The Enthusiast

by Charlie Haas

  At the bottom of the ladder we walked down another corridor, this one with a stream in the middle of it. Geoff pointed out cave pearls, calcite straws, and degenerate-eyed fish. When I got my head stuck in a tight passage, he barked at me to relax till I scraped free. Just past the squeeze, we came into a room-like chamber twenty feet across.

  Geoff turned in a slow arc, his headlight illuminating a bedroll, sealed food containers, aluminum dishes, a hibachi, and a milk crate full of folded clothes.

  “Dweller,” he said.

  I shined my lamp around too. There were clothes soaking in a washtub by a pool of water, and a pair of tan pants hanging from a clothesline attached to the walls with pitons. Beside the bedroll were worn paperbacks of Centennial and Shogun and a magazine called Wet and Ready, from an old heritage of enthusiast titles.

  “Current,” I said.

  Geoff nodded. “Shame no one’s home. Readers love it. Living the dream.” We started back the way we’d come. “See it in England now and then, front page of the Sun—THE NEW TROGLODYTES! Filthy little face peering out at the camera, mental as anything, of course—”

  He stopped suddenly, and I looked up from the cave floor to see a guy pointing a handgun at us. We threw our hands up, yelling, “Hello! Sorry! We’re sorry!”

  The guy was in his thirties, a little beefy in twill pants, a white business shirt half-soaked with sweat, a small backpack, and a caving helmet. “Who are you?” he said in a Missouri twang.

  “Very sorry,” Geoff said. “Let’s be calm. We must have given you a start. We were—”

  “I said, Who are you?”

  “Right. Sorry. I’m Geoffrey Florian and this is Henry Bay. We’re with Spelunk magazine. About caves?”

  “I don’t think I’ve seen it,” the guy said.

  “Not important,” Geoff said.

  My voice shaky, I said, “We can just—”

  “I don’t suppose you’d like to talk to us,” Geoff said. “A short interview?” The guy’s eyes narrowed. “It’s just that our readers are always interested in people who’ve actually made their homes in caves. Or we can be on our way and sorry for the interruption. Entirely up to you.”

  “It’s up to me? The guy with the gun? Amazing.” He lowered it, though, and thought for a minute. “You can’t put my name in there. Or where this is.”

  “No, no,” Geoff said. “Complete discretion.” I had no idea where he was getting his calm from. Either the Kiki Dee thing had battle-hardened him or Silica had gotten him past caring.

  The guy thought some more, then nodded us back to the room we’d found. When we got in there he put his gun and backpack on the floor, scooped water from the pool, drank, and sat down on a rock.

  The three headlamps brought the light up to winter gloom, and I could see a drawing that covered most of one wall. It had the plain dark lines of an Altamira mammoth but it was some kind of flow chart, ovals and rectangles with names in them. Some of the names had been crossed out. I wondered if they were serial murder victims.

  “Sir—” Geoff said.

  “Larry,” the guy said.

  “Larry. It’s good to meet you, Larry.” He took a tape recorder out of his pack and held it up. “I could use this or it’s perfectly fine not to.” Larry shrugged. “That’s very kind. Thank you,” Geoff said, and pressed Record. “So, to jump in, then, ah, how long have you lived here?”

  “Few months,” Larry said. He squirted lighter fluid on the coals in the hibachi and lit them.

  “Have you done any mapping of these caves?” Geoff said.

  “Or animal counts?”

  “Nope. I bet that would be real engrossing, though.”

  “So, in general, then, what would you say led you to, uh, live here?”

  “What led me. Yeah.” He stared at the fire for a minute, shook his head, and turned to us. “How much do you guys know about market research?”

  We looked at each other. “Not that much,” I said.

  “Yeah, well, that’s what led me here. Market research. Working at a company in St. Louis. We broke the population down into groups and found out everything about them. What they bought, what they wore, what they watched, what they drank, how they talked. We started out with all the old classifications, like Sustainers and Achievers and I Am Me’s, and then we broke them way down. We had eighty subgroups. Nobody’s Homies, Dior Christians, Home Despots, Shaft in Golf Pants. The energy just to think up the names would power a small city. But the data were beautiful. The ad agencies? Political parties? Wanted to marry us.

  “I did interviews. I ran focus groups. These women would come in to talk about hair extensions, or diet shakes…”He trailed off, studying the fire’s shadows on the cave wall.

  “It’s harder to hit on women now than it’s ever been before,” he said finally. “I don’t have the numbers in front of me, but it is. You almost have to be from the same little tribe they are, and like I say, there are eighty. You can have a conversation, but you both know nothing’s going to happen, because she’s a Guyless in Prada and you’re a Keg with Legs.”

  The flames had died down and the coals were glowing. He opened a food canister and put some lumps of raw meat on the grill. “But I knew these women,” he said. “From the research. I knew how to talk to them. I don’t mean the ones that came in for the groups. I was strict about that. Fairly strict. But I’d see other ones out there that were just like them. I knew their psychographics. I knew which commercials made them mist up. I knew where they lived and I knew where their kids went to school.”

  He plucked a piece of meat off the grill, waved it around to cool it, and ate. “The first time was at the mall. Naturally. My wife is shopping and I wander off and I see this kiosk girl. I see that little hand working the jewelry pliers, the little tank top and the four pony tails…”He looked at Geoff. “Tell me you never wanted kiosk. But you didn’t attempt it, right?

  “I look at her and I think, ‘Yeah, you’re an Emulator, aren’t you? I can see your apartment from here. It’s bad but it’s near water, your desk calendar’s got angels on it, you splurge on underwear, you listen to K-101 regardless of what city you live in, and you’re taking a class, screenwriting, songwriting, greeting card writing. You’ve got half a dozen start-your-own-business ideas, but people are unfair. They screw over your dreams, but you don’t give up. You’re upward-aspiring. Guess what I’m aspiring up.’

  “Emulator sex. Boy.” He shook his head. “It’s like a movie where they’re overacting, but that’s what’s great about it. The curtains are blowing in and out and there’s screaming. Afterwards she goes to get beers and she goes, ‘You stay right there, you.’” He pressed a playful finger, covered with charred fat, to an invisible nose. “Just poignant, because you both know you’re going to have to talk her down at some point.

  “I’d never done anything like this. My wife was only my third sex partner. But I had the keys now. I’d see a Tightie Whitey in a sweater set and I’d be like, Guess who’s getting into that gated community.” He saw Geoff look down. “Am I offending you? Is this a little coarse? I’m sorry. I live in a cave, okay? Wolves are raised by me.”

  “Right, no, I—”

  “I got kiosk, I got arthouse, I got sales conference. They were stashing the kid at phonics. They were flying in an hour early and meeting me at Embassy Suites. The clothes were sailing off. So many opening nights. And it’s only opening night once, right? And you do not get jaded. I don’t know who propounded that shit. My heart was going louder every time. Like, look at this, I’m getting it again! I escaped from all my troubles. Actually, I didn’t have any troubles, going in, but I escaped from the troubles I was making for myself by escaping. Or maybe I escaped from how we’re all going to escape for real one day. That’s what they say about sex, right? Like I needed to know what they say.

  “So naturally I fucked it up. I just had to have a Sustainer. That’s the group where they’re just getting by. Crisis to crisis. Heavy users of
paycheck advance stores. This was some seriously forbidden-assed fruit. Sustainer sex is a crisis in itself. You feel like an asthma inhaler.

  “Week five, she comes to the house.” He sighed. “We were having people over, some Peaked in Colleges my wife, Kelly, peaked in college with, but that was no barrier to entry, right? Dolores, the Sustainer, comes in sobbing. She’d confessed to her husband and she prayed that Kelly could forgive her someday although she’d never forgive herself, and so on. So forget the marriage. I had zero money. I’d been out here and seen this cave…”

  Geoff said, “You lost your job, then? For using the information?”

  “No, I still work there. But every dime goes to her. And I’d kind of drained out our savings. There were some trucks.”

  “Sorry, trucks?”

  “I bought a few women pickup trucks. To get things going.”

  “Ah.” Geoff paused. “I’d thought it was just by talking to them.”

  “Wake up, cave boy,” Larry said. “You’ll be late for school. The bus is down by the Millers’ house.”

  “Right,” Geoff said.

  “It’s knowing who would want a truck.”

  “No, of course.”

  I cleared my throat and said, “Do you think living in a cave has influenced the way you look at life?”

  “Yeah,” Larry said. “I mean, if you look at the manhood signifiers that are available out there? Like watching football? That’s supposed to be manly because I’m not knocking into anyone, but these little millionaire men are knocking into each other for me, and they have to douche with steroids to do it, but I scream at the TV set, and somehow that’s manly of me. But a cave? Mm-hm. Like at work. I never even tried to advance before, and now I’m going for department head.” He pointed at the names on the wall. “That’s everyone that stands between me and the job. Some of them don’t anymore. Out-politicked. That’s a cave thing. You’re not finished hunting till you paint it on there.” He nodded at me. “Why don’t you come in there with me tomorrow and see? Tell people you’re interviewing me for a business magazine.”

  Geoff said, “Right, I don’t imagine you tell people where you live.”

  “Sure, I do,” Larry said. “I ridicule someone’s presentation so bad they have to go in the bathroom for half an hour, and people go, ‘Okay, wow, well, you really had some questions there.’ I go, ‘Hey, sorry. You know, I live in a cave.’”

  “What do they say?”

  “They laugh.” He did a joyless office chuckle, nailing it, so you could see a file folder clutched nervously to sweatered breasts. “Ah ha ha ha.” He shook his head. “That Larry.”

  Geoff killed a Merit in three drags as we walked back to the Willys to roll out our sleeping bags. “Not really a cave story, is it?” he said. “I’ll drop you and him at his office tomorrow, go back down and find some insects to photograph, if he hasn’t eaten them all.”

  In the morning we drove Larry to an office park of one-story stucco buildings on landscaped rolling hills. He looked around as the Willys idled and said, “Perimeter check. That’s a nice thing about caves. You don’t see a lot of the irate-husband demographic down there.”

  He converted his backpack to a soft briefcase as we walked to his building. “What’s the deal with you and the English guy?” he said, watching Geoff drive away.

  “How do you mean?” I said.

  “Who’s got the better title?”

  “Neither. We’re both associate editor.”

  “Yeah? He acts like he’s over you. Who’s going to move up? Who’s going away in a cutback? You’re not thinking about that, are you? He is.”

  “I don’t think there’s anything like that going on.”

  “I know you don’t. I’m three questions away from knowing your subgroup. If I had to guess right now I’d say you’re an Oil Case.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It means you have a car that causes you to buy oil by the case, and everything else pretty much flows from that. The Oil Case doesn’t go for what he wants. The Oil Case thinks things will work out on their own. While they don’t, the Oil Case crams our nation’s landfills with empty cans of forty-weight.”

  The atrium lobby of his building had a juice bar, a newsstand, and a dry cleaner. In the open-plan offices beyond it, people in business-casual clothes strolled purposefully around with tall coffees and bound reports. We passed a daycare center full of toddlers, a gym with people on Stairmasters, and an indirectly lit cafeteria with three-dollar Chinese chicken salads. On the walls were paintings I could tell were good. Larry saw me looking around and said, “Fucking rest home.”

  He had a private office, third from the corner. His assistant, a ninety-pound guy my age with a soul patch and a phone headset, sat at a desk outside it. “Anything?” Larry asked him.

  “Friedman wrote an e-mail,” the assistant said, “saying we should focus more on packaged-goods business.”

  “You’re saying Friedman walked out in front of a bus?” Larry said. “You’re saying Friedman ritually disemboweled himself? The poor blighter.”

  “I know,” the assistant said. “Total blighter.” He handed Larry some phone messages.

  “You see how he hands me the messages?” Larry said to me.

  “You could learn to do that, right?” The assistant made threatening kissing noises at me like a Pachuco in a prison movie.

  Larry and I went into his office. There were no decorations, and only two pieces of paper on his desk. The window framed a green rise with three birch trees on it. Larry threw most of the phone messages away. The intercom buzzed and his assistant said, “Stan’s out here.”

  “Good,” Larry said, and pointed at me like “You’re on.” I pushed Record on the tape recorder as a guy about Larry’s age came in.

  “But what you’ve done, really,” I said, “is to reinvent how these groups are seen.”

  “Yes,” Larry said. “I had input from other people here, but yes. Stan, this is Henry.”

  “I’m from Fast Company,” I lied. “We’re doing a story on Larry.”

  “Really?” Stan said. “That’s great.” He looked like he’d been shot.

  “What’s up?” Larry asked Stan.

  “Uh, nothing. You guys are into it. I’ll get you later.”

  He left. After a few minutes I went out into the open plan. Stan was at a coffee station that had French roast and Power-Bars. “How’s it going?” he said as I poured a cup.

  “Good,” I said.

  “Great. Yeah, I was just curious, how did you guys kind of hone in on Larry?”

  “Sometimes someone’s name keeps coming up,” I said. “My editor said let’s not be the second place to do him.”

  I was surprised at myself. Larry was no one to me, and Stan wasn’t my enemy, but I was more than willing to do this office karaoke. It was the building, I realized, with its subsidized salads and uninsulting paintings, a building that would look with pity on Spelunk’s two-room office and all the similar dungeons I’d worked in. I would die without ever working someplace like this, but at least I could participate in the cave painting. I could help draw a line through Stan here. I put a heat sleeve on my coffee, pointed the stupid “Later” finger at him, and went back to Larry’s office.

  At ten there was a focus group, and Larry and I sat in the control booth with two of his colleagues. Across the one-way mirror, six pink-collar workers talked about mid-priced cosmetics over doughnuts and Sunny Delight. The facilitator let them spend the first few minutes saying how great this place was, how they’d never get their kids to leave the daycare room and they guessed they’d just have to move in.

  “Sustainer humor,” Larry said, staring through the mirror. When I caught his eye, he nodded at the glass and said, “In the yellow,” and I realized I’d been looking at her, too. When I got back to Silica I called Jillian for the first time in over a year.

  She was friendly, as always, and when she heard where I was living she invited me to
drive over and see her the following Sunday. For the rest of the week I pictured the two of us walking around downtown Clayton, the streets steaming after a morning rain. We kissed on the corner by the tackle store and she said, “God, look at us, and I’m ever modest.” Then we were back at her apartment, and Megan had let her keep the clothes from the Polaroids.

  Someone takes a trip overseas and brings you a fifty-something banknote as a souvenir. The familiar aspects of money (denominations, serial numbers) crash into the strange ones (pink scrollwork, a purple dictator), so that you’re holding an object out of last night’s dream.

  That’s how it felt to come back to Clayton after six years away. My accurate memories collided with the ones I’d scrambled and the few actual changes on Lofton Street, where the steam I’d been picturing curled up from the pavement to be blown away by the Flurry’s grille.

  I’d driven seven hours, stopping once for gas and twice for oil, and it was late afternoon when I got to Jillian’s. She opened the door in her usual jeans and denim shirt, pointy new boots and turquoise jewelry. Summer had darkened her freckles and put highlights on her bangs. “Henry ‘Hank’!” she said, and hugged me. “This is so cool. Come in.”

  “You look great,” I said. “Your place looks great.”

  “Well, thank you. I don’t think it’s any different. Oh, this is new.” It was a photo collage of herself, Scott, and Dina posing by camping gear and twisted trees. “Joshua Tree Monument. We went last fall. It was amazing.”

  “Did you get to Bakersfield?”

  “No. I was crestfallen. Scott had to come back and work. Let me get my junk and we’ll go somewhere.”

  We drove toward the river in her Jetta. “You left at the right time,” she said. “Arnold finally figured out there was no money in Kite Buggy and he folded it. He keeps trying new ones. I’m working on Rug Hooking and Stick Fighting now.” She paused. “Steve moved to Chicago.”

  “How come?”

  “Nearness to the galleries. Plus I finally drove him nuts.” She downshifted, her shoulder flexing under the denim, as she turned onto a riverside street and parked by a sandy path.