The Enthusiast (10 page)

“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.”

 

G
eoff 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.

 

S
he 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.

 

S
omeone 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 scram
bled 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.”

 

W
e 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.

We walked by the river as the sun went down. “Do you realize where Jim Rensselaer is now?” Jillian said. “The Washington bureau of the
Kansas City Star
. It's hilarious. He goes to cocktail parties on Embassy Row.”

“That's great,” I said, and stopped walking. “That time we went to the Thai restaurant and you kissed me afterward. Do you remember that?”

“Of course.”

“What was that about?”

“It's when a man and a lady like each other very much.”

“Did you?”

“Yes,” she said. “You know that.”

“No I don't.”

“Well, I did.”

“Me, too,” I said.

She started walking again. “I mean, it's not like I planned it. You know those things where they give the spiders all different drugs and they try to make their spider webs and the webs are hopelessly screwed up? That's what my plans are like.”

“Okay,” I said.

“I don't know, Henry, it's…if you sleep with people you don't care about, you don't feel so springtime fresh afterward, and if you sleep with people you do care about, it's like, how do you steer this thing?”

“Maybe you don't.”

“I
definitely
don't. That's what I'm saying.” She stopped walking and took my hand as the sunset blazed over the fine hairs on her neck. “You're making me do the part I can't do,” she said.

“I can't, either,” I said. “We could build on that.”

“Build on that? Henry, you're a bigger spider on drugs than I am.”

“No, I'm not,” I said. “Why do you think I drove up here?”

I put my hand behind her head and tried to kiss her. She pulled away so sharply that I felt like some kind of abuser. For a minute we looked at each other as if we were on opposite sides of the river.

“I don't think we better,” she said. “I'm sorry. I don't think we can.”

“Should I still call you?”

“Of course. And I still want to see Bakersfield.” The change of subject steadied her voice. “Look at
their
personal lives. And yet they soldier on.”

“Who soldiers on?”

“Buck and Merle and everyone. I think that's why I look up to them.” The copper gleams from the river were blinding. As I turned back toward the car she touched my arm and said, “Everyone liked you here.”

 

I
t took me all night to drive back. The Flurry's radio was working for once and I got an all-news station from Jefferson City. A family planning researcher in Maryland, heating up soup while his wife and kids slept, had been shot through his kitchen window. The authorities had no leads. When I got back to Silica the band with the patch-cord problems was singing, “Brandy, you're a fine girl.” I only got a few hours' sleep, but I was glad I had a job to go to in the morning.

Except that I didn't.
Spelunk
had been bought by Clean Page, the company in San Jose, as Geoff predicted. Larry was right too: Geoff survived the transition and I didn't.

I went home and started calling around. Laura O'Connor, the art director of
Row!
when I worked there, said she thought a friend of hers named Agnes in the Hudson River Valley might want help with
Cozy, The Magazine of Tea
.

“Tea like you drink?” I said. “Like at Chinese restaurants?”

“It's better tea than that,” Laura said. “But yes.”

Two hours later, at the biggest newsstand in St. Louis, I read
the want ads in
Editor and Publisher
. All the job openings required a knowledge of news, politics, or the kind of sports that people leave their homes to watch. I put it back and moved on to the enthusiast titles. The Clean Page logo, a smugly meaningless swoosh, was on every sixth one.

I bought a copy of
Cozy
and took it home. It had photos of chintz-filled tearooms and people walking around Kenya with baskets on their heads, and a list of places you could call to book a six-hour Japanese tea ceremony. It didn't seem any crazier than anyplace else I'd worked, and I called them in the morning.