We spent the remainder of the evening sipping tea and engaging in normal conversation, a ritual of mediocrity at which Troy proved pro
fi
cient and quite eloquent. He talked about job markets and IPOs and 401(k)s and wouldn’t stop talking about the World Wide Web.
Now and again the phone rang, but Lulu never answered it. She kept listening to Troy paint a picture of a world that could be quite easily
fi
nessed and persuaded and in most cases predicted (I wished Hume were there to set him straight on that account), a world where morality and
fi
scal responsibility could coexist, a world where every fruit you ever wished for was ripe for the picking, where free will was its own kind of destiny. Opportunity and capital were the tools to achieve whatever end you could possibly wish for. It was really quite simple: Ask for little, and little you shall receive; expect opulence, and the universe would surrender its bounty. By this measure, gratitude seemed like a dangerous proposition.
As Troy painted this picture of reality, I realized for the
fi
rst time that I was raised by peasants. I recognized that the world in which Troy lived was the world into which wealthy people brought their children—a world that engendered possibilities and was easily navigable given a philosophy that instilled con
fi
dence, a mythology in which destiny was a ladder and all you had to do was climb it, a world where morality was simply a matter of good taste. I, however, was taught (and so, mind you, was Lulu) that the world was made of meat, that everything had a short ending, that without pain, one could not possibly expect gain. All the opportunity and capital in the world didn’t matter, damnit, it had to hurt! And I was supposed to be well-adjusted?
Not only was I
raised
by peasants, but I was a peasant, too, because Troy’s ideal seemed colorless
to me—safe, predictable, virtu
ally without struggle. And that’s why Lulu nodded and nodded and smiled occasionally, but not like she smiled for Esmeralda, not like she smiled for me in the pampas grass, when we spoke in blinks and squints and lovely incantations. When Lulu smiled at Troy, she smiled like a straw mat, or a paper lantern, or a black scarf draped over a yellow footlocker.
Normal conversation lasted until about midnight, at which point Lulu decided it was time for bed. She gathered up Esmeralda, and they retreated to the bedroom. She reemerged moments later in a nightgown with blankets and pillows for Troy and me, which she set in a big pile next to the Blob.
“Goodnight,” she cooed.
“Goodnight,” said Troy.
Lulu pulled the string for the overhead light, and the room went dark, but you could still see the Chinese lantern bobbing in the darkness as she disappeared into the bedroom. Lulu shut the door behind her, and when she did, most of the universe went dark, leaving only a puddle of bleak light, which
fi
ltered through the hedges and into the window from the street. In this bleak light, Troy and I groped and wrestled the Blob until it was almost
fl
at. In silence, we kicked our shoes off and lay down side by side on our backs, and dispersed the blankets and pillows equitably. We stared at the ceiling for a few minutes without comment before turning our backs to one another.
As I lay there with my best friend, I looked out the window and over the hedges and tried to forget him completely, and hoped that the sun would not rise on one of us—preferably him.
When I awoke, I was alone on the Blob, and daylight spilled dull gray over the hedges into the living room. It was spitting rain and the windows were fogged up around the edges. It could’ve been 5:30
AM, or it could’ve been noon. It could have been fall, it could have been winter. The clock on the stove read 10:09. At some point during the night Troy had found his way to Lulu’s bedroom, for that’s where I discovered him, on his back, under the covers, gazing out the window.
“Morning,” he said.
“Hadn’t noticed,” I said, looking around. “Where’s Lulu?”
“Work, until
fi
ve-thirty. Then she’s got something downtown.”
The inner sanctum of Lulu’s bedroom was more chaotic than the rest of the apartment. Keys and bracelets and pocket change gathered on
fl
at surfaces everywhere. The dresser top was littered with miscellany. Panties lay strewn about. A wicker chair in the corner lay buried beneath an avalanche of sweaters and coats and jeans. Photographs were af
fi
xed willy-nilly to the edges of her vanity. I noted with satisfaction that no less than three of the pictures featured myself, and only one featured Troy, and even in that one his face was partially obscured by somebody’s shoulder.
Troy climbed out from under the covers, naked from the waist up. He scratched his ass and ambled across the hallway to the bathroom. The shower nozzle sputtered to life. I continued my appraisal of Lulu’s room, particularly the chaos atop her dresser, where I found ticket stubs and bus transfers and an old paycheck and a pack of American Spirits and two books of matches and some Nag Champa incense, and I’m guessing about eight bucks in change.
I sat on the edge of the bed, on the opposite side where Troy had lain. I picked up Lulu’s pillow and buried my face in it and smelled it, I mean really smelled it, like I’d been under water for eleven minutes and it was my
fi
rst breath of air, and it smelled like that song
“Back Home in Indiana,” like hay and candles and the Wabash River, and something else, maybe Lulu’s scalp, or my mother’s bathrobe, or sweaty feet soaked in rose water. Whatever it was, it was good.
In a Mexican cigar box on the nightstand, among the aspirin bottles and Carmex and hair clips, I discovered the cause of Lulu’s evenness, or at least one of its harbingers, in the form of a prescrip-tion bottle of Prozac. I pocketed the Prozac so swiftly and without reservation that I can’t honestly say what impulse prompted me. But in my heart I felt that Lulu’s wilderness must never be tamed.
The shower nozzle stopped sputtering, and I heard the little rings clink together as Troy drew back the shower curtain. I retreated to the living room and began folding blankets and wrestling the Blob back into its alternate state of formlessness.
Later, Troy and I walked down the hill through the rain and ate breakfast at Stella’s. We agreed it was overpriced, and Troy insisted on paying. Then we saw a matinee, a celluloid disaster called
Problem
Child 2
. We walked out midway, and poked around record stores on the Ave for a few hours, all the while scrupulously avoiding the subject of Lulu. Troy bought a CD, a T-shirt, and a smoked-glass Jimi Hendrix mirror. He also bought a hat that said
Loser
, which I thought suited him perfectly. I bought Lulu a record for a buck called
Take Another Lap for Jesus
, with an old guy on the cover in the most vivid yellow poly-
fi
ber sweat suit I’d ever laid eyes on. He looked just like Jimmy Johnson, the Dallas Cowboys coach, and he was jogging down the street, presumably for Jesus, with a smile on his face like something Big Bill might’ve crafted midway through a front double bicep. The artist’s name was Norman something, and not only could he croon, according to the liner notes,
like
David, the sweet singer of
Israel
, he was also an evangelist for something called the Overseas Crusade Ministry, whose stated endeavor was something to the effect of
stimulating and mobilizing the Body of Christ to continuous, effective
evangelism and church multiplication on a nationwide basis, so millions
will be transformed into victorious Christians.
Troy wanted to walk around campus, so we walked around campus. The place was deserted. As we crossed Red Square past Meany Hall, Troy
fi
nally broached the subject of Lulu.
“I wasn’t trying to be sneaky, you know. I mean, by not telling you.”
“Weren’t you?”
“No. That’s what I’m trying to explain. I would’ve told you, I wanted to tell you, it’s just Lulu was worried that—”
“It’s none of my business,” I said. “You don’t owe me an explanation. And I don’t want one. What happens between you and Lulu is between you and Lulu. What do I care? I’m her brother.”
“Stepbrother,” he said.
“Whatever.”
“There’s a big difference.”
“Not to her way of thinking,” I said.
“Maybe not,” he conceded. “But
…
” He waved it off.
“But what?”
“Well
…
sometimes it seems like, I don’t know, like
…
do you remember when Lulu and I were going out, and she wasn’t always very nice to me?”
“You mean, like always?”
“Okay, sure, like always. I always felt like that was because of you, because I wasn’t you. I wasn’t funny like you, I didn’t make weird analogies like you, I didn’t describe things the way you described them.”
“Whatever gave you that idea?”
“Because all those nights in Ventura, we ended up talking about you.”
“Don’t blame me.”
“I’m not blaming. I just don’t know what I
am
to Lulu, that’s all.
I never did know.”
“So welcome to the club.”
“You used to tell me that I was nothing to her, and I believed you.”
“That was wrong of me. I was just jealous.”
“But now I think maybe I am something to her, but I don’t know what. It’s different now, a lot different, except really, when it comes down to it, maybe it’s the same. Maybe it will always be the same.”
“I wouldn’t bank on it.”
“All I know is, is that she genuinely cares about me now. She
begged
me to come, Will. And believe me, after that night at Cabazon, I needed some convincing. She made me feel like I was never born that night.”
“That one was my fault,” I said. “I’m sorry. It was a dirty trick. I should’ve never—”
“Forget it. She was crazy that night, and we were drunk.” Troy stopped at the ledge in front of a sculpture that looked something like a rusty pencil poised vertically atop a rusty pyramid. He turned his back to it and leaned against the ledge, and I did the same. Together we gazed out across the empty square, which wasn’t square.
“But then the
fi
rst night I got here, Will, she almost convinced me. She said things about the future, and I’ve never known Lulu to be a forward thinker, at least not where she and I are concerned. I’m telling you, she was different, Will. She was calm, and focused, and she seemed to know who she was, or who she wanted to be. Then yesterday you got here, and
…
I wasn’t convinced anymore. This morning, she tried to convince me again. She apologized over and over, but she never said for what.” He threw his arms up. “I don’t even know what I’m trying to say. Convince me of what? That I’m
what
?”
“Ask her.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
“Because even if she does have an answer, I’m afraid I won’t like it.”
The statement had the ring of truth. The kind you don’t want to ponder. “Well,” I said. “Then just ask her
again
in
fi
ve minutes.”
Somehow this truth was less unsettling, I suppose because it afforded us both a degree of hope. Troy and I shared a little grin. Troy pushed off from the ledge and started slowly back across the square.
After about
fi
ve steps, he broke into a sprint toward the center of the square, then slammed on the brakes and skated across the wet bricks in his tennis shoes for about ten feet, and waved me on.
When we returned to Lulu’s apartment, I put the Prozac back in the cigar box. The
fi
rst step in disarming Lulu, I reasoned, was to quit exerting my will, to quit pushing and pulling at her fate and let it decide itself. I would concede victory to Troy and the rest of the normal world. Then, under the guise of normalcy, I’d in
fi
ltrate this world. I’d woo Lulu with my evenness. And so when Troy and Lulu wanted Chinese food, I acquiesced. When they wanted to see a movie, I acquiesced. Every time Troy wanted to sit next to Lulu, I acquiesced. I said only positive things, and thus I hardly spoke.
And bit by bit, as the week wore on, Lulu began to let her defenses down. On occasion, she even went out of her way, circling the table at The Moon Temple, or stepping over Troy’s knees at the Guild, to sit next to me. One night she clutched my hand while we were walking down the Ave toward Dante’s, where Dan and Lulu used to get drunk with the guy who played Mike Brady on TV. And not only did she hold my hand, but on our way up the stairs she even spanked my bottom.
And once Lulu was defenseless, I began to speak again, and I spoke in lovely metaphors and similes about sparrows and sandbags and hulking brute machine works rusting behind trapezoidal chain-link fences. I spun metaphors about snow
fl
akes and wormwood and just about everything you could think of that wasn’t the thing itself, because Lulu, like myself, understood the world only as metaphor.