The One-Eyed Man Read online

  “You’re worried about it being in the show.”

  “Not at all,” I said. “I’ve just decided it’s like any other conviction the majority of people consider insane: best kept to oneself.”

  “You don’t need to worry on my account,” Claire said. “Since I was four I’ve believed that the inside of a carrot is poisonous. I nibble around the outside to this day.”

  “How do you know where to stop?”

  “There’s a little circle inside. You can see it. That’s the border between healthy beta carotene and hot screaming death.” She craned her neck and sipped from the top of her new beer without lifting it off the bar. “What do you think about that?”

  “I think that what you’re talking about is known as an irrational idea,” I said. “Whereas what I’m talking about is completely rational. In fact, it’s the only rational way to look at death, really.”

  “Okay,” Claire said. “Then it shouldn’t be a problem to spit it out.”

  “You’re going to keep after me about this, aren’t you?”

  “Pestering,” Claire said. “It’s what I do.”

  “Alright,” I said. “Let me answer your question with a question. What do you know about general relativity?”

  “Not much. Cat trapped in a box, Geiger counter, flask of poison …”

  “That’s Schrödinger’s cat,” I said.

  “I’m fucking with you, K.,” Claire said. “Relativity. Speed of light. Time travel. All that shit.”

  “Correct.”

  “Got it. But what does that have to do with your wife?”

  “Well, everything, really,” I said. “In fact, it’s the primary reason we’re sitting here in Beverly Hills drinking twelve-dollar beers with spy glasses on our faces. Believe it or not.”

  “I believe almost anything,” Claire said. “The inside of a carrot is poisonous, for example.”

  “Then would you believe that relativity indicates no one—including my wife—ever really dies?”

  “That’s news to me,” Claire said. “And I took AP physics in high school.”

  “I could give you the broad strokes,” I said.

  “I’ve got nowhere else to be.”

  So I told her about the Einstein biography, the letter to Besso’s widow, the fire, how the more I read and understood, the more the concept of death as absolute had crumbled like old mortar. Claire polished off her beer while she listened.

  When I was finished, Claire put her chin in her hand and said, “This is by far the most interesting conversation I’ve ever had with someone about their ex.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “It also makes quite clear that you’re mentally ill. As if we needed further proof.”

  “Says the woman who thinks carrots are as lethal as cyanide.”

  “But I know that’s crazy, see. Deep in my brain, I know and acknowledge that’s crazy. And so do you, with this stuff. Whether you can admit it to yourself or not.”

  “I’ve learned something essential about life and death. This is not delusional. My senses are the delusion. Sarah’s last breath—that was a delusion.”

  “Fiddlesticks.”

  “Did you just say ‘fiddlesticks’?” I asked.

  “This is just you grieving in an extremely elaborate and unconventional way. You’ve fooled yourself into believing you’re a slave to literalness. You pretend not to understand metaphor, but you actually understand it just fine. You pretend you can’t cross the street unless the signal says it’s okay, but when someone’s life depends on it you jaywalk just like a normal person.”

  “All I can tell you,” I said, “is that before I read that book, I had the same two certainties as everyone else: death and taxes. And then suddenly, I was down to just taxes. After that, every assumption became suspect, no matter how self-evident.”

  “Like you can never use hand soap on your face, for example.”

  “I just need things to be true,” I told her. “Actual. Clear. I need to be able to say, Yes, that is unequivocally so. Or unequivocally not so. Either way works for me.”

  Claire gazed at her reflection in the mirror behind the bar. “If I were a genie,” she said after a minute, “I would tell you to wish for anything else. A billion dollars. Anilingus from a supermodel. The ability to communicate with fish.”

  “I don’t think I want anilingus from anyone.”

  “The point is you probably think you’re asking for very little, but you’re actually asking for a hell of a lot.”

  “Why?”

  “Because, K. Clarity? Certainty? Only children and Republicans expect life to be that simple.”

  We were quiet for a minute. Then Claire said, “So is this what we’re supposed to be doing?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just sitting around shooting the shit? This is the show?”

  “We’re supposed to talk to other people, I think. There are events coming up, too. My award ceremony for the incident at the coffee shop, for example.”

  “Ah, of course.”

  “But mostly I think Theodore wants it to be spontaneous. Reality shows film hundreds of hours to put together just one thirty-minute episode.”

  “So I should stop worrying about being boring.”

  “They’ll edit it out,” I said. “Besides which, if you’re worried about being boring, that means you’re thinking about being on a show, which is exactly what Theodore wants to avoid. If I understood him correctly.”

  “Well of course I’m thinking about being on a show, K. Aren’t you?”

  “Not really.”

  “But you suffer from like late-onset autism. Those of us with functioning egos care when someone points a camera at us. We care a lot. Maybe more than we care about anything else.”

  “Anything else?”

  “And let’s not forget that this is just a pilot. That harpy Andrea could pull the plug before we really get started.”

  “Even so,” I said, “you’ll still walk away with more money than you would have made in several years at Total Foods.”

  Claire studied my face. “Is that why you’re doing this?” she asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean are you doing the show to make up for me getting fired.”

  “That’s not the most precise way to describe it,” I said.

  “You really don’t care about this at all, do you?”

  “Care about what?”

  “Being loved and hated by perfect strangers. Your name on the lips of millions of people you’ll never meet. Getting paid just to hang out at clubs in Atlantic City and Vegas. Endorsement deals. A million Twitter followers.”

  “I’m not on Twitter,” I said.

  “You should be. Clothing lines. Shoe lines. Makeup lines. Ghostwritten tell-alls. TV drama guest appearances, possibly parlayed into regular acting gigs if you’re any good, an Emmy nomination if your agent is any good. Speaking engagements. Waived parking tickets. I could go on.”

  “You’ve given this a lot of thought.”

  “You bet I have.”

  I considered. “If you mean do I derive self-worth or emotional satisfaction from the idea, the answer is no. I’m indifferent to it.”

  “So you’re doing this for my sake.”

  “Yes,” I said. “That is fair to say.”

  Claire gazed at me a moment longer, then turned and motioned to the bartender again. He came promptly, wiping his hands on a towel folded over his belt.

  “Two shots of your best whiskey,” she told him. “And another beer for me.”

  “It’s two hundred dollars an ounce,” the bartender said.

  “Money is no object,” Claire said. “We’re celebrating here.”

  We waited for the bartender to return with fresh drinks. When he set the glasses in front of us Claire raised hers and nodded for me to do the same.

  “You feeling better?” I asked.

  “Don’t judge,” Claire said. “Everyth
ing preceding this I consider hair of the dog. I’m only just now starting to drink in earnest.”

  “Certainly not judging,” I said. “Just surprises me, considering how bad you felt earlier.”

  We clinked glasses and drank.

  “Do you drink much?” Claire asked, setting her glass back on the bar.

  “Not really,” I said. “I went through a period right after Sarah died when I was drinking a lot, by my standards. But that didn’t last long.”

  “By your standards,” Claire said.

  “Half a bottle of bourbon a day,” I said. “More or less.”

  Claire waved this away as an amount beneath contempt. “Want another?”

  I hesitated.

  “Come on,” Claire said. “It’s Andrea’s dime.”

  “Alright,” I said. “One more. Then I should sleep.”

  She signaled to the bartender.

  At that moment Theodore walked back into the bar with a young Hispanic woman wearing large plastic dragonfly wings and a full-length red sequin dress. Given the woman’s near-dwarfish stature, in this case “full-length” meant about four and a half feet.

  “K. and Claire!” Theodore boomed, opening his thick arms to hug us simultaneously. “My new superstars. This is Arnulfo, a.k.a. La Hada Fabulosa.”

  Arnulfo executed a prim curtsy.

  “My Spanish isn’t what it could be,” I said. “What does ‘La Hada Fabulosa’ translate to?”

  “The Fabulous Fairy,” Arnulfo said in accentless English.

  “I take it you didn’t choose that name for yourself.”

  “You take it wrong, cabrón.”

  “We’ve got some whiskey coming,” Claire said. “You want to join?”

  “I would love one,” Theodore said. “But none for Arnulfo, please. He’s so wee, and I need him on top of his game later. In a manner of speaking.”

  “Don’t you think you should let the lady decide for himself?” Claire asked.

  “That is a fair point, I suppose,” Theodore said. He turned to Arnulfo. “You are a woman of the twenty-first century, after all. I’m sorry to have been so presumptuous. Would you like a glass of whiskey?”

  “Jesus Christ, no,” Arnulfo said. “I’d rather gargle horse piss.”

  “Careful what you wish for, my dear,” Theodore said.

  “You’re disgusting,” Arnulfo said.

  “And you love it,” Theodore said.

  “Where you from, Arnulfo?” Claire asked.

  “Fairyland.”

  “Yeah, but I mean when you’re off duty.”

  “Originally? Hoboken,” Arnulfo said.

  “And what do they drink in Hoboken?”

  “Everything, up to and including Sterno,” Arnulfo said. “But I’ll settle for some white rum.”

  “My dear,” Theodore said, “please be sure not to addle yourself.”

  “Relax. I’ve got half a dozen poppers in my clutch,” Arnulfo said. “Let’s hang out with your friends. It’s early.”

  The bartender dropped off our whiskeys, and Claire asked him for one more, as well as a glass of Flor de Caña for Arnulfo. When the extra drinks hit the bar, Theodore raised his glass for a toast.

  “To the genuine,” he said.

  We all drank.

  “And speaking of the genuine,” Theodore said, “it’s interesting that you brought up Arnulfo’s origins, my dears, because he and I were talking earlier tonight, and I think it might be good for all of us to go to Hoboken and visit his family.”

  “We didn’t talk about that,” Arnulfo said.

  “Specifically, his father,” Theodore said. “The last time Arnulfo saw him, the old man gave him a beating with a garden spade.”

  “I don’t know what you have in mind,” Arnulfo said, “but whatever it is, I want nothing to do with it. There’s a reason I haven’t been back there in twelve years.”

  “A garden spade?” I asked.

  “One of those small ones,” Arnulfo said, spreading his hands two feet apart to demonstrate.

  “Still,” I said.

  “Arnulfo’s father is a real hombre varonil in the Dominican tradition,” Theodore said. “Which is to say that he is a homophobe of the very first order. I think I’d like to see you have a conversation with him, K. I think I’d like to record it, in fact. Very much.”

  “He beat you with a garden spade because you’re gay?” I asked Arnulfo.

  “Not exactly,” Arnulfo said. “I mean, that was part of it. But also because I have a smart mouth and dress like a woman and can’t play baseball worth a shit.”

  “But primarily because you’re gay,” I said.

  “Honestly, I think it’s the bustiers and feather boas that really get to him, even more than me sucking cock,” Arnulfo said. “Having to hear about it all the time from his shithead friends at the bodega. That said, though, if someone had bothered to charge him with a hate crime the ACLU would have had a field day.”

  “So let’s confront him, my dear,” Theodore said. “Make him sorry for the torment he put you through.”

  “Why would I want to see that puta?” Arnulfo asked. “For all I know he’s dead by now, anyway.”

  Theodore placed his glass on the bar and grasped Arnulfo’s hands. “My dear,” he said, “what if I told you that we could repay all the humiliation, all the pain, all the anguish, that man caused you in one fell swoop? Don’t forget, I saw what he did to you, Arnulfo. I paid to have your teeth fixed.”

  Arnulfo shook his head. “He’s a monster,” he said. “I don’t want to even look at him again.”

  “But you must! You can show him the brave, beautiful, fabulous man you have become. And we will be there with you.”

  “This is for your new show?” Arnulfo asked.

  “We don’t have to use it for the show, if you don’t want to,” Theodore said. “We’ll visit your father, and if you think it goes terribly and want to forget it ever happened, we’ll pretend it never happened, and no one, not even I, will ever view the footage. It will be destroyed. You have my solemn promise.”

  “Theodore,” Arnulfo said.

  “When have I ever broken a promise to you, my dear?”

  “Never.”

  “And how many promises have I made?”

  Arnulfo turned his eyes, dramatically framed with purple eye shadow, toward the ceiling. “A few,” he conceded after a moment.

  “Then why wouldn’t you trust me now, my dear?”

  “I don’t know, Papi …”

  Theodore turned from Arnulfo to me and Claire. “I’ll work on him,” he said. “The two of you should plan to fly to New York tomorrow, next day latest. And now I believe it’s time for Arnulfo and I to take our leave. Speaking of which, have you yet decoded the exact nature of your relationship? Still going with ‘manager and client’?”

  “I’ve been wondering the same thing,” Claire said.

  “Word to the wise,” Theodore said. “If you engage in any activities you don’t want to appear on national television, take those glasses off. I’m decent enough to advise you thus, but not decent enough to pass on tasty footage if you serve it to me on a platter.”

  “Didn’t you just tell Arnulfo you’d erase anything he didn’t want seen?” I asked.

  Theodore smiled and put a hand on my shoulder. “My dear,” he said, “I love Arnulfo more than life itself. You, on the other hand, are at this point little more than a bare acquaintance.”

  • • •

  Claire didn’t want to remove her glasses.

  “Do you mind if I leave them on?” she asked me.

  “Theodore advised us not to wear them,” I said.

  In the dark, her hands found their way to my belt and began aggressive negotiations with the buckle.

  “That’s not what I asked,” Claire said. “I asked if you care if I keep mine on.”

  “I guess I don’t,” I said.

  Her lips brushed against the skin of my throat. “That’s good,”
she said. “Because it’s one way to make sure Andrea doesn’t cancel us.”

  “They’ll probably have to edit this out,” I said.

  “Be quiet, Gramps,” she said, and so I was.

  10

  OEDIPUS THE GAY COWBOY

  It turned out Arnulfo’s father, Eduardo, was still drawing breath, though by the time we clomped up the six flights of stairs to his apartment in Hoboken his state of being was not one that could accurately be described as “alive.” He was shriveled as a dead housefly, his skin mottled gray-green and alarmingly liver spotted, and though only in his late fifties he appeared, to even the most generous assessment, octogenarian. The grim vise of some lung ailment had grasped him, and his eyes were lit up with the panic of one who is drowning slowly from the inside. Despite this, he still smoked, and did so almost as incessantly as my mother-in-law. Then there was the matter of his oxygen tank, a small green torpedo that, combined with the open flame from his lighter, threatened to kill him with somewhat more expedience than the cigarettes. His hands were hooked into arthritic claws capped with long yellowed nails, and he could barely cross the width of his tiny living room without collapsing. But his son’s hope—that Eduardo had died in his absence—was, at least upon our arrival, a vain one.

  And what’s the surprise in that, really? Experience told me nasty people like Eduardo often clung to life with remarkable doggedness, as though their hatred were so intense that it became its own animating force, and would not allow them to depart the world they loathed. Or maybe, in the case of Eduardo, he didn’t hate the whole world, but just his son, and that alone was enough to keep him breathing. Because later, when Arnulfo came in, the low-grade panic in his father’s eyes flared into something else, something hot and malign and, yes, for him, trapped in his old expiring bag of bones, invigorating. I doubt the man had felt so alive since he’d taken one last whack at his son with that garden spade.

  First, though, it was Claire and I who showed up at his apartment, bespectacled and huffing a bit from the slog up the stairwell. I carried a giant check in my hands, written out for one hundred thousand dollars, and Claire held a bouquet of multihued balloons that bobbed cheerfully at the ends of their strings.

  After we caught our breath I rapped on the steel-plated door, which raised a horrible racket in the empty hallway, the hollow sound of a place unlived in, left to the bugs and dust. We waited a full minute, exchanged glances. I knocked again, and again there was no response, but then, just as I raised my fist to knock a third time, I heard shoes scuffing carpet on the other side of the door. A series of locks tumbled open, and there stood Eduardo, handle of his oxygen tank cart in one hand, a Merit Gold smoldering in the other. For all the formidable things we’d heard about him, he was barely taller than his Lilliputian son, though to be fair he’d probably lost an inch or more to the slouch of illness.