“Why not?”
“What if I win a big pot of cash that could’ve been yours? Think about it.”
I sipped my tea and reached for the sugar.
“We’d both survive,” I said.
Some heavy steps on the porch were followed by a clattering on the door. Jimmy shoved his lottery ticket under some newspapers, and Tom came in without waiting for someone to answer. He was carrying an old space heater and a small fire extinguisher.
“Billy boy,” he said, dropping the stuff next to the door. “Where’ve you been hiding yourself?”
“He’s got that girlfriend now,” Jimmy said.
“She’s not a girlfriend.” I sighed.
“What? It’s not going anywhere?” Jimmy wanted to know.
“Nah.”
“Well, maybe you need to take it somewhere, then. Maybe you need to make some moves.”
“Yeah, I getcha … but … she likes older men. That’s the thing.”
Jimmy served Tom a scoop of crisp. It was a little heavier and more liquid than it should have been, and slid off the spoon with a gross
thluck
.
“So grow a beard,” Jimmy suggested. “Wear a tie once in a while. She might like that.”
I laughed. “I don’t think so, Jimmy. I don’t think that would be enough.”
“Besides. Take my word for it,” he said. “You’ll be an older man before you know it. Shit. You’ll be an
old
man before you know it.”
“That’s encouraging,” I said.
“Besides,” Tom chimed in. “You’re a wise old soul, right? Didn’t you tell me you were a philosophy major?”
Another soft gong sounded from behind the curtain.
“Yup. That’s right.”
“Who’s your favorite philosopher?” Tom wanted to know.
“Kierkegaard.” I didn’t even have to think about my answer.
“Oh.” Tom looked disappointed. “I prefer the ancients. Why Kierkegaard?”
“Well, for one, I like all the stuff about Regina. And how it keeps coming up, in all different spots in his work. Like he had this one thing that he couldn’t get over.”
“I don’t think I remember the whole story.”
“Regina was the girl Kierkegaard was supposed to marry, but he broke it off. He didn’t think he could be married
and
devote himself to his religious writings. Some people think he always regretted this decision, at least on some level. Some people think that a lot of his writing is sort of flavored
with this regret. His most famous writing is about what real faith is. Have you read
Fear and Trembling?”
“Long time ago,” Tom said.
“On the surface it’s about Abraham sacrificing Isaac. And it’s all about being willing not only to sacrifice but to
believe
. And a true believer isn’t willing to just sacrifice things, but is also somehow able to get them back. On some level, it seems like Kierkegaard wanted to believe God might give Regina back. But he couldn’t bring himself to have
that
level of faith.”
“See, that just doesn’t sound like elegant philosophy to me. Sticking your girlfriend in your argument.”
I shrugged. “I guess I like my philosophy to come with a little heart.”
“I suppose it doesn’t hurt.” Tom looked bored. “But I’m more one for a seamless argument.”
“No such thing. In religious philosophy, anyway. There always needs to be a jump somewhere.”
“The leap of faith,” Tom said, snapping his fingers.
“Yeah! You remember your Kierkegaard after all.”
“Would you say you’re religious? Is that why you like him?”
“Naw,” I said. “I just like that idea, that you can be willing to give something up, but still willing to embrace it if it’s ever given back to you.”
“Like what?”
“Like what?” I parroted. Good question. I remembered discussing this in class once. The younger students couldn’t conceptualize this as well as the few older ones. “Well, that depends. It could be anything that God can take away from you. Which means everything, really. You need to be able to give up and reclaim
everything
.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Jimmy demanded. “Are you guys listening to yourselves?”
“It means no sour grapes,” I said firmly.
Jimmy conceded a nod, but I regretted the oversimplification. It wasn’t accurate, and I’d made it sound too easy.
“Or something like that,” I added.
Mr. Phillips seemed to have adjusted
his once-a-month doughnut schedule. He was in the office the following Monday—two weeks earlier than his usual visit.
I was at the cit file, trying to find some information about the history of the word
hornswoggle
for a correspondence, when I heard someone say, on the other side of the file, “No coffee today, John?”
And then Mr. Phillips replying happily, “Not today. Here on business today.”
“Oh? What business?”
“Oh, just poking around for a couple of baseball terms. A buddy of mine was asking me about ‘chin music’ the other day.”
“Ohhh.
That
kind of business.”
I didn’t recognize the other voice. It might have been Anna.
On Wednesday, two days later, I did a double take as I passed the coffee machine. There he was again, leaning casually by the coffee machine, talking to Dan.
“God, I just
miss
this place,” he was saying.
Dan was nodding, opening a little plastic creamer with his long, elegant fingers.
The sudden frequency of Mr. Phillips’s appearances was not, of course, lost on Mona. She dropped a note in my box:
Billy
,
Your elderly gentleman friend seems to have come out of retirement. Could it have anything to do with a certain bit of information provided to him by that nice new young editor with the open, optimistic personality and the winning smile??
M
.
Crumpling her note, I went to find Mr. Phillips in the cit stacks.
I arranged to pick him up
on Friday.
“Where are we going?” Mr. Phillips asked as he got into my car.
“I thought we’d go somewhere different today,” I said. “Know of any good bars downtown?”
“Callahan’s,” he replied. “Hands down. On the corner of State and Bishop.”
“Alrighty,” I said.
As I headed in that direction, Mr. Phillips asked me what I’d been working on lately.
“Let’s see,” I said. “I looked at the cits for ‘icky’ today. That was mildly interesting, even though there was nothing new to define. And ‘icon.’ You know, the computer sense? I sent that one to Science.”
“That’s a shame, Billy. You can’t let Science have all the fun. I just went ahead and defined any science terms that interested me.”
“I’m sure they didn’t like that.”
“Yeah, Ed used to howl about that, when he’d catch it.
He’d bounce my definitions back to Science and have them do them over again. Almost always they’d keep what I’d written. See, I’d only do it with terms I knew I could handle. I wouldn’t try to define, say, ‘ribonuclease.’ They can have
those
words to themselves.”
After I’d parallel-parked, I started to open my door. But Mr. Phillips didn’t move.
“You got any cigarettes?” he asked.
“No. Maybe they sell them inside. Let’s go.”
“Wait. Before we go in, Billy, I wanted to give you something.”
He took an envelope out of his coat pocket and handed it to me.
“Now you just leave poor old Mary Anne’s scribblings in the car for now, and worry about her later,” he instructed me. “We’re gonna enjoy our drink without her.”
“Are these—”
“Cits. Ready to go?”
I tucked the envelope under my visor. “Was it Mary Beth or Mary Anne?”
“Pretty sure it was Mary Anne.”
“Do you remember her last name?”
“No. But it would be easy enough to find it. Just look in the credits of some of the older Samuelson books. Her name’s bound to be in one of them.”
Once we got into the place, Mr. Phillips headed straight for a booth in the back. I was a little disappointed. I’d imagined us hanging out at the bar together, maybe doing a couple of shots of whiskey and cursing with the locals.
“What’s on tap, dear?” Mr. Phillips was asking the waitress. She was cute, with springy brown curls and freckles. She looked just slightly under age.
“Harp. Guinness. Budweiser,” she intoned.
“Gimme a Guinness, then. Please. Billy?”
“I’ll have the same. Thanks.”
Mr. Phillips propped his elbow on a Sam Adams coaster and scratched his ear. “So. What’ve you been research-reading lately?” he wanted to know.
“Some cooking magazines.
Rolling Stone
. And
Motorcyclist.”
“Is that right?”
“Yeah. In fact, I’ve been thinking of getting a Kawasaki. I figure if I put just a tiny portion of my paycheck aside every month—”
“A motorcycle!” He snorted. “Don’t you think you’re a little young for your midlife crisis?”
“Yeah,” I said. “At my age, you just call it
youth
. I’ve actually had my eye on this one crotch rocket for a while. I could get a pretty good used one for about eighteen hundred bucks. Can’t you just see me zipping into the Samuelson lot on one of those puppies?”
Mr. Phillips shook his head as our waitress slid our beers in front of us.
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
“I’m sorry, I’m not laughing at you, champ. I’m laughing at the situation. Marshall, the last guy who research-read that magazine, talked for years about getting a motorcycle.”
“What kind?”
“What kind? I don’t know. It hardly matters, since it was always a very hypothetical bike. A Harley, probably. But his wife would never let him. We all knew this.”
“Well, I don’t have a wife.”
“If you’re smart, then, you’ll get your motorcycle before you get a wife.”
“Plenty of time. I don’t have any prospective wives lined up.”
“Not that little Mona?”
“That little Mona? No. She’s just a friend.”
“You sure about that?”
“Umm … Pretty sure.”
“Maybe you ought to give that girl a chance. Maybe then you wouldn’t need to spend your Friday nights with some old fart from your office.”
“Don’t say shit like that.”
“Why not? Wouldn’t you rather be on a date right now?”
“Not necessarily. It bothers me when older people assume that younger people only prefer their own company.”
“You’re full of it, Homer. Tell me something. You ever actually
been
on a motorcycle?”
“Of course.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. There was this guy I knew in college. He was a little older, a part-time student. He let me take a couple of little spins on his Honda.” Admittedly, he’d only allowed me one spin, but it was such a long and thrilling ride that it felt like it should count for more. “It was awesome, going that fast. With one of these sport bikes, you get the speed of an Italian sports car at a tiny fraction of the price.”
“So you want to go fast. That’s what it’s about, then?”
“Well, no. I mean, it’s not
just
about speed. It’s also about how light you feel, and the way you lean into the curves, this way and that. It’s just the most smooth, natural thing.”
“Huh. Well, in that case, maybe I should try one myself sometime.”
“You can take a ride on mine, then.”
“Right,” said Mr. Phillips. “That’s what Marshall always said.”
“Well, I really mean it.”
“Billy, you know what you remind me of?”
“What’s that?”
“Maybe you haven’t seen many war movies. So maybe you won’t know what I mean.”
“I’ve seen
Full Metal Jacket
quite a few times.”
“No, I’m talking older war movies. In those movies there’s always a nice young soldier who everybody likes. Works hard. He believes in his fellow soldiers and his cause. And he’s willing to make sacrifices.”
“This is supposed to be me somehow?”
“But he’s shot in the end,” said Mr. Phillips, shaking his head. “Almost always shot, in the end.”
“Jesus,” I said. “Why are you telling me this?”
Mr. Phillips shrugged and sipped his beer.
“I suppose I meant it in a cautionary way,” he said.
“How could that be cautionary?” This conversation was starting to annoy me. I much preferred the one about my motorcycle fantasy, which we hadn’t quite finished.
“Maybe I should’ve put it in the form of a piece of advice,” Mr. Phillips said with a snicker.
“Don’t let yourself get shot in the end.”
“All right, just shut up,” I said, plunking my beer down hard.
“What’s that, Homer?” Mr. Phillips cupped his ear. Probably he thought he’d heard me wrong.
“As if I have any control over what happens in the end.”
“I was just kidding around, champ.”
I shrugged, hoping he truly hadn’t heard the “shut up.” It had slipped out before I’d had time to remember who I was talking to. We both drank our beers. Someone played Fleetwood Mac on the jukebox.
“So,” Mr. Phillips said. “Was there something you wanted to talk to me about? Or is this just a social outing?”
“Yeah, well. I was sort of curious about something. I was
noticing this week that you’ve been spending a lot more time back at the office. Um, is that just a coincidence, or—”
“No. Of course not. I’m just trying to help you out. Took a gander in the file myself, and found those cits for you.”
“What year are they from?”
“Nineteen fifty-three. Figured you hadn’t worked your way up that far yet. And I figured right. I found a few.”
“You looked through all the 1953 words?”
“No. Not yet. I wanted to, but you nabbed me first. I only got through ‘H,’ but there really wasn’t much after ‘C.’”
“You find anything good?”
“Yeah. There’s some stuff in there, that’s for sure. I’m not sure what it means yet, but I think I have a general idea. Something weird happening in that poor girl’s head, that’s for sure.”
“Well, thanks,” I said slowly. “I can’t wait to read them. But you should let us find the rest. There’s no need for you to make special trips to the office. I know it takes you a while to get there on the bus and everything.”
“Special
trips. Hogwash. Samuelson’s my second home. Always has been. And you kids sure seem to be taking your time with this. You’re still looking through 1951, aren’t you?”