We are in the living room. I’m sprawled out in front of the couch on the big green-checkered Moroccan rug. My husband is hunched over on the couch, flipping around looking for a movie. We’ve been working our way through a long list of noirs because last year I mentioned I wanted to write a detective novel. Though instead of actually doing any writing, I watched movies, claimed it was all a part of my grand process.
Top Five Favorite Noirs So Far in No Particular Order:
1. Blood Simple
2. Double Indemnity
3. Sunset Boulevard
4. The Long Goodbye
5. Chinatown
“Do you know when the food is getting delivered?” I ask.
“They said 8:35.”
I roll over onto my side. “Well it’s already almost nine. Did they text at all?”
“Let me check.”
He heads into the kitchen to look at his phone, which is plugged in next to the speaker.
“They said ‘the food is with your driver and will be delivered by 9:10.’”
“I’m so hungry,” I groan and roll onto my back again. Bill Callahan croons from the speaker. “What do you think he’s singing about? Like, what do you think the meaning of this song is? Do you have any idea?”
“To be honest I don’t really know what any of Bill Callahan’s songs are about, but I like them. Oh, I love this part too.”
A melancholic cello builds and Bill sings one word at a time like this:
If
If you
If you could
If you could only
If you could only stop
If you could only stop your
If you could only stop your heart
If you could only stop your heart beat
If you could only stop your heart beat for
If you could only stop your heart beat for one heart
If you could only stop your heart beat for one heart beat
There is a long silence when the song ends before the next Bill Callahan song comes on. Sometimes I think I am too much of an impatient person to be a real artist. I want things to move faster than is possible. I don’t know if I can sit with it, meaning The Work. Sometimes I want to catapult myself toward something great, but I am not really sure how to do that and I’m not really sure what I even consider to be great. I consider the movie The Long Goodbye to be great. I consider the combination of ranch dressing and pizza crust to be great. I remember someone telling me that a very famous writer once said: It should take no longer than three months to finish a first draft of a novel. This statement feels impossible to me. I am too easily distracted and I like coming and going as I please. I don’t want to be tied down. My grand process involves too much coffee for me to sit still long enough to finish anything that would resemble a novel in three months. Sometimes I sit at my desk for only thirty minutes before I’ve moved on to something else. It starts with googling a synonym for a word like “impossible” or “distracted,” and then while I ponder a new word choice, I pick up my guitar, and while I’m noodling on the guitar, I look around and notice the room is far too messy to get any actual writing done. Pretty soon, the laptop is shut, I’m up and vacuuming every nook and cranny of the house and rearranging all the plants and paintings on the walls. Next thing I know, my husband comes home from his studio and we’re drinking wine, discussing dinner and what movie we will watch.
Are all people like this? I don’t think so. My husband is someone who is not like this. He is a musician. He is thoughtful and has great follow-through. With everything. Which is surprising because, as I said, he is a musician. The first time I met his brothers, we had dinner at a cantina, and over margaritas and stale tortilla chips served with a side of flavorless salsa, they told me stories about how my husband has always been disciplined. Even when he was a little boy, he would come home from school, and no matter if it was the middle of the week or a Friday afternoon, he would sit down at his family’s big kitchen table and get all of his homework done before he allowed himself to go play outside with the other neighborhood kids. His brothers were teasing, but it only made me admire him more. My husband is reliable as hell. My husband loves to make a list and he loves crossing things off even more. In the last three months he has written seven new songs. Almost a full-length album. And he never buys anything without having done thorough research. He always reads Best Appliances in America & the World before making a decision on what kind of toaster, electric kettle, or vacuum to buy.
I am too all over the place to be prolific. An old roommate once told me they could always tell when I had been in the kitchen because every single cabinet door would be left wide open, and when I was a little girl and I came home from school and my mother asked me if I had any homework to do, I would lie, say I finished it all in class. I had some explaining to do when report cards came in.
The next Bill Callahan song comes on. I’ve always connected more with lyrics, but I love the groovy, rolling guitar picking on this track just as much as everything Bill has to say here.
I move from the floor up to the couch to be closer to my husband.
“Wanna have a staring contest?”
“Sure.”
I press my face up close to his.
“Do you have to get that close for a staring contest?” he asks.
“I do if I’m gonna kick your ass. Okay, one, two, three, stare!”
We both make our eyes go wide wide wide.
“Do you feel like you can see into my soul?” I ask without blinking.
“Do you feel like you can see into mine?”
“Yes.”
I stick out my tongue and cross my eyes. My husband blinks.
“I win! I win!”
“Isn’t making a stupid face considered cheating?” he asks.
“I think it’s considered a strategy,” I say.
“Fine, fine. Let’s go again.”
I scooch closer to him.
“Okay. One, two, three, stare!”
My husband blinks immediately.
“I am the winner again!”
“Shit. Well, I just smoked a spliff.”
“Okay, let’s have a thumb war then?”
“Sure.”
I tuck my knees beneath myself so I can face him easier. We get into position and interlock our right hands with each other.
I begin, “One, two, three, four, I declare a thumb war. Five, six, seven, eight, try to keep your thumb straight.”
Our thumbs wrestle. I wiggle around on the couch and am able to pin my husband’s thumb down. It’s not over yet though, his thumb escapes and it seems he is going to make a comeback. But wait, not so fast! I pin his thumb down again.
“How long are you supposed to hold me down for?” He struggles his thumb free.
“I don’t know.” I pin his thumb down again. “Five seconds. Onetwothreefourfive! Dominated!”
My husband laughs at me. “Okay, okay, I still think you’re cheating. How about an arm wrestle?”
“Shit, okay, you’ll definitely win that, but let’s go.”
We move from the couch to the floor to sit across from each other at the coffee table.
“Do you wanna do lefties or righties?”
“Lefties,” I say, and get into position with my left elbow on the coffee table. “Okay. One, two, three, go!”
We battle. I stand and try to hold my husband’s left arm down with both of mine.
“I don’t think you’re allowed to use both arms in arm wrestling,” he says, then swiftly nails my arm down to the coffee table. “Now I win, little cheater.”
“Well, you have an unfair advantage. You’re much stronger than me, and therefore to even the playing field I can do a little cheating. Let’s do a triathlon.”
“Triathlon?”
“Yeah, like staring contest, thumb war, arm wrestle.”
“Okay, sure.”
We get back into position to start the triathlon. My husband gets on the floor to sit directly across from me.
“Okay, one, two, three, go!” Both of our eyes open wide. We focus.
I was recently reading an interview that this older country singer did. It was the twenty-fifth anniversary of the release of her groundbreaking record, the one that really put her on the map as one of the greatest songwriters of all time. She’d been through hell and back since then. She’s sober now, mostly. And she found true love. The true-blue kind. The kind that rubs your feet at night, makes you coffee in the morning. The kind that will pick up your prescription from the pharmacy, and loves you no matter what kind of shape you’re in. The kind that will read anything you write and give you loving and honest feedback to make it better. The kind that makes you better. The kind that stays.
Anyways, the person interviewing her asked: Now that you’ve finally found true love, do you have a hard time figuring out what you have to say anymore?
The country singer laughed and laughed at this. It’s a ridiculous question of course.
Another thing I’ve been thinking about:
The sinkhole that sort of mysteriously appeared in front of our house a few months ago.
Or is it a pothole? I’m not sure what the difference is. It was right after daylight savings when I first noticed something. The time of year when the sun goes down in the afternoon. I forget if that is daylight savings or just regular savings. I have a hard time getting those two things straight. All I know is that it was dark outside and it was five o’clock and I was taking out the trash after a long day of vacuuming and it appeared that the sidewalk in front of our house had cracked open. I dropped the trash in the can and went to examine the hole. It wasn’t very big. The size of a saucer you’d put a coffee mug on. Or something a plain butter croissant would be served on, if you can’t think in terms of coffee. And the sinkhole didn’t seem very deep. I could see the earth inside. Holes in the road are somewhat normal around here, and if anything, the new hole meant more of a hassle. We’d have to investigate it. Call someone official to come look at it. Make sure it wasn’t going to grow and swallow the house one day.
I brought it up to my husband later while we were in bed with our books and our side table lamps turned on and our dog at our feet and the warm hum of the heater in the background and our eyeglasses sliding down the bridge of our noses. I asked if he noticed the sidewalk seemed to crack open and if we should be worried. I asked if he thought it was our responsibility to fix those sorts of things or if it was the city’s. He said yes, he did in fact notice it and was planning to do some research on it tomorrow morning while he drank his coffee. Reliable, my husband. So responsible.
The roads in our city are all messed up from a hurricane that blew through years ago. Someone made an Instagram called @thisfuckinstreet and posted only pictures of, you guessed it, fuckin’ streets that were fucked. There was one post of a huge sinkhole that nearly swallowed a car. There was another post of a pothole that was so big someone fit a kiddie pool inside and took a selfie of themselves lounging in it with a Modelo. Countless other pictures of holes with rocks stuffed inside, so that they were no longer holes but piles of rocks. The only mountains that exist in our below-sea-level city.
I used to hide love notes for my husband all around the house when we first moved in together. I was thinking I would start leaving notes in the sinkhole. Or confessions. Things I’ve seen. Here’s one:
When I was maybe ten years old, I awoke in the middle of night to find the shape of a large man standing above my bed. At first, in my grogginess, I thought it was just my dad checking on me. But then, I realized that the man was dressed in clothes I’d never seen in my life and was clean shaven. My dad has kept a full beard my entire life. I don’t think I’ve ever seen his actual face, the skin on his cheeks. The man in the doorway was a stranger, but for some reason, I wasn’t scared. He brought his index finger up to lips and whispered: Shhhhhh. I rolled over and went back to sleep. The next morning my mom’s purse was gone. I never told my parents I’d seen the thief. I was afraid I’d be in trouble.
But who’d care about my confessions? I’d just be a litterbug.
I’ve been thinking about how maybe this sinkhole could fit into a story or something. Today, I swear to god, when I went to check on the mail, the hole had gotten bigger. I’ve been thinking, maybe instead of working on a noir book, I could work on some sort of science fiction thing and the sinkhole could be a part of it. There’s got to be a metaphor here. I’ve been thinking about emptiness and if part of the reason I can’t seem to get anything done is because I am stuck in between the feeling of fullness and hunger. And sometimes it’s hard to figure out exactly what I want to say. And sometimes I have too much to say. And am I hungry or am I full? And—
“You blinked,” my husband says.
I snap out of it.
“Shit! Okay, thumb war, quick! Onetwothreefour, I declare a thumb war, fivesixseveneight, try to keep your thumb straight!”
My husband beats me at the thumb war and then whups me at arm wrestling.
“Damn,” I say.
“What’s my prize?”
“Hmm. You can have three things of whatever you want in the world, within reason.”
“Whatever I want?” He raises his eyebrows at me.
“Whatever you want,” I say, and kiss him. The Bill Callahan song is almost over and I pull away from him. “Oh, this is my favorite part,” I say, and go to the kitchen to turn the music up. I sing:
All I wanna dooooo is be the fire part of fireeeeeee.
There is a knock at the door. The dog barks. Our food is here. My husband grabs it and brings it into the kitchen, where I sway back and forth and slide on the tile in my socks. He unpacks everything and we realize they forgot to give us rice, but it feels pointless to call the restaurant and ask for someone to come all the way back over here just to give us rice, something we can make ourselves. We make riceless plates and head back over to the couch. I ask my husband how he feels about switching it up tonight. What about Invasion of the Body Snatchers? The one from 1978? Or maybe we should just start with the original. Yes, we should watch the original and then the remake tomorrow night with takeout from one of the other spots we like. Mediterranean sounds good, but that place always forgets the falafel. Notes would be good for my process. I should start taking notes. 
Mik Grantham is the founder and coeditor of Disorder Press, which she runs with her brother, and the author of the poetry collection Hardcore (Short Flight/Long Drive Books). Her interviews and work have previously appeared in The Believer, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Juked, New World Writing, Maudlin House, Fanzine, and others. She lives in New Orleans, where she owns a café and small bookshop called Lowpoint in the Upper Ninth Ward.
Illustration: Madalyn Stefanak.
