Man About Town

by Mark Merlis

  “I was a gentleman of no seniority whatsoever. There was nothing I could do about it. As it happened, there were other members of the New Jersey delegation who were more favorably situated. The base was never actually in danger. But I didn’t know that, not when the defense appropriations came up for a vote. It was intimated to me that, if I were to vote No on the defense bill and if the base should subsequently close, the electorate might perceive, however erroneously, a causal relationship.

  “I have often wondered why they troubled to intimidate me. I was an inconsequential member, the defense appropriations always passed overwhelmingly, my vote was supererogatory. I have concluded that I was presented with this dilemma—possibly at the direction of the President himself—precisely in order to impress upon me my own inconsequentiality. A junior member from New Jersey was not supposed to question the infallibility of the Commander-in-Chief.

  “I voted Aye to preserve my seat. Not because I required the employment. I could have returned to Rutgers, or found tenure at any number of more august institutions. But I thought I was doing some good being in the House. My vote on the defense appropriations bill did no harm, and it allowed me to do some good.

  “Do you see? Our little amendment will in all probability visit no actual harm on any living person, and the chimerical savings attributed to it will finance some tangible benefits to many persons living in New Jersey. Their gratitude will, in turn, allow me to retain this seat and go on doing what good I can. Including, perhaps, putting this aging frame in the way of some more palpable threats to the well-being of persons of your orientation.”

  Joel nodded. What else could he do but nod? Ask the man to list all the good things he had done? Probably there was a list, probably in thirty years on the Hill Flanagan had done any number of good things that he would be delighted to recite. And he wasn’t a Fulbright, was he? He wasn’t like Fulbright, nigger-baiting back in Arkansas every six years so he could return to Washington and be a statesman, Flanagan wasn’t as spectacularly contemptible as that. He was just ordinarily contemptible.

  “I see,” Joel said.

  Flanagan gave a curt nod of forgiveness, then turned back to Andrew. “Let us go on, shall we?”

  Joel saw. He needed the job. He needed to keep those twenties flowing into his billfold, so that they could mysteriously disappear. He saw that he wasn’t young enough to storm out of the room and into some other life, some other country.

  He stayed in the room, said nothing more and looked out the window at the lovely autumn afternoon. He said nothing more, he wasn’t helping. Not like Andrew, also of the affected persuasion, who was writing out his brilliant amendment on a yellow legal pad. Joel wasn’t helping, it didn’t matter if he stayed in the room.

  ten

  “When are you leaving?” Michael said.

  “What?” Joel was in the kitchen, getting coffee. He was sad to hear Michael’s voice. Six in the morning: usually Michael slept another hour or so. Joel could read the paper, pick his nose, just be himself for an hour before pulling together the Joel he presented to Michael.

  “Isn’t this the day you go to New York?”

  “I can’t go, we’re on call.”

  “On call?”

  “They’re finishing up the budget bill. So they might need me for, you know, odds and ends.”

  “Oh. Well, great, that means you’ll be here tonight.”

  Joel made Michael’s coffee. Nondairy creamer, sugar substitute: he was stocking these things now. “I’ll be here, but I might be working.”

  “At night?”

  “You see, they have to pass this omnibus bill to keep the government running for another year. Just this one bill. So they stick in everything they never got around to, all the other stuff they never passed. It’s the last train leaving the station.”

  “Oh,” Michael said again—curtly, to forestall any lengthy exposition of the budget process. Joel brought him his coffee. He was in Joel’s widowed club chair, wearing boxer shorts with smiley faces on them.

  “Anyway, I’ll probably be up all night.”

  “All night? Shit.”

  “That’s how it works. They do every little thing the very last night.”

  Joel sat down on the sofa and opened the Times. Michael watched him. “You want a piece?” Joel said.

  “That’s okay.”

  Joel couldn’t focus on any of the headlines, he was too conscious that Michael was just sitting there. Sitting attractively, in his merry boxer shorts. Sitting quietly, contentedly, thinking not one single thing. Joel put his paper down. I’m-happy-I’m-happy-I’m-happy.

  The phone rang. Joel raced for it with relief: it had to be Herb, telling him the marathon was beginning.

  “Joel.”

  “Hey, Herb. We’re starting already?”

  “We’re not starting at all. It’s a snow day.”

  “What?”

  “The President vetoed the CR last night and they didn’t pass another one.” The continuing resolution, the stopgap measure that kept the government going, twenty-four hours at a time, until the President and Congress could agree on the final budget.

  “There’s no CR?”

  “Don’t you read the paper? The government’s closed. The Washington Monument’s closed. Old Faithful is not allowed to erupt. And OLA will not be open for business.”

  “But—I mean, they must still be working on an agreement. They’re probably going to need me to help with stuff.”

  “You’re forbidden to help. You can’t work. You can’t go into any government building.”

  “Oh.”

  “You sound disappointed,” Herb said.

  “I guess I just wanted them to get it over with.”

  “It’s going to be a while. They say they might be shut down for a few days.”

  “Really?”

  “They’re waiting to see who blinks first. The paper says it’ll be the Congress.”

  “You think?”

  “They’re the ones who’ll get the calls when the Social Security checks don’t show up in the mailboxes. Anyway, enjoy your holiday.”

  When he had hung up, Joel said, “The federal government’s closed.”

  “The whole government?” Michael said. “Schools and everything?”

  “No, the federal government doesn’t run the …” It was too much to explain. “Anyway, I get the day off.”

  “No kidding. Maybe I’ll call in, too. It’s supposed to be a beautiful day.”

  “Great,” Joel said. Then: “No.”

  “What? Oh. You’re going to New York.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I shouldn’t.”

  Michael shrugged. “You’re going to go sooner or later.”

  “Maybe. It’d be nice to spend the day with you.”

  “Right.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I saw you looking at me. Just now, before the phone rang. You were wishing I’d go away.”

  “Jesus.” There wasn’t any point denying it. “Just for a little while. I was just wishing you’d go back to bed for a little while so I could read my paper.”

  “I don’t see how I keep you from reading your paper.”

  “I don’t know. Look, why don’t you get dressed and we’ll go out for breakfast?”

  “I got to get home, change for work. If you’re not going to be here, I’m going to work.”

  “Are you mad at me?”

  “No, I just might as well work.” Michael stood up, decisively, but then didn’t move. His body seemed to sag a little, above the expanse of smiley faces. “God, I hate work.”

  “I thought you liked your job.”

  “I hate it. Sometimes I just want to quit, go back to school or something.”

  “You should,” Joel said, dismissively. Right: you don’t even read the morning paper, and you’re going back to college.

  “I can’t.” Michael sat down. “I, you know, I owe money on my cards and I … I just can’t.”<
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  “I could—” Joel began. He didn’t know how to finish the sentence. He knew the predicate should specify some kind of assistance. I could help you out a little. I could let you have the exercise room. I could pay your tuition. I could adopt you.

  It had come up so suddenly, this moment. Had Michael turned the conversation in this direction? No, he was just whining about work. Everybody whined about work, it didn’t mean they were looking for a sugar daddy.

  “I could help you out a little.”

  Joel was a GS-15, step 9. His income was close to six figures, he thought, before all the deductions. He made enough that he wasn’t sure what he made, and he didn’t spend it on cars or clothes or any travel except the occasional essential trip to places like Roseville, New Jersey. He could afford Michael. He could keep him openly, give him an allowance that would spare him the necessity of raiding Joel’s wallet—which must have been a little unpleasant to him, he must have felt some twinge every time he did it.

  There wasn’t even any reason either of them should be bashful about it. From each according to his ability. Joel had money and Michael had … everything but money.

  Michael was quiet. Weighing this, probably. How much help could Joel provide? How long would it last—a semester? Long enough to get him through to a Doctor of Apparel Science? What would it be like, being helped? What could it cost him, more than he was already giving? Giving away, or practically. At last he said, “That’s okay.”

  If the entire exchange had occurred a few days earlier, Joel would have thought: of course, he has his dignity, he must think I’m patronizing him. This morning, though, only Joel’s dignity was in question. He didn’t mind being taken; he minded being taken for a fool. “I’ve sort of already been helping you out,” he said.

  “You mean, like, dinner? You pay for dinner? You’re the one wants to go all these places. I wouldn’t care if we went to McDonald’s. Or we can stay in sometimes, I can cook.” Michael grinned. “Maybe not goat.”

  Joel smiled back. They already had a little bit of history together, what was his rush to kill it? “I don’t even know where you can buy goat.”

  Sometimes with Sam he had felt, as now, the utter contingency, the improbability that he should be sitting in a room with a stranger and imagining that something connected them. When they were no more connected than a couple of randomly colliding particles. They had bounced into one another, one of them could bounce away in the next instant, all it, would take would be a word or two. He could kill this in a word or two, or refrain, and the same would be true five minutes from now, or five years.

  He knew he should shut up. He wasn’t even certain: he’d tried to keep track of his money, these last few days, but he’d kept losing count. He was an old white guy, how was he supposed to remember whether he had $137 or $157? Twenty bucks: he’d made that much staring out the window at Senator Flanagan’s office. He was making that much right now. When the government reopened, he’d be paid retroactively for sitting here with a beautiful man whose boxer shorts had smiley faces.

  Which told him, one smirking face after another, that he was a loser. “How did you know I’d been to New York?”

  “Huh?”

  “I just … you know, I couldn’t remember telling you about it, that I’d been to New York before.”

  Michael made a persuasive show of astonishment: where the fuck did this come from, why are we talking about this? “I don’t know. You must have.”

  There were supposed to be signs, some ways that people more perceptive than Joel could detect a liar: he doesn’t look at you, he covers his mouth as he speaks, he blushes. How would he know if Michael blushed?

  “What is this about?” Michael said.

  Joel blushed. “Nothing, never mind.” He scurried off toward the kitchen so that Michael wouldn’t see him cry. A few months ago he hadn’t been able to make himself cry, now he seemed to cry at the drop of a hat. Or of an illusion. He managed to croak out: “Did you want more coffee?”

  “No, I better get dressed.”

  “Okay. Why don’t you take your shower first, I can wait.”

  “Fine.”

  Joel took his shower second, dried himself, found his glasses, stepped out into the bedroom. Michael was gone.

  Joel had meant to go to New York, check into the Sheridan Square, take a nap, go out and have drinks and dinner, and make his way to Roseville the next morning. But as the train pulled into Newark he found himself getting off. He’d only brought a change of linen stuffed into his briefcase, there wasn’t any need to go to the hotel.

  He had twenty minutes to wait for the next train on the Kilmer line. Not enough time for a drink, really; not to mention that the little bar in the station didn’t look like the kind of place where you went in and asked for a pinot gris. He went out to the street for a cigarette.

  Had he ever before set foot in New Jersey? Maybe a Howard Johnson’s on the Turnpike. Past that, it was just a mythical place, the absolute inverse of Arcadia or Cockaigne. You said New Jersey and you thought of a burning rubber tire. Yet Newark, which he had casually assumed would resemble Hiroshima or Dresden, was just an ordinarily dilapidated eastern city. Except that his was, as far as he could see, the only white face in the crowd in front of the train station.

  He had meant to use these minutes to think, finally, about what he might possibly say to his quarry. But he couldn’t focus just now. He scanned the landscape, trying to settle on a good site for the biotechnology innovation zone. As his head swiveled around he couldn’t help noticing that there were any number of hot men standing around. He didn’t let his eyes rest on any of them, not for a nanosecond. Someone had warned him once: don’t stare at black guys, they’ll think you’re dissing them and then they’ll cut you.

  He supposed he was safe; probably there was some little perimeter around the station that was patrolled enough to assure that Amtrak passengers weren’t randomly murdered. But he didn’t look. He felt a little thrill of danger as his eyes zipped past the vacant spaces where there was something he wasn’t supposed to look at. Along with some indignation: I’m here, I have a right to look at anything. Who are you people to tell me what I can look at?

  You people. Did Michael know that, deep inside, Joel still thought “you people?” Probably. He seemed to know everything else. Maybe that was what Joel couldn’t tolerate, finally: that Michael knew everything about Joel, about himself, about each moment he passed through. Or knew all he cared to know, certainly an important distinction. Joel was the only one who needed to know stuff.

  He ground out his cigarette and immediately lit another; it was a long ride to Roseville. Twelve-thirty. Michael was at Hecht’s, dealing with the lunch crowd. Of course he hated that job, must have hated his whole life: helping someone choose a tie or counting packets of underwear, going home to his cell on T Street to change, then hurrying to meet a dumpy, depressed old man who insisted, absolutely demanded that Michael tell him the obvious, that he was a dumpy, depressed old man. How tiresome for Michael, no wonder he had walked out. He had given Joel so much at such a bargain price. Michael had offered up his beauty and youth and life for the price of dinner and the occasional scarcely missed gratuity, and all Joel had had to do was shut up about it.

  He had killed it. Sacrificed a chance—surely his last chance—for ordinary happiness, because he needed to know stuff he already knew. As he had made this trip in order to make the vital discovery that it wasn’t 1964 and New Jersey was not New Mexico.

  He had tried happiness. If he was only going once through this life, why shouldn’t he do what he wanted, rather than what would make him happy?

  Why should he have imagined that he would step off the train in some hamlet thirty miles from the city and find taxis waiting?

  From the platform outside the station he saw, through a window, a ticket agent. But when he stepped inside, there was a shade pulled down over the ticket booth. On the shade, in black letters: “Ticket Agent 6 A.M.-2
P.M.” It was only one-thirty Joel bent down and called through the slot below the shade, “Hello.” There was no answer. He went back outside, stood in front of the open window to the ticket office. The agent looked back at him incuriously, as if he were an image on a television screen, not a live person standing four feet away from her.

  She was a large black woman, with a blue shirt and a necktie. Joel thought, sequentially, perhaps, but it was almost as if he were thinking all these things at once: you are a lazy Negro who got this job through some quota, I am a despicable racist, I can’t really be a racist if I recognize it, you’re lazy anyway or you wouldn’t have closed early, you’re looking at me with hatred so you must be a racist too, I would probably look at me with hatred if I were you, I just want to ask a question, can’t we just deal with each other like humans. And finally: I am enacting this national drama all by myself, she’s just sitting there while a strange man stares at her through her window.

  “Excuse me,” Joel said. She just stared, and he went on. “I was wondering how you get a taxi here.”

  She sighed. “I don’t know, honey.” So sadly, as if she had been wondering the same thing for years. “Maybe you could call one.”

  “Uh-huh. Do you—” There was really no point asking the question. “Do you happen to know a number?”

  She shook her head mournfully. Joel wondered if Michael’s mother looked like this.

  “Oh. Well, could I get some change?”

  “I’m closed.” Rather sternly: you can see I’m closed, do you think you’re somebody special?

  “Oh.” It didn’t matter: it wasn’t as if he could call information and expect the semi-animate being at the other end to tell him how to get a taxi in Roseville, New Jersey. “Do you have any idea where Bridge Street is?”