Philip had, after many years, found Lloyd’s apartment at Meadowbrook Terrace.
Lloyd had disappeared suddenly many years ago, and contacted Philip to inform him that he was still alive but was done with “this phase of my life” and wanted to be left alone forever. Until now that is.
Philip found the apartment complex to be particularly run down. The grass had been cut haphazardly. Everwhere there was peeling paint and signs of decay. Some windows of several units were borded up with plywood. There were a smattering of cars covered in dust with flat tires, and the few cars that looked as if they were being activly driven were spaced even further apart. The cracks in the pavement had grown and weeds had taken root in them. As Philip drove through he noted a large patch of sand which could have been a vollyball court but both poles had been pulled down and on the ground. It felt like a ghost town.
Lloyd’s apartment unit was on the far end of the complex. The building it was in and the adjacent ones all felt empty, it was if this end of the complex was totally deserted. Philip had an apartment number, and had no other option but to knock on the door.
“Philip?” Lloyd said, stunned as he cracked open the door “How did you find me?”
“Last time I saw you” Philip said “We were playing on that boat touring the French Riviera. Doing shows every night. People kept asking why you hadn’t gone off and became fameous already. I was enjoying myself, certainly. Then we docked in Cannes and you said you were going to look for some cigarrettes. Then a few hours later we had lost our violinist”
Lloyd let out a small chuckle “How did you handle it? I’ve always been curious”
“Well” Philip said “we found a busker who was playing violin, and happened to be one of those american backpacking vagrants. So he joined the band. He didn’t play as good as you”
Lloyd cracked a smug grin at this admission.
Philip began “Once you were gone we realized how much of a pain you were to work with, Paul was so much better to get along with.”
“I hated playing on that fucking boat” Lloyd said “When I entered the conservatory I was the greatest violin player in America. I never had to work, my parents were rich enough that everything would be paid for, so I set out to be the greatest violin player of all time. That was until I got to the conservatory. There was this hotshot out of Vienna, who I could never match. It consumed me so much. I thought that if I couldn’t be the best, that there wasn’t any point at all in trying. So when I got out I wanted to find the worst place in the world to waste my talents at, and that was that touring boat in the French Riviera. Playing the classics for a bunch of indifferent German tourists. They didn’t know what they were witnessing, those cretins” Lloyd mumbled, with the door to his apartment still cracked
“I had offers to play for all the great orchestras. I was lined up to do a show at Royal Albert Hall and cancelled 24 hours before. I couldn’t match that absolute oaf out of Vienna. I listened to his conservatory tapes over and over, even though it was recorded in that shack of a recording booth with the worst equipment, you could never tell. It sounds so perfect, even with the tapes worn” Lloyd mumbled again to Philip
“I went and paid a taxi to drive me all the way down to Nice, a thousand euros or something like that, and once there I found your pathetic little flyer – a band looking for a violinsit for a tour boat – and I thought ‘yes, this is my calling’ so I answered it. You didn’t know what you had. Those German tourists. I think there were some gormless Americans amoung them too. Munching on that awful cafetiera food while listening to the greatest violinist of a generation. I had to get out, you see. I’m from America, I’m familiar with these endless sprawling suburbs and the creature comforts of a society built around cheap credit. I wanted to live somewhere that reflected the alienation I felt, I wanted to get away from the world that didn’t appreciate what it had. So I looked and I looked, and I came here, all those years ago, to get away from it all. I think within all of us is a great instinct to withdrawl, to crawl into a hole and never come out, and we spend so much of our lives ignoring this instinct. I thought ‘What if I embrace this instinct totally, what if I simply walked away from the world and never came back’ a sort of ultimate version of Walden’s Pond” Lloyd said, in the crack at the apartment door.
“I followed this instinct to the ultimate culmination of the instinct to withdrawl, and determined that this Meadowbrook Terrace is at the nexus of this instinct, there is no other place like it in the world. It has a magnetic draw. I have witnessed people come and visit, and then sign a lease, and begin to rent, and they hole themselves up and never come out. It’s a blissful hibernation. There are no mountains to gawk at, there’s no azure skies to bask in. It’s too hot to go outside, the grass is dormant from underwatering, even the pool has been filled in with sand. There is nothing but the endless entertainment of the Television, delivery food, and watching the shadows of the blinds grow long along the floor. I got rid of my car a long time ago. In fact, this is the longest I’ve talked to anyone except the lease manager, and that was several years ago when I said under no circumstances are they to tell me about the passage of time. I simply don’t care for it anymore. I have reached a higher plane of existance” Lloyd said, at the apartment door
“May I come in?” Philip asked
Lloyd opened the door some more and gestured. The entire floor was covered in fast food bags and paper cups, refuse of all kinds, there was a small path from the door to a single computer sat at a desk. The long shadows that Lloyd had waxed on so poetically cast themselves over mountains of trash and disused papers.
“There’s nowhere to sit” Lloyd said smugly
“So what have you been doing all these years” Philip asked
“I am writing the greatest piece of philosophy in the history of the world” Lloyd said “Nietzhe will be a footnote compared to my works. I am in the process of writing a 15 volume philisophical tome, each volume at least 1500 pages long. It is perfection. When I am finished I will read it once and then delete all of it. The world doesn’t deserve this kind of awesome truth, it could not handle the raw brilliance. Just like those tourists on that boat could not handle the musical talent of one of the generation’s greatest violinists. It would be a waste for anyone else to read it. But I anticipate I shall be completed in 6 or 7 years. Yes. Just a few more expansions of the 9th volume…” Lloyd trailed off, he turned around and shut the door behind him. Philip heard the click of the lock and was standing in the empty apartment complex. Inside the only light was the glow of Floyds computer monitor.