by Adam Felber
It was too crowded to go out there. But it was meat. And he was so very, very hungry.
The bar at the Charles Hotel is not the kind of establishment that is frequented by postcollegiate, indie-rock-and-vintage-clothing, liberal-minded, somewhat unfocused youths. But it seems appropriate on this night.
The room, a spacious yet cozy symphony of golds and browns, is dimly lit and speaks unabashedly of class. Speaks a bit too loudly of it, in fact—it seems to be the watering-hole equivalent of a New Money couple trying too hard to be mistaken for Old Money, a room very self-consciously at ease with its splendor. Still, it’s comfortable and quiet, and the overpriced drinks are at least generously sized.
Johnny, Arlene, Grant, and Deborah are there because they’re celebrating their escape. Or celebrating something else. Mainly, they had silently agreed to go somewhere that would contain absolutely no one they knew. They’ve found a comfortable table, they’ve ordered drinks, and somehow Johnny has snagged a box of those small red plastic swizzle sticks, which he’s playing with as they talk.
They are having one of those earnest, open conversations that Johnny’s been increasingly fond of lately—sharing their thoughts, dreams, desires, problems, and ambitions, each taking a turn, with very few humorous interruptions, going around and around the tiny table that holds their drinks. They’re being particularly honest, partly because they’re not really listening to themselves or one another.
Grant would like to fly a plane. Deb would like to skydive. Arlene would like to visit China. Johnny would like a sundae that always replenished itself so that it was never empty.
Arlene needs to stop thinking about herself all the time—self-awareness is killing her. Grant needs to say what he’s thinking. Deb needs to find new strategies to avoid hurting people. Johnny needs to learn how to do magic.
Grant thinks the world can be completely fixed by erasing all religious and ethnic identities. Arlene favors complete and total disarmament (moments later, she recognizes the paradox of trying to enforce this, and she badly wants to take her answer back). Deb advocates the massive worldwide distribution of (good) food, (attractive, figure-flattering) clothing, and (airy, livable) shelter. Johnny doesn’t understand the question.
Deb’s ideal partner would never lose interest—obviously, she doesn’t mean in her, just in general. Arlene’s looking for perfect mutual admiration and an unfailingly cute ass. Grant … needs to say what he’s thinking. But doesn’t. Johnny doesn’t particularly care who the person is. Arlene hits him for this. Johnny likes that.
And so on. Grant notices that his martini is remaining very cold. Soon he sees that stuck at the bottom of the glass is a “Schrödinger’s Humdinger,” the giant molecule that Leonora had shown him. It is apparently keeping the drink cold. Grant wonders how that could possibly work.
Their discussion is lightening up a bit. Deb chafes her arms and mentions that the air-conditioning is turned up too high. Grant, breathing deeply, idly says, “I like it.”
“Of course you do—it lets you see Deb’s nips,” says Arlene. At the moment she says this, Grant is indeed staring directly at Deb’s blouse. He’s busted, big-time, and somehow he’s able to laugh along with everyone, raising his hand to acknowledge the foul. He takes in Deb’s friendly wink, Johnny’s helpless laughter, Arlene’s happiness at having scored such a big point. The room is brighter, the overly serious air of their discussion dissipates, the conversation easily passes to a recapitulation of their Great Escape complete with embellishments, accusations, and insults, and everything is momentarily loud, kinetic, and hilarious.
Deb falls suddenly silent, a quizzical expression on her face, her head tilted to the side. When Grant and Arlene notice this, they follow her gaze to Johnny. In front of Johnny is a fantastic wire-frame figure he’s idly constructed out of a few dozen swizzle sticks. It looks like a simple house, or maybe a church. But after a moment they begin to see the truly odd thing about it: The tiny straws don’t appear to be threaded through one another. They just appear to be balanced.
Grant’s first thought is that the swizzle sticks have been joined by melting the ends and sticking them together before they cooled. That’s how he would’ve done it. But it doesn’t look that way. Acting for Arlene and Deb, he slowly extends a finger toward the construct, just barely touching the north side of the miniature, elegant steeple….
Instantly the church collapses, the sticks falling to the table as though they’d been hovering in thin air. A messy pile of swizzle sticks lies on the table in front of Johnny. Johnny giggles and raises his hand, as though he’s been caught staring at somebody’s nipples.
The others don’t laugh. The room is suddenly cold again. The voices from other tables, the smell of food and smoke, the shadows that move around the room are all assaults from Outside, unwelcome reminders of how porous their little world is. They’re suffused by the feeling of waking up too early in an unfamiliar house, hearing inchoate voices and activities downstairs, trying to get back to sleep, and knowing that it’s impossible.
The President of Montana (hehe) couldn’t believe the Bow and Arrow was still there.
Always an anomaly, the bar was somehow necessary to the life of Harvard Square. It was downscale to the extreme: a place that steadfastly refused to take on any piece of pretension or chic. A bar bar, a place to drink cheap beer, catch the game, play darts or pinball, or just watch an alcoholic in the corner pissing away what remained of his life. In short, a bar that would have been completely unremarkable almost anywhere else in the world.
It was full of bikers and locals, mainly. A few students who’d come to Boston without any desire to have their ideas about bars redefined. The universal rules of American bars applied here as nowhere else in the vicinity. As such, it made both components of the PoM(h), the Montana one and the recently reawakened youth, very comfortable.
He watched a silent broadcast of the news as he sat at the bar. The standoff back home did not appear to be making headlines anymore. The last time he’d seen the news (back in Elmira, New York, forty-eight hours ago), his rebellion was still a somewhat hot story. Had something happened? Had nothing happened? He felt a slight surge of relief—he’d’ve heard if there’d been a Waco, it’d still be a hot topic. And the lack of a story meant that nobody at this bar would see that photo of him they’d been using. Sure, it didn’t look too much like him anymore, but it still had made him worry, and now he sank into a grateful feeling of deeper anonymity. Just an older man at a bar, having a drink, half watching the Red Sox cling desperately to first place as the inevitable fall fall approached … a guy nobody knows, soaking up the atmosphere and moving invisibly along … removed from the world of emotional and circumstantial attachments that turns a two-legged hairless ape into a storytelling drama machine …
“Earl?” said a voice to the President’s left. “Earl!? Is that you?”
Act v Scene i—A tavern near the college
(President, Muldower, Innkeeper)
MULDOWER: Earl, I say. ’Tis thee, is’t not? ‘Pon my life! Gentle Earl!
PRESIDENT: No earl am I, good sir, but a man of common blood.
MULDOWER: Nay, sirrah; Earl thou art, and President, too.
PRESIDENT: Marry, sir, but ’tis a paradox! For the titles do conflict, blood and ballots, and thus offer proof of thy confusion.
MULDOWER: You make sport of me, sir.
PRESIDENT: And why not? If thou wouldst make an earl of me, then ’twould be impolite to make nothing of thee.
MULDOWER: Ah, I see it now, your wit doth serve as cover for your fear.
PRESIDENT: As your wig doth for your pate, sir. Though more subtly than that.
MULDOWER: Another barb! Could it be thou knowest me not? ’Tis I, good Earl!
PRESIDENT: Your visage has no twin in the catalogue of my thoughts, sir.
MULDOWER: Ah, but if thou searchest amidst catalogues, thou dost search aright, for ’twas ’twixt tomes that we did meet!
> PRESIDENT: ’Twixt tomes? A curious phrase indeed, and cumbersome withal. Dost thou mean we met ’mongst books?
MULDOWER: Just so, m’lord. Though an age hath passed and cruel Time hath pinched our faces and stretched our middles, still I remember thee. For oft thou didst sing, “Hope I die afore I get old,” and I with thee, and yet stand we here, those insolent bars blessedly unfulfilled.
PRESIDENT: Muldower? Gentle Muldower?
MULDOWER: Twice true, good sir, ’tis I.
PRESIDENT: Zounds! Twenty times has our blue sphere made full orbit round Apollo’s bright bauble ere I saw thee last!
MULDOWER: More, m’lord, still more. How do you fare?
PRESIDENT: How do I fare? Fie! Thou knowest that from others, I’ll warrant.
MULDOWER: Aye, there has been much said.
PRESIDENT: And more shall be said here. But stay! I’ll buy ye a pot of ale and learn of thee as well. Innkeeper! Fetch this graying cur more of his meat, there’s a good man. So how now, gentle Muldower? Whither hast thou traveled?
MULDOWER: Everywhere and nowhere, my good companion. For, though I have like a morning sprite skittered o’er dewdrops to greet all the world’s dawns, always hath my compass led me here, to this place, where still I pore ’mongst the texts, though now the pupil hath become the master.
PRESIDENT: Thou teachest? I should have guessed it. Lectureth thou ’pon the high arts or the low law, noble Muldower?
MULDOWER: A law of sorts, if you will, though a high one. And small.
PRESIDENT: You speak in riddles.
MULDOWER: Precisely, thou hast it!
PRESIDENT: A lecturer in riddles, then?
MULDOWER: Verily, though the riddles be all of a kind.
PRESIDENT: In what sphere?
MULDOWER: That smallest of spheres, m’lord. The atom. For I have made of my days the study of that which is unseen, yet seen by all. Through this tiniest of doorways have I sought entry into heaven, and have been rewarded with some small glimpses.
PRESIDENT: Thou lecturest upon physics! A scholar! Bravely done, good Muldower.
MULDOWER: Aye, ’tis a living and doth offer some rewards. Some most curious, in fact, if this very afternoon be counted ’mongst them.
PRESIDENT: What reward didst thou receive this day?
MULDOWER: A questionable one, my lord, and one which I am loath to speak of, for its providence be uncertain and passing strange.
PRESIDENT: Nay, shy thee not from the tale, friend. Though we have long been apart, mark you; we have trod the streets hand in hand, and together oft did suck smoke from Pan’s other, unmusical pipe. Speak thee, I pray!
MULDOWER:
I will tell thee, tho’ a strange and sordid tale it be:
This weekend day did dawn so bright and fair,
And lacking work did I thus venture out
‘Pon that two-wheeled chariot so favored in these climes.
Thus my day I spent in idle thought,
And rested ’pon the grassy, sheltered lawns
Where soon the urgent students shall return;
They now lie richer for their fallowness.
And there, with lids drawn o’er my weary eyes,
Did I feel two eyes upon me on the Quad.
And, gazing there toward this prickling feel,
Did I behold the sight I now report:
’Twas a woman, though not one known to me.
She was clad in vile rags of garish hues,
And her eyes alight with humors mad and strange.
She did know me, I know not how this was
(Though, certes, in certain circles I am known).
Her voice, cracked and agéd, called my name,
Which sounded on her lips too familiar
By half. No sooner had I met her eyes
Than did she hoist in hoary hands her filthy skirts
And reveal neither bloomer nor petticoat,
But the naked folded proof of womanhood
That ’twixt less ruined limbs would stir one’s lust.
Then, waiting not for my reeling mind to unbend,
The cackling crone did crow and drop her skirts
And flee, vanishing like the very ghoul she seemed.
PRESIDENT: Gads, good sir! But what a tale thou hast told!
MULDOWER: Verily, my friend, would that it were the tale.
PRESIDENT: There is more to’t?
MULDOWER: Aye, the tale’s tail, though it wag the body with its import. And yet I am loath to speak of what I did see there betwixt her thighs.
PRESIDENT: Wherefore, good Muldower? Surely thou hast come this far—unburden thyself! What didst thou see there?
MULDOWER: Her nether hair, m’lord, or its lack, did disturb and puzzle me. For ’twas shaved, m’lord, though not gone. Rather, it did present to the world … a shape, if this thou canst credit.
PRESIDENT: Gentle Muldower, though I have passed many moons in Montana’s mundane milieu, am I not still a man of worldly knowledge? Shy thee not from ’t! For e’en I have heard of “Cupid’s Topiary,” long favored by the decadent and fine. Come! What form did it take? A heart, mayhap? A devil’s horns, perchance?
MULDOWER: No, m’lord, but stranger still.
For there upon the low-peak’d mount of Venus
Was there carved in detail beyond precedent
A spiral, lord, seemingly alive
And wound around another spiral still.
This twisting shape I’ll guess you know is one
That we of science call the helix doubled,
That form ’pon which life’s race is run,
And thus the sight did leave me pale and troubled.
PRESIDENT: A double helix, you say? How bravely done!
MULDOWER: And skillfully, good Earl! For the job could not have been easily done!
PRESIDENT: True, true.
MULDOWER: Why, e’en down as low as sight could see, still did the serpentine shape assert itself.
PRESIDENT: Thou shudderest, Muldower.
MULDOWER: And yet I am impressed. And, yet again, confused. Her meaning, if there be one, doth escape me.
PRESIDENT: Lookest thou not at me, good friend, for I fathom this not. But this I know: We men do circle round women all our lives, and they round us. And yet Time moveth on, bearing us with it. And so are our circles never closed e’en as we make ’em, but instead describe that same spiral, doubled.
MULDOWER: Wisely said, m’lord, and graphable withal. Yet as devoid of apparent meaning as was e’er your wont.
PRESIDENT: Fie upon thee, knave! Ho-ho! But it is good to see thee! Innkeeper, why laggest thou? Seest thou not that we die of thirst?
INNKEEPER: ’Tis ’gainst my judgment….
MULDOWER: Then keep thy judgment sealed along with thy lips, saucy servant! Serve on!
PRESIDENT: Well spoken, gentle friend!
MULDOWER: I thank thee. But what of thee, m’lord? Thou didst disappear from men’s sight lo this sevenday, and are hunted by many, yet thou seemest well.
PRESIDENT: ’Tis true, ’tis true. For ’pon my escape ’twas as if my clouded mind, once fraught with fear and heavy suspicion, did clear like the sky after a March squall, and all that had seemed devilish and dire did lose its particular terror.
MULDOWER: How now, then? Hath our mutinous Montana man recanted?
PRESIDENT: E’en so. At the very fruition of my goals did it all seem a sudden folly, the rebellion ’gainst my rebellion a welcome one, and now my dearest wish is but for the safety of those unfortunates who didst follow my unlawful lead.
MULDOWER: Thy wish? Could it be that thou hast not heard?
PRESIDENT: Heard what, good friend? Is there news from the west? I pray thee, if thou knowest, speak!
MULDOWER: Why, ’twas a story of the greatest significance, sirrah, but a sunrise ago. ’Twas above the fold. Thou sawest not?
PRESIDENT: Nay, I have told thee, knave, for I have been in flight! Speak, I command it, speak! How far
es my lady? Has dire calamity lowered its hand ’pon my flock? Speak!
MULDOWER: Gentle, my Lord, and I will tell thee as I heard it….
’Twas yesterday, when all seemed darkest for thy friends
And the very wind did whisper “Waco” withal,
That the doubled rebellion was of a sudden trebled,
And your usurper did find himself alone.
PRESIDENT: Alone? What massacre led to that turn?
MULDOWER: Not a massacre, m’lord, but an exodus!
For his unyielding resolve extended not
Beyond his own hand, and your erstwhile
Friends did beg surrender, yet he would not yield.
Yesterday did dawn so clear and cool,
And thy usurper Dix awoke alone
To find no soul within your rough-made home.
In darkness fled the throng he had commanded
To find succor in the bosom of the law,
All broken their rebellion and resolve,
And happy yet, they seemed, to the man.
PRESIDENT: The Lord be thanked for that. That blood was not spilt doth warm my thawing heart.
MULDOWER: Ah, would that this were true, m’lord.
PRESIDENT: How now? What transpired? Tell me, knave! How fares my lady?
MULDOWER: Gentle, good m’lord, for she lives. The blood that spilled was not hers. Rest, I shall inform thee:
’Pon discovering betrayal in his ranks,
And finding naught but shadows in his corps,
Still Dix did not a swift surrender make.
E’en still he held himself against the tide,