Page 28 of Rhymes with Metaphor

T he languorous spell of their stay in Wales was broken when, as they were eating breakfast on the patio of a café near the beach, Reg happened to glance at a newspaper on display at the newsagent next door.

“Shit!” said Reg and spat out his bacon. “Is that today’s date?”

Joel checked the newspaper, then his phone. “Yes.”

“My thesis is due in three days !”

Which must be what all those texts from the chair he’d been ignoring for the past few days had been about.

“I thought you wrote it already,” said Joel.

“Yes, I’ve written it,” said Reg. “By hand. In pieces. Scattered all about my father’s house. I’ve got to find them, wherever they are. Then I’ve got to type them, and I can’t type properly. I’ll have to hire someone—someone who won’t mess up the formatting and who can work at short notice and—”

“I’ll do it,” said Joel. “I can type a hundred words a minute, and I won’t mess up your formatting. I’ll help you look for them—you left three in my bedroom at least.”

“Did I?”

“Don’t you remember?”

“No,” said Reg. “Once I’ve written a poem, I cut the cord, fuck off, and forget, the way a bird abandons its eggs.”

“Sea turtles abandon their eggs. Birds incubate their eggs after they lay them.”

“You are an utter swot ,” said Reg.

“A what?”

“A nerd,” said Reg.

“You’ve said that already.”

“It’s still true.”

The morning was spent trying to locate the poems Reg had written in Wales.

They searched the house—happily, most were in his notebooks, with a couple in the dining room and one under the recliner in the front room.

Joel found an accordion folder in the upstairs bedroom and filed them in that.

Then they packed for their journey back to England.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t show you more of the place, cariad. But we’ve no time.”

Reg drove back to England as fast as he dared, and, as soon they got back, before he’d even unpacked, Reg started ransacking the house.

“How many poems are we looking for?” said Joel.

“How should I know?”

“You wrote them.”

“I didn’t take inventory.”

While Reg’s plan, if it could be called such, involved sacking the house, dishevelling each room’s contents before attacking the next, taking apart a chesterfield here, emptying the contents of a piano bench there, Joel insisted on a systematic examination of each room, a veritable fingertip forensic search for any evidence of poetry.

“But that’ll take hours ,” said Reg.

“Your way will take hours and we might miss some. My way, we’ll find everything.”

In a reversal of roles, Joel was now the calm one, holding Reg back from the brink of hysteria.

After the predicted several hours, they managed to locate a good number of Reg’s poems, though Reg was worried one or two were still missing. “There’s one about...erm...an egg? Have we found that?”

“I don’t know,” said Joel, looking through the pages.

“I can’t read your handwriting. If you want me to type these, you’ll have to dictate them.

And can you get me another empty file folder?

I’ll put everything that needs transcribing into the accordion folder and then transfer each one to the second folder after I’ve typed it so I don’t duplicate my work.

I’ll use my laptop—I’m used to the keyboard, and I’ll email you the manuscript when it’s finished. ”

“But I need them in a specific order,” said Reg. “And I won’t know what it should be until I’ve seen them all together as a group.”

“No problem. It’s easy to rearrange them once they’re typed. Did your department give you formatting guidelines for your thesis?”

“It’s on the website, I think?”

“I’ll look it up.”

“This is a shambles,” said Reg. “An utter shambles.”

“It’s not, Reg. Don’t worry.”

While Joel typed Reg’s thesis, Reg went off to the library to strip all of the books from the shelves and shake out the pages on the off-chance he’d used one of his poems as a bookmark.

He stopped after he’d cleared one shelf and looked at the mess of books on the floor, in the window seat, and on the desk.

He felt defeated, scattered, and panicked.

From the dining room, Joel said, “I’ve finished the title page.”

“I don’t know what the title even is,” said Reg.

“I’ve put in a placeholder. You can title it afterwards. Where do you want to start?”

“Start with the first ones. The ones I sent to the chair last spring. Move over.” He had to access his email and go searching for them, right back to the very first one, “Paper Soldier.” Joel copied and pasted it into the thesis, and Reg found the next one and the next, until all the ones he’d sent the chair were in place.

“You’ll have to dictate these next ones,” said Joel. “They look like scribbles to me.”

The sheets of paper bearing the poems, crumpled, smeared, torn scraps of paper, a popcorn box, and Joel’s scrub top, had all been “filed” in the accordion folder, and Reg removed them one by one.

He read them aloud, stopping sometimes to squint at the words because his handwriting was so unsteady he had to guess what he’d written.

Seeing these made him frustrated and sad; they were like lost memories of happy times.

Reg pulled out the scrub top he’d written on the first night Joel had slept with him. He hadn’t looked at it since the day he’d written it. The sound of Joel’s hailstorm typing stopped.

Joel was staring at the laptop screen. He looked unnerved. “This poem is about me.”

“They’re all about you, cariad.”

Joel had the same look on his face as he had when Flip had struck him with the ball, like the wind had been knocked clean out of him.

“You must have realized, surely?” said Reg.

“No,” said Joel quietly. He got up and left the room.

When he didn’t come back, Reg went looking and found him sitting on the terrace in the dark, cradling his head in his arms.

Reg didn’t know what to say or how to make things right.

A similar thing had happened when Reg had given Flip a copy of Player .

The difference being, once Flip had gotten over the initial shock, he had been furious.

He had only calmed down when Reg convinced him that no one who read the poems would know they were about him because Reg had never told anyone about their relationship.

Still, Flip wouldn’t let Reg attend any of his matches for an entire year after Player was published.

“I’m sorry,” said Reg. “I won’t tell anyone it’s you. No one will know about us.”

Joel didn’t look at him. “I want people to know about us.”

“Then what’s wrong?”

“I can’t take how you see me. I’m nothing special, Reg. I’m good at school, that’s all.”

Joel looked so overcome that Reg pulled him into his arms and held him. “One day, you’ll realize how splendid you are.”

The cool evening air started to encroach, and they went inside. Joel was more focussed now, calmer. He pulled a sheet of torn paper from the accordion folder and frowned.

“It looks like you wrote this in the dark,” said Joel.

“I did. We were in bed, and I didn’t want to wake you by putting on a light. Maybe it’ll be more legible if I switch the light off.” Reg did.

“Oh, yes,” said Joel. “It all makes sense now.”

“Really?”

“No.”

Reg was used to keeping odd hours. He had only become more diurnal after spending time with Joel.

But as the night wore on, he became more animated and excited seeing his work come together.

This thesis was easily the best thing he’d written—much better than Player .

It might even be the best thing he’d ever write.

Joel on the other hand, was clearly flagging, despite Reg supplying him with coffee. After Joel had transcribed all of the poems, he made an index for Reg so he could decide how to order them. Reg was inclined to respect the natural chronology of creation.

Joel insisted on running a final spell check. At this point, Joel, who normally had perfect posture, was slouched over the keyboard, chin propped on his palm, and could barely keep his eyes open.

It was nine o’clock in the morning when Reg attached the finished thesis to his email to the chair and clicked send.

“Is that it?” said Joel.

“It’s done. I just have to defend it now. End of an era.”

Joel yawned.

Reg wheedled Joel upstairs to Reg’s bedroom, and Joel fell onto the bed in his clothes. Reg joined him.

“Thank you, my little muse,” said Reg. “I couldn’t have done it without you.”

“Good,” Joel mumbled.

Reg pulled him into his arms. “I’m too tired to do anything for you now. Tomorrow.”

Reg was too exhausted to fully enjoy the triumph of finishing his thesis or the feel of his muse, soft with exhaustion, lying in his arms, and he fell asleep quickly.