The Enthusiast by Charlie Haas Page A

said. “Oh, because it’s just the music playing. That’s good.”
    â€œIsn’t that nice?” Gerald said.
    â€œI went to one once,” Robert said. “One of the lawmakers was retiring, so they had a big group and they asked me to come along. I wouldn’t get up. They said Robert, Robert, but you couldn’t get me up there.”
    â€œNo, you don’t want to do that,” Gerald said. “If the orchestra’s empty, that’s their problem.”
    Robert smiled. “That’s very good. Now, are you in that business also, the magazines?”
    â€œNo,” Gerald said. “I buy and sell metal.”
    â€œOh, boy,” Robert said. “I had a car that I let them do that with. I took it out there and watched them pick it up with that machine and drop it on all these other old cars. All the way there I was thinking, This is terrific, I’ll get a bus pass and to heck with this thing, but boy. I didn’t think it would affect me, but it did.”
    â€œIt was part of your life,” I said.
    â€œNo, I wouldn’t say that,” Robert said. “Well, I don’t want to hold you fellows up. I just wanted to welcome you. This is a good building. We don’t have any of the lawmakers themselves, but there are a couple of gals downstairs that are legislative assistants. They serve as the front lines very often. Okay. Gerald and…”
    â€œHenry,” I said.
    â€œOkay.” He went back inside.
    I’d found the apartment online. It was my usual, but with Gerald there the standard features—armchair ghosts on the walls, phone wires painted lumpily to the moldings—shone with sordidness. I hurried the move and we got into his car to go to dinner.
    â€œConcessionaire,” he said as he started the engine.
    â€œThe unique vocal stylings of the Concessionaires,” I said.
    â€œYeah, they were unique. Do we know where we’re going?”
    â€œNo. I thought we’d just look for something.” We pulled out.
    â€œWhat kind of metal do you buy and sell?”
    â€œStrategic,” he said. “I play the palladium. Although gallium is more and more on my mind these days. They use that in your silicon chips. You can’t make a karaoke machine without it.”
    We circled out from the dead downtown and finally found a brightly lit storefront restaurant with a neon sign in an alphabet I didn’t recognize. There was one other customer, a woman eating a pink entrée and reading Richard North Patterson. The waiter, who could have been Indonesian or Inuit, brought menus. When he left I said quietly, “Do you know what cuisine this is?”
    â€œNo, and I live in New York,” Gerald said.
    The menus were in the same alphabet as the neon, with semi-translations: Chicken pektânnu. Beef pektânnu. We both ordered the chicken. “Spaetzle or taro with that?” the waiter said. We said taro.
    â€œHow’s New York?” I said when he left.
    â€œWell. You’ve been there, right?” Gerald said. I shook my head. “Wow. Well, you owe it to yourself. And they’re ready for you. I moved there the day after I graduated; I gave them no lead time at all, and they were ready for me anyway. By my third day of walking to work I had my coffee guy, my bakery guy, and my fruit guy. The whole city runs on guys. It’s like polytheism with immediate rewards.
    â€œYou know how your big cities are supposed to diminish people? You’re supposed to feel small in the face of it? That’s bullshit. You walk down the street in New York, you see all these sagas going on, you smell thirty smells in a block, andyou snowball . These things are added unto you. If you want people to feel small, you have to put them in the suburbs. They drive those cars that look like dump trucks to make up for it. They put on weight so they won’t blow away.”
    The food came, a greenish stew and