Man About Town

by Mark Merlis

  A buzzer sounded. Buzzers haunted these guys everywhere. There even used to be a couple of nearby bars linked up to the signal system, so a truant member could stagger back to the Capitol and vote.

  “Shoot,” Harris said. “Got to get to the floor.” He stood up, put on his jacket one arm at a time, then came over and shook Joel’s hand, actually grasping it this time. “Josh, I really appreciate your coming over on such short notice. It’s been very helpful.” He repeated, “Very helpful, very helpful,” as he left the room.

  Joel said to Melanie, “I shouldn’t have told him a million. I mean, there are a million aliens, but most of them just get Medicare like anybody else—they worked, they earned it. I think there’s only a few who are targeted by this Altman amendment.”

  “Shit,” Melanie said. “Once he gets a number in his head it’s there for good. How many is it really?”

  “I don’t know. I was trying to pin down the number this morning, but I don’t have it yet.” Inasmuch as the number didn’t magically appear on the solitaire screen. “Not very many.”

  “Well, keep trying. I don’t want him going around saying a million.”

  “Right.”

  “What did you all talk about while I was out?”

  “Um … AIDS mostly.”

  “AIDS? I didn’t know he was interested in AIDS.” She frowned: now she would have to get up to speed on yet another issue.

  “I wouldn’t worry,” Joel said. “He wasn’t that interested.”

  “No, he has kind of a short attention span. He jumps around a lot.”

  “Don’t they all?”

  Joel trudged back to his office, a couple of blocks from the Capitol, in what had once been a tacky apartment building. Now the building housed OLA, along with minority staff from especially obscure House committees. He had to pass through a metal detector and let the guard x-ray his briefcase. This nonsense had started just a few weeks earlier, after the Oklahoma City bombing in April—as if, with all the possible targets in Washington, a terrorist would home right in on House Annex 2A, the very nerve center of American democracy.

  He crept by his boss’s office. Herb was on the phone, as always, and with his back turned to the door; he was looking out the window his exalted position had secured him, so Joel didn’t have to stop and report how the briefing had gone. In his own office, a windowless cell that must once have been a supply closet, Joel reached for the political almanac to look up Harris. Usually he did this before a briefing, so he would know better than to babble about poor people to some raving Social Darwinist, but he had been too busy all morning.

  In the almanac, a Harris campaign photo—shirtsleeves rolled up, no thousand-dollar suit in evidence—and the terse bio:

  Raymond J. (Joe) Harris, Jr. (R-MT) b. 1961, Billings, MT. B.S., U. of Montana (Geology), 1983. Employm†., Big Sky Waste Management, 1983–7. Billings Bd. of Educ., 1985–7. State Assembly, 1987–91. State Senate, 1991 -4, Maj. Whip, 1994. Elected U.S. Sen. 1994. Harris 119,351 (44%); Freeman, Dem., 111,207 (41%); Kraus, Reform, 36,950 (14%); deBoer, Natural Law, 1,427 (1%). Committees: Finance, Natural Resources. Residence: Billings, MT. Wife: Trudi. Children: Raymond III, Jennifer, Scott. Ratings: National Rifle Association, 100; League of Conservation Voters, 5; Citizens for Responsible Tax Policy, 86.

  Politics was all he had ever done, then; if he were ever defeated he’d have to go back to the nothing job in waste management. And he could be defeated: winning so narrowly in the year of the Republican sweep, all those mercurial Reform voters who might go for the Democrat next time. Ray Three would be—what? Twelve or thirteen, maybe. Likely to come home with some body part pierced any day now, and with college application forms not too long after that. So Harris had better stay a senator if he was going to put all those kids through school and get Trudi the Viking range. No wonder he was ready for a little alien-bashing. Safe enough in a state with no ethnic voters: probably the last aliens Montana ever saw were Japanese people in relocation camps.

  Yet, he seemed to care about AIDS. Not enough to do anything, surely, but there was a little spark of humanity under that smooth Republican carapace.

  Joel thought for an instant of going to work for him. Joel had never once considered becoming a staffer. Working those endless days, having to adjust to every change of mood or party line or purchaser, no life at all. Perhaps the idea came to him this particular afternoon because he wasn’t sure what life he had. In any case, he let himself spin out the fantasy.

  Supplanting Melanie first, then becoming indispensable, Harris’s shadow. Slowly educating him, finding his best instincts, turning him into … some kind of moderate. Of course he would be immovable on some things: gun control, probably the environment. But on other stuff he could be—what was Melanie’s word?—nudged. They would sit together on the two wing chairs in his office, Harris thoughtful and troubled, Joel explaining the world to him. Guiding him, step by simple step. Over time Harris would just naturally turn to Joel, as to a big brother. Joel would move to Virginia, they would drive in together in the mornings. Trudi and the kids would get used to his being around, he would become Uncle Joel …

  Herb appeared in the doorway, briefcase in hand. “Hey, Joel, how’d the briefing go?”

  “Okay. He wasn’t quite as stupid as I thought.”

  Herb looked up and down the hall, afraid someone might have heard. Everyone at OLA agreed that the collective IQ of the 104th Congress rivaled that of an ant farm, but it was not usual to say so aloud. “What did you all talk about?”

  “The aliens thing. And then AIDS, a little.”

  “AIDS.” Herb frowned. “Did you bring that up?”

  “No. I don’t just … bring that up.” What did Herb think—that because Joel was gay he went out to senators’ offices and preached sermons? Well, he had preached a little.

  “Why would a member from Montana care about AIDS?”

  “Beats me.”

  “Anyway, I’ve got a meeting to get to,” Herb said. He hoisted his probably empty briefcase as evidence that he was not actually sneaking off at four o’clock on a Friday afternoon.

  “See you,” Joel said. He needed to give Herb about a five-minute head start, then he could sneak out too.

  Of course he wanted to rush home, ascertain just what stuff Sam had picked up. It would be a sort of measure of where they were: the volume of space left vacant by the items Sam had removed would correlate with the expected duration of his absence. Joel had a comical vision of the place denuded, then a much less risible vision of the place just as it was, only. Sam missing. Or, even worse, Sam present. There to tell Joel his future, how things were going to be now. Like a fortuneteller, except one who doesn’t just predict the future but designs it. Sam would decide how things were going to be, and they would begin their new life, apart or tenuously together. If together, then with conditions Sam would specify.

  He picked up his briefcase, put it down again: no sense in everybody toting an empty briefcase home.

  When Joel let himself into the apartment, there were lights on. He called out, “Yoo-hoo.” There was no answer; Sam must have left the lights on when he came for his stuff. Joel didn’t bother to inventory what Sam had removed, just went straight to the kitchen and made himself a drink.

  In the living room he sat, not in his chair, but in Sam’s. The chairs were identical, there wasn’t any reason Sam’s should have felt any different from his own. Except the view was different: he saw the room from a slightly different angle, everything familiar shifted. In this shared space they had had territories, views of their own, places where they intersected and places where they avoided bumping into one another. Their relative positions were fixed. Sam sat in the left-hand chair, slept on the left-hand side of the bed. On the vanity in the bathroom, his gear was to the left. Joel had never inhabited the entire apartment; there were spaces that were Sam’s. When Sam was away for a night, Joel never slept on Sam’s side of the bed, or even in the middle. Even now,
in Sam’s chair, Joel felt as though he were sitting on the lap of a ghost.

  He got up, meaning to move to his own chair, but instead he went to the bathroom to find that, yes, most of the toiletries were gone from Sam’s side of the vanity. Not all: Sam had left behind about half his library of colognes. Feral. Wall Street. Urge. Which ones had he taken? Joel had never paid attention to Sam’s colognes, unless he wore too much. This morning Sam had stood here and picked among them. Deciding how he wanted to smell for somebody who, maybe, did pay attention.

  That he had left any of the bottles was sort of offensive. He hadn’t just cleared out, he had prioritized, and left Joel with his trash. Joel didn’t even have to go to Sam’s closet to know that it would be full of pants he never wore and shirts that were out of fashion. Nor to his bureau to know that he had bequeathed Joel all the unmated socks. He had pruned, he was going to start his new life unencumbered by anything that was less than perfect.

  Two or three months. Were they still in that early phase of courtship when you pretend to be perfect, watch every word, brush your teeth seven times a day, and try not to fart? That would end soon enough. But for a while Sam would be new, as if he had molted, leaving Joel with the bruised and blemished old hide and bestowing on Joel’s successor a young, fresh skin.

  They had tried to molt together sometimes, Sam and Joel. After a vacation, usually; after a few days in a strange place, at close quarters, every routine abandoned, and with it every chance of doing the routinely annoying things. They might even make love in a new position. And, for a while after coming home, they would be especially careful and solicitous. Sam wouldn’t watch TV as Joel cooked but would sit in the kitchen talking. Joel would put his shoes away, hang up his towel. In the morning they would make the bed together instead of just leaving it in a tangle they would have to straighten up at bedtime. They would make love in the middle of the week, they would try that new position again, but it seemed awkward, here in their own bed.

  They shifted to their customary postures. Later, Sam shook Joel awake; Joel was snoring. “You didn’t snore the whole time away,” Sam said. “I don’t know,” Joel said. “Ocean air or something.” They couldn’t bring the ocean air back; in a week it was as if they had never been away.

  Joel had thought this cycle could be repeated indefinitely. He even thought it was salutary. They had already blocked out time in June; that was when they liked Provincetown, before it got too crowded. Joel had booked the tickets. Could Sam possibly have let him do this when he knew they weren’t going anywhere in June? No, he was too frugal. If he had been planning ahead, he could have come up with some plausible reason they shouldn’t book for June. He wouldn’t have let Joel waste the money. So he must not have had even a premonition, not until last night.

  Once he had decided, though, so quickly: a few hours later he was able to come here and systematically pick which colognes to take. He wasn’t the least bit agitated, didn’t, in a daze, hurl a few things into a bag.

  Joel wasn’t angry about whoever it was. He wasn’t angry that Sam lied. He wasn’t angry that Sam left if he had to go. Joel was furious that Sam could be so businesslike. He wanted to sweep all the rejected colognes off the vanity. Except the room would stink for weeks.

  He looked at himself in the mirror. He saw a bright fourteen-year-old, ready for life. He had never stopped seeing that boy. He knew there was a middle-aged man named Joel, but he couldn’t make himself see that geezer. His few remaining strings of graying hair, he saw those. He saw the bags under his eyes, the burst capillaries on the sides of his nose that might have suggested he drank a little too much. But it was as if this were a mask he had put on: from beneath it his eyes looked out as they always had, unblinking and brave and young. He had never believed anything he saw in the mirror, except his eyes.

  He knew Sam didn’t look at him and see a kid. Sam must have seen the comical mask that he had donned for life. Gradually, or all at once? That is: did Sam’s love decline on a steady curve, shrinking with each recession of Joel’s hairline or each increment in his girth, 33, 34, 35 and counting?

  Or did he just look at Joel one day and think, Who the hell is this? How did I get stuck with this?

  As Joel had looked at him sometimes. Not with revulsion, just wonderment. How did it happen that he was bound to this person, what were they doing in the same apartment? Joel was happy enough to be there, but there was something unreal about it. As if Sam’s presence were just a continuing accident: Joel might at any moment blink and he’d be gone. Maybe it was the same for Sam. Maybe he didn’t look at Joel one morning and see a monster, a drab, flabby, sexless lump holding him in thrall. Maybe he just looked and saw a stranger. One for whom he felt perhaps some mysterious affinity, but still a stranger, no one to him.

  If they could have married? The idea had always made Joel snicker. The happy couples he saw in the gay paper—usually an accountant and a church organist—attending their commitment ceremony in matching gray tuxes. They had always been together about six months, and they had a damp, earnest look about them. But if they could have, Joel and Sam? So that they could have filed a joint tax return and suffered the marriage penalty? So that the impending decision, about whether they were going to split the matching pair of club chairs or let them stay together as a set in one abode or the other, could be made by a judge? A piece of paper, a legal document that would have said what all legal documents really boil down to: sooner or later some lawyers are going to get some money. It wouldn’t have held Sam there one extra minute.

  People lived—straight and gay, now—in a world of perfect freedom. The unhallowed contract between Joel and Sam had been as strong as any, good just as long as they both said it was. So no contract at all. Joel-and-Sam had never existed.

  Hadn’t Sam, at least, made an irrevocable promise not to hurt Joel? But how could Joel say that Sam was hurting him? How had Sam’s departure injured him? He was deprived, yes. Deprived of Sam’s conjugal services, as they said in lawsuits. But only in the same way that he was deprived when some hunk in a video didn’t step off the screen and into his arms. Only in the sense of not having what he wanted, and what Sam had no obligation to give him.

  Love had no privilege; his being in love conferred no obligation on Sam. Sam was innocent, just innocently gone.

  Joel went back to the kitchen, poured himself another drink, went to his own club chair this time, not Sam’s.

  He intended to cry. He could feel that he was pretty close to crying, maybe he could.

  He waited.

  Nothing. He tried to focus: say aloud, and simply, what had happened. “Sam has left me.” He could see that this was pretty sad. If it were true—and as he said it a second time he was pretty sure it was true, all the evasions and maybes of the last twenty-four hours blown away, it was true—his life had changed immeasurably, everything he had taken for granted was gone. Like one of those people you saw on the news after a brush fire or a flood, standing and looking at the empty place where their house used to be. They didn’t cry either, those people, at least not in front of the camera. Maybe later, but while the camera was there they just stood in disbelief.

  Not disbelief, post-belief. They had supposed they had a home, but they had been suffering under a misapprehension. Mother Nature had gently pointed out their error: they had never had a home, just a pile of sticks or rocks, a little detritus in one spot on the surface of an indifferent earth. So they couldn’t cry for something that had never existed, as Joel-and-Sam had never existed.

  Too glib. Something inside him actually uttered this, critiquing his little effort to make sense of his feelings, as if grading a hastily written term paper. Too glib, too evasive. He couldn’t cry because he had never felt anything, not really. He had not emerged from belief; he had never believed. He had never been in love with Sam, or with anyone.

  He had cried at movies, but never at a funeral. He did not cry for his parents, or for the friends who had been picked off one
by one. He had cried for Yul Brynner in The King and I. Olivia de Havilland in Gone with the Wind. Even Old Yeller, a dog in some bathetic Disney movie. He could suspend disbelief at the movies, weep fluently as some actor collapsed to the floor of a soundstage. He could not suspend disbelief in the reality of his own life.

  That was it, yes. How he had wept for Riff, the winsome Jet who was stabbed during the rumble in West Side Story. He was eleven or twelve then: he mourned for days, disconsolately listening to the record, looking at that young, doomed face on the album cover. And now he couldn’t muster so much as a lump in his throat for the real man who had filled his life for fifteen years.

  The tears came. Not for Sam. Perhaps more like the tears that flow in a psychiatrist’s office, tears of sublime self-pity and self-absorption. He was some kind of monster, who could not know grief, who had never known love. What is missing, oh, what is missing, doctor? These first tears dried up pretty fast: even being a heartless monster was a pose, after all. What could be more narcissistic than to diagnose your own narcissistic disorder?

  There were two ground turkey patties left in the icebox, and half a can of beans. He would need to start cooking for one. What had he eaten, back in his bachelor days? Carryout, mostly. Sandwiches. A couple specialties of the house. Spread a can of Hormel chili over slices of bread. Add a lot of Tabasco, cover with slices of Velveeta, nuke till Velveeta bubbles. He was in his twenties then, he could eat that stuff. If he were to eat that way now, he’d turn into Sydney Greenstreet. And who would notice? Sam was gone, Joel couldn’t even really miss him, Joel didn’t care if he ever met another man.

  He turned on the TV while he ate his turkey burgers. Congress had gone home, C-SPAN was rebroadcasting a press conference at the Department of Transportation. He flipped through the channels and found a show where male lifeguards with abdomens like relief maps of the Andes cavorted with female lifeguards whose bathing suits somehow stayed wet whether they went in the water or not.