All the Beautiful People We Once Knew

by Edward Carlson

  “How so?” the Frenchman asked.

  “Well they’re both anti-capitalism,” she replied. “Or supra-capitalism. That’s one way they’re similar.”

  “Did anyone hear what Stephen just said?” Fleeger interjected. “That there’s not enough time to get visas?”

  “So what, Robert?” Kath asked, dismissive.

  “So if you can’t get visas then the entire discussion of your upcoming trip to India is fucking moot.”

  “Moot?” the Frenchman asked.

  “Robert don’t be such a naysayer,” Kath said. “We’ll find a way.”

  “We are going,” Soncha confirmed.

  “Yes we are. But what about our camera equipment?”

  “What about it?” Soncha asked.

  “I don’t want to carry all that camera equipment around Hindustan,” Kath said.

  “We’ll just pay someone to carry it, Kath.”

  Fleeger gulped down his beer and ordered another. He wanted all this having nothing real to talk about to cease and Kath and Soncha knew this and conspired to keep it going.

  “I’m pretty sure the sadhus will charge you a fee to film them,” I said. “They’re known to be stingy with their souls.”

  Fleeger stared at me, his flash jury again convicting me of conspiracy and treason.

  “Who?” Soncha asked.

  “The sadhus. The holy men you want to film.”

  “Why are you so negative, Stephen?” Kath said. “Jesus, you’re becoming like Robert. Is anything possible?”

  The server placed on the table pewter bowls of curries and sauces and plates of origami-cut vegetables for dipping: a swan, a crane, a cat, a horse, lotuses, and tulips.

  “But I thought money was against the principles of the sadhus,” said Kath.

  “Enough with the fucking sadhus,” Fleeger retorted.

  I spooned curry into a small volcano of basmati rice as Soncha and Kath gave each other an invisible high five.

  “And how about you, Jacques?” Fleeger said. “What do you do?”

  “Who is Jacques?” the Frenchman asked as Fleeger fumbled his spoon into the sauce. “I am a businessman.”

  “All right,” Fleeger said. “Finally someone at this table who does something useful. Can I get a fork for this please?” he asked a passing busgirl. She handed him a fork and he stared at her tattooed face. “I feel like I’m at fucking Coney Island.”

  The stick of bamboo that had taken root at the base of Fleeger’s ass the moment we entered the restaurant now shot upward through the chamber of his spine. Sitting taller than the rest of us and from across the table, he attempted a hostile takeover of the dinner conversation.

  “So what’s your business?” Fleeger asked the Frenchman.

  “I import furniture. Now from Italy. But sometimes from Brazil and sometimes from Indonesia.”

  “Is that lucrative?” Fleeger asked.

  “Not at all,” the Frenchman replied.

  “I want to go to Indonesia,” Kath said, truncating Fleeger’s efforts.

  “It’s a shithole,” the Frenchman replied.

  “It’s the land of ten thousand islands,” she insisted.

  “That’s Minnesota,” I said.

  “Trust me. It’s a shithole,” the Frenchman said. I liked the way he said “hole.” Accentuating the o with his small mouth. “And they always rip me off.”

  “Of course they do,” Soncha said. “That’s the price of doing business there. Otherwise the deal is too sweet. They can’t make the deal too sweet otherwise you won’t go back.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Soncha. Who doesn’t like a sweet deal?” the Frenchman said. “Kath, go to Hawaii. Much nicer. Less corruption. Less Muslim.”

  “I’m Muslim,” Soncha said.

  “You’re different,” he replied. He put his hand on Soncha’s lap and she held it. She accepted this for now, conscious that her position wasn’t advanced by arguing with the Frenchman in public.

  “So then you appreciate, Pierre, that there is a system,” Robert continued.

  Pierre agreed but didn’t understand what Fleeger was talking about and I was certain his name wasn’t Pierre either.

  “What’s your point, Robert?” Kath asked.

  “That’s my point, Kath. Indonesia and India and wherever else you want to go and shoot your photos and make your films and fantasize about even though you don’t have a clue. They’re outside the system.”

  Kath stared at him as Soncha texted and Fleeger told us all to forget it. Explaining was pointless, he said. The Beijing piglet arrived atop a stainless steel cart, surrounded by bowls of epoxy-thick dipping sauce and chopped green onions and a plate of steaming tortillas.

  “The specialty,” Jacques Pierre said. “I ordered it ahead of time.”

  “Can I get another beer?” Fleeger asked the busgirl, almost hostile, while she fileted the pig and forked it onto small plates. As he attacked the food, deep beneath the tablecloth Kath’s stocking toes fondled and stroked the soft space above my ankle. She found it above the Euro shoes, unsheathed my sock to expose my ankle, and as she did so I filled with a substance similar to warm water, infused with glistening electrolytes. She placed her hand on my thigh and made small finger eights and looked at me.

  “What do you think of the pig?” she asked.

  Soncha took a bite of her pork taco, dripping sauce onto her plate.

  “Looks good,” I said.

  We had played this before. Once in the Dominican Republic and another time at O’Grady’s the night Fleeger became partner. It was a little game she liked to play, a little expression of her little independent affection, a little protest against little conventions. I was too thirsty for contact to worry about Fleeger across the table. It was all biology and need; no room for morality let alone the ethics of friendship in the vacuum of my current state.

  “How long have you two been together?” Fleeger asked Soncha. I could barely hear him. I felt like I was underwater.

  “We’re not really together,” Soncha replied.

  “You’re not?” Fleeger asked.

  “We make love. Sometimes we fuck but mostly we make love.”

  “Amen, Soncha,” Fleeger said, tipping his beer at her. “Finally something we agree upon.”

  Kath released her grip from my thigh.

  “Don’t go getting superior Robert. Their approach is holistic and internal and at the same time expansive.” She stretched her arms to dramatize the universal application of her beliefs. “But Robert, come on, let’s face it. You’re incapable of making the necessary sacrifices to really touch someone.”

  “What does that even mean?” he asked.

  “I don’t know Robert but I can’t keep explaining everything to you. When I do I sound false and annoying and pretentious. You make me annoy myself. It’s like we speak different versions of English. You’re too bold. Maybe it’s because you’ve dedicated your existence to representing insurance companies.”

  “Like the little green geckos on your television?” the Frenchman asked. He chuckled.

  “They’re actually very big green geckos,” I replied.

  The Frenchman whispered something into Soncha’s ear and he rubbed his hands through his feathered part while leaning backward. Fleeger looked exposed, stranded on the dark side of his legal apotheosis, as Kath prepared to again bullwhip his pride. She resumed stroking my thigh beneath the table and the server set down a plate of drizzled plums. Soncha lit a cigarette and blew smoke in Kath’s face, as if she was a shaman preparing Kath for spiritual battle. The Frenchman draped his arm over the back of the chair and looked out the restaurant’s tinted windows.

  The soft, easy side of Fleeger that led us here tonight had long ago disappeared. Tiny lights now flashed behind his dark eyes, red green yellow, red green yellow, as he computed his next move. The computation repeating itself until the code was cracked and the decision made. Kath, in turn, closed her eyes, breathing
in through her nose and out through her mouth. The moment hung there. She took more breaths. She opened her eyes. She was clear and calm.

  “Soncha.”

  “Yes Kath?”

  “Remember the time I invited you and some of the girls over for brunch? Right after Robert and I returned from our honeymoon?”

  “I’m not sure, Kath. Which time was that?”

  “Remember there was the Bluetooth speaker on the kitchen table?”

  “I do remember. We called it ‘the incident.’”

  “Yes, and we laughed about it at the time. Robert had just gotten home from the gym and was taking a shower while I was pouring mimosas and the girls were all sitting around the table. And then suddenly there was this sound of people fucking emanating from the speaker.”

  “I do remember that.”

  “It was really loud, wasn’t it? And the woman was yelling I think in Spanish as she took it. Was it in Spanish?”

  “I think so.”

  “And remember how it kept getting louder and louder as we sat there at the kitchen table. With our flutes of mimosas and our eggs Benedict. Not quite sure what to do or say. Because Robert and I had just gotten back from our honeymoon and it was obvious to all my friends who had just been at our wedding that my new husband was masturbating in the shower at that very moment. Turning up the volume on his phone in frustration to hear the pornographic pounding except he didn’t realize that the sound was playing on the speaker in the kitchen.”

  “So embarrassing.”

  “You know I never told him about that?”

  “You didn’t? Why not?”

  “Maybe because I respected him at the time?”

  “You two are fucking cunts,” Fleeger said.

  He clicked his teeth. The Frenchman looked away and Soncha smoked, both in slow motion, as Kath flung a full glass of shiraz against Fleeger’s chest and chin, soaking an expanse of cotton and silk indelible red. Fleeger pushed back from the table and shoved his chair back into place with both hands.

  “Stephen,” he said.

  If I stood now he would discover the full extent of my treason.

  “Who are you? Batman?” Kath asked him. She looked at me. “Does that mean you’re Robin, Stephen?”

  Rage blocked Fleeger from forming words. His big jaw clenched so tight his square teeth were about to crack. The waitress stepped out of his way and the chefs lauded his departure from the restaurant with an incongruous chorus of Japanese salutations.

  I watched him through the tinted windows. Lurking on the sidewalk. Needing something to ram, to gore, to release the toxicity coursing through his veins. Kath slid into Fleeger’s chair and gave him the finger. I wanted back her hand and foot and I wanted to step outside.

  “Such a child,” she said. “What’s he going to do? Fight me?”

  “I can’t believe Robert was just here,” Soncha said.

  “Marriage,” the Frenchman said. “Est merde.”

  Now I could stand and I exited the restaurant to check on him. Domo arigato gozaimasu. He’s your best friend. I told you so. The night smelled of snow. Of cold metallic humidity. At the street corner Fleeger rummaged through the bottom of a municipal trash bin, reached in with one long arm, and extracted a broken hockey stick. He banged it against the ground to test the integrity of its thwack, looking it up and down. He possessed his faculties. He would listen to reason. I pressed my hands against his chest. His pectoral muscles felt like catcher’s mitts.

  “Robert,” I said, pushing against him. He pressed through me. The machine that had computed his response also demanded execution. He smashed the hockey stick into the neon-blue sign above the restaurant door. Smashed it again. Smashed it once more. Inert particles of blue neon gas spinning into shards of broken glass. He tossed the stick into the gutter and stepped into a taxi. I reentered the restaurant and as I walked across the dining room the patrons and the waitstaff watched me.

  “I need to go,” I said.

  “My God, such a dramatic response. That was so much fun,” Kath replied. “I never would have thought it possible to get such a reaction from him. He’s really changed. We should do this again sometime.”

  The Frenchman made a noise as if to ask for what, for this?

  “How were you married to him?” Soncha asked.

  “I guess I was into beastiality.”

  “Has its place,” Soncha said.

  “Yes but eventually it gets old.”

  “We should go now,” I said.

  “Nonsense,” Kath replied.

  She attempted to order another round of drinks and the waitress looked at the manager and the manager cut us off while speaking on the phone. I suspected he was calling the cops. The Frenchman paid the bill and I thanked him and remembered Fleeger’s offer to treat me to dinner on WorldScore’s tab. The previous good humor of it all. The Frenchman waved me away. It was nothing, he said. The chefs abstained from lauding our departure with Japanese exhortations of good fortune.

  Outside, the restaurant staff swept up the broken glass and surveyed the damage and watched us as we congregated on the sidewalk and prepared to leave. Soncha lit another cigarette. All of us now exhausted with one another. I shook the Frenchman’s hand good night, kissed Kath on the cheek, attempted to hug Soncha, who blocked me. We shook hands instead.

  “Come out with us, Stephen,” Kath said.

  “I have to go.”

  “Come anyway,” Kath said.

  “I can’t,” I said. “I have a thing.”

  “OK,” she said, and kissed me. Her two front teeth scraped my cheek. It wasn’t an accident.

  We walked in opposite directions. I turned around and returned to the restaurant. The staff still sweeping the glass and the manager still talking on the phone. I interrupted him.

  “How much was the sign?”

  He covered the receiver.

  “I’ve already called the cops.”

  “Yes, but how much to replace the sign?”

  He thought for a minute. He would charge a tax. On top of the premium.

  “Fifteen hundred.”

  “I’ll give you eleven. But I have to pay by card.”

  “Twelve fifty.”

  “Twelve fifty and this is over?”

  He nodded yes. I handed him a credit card and signed the receipt and stuffed a copy in my wallet and walked home. Not quite steeped in booze as usual but halfway there.

  10

  I AWOKE IN THE dark apartment surrounded by blinking lights. Green stereo receiver. Red high-speed Internet modem. Gregg’s perennially white Christmas lights reflecting in mason jars stacked on the stainless steel Ikea drying rack. I rose from the couch and navigated the dark apartment, like one of those deep-sea creatures with a small organic bulb attached to the front of its skull, highly evolved to the point of overspecialization, viability limited to thirty thousand feet beneath sea level. A ghost shark. Fleeger had sent me a dozen text messages while I slept. A new message every two sips from a pint. Imploring that I meet him for a drink. Asking where I was. About his behavior and the property damage and whether the cops were looking for him and even a question about Kath’s reaction. Until the momentary guilt and self-awareness devolved into what the eff protestations and how come you’re not responding and I guess I’ll have to handle this myself thanks a lot buddy fuck you. I refrained from texting him he owed me $1,250 for the broken sign. Because I wanted him to sit in it for a while. Outside the snow fell heavy and rich.

  Someone knocked on my door, shaking the deadbolt. For a second I thought it was the cops. I unclasped the chain, turned the knob, and there stood Gregg and Kath. He wore a gray Gore-Tex snowsuit, holding a plastic red snow shovel, and she sparkled in a black shearling tunic flecked with fallen snow. The toe cleavage bunched in her long pointy heels looked pink and raw.

  “Stephen, this woman informs me she’s your friend.”

  They looked like a red-state artist’s rendering of New York City as America
n Gothic. I confirmed she was indeed my friend.

  “She’s crazy. She was riding her bicycle in this blizzard. She just hopped the curb with no hands and fell in a pile of snow. She could have ruined her beautiful face.”

  They were perfect for each other. Gregg reached up to touch her cheek and Kath blocked him with a quick side hug.

  “Don’t say such terrible things about me, Gregg,” Kath said, impatient and drunk. “I thought we were friends now too. After you rescued me from that wretched snow pile.”

  She pushed past me and entered my apartment, burgundy heels hammering the pumpkin pine floor, and dropped her bag on the stain-resistant couch.

  “Oh, but we are friends,” Gregg confirmed. “How could we not be? After I practically saved your life?”

  Kath leaned back across the threshold of the apartment and kissed Gregg’s cheek. A telepathic thank you darling from her to him but she would stay here with me now yes. She wanted to be here. I thanked him as well, wished him good night, and closed the door. Too much time passed before I heard him walk away, tapping his shovel down the staircase.

  “I was in the neighborhood.”

  She collapsed against me. Nuzzled her cold, wet face against my neck. She smelled of shatterproof vodka and wet wool and cigarettes and squeezed me now with her arms wrapped around my waist. The snow melted atop her thick hair, forming patterns of clear beads, like something glued to a South Asian bride on her wedding night. There was a mass to it. I gripped its chords and density and kissed her mouth and her flesh released a wave of something warm from inside her clothes. She didn’t wear antiperspirant that smelled like flowers or baby powder or cucumbers. Instead she wore some musky perfume, rare and European, chopped and distilled from the hairy pouch of a diminutive Eurasian deer.

  “I’m cold,” she said.

  I forced myself on her. Laid her on the couch. Gripped her cold wet calf and squeezed the ball of her muscle. She caught my lip between her teeth. I pulled back and examined her almost translucent shin, mottled with faint brown spots and wispy red hairs.