brandy. Max lights a bowl and we pass it back and forth. Everyone has a touch of the Sunday joneses, thinking about all the things they have to do in the upcoming work-week. Les is starting a new play. Max plugs back into his Cosmodemonic duties. Sam’s temping, she’s a receptionist at an “architorture” firm.
“Temping’s great,” she says. “You only work as long as you want to, and you can stay out of office politics.”
“Just make sure your temp doesn’t turn into a perm,” I tell her.
“She may need to get a perm just to keep her temp job,” Max puts in.
“Hilarious,” Sam says sarcastically, then turns to me. “So: what are you going to do, Dave?”
The dreaded question. However, I’ve been thinking about it. Over the last 24 hours it’s been in development, and I think I’ve come up with a slightly better answer than: Duh, just write, I guess.
“I’m going to try to earn a living as a ‘freelancer.’”
“No,” Sam says. “I meant: where are you going to stay?”
“Oh. Dad’s. At least until I can find something better.”
“Nonsense. He’s going to stay at my place,” Les says.
Silence on all sides greets this bolt from the blue. I don’t know who’s more flabbergasted: me, Max, Sam, or Les herself.
“Why not?” Les asks, as if someone had raised an objection. “My apartment’s small, but technically it’s a two-bedroom. It’ll be good for me, too. We can split the rent.”
Max is on his feet, pacing back and forth in front of the fire.
“Les, you have no idea what you’re getting yourself into. He’s helpless, he’s a dreamer. Every morning, you’re going to have to pin a note on his shirt saying, ‘If lost, please return to 320 Howland Avenue.’”
“That’s nonsense. He can take care of himself, if he has to. He can write magazine articles. The main thing is, he can’t live with his father. It would destroy him —
as an artist.”
This was the longest string of sentences I’d ever heard from Les. Max shrugs. Everyone turns to look at me.
“Les, it’s a lovely offer. I really appreciate it,” I said. “And I accept.”
To this day, I don’t know why she made me that offer. If I’m honest with myself, I suppose I should face the fact that pity probably entered the formula somewhere. But she was right: staying with Dad would have been a killer. How could I explain to him the thought that was beginning to germinate in my brain, a thought which he would have exterminated as a noxious weed, namely, that sometimes you have to fail before you can succeed? That sometimes you have to sink beneath the waves, go gurgling to the bottom of the sea, down to Davey Jones’s locker, and settle there, fish and octopi darting in and out of your barnacled ribs, until people no longer ask how’s Dave these days, until they just shake their head and keep mum. You have to come to a point where, like an Oscar Wilde character, when people ask you what you do for a living, you can say, with perfect equanimity: “Nothing, I’m afraid.”
A notion I remain fully convinced of to this day. Still, it’s a difficult thought to explain, wouldn’t you agree — to a father?
6
Les, and the ’Rents
I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it before but I’m a big man, 6′5″, 225 pounds, a Gentile giant, and I bear my outsize bulk around the world with neither poise nor grace. I’m very clumsy, forever treading on people’s toes, wringing bloodcurdling cries of pain from their lips, sitting in chairs and “two-dimensionalizing” them. Things crumble, tear, shatter, and snap in my great clumsy paws. At a party, someone will pass me a family heirloom, I’ll murmur “how interesting,” and the next thing you know the hostess is in tears in the bedroom.
Well, one look at Les’s dollhouse apartment, with its toy furniture, rattan chairs, antiques, framed pictures, knick-knacks, curios, and, I swear to God, a glass menagerie, and I knew I was in trouble. Gingerly, I
“Temping’s great,” she says. “You only work as long as you want to, and you can stay out of office politics.”
“Just make sure your temp doesn’t turn into a perm,” I tell her.
“She may need to get a perm just to keep her temp job,” Max puts in.
“Hilarious,” Sam says sarcastically, then turns to me. “So: what are you going to do, Dave?”
The dreaded question. However, I’ve been thinking about it. Over the last 24 hours it’s been in development, and I think I’ve come up with a slightly better answer than: Duh, just write, I guess.
“I’m going to try to earn a living as a ‘freelancer.’”
“No,” Sam says. “I meant: where are you going to stay?”
“Oh. Dad’s. At least until I can find something better.”
“Nonsense. He’s going to stay at my place,” Les says.
Silence on all sides greets this bolt from the blue. I don’t know who’s more flabbergasted: me, Max, Sam, or Les herself.
“Why not?” Les asks, as if someone had raised an objection. “My apartment’s small, but technically it’s a two-bedroom. It’ll be good for me, too. We can split the rent.”
Max is on his feet, pacing back and forth in front of the fire.
“Les, you have no idea what you’re getting yourself into. He’s helpless, he’s a dreamer. Every morning, you’re going to have to pin a note on his shirt saying, ‘If lost, please return to 320 Howland Avenue.’”
“That’s nonsense. He can take care of himself, if he has to. He can write magazine articles. The main thing is, he can’t live with his father. It would destroy him —
as an artist.”
This was the longest string of sentences I’d ever heard from Les. Max shrugs. Everyone turns to look at me.
“Les, it’s a lovely offer. I really appreciate it,” I said. “And I accept.”
To this day, I don’t know why she made me that offer. If I’m honest with myself, I suppose I should face the fact that pity probably entered the formula somewhere. But she was right: staying with Dad would have been a killer. How could I explain to him the thought that was beginning to germinate in my brain, a thought which he would have exterminated as a noxious weed, namely, that sometimes you have to fail before you can succeed? That sometimes you have to sink beneath the waves, go gurgling to the bottom of the sea, down to Davey Jones’s locker, and settle there, fish and octopi darting in and out of your barnacled ribs, until people no longer ask how’s Dave these days, until they just shake their head and keep mum. You have to come to a point where, like an Oscar Wilde character, when people ask you what you do for a living, you can say, with perfect equanimity: “Nothing, I’m afraid.”
A notion I remain fully convinced of to this day. Still, it’s a difficult thought to explain, wouldn’t you agree — to a father?
6
Les, and the ’Rents
I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it before but I’m a big man, 6′5″, 225 pounds, a Gentile giant, and I bear my outsize bulk around the world with neither poise nor grace. I’m very clumsy, forever treading on people’s toes, wringing bloodcurdling cries of pain from their lips, sitting in chairs and “two-dimensionalizing” them. Things crumble, tear, shatter, and snap in my great clumsy paws. At a party, someone will pass me a family heirloom, I’ll murmur “how interesting,” and the next thing you know the hostess is in tears in the bedroom.
Well, one look at Les’s dollhouse apartment, with its toy furniture, rattan chairs, antiques, framed pictures, knick-knacks, curios, and, I swear to God, a glass menagerie, and I knew I was in trouble. Gingerly, I
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