A Novel in a Bar Stack

Cross your fingers and hope to lie

He uses his eyes the same way he uses words. “You use your eyes the same way you use words,” she said to him. He smiled. “I want to use them more in my writing.”

“What do you use in your writing?” She said this knowing what he uses in his writing, having read plenty.

“This,” he replied, pointing to his head, or, through his head to his brain—

“You’re creating a false dichotomy.”

“You think so? I feel like I have to turn this off…” he said, pointing to his temples with both hands. Moving his fingers inward to the fragile skin under his eyes he finished, “to use these.”

This is the first conversation they’ve had in which he has slightly disappointed her, which is actually quite impressive because they have been in each others’ sole company for the past five hours.

“Your senses are directly connected to your brain.”

“Yeah, but—“

“I’m also a woman.”

He smirked, contemplating whether to agree or push back, accusing her of making a reductive comment. He, however, is smart enough to recognize that it would be much more condescending to try and tell a woman what being a woman is than admit that he understands her generalization.

“That’s true. You’re a woman.”

She smirked back. This pleased her. She said this expecting pushback—maybe not expecting it, but she sure was ready for it. She knows him quite well. He’s combative, so she had a docket of responses prepared for his reaction. Maybe, then, she wasn’t pleased. Maybe she was picking a fight.

“People are always writing so analytically…” she was half listening to him continue, half thinking about how much she loves the way he uses words “saying this is like this because of this, or she did this because of this,” when he is looking at something she can’t help but turn around and look in that direction, only to see that he is staring into space “making assumptions,” this is what she meant when she said he uses his eyes the same way he uses words, “but what if it was just—“

“Beautiful?”

He smiled. It was not the same as the smirk—much softer. This smile told her that she finished his sentence, not in a way that they almost said the same word at the same time, no, she finished his sentence better than he could have ever finished it on his own. 

“Exactly. Why can’t things just be beautiful?”

“Why can’t things just be beautiful?”

Or even ugly, which is more similar to beautiful than the alternative, which is being reduced to mere analysis—maybe reduced is the wrong word. The word I’m looking for here is the opposite of ‘romanticized’. All of the words that are ostensibly the opposite of ‘romanticize’ are words like ‘belittle’ or ‘denigrate,’ which are both more a measure of value rather than they are of something magical, not to mention the fact that denigration can surely be romantic. Demystification, I suppose, is close, but that word implies an increase in clarity. Both of these characters are aware that more romantic doesn't always mean less clear in the way that demystification implies, because they know a false dichotomy when they see one. Although in their experience, romantic and unclear could not be more correlative. 

She began to tear up. She was tearing up because why can't things just be beautiful was echoing through her brain bouncing of the walls bounce bounce bounce why can't things just be beautiful—

"Oh no... don't cry."

"It's fine," she said. "They're good tears."

"You're going to have so much fun in Lisbon. I'm happy you're going.”

"You were just there, no?"

"Yes, I was. That's where I lost my novel."

"Shit."

"Yeah."

He writes everything longhand first. He was writing his next novel in a navy blue spiral bound notebook, and he finished it a few months back while he was in Lisbon. Then he got drunk, left it at a random bar in a foreign country, and it’s gone for good, well, unless–

"What if I find it,” she says coyly. Her eyes shifted the way a schoolboy’s eyes do when the teacher looks his way during the test and–

“Are you asking what I would do if you found my novel in a random bar in Lisbon, Portugal?”

he wants so badly to look like he wasn’t cheating but–

“Yes.”

he so clearly was..

“Look at me.”

She looked him dead in the eyes.

“I swear to God, if you find my novel in Lisbon I'll–" the last two words were said aloud in her head as he said them aloud in the bar–

"—marry you."

"Promise?"