Say No More

“Sir, I know this is difficult.”

“It’s preposterous!”

“Now that’s a good final phrase.”

“Shut your goddamn mouth about final phrases! I have plenty of phrases left!”

He forced the words out of his mouth and over the counter towards the employee.

The he is named Seymour. Works in an advertising firm and makes enough to not be completely underwater in a small city apartment, three floors up from ground level and three floors down from the top. He licks his index finger before turning pages and hasn’t drunk a glass of water since last August. Seymour writes his name in all uppercase, so in a sense, none of it is uppercase and one could say he doesn’t capitalize his letters at all. Breakfast consists of coffee. Lunch is coffee yet again. Dinner is typically found as over-salted meatloaf, easily heated in a microwave oven, and cheap booze. His favorite movie is How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love The War and his favorite book, in an ironic sense only, is the Bible. Saturdays are spent at the park, Sundays with his mother. When he was nine, he gave a bag of lentils to a girl, ran away, and cried. This was his first and only love. Marcia. She lives next door to his mother. Seymour dislikes cats, his favorite color is purple, and he believes Nietzsche is God.

The man on the other side of the counter remarked, “I’m afraid it’s fewer, around two thousand nine hundred and eighty-seven words, to be exact.”

While two thousand is a large number, please keep in mind, the average male says around seven thousand words daily and eight hundred million in a fifty-year span. In a world where every word counts, people can’t seem to wrap their heads around the idea of conservation.

Patience and thoughtfulness are virtues, and waste is the greatest sin, but is the most human thing. From birth, they are instructed to live wisely; to count their words and make their words count. Save their words for the important moments, but yet, they waste it, and that comes at a price. So they live a life where out of every hundred words, maybe only three counts, but this life isn’t so different or unworldly from our own.

Seymour snapped at the man, “Again, that’s impossible! There is no way in hell-”

“Two thousand nine hundred and seventy.”

“-I’ve run out! Is my average shorter? Did something happen along my lifespan to shorten my number? Did I make a mistake? Are you shitting me right now? I only have three thousand words?”

“Two thousand nine hundred and thirty-four.”

“Whatever.”

“Two thousand nine hundred and thirty-three and have a nice day. Next!”

The redhead with the wide hips stood up and took his place. She passed him with a wink. The ladies behind her commented on Seymour as he stood there in disbelief.

“My nephew’s word count dropped, and he passed after a month.”

Seymour looked back towards the redhead, snapping himself out of the fog the ladies’ gossip had put him in by the tapping of her shoes. He traveled from the heel of her foot to the top of her skirt all the way out the door.

Everything seemed louder than before. It might have been his sudden realization that the time he had left on this earth was up to his discretion. Or the fact the tamale cart blocking the entrance to his building was half off this Wednesday, but either way, the sounds that used to harmonize with his phone calls and discussions with friends now carry the shrill snap of a belt. But that’s in two thousand nine hundred and thirty-three words. That’s a large number. That’s plenty of-

“Large Caramel Mocha.”

“God damn it, Mom!”

“Hey… Seymour again. Did you see my call?”’s, and by then it’s been ten minutes and he’s down sixteen words. Those could’ve been a handful of phrases to describe the ineffable. Phrases like-

“It’s okay,”

“I’m sorry,”

and, “Good morning Hope.”

However, Seymour ignored the parameters given. Seymour wasted a few more words than just the sixteen before. He, in fact, wasted five hundred and sixteen, and then the clock chimed six on a Sunday. He wasted five hundred and sixteen words just sitting on his alabaster white couch for a few days.

That couch was surrounded by some boxes of stuff from his mother’s and two driftwood end tables. In the back was a small, barren kitchen and through that the bathroom. Then back through the living room/dining room/office was Seymour’s bedroom. Seymour’s repulsive, sodden with some…. something? just an overall grotesque bedroom. It might have been fine, slightly damp, but fine bedroom if you could ignore the piles of useless literature from David Hume to John Stuart Mill that gave Seymour an ego and “intellect” to shame, and the overwhelming stench of spoiled, canned espresso, but this is nowhere near important.

What’s important is Seymour’s dismissal of the idea of brevity. What’s important is Seymour’s irresponsibility and ability to lie to himself and others. What’s important is Seymour’s belief that beauty is held in the form of a woman who makes Miss America look like a mockery. In his words. His only interaction with her was the exchange of lentils and a throat full of tears.

Marcia’s gaze was marked by a scarlet lust. The way she threw her hair over her shoulder seemed to say, “and I love you! I swear that’s true,” but only a fool would believe that.

Seymour is an absolute fool. For more than just that one reason. Some of those reasons being he never actually closes the lid on the milk container and doesn’t wear matching socks. But it doesn’t matter. This man is a fool beyond any doubt. He’s the type of fool to write sappy, but shitty, love stories and cry over the music he first heard as a child. He’s the type of fool to never buy a present for his friend’s birthday and say every time they meet, “I left it at home!” He might be smart, but he’s in no shape wise. The type of fool to not just like something, but always let it consume him. He’s the type of fool who says he’s happy, yet wears a smile full of heartbreak. (But can one feel heartbreak, or sympathize, if they’ve never been in love?)

Seymour, as a child, used to believe that plants were psychic. Something that intricate and beautiful couldn’t look that way without paying the price. The pain of secrets. He respected each flower, shrub, and sapling separately, for they each had very important jobs and positions in whichever garden, park, or yard they inhabited. Corsican Mint, a little green, viny thing, always stood out amongst the rest, though. Its small, little curls and details choked out the violets and hyacinths in their battle for beauty. The plant replicated an artist’s brushstroke, the scenery for a landscape of heaven. His mother’s backyard was covered in them. They snaked from under the deck onto tree roots and then on to invade the neighbors’ yards. They blanketed the walk from his building, through the park, to his mother’s and Marcia’s. On the walk to his mother’s, noticed Marcia had cut them all down.

His mother’s brisket was bad and so was cards. The cards would flit over his fingertips like the heartbeat of a scared kitten. King of Hearts. Seven of Diamonds. Jack. Ace. Two. Queen. Queen. Five. Seven again. Some afternoons he swears he can see his heart lost in the shuffle, jammed between the gray cards. But no one wants to think about the neighbor girl while discussing office issues and playing cards.

God, did he not want to think about her and her thirteenth birthday. He wasn’t invited. She wore this tight, purple top. It might have had a lace-like embroidery at the top. He never got close enough and will never get close enough to tell. He remembers seeing her at homecoming. He would’ve killed to be her date. Rumor states that she and David MacCaffee ditched junior year to attend a frat party, and that’s how David got arrested. Or about how Seymour found a photo of her in the-

Back to the cards and his mother. He explained the situation to his mother, leaving him at two thousand and four words. The rest of the afternoon was silent except for the ring of the teakettle. He left his mother’s with one word less.

“Goodbye.”

Then, passing Marcia’s, muttered three more words.

“I love you.” At least, he thought he did. There’s a difference between someone feeling like the sun and someone feeling like an LED light that attracts every fly and mosquito. With hair that blonde, she could be nothing more than an LED light.

A bit of background might be necessary. When Seymour was nine, he went to the farmer’s market with his mother. Fresh fruits, vegetables, and lentils. The bag of lentils he gave the girl. The bag of lentils he gave Marcia. This was when life couldn’t be harsher than a hug. But nostalgia is a dirty liar that insists things were better than seemed. Nostalgia painted Marcia as a being like Aphrodite, a deity amongst men. It was almost unfair the way Seymour saw her. To be put on such a pedestal is difficult, especially living up to it. She wasn’t human.

But that doesn’t matter because Seymour loved her, or his idea of her. He was so infatuated with this burning love for Marcia that he never read the phrase written on his cup by the girl at the coffee stand in the park. His love threw that poor little cup and that poor little phone number into the trash right in front of her. “718-000-4301. Call me :) -Hope.” Let’s just say her hope was crushed. But that’s the funny thing about Hope. She never stopped trying. Four weeks went by and every Sunday afternoon on the way back from Seymour’s mother’s, she would hand him a styrofoam cup with a little poem or sentence scrawled on the side, each week a little bolder than the next. On the fifth week, though, he didn’t finish his coffee in the park. Seymour carried it all the way up to the third floor and set the cup down in front of his alabaster white couch. He does not use coasters.

Seymour returned from the grocery store on a Tuesday afternoon with seven hundred words left. It doesn’t matter how he got to seven hundred words. It doesn’t matter how he got to his original three thousand words, or why anyone would have just three hundred words until the end of their life. Yes, it might be confusing, but that isn’t the point. The point is to tell the story of Seymour, not explain a word count. All that matters is what happened with his three thousand, two thousand nine hundred and thirty-three, or seven hundred words.

Seymour sat his bags on the counter and found his place in front of the television. He had nothing better to do with his time. He quit his job to save himself quite a few words or else he never would have been alive to place the cup from Hope on the table in front of him. But he did. He placed the cup on the table Sunday afternoon and now, two days later, he picked it up to throw it away. “I want to spend the rest of my sunsets with you. -Hope.” She was pretty bold at this point. Hope thought that he would never actually read them.

Seymour chuckled. He couldn’t place Hope if she was in a crowd. She searched for him in crowds. Seymour and Marcia were more alike than Seymour would ever dream. The only difference is Seymour was Hope’s sun. This is the closest they would ever be.

Sometimes people tire of being lonely. Seymour wouldn’t mind Hope for a while. Everyone needs a bit of Hope and that need consumed her. Killed her. But not everyone deserves it.

The next Sunday, on the way back from his mother’s and Marcia’s, he walked up to the coffee stand with his phone number in hand and a five-dollar bill. He left with a lukewarm cup of black coffee.

“Hi… Is this Seymour?” No response. Well, he can’t give one. That would be wasteful.

“Um, would you like to go get lunch sometime, or maybe we can go grab a cup of coffee? Less shitty coffee?”

“Sure.” Five hundred and eighty-nine words left.

“Okay, um, does Thursday at three work? I can meet you outside your building. I, uh, I see you go there every Sunday. I can only assume it’s your place, I mean. I sound stupid. Sorry. I’ll see you there at three?” The tapping of her foot could be heard through the phone. For a society with few words to waste, she sure says quite a few ’um’s.

“That works.” Five hundred and eighty-seven.

He sat down three words lighter and hoping to prompt some jealousy out of Marcia. The worst part about her is the fact his mother had her over every afternoon to gossip and discuss all the mess Seymour has gotten himself into recently, whether it be financially or with the grease fire from last month. But this means that it won’t be more than a few days before Marcia knows he’s finally gotten over her. It might have taken thirty-two years. And he might not be over her, but she doesn’t know that. Surely she doesn’t give in to him because she likes the attention. After all, that’s how women work. What would her reason be to not want Seymour’s company? There is not a single rational reason! Now that she will know Seymour doesn’t want her, she will just have to want him.

Seymour was disappointed to see Hope doesn’t drink coffee. Why work at a coffee stand if you don’t like coffee, let alone ask someone on a coffee date? But that was the only issue he could find with her. Hope talked a lot. It filled the silence in his head. She talked enough for both of them. Hope liked to just wander in silence with him sometimes, and that was just as nice. The coffee date turned into dinner dates and picnic dates and the movies and downtown and her apartment, but he had hope that Marcia would come around. He would hold Hope until Marcia came around.

Sometimes Seymour forgot about Marcia. Hope would sit across from him discussing her “insufferable bitch” of a coworker, and he would look at her. He would look at the way she clenched her hands when excited or infuriated. His eyes would follow the piece of hair that falls in front of her face as she laughs and he could feel himself forgetting Marcia. Hope became lazy smiles, warm hands, old shirts, running down staircases, and he was terribly, absolutely, irreversibly infatuated with her. But because he had hope, he still thought of Marcia. Hope was always an afterthought, something taken for granted.

Quite a few months had gone by. He had said fifteen words in total to Hope. However, he had said four hundred and thirty words over those few months. With each word of his, she returned with an average of thirty-two. She knew he didn’t have many words left. Her uncle passed not too long ago from the same loss of words. It isn’t uncommon. Hope never knew how many words he wasted on everyone but her. A hundred and forty-seven words left.

The phone rang.

“Hey! I was just wondering if you are still open to going to my mom’s on Saturday? You don’t need to say anything, just, just be there? Okay, thank you, bye!” but before she hung up, a few words slipped out. A few that she couldn’t keep in. These would’ve been a waste if left unsaid.

“Love you!”

Seymour sat there. He couldn’t say it back. He wouldn’t say it back. So he hung up. Ten words, three dates with Hope, and two days later, the phone rang again.

“Hi. Seymour, correct?”

Marcia’s voice sang through the speaker, and Seymour sat dumbfounded. A wash of guilt covered him. He felt as repulsive and disgusting as someone feels after touching the damp food conglomerated on the side of the sink after washing the dishes.

“Yes.”

“Yea, so the church is having a potluck Saturday and your mom asked me to remind you. I’m over helping her with the casserole.”

“I’ll be there.”

“All right, thanks, and uh, have a good afternoon, Seymour.”

No matter how disgusted he was with himself, hearing her say his name melted him onto the floor into a puddle of vomit and bile heavy with the scent of want. He didn’t need hope anymore. He had Marcia. He didn’t need Hope anymore. He had Marcia! Saturday couldn’t arrive any sooner. He walked himself into that church carrying a steady stature and one hundred and forty-four words.

Seymour tried to talk himself into her heart all day. He showered her with words he kept and cherished. Words he had been saving for someone he loved. Each word got him ahead of himself and Seymour forgot the girl who made him forget Marcia. Every so often he could see his Hope. Seymour realized far too late that he had five words left. Seymour realized he had three words left when he saw Marcia’s new boyfriend and heard her introduce him to the congregation. Guilt has never felt heavier. He felt alone. He had nothing. He needed some Hope. He had had hope. He took those three thousand words wasted on everything but Hope and put them on paper, well, napkin. These words were a waste.

The phone rang again, but this time he was calling her.

“You’ve made your choice, Seymour, and there’s nothing I can do,” she yelled. “I don’t think you want me in your life anymore. I don’t think you wanted me in your life at all. I was just. God, Seymour!” As angry as she was, she still talked enough for the both of them. “And I will have to find a way to live with that. You said, what did you say? You said nothing! I tell you I love you and you say nothing! I don’t want to be a bandage. I don’t want to be a mere courtesy, Seymour! You won’t hear from me again Seymour and don’t you worry--” her words faded out and all Seymour could hear was the pounding of the tear-speckled, ink-marked napkins in front of him. It’s difficult to love someone when you have never been in love. To navigate it is a nightmare.

To the girl who wonders if I think about her,

I do. I will tell the stars about you.

This is difficult to write. Hell, this is difficult to think about, but I’m brutally in love with you. I mean, I think I am. All I know is I hate myself because I wasted myself and it wasn’t on you. I was a coward and an idiot.

I remember when you meant nothing to me. I wasn’t aware of your existence, but now you are the reason I have these awful bags under my eyes. I stay up till 4am thinking about you, but I never could acknowledge it. It’s bizarre how the mind works. I needed you, but I never wanted you. People always say that it hurts at night and apparently screaming into your pillow at 3am is the equivalent of heartbreak and the feeling love leaves you with. But sometimes it’s 9am on a Tuesday and the sound of the toaster and the smell of earl grey tea that leaves you unable to move your hands. I wonder… I wonder if I was drunk in a room full of all the people I’ve loved whose arms would I run into. I would bet a two-dollar, large, black coffee they would be yours.

From,

Those who dare to have Hope

“--about me because I will be okay. I have to be! I can’t sit here waiting for the day you get over that obsession and finally crawl back to me! I can’t be a fuckin-”

“God damn it!” he cried and suddenly he had zero words left.

His mother hand-delivered the letter to Hope. She wasn’t sad. She was numb and numb, she knew, was somehow worse. Granted, she was simply Seymour’s experiment. His lesson on love. Either way, it doesn’t matter. The girl crumpled him up and tossed him into the trash can before her shift.

The him was named Seymour. Worked in an advertising firm and made enough to not be completely underwater in a small city apartment, three floors up from ground level and three floors down from the top. He licked his index finger before turning pages and hadn’t drunk a glass of water since last August. Seymour wrote his name in all uppercase, so in a sense, none of it is uppercase and one could say he didn’t capitalize his letters at all. Breakfast consisted of coffee. Lunch was coffee yet again. Dinner was typically found as over-salted meatloaf, easily heated in a microwave oven and cheap booze. His favorite movie was How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love The War and his favorite book, only in an ironic sense, was the Bible. Saturdays were spent at the park, Sundays with his mother. When he was nine, he gave a bag of lentils to a girl, ran away, and cried. This was his first, but not only, love. Marcia. She lives next door to his mother. Seymour disliked cats. His favorite color was purple, and he believed Nietzsche was God. And he forgot, then lost, Hope.