"Ees okay. You tell him call home, si?"
"Si," I agreed. "Good-bye." I hung up, hoping I would see him indeed.
So. He hadn't gone home.
Then where?
I know I should have forgotten about it, shoved it to the back of my mind, and just contented myself with being really mad at him. What was the big deal, anyway?
The big deal was that Matt was the only real friend I had, at the moment-maybe the only one I'd ever had, really. I mean, I hadn't known Matt all that long; but four years seems like a long time, to me. Four years, going on five-but who's counting?
It's not as if I'd ever had all that many friends. Let me see, there was jory in first grade, and Luke, and Ray-and all the rest of the boys in the class, I suppose. Then it was down to Luke and Ray in second grade, 'cause jory moved away-but the rest of the kids began to cool off. My wild stories, I guess. Then Ray moved, too, so it was just Luke and me in third grade-and Luke eased up, 'cause he wanted to play with the other kids. Me, I didn't want to play, I was clumsy-I just wanted to tell stories, but the other kids didn't want to hear about brave knights rescuing fair damsels. So from fourth grade on, I was on decent terms with the rest of the kids, but nothing more. Then, along about junior high, nobody wanted to be caught talking to me, because the "in" crowd decided I was weird.
What can I say? I was. I mean, a thirteen-year-old boy who doesn't like baseball and loves reading poetry-what can you say? By local standards, anyway. And in junior high, local standards are everything.
Made me miserable, but what could I do?
Find out what they thought made a good man, of course. I watched and found out real quick that the popular guys weren't afraid to fight, and they won more fights than they lost. That seemed to go with being good at sports. So I figured that if I could learn how to fight, I could be good at sports, too. A karate school had just opened up in town, so I heckled Mom until she finally took me, just to shut me up. I had to get a paper route to pay for it, though.
It only took six months before I stopped losing fights. When school started again in the fall, and the boys started working out their ranking system by the usual round of bouts, I started winning a few-and all of a sudden, the other guys got chummy. I warmed to it for a little while, but it revolted me, too. I knew them for what they were now, and I stopped caring about them.
It felt good. Besides, I'd connected with karate-and from it, I got interested in the Far East.
One of the teachers told me I should try not to sound so hostile and sarcastic all the time.
Sarcastic? Who, me?
So I learned to paste on the smile and sound cheerful. Didn't work. The other kids could tell. All I succeeded in doing was acting phony.
Why bother?
Of course, things picked up a little in high school, because there was a literary magazine, and a drama club, so I got back onto civil terms with some of the other kids. Not the "in" crowd, of course, but they bored me, so I didn't care. Much.
So all in all, I wasn't really prepared for college. Academically, sure-but socially? I mean, I hadn't had a real friend in ten years and all of a sudden, I had a dozen. Not close friends, of course, but people who smiled and sat down in my booth at the coffee shop.
Who can blame me if I didn't do any homework?
My profs, that's who. And the registrar, who sent me the little pink slip with the word probation worked in there. And my academic counselor, who pointed out that I was earning a quick exit visa from the Land of Friendship. So I declared an English major, where at least half of the homework was reading the books I'd already read for recreation-Twain, and Dickens, and Melville. I discovered Fielding, and Chaucer, and Joyce, and had more fun. Of course ' I had to take a grammar course and write term papers, so I learned how to sneak in a few hours at the library. I didn't take any honors, but I stayed in. Then I discovered philosophy, and found out that I actually wanted to go to the library. I started studying without realizing it-it was so much fun, such a colossal, idiotic, senseless puzzle. Nobody had any good answers to the big questions, but at least they were asking. My answers? I was looking for them. That was enough. So I studied for fun, and almost learned how to party. Never got very good at it, but I tried-and by my senior year, I even had a couple of friends who trusted me enough to tell me their troubles. Not that I ever told them mine, of course. I tried once or twice, but stopped when I saw the eyes glaze. I figured out that most people want to talk, but they don't want to listen. It followed from that, logically, that what they liked about me was that I listened, but didn't talk. So I didn't. I got a reputation for being the strong and silent type, just by keeping my mouth shut. I also found out, by overhearing at a party, that they thought I was the Angry Young Man. I thought that one over and decided they were right. I was angry about people. Even the ones I liked, mostly. They wanted to take, but they didn't want to give. They cared about fighting, but they didn't care about brains. They spent their time trying to get from one another, and they didn't care about why they were here. Oh, don't get me wrong-they were good people. But they didn't care about me, really. I was a convenience.
Except for Matt.
Matt was already working on his M.A. when I met him, and by the time I graduated, he was making good progress on his PhD. So what was I going to do when I got my degree? Leave town, and the one good friend I had? Not to mention the only three girls who'd ever thought I was human.
No way.
So I started work on my master's. Physics, of course. How come? From literature and philosophy?
Because I took "Intro to Asia" for a freshman distribution requirement, and found out about zen - and learned about Shredinger's Cat in "History of Science." Put the two together, and it made a lot of sense.
Don't ask. You had to be there.
Then Matt ran into a snag on his doctoral dissertation. Do you know what it's like to see a real friend deteriorating in front of your eyes? He found that scrap of parchment, the-i got hung up trying to translate it. Wasn't in any known language, so it had to be a prank. I mean, that's obvious, right? Not even logic-just common sense. Matt didn't have any.
Now, don't get me wrong. Matt's my friend, and I think the world of the guy, but I'm realistic about him, too. He was something of a compulsive, and something of an idealist, as well-to the point of ... Well, you know the difference between fantasy and reality? Matt didn't. Not always, anyway.
No, he was convinced that parchment was a real, authentic, historical document, and he wasted half his last year trying to decipher it.
I was getting real worried about him-losing weight, bags under his eyes, drawn and pale ... Matt, not me. I didn't have any spare weight to lose. Him, he was the credulous type-one of the kind that's born every minute. I'm one of the other kind, two born for every one of him. I mean, I wouldn't believe it was April if I didn't see the calendar. Forget about that robin pecking at the window, and the buds on the trees. If I don't see it in black and white, it's Nature pulling a fast one. Maybe a thaw.
So he had disappeared.
I thought about calling the police, but I remembered they couldn't do anything-Matt was a grown man, and there hadn't been any bloodstains in his apartment. Besides, I hadn't been on terribly good terms with the local constables ever since that year I was experimenting with recreational chemicals.
Still, I gave it a try. I actually went into the police station-me, with my long hair and beard. Nobody gave me more than a casual glance, but my back still prickled-probably from an early memory, a very early memory, of my father saying something about "the pigs" loving to beat on anybody who didn't have a crew cut. Of course, that was long ago, in 1968, and I was so little that all I remember of him was a big, tall pair of blue jeans with a tie-dyed T-shirt and a lot of hair at the top. I hated that memory for ten years, because it was all I knew of him until Mom decided to get in touch with him again, and I found out he wasn't really the ogre I figured he must have been, to have left Mom and me that way. Found out it wasn't all his idea, either. And I had a basis for understanding him-by that time, I had begun to know what it was like to have all the other kids put you down.