I'm with Stupid (28 page)

“Listen, killjoy,” the man interrupts, “it don’t matter to me if you’re playin’ a trumpet or a cowbell or a policemen’s whistle or a fricken seashell. Whatever it is reminds me of my mother-in-law’s voice. This is no talent showcase. If you got music in your soul become a choreographer. We’ve been waitin’ on you for a good half hour”—the man points to his table, at the center of which is a bust of Pope Pius X—“and I’m gettin’ a little bit ticked off . . .”

Manuel’s uncle reappears before the patron can rearrange Manuel’s face. He nervously appeases the man, who agrees to go back to his designated pope after being promised free dessert. Manuel breathes a sigh of relief. His uncle gently puts an arm on his shoulder. He looks tired. Gee, I wonder why? Manuel, evidently under the impression that the uncle is on his side, again touches the recorder to his lips and begins to play. The instrument is confiscated before Manuel can finish the first note. The screech emitted is something like what you might hear if your friend sat on a cat, (almost) killing it. Manuel stares at his uncle like a defiant school bully called into the principal’s office.

“We have hungry customers,” the uncle says in a pleading voice. “Please can you try to be supportive and do the work? I don’t want you to lose this job. People are starting to walk out of here. Don’t do it for me, son, do it for your mother’s sake.”

Manuel stuffs the recorder into his apron. The Achilles’ heel has been struck. Game over. You can say a lot of things about Manuel but the truth is, the boy loves his mama. What she says goes.

My father tries again. He’d like some bread, and maybe some of that lovely free dessert everyone’s enjoying.

“Coming right up,” Manuel’s uncle promises.

My father calls after him to put some candles on it. My mother gives him a look. “What?” he says. “That way we don’t have to get a birthday cake.”

The uncle escorts his nephew to the kitchen. “You should be honest about what’s happened,” I hear him say to Manuel as they walk away. “There is no use hiding it.” Hiding what?

When Manuel returns with a full breadbasket he apologizes on his uncle’s behalf: “He means well. Unfortunately, he is an idiot of gentle rank whose mind has gone soft from watching too many cartoons.” My mother compliments him on his recorder playing and suggests that I take up piano. She asks my father if he still has his old guitar. Are we starting a band or something? I have to pee.

I get up to use the toilet. Max and Libby go, too. We are making our way down a hallway lined with tall potted palm trees that leads to the his and hers, wondering what Manuel is hiding, and marveling at how crazy it is that he is here in the first place, when a man jumps out from behind one of the trees, blocking our passage.

Libby puts her hand to her heart. “Geez, you scared me,” she says.

He ignores her and stands in front of Max. “Well, if it isn’t my old friend,” the man says. “It’s nice to see you again.” He looks to be in his fifties and has a tuft of silver hair. He is wearing cowboy boots and a flannel shirt tucked into light blue jeans. The outfit looks odd on him. He’s too slight for it. He pushes up his Ben Franklin–style wire-rimmed glasses.

“Do I know you?” Max asks.

“I believe you do.”

Max shakes his head: “Sorry, I think you have me confused with someone else.”

“I really have to tinkle,” Libby says. “Excuse me.” She continues down the hall. The three of us stand next to the palms.

“I don’t have you confused with someone else,” the man says. “What is your name?”

“Max.”

“Max what?”

“Max Parker,” Max responds. He smiles. “You have me confused with someone else.” He tries to move past but the man stands in his way.

“Max Parker, you said?” the man asks.

“That’s right,” Max confirms as the women’s bathroom door opens and out walks the receptionist from Richard’s office. She sees Max and waves. “Good-bye, Dr. Devereux! Have a good night!”

Max calls after her in the fake British accent: “Good-bye Debra!”

“It’s Susie,” she corrects him.

“My mistake!” he says and waves back. “Cheerio!”

The man eyes him suspiciously. “I thought you said your name was Max Parker.”

Max waves him off. “It’s a long story, and not one for your delicate ears. Anyway, ciao, we have to run.”

Max again tries to leave, and again he is detained. “When I met you, you told me your name was Richard Stein,” the man says. I bite my lip. “Perhaps I should introduce myself again. My name is Phillip. I work at the New York Public Library. Remember me now?” He puts his thumbs through the belt loops of his jeans.

Max shakes his head no, but he’s obviously lying. This is the librarian who checked Max out less than an hour before he threw those books into the East River. “You came in recently,” the man continues, “but you misrepresented yourself. You’re not Richard Stein, and I know this because the real Richard Stein came into the library this week to check out a book, only he didn’t have his card. When I checked the name in our computer it showed that Richard Stein, or in this case someone posing as him, checked out a series of expensive books whose titles I vividly remember. There was a book on Greco-Roman wrestling, a book on gay porn . . .”

“That wasn’t me,” Max says. “I don’t want to embarrass you but you have the wrong guy.” He pats the man’s shoulder. “Get your glasses checked.”

The man grabs Max’s wrist. “Don’t play me for a fool. I know it was you. It would be hard to forget someone who checked out so much homoerotic material, flirted with me mercilessly, and then didn’t leave his number. Besides, I checked the surveillance footage after the real Richard Stein came in. I have proof that it was you. And now”—he gives Max’s wrist a squeeze before letting it go—“I have you.”

Max puts a finger to his own lips. “Um,” he says, “Phil. Philly. You’re freaking me out.”

“I would like to point out,” Phillip continues, “that you have stolen state property, and I’m going to need that property back.”

“I don’t have it,” Max quickly says.

“What do you mean you don’t have it?” Phillip asks.

Max takes out his wallet. “Let me pay you for the books. How much will it cost?”

“This is not about money,” Phillip informs him. “This is about stolen state property—government property. This is about false representation and impersonation. This, I’m afraid, is punishable with steep fines and jail time. I can make that happen. The library is not a place for games. The library is
sacred
.”

Max tries to regain control of the situation. He uses his best weapon: charm. “Okay, Phillip, I’m going to be honest with you,” he says. He explains that Richard Stein is a cheater and two-timer and that he was only trying to get some innocent revenge on the guy to teach him a lesson. Yes, maybe he took it a bit far but then so did Richard. He was just trying to even out the universe. “I mean look at this innocent girl,” Max says, pulling me closer. He squeezes my cheeks, exposing my teeth. “Look at her limp hair and the bags under her eyes. She’s a mess. She has low self-esteem. She’s been beaten down by life. I was just trying to cheer her up. I’m sure we can work this out.” Limp hair and bags?

“Are you his beard?” Phillip asks me. I shake my head: I don’t know what that means. “Beard,” he repeats, “his front.” Max gets in there. He says no, he’s openly gay.

“And why,” asks Phillip, “would you bother getting revenge on a guy you never dated?”

Max shrugs. “I believe in love.”

Phillip slowly walks in a circle around him. “I’ll tell you what.” He stops. “I’m willing to overlook this. I usually like my boys beefier but there’s just something about you. I’m willing to forget I ever saw you here, under one condition.”

“That we leave quickly and never enter your
sacred
library again?” Max hopefully asks.

“I want a date,” Phillip says.

Max cringes. “I don’t make passes at men who wear glasses,” he tells him. “Can’t I just write you a check?”

“Your number,” Phillip says. He pulls out his cell phone. Max starts giving him the number. But it’s a wrong number. “And may I remind you,” Phillip adds, “that if you give me the wrong number we’re going to have a problem, Mr. Max Parker. The police will find you and I will help them. I’ll press charges myself.” He again grabs Max’s wrist.

“Let me give you that number from the top,” Max hurriedly says. “I think I just gave you my old number.” He mumbles “shit” under his breath.

“I’m glad we understand each other,” Phillip says. He programs the real number into his phone. “Ever hear of the Lone Star Bar?” he asks.

“Um, yes,” Max responds with a trace of mockery and disdain, like he’s too good for the place.

“I’m a regular, know what I mean?” Phillip says. He takes a step back. “Wear tight jeans and a cowboy hat next time I see you. I’ll be calling.” He taps his belt buckle, it has a bucking bronco on it, and leaves.

“Oh my God,” Max says with revulsion as Libby exits the bathroom. “I just got blackmailed!” I tell him he asked for it. I add that he also has to show up looking like a ranch hand. What’s up with that? Max shudders. “There is a whole gay subculture of men who have a cowboy fetish and Phillip is apparently one of them.” He puts his hands in his pockets. “This is brutal. Bru-tal. Those guys genuinely freak me out. Lone Star is their big hangout. They role-play like they are cowboys. And none of them have good bodies. They’re like that guy”—he points in Phillip’s general vicinity—“or they are fatties with tummies. They just do not take care of themselves.” He pauses. “I can’t believe that librarian just blackmailed me! A librarian!”

William, Libby, and I share a cab home that night. When we get to our building’s front door I notice that the lock is broken. The door shuts but doesn’t lock, meaning that anyone could push it open without first getting buzzed in. I’d better notify the super of the security breach. Pretty soon there will be bums sleeping in the foyer. That happened at the last place I lived. A bum refused to leave until the cops showed up. The whole building smelled like a diaper for months afterward. That dude was awful. His odor could knock down walls—it was like a superpower.

I stop at a coffee shop for a vanilla latte on my way to work Friday morning because I saw a woman on the train drinking one and it made me salivate. I get to the office thirty minutes late. “You’re in trouble,” Barbara says as I make my way past her. I tell her there was a line for the coffee. “It’s not that,” she says. She points at my boss’s office door, which is closed. “He told me to tell you he wants to see you as soon as you get in.” I stare at his gray office door. He wants to see me in there? He never wants to see me in there. “Go on in,” Barbara says and winces. “Good luck. He’s mad about something.”

I take off my coat and set it on the copy machine, along with my purse and coffee. I knock on the door. “Come in!” is the gruff response.

I tentatively open the door and peek in. “You wanted to see me?” I ask.

“Come in here,” he says, “and close the door behind you.”

His office is messy. Papers litter the desk; manuscripts sit in boxes on the floor. The ledge of the big window behind him is lined with half-dead plants. A cheap plastic watering canteen in mint green is sitting next to a fern so dry and brown it looks like it was set on fire.

I close the door behind me. The lock clicks. Click. He picks up a piece of paper and hands it to me from across the desk. “Do you mind explaining this to me?” I look down at the paper. It’s a printout of an e-mail sent by me on behalf of the agency. It reads: “You are a talentless loser. We feel sorry for you.” I blink a few times.

“Please tell me,” he says, trying to keep his cool, “why you would send something like this to an author?”

I begin to stutter. “I-I-I . . . I did not mean to send this. Oh my God. I’m so sorry . . .”

I explain that I was sending my weekly polite rejection letters, thanking authors for their submissions, and I just wrote down some things to get them off my chest, but I thought I had deleted them, not sent them. “I know better,” I helplessly add.

He puts his hand to his temple then jerks it away. “Obviously you don’t know better,” he reminds me. “This author phoned me. Five times. He published this letter on his blog this morning and said he would make it his mission to get the word out about our agency. That we are unprofessional, that we don’t care about writers . . .” He pauses. I tell him I will clear this up. I’ll contact the author and explain myself, that it was a mistake, that I didn’t mean . . .

“I already talked to him. He is unwilling to relent, and frankly I don’t blame him. This agency does not need the kind of publicity you have generated. It does not.”

I apologize again. I would never have . . .

“Get to your desk and check the outbox on your computer,” he orders. “If you have sent something like this to any other authors, I want to know about it right away.” I nod. He tells me to leave and to shut the door behind me. I get out of there as quickly as possible.

“Everything okay?” Barbara asks as I collect my stuff from the copy machine. She is chewing the end of a pencil, a phone book open before her. I shake my head no. “Do you know the names of any good pet psychologists specializing in emotional distress?” she asks. I shake my head again. “Buddy has sibling rivalry. He’s acting up. He chewed a hole in my living room carpet last night.” I tell her I’m sorry to hear that. “It’s just too much,” she adds, “raising these little guys on my own.”

Back at my desk I search the outbox for more e-mails. All the other rejection letters I sent turn out to be legit. Small consolation, though. Idiot. How could I do that? Fuck, I’m going to lose my job. That is all I need. Fuck me. I always have to have a clever line. Shit.

Manuel, in a pin-striped suit, is spread out across half the couch when I get home. He is gesticulating frenetically with a rolled-up newspaper, in the middle of explaining to William the proper way of ironing money. William is occupying a square of the third couch cushion, balancing the laptop on his knees, type type typing like mad. I’m a touch cranky. I light a cigarette and throw the burned match into one of William’s
I LOVE NEW YORK
coffee cups, then lie down on the water bed. When I ask them to keep it down Manuel claps his hands three times. “Let us take our break now, William,” he says. “I am quite parched. Can you offer me an assortment of beverages?” William tells him that we have beer and water. Manuel corrects him: Where he hails from guests are not offered water. Water is for peasants, as is beer. “I believe I will have a cup of Colombian roast with one sugar cube,” Manuel decides. William tells him we don’t have that. “In that case,” Manuel says. “I will have a small glass of dry aperitif or cognac.” I look over and tell him we don’t have that, either. William jumps up: He’ll go to the corner store for cognac, or coffee, whatever they have. Old habits die hard. William has reverted to his days on the reserve, serving rich people or, in this case, formerly rich people.