Wicks has a hard-on for tapping his pencil today. Ratatat tapping against the top of his clipboard, the sound of a busted metronome trying to eke out the time for Beethoven before it dies. I can’t tell if he’s doing it on purpose or being annoying by accident. I tell him I like Mozart and he raises one of his rabbit warren brows at me. Tap tatap tap tatap tap. When I tell him not to worry he curls his gashed out little mouth and asks me about the pills. I say that they remind me of him.
I tell Wicks I’m not real and he pokes me with the end of his pencil the way a child might molest a dead thing. He smiles, satisfied, and pokes me again. I can see the lines of vintage dentistry running across his two front teeth, the consequence of some past violence. I try to imagine installing their absence myself. Wicks watches me thinking and asks me to elaborate. There’s a mortar and pestle feeling to our conversations that leave me feeling purposelessly milled, when I tell him this he shakes his head and asks me what I need.
A Few Short Words 