“Yes,” I said, agreeing simply to be sociable. “It’s about two tramps who are waiting for Godot to return.”
“A French play? Sounds like a film I saw once with the poker-faced actor Buster Keaton. He had gotten into a number of jams and was awaiting the return of his partner to straighten things out. Man’s name was Godot, but he never returns. Or perhaps it wasn’t Keaton at all, but Laurel and Hardy.”
“No, Waiting for Godot is a kind of existential comedy.”
“But Laurel and Hardy would make a good Vladimir and Estragon, don’t you think? Two tramps. Laurel and Hardy were always two tramps.”
“I am beginning to feel like we’re two tramps, waiting for some order out of this chaos.”
“No, I am sure it was Keaton. He was much admired by your playwright. He even used Keaton in a film without words. Not a silent film, mind, but nothing to be said.”
“You even sound like him,” I said.
“Your Frenchman? Perhaps he only wrote in French. Forced himself to think harder.”
“That’s it,” I said. “Beckett. An Irishman who wrote in French first and then translated his own words into English. God bless you, Mrs. Stottlemeyer.”
“Who?”
“Eleventh-grade literature class. My teacher.”
“Mrs. Stottlemeyer. Funny what we remember.”
“So are you?”
“Beckett?” He raised his bushy eyebrows. “I am afraid Beckett is dead. Some time ago.”
“Beckett’s ghost, then?”
“Did you not pinch yourself a while back there and conclude the evidence of your current corporeality exists? Don’t you trust your own senses? And if I were mere ectoplasm, what does that make those young beauties over yonder? I can assure you, Sonny, they are as real as you or me.” With a flutter of fingers, he waved to the women.
“If you are not a ghost and not my father and not the Irish playwright Beckett, then who are you?”
“You attempt to answer a positive but avert to the negative. All in good time, bucko. First, there are several more women in your bed—”
“And that’s another thing,” I said. “Why are they here? What are they implying with their stories? That somehow I am to blame?”
The old man laid a fatherly hand upon my shoulder. “You are overwrought, my boy, and yet as I’ve said—as you’ve said—there are more women in the bed from whom we haven’t yet heard.”
The very thought of those other creatures nearly drove me to tears.
“Now, now,” he said. “Take your mind off your woes. You are an architect of some sort, aren’t you? A builder? Why don’t you patch the hole in the ceiling?”
A frying-pan-sized hole provided a portal into the attic. All kinds of junk had been stored up there over the years. Anything was liable to come spilling through the opening. He had a point. Given the chore, I felt a deep sense of relief settle in my chest. I had a job to do.
“Right, so. Off you go.”
“Thanks—”
“Would it make you feel any better to give me a name? Call me Beckett or what-you-will?”
“Okay then, Beckett. I’ll be up in the attic, fixing a hole. To stop my mind from wondering.”
“Very cute. And I’ll mind the four ladies. Now there’s a poker hand for you. Four queens and a knave.” As we passed, Beckett patted me once on the back, and it felt good to be getting somewhere finally.