Don’t worry about it, he tells himself, nobody noticed, but even as he tells himself this he feels the prickling sensation of disapproving eyes on him, and he tracks over to the source of the sensation, and that’s when he sees her, alone at a table for two: Denver.
CHAPTER SIX
LISTEN, AUDIENCE
IMMANENCE • AMBIGUOUS INTRODUCTIONS • I’M NOT SAYING BUDDY • TOTAL FAILURE OF CHARACTER • ABSOLUTE CORPOREALITY • KAFKA TELLS A JOKE • FAMOUS LITERARY BRAWLS • A STORY ABOUT SOME THINGS • SOULS • STOUT • RHETORIC
There had been a night, at the tail end of summer, when Billy and Denver had gone out for drinks with Bingxin Ying, a petite gallery owner with violet lipstick, an asymmetrical haircut, and an intense manner of aggressively probing the air while she spoke. The outing was in celebration of the closing of a deal: Bingxin was putting together a new show, Eidetics, to run at her gallery for the next three months, and she’d acquired five of Denver’s early shorts. The conversation, half conducted in art-speak, quickly went over Billy’s head, but he’d been content to lurk in the back of the booth, eat the skewered selection of fruits that had come with his drink, and watch Denver glow in reception of what he guessed was a rather abstract form of effusive praise.
Content for a while, anyway. Then came a moment when Bingxin made a vigorous stabbing motion with both of her hands and, over the music, had shouted “What impresses me the most about your work is its commitment to immanentization of the ephemeral.” Billy had watched Denver beam, had watched her say “Thank you” with a real sincerity that he wasn’t sure he’d ever successfully invoked, and he actually felt a little jealous. No, more than a little: straight-up capital-J Jealous. He made a mental note of the phrase. Immanentization of the ephemeral?
Later that night, in bed, Billy tried it out. “The immanentization of the ephemeral,” he said, apropos of nothing.
“I know,” Denver had said, propping herself up on one elbow. “Didn’t you love that? Bingxin really gets me.”
This was not, ultimately, the reaction that Billy had wanted, and he withdrew into a kind of sulkiness. It took Denver only seconds to notice.
“What,” she said.
“I don’t get it,” Billy said. “What does it mean?”
Denver clucked her tongue at him. “It’s not so complicated, Billy,” she said.
“It sounds complicated.”
“You’re a writer,” she said, which went some way toward cheering him. “You know what words mean.”
“I don’t know what immanentize means,” Billy had said, still in a bit of a pout.
“It means to make immanent.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“Yes you do. Think about it for a second.”
But Billy was in no mood.
“It means,” she said finally, “to bring into being.”
“Okay,” Billy said. “I did know that, I guess.”
“And the ephemeral?”
“Yeah, okay,” Billy said. “I know that one.”
“Lay it on me,” Denver said.
“It means things that won’t last.”
“Yeah,” Denver said. “And that’s the thing about the world that’s so beautiful and so sad. Everything is ephemeral. Nothing lasts. And that’s why I go around, you know, with a stupid camera strapped to my shoulder all the time. Because I want to capture some of those things. I want to bring them back into being. Just to make them last for a little bit longer.”
And now, as Billy enters Barometer, the very first thing that he notices is that she isn’t wearing her shoulder-mount tonight. Billy looks around on the table in front of her, feeling certain that he’ll spot her camera somewhere within reach, but it isn’t anywhere. Looks like tonight the ephemeral will go unimmanentized. Fuck.
Nevertheless, he feels determined to open on a positive note, if only to cover for the fact that he’s just been caught openly flirting with somebody else. “Denver!” he says. “Hi!” He can feel shiteatingness creep into his grin.
“Hi,” Denver says, with obvious wariness. She looks at Billy, then at Elisa, then back at Billy, some variety of deepening despair taking residence in her expression. Billy’s grin gets even wider, to compensate.
“Denver,” Billy says, voice buoyant with cheer. “This is Elisa—she’s the, uh, the other reader tonight? The poet?”
“Nice to meet you,” Denver says, her voice rimed with frost.
“And Elisa,” Billy continues, “this is Denver, my—” And right there he chokes. Can’t quite bring himself to say girlfriend. He’d spent half the day strenuously contemplating the prospect that she might be really and truly gone. Hadn’t he? And yet here she is. He’s tempted to just call her his ex, and he feels a nasty pleasure at the thought that she might feel stung. But that’d burn the bridge, and so he hesitates. Friend is right out. He needs some word that’s neutral, ambiguous. Because there’s Elisa. And he feels like there’s no sense in coming across to Elisa as taken unless he knows that Denver is really, well, taking him. So: not girlfriend, then—but what? Partner? Companion? Buddy?
Of course as soon as the pause lasts more than a second his entire thought process on the matter becomes completely transparent to everyone.
“Nice,” says Denver. She looks away, aiming whatever expression she’s wearing now at the wall, where Billy no longer has access to it. She takes a long sip from her martini.
“Uh, okay,” Elisa says, a barb in it aimed at Denver. She gives Billy a tightly wound smile, the kind of smile that hides a mouth full of clenched teeth. It’s a little fearsome, but then she gives him a kindness: she lays her hand on his shoulder. Just for the briefest second. “Good luck tonight,” she says, and then she’s off to the bar, removing her hand from his person and using it to signal the bartender with one decisive thrust.
Billy watches her go, but only for a second. With Elisa out of the picture he can at least concentrate on the task at hand: damage control. He slumps down into the available chair. Denver casts a flashing look at him then looks at the wall again.
“Really nice,” Denver says. “You’re a class act, Billy Ridgeway. Would it have killed you to say girlfriend?”
“It wouldn’t have killed me. I’m just not sure it’s accurate. You haven’t exactly been there for me lately,” Billy says, clawing desperately for what looks like it might be the moral high ground.
“I’m here, aren’t I?” says Denver. She turns back to him. “I’m here; I’m at your reading; I’m being supportive. Pretty much the opposite of what you did the night of the Eidetics opening, if you recall that night.”
Billy does. He passes on the opportunity to comment on it, though, because The Night of the Eidetics Opening serves now as shorthand for Total Failure of Character, a pure instance of asshole behavior, a kind of toxic fact which, he has learned, will cause him to immediately lose any argument in which it is admitted as evidence. Instead, he strategically rewinds back to the part of the argument where Denver used the word supportive.
“Supportive?” he practically crows. “It’s been, what, eight days since you spoke to me? I left you like twenty-five voice messages and you didn’t return even one of them. I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”
“Six,” Denver says.
“What?”
“Six. You left me six voice messages.”
Billy mulls this. “That’s still a lot,” he says, after a second.
“I think,” Denver says, her tone softening a little, “that it was the right number of times, maybe. I thought about this. I decided that it was enough to show me that you were sorry and not so many that you crossed the line into scary.”
“Thanks,” says Billy, brightening. “I thought about how to strike that balance, you know.”
“I believe you,” Denver says. “I could sense that you were thinking about that, actually. It’s very you to do something like that.”
“Thanks,” Billy says again, although a littl
e unsteadily: he never feels exactly certain that people mean that’s very you as a compliment when they say it to him.
Silence for a moment.
“I miss you,” Denver says.
“Oh,” Billy says. He wants to respond sympathetically, although that means having to mask the reflexive pleasure that he takes from what she said. He dithers over a few possible responses and finally fumbles out “That’s good, though, right?” which he’s pretty sure is the worst of all possible options.
“I miss you,” Denver says, ignoring him, “but I’m not sure I like you.”
“Oh,” Billy says, crumpling. “That’s—yeah, that’s less good.” He really wishes he had gotten a drink before sitting down.
“Let me say what I mean,” she says. “What I mean is”—she sighs—“what I mean is, you’re likable, Billy. You really are. You’re clever and you’re funny and you’re talented and sometimes when you look at me I can see what you must have looked like as a little boy and I just feel like my heart is going to burst.”
Billy risks a smile, although he knows that a but is coming. His hands start to fidget at the table, as though they’re autonomously seeking the drink he has failed to supply them with.
“But,” Denver says. She pulls her hair back from her face, holds a hank of it in her fist and pulls in a way that looks like it facilitates some internal tautening necessary to the conversation. “But,” she continues, “I don’t think you’re good for me. I just think you’re never quite present.”
“I am present!” Billy exclaims, seizing the opening. He raps on his chest with his knuckles, to demonstrate. “Immanent,” he says.
Denver gives him a sad smile. “Immanent,” she says. “Sure. But I need someone who’s going to be present. For real present, not just immanent. I’ve just—I’ve learned that, about myself, by now. Guys who can’t be present? They’re often funny, clever, talented guys, Billy—but they’re no good for me. And I’m trying—I’m really trying not to like guys who are no good for me.”
“But,” Billy says.
“But what.”
“But I want you to like me.”
“I know,” she says. “And it kills me. It kills me that you want me and it kills me that I want you back. And it kills me that I’m here, overlooking the fact that you’re probably bad for me, even though I swore—swore!—to myself that I was done with you. And it kills me that”—she looks inadvertently over to the bar, in the direction Elisa went—“that you’re already looking for the Next Thing. That you weren’t even present enough in our relationship to be sad when you thought I was gone.”
“I was sad,” Billy says, miserably. “Really fucking sad.”
“Well,” Denver says, with a note of bitterness, “then maybe there’s hope.”
Billy remembers an old joke out of Kafka: There is hope. Plenty of hope. An infinitude of hope. But not for us.
And that’s when Anil and the Ghoul show up.
“Billy Ridgeway, man of the hour,” says Anil, clapping Billy on the back.
“Explain to me why you don’t have a drink in your hand right now,” says the Ghoul.
“Hey, guys,” Billy says.
“Hey, Denver,” Anil says. He looks back and forth between Billy and Denver, evidently trying to assess the state of the dynamic. “Um, am I interrupting?”
“No, it’s okay,” Billy says. “Pull up some chairs.” There will be time—he hopes—to continue this conversation with Denver later. There are times when privacy is crucial, and, yes, being in the middle of a tense conversation with an estranged loved one is usually an indicator that you’re experiencing one of those times, but Billy really believes that if you’re about to get up on stage you shouldn’t turn away even a single friend who wants to be by your side. He glances at Denver to see if she’s okay with it. Her face bears a practiced blankness, but he catches sight of something un-consoled floating into the depths of her head, where he cannot reach it.
Shit, he thinks.
Everybody looks at one another, deep in their respective bubbles of social calculation, trying to figure out what to say next.
“I am buying you a drink,” the Ghoul says, and he slouches off into the darkness.
“So,” Billy says to Anil, eager to get a conversation—any conversation—off the ground. “You just get off work?”
“Yeah,” Anil says. “And let me tell you. That place.” And he’s off, telling a story about the latest wackiness to go down at the sandwich shop, Giorgos getting into it with some customer. Denver listens, cracks a fake smile—to front like she’s okay, Billy intuits—and then eventually Anil’s patter wins her over, and a real smile replaces the fake one. It’s the first real smile Billy’s seen on her in a long time. He’s glad to see it, even if it breaks his heart a little to know that he wasn’t the one to pull it out of her. She ends up telling a story, too, about the baroque anthrax paranoias held by one of her old bosses, the guy who supervised her in the hospital mailroom when she was employed there as a glorified letter-opener, in those days right after 9/11, when everything had seemed so fucked.
The Ghoul returns, putting a pint of ale in Billy’s hand, and in turn tells a story about one of his old bosses. Denver throws her head back and laughs her loveliest laugh and the reaction even gets a rare, thin smile out of the Ghoul. And for a blissfully unbroken stretch of time—maybe fifteen minutes—Billy feels like his life is normal, like everything is going to be okay.
And then Billy’s phone starts vibrating. He pulls it out of his pocket and sees that it’s his dad again. What is this, three times in as many days? A troubled expression clouds Billy’s face. The others, still clowning with one another, don’t notice. Something could really be wrong. It occurs to him, with a dollop of alarm, that he still hasn’t listened to either of the previous voice mails his father left. He imagines taking the call, screwing a finger in his ear so he could hear his dad over the dull clamor of bar noise; he imagines getting up, taking the phone outside, having a conversation on the curb. Either way he knows that it would pull him out of the pleasurable little pocket-universe that he’s been enjoying. He likes it in here, in the world where it seems like everything is going to be okay, where there are no family emergencies to worry about. But he makes a promise to himself to listen to the voice mails on the way home after the reading. Or if he’s too drunk, or it’s too late, or if he needs that time to sort things out with Denver, then he’ll listen to the messages in the morning, before he has to drag his ass off to work. Any emergency can wait until then. He feels certain of it.
He’s trying to get back into the rhythm of the conversation when they’re joined by Laurent, the editor in chief of The Ingot, the guy who organized the reading. Laurent is a pale Glaswegian whose freckles and curly sprawl of red hair make it difficult for Billy to imagine him as any older than fifteen. He swims within a massive, cable-knit roll-neck sweater which provides probably half of his mass.
“Glad you could make it; glad you could make it,” he says, pumping Billy’s hand with enthusiasm.
“Oh, sure,” says Billy. He still hasn’t come up with a story to tell, and the realization that he still has to triggers a sudden unpleasant tightening in his scrotum. “I … wouldn’t have missed it.”
“Wonderful. Listen, I think we’re going to get started in about five minutes. We’re going to have you go first, then a short break, and then we’ll have Elisa go.”
“Okay,” Billy says, falsely. A thin line of sweat breaks out on his forehead. “Great.”
Laurent claps Billy on both shoulders. “It’s good to have you here. On board.”
Billy forces a smile, and waits for Laurent to remove his hands. The moment lasts a little longer than it should, and Laurent’s face turns somber.
“I wanted to apologize,” he says. “About the—the thing.”
“The thing?” Billy says.
“You know,” Laurent says. “The unpleasantness.”
“The Bladed—”<
br />
“Yes. Don’t even say it. I can’t even stand the name of the thing.”
“Don’t worry about it. It doesn’t matter,” Billy lies. “It’s just one write-up; it doesn’t define the evening. It seems like we got a good crowd anyway.”
“True, true,” says Laurent. His hands are still on Billy’s shoulders. “It’s just—Thanks for the invite, Ingot, but we find ourselves in a position where we must decline. It’s galling.”
“Whatever,” says Billy, eager to end this. “I wouldn’t really have wanted him here anyway. If he steers clear then so be it.”
“Well, that’s the thing,” says Laurent. “He didn’t steer clear. That’s him, right over there.”
He releases Billy’s shoulders at last and points. Everyone’s eyes follow. Sure enough, standing alone, with his back against the deep purple wall of the bar, a tall figure with a slate-gray shirt and a mandarin collar, idly reviewing items in a steno notebook. Billy looks at the bony face; the heavy brow; the thick, bookish eyeglasses made out of some kind of horn; the expression of faint boredom; and he thinks one word: enemy.
“I’m not sure why he came,” Laurent says, “but I know you’re going to prove him wrong.”
“Uhhh,” Billy says. “Yes. Yes, I will prove him wrong.”
“I want you to know,” Laurent says, “that here at The Ingot we really appreciate and believe in your work.”
“Um, okay,” Billy says. It actually does still mean something to hear somebody say that. He takes the words and mentally fashions them into a tiny badge of honor, which he fastens invisibly over his heart.
“Five minutes,” Laurent says. He checks his watch. “Well, three. Okay?”
“Okay,” Billy says.
“So that’s Anton Cirrus,” Anil says, as Laurent heads off toward the stage.
The Weirdness Page 9
