FLYNN'S MINDGAME.

[dadio]

And Flynn has this notion that if he could hide away somewhere some room someplace and lock the door and lay on the bed and stare at the ceiling he might possibly conceive the big novel the book to blow all other novels away and as he lies there on the bed the girlfriend having just left her impression still there on the bedcovers and pillow and her perfume still in his nose and the semen still there on the sheets and he taking a cigarette from the screwed up pack puts it between lips and lights up and inhales and thinks of the girl laying there just half hour ago talking about the nitty gritty aspect of things about him getting married and him getting a job and having kids and maybe mortgage a house or such and he begins to laugh softly to himself at the absurdity of it all him marrying and having a job and having kids about the house with all the noise and stink and human all too human aspects pushing in on him and the girl laying there her hair dark and long and her eyes small like dark pips in ice-cream and those lips rather plump but good for kissing but which spoke too much and when she lay there on her back and spread her legs and he was having it away as his friend O’Brien would say he would be thinking of a scene in his proposed novel how he was going to put it down what words he was going to use and how to bring it all together and grab the reader by the eyes and hold him or her there until they got the scene as clearly and deeply has he did and coming back to the moment the smoke from the cigarette rising upwards the image of the girl still stuck in his mind like a fly to flypaper and the scene that was beginning to be conceived was being pushed aside by the perfume and memory of the girl and her words the animal aspect of her saying more more harder harder quicker quicker and he catching sight of a airplane passing by the window wondering where it was going and which way is that? he asks himself east or west? and he remembers his father saying to him as a young boy go west son go west don’t go east boy ain’t nothing for you there and rubbing his crotch he inhales deeply trying hard to move his novel on to try get the next scene laid out before him and the characters in place but still the darn face of the girl intrudes her naked breasts and buttocks and that look she gave out of those dark pippy eyes and he recalls the English teacher at high school saying Flynn you’re going to be a writer one day you’re going to turn heads then he had heard later that the old fuck had been taking kids home with him in the lunch hour and did things to them although no one said what he did and looking away from the window he gazes at the Miro print on the wall the one his mother had got for him from some store after she heard him say how much he liked it and he still liked it liked having it there the one art work in the whole room which he put up on the wall each time he moved into some apartment and always the bedroom always opposite the bed just so he could gaze at it and his girlfriend would say what the fuck’s that? and he gave her a potted biography of Miro and his art and she’d lay there butt naked with her mouth open trying to take it all in and as he draws hard on the cigarette he conceives of the scene in the novel where the main character lies on a bed smoking a cigarette gazing at a Miro painting and he goes on to describe the room and the bed and curtains and carpet with the cigarette burn and the sink and the towel and he puts it all in the scene just like Balzac would have done but more modern more tighter but the girl enters into his thoughts again this time by walking across the room to the window and drawing the curtains to shut out light and snoopy eyes and he can see the cheeks of her plump butt how they wobble as she reaches up and yet it is all in his imagination just tricks of light just the mind getting overheated because she’d left a short while ago and had gone off in a huff because he had not answered her questions on marriage or kids or where they would live and he sees her there still by the window imaginary or not he studies her from behind the way she stands the way her hair touches down her back and that he thinks could go into a novel scene yes get her like that capture her just there bring in the words get the darn words to work build up the image and the cigarette is at its end so he stubs it out in the cheap ashtray the landlady left in the room the landlady with the features like Mussolini except she had hair tied in a bun at the back of her head and always saying no loud music no dames no booze bottles tucked behind radiators and so on and so and he closes his eyes and sniffs the air taking in the girl's perfume and body sweat and semen and feels the impression where the girl had been where her body had pressed hard downwards and he moves his hand over it imaging she was still there pretending he was feeling her thigh touching her pubic hair but knowing it was a mind game knowing she was gone and was not there.