American Spirit: A Novel (13 page)

The instructor woman issues another smiling and distant order to the class as it is winding up: that they should start thinking of little labels or logos to mark their projects with, just for fun. This is really nothing more than a way for her to mention—and certainly not for the first time over the course of weeks, one would imagine—that her store is called Aurora Design and Supply. Then she talks about putting an address on there as well in case someone sees a piece you’ve made and would like to know how to order more. This is basically a way for her to remind students where her shop is located. “So my logo is a star above a mountain, and it says Aurora
Designs and then it has the phone number right there.” And it seems stupid, but between last night and today, the heart has tricked the brain into thinking that Matthew is a can-do kind of guy who likes to try. So he paints on a name that will also function as a loose legal disclaimer or warning on the bottom of the mug:
NOT ZEN, INC.
And the address is simply
MADE IN MY CAR.
A Lori or Lynn or Bea or somebody, the same woman who asked Matthew if he’s gay or married, comes over and looks at the mug; an instant
whoop
seems to call the others over like hens and the whole place is clucking and laughing and then, from one of them, “Okay, how much for that one once you get it back from being fired?” and Matthew still shudders a bit when hearing the words
being
and
fired
so close together.

“Oh, it’s not, you know… I can’t charge for this. Right?”

But the instructor just sort of looks over at him now more confused than she was in the parking lot first trying to figure Matthew’s situation. Then she answers the question; gets all high-road crafting philosophy on him. “Well, it’s your work. It’s something you’re connected to after creating it, so whether or not to sell a piece is always a bittersweet question and no simple price seems equitable when we consider what we put into a piece.”

Matthew seems to really consider this for a moment—sleepy, stoned, and confused about what the instructor woman said—and turns to the interested Lynn or Jan and says, “I could do fifteen on this… piece.”

“Sold. I’ve got a son in California who loves
Pulp Fiction,
the John Travolta movie, and he’ll get a kick out of this. His wife will hate it, but you shouldn’t take that as a reflection on your work, the woman is predisposed to hating anything I send him.”

The head reels to imagine what forty-year-old man with a wife, and probably a family, is simply known for loving a movie that came out about twenty years ago. That’s apparently the way it runs in actual families, people kind of remember one thing you said you liked, latch on to it, and that’s your thing. Weirdly enough, this is also kind of the way it works in the kind of fast, temporary families Matthew grew up in; you’re the guy who likes jeans because you wore jeans a lot this week so you are now forever The Guy Who Likes Jeans when clothes are donated or a character like Fonzie comes on television. Hey, Fonzie is like you, he loves wearing jeans! And this actually fills the gap in the heart some nights; it actually works. It sounds like it’s not enough, but if the heart has been cracked hard and fast enough, and the head is still trying to insist that things will be normal sometime soon, it is more than enough for some guardian to see Fonzie on the TV and say that he is like you and that you are like him.

So the deal is struck, fifteen bucks. Matthew stares at his hands, thinking: fifteen, thirty, forty-five, sixty, seventy-five, ninety, one oh five, one hundred and five times fifty is five thousand two hundred and fifty; all from something thought up in a fit, from the hands doing their bit, from some oven or something. The mug will be back in time for the next
class, when Matthew and the gals are back here to craft and gab. The head is abuzz at all of this industrious hustling of late. Within just about eighteen hours, cash has been generated, controlled substances have been procured, and even a sturdy firearm to fortify the freelance life has been bartered for. The brain feels the confidence and happiness coming on and quickly cues the little vacuum, sponge, and turkey baster machines to suck and soak up the last drop of serotonin buzz; tries to keep the neurochemistry of good fortune under control.

The body soldiers on in a light shuffle, feeling aglow, thrilled that so much good came of the last day or so. Out of the class as the covey sends a flutter of “See ya-soons.” Down the hall, a peek into the Put ’n’ Take: That issue of
Hype Hair!
is gone, should’ve grabbed it when it wasn’t, the paperbacks are gone and off to better homes,
Shifting Parameters in Nonlinear Models
lies at the bottom of the box. The fact that some janitor rescued it from the recycling bin steadies Matthew’s faith in people, but the fact that nobody has inflicted it on themselves or another is what bolsters Matthew’s real faith in the human condition. Hey, look, next to that, in the corner there, an issue of
American Craft,
and with a spring in his stoop, with some jaunt in his bend, it’s gone in a flash.

Telecom and Going Down

T
HE TELEPHONE HAS BEEN
on lately, which is just a way of half-hoping Tatiana is calling any minute for any reason. Matthew knows the phone is on and thinks thoughts in its direction, like
Dream about me,
or,
Hear something ticking inside of you,
or,
Feel tired of disappearing.
But all the telephone is saying at the moment is
TIM. MOBILE
.
Hello
isn’t out of Matthew’s mouth and Tim is already talking about how he’s going to make a comeback after losing everyone’s money. This, evidently, starting by mailing out a form letter to everyone whose money he has skimmed and fucked and snorted, and it is apparently a form letter that starts with the line, “I am sorry I failed to make you millions as we had planned. But if you can stop thinking about yourself for a moment, I’d like to tell you about my new plan.”
And there’s a line, not long after that gem, that says, “Let’s, just for a minute, quit worrying about how I was supposed to make you millions. Stop and think what it’s like for me at this impasse.” There are other accusatory lines even worse than those that can only serve to strengthen any prosecution’s case, and Tim sees fit to read the whole letter to Matthew, stopping only to occasionally say, in a broken, maybe drunk, certainly speedy voice, “I mean, right? Fuck, give me a fucking break, right?” And then the letter of apology that Tim wants to send along to all of his clients ends with the line, “I’m going to be up front with you: I’m in need of a short-term loan.” That’s it. That is essentially the way he signs off.

“Are you still doing tons of coke?”

“Fuck you.”

“That’s a yes.”

“I’m living in a van…”

“It’s an RV. And it’s a rental. And seriously, what has gone wrong for you? Not much when you think about it. You have everything you need. You always have. Yes, fine, some woman shaved your legs and fucked you with a bat and tied your balls up with…”

“My fiancée, thank you very much. And wait, she what? What are you saying happened? Because that’s not what happened.”

“You were going to marry her?”

From across the lot, the instructor from class is making her way toward her car.

“Yes.”

Matthew waves to her as she gets into her car.

“You were going to marry the woman who dressed you up like a schoolboy or a maid or whatever, made you wear some kind of dildo helmet and…”

“What the fuck, where do you get this? It was just a hood; just like a leather hood thing.”

The instructor smiles in reply to Matthew’s wave; this sort of suburban, perfunctory, and pleasant smile without any eyes to it.

“Just?”

“Fucking relatively speaking. Why would I be a schoolboy?”

She loads the box of class projects into the trunk of her medium-jumbo somewhat-luxury sedan. Matthew brightens. In one week the mug will be finished and back and then fifteen dollars, then thirty, forty-five, sixty, seventy-five, ninety.

“Your letter thing sounds sad. And vengeful—as if you’re the victim. I think that’s why I figured you were made to wear one of those helmets; because you sounded like a victim. A victim doing tons of blow.”

“I was.”

“You were what? Wearing the dildo helmet thing?” Matthew waves politely at her once more. No matter how many times he waves, she doesn’t turn into Tatiana.

“There was no helmet; who’s saying that? Why would you buy that shit?”

“That’s the question I should be asking you.”

“So, yes, I was doing coke. While I wrote it. The client letter.”

“That’s what I asked to begin with.”

“I know, and that’s what I just said once you gave me one fifth of a second to talk, okay? Jesus.”

“Well, you said you’re running some kind of program on yourself out there and that I need to be some hard-ass that you check in with.”

“I never said to be a hard-ass, I just said I needed someone to check in with.”

And then Tim talks for minutes on end again. Throwing around all of these tough-guy lines about kicking the savage drugs she kept him embalmed with; about Montana, Wyoming, or Idaho and wishing he had a better idea of which state he was a six-wheeled resident of while anchored in Yellowstone National Park for this federally inspired but supposedly totally self-imposed reevaluation and detoxification program of his. Tim keeps talking and talking and talking to Matthew, which might be part of this program he’s made up to get this life straight again; the whole thing might hinge on sitting in a rented RV talking to Matthew and other friends when he can get a signal to dial them. While Tim keeps talking, Matthew keeps beaming thoughts at the phone, trying to make call-waiting interrupt the moment. Feel something ticking in you, get tired of disappearing, and: “Dream about me.”

“What?”

“I didn’t say anything.”

After the phone, the book about food and praying and flying comes out again and gets the heart all jumped up about traveling the world. There’s also the new issue of
American Craft,
and Native American cigarettes, dire dispatches from Steely Dan, and a montage of about nine different driver’s seat positions found by reaching down to the little electric buttons while the eyes take pages in. Finally the sun gets old and fades to deep orange and barely warm. The last of the light looks filtered through high clouds and smoke and all it wants to talk about is the past and it plays sucker ballad chords like that thing where a G major falls a half step to the F sharp root, then down again to E minor with the seventh or ninth added in to make that weird happy-and-sad sound that feels like a thousand Sundays or summer ending or a girlfriend leaving.

Soon enough the Bavarian sedan is aimed out of the lot and toward the homestead. Once at home there is every excuse in Matthew’s head to leave again and head out for a night alone somewhere: Kristin hovering on stairs and whisking past quickly in the darker periphery of the place, for instance. And the pain that feels like being kicked between the legs comes around with the stream of red urine that Matthew’s trying to forget. He tries to convince himself it’s just vitamins in the urine, that it’s some sign of the body already doing some sort of self-healing; that he will not be required to call Alpha Imaging to pay cash to be slid into some giant tube that photographs sixteen slices of the abdomen to find out what he already knows in his heart and head.
There are bills, some sorted through, some falling between cracks again. There are some that won’t be opened until the voice mail about the email about the unopened mail forces his hand. There are a million questions, and maybe the best one to start with is: Who on earth would want to stay inside tonight with all of this bouncing around in here?

At night it isn’t hard to slip out, for either of them. It’s probably easier for Kristin to slide through a crack in the wall and out of the house. After all, she’s able to vaporize into a room with complete silence, like a deadly government assassin letting you know she could have used lethal precision to remove you from the planet but decided to just observe you and not go through with it. So who knows how many times she comes and goes from the house in the evening. Matthew, on the other hand, bothers to at least devise a decent premise in his head. He will usually go through the trouble of convincing Kristin that he’s meeting Tim for dinner or to go see some band, but really, he’s trying to convince himself and he’s the last to know. But this premise feels good to hold inside, because Kristin has never met Tim, and so would know nothing about how he’s getting his life together by sucking up the last of his tribal quality drugs alone in national parks.