There's Something I Want You to Do

by Charles Baxter

  “Yes,” Harry said, as the plane bounced around. A woman one row in front of him, on the other side of the aisle, was anxiously reading while holding her husband’s hand. Okay: it was a turbulent flight but not life-threatening. “Could I ask you,” Harry said, turning to his seatmate, “what Schindler was like? Did you ever talk to him?”

  “Talk to him? What a question. No! Never. Don’t be nuts. You didn’t even look at him.”

  “You didn’t look at him?”

  “Of course not. I kept my head down. I could hardly tell you what he looked like. You didn’t look at any of the Germans. If you were smart.”

  “Why not?”

  “Why not? I see you don’t— Well, because. It’s, um. Because obviously. Because you didn’t look at them, Schindler included. Not any of them. You know, I was going to be in that movie. Spielberg, that fellow, not a tall man, flew me to the grave site. In Jerusalem! With the camera set up, shooting, take one take two, I put a stone on the grave, me. Filmed. Lights, camera, action.”

  “Were you—?”

  “I got a good dry-cleaning business in Milwaukee,” the man said. “Several stores. Successful! A new one out in Brookfield, maybe one in Waukesha. We’re looking into it. My life doesn’t depend on being in a Hollywood film. I got left on the floor.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I got left on the floor. What’s the matter? This phrase, you never heard it? When they cut you out?”

  “Oh,” Harry said, “the cutting-room floor. You got left on the cutting-room floor.”

  “This is what I said.”

  “No, you said you got left on the floor. I’m sorry. I didn’t know what floor you were talking about.”

  “What’d you think I was talking about? The second floor, lingerie, where you buy ladies’ undergarments? This is— Well, you’re a kid, no wonder you don’t know anything. So. I went over there, a nice hotel, free food, the Holy Land, Jerusalem, he shoots me, I am directed, but where am I in the film? Nowhere. Not that I mind.”

  “I’m sorry. You should have been in it.”

  “You’re telling me. They flew me to Jerusalem. Coddled, there and back. A seat in first class both ways. So tell me. They don’t want me in their film. What’s wrong with me? My appearance? Anything? No. I don’t think so.”

  Harry looked more carefully at his seatmate’s face, which was of a formidable ugliness. Of course, ugliness was no one’s fault despite what Oscar Wilde had said about the matter. Lowie’s elderly expression was one of sour, downturned-mouth disgust mixed with a very precise rudeness. However, he was a survivor, so hats off.

  “You see anything wrong with my face?” The man was persistent.

  “Not a thing,” Harry Albert said. “Clearly they made a mistake, leaving me on the floor. I mean you. Not me. You. Slip of the tongue.”

  “You, they didn’t leave on the floor. With your looks, a handsome English prince like yourself, they never leave you down there. Guys like you? Always in the movie, upstairs, presidential suite, the best treatment, silk sheets. Palace guard out in front, beefeaters, room service. You, they put in the golden carriage. Horses pull you. People waving, want your autograph. Guys like me, never, unless we fight for it, compete, in a free market. How come therefore they fly me to Jerusalem if they’re only going to waste my time? This remains a puzzle. Even my wife can’t solve it. So why are you flying to Vegas?”

  “A business conference,” Harry Albert said.

  “What do you do?”

  “Manufacturer’s rep. Medical devices.”

  “Well, good. That’s a good business. The economy can never hurt you if you sell to sick people. The sick are always with us, I assure you, Harry Albert. Always will be. A full supply of the sick. Hoards of sick. More of them always, too, including the old, like, what do the kids call them, zombies.”

  “And you?”

  “What about me?”

  “What’re you going to be doing in Vegas?”

  “Oh. Me? I’m meeting my wife. She got there yesterday, a cheaper flight, one night on her own, and she’s been playing the slots. I had work I had to do, talk to a banker here in Minneapolis, therefore I’m leaving today. She’s been playing the slots, did I mention that? And tonight and tomorrow and the next day, we’re going to the shows. The shows in Las Vegas are the best in the world! The nightlife. It’s— Am I explaining? Even a child knows. Do you like nightlife?”

  Harry Albert liked nightlife very much but suddenly felt that a certain tact might be necessary. “Yes,” he said.

  “And the showgirls?”

  “Showgirls? Meh,” Harry Albert said.

  “Meh?”

  “Yeah, meh. I like the costumes sometimes,” Harry Albert said.

  “Costumes, yes, sequins and glitter, but they’re not the point. What’s with the ‘meh,’ if I may ask?”

  “I can explain.”

  “This explanation I would like to hear. Every year, my wife and I go to Vegas. We have fun. We gamble a little, we go to the shows. Performances, by the very best: Wayne Newton, Olivia Newton-John, Sammy Davis Jr. Have you seen him? What a voice! Versatility! Perhaps he has no appeal to English royalty like Prince Albert, but what’s the harm? Okay, so he’s been dead for a while, but my point is: greatness. Also, and I don’t think I mentioned this, the sun. The sun is a prizewinner. Have you ever seen rain in Las Vegas?”

  “No. Never.”

  “Exactly. They’re smart. They have the sun under contract.”

  “And rain?”

  “Rain they don’t employ.”

  “Well, it’s a desert out there,” Harry Albert said.

  “Yes, but nightlife blooms where no rain falls. You’ve heard that expression? What time is it at the blackjack table? Who cares? Shoot out the clocks! The showgirls, tanned and healthy, where do these girls come from? They pop up out of the cactus plants, could be. Do they have mothers? Are they desert creatures like armadillos? I don’t bother to ask. Even my wife enjoys the showgirls, as long as they’re dancing. I like to sit close, so you can see the sweat. Sweat drips down their long legs. I like that. Criticize me if you want to.”

  “Ah.”

  “You don’t like them? Prince Albert, I believe you said you were indifferent to showgirls.”

  “Well, I’m gay.”

  “So are the girls. Everyone smiles in Vegas. Everyone is happy and carefree, except for the losers of life savings. You have to know when to stop. Common sense. I don’t see the problem.”

  “You don’t get it,” Harry Albert said. “I’m queer.”

  The plane bounced, and 32-A sat back. “You’re a queer?”

  “Yup.”

  “You don’t look like it. What’s the point in that? Please explain.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Why would anyone want such a thing? No showgirls for you? Just showboys? With nice hair? Tap dancers? Playing the gold piano?”

  “Could be.”

  The old man leaned back and puffed out his cheeks. “I’ve known people like you. And, let me say, I am open-minded. Every hedgehog has a law for itself, hedgehog law. For me, however, queer has no appeal. Your particular kingdom is closed to me. So, you get to Vegas, no showgirls, no pretty waitresses, what have you got?”

  “Plenty,” Harry Albert said.

  “Please don’t describe. A cute smile I suppose can be anywhere. But okay. Prince, listen to me. Like I said, open-minded is my motto. You got your book there, you’re reading about Schindler, but this is America now, different hedgehog laws. So, okay, what am I—? I’m saying, and this is very simple, so listen. These other people on the plane, screaming now, turbulence, they would say it too if they only stopped screaming. Which is: enjoy life. In your hedgehog royalty way.”

  “Thank you,” Harry Albert said. “Trust me. I do enjoy it.”

  “You’re kind of solid-looking. You don’t look delicate, if I may say. Or sensitive, even, which, I might as well tell you, I despise. Feelings? No, no
t for me.”

  “I work out.”

  “You work out what?”

  “In the gym. Circuit training. Also, I box. I’m a fighter.” Harry Albert made a fist, and the old man nodded. “I have a good punch.”

  “That’s right. You must. That’s right.” The old man had become quite vehement. “So there’s something I want you to do, Prince.” The old man reached into his pocket and drew out a business card. On it had been printed his name, the name of his business, Go-Clean, with its website, and an e-mail address. He handed it to Harry Albert. “First we shake hands. Not every day do I meet a member of the English royal family trained in pugilism.”

  “But I’m not—”

  The old man held up his hand. “Don’t deny. You’re thinking: this old man, he’s crazy, a Schindler Jew, suffering has made him insane, and I’m telling you, no, it didn’t. Maybe a joker.” He held out his hand, and Harry Albert shook it. “A joker is what it made me. A joker vacationer. An American going on vacation to Las Vegas, where my wife already is, that’s what I am. An American like you. So what you do is, you go to your business conference and then night falls, and you enjoy the nightlife in your hedgehog way with your hedgehog friends, and you write to me, you send me a note telling me you’re okay. Because now we are friends. You said you are honored to meet me.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “And I am likewise honored to meet you, English royalty. Freed at last from the palace, like Roman Holiday. Even though you don’t look like Audrey Hepburn. Maybe more Oscar De La Hoya. Are you vain, like him?”

  “Yes. But I’m not—”

  “Like I said: don’t bother to deny.” The old man turned to gaze out the window. “We’ll be landing soon. Where are the free peanuts? The free beverage?” He turned back to Harry Albert, and all at once a smile broke out on his profoundly ugly face, a transfixing smile. “This is a very annoying flight. Except for you. Prince, you’re good company,” he said. “You keep a person interested. Send me a letter. Tell me what it’s like.”

  —

  Sitting in his hotel room, satiated with pleasure, the other young man still in bed, prettily sleeping, Harry Albert opened his laptop and began to write.

  Dear David, he wrote, I promised that I would write to you and now I’m doing just that. I’ve had some lucky streaks in Las Vegas since I got here. The conference went well, I made some contacts, I met some people. He glanced at the bed before turning back to the computer screen and the keyboard. You could say I won.

  Business in my field is good. I don’t have to worry about money.

  For a moment he gazed out the open window at the lights of the city. He liked to keep the windows open with the curtains drawn back in case other visitors, in other hotels, happened to glance out, Rear Window style, in his direction. They would see him disporting himself in the company of others. Let them envy him. Let them envy his good looks, his luck.

  You asked me if I’m vain. And I sure am. I don’t think about my looks too much, anyhow not much more than most people do, but it gets me results. When I get older, I’ll have to drop it. My appearance will start to fail. But by then I’ll be in love. I’m too busy for love right now. But by then, in the future, I won’t care how pretty anybody is, and they won’t care about my looks either, and we’ll be fine.

  The point is, I love my life. So do you. I was pleased and honored to meet you.

  Thanks for the conversation.

  He signed the e-mail “Prince Albert.”

  A week later, back in Minneapolis, he received a reply, three words. Don’t kid yourself.

  The e-mail note was unsigned.

  CODA

  Coda

  The Stone Arch Bridge crosses the Mississippi River between Father Hennepin Bluffs Park on the east bank and Mill Ruins Park on the west in the heart of Minneapolis, Minnesota. This bridge, which once supported railroad traffic in and out of the city, has twenty-one stone arch spans. Wikipedia tells us that James J. Hill, the Empire Builder, had the bridge constructed in 1883, and in the early 1990s it was converted to a pedestrian-and-bicycle bridge.

  On warm days in late spring or summer, the bridge serves as a kind of promenade, or gallery, for pedestrians, and on such days you are likely to see both visitors and city dwellers walking across it with no particular destination in view. That obese man, for example, with rainbow suspenders, who is wearing a frown and a faraway look, and whose wife—they both have wedding rings—has her hand through his arm for support, might he be a doctor, a pediatrician? Close behind him is a woman mumbling to herself, and you might imagine that she’s translating a poem in her head out of an Eastern European language into English. And on this side, speeding past you, are two people on bicycles, one of them looking vaguely Asian-American, the other, his girlfriend or wife (they pass by too quickly for the idle pedestrian to spot any evidence that they are married) smiling and happily shouting instructions in his direction.

  Near Wilde Roast Café, a gay-themed restaurant on St. Anthony Main, you bump into a man who is texting on his iPhone, and you excuse yourself and continue on your way.

  The day is beautiful: royal-blue skies, a light breeze, temperature in the high sixties, the sort of day that Sinclair Lewis, who once lived here, would mark in his journal as “p.d.”—that is, a perfect day. These people are gathered here like the Sunday strollers in Seurat’s painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, where the beautiful laziness, the indolence of those out for a breath of air, offers itself as a glimpse of Paradise. Delmore Schwartz, obsessed with that painting, wrote these lines in his poem “Seurat’s Sunday Afternoon Along the Seine”:

  The sunlight, the soaring trees and the Seine

  Are as a great net in which Seurat seeks to seize and hold

  All living being in a parade and promenade of mild, calm happiness:

  The river, quivering, silver blue under the light’s variety

  Is almost motionless.

  How I love that poem. But, after all, how much happiness can there be, without its opposite close by, so that we can know what happiness is?

  Look: the pedestrians gaze over the bridge’s side at the Falls of St. Anthony, the only falls anywhere on the Mississippi River. Who was St. Anthony, for whom these falls, and this part of the city, were originally named? A much-loved man, born in Lisbon as Fernando Martins, he became a Franciscan and took the name Anthony. Known for his preaching, he did not live long, dying at the age of thirty-five. Legend tells us that when his body was exhumed years after his death, his body was “found to be corrupted” (that is, it was dust), but his tongue was glistening and intact, thanks to the purity of his teachings.

  Before Minneapolis was Minneapolis, it was St. Anthony Falls. St. Anthony is still known as the Saint of Lost Things, and even lapsed Catholics will sometimes repeat, “Dear Saint Anthony, please look around. Something is lost that must be found.” He is also thought to restore lost tranquility, and in one such prayer, he is beseeched “to restore to me peace and tranquility of mind, the loss of which has afflicted me even more than my material loss.” Father Hennepin, upon seeing these falls for the first time, described them as “astonishing in scope and power.” But much doubt has been cast on his histories, and the histories themselves are considered unreliable. Present-day historians consider Father Hennepin to have been a prodigious liar.

  But the day is beautiful, all the same.

  Acknowledgments

  These stories had several early readers, and I especially want to thank Stephen Schwartz, Lorrie Moore, William Lychack, Robert Cohen, Eileen Pollack, and Louise Glück for their help. “Forbearance” is distantly based on an anecdote told by Miller Williams decades ago. My thanks to him and to Giuseppe Belli. Thank you to Kyle Kerr for the idea. As ever, my gratitude goes to Dan Frank and Liz Darhansoff.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Charles Baxter is the author of the novels The Feast of Love (nominated for the National Book Award), The Soul Thief, Saul an
d Patsy, Shadow Play, and First Light, and the story collections Gryphon, Believers, A Relative Stranger, Through the Safety Net, and Harmony of the World. He edited The Collected Stories of Sherwood Anderson for the Library of America. He lives in Minneapolis and teaches at the University of Minnesota and in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.