by Owen Thomas
Hollis eyed the bar behind Eric. “White wine?”
“Sure.”
“What do you have?”
“Oh, some beauties.” Eric smiled, bowing the scar over his mouth. “Come on up to the bar if you’d like. I’ll get you a list.”
Eric turned and Hollis stood up and followed him to the bar and took a seat. Eric handed him an impressive list of Californians and then left to put in the food order as Hollis perused the offerings.
“Let’s do the 2003 Albert Lauren,” Hollis said when he reappeared.
“You know your wines.”
“I like to think so.”
Eric poured him a glass of the clean, yellow wine and watched as Hollis swirled it and held it up to the light and sampled the bouquet, rolling some over his tongue.
“Mmm. Nice,” he said.
“Yeah?”
“Very.”
“A little pear. Little apple in there.”
“Mmm. Yes.”
“It’s a good vineyard. Never disappoints.” Eric returned to stacking the glasses. “So what brings you to beautiful Blythe?”
Business, he wanted to say, the old instinct never far away. Elevate. Separate. Distinguish. A man apart.
“Visiting my daughter,” he said instead, resisting and taking another taste.
“Ironwood or Chuckawalla?”
“Uh… L.A.”
“Ah, much better. Where you coming from?” Eric began pulling glasses from a large green rolling cart and putting them away behind the bar.
“Columbus.”
“Ohio.”
Hollis nodded through another sip. “Boy this is good. Yeah. Ohio.”
“I’ve got sister in Ohio. And an uncle.”
“Whereabouts?”
“Sister’s in Cincinnati. Uncle’s in…” Eric stopped moving glasses and closed his eyes, dropping his chin to his chest like someone had tripped a main power switch. Just as suddenly he opened his eyes and continued. “Lima,” he said. “He’s in Lima.”
“God’s country. I went to college in Lima.”
“Oh yeah? What school?”
“Northwestern.”
Eric looked confused.
“I thought Northwestern…”
“UNOH,” Hollis said quickly. “University of North Western Ohio. You fish?”
“I’m more of a surf-guy.”
“California.”
“Yeah. Grew up on the beach. Never really got into fishing.”
“Like my son. And my wife.”
“Oh yeah? Not fishermen? Fisher-people?”
“Not fisher-people. Which makes them aliens from some other planet.” Eric laughed and Hollis waved him off. “You too as far as I’m concerned.”
“Hey, now. Go easy on us philistines.”
“You don’t know Heaven until you’ve fished Buckeye Lake in August.”
“Something tells me you won’t listen if I tell you about the perfect wave.”
“No.”
“Zen from inside the curl?”
“No. But I’ll forgive you if you top off this ambrosia.”
“Done.” Eric filled his glass and re-corked the bottle. “That’s quite a haul. Ohio.”
“Oh, I just drove over from Phoenix.”
“Ah.” He nodded as though a big piece had just fallen into place. “How was Phoenix? Cooling down by now probably.”
“Nice. Yeah. Not too hot I guess. Wasn’t there long.”
“That where your son is?”
“Nah. He’s in Columbus. I was just, uh… I was just visiting a… a….” Hollis didn’t finish, his train of thought derailing over the question of just what, exactly, Bethany Koan was to him.
“Sounds complicated,” said Eric, not exactly smiling.
“Oh it’s… bah.” Hollis waved his hand in Eric’s direction, dismissing the problem he had not named. “Girl trouble.”
Eric raised his eyebrows. Hollis saw surprise; the kind that promised respect upon confirmation.
“Girl trouble? You mean…”
“Oh, forget it. Forget it.”
Eric nodded, placing an empty green rack on the bar and then began unloading glasses from the next rack.
“You want the volume up on the game?” He asked.
“Nah,” said Hollis. “Looks ugly to me. Saints are getting devoured.”
“They’re doing it to themselves. ‘Course that’s usually how it goes.”
“It’s not that I had a steady girlfriend or anything,” said Hollis. Eric looked up, pulled short by the non sequitur. Then he held up his hands.
“No… hey, it’s none of my business, Hollis. I don’t mean to pry.”
“She’s a friend. Daughter of a colleague, I should say. I thought she was such a nice kid. It wasn’t about sex. It was never about sex.”
“Oh. Hey, yeah, whatever man.”
“Not in the beginning, anyway.”
Eric’s eyes glowed and the scar quivered with restraint.
“It was about education. I was helping her look for business schools.”
“In Arizona,” he said confirming, trying to be helpful. Hollis shook his head.
“Ohio. She disappeared to Phoenix… I think… so that she could… I think she wanted to bilk Mike O’Donnell out of some money if you really want to know the truth about it all. That’s what I think she was up to. She basically followed the guy. Stalked him. But then she got herself arrested after a book signing. So she called me. Of all people, she called me. She knew I was a pushover. She wanted me to pick things up where we left off, if you catch my drift.”
“Uh….”
“If you can’t bag O’Donnell, why not give Hollis-the-bumpkin another shot?”
Eric stared at him in a kind of paralyzed confusion, a clean glass in each hand, nothing moving except an expression imploding from incomprehension.
“So I had to fly out to Phoenix. Get her out of jail. Save her from the clutches of the law. And some guy… Joseph Aslan? You know him? Anyway, he wanted the sex and she wanted the diamonds, and maybe the drugs too, hell, she was probably into the drug scene the whole damn time. But it was me … Me! … that paid for the whole fiasco. Well, me and the fish. At least I’m alive, which is more than I can say for the fish. Still, that’s sixteen thousand dollars I’ll never see again, I know that much. Plus the airfare. And the hotel. And the car. And the gas. Jesus.”
Eric put the glass he was holding on the bar. His forehead wrinkled like a pond receiving a small stone. He started to ask something, then lapsed back into quiet interest.
“Sorry,” said Hollis. “Long story.”
Eric retrieved the bottle of Albert Lauren, uncorked it, and topped Hollis’ glass.
“On the house. I don’t open for another forty minutes. If you’re willing to talk…”
Hollis’ first instinct, marinating in the humiliation of the story, was to decline the invitation. But before he could shake his head, much to his own surprise, he found that he was willing. He did want to talk.
“It’s a sordid mess.”
“I’m a bartender. Do your worst. You talk, I’ll pour.”
He started at the Zumstein Drive Ramada café in Columbus Ohio, with Suki Takada, the pertly earnest, innocent, academic-minded, surprisingly Anglo daughter of Japanese bank executive Akahito Takada, standing at his table with a book in her hand and a backpack over one shoulder; and he ended outside Room 713 of the Taliesin Westin in Phoenix, Arizona, with Lynnette Moss, the pocket-picking, sexually carnivorous daughter of former Syracuse Chiefs right fielder Bret Moss, standing naked in the hallway yelling for him to return. Eric had a bartender’s talent for listening. He soaked it all in like a sponge, interrupting only once so that he could disappear back in the kitchen to retrieve the cheeseburger.
By the time Hollis had fully related the metamorphosis of Suki into Lynnette, he was drained, as was the bottle of Albert Lauren. If he had been initially disinclined to account for the events that had brought him
most of the way to a barstool in Blythe, or at least those aspects of the saga from which one might judge him a hapless rube, the wine and the quiet of the café and Eric’s unassuming presence put him at ease. It helped, he supposed, that he would never see Eric again.
“So… then…”
“What?” Hollis finished the burger and blotted his mouth with a napkin.
“Nothing,” said Eric.
“What?”
“This woman must be…”
“Younger?”
“Yeah.”
“Not quite thirty.”
“Takin’ a walk on the wild side there aren’t you Hollis?”
Hollis shrugged and finished his glass. “Like I said, not the way it started out.”
“And so you’re pretty sure your wife… knows.”
“Wives always know. Even when they don’t. You married?
“Nothing the state of California will recognize. Not yet.”
Hollis looked up from his glass, not understanding. And then he did.
“Oh.”
“Problem?”
“No, no. After that story? No.”
“Paul wanted to move back to Boston. His family hates me though.”
“Ah. Not so tolerant I’m guessing.”
“Tolerant. Who tolerates the Antichrist? Half of them are cops. Other half firemen. I don’t fit in so well out there. This is my Boston souvenir.” He tapped his scar.
“Christ in Heaven,” whispered Hollis as if seeing it for the first time.
“No. No, it was a cop in a gay bar with a broken bottle. Turns out it was Paul’s second cousin. Nobody knew at the time, but that’s just the small hamlet that is Boston.”
“So then the whole family…”
“His Dad was a Navy Seal. And Jesus is on their side, so…”
“But they accept him? Paul?”
“No. Not so much. So far I’ve convinced him to stay here and wait for California to get its act together. But that plan won’t work forever.” Eric shrugged and opened up another bottle and started to pour. “We’ll see. Life’s good. It’s all about the love, right?”
Hollis nodded as he buried his nose into the bouquet and then drank, not quite knowing what to say.
“Hang a sec, Dude.”
Eric put the bottle down and left to tend to two couples that had seated themselves by the windows. Hollis twisted on the stool watching. The women – one with coral lips and blue pancake eyelids and Chinese coins hanging from her ears, the other sharply corvine with jet-black hair and a hard nose wearing a black tunic and holding a camera – clucked and cackled as he approached, obviously familiar. Eric laughed and pretended to provide solace to the long-suffering men. The woman with the camera swatted at him in playful retribution and everyone laughed. Eric made a face as he took down their orders. The crow could not stop laughing.
Hollis felt a kind of admiration for Eric that he could not entirely explain. There was, to be sure, the easy confidence of youth. And that laid-back Californian insouciance, as charming as it was irritating. But something more. Something of the ease with which he inhabited his own skin.
Eric laughed again, tucking the pen behind his ear and jutting his hip out saucily. The table rollicked.
And then the word dropped heavily into the palm of Hollis’ consciousness like a ripe round fruit. Contentedness.
Eric, he thought, was free. Here was someone who had let the picture burn. The self-portrait had melted and curled and pocked into bubbles of color that had twisted up into thin horns of acrid black smoke until it was entirely gone leaving only… him. And now he was free. Free to be whatever it was that he really was. No striving. No disappointment. Just acceptance.
Eric was now whispering something to the crow lady, craning his head away from the men, bowing and stretching his neck so that a vinaceous-plum river seemed to serpentine from behind his ear across the smooth cylindrical plane of his skin, claiming him in broad daylight. She laughed and then there was laughter all around.
Pain? Yes, he thought to himself, turning back to the bar, pouring himself into the glass. Eric had known pain. How could he not? There is always pain. But to deny the pain… to resist the pain… is to suffer. So says the Buddha. End the suffering by accepting the pain. There is no life without the pain. Let it hurt. Let the body bleed and the soul weep. Strive not to be a particular way in the eyes of the world. Contentment lies in the arms of acceptance. We are who we are. Fuck the rest and all who would judge us for it. That was not Buddha, exactly; that was Charles Compson. But it was basically the same sentiment. Do not suffer for being misunderstood. Do not resist that. Accept it. Do not suffer for not being valued by others. Accept it. Do not deny the past. Accept it. No, better yet, embrace it. Do not resist your failings. Embrace them, for they are you.
He threw back the rest of the wine. One of the women was telling a story about her daughter and a motorcycle that she loved more than the boyfriend who owned it.
Hollis helped himself to another glass, thinking of Tilly. Thinking of Susan. Thinking of Susan yelling at him in the kitchen. Thinking of the anger in her eyes. Thinking of the question he could not answer: When was the last time you admitted that you made a mistake, Hollis?! Thinking of the sound of his heart in his ears, when she asked that question, skipping its rhythm and then racing to catch up. When was the last time you admitted it to yourself? The fantasy world you live in, Hollis, does not permit you to commune with the rest of us sinners.
Had he made mistakes? Yes. There. Yes, he had made some big goddamned mistakes. Doozies. Enormous, hurtful, selfish, ego-driven, soul-imperiling mistakes. A sinner? Yes. There. A sinner. A common sinner. Sins of commission. Big, fat, ordinary, plebeian, addlepated, boneheaded, weak-willed, Joe-America diversions from the righteous path. So why deny that? Why disown that truth? Why forsake that part of his true self, which was as much a product of his existence as his own children. Had he been so foolish as to think that mere declaration was sufficient to change history? There was no changing history. No changing who he was. I am above it! All of it! See me! Hear me! Was that really all it took? Did feeling it or saying it ever make it so? Was that really the recipe for exceptionalism: a soupy base of constant, self-flattering patter, infused with a healthy disdain for common amusements to ward off lowly associations, stocked with chunks of anecdotal triumph and bits of precut wisdom, and garnished with hints of esoterica and epistemic oddities just to confound and shame the lesser palates? Was that it? Was that the dish that proved he was not the man he was? The dish he served daily at gunpoint to people who would say whatever was necessary to help him believe whatever he wanted to believe? And they did. They had choked down every spoonful. Because they feared him? Because they loved him? Not even Tilly had been able to say it directly. She had simply left the table altogether and moved away.
And now Susan.
Although Susan had told him, hadn’t she? She was the only one who had loved him or hated him enough to tell him the truth. A man can’t change who he is any more than he can change history. You can’t change history. That’s why they call it history. And Susan knew almost every goddamned day of his history and what she didn’t know, he knew. Hollis knew it all.
He tipped the glass. Swallowed. Laughter. Behind him. Again. Swallowed. Poured. Tipped. Laughter. Laughter.
The emperor had no clothes. He was naked and grotesquely so. Everyone saw that. Had seen it. Had seen it for years. Had shaken their heads after every conversation. Had laughed in private. They could see. And now he saw too. Hollis the oenophile. Hollis the mystic. Hollis the pure and unsullied. Hollis the judge, jury and executioner. Hollis the charmer. The soothsayer. The storyteller. Ooooo, look out, here comes Hollis!
Yes, he saw it. It was as clear as day now.
Susan had called him a doppelganger. He was two people: one real but not to be acknowledged, and one confabulated into existence by a conspiracy of his own hubris and the deference of those he needed.
He drank.
But why hide himself – the real Hollis – in the attic? Why suffer such self-alienation? Because others might disapprove; might find him unworthy; repulsive? No. Fuck the others. Because Hollis Johns might disapprove, that’s why. Hollis Johns might disapprove of Hollis Johns. It was never about others. It was always about him. Anything but disappointment in himself. Ugly reflections can kill a man; the shock of that kind of sudden exposure; the grand portrait crashing down to reveal the mirror behind. It could kill a man. Like it had killed Darius Knotty, twisting from that gnarled branch over Lionshead Creek. How shocking it must have been for Darius to see, suddenly, a legacy of miscegenation in his own eyes.
He drank. Laughter. The crow’s daughter wants to break up with the boyfriend but is holding off until after his business trip so that she can use the motorcycle while he is away. Laughter. What if she hides it? Laughter. Claims it was stolen? Laughter.
He poured. Drank.
Darius Knotty. Poor bastard. He should have let the portrait burn long ago. Just light the match and let it burn. Send that monstrous conceit up in flames and rise from those ashes like a Phoenix, a new man. An authentic man. An honest man. A man who was whoever he was.
Too late, though. For Darius. Portrait-burning was a young-man’s game. By the time Darius had tied that slipknot he was too far down the road of self-deceit to even consider starting over. He had long since committed to being the pure thing that he was not – the pure thing he never had been – and there was no turning back. Nothing to do at that point but step off the hood of that white Plymouth Fury into thin air and disappear.
Hollis looked morosely into his wine, cradling the bowl of the glass in both palms like a newborn. He caught his reflection in a glint of light. The room concaved around behind him as a yellow and spectral world; the spindles of new diners entering the café stretching over the glass, growing like Ohio hardwoods at his back.
He drank. The thoughts in his head would not be contained; could not be drowned. These thoughts, which had begun to take shape on the drive from Phoenix in the form of a specific horror and self-loathing over Tilly, now began to liquefy and coalesce like growing dots of water on a window, combining into pools that drained of their own volume into braided streams and streaked down, down, down into a single dark and genuine revelation about something far more encompassing than the old and horrible thing about Tilly. The thing about Tilly, as bad as that was, was, in the end, merely a symptom of something far greater about himself. Great and simple at the same time: he was a fraud. At the end of his life, he was a … fraud. Hollis the incorruptible man of commercial finance had, as a person, been hiding his debt, secretly purging it from the balance sheet, misrepresenting his moral solvency with every breath. He had become the very personification of … of … of Enron. Yes, he thought. Enron. And the reckoning was now upon him.