The fact that Ross himself was a sort of scheduled hack did not alarm him. There weren’t many hacks of his kind, and that pleased him. He dared the world to give him a life he could not make significant on paper and earn some money with. So didn’t this indicate the dull surprise that nobody was significant? Or was it the great Christian view — every man a king? Ross had no idea, and no intention of following up on the truth. Years ago he had found that truth and the whole matter of the examined life were overrated, highly. There were preposterous differences in values among the lives he had thrown himself into. Even in sensual pleasure, there was wide variance. He himself thought there was no food served anywhere worth more than ten dollars. No woman on earth was worth more than fifty, if you meant bed per night. Others thought differently, obviously. The young diva who put pebbles in her butt and clutched them with her sphincter (she insisted he include this) — well, it was simply something. It made borderline depraved people feel better when they read it. Also, when would the discussion about love ever quit? He could be deeply in love with most of the women in every fashion magazine he’d ever flipped through. The women would have to talk themselves out of his love, stumble or pick their noses. Usually he did not love Nabby, his wife, but given an hour and a fresh situation he could talk himself into adoring her.
What he loved was his son.
What was love but lack of judgment?
So if God judged, he was not love, eh?
This sort of stuff was the curse of the thinking class. You went away to college and came back with such as that to nag your sleep till you dropped.
Best to shut up and live.
Best to shoot anonymous innocent citizens with an air rifle and shut up about it. The delicious thing was that the stricken howled and bore the indignity as best they could, never to have an answer. He saw them questing through the decades for the source of that moment. He saw them dying with the mystery of it. Through the years the stricken had looked up at the top of buildings, sideways to the alleys, and directly at passersby. Once he had looked directly at a policeman, beebeed, rubbing his head and saying something. Twice people had looked deeply at Ross and his car — another year, another Riviera — but Ross was feigning, of course, sincere drivership. What a rush, joy nearly pouring from his eyes!
In Newt’s neighborhood his car was blocked briefly by some children playing touch football on the broken pavement. They came around and admired his car and the two-seater boat towed behind as he pulled in between dusty motorcycles in front of a dark green cottage, his son’s. Already he wanted away from it, on some calm pond with the singing electric motor easing the two of them into cool lily-padded coves, a curtain of cattails behind their manly conversation. They had not fished together in ages. Newt used to adore this beyond all things. Ross had prepared his cynicism, but he had prepared his love even more. The roving happy intelligence on the face of little Newt, age eleven, shot with beauty from a dying Southern sun as he lifted the great orange and blue shellcracker out of the green with his bowed cane pole — there was your boy, a poet already. He’d said he had a new friend, this fish, and not a stupid meal. He’d stroked it, then released it. You didn’t see that much in the bloody Southern young, respect for a mere damned fish. He’d known barbers to mount one that size, chew and spit over it for decades.
They seemed to have matched Ross’s care in his presents with (planned?) carelessness about his arrival. This sort of thing had happened many times to Ross in the homes of celebrities, even in the midst of his projects with them. Somebody would let him in without even false hospitality: “Ah, here is the pest with his notes again,” they might as well have said, surprised he was at the front door instead of the back, where the fellow with their goddamn mountain water delivered.
The girl indicated somebody sitting there in overalls who was not Newt, a big oaf named Bim, he thought she said. Yes, there always had to be some worthless slug dear to them all for God knew what reasons hanging about murdering time. Bim wore shower shoes. He did not get up or extend a hand. Ross badly wanted his cynicism not to rise again, and made small talk. The man had a stud in his nose. He dressed like this because the school was a cow college, Ross guessed. It was hip to enforce this, not deny it, as with Ivy League wear, etc.
“So where do you hail from, Bim?”
“Earth,” said the man.
Drive that motherfucking stud through the rest of your nose, coolster, thought Ross. Ross looked straight at Bim with such bleak amazed hatred that the man rose and left the house as if driven by pain. Ross stood six feet high and still had his muscles, though he sometimes forgot. There wasn’t much nonsense in him, and those who liked him loved this. The others didn’t. He might seem capable of patient chilly murder.
“I don’t know what you did, but thanks,” said Ivy Pilgrim. “He’s in Newt’s band and thinks he has a title to that chair. Can’t bear him.”
“Bimmer has a fine sensitivity. Hello, Dad.” Newt had entered from the back. There were only four rooms. “Where’d Bimmer go?”
Newt did not have a ponytail. He had cut off almost all his hair and was red in the face around his beard. He wore gold-rim glasses set back into his black whiskers, and his dark eyes glinted as always. His head looked white and abused, as just shoved into jail. The boy had looked a great deal like D. H. Lawrence since puberty. Here was the young Lawrence convicted and scraped by Philistines. But he didn’t seem drunk. That was good.
“I don’t believe Bimmer liked me,” said Ross.
“He moves with the wind,” sighed his son.
“Mainly he sits in the chair,” said Ivy Pilgrim.
Ross looked her over. She was better than the photograph, an elfin beauty from this profile. And she wasn’t afraid of Newt.
“You have the most beautiful hair I’ve seen on a man about forever. That salt and pepper gets me every time,” she said to Ross.
“Thank you, Ivy.” Watch it, old man, Ross thought. Other profile suggests a kitten, woo you silly.
“What instrument does Bimmer play?” he asked.
“Civil Defense siren, bongos, sticks,” said Newt seriously.
“So you’re in earnest about this band?”
“I’ve never been more serious about anything in my life.” Since Newt was twenty, Ross was wary of asking him any questions at all. He’d get the wild black glare of bothered pain.
Who could tell what this meant? Though with his bald head it seemed goony and desperate.