Like Life

by Lorrie Moore

  “Are you the landlord?”

  “No,” said Harry. “I’m a tenant.”

  “We charge two hundred dollars, automatic, if we visit,” said the plumber, calmly. Plumbers were always calm. It wasn’t just because they were rich. It had something to do with pipes and sticking your hands into them over and over. “Tell your landlord to give us a call.”

  Harry left another message on his landlord’s machine and then went off to a coffee shop. It was called The Cosmic Galaxy and was full of actors and actresses talking wearily about auditions and getting work and how useless Back Stage was, though they bought it faithfully and spread it out over the tables anxiously to read. “What I’m trying to put together here,” he overheard one actress say, “is a look like Mindy and a sound like Mork.” Harry thought with compassion how any one of these people would mutilate themselves to write a TV episode for Glen Scarp, how people are driven to it, for the ten thousand dollars, for the exposure, for the trashy, shameful love of television, whatever it was, and how he had held out for his play, for his beautiful secret play, which he had been mining for years. But it would be worth it, he believed. When he came triumphantly up from the mine, emerged with his work gorgeous and completed, he would be, he knew, feted with an orchestra, greeted big by a huge brass band—trumpeted!—for there were people who knew he was down there, intelligent people, and they were waiting for him.

  Of course, you could be down there too long. You could come up for air, all tired and sooty, and find only a man with a harmonica and a tin can, cymbals banging between his knees.

  On Tuesday the suds were gone. Harry pulled the drain closed so that nothing else could come rushing up. Then he washed in the kitchen sink, with a rag and some dish detergent, and went off again to The Cosmic Galaxy.

  But on Wednesday morning he woke once more to the sharp poison of diesel fumes in the apartment. He walked into his bathroom cautiously and discovered the tub full to the brim with a brackish broth and bits of green floating in it. Scallions. Miso soup with scallions. “What?” He checked the drain, and it was still closed. He left a message on his landlord’s machine that went, “Hey, I’ve got vegetables in my tub,” then he trudged out to a different coffee shop, a far one, on the very edge of the neighborhood, practically up by Lincoln Center, and ordered the cheeseburger deluxe, just to treat himself, just to put himself in touch with real life again. When he returned home, Deli was hovering in his doorway. “Mornin’, Harry,” said Deli.

  “Isn’t it afternoon?” asked Harry.

  “Whatever,” said Deli. “You know, Harry, I been thinking. What you need is to spend a little money on a girl who can treat you right.” She inched seductively toward him, took his arm with one hand and with the other began rubbing his buttocks through his jeans.

  Harry shook her off. “Deli, don’t pull this shit on me! How long have I known you? Every morning for five years I’ve come out of this building and seen you here, said hello. We’ve been friends. Don’t start your hooker shit with me now.”

  “Fuck you,” said Deli. And she walked away, in a sinuous hobble, up to the corner to stand.

  Harry went upstairs to his apartment and slowly opened the door to his bathroom. He reached for the switches to the light and fan and turned them on in a single, dramatic flick.

  The tub. The miso soup was gone, but in its stead was a dark brown sludge, a foot deep, sulfurous and bubbled. “Oh, my God,” said Harry. It was a plague. First suds. Then vegetables. Then darkness. He would get typhus or liver death. There would be frogs.

  He left another message on his landlord’s machine, then he phoned Breckie and left one on hers: “I have half the Hudson River backed up into my tub. Sea gulls are circling the building. You are a doctor. Does this mean I could get a sad and fatal ailment?” He had Maria Callas singing in the background; he always did now whenever he phoned Breckie and left messages. “Also, I want to know how seriously involved you are with this guy. Because I’m making plans, Breck. I am.”

  On Thursday, Glen Scarp called and Harry said yes. Yes, yes, yes.

  They met that Monday for drinks at the hotel where Scarp was staying. It was on East Fifty-seventh Street and had a long vaulted entrance, dreamy and mirrored, like Versailles, or a wizard’s castle. Scarp was waiting for Harry at the end of the corridor, sitting on a velveteen bench. Harry knew it was Scarp by his look of inventory and indifference for everyone who came down the passageway until he got to Harry. Then he looked bemused. Harry proceeded painfully slow, in a worn-shoed lope, toward the bench. Velveteen spread to either side of Scarp, like hips.

  “Hello,” said Harry.

  Scarp was a short man and stood quickly, aggressively, to greet a tall. “Harry? Glen Scarp. Good to meet you at last.” He was not that much older than Harry, and took Harry’s hand and shook it gingerly between both of his. This was California ginger, Hollywood ginger. This was the limp of flirtation, the lightness of promise. Harry knew this, of course, but knew this only in the way everyone did, which was knew it sort of.

  Scarp was wearing a diamond broach, a sparkly broccoli on his lapel, and Harry almost said, “Nice pin,” but stopped himself. “Well, good to meet you, too,” said Harry. “My whole life these days feels conducted on the phone. It’s great to finally see the person behind the voice.” This was not true, of course, and the lie of it trickled icily down his back.

  “Let’s have a drink in here, shall we?” Scarp motioned toward the cocktail lounge, which was all ficus trees and chrome and suffused in a bluish light.

  “After you,” said Harry, which was how he liked to do things.

  “Fabulous,” said Scarp, who marched confidently in ahead of Harry, so that Harry got to see the back of Scarp’s hair: long, sprayed, and waved as a waterfall.

  “I want to tell you again first of all how much I admire your work,” said Scarp when they were seated and after they had ordered and Scarp had had a chance to push his sleeves up a bit and glance quickly down at his broach, a quick check.

  “I admire yours as well,” said Harry. In reality he had never seen Scarp’s TV series and had actually heard negative things about it. Supposedly it was about young professionals, and there were a lot of blenders and babies. But this, here, now, was not reality. This was reality’s back room. It was called dealing. The key, Harry knew, once you got done with the flattery, was to be charming and quick. That is what these people liked: a good, quick story, a snappy line, a confessional anecdote with polish and perhaps a relative in it. Then they would talk money with you. They would talk ten, fifteen thousand an episode, but that was only starters. Sometimes there was more to be had than that. But Harry was after only a single episode. In and out, like a cold bath. That was all he wanted. In and out. A single episode couldn’t hurt his soul, not really. His play would have to sit for a while, but when he returned to it, like a soldier home to his wife, he would be a wealthy man. He would move. He would move somewhere with fresh air, somewhere where Breckie lived.

  “Thanks,” said Scarp. “So what have you been working on lately? You had the under-thirty prize thing—what was that—three years ago?”

  “Three? What year is it now?”

  “Eighty-eight.”

  “Eighty-eight,” repeated Harry. “Well, the prize thing was actually then four years ago.”

  “Not under thirty anymore, I’ll bet.” Scarp smiled, studying Harry’s eyes.

  “Nope,” said Harry, glancing away. “Not for a while.”

  “So what have you been doing?”

  It was like talking to the playwriting police. You needed alibis. “I’ve been lying in my apartment,” said Harry, “eating bonbons and going, ‘What year is this?’ ”

  “Right.” Scarp laughed inscrutably. He picked up his drink, then put it down again without taking a sip. “As you know, I’m always looking for writers for the show. I’ve been doing some of the writing myself lately, and I don’t mind that. But I thought you and I should get to know each
other. I think you have a great handle on contemporary language and the … uh …”

  “Postmodern imagination?” suggested Harry.

  “Absolutely.”

  “Of the young deracinated American?”

  “Absolutely,” said Scarp.

  Absolutely. It wasn’t even absolutely to Harry, and he was the one who’d said it.

  “So just informally, as friends, tell me what you’ve been up to,” said Scarp. “There’s no pressure here, no design. We’re just getting to know each other.”

  “Actually I’ve been working on this play that I feel pretty good about, but it’s long and is taking a lot out of me.”

  “You know, I used to want to write plays. What’s this one about, or can’t you talk about it?” Scarp started in on his drink, settling back into a listener’s sit.

  “I’m primitively secret about my work,” said Harry.

  “I respect that, absolutely,” said Scarp. He scowled. “Your family from this country?”

  Harry stared at Scarp: His eyes were lockets of distraction. What did it mean? “Yes,” said Harry. He had to get Scarp back, get him interested, and so he began telling Scarp, in the most eloquent sentences he could construct, the story of the town his ancestors had founded in the Poconos, and what had become of it recently with radon gas, and the flight to Philly and Pittsburgh. It was a sad, complicated tale, jeweled with bittersweet wisdom, and he was lifting it in its entirety from the central speech of his play.

  “That’s amazing,” said Scarp, apparently impressed, and it gave Harry confidence. He barreled on ahead, with the story of his parents’ marriage, his father’s alcoholism, his cousin’s sex change operation, and a love affair he had once had with one of the Kennedy girls. These were fragile tales he had managed to hone carefully in the writing of his play, and as he spoke with Scarp the voices of his characters entered his mouth and uttered their lines with poignancy and conviction. One had to say words, and these were the words Harry knew best.

  “Astonishing,” said Scarp. He had ordered another round of drinks, at the end of which Harry was regaling him with the play’s climactic scene, the story of Aunt Fussbudget Flora—funny and wrenching and life-affirming in its way.

  “The lights went dim, and the moon spilled onto her pillow in pale oblongs. We were all standing there, gathered in a prayer, when she sighed and breathed her very last word on earth: ‘Cripes.’ ”

  Scarp howled in laughter. “Miraculous! What a family you have. A fascinating bunch of characters!” Harry grinned and sat back. He liked himself. He liked his life. He liked his play. He didn’t feel uneasy or cheaply spent, using his work this way, or if he did, well, he pushed that to one side.

  “Harry,” said Scarp, as he was signing for the check. “This has been a real pleasure, let me say.”

  “Yes, it has,” said Harry.

  “And though I’ve got to run right now—to have dinner with someone far less engaging, let me tell you—do I have your word that you will consider writing something for me sometime? We don’t have to talk specifically now, but promise me you’ll give it some thought. I’m making a troth here.”

  “And it shall set you free,” said Harry. “Absolutely.”

  “I knew I would like you,” said Scarp. “I knew we would hit it off. In fact, where do you live? I’ll get a cab and drop you off.”

  “Uh, that’s OK,” said Harry, smiling. His heart was racing. “I could use the walk.”

  “If you’re sure,” said Scarp. “Listen, this was great. Truly great.” He shook Harry’s hand again, as limply as before. “Fabulous.”

  THERE IS A WAY of walking in New York, midevening, in the big, blocky East Fifties, that causes the heart to open up and the entire city to rush in and make a small town there. The city stops its painful tantalizing then, its elusiveness and tease suspended, it takes off its clothes and nestles wakefully, generously, next to you. It is there, it is yours, no longer outwitting you. And it is not scary at all, because you love it very much.

  “Ah,” said Harry. He gave money to the madman who was always singing in front of Carnegie Hall, and not that badly either, but who for some reason was now on the East Side, in front of something called Carnegie Clothes. He dropped coins in the can of the ski-capped woman propped against the Fuller Building, the woman with the pet rabbit and potted plants and the sign saying, I HAVE JUST HAD BRAIN SURGERY, PLEASE HELP ME. “Thank you, dear,” she said, glancing up, and Harry thought she looked, startlingly, sexy. “Have a nice day,” she said, though it was night.

  Harry descended into the subway, his usual lope invigorated to a skip. His play was racing through him: He had known it was good, but now he really knew. Glen Scarp had listened, amazed, and when he had laughed, Harry knew that all his instincts and choices in those lovely moments over the last four years, carefully mining and sculpting the play, had been right. His words could charm the jaded Hollywood likes of a Glen Scarp; soon those words, some lasting impression of them, might bring him a ten- or even twenty-thousand-dollar television episode to write, and after that he would never have to suffer again. It would just be him and Breckie and his play. A life that was real. They would go out and out and out to eat.

  The E train rattled west, then stopped, the lights flickering. Harry looked at the Be a Stenographer ad across from him and felt the world was good, that despite the flickering lights, it basically, amazingly, worked. A man pushed into the car at the far end. “Can you help feed me and my hungry kids?” he shouted, holding out a paper cup, and moving slowly down Harry’s side of the car. People placed quarters in the cup or else stared psychotically into the reading material on their laps and did not move or turn a page.

  Suddenly a man came into the car from the opposite end. “Pay no attention to that man down there,” he called to the riders. “I’m the needy one here!” Harry turned to look and saw a shabbily dressed man with a huge sombrero. He had electric Christmas tree lights strung all around the brim and just above it, like some chaotic hatband. He flicked a button and lit them up so that they flashed around his head, red, green, yellow. The train was still stopped, and the flickering overheads had died altogether, along with the sound of the engine. There was only the dull hum of the ventilating system and the light show from the sombrero. “I am the needy one here,” he reiterated in the strangely warm dark. “My name is Lothar, and I have come from Venus to arrest Ronald Reagan. He is an intergalactic criminal and needs to be taken back to my planet and made to stand trial. I have come here to see that that is done, but my spaceship has broken down. I need your assistance so that I can get it done.”

  “Amen!” someone called out.

  “Yahoo,” shouted Harry.

  “Can you help me, people, earthlings. I implore you. Anything you can spare will aid me in my goal.” The Christmas tree lights zipped around his head, people started to applaud, and everyone dug into their wallets to give money. When the lights came on, and the train started to go again, even the man with the hungry kids was smiling reluctantly, though he did say to Lothar, “Man, I thought this was my car.” When the train pulled into Forty-second Street, people got off humming, slapping high fives, low fives, though the station smelled of piss.

  Harry’s happiness lasted five days, Monday through Friday, like a job. On Saturday he awoke in a funk. The phone had not rung. The mail had brought him no letters. The apartment smelled faintly of truck and sewage. He went out to breakfast and ordered the rice pudding, but it came with a cherry.

  “What is this?” he asked the waiter. “You didn’t use to do this.”

  “Maraschino eyeballs.” The waiter smiled. “We just started putting them on. You wanna whipped cream, too?”

  When he went back home, not Deli but a homeless woman in a cloth coat and sneakers was sitting in his doorway. He reached into his pocket to give her some change, but she looked away.

  “Excuse me,” he said. “I just have to get by here.” He took out his keys.

&nb
sp; The woman stood up angrily, grabbing her shopping bags. “No, really, you can sit here,” said Harry. “I just need to get by you to get in.”

  “Thanks a lot!” shouted the woman. Her teeth were gray in the grain, like old wood. “Thanks!”

  “Come back!” he called. “It’s perfectly OK!” But the woman staggered halfway down the block, turned, and started screaming at him. “Thanks for all you’ve done for me! I really appreciate it! I really appreciate everything you’ve done for me my whole life!”

  To relax, he enrolled in a yoga class. It was held three blocks away, and the teacher, short, overweight, and knowledgeable, kept coming over to Harry to tell him he was doing things wrong.

  “Stomach in! Shoulders down! Head back!” she bellowed in the darkness of the yoga room. People looked. She was not fond of tall, thin men who thought they knew what they were doing. “Head back!” she said again, and this time tugged on his hair, to get his head at the right angle.

  “I can’t believe you pulled my hair,” said Harry.

  “Pardon me?” said the instructor. She pressed her knee into the middle disks of his spine.

  “I would just do better,” said Harry loudly, “if you wouldn’t keep touching me!”

  “All right, all right,” said the teacher. “I won’t touch you,” and she walked to the other side of the darkened room, to attend to someone else. Harry lay back for the deep breathing, spine pressed against the tough thread of the carpet. He put his hand over his eyes and stayed like that, while the rest of the class continued with headstands and cat stretches.

  The next week Harry decided to try a calisthenics class instead. It was across the street from the yoga class and was full of white people in pastel Spandex. Serious acid disco blared from the corner speakers. The instructor was a thin black man, who smiled happily at the class and led them in exercises that resembled the motion of field hands picking cotton. “Pick that cotton!” he shouted gleefully, overseeing the group, walking archly among them. “Pick it fast!” He giggled, clasping his hands. “Oh, what sweet revenge!” The class lasted an hour and a half, and Harry stayed on for the next class as well, another hour and a half. It strangely encouraged and calmed him, and when he went to the grocery store afterward, he felt almost serene. He lingered at the yogurt and the freshly made pasta. He filled his cart with mineral water, feeling healthy and whole again, when a man one aisle away was caught shoplifting a can of bean-with-bacon soup.