Maya Dardel Page #4

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- I'm glad you aren't

one of those 10 women.

- What are you

reading right now?

- You know not much, actually.

I find myself without a

lot of Patience in my 30s.

You know, it's weird.

You'd think I'd

have more Patience.

- You're uglier than

I first realized.

- Yeah, well my phone

and my computer have

killed off my ability to

be beautiful and read.

I read the whole mess in my 20s.

That was the end of reading.

Now I just write and

skim and write and skim.

I read your novel in my 20s.

I haven't read your poetry.

- You should, you might

learn some f***ing grace.

The three books

I wrote in my 30s.

Those are what

sycophants call genius.

One, two, three.

Like little neutron stars.

- So your own mind managed

to impress you, yeah?

- Not now, the light's gone out.

But in my 30s, yes,

my mind was very good.

I felt it, then, I loved it.

It was like a set of

strings, all intertwined.

But not tangled, not

tangled like necklaces.

But like a 10 or 11

dimensional hammered dulcimer.

Then in my 30s.

- I'll, I'll make you a deal.

You make me your

heir and executor,

and I'll read all your books

and write a hagiography

of you and spend my

30s telling everyone

how beautiful a

dulcimer you were.

- You can't be my executor,

you're out, I told you already.

- Yeah?

- Out.

Out.

- Let me finish my drink.

- Yeah, you can finish your

drink, that's the law, you know.

The laws of hospitality

are older than poetry even.

Cheers.

- So um, when could I come back?

- Let me check my calendar.

- I uh,

I play the violin, you know.

- Next week, next Thursday.

That's the neighbor, nothing.

- I'm not free on Thursdays.

I wait tables, I'm

a f***ing plebe.

- You're free on Thursdays

if you want to come back.

- Okay, see you next Thursday.

- Tomfiddlery, clusterfuckery.

Clusterfuck I'm going where,

I don't know, I don't care.

Clusterfuck.

- You don't even

live near other people.

- I live near you

and all your junk.

If I, I'd start over,

I'd go live in Istanbul.

Maybe paint some crazy sh*t.

Isn't that awful

when a writer says,

maybe I'll take up painting?

- You're just f***ed up, Maya.

You're behaving like

a lonely person.

You need to drop acid

and make new friends.

Why don't you go to burning man?

- A person can live

right on the bosphorus.

It's still kind of

cheap there, you know.

With my grapes and my

land and what it's worth.

Even nicer places

along the water

on the Asian side, for decades.

Unless Turkey blows up in civil

war by the end of the year.

- Do you miss Ismail?

What happened to your pact?

- What pact?

- The one where you get back

together when he turned 60.

- You remember that?

Hm.

Pacts are for pachyderms.

You smell pretty

good for someone who

- outdoor showers get you just

as clean as indoor.

It's okay to admit

when you miss someone.

- I don't miss Ismail.

I do miss Turkish men, though.

I'd like to meet

another Turkish man.

Look, at our age

one can either live

in a healthy state of denial

or an unhealthy

state of mortality.

I live in the mortality,

and so, you know, for me,

everything is starting to

have this ghostly profundity,

exactly because nothing

is, in fact, profound.

And there are no ghosts.

And because I have

no one at all.

The only thing

that matters to me

are the books I wrote years ago.

That's it, that's it.

That's all I care about.

- What is this?

- My boat.

All this junk was here

when I bought the land.

- I like your boat very much.

- You know there's another

boy, man, whatever you all are.

His writing is not

as good as yours.

But there is competition.

Paul.

He's not like you at all.

He's not a mama's boy.

Would you like to meet him?

- Meet him here?

- Yeah, at my house.

He comes twice a week.

- No.

I mean, um, no, I'd prefer not.

- That might just be too bad.

- Are you angry at me?

- No.

- I'm not obsessed

with my mother.

I don't live in Texas

because of my mother.

- Oh, no?

- No, my mother was

terrible, when I was little.

- Oh yeah, what terrible

things did she do?

- She slept with men.

- That sounds just awful.

- Hundreds of them.

- Was she a prostitute?

Was she?

- No.

- Well, I can't have a man

taking over my posthumous rep

if he doesn't like mean

old libidinous women.

- My mother wasn't mean or old

or even so libidinous.

She just, she was a person

with terrible values.

She wanted to be a news

anchor on television.

- And?

- And she tried and

tried, and nobody gave

her what she wanted,

but they just kept

teasing her and

having sex with her.

And they were all

horrible people.

- And now you're into

poetry and porcelain.

Poor little flower.

I don't feel bad for you.

It's getting dark.

Go back to your hotel.

Uh, maybe not idiotic,

mediocre is the word.

His, um, soft-core

dialogue he writes,

this pseudo-red-light-district

sh*t.

I don't like books

by men like that.

- Yeah, well,

you're missing out.

- Hello, Ismail,

how's the weather in my head?

How's the weather in Byzantium?

You old Trojan rooster.

- I don't want to

hear the criticism.

- That was luck.

- We can just let

silence continue.

- Just read it, Ansel.

I think I've had some water

in my ear for a few weeks.

Read it to me.

- Fell when the wax

melted, fell in through

an aneurysm in a thought

of wall into a grand

reception hall like in

an 18th century hotel.

And there stood you in

schism-blue eyeflooding

floor length gown, and all your

books and things around you,

you had given them

them to wingless me,

who wrote this note to you.

It said, don't hurt yourself.

I'm asking you, it said,

it said I fell in through

a rip in the paper.

- You're a sweet boy,

Ansel, thank you.

One almost imagines you're

the kind of reactionary

who writes because

he felt something,

and not just because he

wants to be published.

There might be an unpublished

novel here somewhere

on the property.

Given the corporate

takeover of publishing,

I think a Maya Dardel novel's

worth an advance of maybe

$100,000 if I'm living,

but I think a million

maybe if I'm dead.

- That's not why I'm here.

- Did I hurt

your feelings again?

Why are you here, dear boy?

- Because it, it

shouldn't be anyone else,

if you have to do it.

- Why?

- Because I

understand your work.

I understand it, I can read

it in its six or seven layers

or matrices or whatever

you think of them as.

- Them?

- The layers, the combining

and harmonic themes

and sounds and senses, and you

know what I'm talking about.

- You're making

poetry sound like

some rare form of luminous math.

- Well, isn't it, kind of?

- Maybe it is.

You know this poem, despite

that it's written to me,

is really quite impressive.

Um, but there are some

risks in it, though, right?

- What risks?

- Well, schism-blue for example.

It's interesting to

imagine the shade

of blue that is

the schism shade.

The blue of divorce,

of mental breakdown,

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