Men and Cartoons

by Jonathan Lethem

  “Ice Station Zebra,” I said. “Rock Hudson's in it. It's really bad. Listen, I'm bushed.”

  He slept in. I was working at my desk for hours before I heard him go in through the kitchen, up to the bathroom for a shower. The water ran for almost twenty minutes. I'm not sure, but I think he must have come out while I was on the phone with my Hollywood agent.

  As I get older I find that the friendships that are the most certain, ultimately, are the ones where you and the other person have made substantial amounts of money for one another. Those histories have a breadth, an unspoken ease, that others, even siblings or ex-wives, just can't match. My Hollywood agent is about my age, and when I talk to him I feel he knows who I am, because he helped make me who I am. We're a conspiracy, and a much more reliable one than most.

  Some time after I'd hung up the phone, I became aware of Matthew standing in the doorway of my office. “Did you hear me talking to you?” he said.

  “Uh, no.”

  His eyes were ringed and dark. He didn't speak.

  “There's coffee in the kitchen,” I said. “It's still hot.”

  When he returned with the coffee he came all the way into the room and stood in front of me. He seemed disconcerted.

  “I think I'll go check out that old foundry today,” he said. “There's some wrecked equipment I always wanted to take pictures of.”

  “No camera,” I reminded him.

  “Well, I guess I'll just go look at it.”

  Ruins, I thought. Wrecks, shambles, margins. Zen junk.

  “That's fine, I'll be here,” I said. “I have some stuff to do. We can go out for dinner tonight.”

  “We could cook something,” he began. I could see him grasping, trying to frame some larger question.

  “I'd like to take you out,” I said—magnanimity being one of the most effective ways of ending conversations. I was thinking of my work. I had to get back to harnessing our high-school sensibility to the task of selling compact discs.

  HE WAS back at five, with another bag from the Piggly Wiggly. Inside was a full six-pack, and another one full of empties. He'd been out all day looking at sites and drinking beer from a paper bag. He put the empties on the porch and the six in the fridge, like an obedient dog moving slippers to the bedroom.

  I'd arranged for us to meet a couple of friends for dinner. A science-fiction writer who does scenarios for interactive video games, and a screenwriter. We all have the same Hollywood agent, which is how we met. I figured the screenwriter could sober Matthew up about his script ideas. I didn't want to eat dinner with Matthew alone anyway.

  We met for drinks first. By the time we got to the restaurant Matthew was lagging behind, already so invisible that the maître d' said, “Table for three?”

  He barely spoke during dinner. At the end of the night we parted at my driveway, me to my front door, Matthew to the garage.

  “Well, good night,” I said.

  He stopped. “You know, I realize I don't have everything quite together,” he said.

  “You've got a lot of interesting projects going,” I said.

  “I'm not asking you for anything.” He glared, just briefly.

  “Of course not.”

  “I feel strange around you,” he said. “I can't explain.” He looked at his hands, held them up against the light of the moon.

  “You're just getting used to the way I am now,” I said. “I've changed.”

  “No, it's me,” he said.

  “Get some sleep,” I said.

  I didn't see him in the morning, just heard the shower running, and the door to the refrigerator opening and closing.

  ABOUT A week later, I hit on the idea of putting Matthew into Planet Big Zero as a character. It was a way of assuaging my own guilt, and of compartmentalizing the experience of seeing him again. I guess I also wanted to establish the connection between our old wide-open, searching form of humor and my current smug, essentially closed form.

  As I drew Matthew into the panels it occurred to me that I was casting him into a prison by publishing him in the cartoon. Then I realized how silly that was. If he was in a prison he was there already, and the cartoon had nothing to do with it. He'd be delighted to see himself. I imagined showing it to him. Then I realized I wouldn't. Anyway, I finished the cartoon, and FedExed it to my editor.

  Who hated it. “What's that guy doing there?” he said on the phone.

  “He's a new character,” I said.

  “He's not funny,” said the editor. “Can you take him out?”

  “You want me to take him out?”

  “He's not intrinsic to any of the scenes,” said my editor. “He's just standing around.”

  THAT WAS two months ago. The point is, it wasn't until just the other day, when I hit the sleeping bum on the head with the gate, that I really gave any thought to the way things turned out. So much of what we do is automatic, so much of life becomes invisible. For instance, I've been buying six-packs and putting them in the fridge, but it isn't me drinking them. The empties pile up on the porch. I always forget to bring them out to the curb on recycling day. Sometimes the bums prowl around for bottles and do my work for me. I think somebody somewhere gives them a nickel apiece for them—another invisible operation, among so many.

  Matthew's parents' car got towed after two weeks. It must have had ten or fifteen tickets pinned under the wiper. The authorities are pretty vigilant about that around here. As for Matthew, he's still in the garage. But he's been rendered completely transparent, unless, I suppose, you happen to be wearing Toscanini's glasses.

  The Glasses

  ROWS OF FRAMES SAT ON GLASS SHELVES, clear lenses reflecting gray light from the Brooklyn avenue. Outside, rain fell. At the door a cardboard box waited for umbrellas. The carpet was pink and yellow, to the limits of the floor, to the tightly seamed glass cases. The empty shop was like a cartoonist's eyeball workshop, hundreds of bare outlines yearning for pupils, for voices. They fell short of expression themselves. The whole shop fell short. There was no radio. The white-coated opticians leaned on their glass counters, dreaming of their wives, of beautiful women who needed glasses. One of them moved into the rear of the shop and made a call.

  The other turned as the door chimed, two notes blurred momentarily in the rain's hiss.

  “You're back.”

  “Damn fucking right I'm back.” The black man wiped his feet just inside the door, though there wasn't a mat, then jogged forward into the shop. He wore a baseball cap, and his glasses.

  The optician didn't move. “You don't need to use language,” he said.

  They'd sold him his glasses yesterday. One hundred dollars. He'd paid with cash, not out of a wallet.

  The customer bounced from one foot to the other like a boxer. An ingrown beard scarred the underside of his long jaw. He pushed his chin forward, keeping his hands by his side. “Look. Same damn thing.”

  The optician grunted slightly and moved to look. He was as tall as the customer, and fatter. “A smudge,” he said.

  He was still purring in his boredom. This distraction hadn't persuaded him yet that it would become an event, a real dent in the afternoon.

  “Scratched,” said the customer. “Same as the last pair. If you can't fix the problem why'd you sell me the damn glasses?”

  “A smudge,” said the optician. “Clean it off. Here.”

  The customer ducked backward. “Keep off. Don't fool with me. Can't clean it off. They're already messed up. Like the old ones. They're all messed up.”

  “Let me see,” said the optician.

  “Where's Dr. Bucket? I want to talk to the doctor.”

  “Burkhardt. And he's not a doctor. Let me see.” The optician drew in his stomach, adjusted his own glasses.

  “You're not the doctor, man.” The customer danced away recklessly, still thrusting out his chin.

  “We're both the same,” said the optician wearily. “We make glasses. Let me see.”

  The second opticia
n came out of the back, smoothed his hair, and said, “What?”

  “Bucket!”

  The second optician looked at the first, then turned to the customer. “Something wrong with the glasses?”

  “Same thing as yesterday. Same place. Look.” Checking his agitation, he stripped his glasses off with his right hand and offered them to the second optician.

  “First of all, you should take them off with two hands, like I showed you,” said the second optician. He pinched the glasses at the two hinges, demonstrating. Then he turned them and raised them to his own face.

  The inside of the lenses were marked, low and close to the nose.

  “You touched them. That's the problem.”

  “No.”

  “Of course you did. That's fingerprints.”

  “Damn, Bucket, man. I'll show you the old ones. You can't even fix the problem.”

  “The problem is you touched them. Here.” The second optician went to the counter and dipped the glasses in a shallow bath of cleanser, dried them with a chamois cloth. The customer bobbed forward anxiously, trying to see.

  “What do you, scratch at your eyes all the time?” said the first optician, smiling now. The problem was solved.

  “Shut up,” said the customer, pointing a finger at the first optician. “Just shut up. You're not my doctor on this.”

  “Nobody is,” said the first optician. “You don't need a doctor, you need to keep your hands out of your eyes.”

  “Shut up.”

  The second optician glared at the first. He handed the glasses to the customer. “Let me see you put them on.”

  The customer bent his head down and lifted the glasses to his face.

  “Wait a minute, I couldn't see . . .”

  “It's the fit.”

  “The bill of your cap was in the way,” said the first optician.

  “Put them on again,” said the second.

  “Same thing,” said the customer, shaking his head. He pulled off the glasses, again with one hand. “Look. Still there. Little scratches.”

  The first optician stepped up close to the customer. “Sure. You touched it again. When I couldn't see. It's how you put them on.”

  “He uses his thumbs,” said the second, snorting.

  “Little scratches, man. I paid a hundred dollars. Second day I got these little scratches again. Might as well kept the old ones.” He thrust the glasses at the first optician.

  “They're not scratched,” said the first optician. “Just dirty. Your hands are dirty.”

  The customer flared his nostrils, twitched his cheek, raised his eyebrows. “That's weak, Bucket. I come in here show you a pair of glasses get all rubbed and scratched, I'm looking for some help. You tell me I need some new glasses. Now the new ones got the same problem, you tell me I got dirty hands. These the glasses you sold me, my man.”

  The second optician let air slip very slowly through his tightened lips. “Your old pair was scratched. You had them, what, ten years? They were falling off your face. The hinges were shot, the nosepiece was gone. The lens touched your cheek.” He paused to let this litany sink in. “The glasses I sold you are fine. The fit is fine. You just have to break some habits.”

  “Habits!”

  “He's a clown,” said the first optician, leaning back against the counter, sticking out his belly. “We should've thrown him out yesterday.”

  “Instead you took my money,” hissed the customer. “Good enough for you yesterday. You couldn't see black for all the green yesterday. Now I look black to you. Now I'm a clown.”

  “You think we need your hundred dollars?” The first optician managed a laugh.

  “That's not necessary,” said the second, to the customer. He ignored his partner. “We'll take care of you. Sit down, let me look at the fit.”

  “Shit. Your man needs to shut up.”

  “Okay, please.” The second optician pulled up a chair from beside the counter. The padding was pink to match the carpet.

  “Sit down.”

  The partners fell easily into a good optician/bad optician routine. It was pure instinct. Perhaps the customer sensed his options dwindling, perhaps not. Probably he did. The air went out of him a little as he took the chair.

  And the glasses, the proof, were in enemy hands. The second optician was rinsing them again.

  “Shit, Bucket,” said the customer, petulance in his voice now. “What you know about my habits?”

  “Okay,” said the second optician, ignoring the remark. His voice was soothing. “I just want to see you put them on. Just naturally, like you would. Don't push them into your face. They won't fall off. Just drop them over your ears. Then I'll check the fit.”

  He offered the glasses, then pulled them back as the customer reached for them. “Take off your hat,” he said admonishingly.

  The customer took off his hat. His hair was grooved where the lip of the hat had rested. The first optician, watching from his place at the counter, reflexively reached up and fluffed his own hair.

  “Here you go. Nice and easy.” The second optician handed over the glasses.

  The customer stuffed the hat in his ass pocket, then raised the glasses with both hands, holding them by the earpieces awkwardly. His hands trembled.

  “That's it,” said the second optician. “Let's have a look at the fit.”

  The customer dropped his hands to his lap. The second optician brought his face close to the customer's. For a moment they were still, breathing together tightly, eyes flickering. The intimacy calmed the customer. He was in some sense now getting his due, his money's worth. He could feel the second optician's breath graze his cheek.

  Then the second optician saw the marks.

  “Wait a minute,” said the second optician, straightening his body. “They're still smudged.”

  “I told you!” said the customer.

  “He touched them again,” said the first optician, back at the counter. “I told you, he puts his thumb on the lens.”

  “You touched them again,” said the second optician.

  “You watched me! You saw! I didn't touch them!”

  The second optician shook his head, crestfallen. “I don't understand how it happened.”

  “Simple, he touched them,” said the first.

  “Liar!” shouted the customer. “You watched me.”

  “Listen,” said the second optician, rallying, a little frenzied. “This doesn't make sense. What do you think? They smudged themselves? You touched them!”

  “I want my money back, Bucket.”

  “Look, I can give you your money back, it's not going to do any good. You're screwing up your glasses yourself. It's going to be the same wherever you go.”

  “It's the fit.”

  “What are you saying, fit?” interrupted the first optician.

  “You think they're touching your cheek?”

  “That's right. My cheek.”

  “Show me where,” said the first, leaning in.

  “For chrissake, don't make him put his hands up there,” said the second. The opticians had traded places now, the fierce, the patient. Only the customer was unperturbed, true to himself. He moved his hand with slow drama, like a magician, to point at his face. Shifting and sighing, the opticians closed around him to see.

  The rain outside slowed, died. Cars whirred through the water in the street.

  “It's my cheek,” reminded the customer.

  “Maybe your last ones touched you there,” said the second optician. “Your nosepiece was all worn down. These don't touch.”

  “I feel it.”

  “No, you don't. You're used to touching yourself there, putting your fingers in there,” said the second. “That's what I meant by habits.”

  “You don't know,” said the customer quietly, with a Buddhist calm. “Now you got to give me my money back.”

  “We'll see about that,” said the second optician grimly. He plucked the glasses from the customer's face.

&n
bsp; “This is getting silly,” said the first optician to the second. “Give him his money. Get him out of here.”

  “I'll make him sit here all night if I have to,” said the second. “He's putting his fingers on them.”

  “I got all the time in the world,” said the customer happily.

  “Sit still,” said the second optician. He again dried the glasses with the chamois, and replaced them on the customer's face. “Keep your hands down.”

  The customer sat, his hands on his knees, the chord of tension in his body stilled at some cost. The second optician leaned in close to the customer's face to inspect the juncture of nosepiece and nose.

  “How long are we going to keep him here?” said the first optician pleadingly.

  “I told you, as long as it takes.”

  “You're kidding me.”

  “Help me watch him. Watch his hands.”

  The customer smiled, delighted now. He could play this game and win. They'd see the scratches reappear. He focused on his hands. They were all focused on his hands. He kept his hands on his knees.

  “We gotta get him out of the way at least,” said the first optician.

  “Behind the counter,” said the second. In his determination he had an answer for everything.

  “Here you go, Bucket,” said the customer.

  “Keep your hands down!” said the second optician. “Let me move the chair. Joe, watch his hands.”

  The customer was installed behind the counter, hands on his knees, chin up, waiting. The bill of his cap jutted from his back pocket.

  The opticians leaned against the wall and the counter, inspecting the customer as though he were a horse on which they'd bet, and they gamblers looking for some giveaway imperfections, some tremble in its flank.

  “He's gonna touch them,” said the first optician.

  “He wants to,” said the second. “But he knows we're watching.”

  “You'll see,” said the customer.

  “Look at his hands,” said the first. “He can't take it, he's gotta go up there. It's like a tic, a whatchamacallit. He's got like Tourette's syndrome or something.”