J. Lennon - See You in Paradise

“What do you need there?” he wanted to know.

“Some very strong filament. Fishing line. For hanging something.”

Weber seemed to recoil. “Well, I’m not going in there with you.”

“Okay,” I said, perhaps too readily.

“I don’t believe in killing animals,” he went on. “That’s, like, an animal-murdering supply store, basically.”

I couldn’t help myself. I asked, “But … don’t you eat meat?”

He snorted. “Well, yeah, but that’s different. That’s meat animals. This is wildlife.”

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t envy him. I wanted what he had: the ability to remake the world on the fly, to force it to conform to his vision. Or maybe what I really envied was his vision: that he had one. In any event, I hated him. I said goodbye and left him to his cognitive dissonance. Then I went inside and gazed back through the window at his hunched form as he slouched toward town. When I turned around, I saw Ruperta behind the counter.

“What are you doing here?” she said.

“What are you doing here?”

She shrugged. “Bernice fired me.” Bernice was her old boss, the owner of a catering company that Ruperta had managed. “For no reason! She said I was spying on her through her windows at night. Which obviously I wasn’t. She’s fired half the staff. She’ll be out of business by New Year’s and in the loony bin by Groundhog Day. Who’s the big guy?”

I explained as best I could about Weber, and told her about the head. She nodded, smiling wryly. I was in love with her. And here I thought I had made so much progress.

“Still on those train books?”

“No,” I said, “I’ve kind of lost interest.”

“Huh,” she said. “Well. Goodbye.”

I hadn’t intended to leave. But I said goodbye and walked the rest of the way into town.

For the next two weeks, I hoped daily that Weber would spend the night at the home of his immoral, withered teen sex addict so that I could go snoop in his bedroom. When he did, I explored every corner, digging through his stuff carefully at first and later with desperate abandon. The room produced more fascinating artifacts than I had anticipated — love letters from various adolescent girls (boringly, they seem to have been written when Weber, too, was an adolescent); photographs of Weber and some other people at a party, in which only Weber appeared sober; several books on sculptural technique (which, oddly, didn’t appear ever to have been opened); and, inside a special little carved Indian-looking hinged box lined with crushed velvet, a single, foil-wrapped, six-months-expired, spermicidally-lubricated condom. I could not help but let out a little bark of laughter when I saw it. But I then remembered that Weber was the one with the girlfriend, not me, and I licked my lips in bitter humiliation.

The head, meanwhile, had improved. It had become creepier. It was … animated, almost; it had a life force. Weber had turned it, so that now it faced the window and gazed at Mount Peak with admiration, respect, and not a little irony, as if it and the mountain had made a pact. The freckles and blotches that populated the real John Weber’s face had been reproduced here, somehow, as slight depressions or perhaps microscopically thin plateaus; their monochrome relief gave them a quality of terrible realness, and I could not refrain from touching them. Then, in the harsh glare from Weber’s daylight-corrected lamp, I saw that my fingerprints had marred, subtly, the surface of the head and mixed with Weber’s own. I thought of Ruperta and emitted a small whimper.

Have I described her? I don’t think that I have. Ruperta was an arrangement of pleasing roundnesses, wide round eyes nestled in wide round glasses, surrounded by black parentheses of hair set atop a full, pink melon head. Her body was all balls stuck to balls: a snowman of flesh. She was my type — indeed, the perfect expression of it. I walked to town every day now in order to pass by the animal-murdering supply store, where she allowed me to speak to her briefly each day, to construct the elaborate illusion that I was leading a respectable and appealing life. She told me that she had learned to fire a rifle and to tie trout flies, and that she liked these things a great deal, and what did I think of that? I liked that very much, I said, and as I said it, it became true. I felt the possbility of reinvention, of reconciliation. Some days I wept as I walked the rest of the way to work.

John Weber, meawhile, did not seem himself. Sometimes, he appeared not to notice me at all. I found him one morning sitting at the kitchen table, gazing out the window at the mountain. In the next room, I recalled, the head was doing exactly the same thing.

“John,” I said. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” he replied.

I stood there, unsure what I should do. Had John Weber just turned down an opportunity to speak? He looked so glum. Or, rather … serious.

“No, what?” I persisted.

He turned to me now, slowly, and regarded me as though he were deciding what sort of person I was, whether I could be trusted with what he had to say. After a moment, he came to a decision.

“Well, to be honest, for a while there I wasn’t sure about you. You’re a little self-absorbed, you know. But I guess we’re really friends now, aren’t we?”

“Sure.” I thought of the condom, nestled in its tiny secret bed, and felt guilty.

“I’ve decided to ask Sandy to get engaged.”

I tried, but failed, not to say, “Really?”

“Yes. And if she agrees, I am going to make love with her.”

Regret flooded my body — ihad passed up the chance to never hear this!

“I have a plan,” Weber said, brightening. “I’m going to invite her on a hike. Up Mount Peak. And we’re going to go all the way to the Beavers sign. And I’ll propose to her, and if she says yes, I’m going to point down at our roof and say, ‘See that? That’s where I’m going to make passionate love to you as soon as we get down there.’”

“Umm, you want me to make myself scarce?”

He waved his hand. “Ah, no, doesn’t matter, hang around if you want. Anyway, then we’re each going to take a white stone from the Beavers sign, and we’re going to bring them down here and lay them next to the bed while we do it. That’s the plan.”

“There’s a big pile of the stones out back,” I pointed out.

“The stones aren’t the point, roommate,” he said. “Getting the stones is the point.”

“I see.”

“And plus,” he said, his dark mood utterly dispelled now, “I have something else for her. A very special thing I’ve been making.”

“Wow.”

“Do you want to see it?”

“I think that’s just between you two.”

“That’s a good point. I can’t show it to you. What was I thinking? It has to be pure. Only I have set my eyes upon it, and she will be the first ever to see it, aside from its maker.”

“That’s romantic,” I said.

He was euphoric now. “Really? You think so?” He stood up. “Oh man, this is so awesome. I am so gonna get engaged to her.” And before I could stop him, he came to me and hugged me. “Thanks, man. You’re the greatest. I was so wrong about you.”

“You’re welcome,” I said uncertainly and withdrew from our embrace. Weber threw on his coat and marched out the door, presumably to go set up his Big Day.

That day came quickly. The following Saturday morning the two of them set out at dawn on a gear-collecting mission and reappeared a few hours later in their excursion getups: fleece jackets, tan shorts lousy with zippered pockets (new ones, with more pockets than ever before), sleek boots of synthetic fabrics in natural colors, and matching backpacks with a single, diagonal padded strap. Weber looked elated. Sandy looked skeptical. The backpack strap was very wide and kept pressing into one or another of her small breasts, forcing her to adjust it every thirty seconds or so.