by James Greer
The first letter of every sentence that Billy says is the code. In other words, when he says,“See what I’m saying?” the code is “S.” Everything after that initial letter is meaningless, which is why it’s easy to change around and avoid repetition that would give away the secret. The finger snaps are vowels: A, E, I, O, U, in that order, which is to say three snaps for I, which is what Billy did. So Guy understood at that point “S, I.” Then Billy said, “No, it’s not a code,” etc., incorporating the code into his response to the girls—in other words, the third letter is “N.” The theatrical “Go!” provided a “G,” which led Guy to “sing,” which he knew from long experience with Billy was shorthand for “singer,” most likely, a fact confirmed when Billy snapped his fingers five times, indicating “U,” at which point Guy understood the clue to be shorthand for “the singer of U2,” and all the rest was stalling for effect.
39. MARCUS RECONSIDERS HIS LIFE AND COMES TO A PROBABLY UNSURPRISING CONCLUSION, TWO DAYS AFTER VISITING GUY AT THE HOSPITAL, A FEW DAYS AFTER THE KOREAN CHECK-CASHING FIASCO
Nothing good ever happens in the winter, thought Marcus, staring out the window of his Cambridge town house. Not one good thing. Christmas is a disaster, New Year’s is a letdown, and now my dad’s dead and my brother’s right behind him. Guy was smart to stay in California. Winter never happens in Los Angeles. That must be the attraction, for most people. I mean, obviously that’s the attraction, Endless Summer and whatnot, but besides that, when nothing good ever happens you don’t notice as much, because there’s the sun. There’s the sea-blue sky. Is it going to be hot today, or merely comfortably warm?
I need the winter, though. I need the contrast of shadow and light to make sense of anything, not that I’ve done such a great job. Making sense. Mom’s right, I’m not a very kind person. Nor am I a particularly honest person. I haven’t been honest for years, not with my family, not with my wife, and least of all with myself.
Constance came into the room with a cup of coffee, which she handed to Marcus, wordlessly, smiling. He smiled back.
-I have to leave.
-Again? said Constance. -But you just got back. You’ve hardly had time to unpack.
-I know. But this is different.
Constance sat down with a quizzical look.
-What’s wrong? she asked.
-Nothing. Everything. I feel like I’m moving backwards. Five gears in reverse, darling. Like the old soul song. That’s all I’ve got. I’m always facing backwards. Benjamin’s angel of history. I can only see what’s happened, and look on in horror. I can never turn around.
-Because you’re the angel of history.
-You know what I mean.
-Honestly, I don’t. I usually do, but you’ve got me stumped, buster.
-Yeah. I’ve got myself stumped.
-Well, you’ve been through a lot in a very short period of time.
-I haven’t, really. My dad went through a lot. My brother. Even my mom, because she actually loved them both. Loves. Whatever. I’ve just had to do a lot of responsible Marcustype stuff. But if we’re talking about emotional toll, which I think is what you meant, I really haven’t. Maybe on some level that hasn’t hit me yet …
-Marcus, if you’re talking to me like this, which is pretty much the first time you’ve ever talked about anything to do with your family, in a serious way, then “on some level” is right here. On the surface.
-You’re right. It’s just that I don’t feel it.
-What’s “it”?
-Anything! Grief, anger, melancholy, sorrow, loss, pain.
-Those are good things not to feel, I’m thinking.
-That would be true. That would be true if the inverse were also … Are you happy Constance? Do you ever feel happy?
-No.
-No?
-Not really.
-Well, how is it I don’t know this relatively important fact about you? I’m not happy either.
-I know.
-Jesus.
-I’ve never really thought of happiness as any kind of realistic goal.
-Really? Since when?
-Since forever. I don’t remember the actual date and time of my epiphanies, dear. I’m not Joyce.
-Joyce who? Oh.
-So you want to leave? You think that will make things better?
-I don’t know. I thought it was worth a shot.
-Have you … is there someone …
-What? Oh God, no. No. It has nothing to do with …
-I didn’t think so. It’s just one of the questions you’re supposed to ask.
-And you? True to your name?
-More or less. Okay, more.
-You never liked my family.
-What’s that supposed to mean?
-I don’t know.
Constance sighed deeply. -No, I never did. In fact I couldn’t stand your family. Except for your mom. I feel sorry for your mom. I didn’t know that was an issue for you.
-It wasn’t. It’s not. You probably liked them better than I did. I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
-Maybe there isn’t anything left to say.
-Maybe there isn’t. Shouldn’t that make me feel sad?
-If you want my opinion, which is why you asked, I’m assuming, it’s because you spend all your time feeling sad. You’re so used to feeling sad that you don’t know what it’s like to feel anything else. Maybe you’ve even given up on the hope of ever feeling anything else.
-That sounds more like what you are feeling.
-Yes. Ironic.
-So what, then?
-What do you mean, what?
-I mean, what do we do now?
-I don’t know. Until five minutes ago I didn’t know that anything needed to be done.
-You mean you’ve been unhappy since I guess forever, and you were prepared just to keep on going, the way things are, indefinitely?
-Why not?
-Because … this … Marcus waved his hands around the room as a gesture to encompass his entire empty life.
-This?
-Isn’t working. Isn’t making you happy.
-It isn’t making me unhappy. I can do that either with you or without you. I had the idea we were in this together. Why, what’s your plan?
-I guess I don’t have one.
-Remember way back before we got married, when we were both still dewy-eyed college kids, and you proposed to me, or however that went—you did propose, didn’t you? We didn’t just sit down and do a cost/benefit analysis of getting married …?
-We might have. But that was after I proposed. And I was never dewy-eyed.
-Exactly my point. But one of the preconditions I insisted on imposing, I do remember this, specifically, was that if ever either of us wanted out, for any reason, he or she would be allowed to go. No muss, no fuss. I remember insisting because at the time I thought it would more likely be me who wanted out.
-You were right. At the time.
-If somewhere in the frozen tundra of your heart you believe that our marriage is the root cause of your … let’s call it dissatisfaction, then you need to leave.
-I don’t know what I believe. Either in the tundra of my heart or the fallow field of my brain.
-I don’t think people like you and me are made for happiness, Marcus. I don’t think we’re constructed properly. We get along. We do things the right way. In order to be happy you have to be like Guy.
-Who you hate.
-He never brushes his teeth!
-I know. It’s gross. But maybe sometimes you have to look beyond dental hygiene.
-Maybe I just did.
-But how can he be happy when he’s comatose?
-Before the coma. Or maybe even after the coma, who knows? But it’s the risks, the carelessness, the more or less complete lack of self-consciousness that allowed Guy to experience, I suspect, at least a few brief moments of happiness in his life. Along with a great deal of fear, and misery, and self-loathing, possibly related to toot
h decay. That’s something we don’t have to deal with as much.
-I’m pretty good at the self-loathing.
-Yeah, but it’s different. It’s muted or muffled by your internal engine.
-I could get hit by a bus any minute now.
-People like us don’t get hit by buses. We look both ways before crossing the street. And then we look again, just to be sure. We don’t get the highs, but we don’t get the lows, either. All we get is a kind of general malaise.
-World Fever. That’s what Guy called it. He was convinced that the world was actually diseased, or at least the human race. He said World Fever would eventually cause the breakdown of ordinary life. He was really looking forward to that day.
-He may well live to see it. But I don’t think World Fever’s fatal, I really don’t. I think it’s like any other kind of fever, you just feel like shit for a couple of weeks, maybe you take some time off work, maybe you dose yourself with antibiotics and cold medicine and tough it out, but it goes away, eventually. After a while you forget you were even sick.
-But if everyone got sick …
-Then everyone would have to forget that they’d been sick. It sounds like a lot to ask, but when you think about the stuff we’re used to forgetting on a daily basis …
-Yeah. You know, we never talk like this anymore.
-That’s not true. We’ve never talked like this. Ever.
-Not even back in the dewy-eyed years?
-We were too stupid to talk about anything real back then. We thought the future was bright with promise. We had hope.
-I miss hope.
-I don’t. It raises expectations, which are inevitably thwarted, and next thing you know your husband wants to leave.
-You knew I wasn’t leaving.
-I knew you were unlikely to leave. I also knew you were likely to do something, maybe for the first time in your life, completely foolish if I didn’t step in.
-Which is when you brought me coffee, said Marcus, staring into his now-cold cup. -Which I don’t drink.
-You’re welcome, said Constance, smiling, as she got up to leave.
-I have to do something, said Marcus, toward Constance’s retreating form. -I have to make some kind of change. Otherwise … otherwise this has all been for nothing.
Marcus sat silently for a while, thinking.
-Maybe … maybe my antipathy toward wallpaper, I mean any kind of wallpaper, in general, is misplaced. Maybe there’s something to wallpaper after all. Maybe there’s good wallpaper and bad wallpaper, and I need to figure out the difference.
He looked, as if for the first time, around the wallpapered room.
-I mean, this pattern isn’t so bad. Maybe in a different color …
40. UNORIGINAL OBSERVATION BY GUY FORGET ON THE FUTURE OF THE HUMAN RACE, INSERTED BY THE NOT ENTIRELY OMNISCIENT NARRATOR AT THIS POINT BECAUSE IT’S ABOUT TIME
Everyone—this is not, by the way, an original observation—is at his or her wit’s end. Everyone has reached his breaking point, and passed that point without breaking. Stretched like a snare across a hollow drum, filled with miserable air. Hit it once, the world shatters.
That’s what Guy thought, anyway. That was his guiding precept: the inherent frangibility of everything. Starting from that precept, Guy asked himself something: How can this be good for me? How can I profit from World Fever?
There’s very little doubt the world is suffering from some kind of disease. From up close, it can look like a lot of little diseases, but when you take the long view, and Guy Forget always and ever only took the long view, to his credit, it’s clear there’s only one real disease. All the little ones are just variants, like different shades of the same kind of blue jeans. And you might as well call that macro-sickness World Fever, because everyone understands what it’s like to have a fever, and most people have enough imagination to apply that understanding to the world in general. The world feels like hell. The world wants nothing more than to lie in bed and watch TV for a solid week, but there’s no chance, because there are too many things that absolutely need doing. Things that cannot be put off. Besides, it’s not a really bad, untenable, can’t-even-function kind of fever, it’s low-grade, where you feel stupid even complaining about being sick, because compared to people who really are sick, you’re not sick at all. Stop being such a whiner. Get back to work. Take a couple aspirin, maybe one of those gelcaps that claim to push back inside your body all the worst symptoms, and get back to work, World.
You do that, though, I mean you do that for an extended period of time, where you don’t really ever get enough sleep and you keep slogging away at your boring and pointless job (and there is nothing more boring and pointless than being the World, as Guy would often take pains to point out), and eventually shit catches up with you and you get really, really sick, or you just get really, really sick of being sick, and you crash. Not the solid week of bed and TV crash, either—the month or two of soul-crushing depression for no discernible reason crash, where you alienate your friends, probably lose your job, and eventually, because you can’t think of any other way out and you’re old enough to know that self-medicating via substance abuse is not a workable solution, you go on some kind of anti-whatever medication, which lifts you up just enough to function, to beg forgiveness from your friends, who say “Sure,” but things are never really the same, and plead with your boss for your old job back, which either doesn’t happen and you have to find a new one that turns out to be worse and pays less, or happens but now you’re the prodigal worker and everyone treats you like dirt and you have to accept less pay too, as a condition for rehiring.
Guy was waiting, with whatever modicum of patience he possessed, not a lot, for that definitive crash. Not just waiting: preparing. His immediate plans might not have depended on the crash, but his long-term plans hinged like the gate to a mighty fortress on the coming collapse.
41. THE DAY GUY FORGET APOLOGIZED, WHICH IS ALSO THE DAY OF THE KOREAN CHECK-CASHING FIASCO, IN FACT NOT MORE THAN FIFTEEN MINUTES AFTERWARDS, ROUGHLY
I said I was sorry.
-It was the way you said it.
-What’s wrong with the way I said it?
-Mainly, I didn’t believe you.
-How’s that my fault?
-Because of all the other times you said you were sorry but you didn’t mean it.
-That’s a really negative way to go through life.
-What is?
-I mean, I’m sorry. I said I was sorry. Nothing else I can say will help. I should never have called you a … well, it’s no good repeating it, is it? The more you say, “A duck shits out more brains in five seconds than you’ll ever hold in your peanut-sized cerebellum,” the worse it sounds.
-You said a baby duck.
-Again. This is rehashing the past. Let’s move forward.
-It’d be easier to move forward if I didn’t have that mental image in my head. It’s not very pleasant.
-You think the guys at Anzio had pleasant images in their heads when they fought their way inland? They had hellish images in their heads. Body parts blown off their good buddies. Brains splattered on their sleeves. That’s just … I mean, how do you move past something like that? But they did. They moved past it. And so can you.
-What’s Anzio?
-It was in a movie. I don’t know. Some storming-the-beach thing. You know: war is hell.
-But we’re not at war.
-We’re not at war? You don’t watch the news? Or do you mean just you and me—we’re not at war with each other. That’s true. But the country, the United States of these Americas, we are most definitely at war, buster, and if you don’t get that, then you are as bad as a hippy, and possibly worse.
-It’s not like a real war. Like World War Two or the War of the Roses.
-Which was a very entertaining movie, but I do see your point. You’re saying it’s not a real war unless there’s a draft. Unless the children of privilege are sent to fight, no war can be considere
d true.
-I don’t know what I’m saying. Sometimes I feel like you put words in my mouth even when I say the words.
-Trust me, if I were going to put words in your mouth, I’d put better words.
-Exactly what I’m talking about.
-You’re right, that was uncalled for. Or maybe it was called for, but I should have not answered the call.
-Can we just get on with the … with whatever you have planned next?
-Here’s the problem, Billy. I didn’t really plan for next.
-Don’t tease me, bro.
-You know how much I hate when you call me “bro.” Or when you call anyone “bro.” Or when anyone calls anyone “bro.” Even ironically. Charlie did the same thing earlier. I don’t know what made me angrier, him calling me “bro” or him screwing up a plan that we were nice enough to name after him.
-Sorry.
-But I’m not teasing you. I made no contingency for this sort of thing. I did not expect we’d end up on top of a hill with no money and the cops probably looking for us. In a stolen car.
-You don’t know that it’s stolen.
-I have a pretty good notion. I got it from Sven, and Sven didn’t show. He’s either in league with Charlie, or just a flake. Either way: stolen car. Though I must say, if you’re going to steal a car, a Mini Cooper is not a bad choice.