“And … scene,” I said. We’d taken some drama classes together. The others clapped hard for our skit, or the oratory, really. Davis, wasted in the right ratios, was a natural. We both took a bow.
* * *
I had one of those phones that did everything, but I could never master the simplest apps. Every time I tried to add to my schedule, these words would flash on the calendar display: “This appointment occurs in the past.” I grew to rely on the feature. It granted me texture, a sense of rich history.
I was remarking on this to Davis in the midtown diner where we’d agreed to meet. I suppose you could call it a retro diner, but what diner isn’t? They’re all designed to make you think fried food won’t kill you because it’s the 1950s and nobody knows any better, and besides, there’s a chance you haven’t been born yet.
We dug into our bacon and cheddar chili burgers. I watched Davis chew.
He didn’t look sick at all. He was still ugly but a good deal less so. Some men get handsome later. It’s up to them to make it count. He’d replaced his granny glasses with modish steel frames. He looked scientific, artistic, somebody trained to talk to astronauts about their dreams. He eyed me over his drippy meat.
“That’s funny,” he said. “I could look at your phone, maybe fix it.”
“No,” I said. “I like it that way.”
We were silent for a moment.
“So,” I said. “The ragged rider.”
“Indeed.”
“You look fantastic. I thought you’d be much more winnowed.”
“It’s not that kind of disease.”
“What kind is it?”
“We’re still working on that. The doctors.”
“I’m sorry. Whatever it is.”
“It’s in the blood. They know that. I’m sorry, too. But at least it’s given me an excuse to gather my old friends.”
“We haven’t talked since—”
“Since graduation,” said Davis.
“No,” I said. “That other time.”
We’d run into each other in a cocktail lounge in San Francisco several years after college. Davis wore a suit of disco white and toasted the would-be silicon barons at his table. I, assistant manager of this spacey blue sleazepit for the young and almost rich, sloshed Dom in their flutes. Davis slipped me some cash and a wink, but he flailed in a world beyond his code capacity. His group appeared composed of algorithmic gangsters, expert wielders of their petty and twisty Jewish, Welsh, Cambodian, Nubian, and Mayan brains. They hadn’t spent their undergraduate years soused, brandishing pistols and theory. They’d been those morose, slightly chippy bots I’d noticed at the refectory whenever I rolled in for some transitional pancakes after a night of self-bludgeoning. They were churls with huge binders, and I’d always known they were my betters.
“Be honest,” said Davis at the bar. “Are you gunning for maître d’ or is this research for a screenplay?”
“I’m trying to pay my rent, sycophant.”
“We were like brothers.”
“Cain and the other one.”
“That’s true. So what’s your life plan?”
“Drinking,” I said. “One day at a time.”
“These people here think I’m Swiss,” said Davis. “They think I have Ph.D.s in cognitive science and computer engineering. There’s a serious tip involved if you help maintain my cover.”
“What’s the angle?”
“I need them to work for stock options. I’ve got a start-up. It’s called the Buddy System Network. You become friends with people online, share your opinions, your stories, put up pictures. Only connect, right? What do you think?”
“I think you’re a freaking crackpot. Your idea is ludicrous. People aren’t machines.”
“If you’d read more great literature, you’d know that machines are exactly what people are.”
Now, as we sat in the diner, Davis — the new, dying, steely, reframed Davis — dragged a waffle fry through his chili burger sauce.
“So what have you been doing?” I said, thoughtless as usual.
“Right now I seem to be dying. Before that I was looking to break into your line of work. Sponging off wealthy women. My tangelo flow isn’t what it used to be. The economy mugged the Davis dynasty. Come to my place tomorrow, will you? It would mean a lot to me.”
* * *
That night, back in my shimmering crypt, I called Martha in Michigan.
“This is crazy,” I said. “Let’s patch it up.”
“You turd, I’m married again.”
“Oh, right,” I said. “Scott. How well does he grill?”
“We’re vegans now.”
“No dairy?”
“Kills the sex drive.”
“So that’s what it was.”
“No, honey, it was other things with us.”
“How’s your mom?”
“Let’s not revisit that incident.”
“Incident? Try era.”
“I’ve got to go.”
Down in the hotel bar, I thought of how much Davis and I still had to discuss. Our friendship, for example, and how quickly we’d passed through each other, from fascinated strangers to loyal chums to relics of each other’s worlds. We’d been pawns of proximity, choiceless as brothers. I’d always sort of hated him, really, his arrogance, his masks, his whispery fake ways with my mind. I’d been nothing to him, just his handsome stooge, a barker for his depraved tent.
Now, I could tell you my family history and you could do some amateur noodle prods, conclude I needed one such as Davis to salve my certain hurts. Was it the time my mother beat my hands with a serving spoon while I stood enchanted by the ripples in her gray rayon blouse? Or the occasion my father recited a limerick that began “There once was a dumb fucking boy / who was never his daddy’s joy”? Yes, we could solve for why, but we could also eat another slice of coconut cake. Why won’t save you, anyway. Why makes it worse. And Davis, I realized, he wasn’t sick.
He was sick.
* * *
I took the train and then the bus to his place in Red Hook. He lived in a refurbished ink factory. I pushed through the iron doors and climbed the stairs until I saw a metal plate with Davis’s name on it. This building, he’d told me at the diner, was owned by rich artists who rented cheap, unsafe spaces to poor artists. Davis had a good deal with these slumlord aesthetes.
His apartment, empty and unlocked, was a great cement room with high windows. Greasy carpets covered the floor. A pair of half-shredded cane chairs and a stained divan connoted a parlor. I recognized all the furniture from the old days. He’d added nothing. Even the stereo had survived.
Davis appeared in his doorway. “Everyone’s up on the roof, kid. Follow me.”
He led me up a narrow ladder to a nearly nautical hatch. I popped through after him, my chin at tar level, surveyed the roof scene — so many pasty, dulled versions of the people I’d known, our old audience, and strangers, too. Caldwell the goblin had gone waxen and squinty. The Texan, dipless, had a tidy potbelly. He sported a polo shirt and unsevere trousers, golf philanthropical. The girl who once stood by the stereo was now a woman who hovered near a hooded grill. It resembled a Greek design I’d coveted from catalogs back in Ypsilanti. I could smell the seared tuna smoke, the zuke-juice vapors. Davis pulled me from the hatch, led me to the sawhorse bar. We had vistas of city and sea.
“My friend will have the rum punch,” said Davis to the teen boy with the ladle.
“Okay, Dad.”
Davis pounced on my surprise.