The Future for Curious People: A Novel (16 page)

“Everything.”

“I don’t like the sound of that.”

“You know what you are?” Madge says, her voice low and rough with anger. “You’re an overrepresented demographic. The neurotic, needy white male demographic.”

“And yet I still don’t think anyone’s quite represented
me
—you know, accurately and precisely—in art or literature or film.”

“That’s because of the blur of so many representations of your demographic.”

“The blur might be the best I can hope for,” I say. And suddenly I can feel it—like a downy coat on my skin—the fuzzy outline of my soul.

“You,” she says, still not moving. “You’re always so like you.”

“And this is bad?” I want to say,
And this is why you’re not wearing the ring?
I want to tell her that doesn’t make any sense. I am obviously always like me, but her face is so red and we’ve dated for so long that I’ve learned when it’s best to just shut up. “I’m getting a drink,” I say to Madge’s vicinity. I can’t look directly at her or I might break something and then break something else. This might then go on forever.

I leave Madge in the living room and walk into the kitchen. I take a Heineken out of the fridge before three heavy consecutive knocks on the door.

I open the beer bottle with a bottle opener attached to my keys as I head over to open the door, but Madge stops me.

“I ironed you a white oxford button-down. It’s hanging in the closet.” She’s dressing me in parts. And I can tell she has more to say, but then there are more knocks on the door. “Hurry.”

WHEN I RETURN FROM
the bedroom, wearing the starchy white oxford, I find Bart and Amy settled onto our couch. I head for the kitchen and find Madge struggling with a bottle of champagne. I lean over and whisper into Madge’s ear, “Boat shoes. In the winter. In Baltimore.” I take a sip of my beer. I can’t
believe
my best friend is wearing boat shoes! “He’d probably wear them to visit me in prison. Does he know how stupid he looks?”

“What are you talking about?”

I finish my beer. I set the beer down on the kitchen counter and run my hands down the front of my white oxford. “It’s very crisp,” I say, hoping to change the subject. “You did a great job with the iron, thank you.”
Complimentary
is one of the positive traits in Dr. A. Plotnik’s book on romantic success. I’m still trying, if for no other reason than I don’t want to fail in front of the futuristically successful Bart and Amy.

“The boat shoes are simply preparation,” Madge says, louder than necessary. “Some people like to plan ahead.” Does she mean that the shoes are part of a larger plan for Bart to buy a boat? She picks up the cheese tray we can’t afford and crackers we probably can’t afford either. “You know, when there’s something worth planning ahead for.” And with that, she walks out of the kitchen.

I open the fridge and take out another beer. Bart and Amy brought the champagne, but the champagne can suck it. I open my beer in the kitchen. I’m buying as much time alone as I can. It’s going to be a long night. Who the fuck would name their band the Babymakers? Who the fuck would name their kid Adrian? Why am I still thinking about him? Luckily, Madge turned the music off when Bart and Amy got here. The flyer for the Babymakers is rolled up next to my empty Heineken bottle. I pick it back up and stare at it.

I take another sip of beer and count to one hundred. I’ve heard this helps—the counting, not the drinking, though I’ve heard that helps, too, just for different reasons. I’d check my pulse, but I can never find that shit. I’d be a terrible doctor.
Th
is one’s dead, too,
I’d tell the nurse.
I just don’t feel anything happening. Must be an epidemic or the zombie apocalypse.
Would the nurse call the CDC or would I?

I’d stay in the kitchen the entire night if I could, but I know with every minute, Madge is getting angrier: I’m being a bad host.

I chug my beer, get another, and walk into the living room.

Bart and Amy are still sitting on the couch; Madge is across from them in a chair.

Bart stands up when I walk into the room. He puts a hand on my shoulder like we just finished a business transaction. “It’s good to see you, friend,” he says.

Bart looks even more ridiculous up close. He’s wearing a navy blue blazer, something rumpled around his neck. And the boat shoes. In the winter. In Baltimore.

“Is that an ascot?” I ask.

Bart lightly massages his neck. “Amy picked it out.” He looks over at Amy and smiles. Amy smiles back. “She says it makes me look older.”

“Soon, you’re going to want to look younger,” I say.

Amy ignores my comment. “It’s silk, like a cloud.”

I nod, take another swig. Bart sits back down on the couch.

Madge looks at me, appalled. “You didn’t offer our guests a beer?”

“It’s all right,” Bart says. “We brought champagne.”

Amy nods.

Four champagne flutes are lined up next to the bottle of champagne in an iced bucket on the coffee table. I wonder when we got champagne flutes. Did Madge buy them for tonight?

“We should get this thing open,” Bart says. He leans forward and pulls the champagne bottle out of the bucket of ice.

“Be careful with the cork,” Amy says. “We all need our eyes.”

Everyone but me laughs.

My mind wanders to Evelyn Shriner. I wonder if she’s the champagne type, if her rain boots are the champagne type, if she would look that lovely visiting me in jail.

Madge is staring at me. Amy is staring at me, too. Why? Because I’m just quiet? It always seems to be the quiet things that make people stare. I didn’t hear the bottle pop, or Bart fill up all four flutes with champagne, but they’re raising glasses.

“A toast to the bright days ahead!” Bart says, like he’s practicing driving his new off-white Mercedes, pretending to take a call at a red light just as the war vet is hobbling toward his window, shaking a change jar made out of a used Wendy’s cup, a sign hanging around his neck that says
HUNGRY
—just
HUNGRY
, because he was too hungry to write more than that. Is there some doomed future where I’m that guy with the sign?

“Yes!” Amy says, holding her champagne flute up. “Bright days!”

I wonder how many times they practiced this before they came over.

“Lovely,” Madge says. She looks at me. “Are you going to put down that beer, Godfrey?”

“No,” I tell her. “So, what else are we going to toast to?”

“I don’t know,” Madge says. “Why don’t you give a toast, Godfrey?”

I smile at everyone. “Would love to.”

The four of us form a circle. I grab one of the glasses. We raise our champagne flutes.

“To Bart and Amy,” I say, “our best friends and future Republicans.”

They glance around nervously, but we all clink our glasses. Everyone is about to take a sip when I stop them.

“Wait!” I say. “I have more.”

“Godfrey, please,” Madge says.

I ignore her. “To possibilities,” I say. “To the lack of understanding through understanding too much.”

“Let’s drink,” Bart says, his glass of champagne still hanging in the air.

“Yes,” Amy says. “We wouldn’t want the champagne to get warm.” She laughs nervously.

Madge doesn’t say anything. She’s still staring at me.

But I don’t drink. Not yet. I’m not done. This is that fuck-it moment and I’ve already lost. Why not go out big?

“What about in fifty-one years?” I tell them. “What if there’s a hurricane, and it sinks your fucking yacht?” I point at Bart. “What if you can’t get your cock to go up anymore at year twenty, but you didn’t know that because all you got was one glimpse, just an ounce of a forever? An ounce can seem so big when you’re looking at a screen in an ex–Chinese restaurant, but in reality, it’s still just a fucking ounce.” I take a breath. Bart is staring at me, sharing the same look as Madge. Amy is drinking her champagne very quickly. “What if Amy catches you with a nineteen-year-old hostess at the country club you’re members at? What if she forgives you and stays with you because of the money, because of the grandchildren and only slightly fucked-up children who didn’t know what to do with all that money, so it was just line after line after line of coke off their framed Harvard diplomas with their American Express Black cards?” I turn to Amy. I only need a second to catch my breath. I haven’t felt this good all day. “What if your ass won’t stop growing? What if the envisioning missed Bart’s heart attack by one day?” I turn to Madge. “What if your ass won’t stop growing? Or my ass or Bart’s ass? I look really good in a prison jumpsuit. Did you know that? Do you see me bragging on and on about that? No you don’t!” I point at Bart. “What if at year fifty-one, the skies open up and Jesus is like, ‘It’s time. You’re so boring I’m tired of yawning,’ and you’re like, ‘Holy shit, I only stayed with her because my insurance has a good copay, so on a whim I saw this weird doctor.’ What if that’s your last thought? What if the money and the yacht that may or may not sink are the only things that keep your marriage wet?”

Everyone is staring at me. Madge’s face is red. Bart and Amy’s mouths are open so wide, birds could nest in them. I down the champagne in one gulp. I set my beer down on the table.

I look at Madge. Her face is screwed up and she’s about to say something—but she’s got so much to say she doesn’t know where to start.

Amy and Bart are staring at the floor, or maybe Bart is staring at his boat shoes. I bet the floor is wondering why it’s getting so much attention. I imagine the floor doesn’t want the attention—it just wants to be a fucking floor.

“You shouldn’t have told Madge about that girlfriend I broke up with because I got lost, Bart! You shouldn’t have done that!” I grab my coat. “I need to get some more beer,” I say as I open the door and walk out of the apartment, run down the stairs and out the door.

I’m in trouble. I’m in deep. Things are really bad and yet I feel good. I feel really good. It’s cold and I don’t have a hat or mittens. I’m just loose in the world.

I head over to Fontana’s. I check my watch—I have about twenty minutes till they close, which is probably just enough time for Amy to console Madge in the bedroom while Bart finishes the cheese in his goddamn boat shoes. I’ll grab a six-pack and some gum; it’s impossible to have too much gum. Maybe for once I’ll be a winner. I’ll rush back to Madge waving my receipt and say, “Look at what your fiancé got you, 20 percent off your next purchase of Gouda fucking cheese.”

Does Fontana’s even carry Gouda cheese? It wouldn’t matter, I’d say it anyway. I’ll be a winner, so I can say whatever the fuck I want.

And then I realize I left my wallet in the apartment. I can see it on the edge of the kitchen counter—next to my cell phone and keys, also left behind—but I go through all my pockets anyway. I’ve got a ten-dollar bill and three singles that have been balled up like an empty gum wrapper.

How could I forget my goddamn wallet and phone—
again
? There is something seriously wrong with me and the loss of personal items is an iceberg tip. I imagine myself drunk and lost and finally packed under twenty feet of snow; one by one my fingers turning blue, unable to call anyone. And when they finally find me, no one will know who I am.

Fuck it. I breathe in the cold. Everyone I talk to is in the apartment anyway, and they all suck right now.

I look back at the apartment and then up and down the street. I am trying to figure out what exactly went wrong. Then I realize: maybe Madge has never been good at being a person. Maybe she’s someone else’s version of a great person. Maybe it’s not so much that the person she believed I could become was deep inside of me and only needed to be drawn out. Maybe she never wanted a better me, but a different me—for me to be someone I’m not.

The sidewalks are sludgy. Tonight is a good night for rain boots. I look down the street and zip up my jacket. I could go back, beg forgiveness, but I don’t. Keep going, I tell myself.

IT’S LATE ENOUGH THAT
I know I’ll be the only patron in Fontana’s before I even walk through the front doors. And I am. And I’m drunk. And I’m going to get drunker. There is champagne and beer in me. If the two fought, which one would win? I would say champagne because it costs more, but the rich don’t work harder. That’s bullshit.

It’s twelve minutes to nine. Fontana’s closes at nine. My life at twelve minutes to nine: thirteen crumpled dollars in my pocket, an angry not-really-fiancée at home, pissed-off friends, and I’m freezing as fuck. I make a beeline for the beer.

Behind the cooler doors there aren’t many choices—the normal domestics, the normal imports, the forties I haven’t touched since sophomore year of college when I went to a party and a Colt 45 was duct-taped to each hand, and I wasn’t allowed use the bathroom until I finished both—I want them all.

Thirteen dollars cannot buy them all.

I do some slow math in my head before walking away from the rows of beer. I need to be smart with my money. I need liquor.

I scan the shelf of spirits. Vodka, no. Rum, God no—never again after that night. Whiskey. Yes. It’s cold out, and whiskey is just really fucking good anyway. I’ll count that as a double win. My eyes keep going until they fall on a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. Too rich for my blood. Then I see it: On the bottom shelf, a fifth of Evan Williams. And the price below it: a smooth $11.99. There’s only one left. I grab it, cradle it like a firstborn, and walk to the checkout. As I set the whiskey on the counter, my brain says,
Where’s the pear-shaped brooch?
It’s not on the counter. I look up expecting Mr. Fontana, but it’s Mrs. Fontana.

“This is it?” Mrs. Fontana says.

“No,” I say. “I paid Fontana ten bucks to keep the pear brooch out where everyone could see it. So where is it?”

She glares at me, but this time I hold her gaze. Finally she pulls a cell phone out of her pants pocket and hits a speed-dial number.

I wait.

She says, “That little shit who wears the mittens is here.” The little shit who wears mittens? I don’t care for that at all. She pauses, listening. “Yeah, he says he paid to have some brooch on display. That right?”