See You in Paradise (25 page)

“You don’t kiss?”

“On the cheek.” He blushed. “Sort of neck, too.”

That was enough for me. I stood up. “I have to go to work,” I said.

“No you don’t. It’s only ten thirty.”

“There are errands I need to do.”

“The next bus won’t be here for half an hour.”

“I am going to walk to town.”

His raised his eyebrows. “You are? That’s so cool. I am coming with you.” He went to the coatrack and shrugged on his jacket. “I have to get some fresh air and straighten all this out in my head.”

Did he say “my head” with special, slightly fey, significance? I believe that he did. I did not want to walk the two miles to town, let alone with John Weber, but that’s what I ended up doing, and in retrospect it was a good thing, because I bumped into Ruperta. In order to get away from Weber as quickly as possible, I had pretended to need something at the first retail business we passed, a fishing and hunting supply store at the edge of town.

“What do you need there?” he wanted to know.

“Some very strong filament. Fishing line. For hanging something.”

Weber seemed to recoil. “Well, I’m not going in there with you.”

“Okay,” I said, perhaps too readily.

“I don’t believe in killing animals,” he went on. “That’s, like, an animal-murdering supply store, basically.”

I couldn’t help myself. I asked, “But … don’t you eat meat?”

He snorted. “Well, yeah, but that’s different. That’s meat animals. This is wildlife.”

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t envy him. I wanted what he had: the ability to remake the world on the fly, to force it to conform to his vision. Or maybe what I really envied was his vision: that he had one. In any event, I hated him. I said goodbye and left him to his cognitive dissonance. Then I went inside and gazed back through the window at his hunched form as he slouched toward town. When I turned around, I saw Ruperta behind the counter.

“What are you doing here?” she said.

“What are
you
doing here?”

She shrugged. “Bernice fired me.” Bernice was her old boss, the owner of a catering company that Ruperta had managed. “For no reason! She said I was spying on her through her windows at night. Which obviously I wasn’t. She’s fired half the staff. She’ll be out of business by New Year’s and in the loony bin by Groundhog Day. Who’s the big guy?”

I explained as best I could about Weber, and told her about the head. She nodded, smiling wryly. I was in love with her. And here I thought I had made so much progress.

“Still on those train books?”

“No,” I said, “I’ve kind of lost interest.”

“Huh,” she said. “Well. Goodbye.”

I hadn’t intended to leave. But I said goodbye and walked the rest of the way into town.

For the next two weeks, I hoped daily that Weber would spend the night at the home of his immoral, withered teen sex addict so that I could go snoop in his bedroom. When he did, I explored every corner, digging through his stuff carefully at first and later with desperate abandon. The room produced more fascinating artifacts than I had anticipated—love letters from various adolescent girls (boringly, they seem to have been written when Weber, too, was an adolescent); photographs of Weber and some other people at a party, in which only Weber appeared sober; several books on sculptural technique (which, oddly, didn’t appear ever to have been opened); and, inside a special little carved Indian-looking hinged box lined with crushed velvet, a single, foil-wrapped, six-months-expired, spermicidally-lubricated condom. I could not help but let out a little bark of laughter when I saw it. But I then remembered that Weber was the one with the girlfriend, not me, and I licked my lips in bitter humiliation.

The head, meanwhile, had improved. It had become creepier. It was … animated, almost; it had a life force. Weber had turned it, so that now it faced the window and gazed at Mount Peak with admiration, respect, and not a little irony, as if it and the mountain had made a pact. The freckles and blotches that populated the real John Weber’s face had been reproduced here, somehow, as slight depressions or perhaps microscopically thin plateaus; their monochrome relief gave them a quality of terrible realness, and I could not refrain from touching them. Then, in the harsh glare from Weber’s daylight-corrected lamp, I saw that my fingerprints had marred, subtly, the surface of the head and mixed with Weber’s own. I thought of Ruperta and emitted a small whimper.

Have I described her? I don’t think that I have. Ruperta was an arrangement of pleasing roundnesses, wide round eyes nestled in wide round glasses, surrounded by black parentheses of hair set atop a full, pink melon head. Her body was all balls stuck to balls: a snowman of flesh. She was my type—indeed, the perfect expression of it. I walked to town every day now in order to pass by the animal-murdering supply store, where she allowed me to speak to her briefly each day, to construct the elaborate illusion that I was leading a respectable and appealing life. She told me that she had learned to fire a rifle and to tie trout flies, and that she liked these things a great deal, and what did I think of that? I liked that very much, I said, and as I said it, it became true. I felt the possbility of reinvention, of reconciliation. Some days I wept as I walked the rest of the way to work.

John Weber, meawhile, did not seem himself. Sometimes, he appeared not to notice me at all. I found him one morning sitting at the kitchen table, gazing out the window at the mountain. In the next room, I recalled, the head was doing exactly the same thing.

“John,” I said. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” he replied.

I stood there, unsure what I should do. Had John Weber just turned down an opportunity to speak? He looked so glum. Or, rather … serious.

“No, what?” I persisted.

He turned to me now, slowly, and regarded me as though he were deciding what sort of person I was, whether I could be trusted with what he had to say. After a moment, he came to a decision.

“Well, to be honest, for a while there I wasn’t sure about you. You’re a little self-absorbed, you know. But I guess we’re really friends now, aren’t we?”

“Sure.” I thought of the condom, nestled in its tiny secret bed, and felt guilty.

“I’ve decided to ask Sandy to get engaged.”

I tried, but failed, not to say, “Really?”

“Yes. And if she agrees, I am going to make love with her.”

Regret flooded my body—ihad passed up the chance to never hear this!

“I have a plan,” Weber said, brightening. “I’m going to invite her on a hike. Up Mount Peak. And we’re going to go all the way to the Beavers sign. And I’ll propose to her, and if she says yes, I’m going to point down at our roof and say, ‘See that? That’s where I’m going to make passionate love to you as soon as we get down there.’”

“Umm, you want me to make myself scarce?”

He waved his hand. “Ah, no, doesn’t matter, hang around if you want. Anyway, then we’re each going to take a white stone from the Beavers sign, and we’re going to bring them down here and lay them next to the bed while we do it. That’s the plan.”

“There’s a big pile of the stones out back,” I pointed out.

“The stones aren’t the point, roommate,” he said. “Getting the stones is the point.”

“I see.”

“And plus,” he said, his dark mood utterly dispelled now, “I have something else for her. A very special thing I’ve been making.”

“Wow.”

“Do you want to see it?”

“I think that’s just between you two.”

“That’s a good point. I can’t show it to you. What was I thinking? It has to be pure. Only I have set my eyes upon it, and she will be the first ever to see it, aside from its maker.”

“That’s romantic,” I said.

He was euphoric now. “Really? You think so?” He stood up. “Oh man, this is so awesome. I am so gonna get engaged to her.” And before I could stop him, he came to me and hugged me. “Thanks, man. You’re the greatest. I was so wrong about you.”

“You’re welcome,” I said uncertainly and withdrew from our embrace. Weber threw on his coat and marched out the door, presumably to go set up his Big Day.

That day came quickly. The following Saturday morning the two of them set out at dawn on a gear-collecting mission and reappeared a few hours later in their excursion getups: fleece jackets, tan shorts lousy with zippered pockets (new ones, with more pockets than ever before), sleek boots of synthetic fabrics in natural colors, and matching backpacks with a single, diagonal padded strap. Weber looked elated. Sandy looked skeptical. The backpack strap was very wide and kept pressing into one or another of her small breasts, forcing her to adjust it every thirty seconds or so.

“I got us some stuff,” Weber said.

“I can see that,” I replied.

“It’s all for our special day.”

Sandy said, “I still don’t see what’s so special about it.”

“Everything,” Weber said, taking her hands. “Everything about it is very special.” I caught a glimpse of Sandy rolling her eyes.

They turned, walked out the door, and headed for the mountain. But after a moment, Weber came back. He hurried over to me and laid his hands on my shoulders. Even through my oxford shirt I could feel how damp they were.

“I won’t be the same when I come back. You need to understand that, roomie.”

“Okay …”

“Old John Weber will be no more.” His face appeared beatific, or perhaps just flushed. “You won’t be able to count on my advice—new John Weber might be beyond all that. So I just want to tell you now—you need to change, too.”

“Do I?”

“Put it all behind you. The trains and stuff. All your internet groups. Find purpose for your life. That’s all.” He lifted his hands and brought them down on my shoulders a second time, perhaps a bit too heartily.

“Did you look on my computer?” I asked him.

But he only shook his head, his real head, the less intelligent of the two. “So long,” he said and marched out.

Here’s what had happened the night before: I strolled into the fishing and hunting shop right before it closed and asked Ruperta if she’d let me take her out to dinner. She said yes. We got into her car and drove east around Mount Peak, and then south behind its much more impressive twin, Mount Clark. Eventually we came to the large log structure that housed Pappy’s Best Steaks Ever Grill, where, if you had the money and, more importantly, the desire, you could walk around back and pick out, from a meadow, which grass-fed steer you wished to devour that night. They would slaughter it on the spot, and when you were through eating, they would load the leftover butchered cuts, wrapped in white paper and packed into cardboard boxes, onto the back of your pickup truck.

We did not choose that option, though. Ruperta had some prime rib, and I ordered barbecued chicken.

“You’re not going all hippie vegetarian on me, are you?” she asked.

“Chicken’s not a vegetable,” I argued.

“It’s close.”

We didn’t say much during the meal. Afterward we drove out to the all-night shooting range, and I watched Ruperta spray a man-shaped target with hot lead underneath the arc lights. I was impressed—she was very good. When she was through we sat in the car and made out, and she lay her fat little hand on my crotch.

“Is this real?” she quipped.

“Ha ha.”

“You should know I slept with my boss a couple of times.”

“Oh,” I said. I had assumed, of course, that she would go seeking amorous companionship, but it was hard to imagine it actually happening. I felt very small.

She frowned and removed her hand. “Hmm. Just like old times.”

And so all this was on my mind as I sat and watched through the kitchen window as Weber and Sandy scaled the mountain. Now, I am not big on epiphanies. But as their bunched, indistinguishably hairy calves vanished from the frame, I felt a bottomless hole open up in the floor of my soul, and I knew with sickening certainty that, if I did not leave this place immediately, I was going to die here. John Weber would marry his weathered nymph, and they would keep me, like a son or drooling pet, in this hideous little clapboard prison. Or worse yet, Sandy would decline to wed, and then Weber and I would be alone. One way or another, I would never escape Weber. His avidity was more powerful than my aversion. He had a life force—he had
joie de vivre.
All I had was a collection of train books and an intimidating ex-girlfriend.

Maybe he was right about me.

I went to Weber’s room and pawed, once again, through his possessions. I had my own things, of course, mementoes of an unremarkable life, stored away in boxes and crates in the closet, but they didn’t interest me. I knew Weber’s better than mine. The head still stood on its pedestal, gazing out at the mountain’s cheesy face, and was I imagining it, or did it look a little smugger these days, a little more smarmy, a little more glib? I don’t know what made me do what I did next—some uncharacteristic upwelling of personality, maybe—but I dropped the packet of state-themed postcards I was holding, took three steps across the room, and mashed in Weber’s nose with my thumb. I gasped, as if having just watched someone else do it. The face was ruined, of course; the jolly ape Weber had always secretly resembled was revealed in all its glory, with my whorled print in the center of it.