Ray of the Star by Laird Hunt

had been a grateful recipient of the connoisseurs’ largesse for longer than any other current statue on the boulevard, a request from them was as good as a command, but that they were interested in anything more than his presence on the dance floor as the party trundled on into the wee hours was left unclear until, not terribly long before daybreak, they had danced a moment on either side of and in front of him then taken him by the arms and led him in the direction, as they put it, of a place they could all chat—this stand in the market where the connoisseurs were habitués—about, as it occurred, Harry and, by extension, Solange,
    “So, it’s working,” one of them said,
    “And part of why we asked you to join us for breakfast is just to express the sentiment …”
    “The conviction,”
    “Yeah, the conviction that it couldn’t have been done without your help,”
    “My help?” said Alfonso, the connoisseurs laughed, one of them gave out a short whistle, then another one clapped him on the shoulder and said,
    “No need to be disingenuous,”
    “It’s unappealing,”
    “Unappetizing,”
    “It’s like all that fried food at the party,”
    “Gets to you,”
    “Only with this you don’t want to keep eating,”
    “You don’t want to start eating,” the connoisseurs each picked up the cream-filled pastry they had ordered, wrinkled their noses, and tossed it back onto the counter, while Alfonso, who had a large bite of a similar pastry in his mouth, swallowed slowly, thought of telling Harry the story, of giving him the use of the submarine and putting him into position opposite Solange, of helping him push it each morning, of offering to roll him and Solange through the warm streets, and tried to decide if he had known he was helping, that he was acting, in a sense, as an instrument, but found he couldn’t quite remember, not that it mattered so much, he was happy to help and said as much and the connoisseurs picked up their pastries again and took bites and one of them said,
    “Sending that guy off last night was the best thing you did,”
    “Stroke of genius,”
    “Maybe not genius but it bought us some time,”
    “Come on, this is Alfonso, our friend, let’s call it genius, we can call it genius,”
    “For fuck’s sake, fine, it was a stroke of genius,”
    “Gave Harry his night,”
    “And what a night,”
    “All it takes is one,”
    “For love to come knocking,”
    “Now it doesn’t matter,”
    “They’re both hooked,”
    “Hooked enough, Solange’ll get over it,”
    “Teach her a little lesson, she’ll be fine,”
    “Why would Solange, of all people, need to be taught a lesson?” Alfonso asked, prompting two of the connoisseurs to smack the other and say,
    “He misspoke, he was thinking about something else,”
    “Criminy, you’re right, I misspoke, I
was
thinking about something else, apologies, Jesus, of course, poor Solange,”
    “This is about him,”
    “Harry,”
    “Don Quixote,”
    “Ha, ha, ha,”
    “Now it can start,”
    “What can?” said Alfonso,
    “Ah, the poor schmuck,” said one of the connoisseurs,
    “Yeah, the poor schmuck,” the other said.

T he poor schmuck was feeling like anything but as he stood in front of the mirror in his apartment—first smoothing down the slightly wrinkled jeans he had left too long in the pile of clean laundry without folding, then smoothing the short sleeves of his yellow T-shirt with its blue sea bass logo, then pulling on his brown jacket, which did surprisingly well in warm weather, then running his hands through his still-wet hair, which, he had a feeling, would fall wrong all day, despite the solid quantity of hair paste he had applied after washing it—in fact he was feeling almost what one could call excellent, even better than he had felt when he had still been feeling good on the evening he had first met Ireneo and seen Solange, and the prospect of the day about to unfurl before him was so appealing that once