
This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. He was supposed to help her. Always a SCHMUCK failure, fails, failed, failing....
“A nap sounds good,” Seymour agrees. “Thanks.”
He gives her a quick kiss on the cheek before going downstairs.
(“Dad, where do the Mushniks come from?”
“They come from Czechoslovakia. Get over here, boychik, I’ll show you some pictures. This here’s your grand-father, Gregor Mushnik.”
“He’s big. When I grow up, I wanna be like him.”
“Let’s not set our hopes too high, boychik,” Mushnik rumbles, pleased nonetheless. “Now, he married Mama Mushnik in ’38….)
The plant is a vibrant green, twelve feet tall, with thick, rubbery leaves. Its most prominent vines have buds. Vines cover the floor and the walls. Audrey suggested he prune them, but Seymour doesn’t dare.
“Twoie?”
“Mmhmm?”
“Can you feel dad the way you did me?” (It’s always dad, now.)
“Sure.”
“Did he love me?”
The plant is quiet. “No,” it says finally. “He liked you a lot once upon a time, but that dried up.”
Seymour isn’t surprised. “Why? When? What did I do?”
It’s quiet again.
“Twoie?” Seymour asks. “Twoie?”
“It wasn’t any big thing,” the plant replies.
“You’re sure.”
It pauses again. “Yes. Just a lotta little things. You know how it is.”
Seymour takes a deep breath. Twoie would know. Twoie would know.
I know the way you’ve treated other guys you been with
JUST be a lady with me
There’s the purple face with the glowing jagged teeth. Audrey screams. There’s the snap of bone and her arms break, spilling red-and-black blood over the linoleum. Officer Warkentin is examining the plant, and Twoie tells him everything, and every TIME IT OPENS ITS MOUTH THERE’S THE BODY flesh flesh dripping and suddenly Seymour is close to the open eyes, so brown they look black, they’re open wide
because the eyelids got digested first
and the plant turns to him and grins
while Officer Warkentin
takes notes
The reporter from TIME magazine calls back, asking to reschedule their interview, he’s come down with a nasty flu. Seymour says sure.
A lady wouldn’t leave her escort
It ain’t fair or NICE
A lady wouldn’t wander
all
over the room
Seymour is in the back, in a room that still smells of pipe tobacco, counting rolled coins for cash-out. he has to fill the deposit forms. He has to send them to the bank at the right day. So many things to remember.
“Seymour?” He can feel the bass voice vibrating through the floor.
“Yeah?”
“I’m hungry.”
Seymour sets the deposit forms down and closes the cashbox. (He’s got blood. So easy to let it go. Won’t be more painful than cutting his left hand.)
He goes down to the basement. He watches ‘One Versus One Hundred’. He thinks Is this it? Is this why I did it? The show isn’t even that good.
AND BLOW ON SOME OTHER GUY’S…DICE.
Audrey hesitantly knocks on the door to the back. It’s been almost a week since Mushnik. It’s five o’clock. There’s no one in the store.
“C’mon in.”
He looks at her hesitant face. There’s walls between them she doesn’t even know about. Ones she’ll never get through - and if she does, whatever they have will be gone, gone like a dreamless night, gone like a dead body, gone like a peaceful conscience.
“Is your grandmother okay?”
This has become shorthand for all the things Audrey doesn’t ask, like ‘How are you?’ ‘Have you gotten any sleep?’ ‘What’s wrong with you?’ Seymour doesn’t know why she hasn’t asked them. Because it’s easier this way. Because for all she knows he loved his granny. What does Audrey really know about him, anyway?
Seymour shakes his head.
Audrey goes to him and hugs him. Seymour wraps an arm around her shoulder, as distant and detached as if he were watching the scene.
He holds her in his arms and thinks Dad died for a hug?
(“Seymour, c’mere. You got to read this if you want to have a bar mitzvah.”
“Yes, sir.”
“What is that grumble? Do you want to be a man or don’t you?”
“I do! It’s…it’s just…this is so long.”
“Long!” Mushnik barks. He sighs heavily, the anger draining out of him. “That’s life, boychik, a long hard slog. Not like your comic books and not like they told you when you were a kid. That’s the life of a man. But,” he adds, to stop the obvious question before it’s asked, “you get benefits, too. Life as a grownup, dealing with grownup things, better than anything you could get as a kid. You get me?”
Seymour isn’t sure he does, but says “Yes, sir” anyway.
How do you forget that about a person? Seymour asks himself. There was good between them. Love, probably, even if Mushnik expressed it by yelling, even if Seymour was looking for something else from him. They were books in two different languages, sure…but that doesn’t mean there was no good.)
“Seymour, I’m hungry.”
He shakes his head. “I can’t keep doing this.”
“Oh? What, exactly, are you going to do about it? Tell anybody and they lock you up ‘til the end of your pathetic little days. Someone else’ll get me - I’m famous enough - and then he’ll be the one living the good life.”
The good life.
The good life?
All the thoughts and nightmares and feelings come shooting out - the covering of work and TV and Audrey has done a good job at keeping them suppressed, but something about that question sends it all shooting up….
He does want to go to jail. Audrey, the Krelborns - let them think he’s a murderer. They should. He deserves it. And they deserve to know the truth about him.
Twoie isn’t a friend. Isn’t a brother or father or son or priest to hear his confessions. It’s a plant doing what it takes to survive. It hasn’t even been subtle about it. (How did Seymour get his head screwed on so wrong? Because he let the plant keep talking to him. He let it influence him.)
Seymour leaves the store immediately, grabs the car (it says “Mushnik & Son’s” on the side) and swings down to pick up some weed-killer.
He’ll keep it in the car. No need to alarm the plant now. He’s got the axe (chopped him up and blood was on the wall). Axe and weed-killer. Weapons.
“Nevermind, Twoie,” he says as he comes back in. “I just needed to get…God, get out of this place for a while. Clear my head. I’m still-” He gives a soft laugh. “There’s no where else for me to go, is there?”
“Damn straight,” the plant rumbles, reaching out with a vine and patting him on the shoulder.
Seymour is proud of himself for being such a good liar that he can even fool the plant.
Roll will ya? Roll will ya? Wassa matter?
ROLL THE DICE!
Luck be a lady
toniiiiiiiiiiiiiight
Comin' out, comin' out right!
HAH!