Connor Harrison

 Moses Parker, Poet

Moses Parker sits in his car outside the motorway services. Moses Parker is a published poet with one book out so far, for which he has won one award, and been shortlisted for three. The name Moses Parker has been heard on TV and on Radio Four. It has appeared in many major literary publications. He is a recognised talent. He once left a man to die in London. He has over three-thousand followers on Twitter.

Moses opened the car door and remained in his seat. He looked around the car park for something else to think about besides himself for five minutes, sick of this rehearsing over and over his own biography, of his self. It was neurotic (it was necessary.) Moses Parker has almost completed a second book of poems. His publisher is very confident it will be fantastic, if he can finish it. Moses Parker can’t finish it. Moses Parker is a poet. A huge filthy truck pulled up nearby and breathed out something like the day. He took this as his cue to get out of the car and walk across to the services. As it always seemed to be when he stopped at these places, the weather was both bright and cool. There was always something sad and at the same time relaxing about services, Moses thought. Like the hint of going on holiday, like an airport breakfast. He played with the car keys in his hand and stopped at the sliding door entrance. Moses Parker doesn’t even know what he wants from the place. He can’t even remember deciding to pull in. This morning his wife smelled of new sweat, and he can smell it now. It’s nice. Moses Parker wants a coffee. Moses Parker pictures Moses Parker drinking from a mug at a table and likes what he sees. His name is beginning to lose meaning.

At the counter, he ordered a cappuccino and a blueberry muffin. The barista who served him was as pale as a sickness and Moses wanted to reach out and touch his skin. He wanted to know if it would feel like milk. Sitting around at the coffee shop tables, were single men in either suits or jeans, and a family of four. The family had a baby in a pram and the baby was crying. Moses took his drink and his muffin and sat as far as he could from the crying. He rubbed his eyes and checked his phone. It was just after twelve and someone on Twitter had tagged him in their comment. ‘Bought @MosesP_oet’s book today and am absolutely floored. What a writer.’

Moses put the phone face down on the table and tore a piece out of the muffin. On a normal day, the random internet praise was nice, exciting, even, but tagging him in it also felt like a light hostage situation i.e. reply or look like a prick online. But more than that, today and for the last week, he had been tired of the sight of his name, because he could not step outside this impulsive review. Moses Parker is a lauded poet, you know. He is, to some extent, respected, which is a long way away from the abuses of his old job at Tesco. Moses Parker understands this muffin won’t help him lose weight, but he almost believes that his acute self-awareness will make him feel less fat. He wants to kick that crying baby through the plate glass window. This is why he can’t say yes to his wife, and why she will, he can admit to himself, want to leave. Moses Parker is up and coming. Moses Parker sips his cap-uh-cheen-oh, hypothetically approaches the mother of the baby and explains who he is (Moses Parker), and if she might stop the baby from making noise. Of course the mother hypothetically says yes, asks for an autograph, kisses him on the mouth.

Moses chewed his food and could feel that he had entirely zoned out, elsewhere, eyes empty on some corner of the room. He was having sex with the mother in the services bathroom, not as a turn-on, more to just pass the time. When he did eventually snap out of it, he’d forgot what he’d been thinking about in the first place. He drank more coffee. Moses Parker is driving to London to make amends but he doesn’t want to analyse this. Moses Parker had tried to dodge the elephant in his head for five years, and now it was impossible. The elephant is Tony Oliver. He’s on Facebook. They had met when Moses was staying in London with friends, had known each other for all of one night.

Moses reached the blueberry filling and couldn’t stomach the taste. He folded what was left in the muffin’s wrapper and drank more coffee. Five years ago, he had published about a dozen poems or so in magazines, and journals, and websites. His visit to London had nothing to do with poetry, or anything really, beyond London itself. Most of the time he saw himself as a country boy, from vague peasant stock, and had never lived anywhere near a city. Which was probably what attracted him to Tony Oliver sometime in the night in a pub Moses couldn’t remember the name of.

The Bull and the Horn. Back when Moses could only ever think of himself as in the future. Moses Parker is writing a sequence of poems about that night in London. What a fucking narcissist. What a loser Moses Parker is, to only ask for forgiveness once he needs to finish a book. He repeated this over and over and drank his coffee caught in that single, depressing thought. Moses Parker is a loser Moses Parker is a loser. Moses Parker is a poet. He wishes Tony Oliver had died. No. That can’t be true.

The family started to collect their things and clean up their table. Moses watched them leave and head to their family car. As he watched them walk, there was something about the combination of details – the casual sunlight, the transitory weirdness of services, the taste of the coffee in his mouth somehow parallel with the mother’s brown hair – that made Moses linger. An excited, nebulous need to write without the words to do it. Not yet, anyway. Moses Parker loves his wife so much he would stab himself in the head if she asked. Maybe he should text her that. Maybe not. She might not understand; she might think he’s dying.

Five years ago Tony Oliver was a man with a beautiful face and a pink shirt. Moses was alone by then. He had a drinking problem and his London friends had left him in the pub. He had a drinking problem to avoid having a manic-depressive problem, and sitting there in his corner with his bottle, he had seen Tony Oliver at the bar, sipping wine. Drunk enough in London to immediately fall in love and watch Tony Oliver with his own friends.

Moses Parker is falling into his mouth five years ago, looking like the nobody he is. Moses Parker is so impressed with this man at the bar, he once explained to his wife, that he thinks he is in love. This man is just humming with confidence, a heavy Adam’s apple, bobbing up and down when he laughs. And then he comes over. He comes over to Moses Parker and leans into a chair and says, you’re looking battered mate. You’re out of it. Don’t sit on your own, come to the bar.

After the coffee and the muffin, Moses needed the toilet. He wiped all of the crumbs into his palm and scattered them on the floor. The toilets turned out to be beside the dark room of arcade machines. He padded the plastic rim with paper. Moses Parker hates public toilets. He has always hated them and never known why. Maybe it’s just other people’s piss. Stranger piss. Moses Parker is selling copies of his book, more than average, in fact. There is even word he might be nominated for the T. S. Eliot Prize. Moses Parker looks at his pale legs with their wiry little hairs and their old stretchmarks. Would Tony Oliver even know what the Eliot Prize is, what it means?

Tony’s friends at the bar were loud men and women, the kind Moses had expected to find in London. He tried to stand still and smile, but he started to find the laminate floor nearer and nearer to his head. Tony Oliver saw this and put an arm around his shoulders, as if they had known each other for a while. Moses became a small boy and thought he might cry. Instead, he threw up over his own feet.

Moses Parker can’t relax on the toilet. He is constipated. He is a fantastic public reader of poetry, people have said so, audiences. Moses Parker has audiences. Moses Parker is a poet with a second book on the way. He is washing his hands and looks around to see if anyone is watching. In the mirror, Moses Parker, washing his hands. In London, Moses Parker, walking to the train station with Tony Oliver’s arm and aftershave around him, Tony Oliver saying where are you from? The North. Where are you from? From right here. What’s your name? Tony Oliver. Moses Parker is sobering up, hasn’t had a drink in over an hour. Sick in his socks. Tony Oliver. Yeah. I’m Moses. Like the Red Sea. Moses Parker kisses Tony Oliver on the neck outside an off-license and Tony Oliver laughs.

So, his wife once said, you got off with a man?

No, but he gave me his number and told me to call when I was sober.

And did you?

Moses Parker goes into the W.H. Smith’s next door to the coffee shop and noses around at the newspapers and travel-sized shampoos. Moses Parker is in a bookshop and he is a poet, he feels like a secret agent. He is judging the books on the shelves. Judging books by their covers. Moses Parker is a cliché. There are so many novels in bright colours. There is his book, not in the bestsellers but there, spine-out, Moses Parker it says, The Red Sea, it’s still a good joke. He reads the title again and it’s still good.

Moses picked up the book and flickered the pages. He read the dedication to his wife and goosebumps turned his skin to chicken. He couldn’t believe how much he loved her. He had stopped the story about Tony Oliver at the kiss, or not stopped, fabricated. He had suddenly felt safe enough to repeat the story to her, and then he had run scared again. To think she might have shifted uncomfortably in bed, might have nodded and looked down at the sheets. He carried the book over to the till and waited for an employee. Finally, one appeared from out of the staff room, a young girl with neon pink hair.

‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘is it just the book?’

‘Yes, please. Do you read?’

‘Um, yeah, sometimes. I haven’t read this, though. You’ll have to tell me if it’s any good.’

The girl laughed and handed him the book. Moses stood there a little longer than he ought to. The girl waited with a smile while he held the book and played with his hair. Moses Parker is the poet. He’s right here, you idiot. Moses Parker is famous, in words. Moses Parker is buying his own book in the middle of nowhere. Moses Parker is a fucking loser.

‘Do you want me to sign it?’ he asked.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘I’m uh, I’m Moses Parker.’

‘Oh, okay,’ she laughed and shot red through with embarrassment, ‘are you an actor, or…?’

Moses looked at the book. He left the shop. He walked outside as quickly as he could and stopped on the gravel path. He walked in a wide circle and stopped again. Moses Parker is going to cry maybe, Moses Parker can see his nice little car on the car park and the dusty truck nearby. Moses Parker is a person of interest. Moses Parker is a poet. He is rubbing sick on Tony Oliver’s neck and listening to him laugh. Moses Parker can see it like a film, here it is, an alleyway between two kebab shops, the smell of burnt rubber and salt, a stranger’s voice, a beer bottle, Tony Oliver falling into the street like an old man, all head and no elbows. Moses Parker with glass in his eye. Moses Parker going. Moses Parker gone. Moses Parker the poet in a car park, his first published collection in his hands, practising the way he will say I’m sorry I left you, Tony. This book is for you.