Young Arthur Less nods yes and stands up with the smile he saves for grown-ups. The man nods in greeting.
Marian Brownburn grabs a large black straw hat, puts it on her head, and waves to them. “Go on, boys. Take care of my Robert!”
The sky takes on a shimmer as blue as her eye shadow, and as the men approach the waves they seem to redouble in violence like a fire that has been fed a bundle of kindling. Together they stand in the sun before those terrible waves, in the fall of that terrible year.
By spring, they will be living together on the Vulcan Steps.
“We had to do a quick change to the program. You can see it has a new title.” But Less, conversant only in German, can make nothing of the words on the paper he has just been handed. People are coming and going now, clipping a microphone to his lapel, offering him water. But Arthur Less is still halfway lit by beach sunshine, halfway in the water of the Golden Gate in 1987. Take care of my Robert. And now, an old woman falling and breaking her hip.
She sends her love. No rancor, no feelings at all.
The Head leans forward with a whisper and a comradely wink: “By the way. Wanted you to know, those pills work great!”
Less looks over at the man. Is it the pills that make him so flushed and grotesque? What else do they sell here for middle-aged men? Is there a pill for when the image of a trumpet vine comes into your head? Will it erase it? Erase the voice saying, You should kiss me like it’s good-bye? Erase the tuxedo jacket, or at least the face above it? Erase the whole nine years? Robert would say, The work will fix you. The work, the habit, the words, will fix you. Nothing else can be depended on, and Less has known genius, what genius can do. But what if you are not a genius? What will the work do then?
“What’s the new title?” Less asks. The Head passes the program to Arturo. Less consoles himself that tomorrow he will board a plane to Italy. The language is getting to him. The lingering taste of mescal is getting to him. The tragicomic business of being alive is getting to him.
Arturo studies the program for a moment, then looks up gravely:
“Una Noche con Arthur Less.”
Less Italian
Along with the other drugs Arthur Less bought at Mexico City’s airport farmacia, Less has obtained a new variety of sleeping pill. He recalls Freddy’s advice from years before: “It’s a hypnotic instead of a narcotic. They serve you dinner, you sleep seven hours, they serve you breakfast, you’re there.” Thus armed, Less boards the Lufthansa aircraft (he will have a fairly rushed layover in Frankfurt), settles into his window seat, chooses the Tuscan chicken (whose ravishing name reveals itself, like an internet lover, to be mere chicken and mashed potatoes), and with his Thumbelina bottle of red wine takes a single white capsule. His remaining anxiety from “Una Noche con Arthur Less” is working against his exhaustion; the sound of the Head’s amplified voice loops in his brain, saying again and again, We were talking backstage about mediocrity; he hopes the drug will do its duty. It does: he does not remember finishing the Bavarian cream in its little eggcup, nor the removal of his dinner, nor setting his watch to a new time zone, nor a dozing talk with his seatmate: a girl from Jalisco. Instead, Less awakens to a plane of sleeping citizens under blue prison blankets. Dreamily happy, he looks at his watch and panics: only two hours have passed! There are still nine more to go. On the monitors, a recent American cop comedy plays soundlessly. As with any silent movie, it needs no sound for him to imagine its plot. A heist by amateurs. He tries to fall back asleep, his jacket as a pillow; his mind plays a movie of his present life. A heist by amateurs. Less takes a deep breath and fumbles in his bag. He finds another pill and puts it in his mouth. An endless process of dry swallowing he remembers from being a boy with his vitamins. Then it is done, and he places the thin satin mask again over his eyes, ready to reenter the darkness—
“Sir, your breakfast. Coffee or tea?”
“What? Uh, coffee.”
Shades are being opened to let in the bright sun above the heavy clouds. Blankets are being put away. Has any time passed? He does not remember sleeping. He looks at his watch—what madman has set it? To what time zone: Singapore? Breakfast; they are about to descend into Frankfurt. And he has just taken a hypnotic. A tray is placed before him: a microwaved croissant with frozen butter and jam. A cup of coffee. Well, he will have to push through. Perhaps the coffee will counteract the sedative. You take an upper for a downer, right? This, Less thinks to himself as he tries to butter the bread with its companion chunk of ice, is how drug addicts think.
He is going to Turin for a prize ceremony, and in the days leading into the ceremony there will be interviews, something called a “confrontation” with high school students, and many luncheons and dinners. He looks forward to escaping, briefly, into the streets of Turin, a town unknown to him. Contained deep within the invitation was the information that the greater prize has already been awarded to the famous British author Fosters Lancett, son of the famous British author Reginald Lancett. He wonders if the poor man is actually coming. Because of his fear of jet lag, Less requested to arrive a day before all these events, and for some reason they acceded to his request. A car, he has been told, will be waiting for him in Turin. If he manages to make it there.
He floats through the Frankfurt airport in a dream, thinking: Passport, wallet, phone, passport, wallet, phone. On a great blue screen he finds his flight to Turin has changed terminals. Why, he wonders, are there no clocks in airports? He passes through miles of leather handbags and perfumes and whiskeys, miles of beautiful Turkish retail maids, and in this dream, he is talking to them about colognes and letting them giggle and spritz him with scents of leather and musk; he is looking through wallets and fingering the ostrich leather as if some message were written in braille; he imagines standing at the counter of a VIP lounge and talking to the receptionist, a lady with sea-urchin hair, about his childhood in Delaware, charming his way into the lounge where businessmen of all nationalities are wearing the same suit, and he sits in a cream leather chair, drinks champagne, eats oysters, and there the dream fades…
He awakens in a bus, headed somewhere. But where? Why is he holding so many bags? Why is there the tickle of champagne in his throat? Less tries to listen, among the straphangers, for Italian; he must find the flight to Turin. Around him seem to be only American businessmen, talking about sports. Less recognizes the words but not the names. He feels un-American. He feels homosexual. Less notes there are at least five men on the bus taller than he, which seems like a life record. His mind, a sloth making its slow way across the forest floor of necessity, is taking in the fact that he is still in Germany. Less is due to be back in Germany in just a week’s time, to teach a five-week course at the Liberated University. And it is while he is in Germany that the wedding will take place. Freddy will marry Tom somewhere in Sonoma. The shuttle crosses the tarmac and deposits them at an identical terminal. Nightmarishly: passport control. Yes, he still has his in his front left pocket. “Geschäftlich,” he answers the muscular agent (red hair cut so close, it seems painted on), secretly thinking: What I do is hardly business. Or pleasure. Security, again. Shoes, belt, off, again. What is the logic here? Passport, customs, security, again? Why do today’s young men insist on marrying? Was this why we all threw stones at the police, for weddings? Submitting to his bladder at last, Less enters a white tiled bathroom and sees, in the mirror: an old balding Onkel in wrinkled, oversized clothes. It turns out there is no mirror: it is the businessman across the sink. A Marx Brothers joke. Less washes his own face, not the businessman’s, finds his gate, and boards the plane. Passport, wallet, phone. He sinks into his window seat with a sigh and never gets his second breakfast: he has fallen instantly to sleep.