Chapter 24 - Alone

Jeremy went home and slept all day, got up and forced himself to pop something in the microwave and eat it. He tried to write, but the only thing he could think of to write about was a sonnet to Liliana -- Tianalamara -- and he just dissolved into tears when he tried, so he went back to bed.

The next day was a bit better, but after spending the whole day writing, with only a short break for lunch, he realized that what he'd written was garbage.

This wasn't all that unusual. His usual practice was to reread what he'd written every ten pages or so, and often he would trash most of it and start back over from six or eight pages back. It wasn't unusual for him to spend four hours working and produce two pages, having typed the equivalent of a dozen or more if he'd actually been working on a typewriter producing pages as he typed.

But usually he'd have at least something to show for a day. Today, none of it was any good. It was all garbage.

He wasn't even sure this story was a good idea.

He needed to get out. He headed for the park, hoping against hope to find her there waiting for him, but of course she wasn't. He sat down on the stone she'd been sitting on when he first saw her, and tried to sort out his feelings.

He didn't even know what to call her in his head. She had always been Liliana to him, but now he knew her real name was Tianalamara. He wondered if she'd told him her real name only because he'd seemed so dense at not understanding her hint that she was sure he was going to die. So why not?

On the other hand, although supposedly true names could give one power over otherwordly creatures, it didn't matter much if he never saw her again. If he couldn't use it to summon her, what good was it.

Or could he use it to summon her?

He stood before the doorway, looked around. No one was in sight. He reached out for the door as if waiting to grasp the hands of someone coming through it.

"Tianalamara, come to me!" he pleaded. Then he said it again, this time ordering. Then he said it once more, pleading again and almost wailing.

Nothing happened.

"Well, what did you expect," Jeremy asked himself. Whatever compulsion might come from a mortal calling your name was sure to be trumped by the King of All Faerie forbidding you to go to him.

He walked home dejectedly and made himself some supper. He really didn't feel like eating, and ended up throwing most of it out. Then he went to bed.

The next morning he did some paperwork for his new writing career. He had to write three new cover letters and print out new clean copies of the three stories on nice paper for stories that had been rejected. He took them to the post office to mail them out, and did some shopping.

He was still depressed, and still somewhat in shock. He couldn't quite get used to the idea that Liliana wasn't going to be back in a few days.

Tianalamara. Tianalamara wasn't going to be back. He'd just found out her name, and now he would never even get to call her by it.

He suddenly broke down crying in the middle of the grocery store. He abandoned his cart and went to the front of the store, where there were benches for people to sit on. He sat down and tried to collect himself.

"Are you all right?" someone asked. He looked up, and for a split second Liliana's form and face superimposed itself on the form and face of the young woman who had come up to him. But it was just a woman with dark hair. A nice woman, apparently, a look of concern on her face.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I'll be all right. I just . . . I just lost my . . . girlfriend." That was as good a word as any, he decided.

"Oh, I'm so sorry," she said, assuming, as he'd known she would, that he meant she had died. "When did she . . ."

We can't even say the word, Jeremy thought. We're all so afraid of it.

"Just yesterday."

"Oh, my goodness. Well, you certainly have every reason to feel like crying, then. Is there anything I can do?"

"No. I'll . . . I'll be all right. It actually helps, knowing there are nice people in the world like you willing to come up and ask if they can help a stranger."

"Well, I'm just doing what anyone would do."

No, you're not, thought Jeremy, but he didn't say anything.

It did touch his heart, and he even wondered who she was and if she was single and whether or not he could ever have a girlfriend like her, if he ever got over Liliana.

But he doubted if he ever would.

He told her he was fine, she could go. She stayed a moment, giving him a chance to change his mind, then left him alone. He went back and found that his cart was gone -- probably the store employees had reshelved his stuff by now, so he ended up just going home without buying anything.

He tried to write a sonnet. He wrote fourteen lines of iambic pentameter. The rhyme scheme worked. The octet/sestet framework solid, but the poem didn't begin to describe how he felt. It was too analytical. It just lay there on the page, like a dead thing, emotionless and bereft of any spark of feeling.

He tried another, but gave up in frustration halfway through. He decided he was still in no condition to write after what had happened to him -- and who could blame him -- and tried to read, but nothing he picked up held his attention. He was restless. Discontent.

He went for a walk. Again, he went by the fountain park, even though he wouldn't have been likely to run into Lili--Tianalamara this soon after a visit even if nothing had happened.

Tianalamara. Tianalamara. Tianalamara. He kept repeating her name like a mantra. He thought of it as mentally calling her. He thought that maybe if he called her enough, she would somehow come to him. No, it's not that he thought that, exactly -- he wasn't being rational and reasonable enough to label what was going on inside his head "thought." He just found himself compelled to call her, usually mentally, occasionally aloud, when he was alone and he thought no one could hear him.

"Tianalamara. Please come to me. I need you."

Days turned into weeks and still he wasn't writing anything worth sending out. All the stories that he'd written sold or were rejected, all the rejected ones were sent out again, and March warmed into April, and still he had not written a single story that he felt measured up to what he'd written while he was with Tianalamara, whom he'd known as Liliana.

He'd always known she was something of a muse for him, that her presence in his life had been the spark that started him toward his new career. But he hadn't contemplated the reverse, that without her he'd be unable to write.

He started sending out the stories he was managing to finish, even though he himself thought they were inferior and unlikely to be published. He sent them to the lower tier magazines that didn't pay as much, hoping they'd be more desperate.

His money was dwindling now. He still had money in the bank, still had some time before homelessness was seriously looming on his horizon, but while his first few weeks of joblessness saw increases in his bank account, that was no longer true, and what was worse he no longer had a backlog of stories at magazines waiting for approval. He hadn't sent anything new for almost a month, just forwarding on a few rejected stories to new markets. Now he was sending again, but even if these inferior stories sold it would be weeks before he saw money from them.

And he wasn't writing anymore. Oh, sure, he was writing, in the sense that he was sitting down to his laptop or his notepad and putting words on paper. But he wasn't doing it with the feverish intensity he had once had. Aside from the fact that his writing wasn't as good, he wasn't doing nearly as much of it.

Six weeks after his brush with death, he finally accepted that he would never see Tianalamara again. He knew that his dreams of making a living as a writer were probably gone as well. He began to seriously look for a job -- any job. He found that the job market had tightened considerably since the last time he had looked. Back then, if you had a college degree, you were pretty much assured of getting a job somewhere. Maybe not as good a job as you thought you deserved, maybe not a very high paying job, but some kind of job somewhere.

No longer. Most places he applied at didn't even bother calling him back to let him know he didn't get the job. Places he asked at that hadn't advertised positions often told him that they'd recently downsized, and they saw no possibility for openings anytime in the near future. They could put his resume on file, but . . .
It was depressing, and it was worrying. Eventually, his money would run out, and then what would he do?

Spring warmed into summer. Still unemployed, still not writing anything good, Jeremy had seen his percentage of acceptance first time out drop considerably, along with the size of the checks. Buying high quality paper and paying for postage was now a serious concern. How much longer could he keep doing this?

In July, he realized he'd have to either give up his car or his apartment. Giving up his car would seriously limit his mobility, and his ability to get a job, in a city known for its crappy mass transit system. But insurance and gas were eating him alive.

On the other hand, he could sleep in his car, but he couldn't drive to work in his apartment. He looked into the costs of a storage locker and a post office box and found that he could do both of them for less than $100 a month and so, reluctantly, he gave up his apartment.

He kept going to the fountain pond every day, even though he knew that Tianamara wouldn't be there, would never be there again. He couldn't help himself. He always went there, and he always looked through the door to the fountain in the middle of the pond, and called her name. Sometimes he shouted it so loudly that people around him stared at him as if he were crazy.

He realized quickly that the worst thing about being homeless was not being able to take a shower. He did his best to wash up in public restrooms, but he knew that he must smell. People started treating him differently. He would walk into a place to apply for a job and he could tell from the reaction of the receptionist that he had no chance there.

He quit making the insurance payments on his car. He didn't drive it much anymore. He just moved it from parking place to parking place from day to day to keep it from being ticketed. He spent most of his time in the park. He slept there most nights. It was hot, but it was cooler in the park than anywhere except inside an air conditioned house.

He was distinctly aware that his life was spiraling downward out of control, that if he continued in this cycle he would soon be one of those half-crazed panhandlers he used to ignore on his way in and out of the library everyday. He didn't want to end up like that, and he knew that was the direction he was headed, but he saw no way to turn his life in another direction.

Tianalamara was gone. He couldn't live without her.

"I need you," he told her every night as he fell asleep under the pitiful handful of stars visible in the city sky. "Please. Tianalamara. Come to me."