The Enthusiast by Charlie Haas Page B

chunks of steaming, soap-like vegetable. “Have you heard this music that’s coming out now?” Gerald said.
    â€œProbably not,” I said.
    â€œThey’ve got a guy rapping, and then there are these little snatches of talking and like Arabic wailing going in and out. I didn’t know what that was about till I moved there. Because two hundred years ago, you went for a walk and you heard the birds singing and you went home and wrote the Pastorale , right? But New York, you go outside, it’s like a radio that gets every station at once, plus the bonus cursing-nanny channel. So you go home and write that.” He jabbed at an air synthesizer, “‘I was a, I was a, what is a, you were a,’” scratched a turntable, “ Wheersht wheersht ,” and jabbed a key again, “‘Kali zulfon , I was a.’
    â€œBut then you turn onto a desirable side street? And there are the birds! The birds haven’t gone anywhere! There are trees with little rubber collars on them. There are doormen. There are gifted children. You want Pastorale ? Your guy has some nice Pastorale today, no problem.”
    He was leaning back in his fiberglass chair, draping himself over it like a high-finance guy in an interview photo. I congratulated myself on having been right about his future, a gold rush with hipper minerals.
    We ordered coffee. It came in jelly glasses with straws, and Gerald’s had an umbrella. “So,” he said, “the publishing game. I hear that’s a sweet racket. I hear you boys talk into Dictaphone machines and drink Martini cocktails. I hear you get your collars made to order.”
    â€œIt’s all true,” I said. “Actually, I don’t think I’m getting anywhere.”
    â€œNo? But you work with people who devote themselves to things, right?”
    â€œAre you kidding?” I told him a few enthusiast stories, and every time I finished one he made me tell another. He couldn’t get enough of people who got interested in something and looked around one day to see that the something was everything.
    â€œI take all that back about New York,” he said. “You don’t need New York at all. That’s wonderful, what you’re doing.”
    â€œWhy is it wonderful?” I said.
    â€œTo help people give themselves over? If you live in Japan, you see the monk with the begging bowl, you put something in there, because he’s not just trying to get his parking validated. He’s doing it for everyone. It’s like, ‘I have a tea guy, a rice guy, and a guy who touches the essence.’ But Japan’s got nothing on us. We don’t just go in for things, we go in and never come out again. Skydiving. Model trains. Wars. Whatever’s handy. And you’re right in the middle of it. You should take some national pride.”
    â€œYou saw my apartment, right? That’s a bad apartment.”
    â€œNo question. You’re doing public interest work. You always wanted to. Don’t worry about the apartment. Those things will come.”
    He dropped a twenty on the table and drove me back to my building. As we idled at the curb he handed me a business card and said, “Now, Henry, this card has my telephone number on it. Anything you hear that might help us solve this thing, day or night, I want you to call that number. You understand?”
    â€œTake me with you,” I said.
    â€œGet your toiletries. You’ll love it. They’ll love you.”
    â€œYeah. I’ll come down and see you, though.”
    â€œI should fucking well hope so. We’ll have a large time.”
    â€œOkay.”
    â€œThat’s another one,” he said. “‘A large time.’ Don’t you hate that?”
    I said I did and went up to my apartment. I was too tired to unpack my sheets so I slept in the chair.
    The job at Martial Arts World was okay except that I kept finding myself on the floor.