Jonathan Lethem - Lucky Alan - And Other Stories

When we’d settled down with two glasses of Syrah, Blondy drew from his pocket several worn photocopies. “Okay, these are the questions I’ve been wanting to ask you,” he said, as if he’d been expecting my call in the first place.

“Okay.”

“They’re from Max Frisch’s Sketchbook 1966–1971 . Ready?”

“Sure.”

“We won’t do the whole questionnaire. I’ll pick and choose.”

“Sure, fine.”

“Are you sure you are really interested in the preservation of the human race once you and all the people you know are no longer alive?”

“Sorry?”

“That’s the first question.” He resumed his insinuating theatrical murmur. “Are you sure you are really interested …”

I did my best with the question, told Blondy I thought anyone ought to feel a value in the continuity of the species, but he interrupted. “No, you,” he said. “How do you feel?”

“Yes, I’d be sad if there were no people.”

He leaped to the next question. “Whom would you rather never have met?”

My only brush with Harold Pinter had been fiercely disappointing. I began to describe it. Blondy rushed me again.

“Would you like to have perfect memory? Just answer the questions that interest you, Grahame. If you had the power to put into effect things you consider right, would you do so against the wishes of the majority?”

“Look, Sigismund, what is this?”

“Are you convinced by your own self-criticism?”

“Too much, I’m afraid.”

“Are you conscious of being in the wrong in relation to some other person (who need not necessarily be aware of it)? If so, does this make you hate yourself — or the other person?”

His voice was so entrancing that I suspected we were both entranced. He might as well have asked to read me poetry, for all that I was persuaded he wanted my replies. I said, “What about you , Sig? You answer this one.”

He nodded, raised his glass. “And hate myself for it.”

Again, I wondered if I heard the sound of a trap snapping shut. Had I delivered my designated line? Were we perhaps getting to the point?

“Who?” I asked.

“Alan Zwelish,” Blondy said.

*

Sigismund Blondy had known Alan Zwelish for several years, in the way of a Manhattan neighbor, repeatedly sighting a compelling face in passing instants as one or the other swerved from the street into the entrances of their buildings, which stood across and askew from each other, or in the same Chase ATM lobby on Seventy-ninth, or in the late-night Korean shop collecting, if you were Zwelish, a pack of cigarettes, or, if you were Blondy, a bottle of ginger beer or a packet of wasabi peanuts. Or, most stirringly, far from the block they shared, at adjacent bookstalls in Union Square on a hot Saturday noon, where they honored the strangeness of detecting each other so far afield with a curt nod. That nod could have been the whole of it. But Blondy didn’t play by the Manhattan-neighbor rules. He was provocative, voluble, grabby. He collected life histories, he’d once bragged to me, of the block’s fleet of dog-walkers, maypoled in leashes on their way to the park, confused to be approached when nearly anyone else would switch pavements to get a berth from roiling terriers. Cooed at strollered babies until lonely Tibetan nannies, the invisible persons of Manhattan, practically swooned in his long arms. Blondy regaled waiters, too; I’d seen him do it.

Anyway, Alan Zwelish, short, muscled, his eyes sparkling with suspicion, sports coats pixied with dandruff, became a fascination. Bearded when Blondy first noticed him, Zwelish shaved within a year or so, revealing features younger and grimmer than Blondy had guessed, a knuckly chin and somewhat sensuous lips. Tenured-professorial in the pretentious facial hair, without it Zwelish was revealed to be no more than thirty-five. His Bogart smoking mannerisms seemed the result of mirror study and, like the renounced beard, an attempt to gain control of the lower portion of his face. Blondy watched this proud, drum-tight personality fidget past him on the street and began projecting; he couldn’t help it: an unfinished degree in journalism, concerned married sisters in New Jersey or Connecticut (but probably New Jersey), weights but no cardio, aggrieved blind dates, Cigar Aficionado and Stereophile , takeout menus, acres of porn. What was positive was this: Zwelish owned his apartment, the basement of a co-oped town house, and made a living consulting on business software — these facts Blondy got out of Alan Zwelish, semi-voluntarily, the first time he introduced himself, on Seventy-eighth Street.

The next time they passed, Zwelish attempted to look the other way, as though offering up this information had been a paying of dues, and he could now revert to nodding acquaintance. No dice, not with Blondy, who launched one of his in-medias-res gambits (the equivalent, maybe, of a Max Frisch questionnaire): The parrots were missing, had Zwelish heard? What? Zwelish hadn’t ever seen the flock of green parrots, rumored to be pets escaped over the years, which congregated in certain trees on York Avenue at Seventy-seventh, around which you could hear a tropical cloud of parrot conversation? These birds were a totem of the neighborhood; it was essential Zwelish see them. But Blondy hadn’t managed to spot them for more than a week. Was Zwelish doing anything urgent at the moment, or would he join Blondy for a walk to search them out? Incredibly — or not, given Blondy’s charismatic sway — Zwelish excused himself for a moment to put his briefcase inside and take a leak, then rejoined Blondy, and they strolled together to York. It was a perfect afternoon, a temperate wind rebounding off the river. They found the parrots easily. (Whether they’d ever been missing at all Zwelish was left to wonder.)

Now the hard little man had been cracked open. As Sigismund Blondy saw him, Zwelish walked in a fiery aura of loneliness, but Blondy had gotten inside the penumbra. Zwelish would grab Blondy on the street and describe family plights: the barely tolerated Passover at his — yes! — sister’s in New Jersey, the difficulty of properly liquidating his father’s gnarled-up assets, which were under his elderly mom’s watch. And brag, essentially. Was Blondy drinking the crap water that came out of the Seventy-eighth Street taps? He should install such-and-such purification system in his sink. Cash sitting in a money-market account was as good as thrown away; Zwelish was in certain arcane tech stocks and had also acquired a Motherwell print. Blondy was invited to an East Hampton guesthouse weekend? That place was hell, trust Zwelish. Zwelish’s high-school buddy had a place in the Berkshires, a better value. Blondy rented ? Hopeless! Everything was a competition in which Blondy wouldn’t compete, saying, “Look at who you’re talking to, Alan. I’m like the parrots, just roosting here, decorating the area. I’d rather leave nothing behind but delicious memories.” Bohemian standards Zwelish wouldn’t ratify. “You’re a fool,” he’d say. “Yes,” Blondy agreed, “I’m a fool, exactly.” Zwelish narrowed his eyes. “But you don’t know how dangerous it is to be a fool. Dangerous to yourself and others.” Blondy thought, What others?

Possibly Zwelish meant the women. Sigismund Blondy, like any tall dissolute specimen, had women around him, in roles likely unclarified even to themselves: exes, friends, liaisons. Zwelish witnessed a certain number of the comings and goings of this elegant flock, which culminated in an introduction at a First Avenue Greek diner during morning hours suggestive of an overnight visit, before collaring Blondy alone one day to say, “Okay, Sig, how do you do it?”