by Tommy Butler
Directly beneath each of these brilliant curios is a throng of travelers. They swarm and squeeze and jostle, leaping for the light. They bellow challenges and vent supplications. Though their clamor is passionate, there is no ferocity in it, only a collective, joyful yearning. You haven’t a clue what it is they think they’re doing.
“Bidding,” says Merriam. “This is the Auction. They’re bidding for lives.” Each of the gleaming curios, she explains, is a life yet to be lived, a journey yet to be ventured, awarded in the Auction to whichever traveler desires it most deeply.
You look closer, peering more intently into the dance of each curio until you can make out, in precise detail from beginning to end, the measure of the life within. Some are shorter, some longer, some front-loaded with joy and ending in sadness, others strung with years of injustice before culminating in bittersweet redemption. The variations are infinite, yet not a single life is without its assemblage of petitioners. Nearest to you—shaped like a hornet’s nest and pulsing with red-and-gold light—is an unequivocal train wreck of an existence, littered with poor decisions, bad breaks, and tragedies ill prepared for. Yet the press of travelers beneath it is as vibrant as any other, the journey no less desired for its ruinous run of misfortune.
“Why are they bidding on that one?” you ask.
“Why wouldn’t they?” asks Jollis.
“It just looks so . . . hard,” you say. “Wouldn’t they rather have the easiest, most successful lives?”
Jollis shrugs. “Who can say? Some do bid on so-called charmed existences. But perhaps a traveler recalls a life of ease that was utterly spiritless, and now longs for one of meaning through hardship. Or a journey without tragedy that ended up feeling superficial, leading them to crave one of loss and depth.” Jollis gestures toward the life shaped like a hornet’s nest. The bidding for it has grown more frenzied, and the pulsing of its red-and-gold light quickens in response. “Or maybe a traveler is fresh off a life of great achievement, plagued by even greater anxiety,” says Jollis, “so that they seek one of failure, devoid of expectations.”
Jollis’s reasoning is unusual, yet somehow compelling. In fact, even as he speaks, your gaze is drawn to a life off to your left that you find oddly appealing—a green and glittery thing, shaped like a violin, in which a particularly disastrous choice leads to all sorts of mayhem. Still, there seems to be a flaw in Jollis’s logic.
“But I’d just avoid it all,” you say. “The mishaps, the bad decisions. Knowing the consequences, I’d just make different choices.”
Jollis shakes this off. “After the Auction, just before you are born, comes the Fugue. It erases any memory of the life to be lived, and even the fact that you chose it.”
Merriam nods. “It’s the only way the whole thing works.”
“So my choices aren’t really choices,” you say. “I’d be going through motions that are already determined. I just wouldn’t realize it.”
“No,” says Jollis. “Your decisions in the life are real, original. The fact that we see them here doesn’t change the fact that you make them. You are entirely free to decide otherwise. You just don’t.”
“Then is the life made, or do I make it?”
“Yes.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“Sometimes you have to abandon sense for truth,” says Merriam.
A cheer is raised among the travelers nearest you. The auction for the hornet’s nest has been completed. The winner is congratulated by the others, no soreness or envy to be found. You see, too, that the green and glittery violin has also been awarded. No matter. With a boundless menu from which to choose, you feel certain you’ll find a life you like. Or don’t like, that is, depending on what you’re looking for.
“When you’re ready, the Fugue is that way,” says Merriam, pointing. “But if you’re so inclined, there’s a training arena over there. It’s a beautiful facility.”
“Training for what?”
“For your life.”
“Why bother training if I’m just going to forget it all?”
Jollis glances at Merriam. “Some travelers say the Fugue is imperfect,” he says. “Others believe that you keep the traits you train for, even if you forget the training itself.”
“Like muscle memory?”
Jollis shrugs again. It occurs to you that much of this is a mystery even to him and Merriam. You consider again the Door of Wonders, the ardent assemblages of travelers, the infinite matrix of curious lives, shining like so many stars in the sky.
“So I won’t remember any of this?”
“For all intents and purposes, no.”
You nod. Merriam and Jollis warned you that things would get confusing, and they have. Still, nothing you’ve been told makes you want to turn aside now. As your gaze circles back to Merriam and Jollis, there’s just one last thing that troubles you.
“Will I remember you?”
“I’m afraid not,” says Merriam, smiling sadly. “But don’t worry. We’ll see you again.”
Elliot
(2000)
New York City. The far edge of December. The first heavy snow of the season is falling—wide, soft flakes, each one intricate and symmetrical. Like the pictures you see of snowflakes in books. Like the way you think snowflakes ought to be.
I step out the front door of my building and pause for a moment, suspended in the cold, windless air. Dense clouds and the wintry tilt of the earth conspire to cast the morning in a twilight that will linger all day, until time itself becomes indeterminate. The snow descends with a leisurely nonchalance, belying the swiftness with which it blankets the city. As the inches accumulate, ordinary sights and sounds disappear—parked cars become hillocks, pedestrians retreat into electric-lighted burrows, even the buildings largely vanish in the mist. The whiteness is so otherworldly, I hesitate to label it white at all. They say the Inuit peoples of the North have fifty words for snow. I think they would need to invent another, were they to experience this winterbound Manhattan.
Normally, I would venture out into this frozen world while it lasts, before New York feels the storm waning and bullies its way out of its forced hibernation. Once the plows and cabs and plodding feet reawaken, the brilliant white will deteriorate into a ponderous gray slush, flecked with soot and car exhaust, threatening to flood your shoes at every puddled intersection. There is little time—hours, at most—in which to wander the fleeting wonderland, to trek the exposed spine of Sixth Avenue as if you were the last sojourner on earth, marveling at the silence of a city that is finally, mercifully, asleep. Or to peer upward with your mouth agape, endeavoring to distinguish the falling flakes from the backdrop of cloud, in the hope of catching one on your tongue. I’m always amazed by the emptiness, by the realization that no one else chooses to immerse themselves in the spectacle. (I once thought I saw a cross-country skier on the West Side Highway. The distant figure, blurred by the falling snow, appeared to stop and wave to me before passing away. By the time I reached the spot where I thought the skier had stood, there were no tracks left, and I can’t be sure it wasn’t just a dream I had.)
But I do not venture into the ephemeral this morning. Instead, I raise a shovel and clear a path through the snow—down the steps and across the sidewalk to the base of the ginkgo tree—so that Jennifer’s Chihuahua can take a shit.
I say “Jennifer’s Chihuahua” because it was Jennifer who one day brought him home and informed me that he was staying. She, however, refers to him as ours—or as Henri, which is what she named him. I initially found this funny, since it seemed the kind of name you’d give a French poodle rather than a Mexican Chihuahua. The irony was lost on Jennifer, though, who decided she liked the name after hearing it on her favorite sitcom. I’m not sure how Henri feels about it. I thought about calling him Enrique, but I didn’t want to confuse him, and who am I to stereotype him anyway? Maybe he identifies as French. After getting to know him better, I now believe that he has something of the artist
in him—the expressive pouts, the fits of delight, the flair and variety of his poops at the ginkgo tree. I’ve decided to pretend that he was named after the famous French painter, and will even call him Matisse now and then, to which he responds with a look of curious annoyance.
I’ve tried to point out Henri’s aesthetic disposition to Jennifer, but she doesn’t see it. “He’s a dog, Elliot,” she says, quite accurately.
“But he’s so expressive,” I say. “Look at his face.”
She laughs. “He probably has to go potty.”
“What about the fact that he refuses to wear the blue sweater you got him, but is okay with the red one?”
“Dogs can’t see red,” says Jennifer.
“Or the way he’ll just stop and stare at some random object?” I say. “As if he’s studying it for a portrait or something?”
“He’s probably trying to figure out the best way to hump it.”
There’s no convincing her, but it no longer surprises me that I might know Henri better than Jennifer does. Arguably, based on the amount of time spent with him, Henri has become not Jennifer’s dog, nor ours, but mine. Jennifer has been working more than ever, and neither Henri nor I have seen all that much of her. Today she even bucked her lawyer’s trend of sleeping late, leaving for the office before dawn in order to get there ahead of the storm. That it may now prevent her from coming back home is a thought that I suppose didn’t occur to her.
For several reasons, I’ve accepted both Henri’s arrival and the burden of caring for him without complaint. First, I’ve grown quite fond of the little French Mexican. After several months of scraping food into his bowl, curling up on the couch with him, and scooping up his stylish turds, I believe we’ve formed a bond, even if he categorically rejects my attempts to train him to do anything else. (“I am an artist!” I can almost hear him say.) Second, next to the odd blizzard, Henri is the best excuse I have for going in to work late, or leaving early, both of which I’ve been doing more of recently. Dogs aren’t allowed at the office—an exclusionary policy of which Henri disapproves, as evidenced by the pool of urine he leaves on the kitchen floor every Monday afternoon. (“An artist!”)
But the primary reason I’ve embraced Jennifer’s dog is because Jennifer asked me to (sort of)—and because, ever since Sasha berated me for wanting to kill myself, I’ve been thinking a lot about selflessness. Not that Sasha’s intervention actually changed my mind, or magically sutured the stubborn and inscrutable rift in my heart. Had Sasha not taken the revolver with her when she left, I can’t say that I wouldn’t have picked it right back up again. Yet her accusation of selfishness bothered me far more than my mother’s insinuations of ingratitude ever did, until I began to wonder whether I’d been going about everything all wrong.
I’m trying, then, to forget about “what Elliot wants” or “what Elliot needs.” In other words, and with all due respect to Gareth and his gracious leadership of group, I have stopped trying to grab happiness by the balls. I could never get a firm grip on them anyway, and I’m not sure happiness appreciated my efforts. To paraphrase Sasha, some emotions just aren’t into that kind of thing.
If Jennifer’s Chihuahua represents my first opportunity to practice selflessness, my brother provides the second. After years of hobnobbing, chumming, consorting, and cajoling, Dean finally received an invitation to join an exclusive men’s club in Midtown, complete with smoking room, racquetball courts, Michelin-starred restaurant, and extravagant initiation fee. To celebrate—and, perhaps, legitimize—his inauguration, he promptly started smoking cigars and taking racquetball lessons. After working on his game for months, he’s been pestering me to play, I suspect because he’s now practiced enough to feel certain that he will win. Instinct tells me to avoid this sort of direct contest with my brother, disinterring little league memories of strikeouts and exile. Yet, in deference to my newfound spirit of altruism, I accept.
I played a bit of tennis back in the day, and have exhibited sporadic glimmers of virtuosity at the Ping-Pong table, but I’ve never set foot on a racquetball court. Dean graciously takes it upon himself to introduce me to the sport. In the plush locker room of his club, he outfits me with a brand-new racquet, glove, and goggles to go along with my worn tennis sneakers and gym shorts. A deep-carpeted corridor leads us to a glass wall through which I catch my first glimpse of the court itself—a rectangle of blond hardwood flooring bisected by three red lines, two solid and one dashed. The floor is tightly enclosed by white walls stretching up to a high ceiling. As we slip through the glass into the compressed silence, the door shuts behind us like the seal to an airtight box.
Dean explains the rules of the game while hitting the rubbery blue ball against the far wall. He seems to relish the chance to both display his skills and flaunt a whole new panoply of jargon—hinders and rollouts, plums and splats, three-wall serves and high-lob Z’s. I’m only half listening. Given my lack of experience—and Dean’s recent training—I have no intention of winning, or even trying to. I am more captivated by the spare geometry of the court, by the abrupt, hollow thock of the ball as it strikes the wall, by the whiteness of the wall itself.
No surprise, then, that I lose the first game. I honestly don’t recall having begun it, and am only aware that it’s over when Dean grabs the ball and announces the score.
“That’s game,” he says, almost contritely—struggling, I suspect, to substitute compassion for condescension. “Another one?” he asks, more eagerly.
Our second game unfolds much as our first, though my brother’s ceaseless chatter has evolved from basic explanation to emphatic directive. Some of his tips seem obvious enough—bend your knees, snap your wrist, keep your eye on the ball. Others are more arcane, particularly as Dean continues to brandish his shiny new vernacular. “Pinch!” he yells. “Killshot!” “Dinky-doo!” Whatever it is he’s trying to tell me, Dean himself clearly takes it seriously. Ever the golden retriever, he bounds around the court, earnestly struggling to employ the techniques he’s learned while simultaneously straining against them, as if they were a leash he’s been told is for his own good. His exhortations on proper form are lost on me. If my footwork is shoddy or my elbow flies out, so be it. I let my body do what it wants, my attention rapt by the frantic carom of the ball through all corners of the room, like a proton in a particle accelerator.
It comes as a shock to no one that I lose the second game as well, but as we start the third, a funny thing happens—I get better. My fixation on the bouncing of the ball begins to reveal opportunities for patterns and angles that make the game more beautiful, and also happen to win me points. The match grows competitive. Dean’s deluge of instruction evaporates, replaced by a rising tide of trash talk that would, as they say, make a sailor blush. This surfacing of my old adversary triggers a desire in me to beat him, and our contest grows more heated, hanging in the balance until the last few points, when, pausing to wipe the sweat from my brow, I see that old look of fear on my brother’s face, and remind myself that this was supposed to be about selflessness.
“You played well.” Dean hands me a cigar wrapped in plastic. “Almost took that last game from me.”
Freshly showered, we have retired to the smoking room of Dean’s club. As one does, I suppose. All dark wood and thick Persian rugs, the room is much like an elegant library but for the lack of books and the faint whiff of pretentiousness seeping from the cracked leather of our antique chairs.
“Just lucky,” I say. “I don’t have your skills.”
Dean attempts a modest shrug. “I’m thinking about changing instructors.”
“I like all the ricochets,” I say. “It’s like a subatomic particle.” Dean arches an eyebrow. “I’ve been reading about electrons,” I explain.
“You should take some lessons,” he says. “You could really be good.”
I refrain from pointing out that maybe I already am good, or else maybe Dean himself isn’t. “I don’t know,” I say. “Seems like a l
ot of work. I’ll probably just hack around once in a while.”
Dean frowns. “Remember what Dad used to say—‘Do it well or don’t do it at all.’”
“I remember,” I say, recalling my father’s words but not the context in which he spoke them. “That never made much sense to me.”
Dean’s frown deepens, as if I’ve profaned some sacred gospel. We sink into reticence. It occurs to me that I’ve never simply sat with my brother, alone, for any length of time. The silence grows awkward, until a young woman approaches in a white tuxedo shirt and red bow tie, deftly balancing a serving tray on her fingertips. She sets two glasses of brown liquid on the table between us.
“Here you are, Mr. Chance.” She smiles, turning on her heels before I’ve realized that she was referring to Dean.
“Thank you, Teresa.” My brother ignores the drinks, instead handing me a small metal tool with a circle in the middle where two opposing blades come together. Like a miniature guillotine.
“Snip off the tip,” he says. “One quick motion. Take the plastic off first.”
I do as I’m told, dropping the severed tip of my cigar into a nearby ashtray. Dean does the same, then lights a wooden match and holds it toward me. A vision of Sasha’s Buddhist monk flashes before me. The candle is you. The flame is you. The flame is me.
“Normally, you would never light another man’s cigar,” says Dean. “But we’ll make an exception.” I put the cigar in my mouth and crane forward to hold it over the flame. When I see smoke, I inhale deeply, sending a searing bolt of fire down my throat and into my lungs. I explode in a fit of coughing.
“Jesus, Elliot. Don’t inhale it.”
“What else am I supposed to do with it?”
“Just let the smoke into your mouth and savor it. Then exhale it.”
This seems bizarre to me, like foreplay without the final act, but apparently cigar etiquette is replete with odd customs and practices, which Dean proceeds to expound—don’t hold the cigar in your mouth, do wait until the cigar is warm before removing the label, don’t dip the cigar in alcohol, do let the ash accumulate at the tip of the cigar until it’s about an inch long, then roll it—don’t tap it—into the ashtray. Don’t point with the cigar, or chew on it, or rush it, or smoke more than half of it.
