War of the Encyclopaedists (29 page)

35

In attempting to figure out what book her fictive Hal was reading in the portrait, Mani had turned to
The
Thousand and One Nights
. Her mother had read her the stories as a child, and over the years they had become, for Mani, a sort of whimsical encyclopedia of the imagination.

The tales within the book were framed with the story of a king, who, fearful of marital betrayal, murders his virgin wife each night, then takes a new wife the following day. When the kingdom runs out of virgins, the vizier's daughter, Scheherazade, volunteers herself. Each night she tells the king a tale, stopping short at a cliffhanger, prolonging her life a further night. When she tells the king the tale of
The Thousand and One Nights
itself, the king has lost, for he can never escape the loop. It is an infinite prison. Such a metaphysical solution made perfect sense for someone like Hal. Of course he'd be reading a book about himself.

Mani carefully replicated the painting in miniature on the cover of Hal's book, then did so again within that replica, and again, the image becoming abstract dabs of color as it receded within itself, drawing the viewer's eye into the black hole of the book—but somehow also casting the viewer out beyond the frame, for the painting itself was the cover of an enormous book that the viewer would never be able to read. No, only that smug-looking hipster in the painting could read it, the corner of his mouth curled up—in amusement at the book or
merely as a pose, even Mani couldn't tell. It was dizzying, in her head and in her heart, and that was how she knew she'd done good work. She texted Hal.

The text had been an address. And a time: eight p.m. It did not say
come see m
e or
let's talk.
It did not attempt to explain or palliate the six months of rough silence that had festered between them. It didn't cast blame and it did not invite apology. It presented itself as a fact, as part of the natural order of things. And so Corderoy, who was otherwise too cowardly to reestablish contact, too guilty to reply, obeyed, for what else could he do? The universe happened, and this meeting at Mani's studio was a thing that happened within it.

As he walked up the stairs, he pictured Mani not in a wheelchair or covered with bandages but spry and vigorous. He paused in the hallway. The door to her loft was cracked. Years later, he would remember this as the moment he turned and walked away.

No. He would remember this as the moment he knocked.

He knocked timidly as he pushed the door open. Mani was standing at the window with a cigarette, wearing sweatpants, her hair oily and pulled back in a ponytail.

She turned and smiled and it killed him. He felt something emanating from that smile and it was not love. It was power. A form of power that was not rigid or controlling, that was not concerned with dominion. It was power that derived from an essential goodness. The smile he offered back said,
Please don't hurt me, I know I deserve it.

“I have something to tell you,” Mani said, putting out her cigarette. “But first I need to show you something.”

Corderoy walked farther into the room. “You look good,” he said. “How long have you been here?”

“We can talk about that stuff later,” Mani said. “This is important.” She walked up to a large canvas in the middle of the room and pulled the sheet off it.

Corderoy took in the painting. A hipster about to get his head ventilated by a Civil War soldier. And the soldier, he looked a lot like Montauk. But who was the hipster kid? Corderoy tilted his head to the
side. “That's not . . . is that?” he said without looking away from the painting. It was. It was him. It was so obviously him.

Mani observed Corderoy's face, how it moved from confusion to recognition and then into an even deeper confusion. “What do you think?” she asked.

There he was, reading a book whose cover depicted the death he was about to experience at the hands of his best friend, and yet he looked so self-satisfied, so smug. As if he could keep death at bay through infinite recursion. The painting had contempt for its central figure. And yet such care had been taken to perfect the lilt in the brow, the sheen of oil on the forehead under the fluorescent light. In contrast, the image of Montauk leaping from behind was almost blurry with rage. A rage that seemed neutered by the frozen moment of the painting. “I . . . don't know,” Corderoy said. He finally turned to look at Mani. “I'm stupid,” he said. “I'm so, so stupid and sorry.”

“Don't be sorry yet,” she said. She took a breath. “After you left, when I got out of the hospital, I didn't have anywhere to go. So, I moved in with Mickey for a while.”

Corderoy blinked.

“I told him not to tell you. I thought it would be weird.”

“It is weird,” he said. He willed his face to relax. “But. I get it.”

“Also, we kinda, sorta. Got married.”

Corderoy steadied himself on the edge of a chair.

“Just at the courthouse. It was Mickey's idea. To give me health insurance and a thousand bucks a month from the Army. That's how I paid for physical therapy, and this place.”

Corderoy looked back to the painting. He tried to bury his consciousness inside of it. “I. I.”
I don't deserve this? I have no reason to be angry?

“Cards on the table,” Mani said. “I had to.”

Corderoy stared at her feet. He couldn't say another word. He turned and walked out, leaving the door open behind him.

• • •

It was dark and chilly on the street, and Corderoy strode with purpose toward anywhere. He wanted to bang on parking meters and signposts
as he walked, to kick garbage cans, but he didn't. He held his breath. Montauk had taken Mani in and helped her with her medical bills, asking nothing in return, and that made Corderoy, in comparison, even more of a jerk. He closed his eyes and walked blindly. Montauk had given him an escape route when he needed it, and Montauk had stuck around to clean up the resulting mess. He stumbled, he ran into someone. He kept walking. No, he had no right to be angry. But he was. And realizing he was wrong to feel angry made it worse. The flames were nearing his gas tank, and knowing it wouldn't blow on its own, he saw himself rigging it for detonation.

He heard the sound of water, a washing, a spraying. He stopped abruptly. He breathed in. He opened his eyes. He was standing in front of the Allston Car Wash. A sedan had just pulled in and was being slapped around by the massive felt arms and rollers. He walked in behind it. An attendant saw him but was too late to stop him from entering.

The jets of water soaked him through in a second, and the large slapping brushes nearly knocked him over. Soap got in his mouth, and he started choking before another brush, stiffer and more painful, came from his right and sent him to the floor. The conveyor belt was moving him forward along with the car, but he could hardly breathe. The constant attack of the water and the soaped-up brushes didn't give him time or space to inhale. As he reached for the car's rear bumper to pull himself up, he realized that this was what the car always went through, though you couldn't possibly know from inside. He felt as if he were outside his own body, shocked at what the exterior must put up with on a daily basis, the rigors of gravity and light and water, and outside of his life, as if the thing that was really him were so tiny and small and protected that it couldn't possibly be exposed to the traumas that defined his life.

He plunged through one last curtain of water and was hit by gusts of heated air that invaded his crevices. He struggled to stand under the force of the fans.

The manager of the car wash was waiting for him as he emerged. “What are you fucking nuts? I oughta call the police.”

“Can I have a towel?” Corderoy asked.

“Get the fuck out of here.”

• • •

He walked into the first bar he could find, leaving sodden footprints behind him. He ordered a glass of whiskey, paid with sopping cash, downed it, then ordered another. Twenty minutes later, he stumbled out, drier, warmer, and drunk. When he got home, he checked his pockets. His phone was a wet, functionless brick. His keys were missing. He banged on the door until Tricia let him in. He said nothing to her. Inside his cave, he opened his laptop and navigated to the Encyclopaedists article. He created a new subsection: “Betrayal.”

36

That night Corderoy dreamed of the painting, saw it move forward and backward in time, Montauk's bayonet piercing his skull and protruding from his eye socket. Then it sliding out and Montauk receding into the background. When he awoke the next morning, a strange calm had come over him. His fever had broken. He did not reflect on what he'd added to the Wiki article the previous night or whether he still believed it. It belonged to its moment in time as he belonged to this moment. And this moment felt good, but more important, it felt momentous—like the end of
Ulysses
—it was carrying him somewhere, and he was content to give himself to its design.

And so he arrived at Mani's apartment without warning and pushed the buzzer. Up until the moment itself, he wasn't sure what he was going to say, and it surprised him as much as it did her when he walked in and said, “I love it. I love the painting. It's weird and it's true and I absolutely love it.”

Mani was speechless. She sat down on her bed and began rolling a joint. She held it up when she was done, and Corderoy sat down next to her. She lit it and they smoked it and they said nothing until it was finished. Then Mani said, “I didn't need you to like it. It's not for you.”

Corderoy stiffened.

“You know how sometimes you have to say something out loud to see if you believe it?” Mani asked.

“Do you believe it?”

“This is me extracting myself. I'm trying to see who I am—not in relation to these other things.”

“Things? You mean me and Mickey.”

“Not you, but what I feel about you and Mickey. I had to take all of that out of my head and put it in the painting.” She paused and looked up as if examining whether she believed that last statement. “I'm glad you like it,” she said.

“I don't like it,” Corderoy said. “I love it.”

“Thank you.”

Corderoy looked through her eyes into the well of her being. What a lucky fool he was to be sitting so close to a human so perfect. “This is going to sound weird,” he said, “but can I ask you a favor?”

Mani stared at him. What favor could he possibly think he had the right to ask of her?

“My.” His voice evaporated. Was he really going to ask her this? It was ridiculous, given the history. It was insane. It would demolish whatever new foundation he was building with Mani, leaving a crater in its place. “My roommate's leaving for Baghdad,” he said. “I need to find a new apartment. I don't expect you to say yes, but . . . do you think, maybe, starting in February, I could crash here, on the floor or something, until I find a place? I got nowhere else to go.”

Seriously?
Fuck off
. She tried out the words in her head. But she couldn't get the right emotion behind them. She'd given her rage to Civil War Mickey and his bayonet. “You're right,” she said. “That is weird.”

“Is that a no?”

The absurdity of Hal's request welled up and Mani nearly laughed. The idiot was audacious. That was something. “I need to think about it,” she said. “I'll call you, okay?”

“I don't have a phone,” Corderoy said. “I— It broke.”

“I'll write you an e-mail, then.”

“Okay.”

“You should go now.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Of course.”

“It's good to see you,” she said.

Corderoy nodded and left.

• • •

That weekend passed in a fugue. Tricia was busy preparing to leave the country. Corderoy shut himself in his room and watched
Twin Peaks
to keep from obsessing about when Mani would write, what she would say. When the e-mail finally popped into his inbox on Monday, his heart began racing. She had written:
I'm having dinner with my parents in Newton tomorrow. Come.

“So, Hal, Mani tells us you're studying literature?”

“Yeah,” Corderoy said, taking a bite of Persian-spiced meat loaf. “I mean, yes, Mr. Saheli,” he said through his mouthful. He'd taken the bus to Newton and walked a mile to Mani's house, and as soon as he'd crossed the threshold, Mani had pulled him aside and told him that her parents insisted on social formality. It reminded him of Professor Flannigan's class.

“That's wonderful,” Mani's mother said.

“And how do you plan to make a living?” her father asked.

Corderoy looked over at Mani. She looked as indignant as he was bewildered. She said, “Hal plays the market. He invested in Google early on. He doesn't have to worry about money at all.”

Corderoy almost choked.

“Good for you, Hal,” Mani's mother said. She refilled her wineglass, which didn't need refilling.

“Got lucky,” Corderoy said. He glared at Mani.

“He's being modest,” Mani said. “He knows more about the futures of tech companies than most Harvard MBAs. He even published a paper in the
Harvard Business Review
about the dot-com bubble.”

“You're a multitalented man, Hal,” Mr. Saheli said, wiping his mouth, which didn't need wiping.

“Thank you, sir.” Corderoy kept his eyes on his plate. He wondered if his face was red. Why couldn't she just tell small lies, like a normal person?

“How is your job going, dear?” Mani's mother asked her. And Mani dove into an imaginary world where everything was working out great
but for one annoying coworker, Amanda, who wore too much perfume and spoke with an affected British accent. Corderoy hadn't had a chance to catch up with Mani and had no idea whether any of this was true, but after hearing her tale about his investment wealth, he suspected it was pure bullshit.

They had coffee after dinner, and Mani's father told Corderoy a few stories from his years driving a taxi. Corderoy listened politely, occasionally asking a question to keep the conversation focused on Mani's parents and off him. Around eleven, they retired, and Mani's mother set Corderoy up in the guest room.

Mani gave him a knowing look as she shut his bedroom door. Sure enough, about an hour later, she crept down the hall, silently opened the door, and finding him wide-awake, motioned for him to come back to her room.

Mani crawled under her comforter and lay back in the center of her double bed. That seemed to be a sign that the bed was meant for one person. But the comforter was pulled back on the near side, which seemed like an invitation. Do not fuck this up. Corderoy decided to sit on the edge of the bed, facing away from her.

“My parents can be intense,” Mani said.

Corderoy surveyed the room. It was a time capsule from an ­eighteen-year-old girl circa 2000. Which meant that the most recent cultural artifacts were a Rage Against the Machine
The Battle of Los Angeles
poster and a pair of Etnies skate shoes in the corner that looked like they'd actually been skated in—the telltale scuffs along the outside toe of the left foot, where the shoe would have scraped against the grit of the board to ollie. There were also curious remnants from the late eighties. Garbage Pail Kids stickers on the back of the door. A small porcelain pony sat on a bookshelf, no doubt some childhood gift that had become a sentimental burden, just like the bejeweled music box next to it.

“Why did you lie to them?”

“I hate it when they pressure me about that shit. I didn't want them to grill you.”

“I mean about you. Are you applying to schools? You don't really work at that gallery.”

“How do you know?”

“When I saw you in your studio. You seemed content. Like that's where you belonged. Why would you be reaching anywhere else?”

“That's why.”

Corderoy furrowed his brow. He rotated so that he was facing her.

“Because if they came to visit me at my studio,” she said, “they wouldn't see that. They wouldn't see that I am. I'm happy there.”

“Why did you want me to come here?”

“I guess I thought that seeing you here, with my parents, would help me make this decision.”

“What decision?”

“To let you stay with me. For a while.”

“I shouldn't have asked you to—”

She put her hand on his, and it short-circuited his nervous system midsentence. Corderoy looked into her eyes, then closed his own and gave himself to this moment of intimacy. A second later, he felt Mani's lips on his. She pulled back and he opened his eyes. What was he doing here? Helping Mani to make a mistake. “Why?” he said.

Because this decision was big, because letting him back into her life was difficult, because it would force her to grow? “To see how it felt,” she said.

He leaned in and kissed her. “How did that one feel?”

She studied his face. He was tied to her by guilt, she to him by injury. Those weren't good reasons to be doing this. But this wasn't about reasons. “It didn't feel wrong,” she said.

“I love you,” Corderoy said. He wasn't sure if he meant it. It could be a lie.

“I know,” Mani said.

A smile spread across his face. Did she know she was quoting Han Solo? Even if she didn't, those words made him realize that he did mean it. He loved Mani in a way that was so much more messy and uncertain than all the portrayals of love he'd assimilated as a child. It was precarious. It was unlikely to last. But that's how he knew it wasn't bullshit. “Is that okay?” he asked.

“You can stay with me,” she said. “Until you find a place.”