Promise?”
“Yeah. Why, what do you mean?”
“I don’t know. It’s just, I’m not sure you get how important this is. You are.”
“Ah.”
“You’ve got to be a good friend, Matt. A really good friend. He’s going to need you.”
“I know.”
“But more than you think.”
“How so?”
“Just … When’s the last time you really
talked
to him?”
“You know what, Mercedes? You’re right. I suck at this. Too. I suck at this too.”
An impatient
phooph
of air from the far end. “Okay, good, you go ahead and hate yourself. I’m so impressed, Matt. Hating yourself, that’s just bound to fucking help.”
And she hung up hard.
Grand piano. Plaid-vested barkeep. Row upon glinting row of rare single malt. Matt doesn’t have a regular watering hole, but if he did it’d be nothing like this, like the Starlight Lounge.
It’s been an hour or so since he got done with Mercedes. He topped up his Jacuzzi, set the timer for twenty minutes, lowered his shaky frame into the froth of bubbles. “Juniper Breeze,” fresh as all get-out. The jets prodded and pummelled him from every angle, the motor hypnotized him with its Tibetan-monk drone. As he crawled out he managed to steer clear of the shaving mirror, its nightmare microscoping of pores and follicles. No escape, though, from the flat mega-mirror over the sink.
Oh dear. His virtually pigmentless, night-of-the-living-dead skin had gone all patchy, lobstered here and there by the bath. A decent crop of hair (black with the odd grey squiggle) graced one pec, but the other was almost pubescent in its sparsity. Virtually everything about him—he’d never really noticed this before—was lopsided. Look at the eyebrows, one arched, one level, lending him an expression of aggrieved puzzlement. Look at the cockeyed prick, leaning inelegantly to the right. Matt had gleaned from a nature show once that babies, indeed animals of all kinds, are attracted to symmetry. Symmetry signifies life, sets the organic apart from the inorganic—the lion’s face apart from the rubble of rock, say. It makes sense, then, that you’d go crookeder and crookeder as you age, as you commence your transit from animate to inanimate, from living to that other thing.
Nail clippers? It was all he had. He went at the whorl of hair on the right side of his chest like a topiarist with the teensiest possible pair of garden shears. After about five minutes he’d evened things up, though the right side looked ravaged more than trimmed. He spent the next few minutes practising his skeptical and surprised looks in the mirror, trying to get his two eyebrows to go up in tandem. Which just left his dick—a longer-term project, presumably. His
package,
that was the expression. What if he carried it on the other side of the seam for the next few months? Could it be trained, vinelike, to lean the other way?
Matt’s on the first swig of his second pint of microbrewed I.P.A. when Karen wanders in. He’s just finished shifting his package, thank Christ. Karen does a brisk pan of the lounge, hunting her gang presumably, her fellow geniuses. Genii? “Hey Karen, over here!” What the hell.
She squints, picks him out of the clinky gloom.
Should have gone with the blazer. It was a little rumpled after a day balled up in the bottom of his bag, but without it this khakis-and-crewneck rig is pretty dull. Karen’s look is jacket and slightly funky blouse, knee-length skirt with an unexpected belt—the more-than-meets-the-eye thing. She’s in orangey reds again, goldy browns, a fluster of falling leaves. Toronto about a month from now, when it too starts dying.
“Hi, sweetheart.” She bends over him—gape of breasts going udderish, teatlike with gravity—and plants a slow kiss on his forehead. “Am I ever glad to see you! I was starting to think maybe you’d had second thoughts!” She laughs. Has he heard her laugh yet? It’s more petite than you’d expect, a piccolo note from a flute
“Yeah. Why, what do you mean?”
“I don’t know. It’s just, I’m not sure you get how important this is. You are.”
“Ah.”
“You’ve got to be a good friend, Matt. A really good friend. He’s going to need you.”
“I know.”
“But more than you think.”
“How so?”
“Just … When’s the last time you really
talked
to him?”
“You know what, Mercedes? You’re right. I suck at this. Too. I suck at this too.”
An impatient
phooph
of air from the far end. “Okay, good, you go ahead and hate yourself. I’m so impressed, Matt. Hating yourself, that’s just bound to fucking help.”
And she hung up hard.
Grand piano. Plaid-vested barkeep. Row upon glinting row of rare single malt. Matt doesn’t have a regular watering hole, but if he did it’d be nothing like this, like the Starlight Lounge.
It’s been an hour or so since he got done with Mercedes. He topped up his Jacuzzi, set the timer for twenty minutes, lowered his shaky frame into the froth of bubbles. “Juniper Breeze,” fresh as all get-out. The jets prodded and pummelled him from every angle, the motor hypnotized him with its Tibetan-monk drone. As he crawled out he managed to steer clear of the shaving mirror, its nightmare microscoping of pores and follicles. No escape, though, from the flat mega-mirror over the sink.
Oh dear. His virtually pigmentless, night-of-the-living-dead skin had gone all patchy, lobstered here and there by the bath. A decent crop of hair (black with the odd grey squiggle) graced one pec, but the other was almost pubescent in its sparsity. Virtually everything about him—he’d never really noticed this before—was lopsided. Look at the eyebrows, one arched, one level, lending him an expression of aggrieved puzzlement. Look at the cockeyed prick, leaning inelegantly to the right. Matt had gleaned from a nature show once that babies, indeed animals of all kinds, are attracted to symmetry. Symmetry signifies life, sets the organic apart from the inorganic—the lion’s face apart from the rubble of rock, say. It makes sense, then, that you’d go crookeder and crookeder as you age, as you commence your transit from animate to inanimate, from living to that other thing.
Nail clippers? It was all he had. He went at the whorl of hair on the right side of his chest like a topiarist with the teensiest possible pair of garden shears. After about five minutes he’d evened things up, though the right side looked ravaged more than trimmed. He spent the next few minutes practising his skeptical and surprised looks in the mirror, trying to get his two eyebrows to go up in tandem. Which just left his dick—a longer-term project, presumably. His
package,
that was the expression. What if he carried it on the other side of the seam for the next few months? Could it be trained, vinelike, to lean the other way?
Matt’s on the first swig of his second pint of microbrewed I.P.A. when Karen wanders in. He’s just finished shifting his package, thank Christ. Karen does a brisk pan of the lounge, hunting her gang presumably, her fellow geniuses. Genii? “Hey Karen, over here!” What the hell.
She squints, picks him out of the clinky gloom.
Should have gone with the blazer. It was a little rumpled after a day balled up in the bottom of his bag, but without it this khakis-and-crewneck rig is pretty dull. Karen’s look is jacket and slightly funky blouse, knee-length skirt with an unexpected belt—the more-than-meets-the-eye thing. She’s in orangey reds again, goldy browns, a fluster of falling leaves. Toronto about a month from now, when it too starts dying.
“Hi, sweetheart.” She bends over him—gape of breasts going udderish, teatlike with gravity—and plants a slow kiss on his forehead. “Am I ever glad to see you! I was starting to think maybe you’d had second thoughts!” She laughs. Has he heard her laugh yet? It’s more petite than you’d expect, a piccolo note from a flute
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