Man About Town

by Mark Merlis

  “What?”

  “The advertisement you brought me, did you want it back?”

  “Oh,” Joel said. “Yeah, I guess.”

  Bate handed it over; Joel looked at it. He was stunned, as startled by the boy’s beauty as if he had never seen the picture before. Well, he hadn’t seen it in a couple of months: he would have thought his mental facsimile of it was faithful enough, but he must have got it mixed up somehow with the glossy Peter Barry in Chambers Sexton’s binder. The boy in the picture was entirely different, rougher and at the same time more innocent. Maybe he had only existed that one instant, just long enough for a shutter to open and close.

  “Mr. Lmgeman.” Bate stood up, in his black raincoat. Joel thought he meant to shake hands, extended his own. “No,” Bate said. “I have to tell you … I’ve helped you with this, but … Mr. Lingeman, you have no right.”

  “No right to …”

  “To just go there and—this man who doesn’t even know who you are.”

  “I’m not going to do anything to him. I’m not sure I’m even going to talk to him.”

  “I’ve found a lot of people. People who didn’t want to be found. That’s what I do. But they—they knew they were missing. They’d walked out on somebody, or they’d stolen something, or … They knew there was someone looking for them.”

  “So … what? You’re afraid I’m going to upset him?”

  “He’s lived his whole life not even aware of your existence, his whole life.”

  Joel shrugged. There were about six billion people of whom that could be said.

  “For you to come to him now. Tell him that all these years you’ve been …” Bate was too fastidious to finish. All these years you’ve been looking at his picture and jerking off. That’s what Bate thought. And that Petras Baranauskas would be disgusted, feel sullied at the very idea that someone had thought of him that way, used him that way, for so many years.

  “I haven’t—” Joel began. He hadn’t, as it happened. When he had first possessed the picture, so long ago, he had not yet discovered the art of self-abuse. By the time he had come into possession of it again, the few weeks he had it before he turned it over to Bate, he had a drawer full of more explicit meditational aids. He didn’t need to tell all this to Bate; there would be no use explaining to Bate that his feeling for the boy wasn’t crudely sexual. If in fact it wasn’t.

  Bate shook his head. “It’s like telling him he’s never been anything but the boy in that picture. It’s like saying he had no life.”

  “No, of course he did, I’m not…” Seconds, Petras had stood in front of a camera for seconds, and then had gone on to rack up a Social Security earnings history, a credit history, a lot of others Bate had not unearthed. Medical history, driving record, maybe an arrest or two. Maybe his name on the plaque for a winning team in the Roseville bowling league, or on the shelf that held his personal beer stein at the Roseville bar, or—so much Bate had not uncovered, so many folders he could have filled. Just one of which might have contained the single line: “10/8/63. CL: Simms of Santa Fe. AG: Dink & Dink. PH: A. Mar key.” The moment Joel thought of as the climax of Petras’s life. The shutter opening and closing: Petras might not remember at all. Maybe he didn’t even remember posing for that picture.

  “I’m the one who had no life,” Joel said.

  “Oh, come, Mr. Lingeman. You’ve had a successful career, excellent academic record, you’ve …” He trailed off, having disclosed that he—and why not?—had checked Joel out. Another folder. Maybe he had six billion folders.

  “I’m going to be tied up on Thursday,” Joel said.

  “Oh, yeah?” Michael put his fork down, waited for Joel to elaborate.

  They’d been together almost every night. Possibly they had reached the point at which it was no longer sufficient for Joel to say he was going to be tied up. “I’m going to New York. Just for the one night.”

  “New York? You just went.”

  Joel couldn’t recall having told Michael this. “Yeah, but that was business. This time it’s just—you know, every so often I go to New York because it’s New York. I go to museums or maybe a show, whatever. I’ve always gone a couple times a year.”

  “Oh. But you don’t want me to come.”

  “I—”

  “Well, I guess I can’t really afford it.”

  Michael went on eating, as if the topic were closed. Which was good, because of course Joel had no intention of bringing him along on this particular trip. But the topic was by no means closed. Michael must have been thinking: I’m supposed to sit alone in my little studio on T Street while my rich lover gallivants off to New York? While Joel was thinking: am I supposed to take him on trips, as if I were his sugar daddy? Or am I supposed to stay here and do only those things Michael can afford? Which didn’t, so far, include paying for dinner even once.

  “Where are you going to be staying?” Michael said.

  “In the Village, place called the Sheridan Square Hotel.”

  “Is that nice?”

  “It’s a dump. But, you know, it’s cheap, I don’t care much about hotel rooms.”

  “Oh. I guess, if you were—I mean, if you’re going anyway, then it doesn’t matter much if there’s one or two people in the room.”

  Uh-oh. “I don’t guess.”

  “And then there’d only be the train fare. How much is that?”

  “Well, I take the Metroliner. It’s, I don’t know, two hundred and something round trip.” That would surely end the matter.

  “Oh. But they have cheaper trains, too, right?”

  “Yeah. Maybe half that.”

  Michael was quiet. Joel could offer to take the cheap train for once. He could let Michael pay for the cheap train and then he could cover the upgrade. They could travel separately and meet. Joel could say: “I have personal business in New York.”

  “Okay. So it’s not about going to museums and shit.”

  “No.”

  “Well, you know, I don’t need to know your business,” Michael said. He leaned forward.

  Joel took a breath. “I’m going to see … somebody I was in love with when I was younger.”

  “Oh. So you might … you’re thinking you might get back together?”

  This was too casual; it would serve him right if Joel said maybe. Then it would serve Joel right if Michael just got up and walked away. “I—actually, I never met him.”

  “You never—”

  “He was a picture in a magazine.”

  Michael nodded as if this made sense, even took a bite or two of his salad before he said, slowly, “You’re going to New York to see somebody you saw in a magazine.”

  “New Jersey, actually. He lives in New Jersey.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I found out.”

  “So you fell in love with a picture in a magazine when you were … younger, you said, when was that?”

  “Nineteen sixty-four.” Michael wasn’t born, of course. He must have felt as distant from Joel, hearing that date, as Joel felt when people talked about 1946. More distant, because Joel had some concept of how it was to be alive in 1946. Michael probably supposed that any picture Joel could have seen in 1964 would have shown a man wearing animal skins and carrying a club.

  Michael said, “You’re just going to go see what he looks like now?”

  “I guess.”

  There was a long silence. Michael’s hands were folded on the table. He looked down at them. He was trying to decide whether Joel was crazy or merely lying. Or, unable to resolve this question, perhaps he was trying to decide whether it mattered. Whether this was just a harmless oddity he could overlook or whether he should get away from this loony as fast as he could.

  “Well, how long could that take?” Michael said.

  “What?”

  “I mean, we could go up together, and you could go … look at this guy while I hang out in New York, and then we could have fun.”

  He was g
oing to overlook it, then. He would let Joel pursue this quixotic idiocy and treat it as no big deal. Except that it would always be between them, that Joel had done this crazy thing. Michael wouldn’t even have to talk about it; it would just be something he knew. Would that be so bad, to have someone who wanted to go on seeing you even though he knew you were crazy?

  Joel pictured it. They would ride up together, check in at the hotel, have lunch somewhere. Joel would push back from the table and say, “Well, I’m off to New Jersey. What are you gonna do all day?” Joel would carry out his mission, in the evening they would meet and Michael would say—polite, bewildered, indulgent— “How did it go?” Indulgent above all: Joel hated the thought of being indulged.

  “Maybe I don’t need to go,” Joel hazarded. “Maybe it’s just silly.”

  “Sounds like it,” Michael said.

  “Come if you want to.”

  “I don’t think I want to,” Michael said. The worst, the ultimate weapon, that Sam had resorted to sometimes and that made Joel want to tear his eyes out: when Joel gave in and Sam went on sulking. “You go on ahead.”

  “Okay.”

  “Maybe I’ll go out myself Thursday. Who knows, maybe I’ll bump into some old flame myself.”

  “What?”

  “Just kidding. Maybe I’ll rent a movie or something.”

  “You should go out. We’re not joined at the hip.” That was a line of Sam’s, it just came out. Michael looked puzzled. “I mean we’re not Siamese twins.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  Sam used the line all the time, and Joel had never paid attention.

  While Joel was undressing, Michael went to the bathroom. Joel put his wallet on the dresser, was about to take his pants off. He stopped and looked in the wallet. Hastily, sneaking a look in his own wallet.

  “New York? You just went.” Joel had not told him this. The only way he could possibly have known was to have found the ticket stub, which was, yes, still in the bill compartment.

  Michael was routinely inspecting the contents of Joel’s wallet. Had he taken any more money? Never so blatantly again, never the only twenty left. But maybe if there were, say, seven twenties, and Joel couldn’t have noticed if they became six? What did it matter, if he didn’t notice? Just the occasional twenty: not enough to have made much difference in Michael’s life. Maybe he bought an extra fine shirt, or a couple of CDs.

  Not enough, he couldn’t have kept coming just for the occasional twenty. He liked being with Joel; the twenty was just a lucky bonus. Not much different than if, when he came over, he raided Joel’s icebox. Except there was nothing in Joel’s icebox, and there was sometimes a little something in Joel’s wallet that Joel would never miss.

  “You just went.” How could he be so stupid—practically telling Joel that he was going through Joel’s wallet? Michael wasn’t stupid. He wanted Joel to know. There: he wasn’t even taking the money for itself. He was taking it so that Joel would know he was taking it. As he must have wanted Ron to know: why else would he have put the card back?

  If this was a test, what was the correct response? If Joel called him on it, he’d deny it. If Joel didn’t, just said nothing, he’d think Joel was a fool. Or maybe he’d think he had permission. Which he did, so long as he never again took the last twenty, never again left Joel standing penniless in the checkout line at the Chinese salad bar.

  This was all too complicated for Joel. Sam was never this complicated; even when he was cheating, he did it in the simplest and most straightforward manner. He didn’t plant little clues. Did Joel have the energy for this?

  Absolutely: it might well have been the most interesting thing that had happened to him in thirty years.

  Okay, (a) Michael tells Joel that he has an inexplicable passion for old white guys, (b) Michael tells Joel that the only reason they’re together is so he can steal Joel’s money. The latter was patently false, because he wasn’t taking enough. But he wanted Joel to think it. Because otherwise Joel might think there was something pathetic about him. Might think Michael was sick or wounded, had some ugly sore for which—so pathetic—Joel was the salve.

  Michael was pathetic, any way Joel worked it out. Underneath the beauty, something unhealed.

  He came out of the bathroom, toweling himself. Whatever was wrong with him, underneath, the surface was certainly distracting.

  “You took a shower,” Joel said.

  “You didn’t hear me?”

  “I was thinking about something.”

  “You’re always thinking about something.”

  Joel shrugged. “Looks like you’ve been thinking about something.”

  Michael looked down, grinned, then grew serious again. “Even then, even when we … I can tell you’re thinking.”

  “I don’t see—I mean, how can you help thinking? You must think something.”

  “Only that I’m having a good time. Just that I’m happy. Or nothing, really, I don’t think anything.”

  Was this possible? Could a sentient being actually think I’m-happy-I’m-happy-I’m-happy, or nothing at all?

  Joel tried as Michael crawled into bed with him. Having Michael in bed with him was certainly something he ought to be happy-happy-happy about. He couldn’t do it, couldn’t turn his mind off the way, now, he turned off the light. But if he couldn’t stop thinking, it was just as well to have a man holding him while he thought.

  He thought of Sam. Michael might as well have been Sam—what was the difference, in the dark? A body pressed close to his own, why should Joel care what body, or even why it was there?

  Sam used to, during his periodic cleaning binges, scoop up the change from deep inside Joel’s club chair and then leave it on the end table, neatly done up in a little plastic bag. Sam had never taken even what Joel would never miss.

  There wasn’t going to be a Sam again, dear Sam. At this stage of his life the best Joel could do was Michael. Sam had said those very words, hadn’t he, that day in the park? “I was just the best you could do.”

  Joel chuckled. Michael or Sam or whoever was behind him murmured, “Hm?”

  Joel smiled: he remembered now, as he couldn’t that day in the park, when he had heard those words before. His mother, trying to get off the phone after listening to some friend’s interminable recitation of her husband’s deficiencies. His mother, snapping, “Well, Alice, he must have been the best you could do at the time.”

  By definition. If Michael was here, he was, by definition, the best Joel could do. Life reduced to one thudding tautology And what was wrong with Michael, why shouldn’t Joel be happy-happy-happy with Michael, at the negligible price of the occasional twenty? It wasn’t about Michael at all, it was about Joel. Joel wasn’t good enough, by definition.

  He had looked at the picture and hidden the magazine away, so long ago, looked at it again and again, so hungry to learn what it had to tell him. Shattered by what it told him; the kid who looked at it was shattered and never put back together again. You are not good enough to slip through this page and into Santa Fe. You will never be good enough.

  Joel and Melanie, Senator Harris’s LA, were in two of the chairs in the waiting area in Senator Flanagan’s anteroom, separated by a clutch of lobbyists in pinstripe suits. So they weren’t able to talk. Nobody talked; one of the lobbyists glanced now and then at his fellows, clearly wanted to tell them something, but wouldn’t because Joel and Melanie were there. Joel didn’t recognize any of them, they weren’t the pharmaceutical guys. They must have been here for a different meeting—which, with Joel’s luck, would come before the meeting on the Harris amendment. He and Melanie would have to sit here for an hour, waiting while these guys begged for whatever handout they were here to get. Whatever gift Flanagan still had it in his power to confer.

  Matthew Flanagan had been a professor of economics at Rutgers who had run for the House in 1964 as a sort of lark and was swept in with the LBJ landslide. His service in the House had been undistinguished. W
hile his capacity for Irish whiskey ingratiated him with the leadership, his tendency to lecture his colleagues on the basic principles of Econ 101 did not. He was assigned to the District of Columbia and the Fisheries and Wildlife committees, neither of which let him do very much for New Jersey. When, in his fifth term, a seat on Ways and Means came vacant, he pointed out his enormous expertise in the very subjects the committee dealt with: taxes, social security, welfare. The chairman, the omnipotent Wilbur Mills, did not desire committee members with enormous expertise. He desired committee members who would give him their proxies and shut the hell up.

  Flanagan wasn’t going anywhere in the House, so he decided to take a stab at the Senate. In any other year this would have been a laughable ambition, but it was 1974, the post-Watergate election; Bozo the Clown could have been elected as long as he was on the Democratic ticket. Once in the Senate, Flanagan thrived. A tendency to deliver interminable and pompous lectures is not disdained there; on the contrary, the Senate sometimes allots entire days to “morning business,” during which senators take their turn in haranguing an empty chamber. And advancement in the Senate depends entirely on longevity. By 1991 Flanagan was the second-ranking Democrat on the Finance Committee—able to do so many fine things for so many people, not least the pharmaceutical companies, that he didn’t have to worry about fund-raising. He was freed to write, or at least approve, innumerable op-ed pieces, which, when collected into books, earned him his reputation as the intellectual light of the Senate.

  His brief tenure as chairman of Finance began two years later and was ended by the catastrophe of 1994, to which he himself had contributed by his indolent and, some said, spiteful failure to get the president’s health care proposal through the committee. But he remained the ranking minority member, still able to do wonderful things for New Jersey. Such as pushing through the biotechnology innovation zones, if he could only find the savings to pay for them.

  Joel was right: the receptionist collected the pinstripes and led them down the narrow hallway to Flanagan’s sanctum. It was only fair, really, that their meeting should come first. They were, after all, paying for it.