Men and Cartoons

by Jonathan Lethem

  “Doran, Viv,” said Polymus, grabbing Doran by the shoulder and tugging him inside. “Throw your coat on the bed. I'll take that. C'mon. Hope you like pernil and bacalao!”

  “Hello,” she said, and as Doran relinquished the bottle she took his hand to shake.

  “Vivian Relf,” said Doran.

  “Vivian Polymus,” she confirmed.

  “Shall we pry open your bottle?” said Vander Polymus. “Is it something special? I've got a Rioja I'm itching to sample. You know each other?”

  “We met, once,” said Vivian. “Other side of the world.”

  Doran wanted to emend her once, but couldn't find his voice.

  “Did you fucking fuck my wife?” chortled Polymus, fingers combing his beard. “You'll have to tell me all about it, but save it for dinner. There's people I want you to meet.”

  So came the accustomed hurdles: the bottles opened and appreciated; the little dinner-party geometries: No, but of course I know your name or If I'm not wrong your gallery represents my dear friend Zeus; the hard and runny cheeses and the bowl of aggravatingly addictive salted nuts; the dawning apprehension that a single woman in the party of eight had been tipped his way by the scheming Polymus and another couple, who'd brought her along—much as, so long ago, Vivian Relf had been shopped at parties by the couple she'd been visiting. Hurdles? Really these were placed low as croquet wickets. Yet they had to be negotiated for a time, deftly, with a smile, before Doran could at last find himself seated. Beside the single woman, of course, but gratefully, as well, across from Polymus's wife. Vivian Relf.

  He raised his glass to her, slightly, wishing to draw her nearer, wishing they could tip their heads together for murmuring.

  “I used to think I'd keep running into you forever,” he said.

  She only smiled. Her husband intruded from the end of the table, his voice commanding. “What is it with you two?” Irrationally, Polymus's own impatience seemed to encompass the years since Doran and Vivian's first meeting, the otherwise forgettable, and forgotten, party. Doran wondered if anyone else on the planet had reason to recall that vanished archipelago of fume, conversation, and disco, tonight or ever. The ancient party was like a radio signal dopplering through outer space, it seemed to him now.

  “You fuck him, Viv?” said Polymus. “Inquiring minds want to know.”

  “No,” said Vivian Relf-Polymus. “No, but we were probably flirting. This was a long time ago.”

  Polymus and his wife had captured the attention of the whole table, with evident mutual pleasure.

  “We had this funny thing,” Doran felt compelled to explain. “You remember? We didn't know anyone in common. You seemed really familiar, but we'd never met before.”

  This drew a handful of polite laughs, cued principally by the word funny, and perhaps by Doran's jocular tone. Beneath it he felt desperate. Vander Polymus only scowled, as for comic effect he might scowl at an awkwardly hung painting, or at a critical notice with which he violently disagreed.

  “What I remember is you had these awful friends,” said Vivian. “They didn't hesitate to show they found me a poor way for you to be spending your time. What was that tall moody boy's name?”

  “Top,” said Doran, only remembering as he blurted it. He hadn't thought of Top for years, had in fact forgotten Top was present at the Vivian Relf Party.

  “Were you breaking up with some girl that night?”

  “No,” said Doran. “Nothing like that.” He couldn't remember.

  “If looks could kill.”

  Those people mean nothing to me, Doran wished to cry. They barely did at the time. And now, what was it, ten years later? It was Vivian Relf who mattered, couldn't she see?

  “Do you remember the airport?” he asked.

  “Ah, the airport,” said Polymus, with a connoisseur's sarcasm. “Now we're getting somewhere. Tell us about the airport.”

  The table chuckled nervously, all in deference to their host.

  “I haven't the faintest idea what he's talking about, my love.”

  “It's nothing,” said Doran. “I saw you, ah, at an airport once.” He suddenly wished to diminish it, in present company. He saw now that something precious was being taken from him in full view, a treasure he'd found in his possession only at the instant it was squandered. I wrote a poem to you once, Vivian Relf, he said silently, behind a sip of excellent Rioja. Doran knew it was finer, much more interesting, than the wine he'd brought, the Cabernet Franc they'd sipped with their appetizers.

  He might have known Vivian Relf better than anyone he actually knew, Doran thought now. Or anyway, he'd wanted to. It ought to mean the same thing. His soul creaked in irrelevant despair.

  “This is boring,” pronounced Vander Polymus.

  The dinner party rose up and swallowed them, as it was meant to.

  Planet Big Zero

  MY HOUSE IS PROTECTED FROM THE STREET by a wooden fence six feet high, so solidly built that it's practically a wall. You can't look through it. The fence gate swings open smoothly, an inch from the paved walkway, without sticking or wobbling. Returning home a few days ago, I stepped up and pushed the gate open, as I always do, without breaking my stride. This day the gate bumped hard against something on the other side.

  Annoyed, I pushed harder, and stepped through the space I'd wedged open. Lying on the walkway, rubbing his head, was a bum. I'd whacked him on the top of his skull with the gate. After a confused moment I grasped the situation: he'd ducked in from the street, then stretched out to warm in the sun in the first place he found. I live next door to a supermarket. He was probably napping after a meal of salvage from the dumpster in the alley. I knew that bums sometimes slept the night in the alley, though they always kept out of sight.

  He wasn't knocked out. He made a sort of rasping, moaning sound and rolled onto his side.

  Then we had the strangest conversation.

  “You okay?” I said, defensively gruff.

  “Yeah,” he said. He was bald on top, so I could see that there wasn't a gash.

  “That's a hell of a place to be,” I said, justifying myself.

  He said something I couldn't quite make out. It sounded like, “Every place has its price.”

  “What?”

  “That's the price of this place.” Or something. I was already walking away, toward my door. I'd seen that he was both unharmed and harmless.

  “Well, take care of yourself,” I said.

  “Don't worry about me,” he said.

  Then I went inside, and for the briefest moment, tried to think about what had happened. I just hit a man in the head with a big piece of wood, I told myself. A part of me insisted that it was a notable event, something disturbing, something extreme. I'd certainly never done anything like it before.

  But that part of me lost out. My attention just slid away. I literally couldn't keep my mind on it.

  I mention this because of the light it sheds on what happened with Matthew.

  WHEN MATTHEW and I were in high school we had a running joke that I think epitomized our sense of humor. Our school featured special programs for musically talented students. For that reason, or for no reason at all, there was a bust of Toscanini in the middle of the main hall of the building. It was a dingy bronze, slightly larger than life-size. Toscanini gazed out with a stolid, heroic air, his thick oxidized hair flowing back in the sculptor's imaginary breeze. He could have been a general, or a football coach, but a plaque on the pillar informed us that it was in fact Toscanini. It was typical of Matthew and me that we even noticed the sculpture. I doubt if any of the other students could have confirmed its existence if we'd mentioned it to them. We never did.

  The joke was exclusively between us and some unseen janitor or security guard. Every week or so for a whole term, on our way out of the building after our last class, Matthew and I would hurriedly tape a pair of eyeglass frames, crudely fashioned from torn notebook paper and scotch tape, across Toscanini's glaring eyes. The glasses were ne
ver there when we returned in the morning. They were probably torn away within minutes, but that didn't matter to us. The sight of the paper glasses on the bronze was funny, but only initially was it the point of the joke.

  The real point was saying it, again and again. “Toscanini's glasses.” As though those glasses were a landmark, the one certainty in an uncertain universe. Whatever subject was at hand, the glasses were the comparison we'd reach for first. “What didn't you understand? It was as clear as Toscanini's glasses.” Or “Cool, man, like Toscanini's glasses.” Or “No more urgent than, say, Toscanini's glasses.” If one of us forgot what he was going to say, the other would gently suggest, “Something about Toscanini's glasses?”

  It was a joke about futility, and at the same time a joke about will, and subjectivity. If we filibustered the glasses into existence between us did it matter that the paper-and-tape glasses didn't persist? Worlds seemed to hang in the balance of that unspoken question, and in a way they did. Our worlds. The glasses stood for our own paper-thin new sensibilities, thrust against the bronze of the adult world. Were we viable? Did we have to convince others, or was it enough just to convince ourselves?

  The question was made immediate by our careers as students. Did it matter that you were smarter than your English teacher if she could fail you for cutting class to smoke pot in the park? Matthew and I gave her that chance, and she took it. When college-application time rolled around, the costs were suddenly apparent. You couldn't get into an Ivy League school on the strength of private jokes.

  Actually, I did. For the essay section of my Yale application I drew a ten-page comic, of the soul-searching, R. Crumb variety. It took me three weeks, and it was by far the most sustained effort I'd made in the four years of high school, or in my life to that point. I remember Matthew calling me at home during those weeks, wanting to know what was wrong. I couldn't explain.

  The comic led to an unusual interview with a Yale scout. The first question he asked was what my favorite single book was. I said Travels in Arabia Deserta, which I'd never read. He looked taken aback. “That's my favorite book,” he said. “I didn't realize anyone your age was reading it.” “Yeah, well,” I said. “I'm an autodidact.” I hoped that would account for my grades. I don't know if it did, but I had the scout eating out of my hand after the lucky coincidence. Fortunately he didn't ask me what I liked about Arabia Deserta.

  Matthew got into Reed. I helped him get the application out, in one desperate night before the deadline. Reed is one of those colleges where they don't give grades, where you can major in things like harmonica or earth sculpture. It's in the Pacific Northwest, far from New York, which probably would have been good for him. But he didn't go. He convinced his parents that he needed a year abroad before he could decide what to do. Sending him to college would have cost about the same, so they went for it. He and his marijuana fumes were out of the house either way.

  Matthew was talking about becoming a Zen monk a lot at that time, and he even carried around an Alan Watts book called The Wisdom of Insecurity for a while. I'm sure he thought our pranks were a form of native Zen. An example: We took an 8-by-11 sheet of clear Mylar to the Xerox shop and asked for a copy. The clerk indulged us. The result was a photograph of the inside of the machine, of course, but Matthew insisted on calling it “a copy of nothing.” Just like one hand clapping, see? He cared nothing about Buddhism, needless to say. If there had been such a thing as a Dada monk he would have wanted to become that. But Zen it was, so he went to Asia.

  Matthew visited me once at Yale, junior year. I lived in a suite with a roommate, and I was embarrassed to have Matthew stay there. He and I were beginning to look different. He was sunburned and wiry and seemed quite a bit older. He was still dressed like a boy but he looked like a man. At Yale we all dressed like men but looked like boys, except for a few who were working on beer stomachs.

  Matthew was back temporarily from Thailand, where, he explained excitedly, he'd gotten involved with a charismatic drug lord named Khan Shah. Khan Shah was more powerful than the government, Matthew said, and was trying to legitimize his rule by making poppy cultivation legal. He was a man of the people. Matthew was learning to speak Thai so he could translate Khan Shah's manifestos.

  This didn't sound like Zen to me, and I told Matthew so. He laughed.

  “Are you doing what you want to do?” he asked me suddenly.

  That question didn't compute for me at the time. Matthew was making me very, very nervous. I could still admire him, but I didn't want him in my life.

  Cracking old jokes for cover, I hustled him back down to New York with excuses about a girlfriend's demands and a paper I had to write. He spent just one night.

  That was the last I saw of him for eight years. Except for postcards. Here's one from a few years back. The front shows Elton John, in spangled glasses. In Matthew's hand on the back it says “Vacant Lot/Living Chemist.” No return address. The postmark is Santa Fe, New Mexico.

  I ONLY had an hour's warning. He got my number from information, he explained on the phone. I gave him the address. An hour later he knocked on my door.

  He wobbled slightly. “I parked in the green zone,” he said.

  “That's fine, it's two hours.” I stared. He was still tall and bony, but his face was fleshy and red. I immediately wondered if I looked as bad, if I'd lost as much.

  “Here,” he said. “I brought you this.”

  It was a rock, fist-sized, gray with veins of white. I took it.

  “Thanks,” I said, checking the irony in my voice. I didn't know whether I was supposed to think it was mainly funny or mainly profound that he'd brought me a rock.

  If it was high school there would have been a punch line. He would have led me out to the curb to see the trunkload of identical rocks in his car.

  Ten years later, that kind of follow-through was gone. Matthew's gestures were shrouded and gnomic. Trees falling in forests.

  “Come in,” I said.

  “I saw the Piggly Wiggly when I parked,” he said. “I thought I'd get some beer.”

  It was two in the afternoon. “Okay,” I said.

  A few minutes later he was back in the doorway with a rustling paper bag. He unloaded a six-pack of Sierra Nevada into my fridge and opened a tall aluminum canister of Japanese beer to drink right away. We poured it into two glasses. I wrote off getting anything accomplished that afternoon.

  He leaned back and smiled at me, but his eyes were nervous. “Nice place,” he said.

  “It's a place where I can get work done,” I said, feeling weirdly defensive.

  “I see your stuff whenever I can,” he said earnestly. “My parents clip them for me.”

  I draw a one-page comic called Planet Big Zero, for a free music magazine produced by a record-store chain. Once a month my characters, Dr. Fahrenheit and Sniveling Toon (and their little dog, Louie Louie), have a stupid adventure and review a new CD by a major rock act.

  Somewhere in there you might detect the dying heartbeat of Toscanini's glasses. It's a living, anyway. Better than a living recently, since a cable video channel bought rights to develop Planet into a weekly animated feature, and hired me to do scripts and storyboards.

  “I didn't realize your folks were into rock journalism,” I said.

  “My parents are really proud of you,” Matthew said, working diligently on his beer. He wasn't being sarcastic. There was nothing challenging left in his persona, except what I projected.

  He told me his story. Since Santa Fe he'd been in Peru, taking pictures of plinths and other ancient structures. He talked a lot about “sites.” The term covered a sculpture in Texas made of upended Cadillacs half buried in the desert, stone rings in Tibet, a circular graveyard in Paris, and Wall Street skyscrapers. He'd shot hundreds of rolls of film. None of it was developed. He was trying to get funding to create a CD-ROM. In the tales he told there were ghosts, mostly women, scurrying out of the frame. An expatriate Englishwoman he'd lived with in Mexico C
ity who'd thrown him out. A female journalist who'd been his collaborator, then disappeared with his only photos of an Inca burial site that had since been destroyed. And the bitch in the Florida Keys just now who'd stolen his camera after a shared three-day drunk.

  I live in Connecticut, an hour out of the city if there's no traffic. Matthew had driven up to see me in his parents' car. He was in New York trying to convince his parents to cash out ten thousand dollars in zero coupon bonds they were holding in his name, presumably for when he married and bought a house. He was willing to take a hit on early-withdrawal penalties, so that he could use what remained to fund his return to Peru.

  He'd become some combination of an artist with the temperament, but no art, and Thor Heyerdahl without a raft.

  The Japanese canister was empty. Matthew went into the kitchen for the first of the Sierras, unapologetically. He wasn't drinking like he was on a tear, or wanted to be. It was as though the beer was a practical necessity, like he needed it for ballast.

  “If you don't want to drive back down tonight you can stay in the garage,” I told him. “It's set up as a guest room. You can pee in the sink in there. I'll give you a key to the house so you can shower or whatever.”

  “That's great,” he said. His look was humble and piercing, both. “You know, it's really amazing to see you again.”

  I sort of flinched. “The same,” I said.

  “It's amazing how little has changed after all this time.”

  I wasn't aware of that being the case, in any sense at all. But I nodded.

  That night we got on a roll in safe territory, talking about high school. The Water Fountain Trick. The Literary Excuse Me. Mother Communication Hates You. Falling Down Jesus Park. Toscanini's Glasses. Then, fueled by beer, I told him a bit about my life, my short marriage, the novel I couldn't sell, the years of legal proofreading. Matthew drank and listened. He listened well.

  Then he started telling me about his idea for a screenplay we were going to write together. “Has there ever been a thriller set in Antarctica?” he asked, eyes burning.