World Gone Water (10 page)

“Merry Christmas,” I said, smiling.

She arched her eyebrows. “You playing Santa?” she asked. An awkwardness descended as my coworker and I stood supporting the wilting tree.

“Thought you might like to have a tree for that present,” I said.

The woman smiled awkwardly and stepped aside, admitting us into her tiny living room. That the tree was too big for the living room didn't diminish my enthusiasm, and my coworker and I quickly strung the lights and hung the bulbs. The woman's daughter peered around the corner, scared at the sight of the monstrous tree.

“It's a Christmas tree,” I said, plugging in the lights. The room was aglow in red and green.

“Want to see our Christmas tree?” the girl asked. “I made it.”

“Sure,” I said, caught up in the holiday spirit.

The woman folded her arms and leaned against the wall as her daughter led me around behind the tree I'd brought to show me a tiny tree she'd fashioned out of empty toilet paper rolls. The girl and her mother had glued cotton snow onto the tree, sprinkling
glitter over the whole creation to give it the appearance of having lights. I stood grinning at the tiny tree, embarrassed as the girl excitedly ran through the various steps involved in making your own Christmas tree.

Cunt, cunt, cunt, cunt, cunt, cunt, cunt. Bitch cunt. It's fucking hilarious how women always say, “I want you to tell me what you're thinking about,” and then they pull out of your life without so much as a “Had a good time!” or “Thanks for the cock!” Jesus, why?

I call in sick to Aztecka and then call back in ten minutes and tell them I'm quitting. Later I'm dressed up, leaning against the bar, and Jason is so pissed off at me he pretends not to hear my drink order. I wave down Miles and he brings me a vodka but doesn't take my money, and this gesture of kindness renders me mute.

It isn't long before I spot another one, alone at the table in the corner, but there is a revulsion within me, remnants of my loyalties to Jane, a revulsion I've felt many times before, the final pull of the last one's personality and the arrival of the next. The vodka clears the slate and I saunter through the crowd to her table and I can tell that she wants me to give her one good time in the vacuum of her life, and when I smile, she invites me to sit down and I do.

The end of Utopia comes in a poorly lit room, a wooden chair at the foot of a hospital bed. Outside the window a city carries on, ceaselessly. At the end of Utopia, I am sitting in a wooden chair, smoking a cigarette for the first time in my life, desperate for pleasure. My skin is a chemise that has been left out in the sun for too long. I want to get up and look out the window and see what's happening on the street below, but I don't have any strength. At the end of Utopia, I look over at a telephone on the nightstand next to the hospital bed and my mind is blank. At the end of Utopia, all I can wonder is what I had for dinner the night before. I draw on the cigarette and gag and it occurs to me that if I die, it could be days before anyone notices.

Jason's in his office at Aztecka after the place has closed for the night.

“Bitch,” Jason says when I tell him about Jane. “What a bitch.”

He looks up at me and says, “You're not gonna fuckin' believe this, but Sara's gone too.”

I'm shocked by this but can't feel anything resembling an emotion beyond despair. “What a bitch,” I say.

Jason looks back at his receipts, entering some numbers into the computer, the green glow of the screen painting his angry face.

My decision to join the Mormon Church was borne not out of religious zeal but out of romantic sacrifice. I wanted to prove to Jenny that taking me back hadn't been a mistake, that I could commit to our future. The anxiety induced by our separation drove me into a depression, the idea that I'd thrown away something of value plaguing my daily thoughts.

I kept my plan to be baptized Mormon a secret at first; Jenny was wary when I asked to start attending church with her and her family, sensing my motive. “You don't have to,” she said, though I knew she was thrilled about having me in the pews on Sunday.

As far as I could discern, the Mormon religion seemed as harmless as any of the others, with the added advantage of securing the ribbon around my relationship with Jenny, whom I began to think of as my wife. We complemented each other nicely, and I noticed that the other Mormon couples did too, the women hanging on the men's every word, gazing upwardly at them lovingly, laughing at their jokes.

The first step to becoming Mormon was an interview with the bishop. While I knew the interview was a formality and that the bishop couldn't thwart my intentions, I considered the audition
seriously; my preemptive loathing for the bishop as a potential obstacle powered an authentic performance that persuaded him away from his speculation that I was simply joining for Jenny, and I convinced him that my intentions were true and well considered.

The next step was a consultation with the missionaries. The elders like to convene with you in your home, but because I knew my first cousin twice removed wouldn't want Mormons in his living room, I arranged to meet them at Jenny's cousin's house. The missionaries took the regular-guy tack with me right away, a shtick they no doubt devised to play up their regional differences: one was from Alaska and one was from Texas. Elder Alaska was the quieter of the two, the foil to many of Elder Texas's jokes. Once we established that we were just three regular dudes, we proceeded with the business at hand.

“What do you know about the Church?” Elder Alaska asked.

I told them what little I'd gleaned from my limited exposure to the Church.

“We're ahead of the game,” Elder Texas joked. “We normally spend the first interview correcting mistruths and rumors.” A smile spread across his meaty face.

Elder Alaska produced a video and we settled onto the couch, Jenny's cousin and her cousin's family artfully dodging the front room as they moved silently through the house. The video dramatized the finding of the Book of Mormon, the lost addendum to the Bible, by Joseph Smith in upstate New York, the actor playing Smith effectively portraying piousness. Next the Mormon belief system was detailed: God as the Heavenly Father; Jesus Christ, his son; how Mormons can return to live with God through the atonement of Jesus Christ; the function of the Holy Ghost as a guide to help recognize truth; that the Church of Jesus Christ has been restored on Earth through the Latter-day Saints; how God reveals his wishes
through modern prophets (as he did in his own time); and, most appealingly, that by leading an exemplary Mormon life of sacrifice and service, families can be together forever in eternity.

The elders asked if I had any questions and I shook my head, still absorbing everything I'd learned, connecting the dots between the ideas I'd heard uttered at dances and on Sundays and among the Mormons I'd known, the key to their secret language finally revealed. The question the elders were really asking was if I believed what I'd just seen—I imagined they were on the hook if they let a nonbeliever join for nefarious purposes, like wanting to marry another Mormon—but the question of belief didn't enter my mind. Sure, some of the LDS principles were hokey, but I weighed losing Jenny against having to pretend to believe in an afterlife and decided that the latter was nothing matched against the sorrow of the former. And so I accepted the pamphlets filled with supporting information and signed up for the conversion process, which consisted of a set number of meetings with the elders to prepare myself for baptism. Jenny's cousin was gracious to offer up her living room for these sessions so that I could continue my study in secret. By then, I was less concerned about my first cousin twice removed than I was about Talie finding out. For her part, Jenny continued to prod me with questions meant to ensure that I was acting of my own free will, my answers becoming more and more demonstrative as I pretended to embrace the Church.

The day of my baptism finally arrived. I'd chosen Jenny's father to perform the baptism, which involved full immersion into a tub of water. Arriving early Sunday morning, I sat in my car in the parking lot, the gravity of what I was about to do occurring to me for the first time. The absence of any family or close friends would not be a signal to the other members of the congregation, but I felt their absence and wondered if there was a tenable exit strategy. The fall
from trying to convince Jenny that I was committed to our future to standing on the doorstep of conversion had been fast, and I looked around, a little shaken by what I'd done. Jenny's family arrived and I switched on the autopilot, smiling and shaking her father's hand. The parking lot soon filled with well-wishers and those brothers and sisters who made a sport of attending baptisms.

I waited in a small room attached to the baptism chamber, whose front opened out into the chapel. Jenny's father entered with our baptism suits, a one-piece long-underwear type garment that left little to the imagination. We both suited up and Jenny's father stepped into the knee-deep lukewarm water in the baptismal tub. He asked me if I was ready and I nodded that I was, wanting to be over and done with the embarrassing ceremony. The shield on the baptism chamber went up, revealing a gallery of smiling faces, ready to accept me into their fold. I looked away, not wanting them to be able to read my face or that I was preoccupied with how exactly my frame was going to fit into a tub the size of a small whirlpool. My concerns proved to be real when, during the ceremony, Jenny's father leaned me back for submersion and we both toppled into the water, his small arms unable to hold me as I fell backward. The crowd didn't react, and Jenny's father and I bounced up, drenched, the first part of the ceremony over.

The second stage of the baptism involved me ascending the pulpit to deliver my conversion speech, a talk I hadn't worked out in advance. I began by listing the litany of nice things I knew about Mormons, naming the Mormons I personally knew, breezing through Jenny's name so as not to give rise to speculation. I knew the crowd was anticipating my humbling, an act I understood from the missionaries (who were in attendance as the two required witnesses) was as much a part of the baptism process as the submersion. My eyes teared as a surprise homily about the importance of family and
friends issued forth. The ghosts of everyone I'd ever known and would never know again floated through me as I completely broke down, sobbing, gasping phrases about how nice it was to be among so many caring people.

Some women don't know how well they've been treated. When Jane comes back, she's going to owe me a truckload of apology. If she tries to start up with another guy, she is going to see right away how superior utopian love is. Most men are only out to get. Take, take, take. Taking is a natural behavior, like for instance the guy with his sign, standing on the median across the intersection, clean shirt, blue jeans, worn tennis shoes. He walks along the median, pausing at the driver's side of each car for a three count before moving on to the next. The left-hand turn lane holds six cars at a time. The third car and fifth car give him money. The sixth car rolls up the window.

The sign says, FATHER OF 3, GOING TO BE EVICTED TOMORROW A.M. I see it when he swivels around and walks back toward his duffel bag, which is planted at the base of the traffic light. The car behind honks for me to make the right turn, and I almost go, but I see the girl in the seventh car, which is now the first, roll down her window.

The car honks again, and I switch on my hazards, letting traffic go around. The girl in the car is classically beautiful, the sort of vision of perfection you'd see on TV, and the guy with the sign doesn't move on after the girl shakes her head no. The guy goes into some kind of rap and the girl just stares straight, praying for
the green light. I think I'm going to jump out of my car and maybe tackle this guy if I have to. The girl finally rolls her window up, pissing this guy off, and he smacks her window with his hand, yelling “Bitch!” just as the light changes and she speeds off.

I change lanes, drifting left, and flip a U to enter the left-hand turn lane.

“Spare any change?” the guys asks me.

“How much do you need?” I ask.

He says, “Whatever you can spare, man,” without missing a beat.

“I can spare lots,” I tell him.

He's never heard this and lowers his sign a little, looking me over. “A couple bucks would be good.”

“I can give you more than that,” I say. “Climb in, we'll drive to the ATM.”

“I'll just take the change in your ashtray,” he says.

“Look, the light is going to change and I'm going to drive away,” I say. “Get in and we'll go to the bank and I'll give you a couple hundred bucks.”

The light changes and he says, “Wait, man,” and grabs his duffel bag.

The first thing I notice is that he doesn't smell like he's been standing outside all day. His hands are rough and he has the fingertips of a smoker.

“I'm Robert,” he says, a little nervous.

I couldn't care less.

He starts his rap about how he lost his job (a lie, most likely) and then his wife left him (who would even consider marrying this guy?) and his children, oh, his children (they're better off).

“The world is a cruel place,” I say in my best patronizing tone.

“You said it, man.”

Robert stares at the mirrored bank building as if he is looking at heaven, turning in his seat when I pull around back.

Thankfully, there are no cars at the ATM.

“Wait right here,” I say, and, just for sport, I leave the car running.

After moseying to the machine, I thumb through the cards in my wallet, standing out of range of the camera watching from behind the tinted glass. I look up and wave for Robert to come here.