Benjamin Hale - The Fat Artist and Other Stories

Derek tried to draw personal information out of him — gently, not wishing to pry, but spurred ahead by frustrated curiosity. What had been bizarre to him was seeing drag that was somehow still inside the box of heterosexual gender relations. This man was not gay. Chase did not want to fuck him. His offer of a ride home was just him being friendly. Derek asked if he was married.

“Uh-huh,” said Chase. “The Big Ten’s coming up this fall.”

“Do you have children?”

“Uh-huh. Two. A girl and boy.”

By this time they’d come off the highway, and the Buick was idling in front of Derek’s squat, cheap apartment building on Jewel Avenue. The odds of ever seeing this man again felt low, and perhaps that was what prompted him at last to just ask him directly.

“What does—” Derek faltered. His hand was on the door handle, and it was late. “What about Cathy? What does your wife think about her?”

“Oh, no. She doesn’t know anything about that.”

“Oh? She thinks you’re—?”

“At a club.”

“A club?”

“You know. Athletic club.”

“So — you don’t identify as gay, or… what?”

Chase smiled and shook his head. He shrugged. The explainer was out of explanations. He didn’t seem to like talking about it. He made a sort of gesture toward the back of the car with his head.

“Cathy stays in the trunk. I think it’s best that way.”

“I saw this documentary? About DARPA?”

Greg obligingly nodded for him to go on. Megan was watching the ceiling. Peter had spent the evening nervously shoving conversation across anxious waves of silence.

“You know DARPA? Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. They’re involved with all kinds of black helicopter shit, like training spies to do ESP, invisibility shields, the Montauk Project, all that shit, but okay, so they’ve developed this thing called the Exoatmospheric Kill Machine — it’s this satellite with a really, really fucking powerful laser on it that can just zoom in on anybody anywhere in the world and kill them from outer space. One second you’re walking around, hum-de-dum, doing your thing, then all of a sudden, bzzzzt , you’re dead. That’s our fucking tax dollars at work.”

Megan was lying on the couch with her bare feet in Greg’s lap and Peter sat hunched on the edge of a chair, rapidly bouncing his leg on the ball of his foot. Since they’d gotten home from dinner he’d been sucking down glass after glass of orange soda so quickly the original ice cubes hadn’t had time to melt. It was getting late. Megan gave Greg a seemingly meaningful look that Peter couldn’t interpret.

“I really don’t think they have the capability to do that,” said Greg.

“Do not be a fool,” said Peter. He could feel how agitated his voice was. It had a quivering edge of emotion that he couldn’t swallow. “It’s the fucking government. They have the money. They have the power. Do not be naïve.”

“I’m going to bed,” Megan said to Greg.

It was the first night Peter would be staying with Greg and Megan. They had picked him up from South Station that afternoon and taken him out to dinner in Boston, then come home and talked for a while. Greg had had a beer with dinner, and that’s it. Megan was pregnant, and Peter of course was not drinking. The air was awkward with sobriety.

Peter kept on trying to think of interesting things to say. Every time he tried to make conversation Megan looked at him like he was crazy.

During his exit interview, Robin had told Peter he needed a fresh start. Robin was the counselor-therapist woman. She was nice to him but he never believed anything she said. She always did the therapist thing of being nice to you but not getting remotely emotionally involved. Her face was round and so deliberately earnest looking that there was obviously nothing earnest in it at all. She was wearing this sort of low-cut shirt, and Peter’s eyes kept getting stuck in her cleavage. During the interview she shrugged up the shawl thing she was wearing and wrapped it across herself, and Peter wondered if she’d noticed him looking at her breasts. She probably had. Peter had finally learned that women are better at knowing when you’re looking at their breasts than you think they are. He was a little embarrassed but it wasn’t like he was ever going to see her again. This was his exit interview. She told him he needed a fresh start.

Yeah, well. Peter was edging up on the realization, the main part of him had already admitted it, but out of fear he’d not yet let his conscious mind admit it, that there is no such thing as a fresh start. Not in life. In a Nintendo game, if you fuck up beyond the hope of ever pulling your shit together again you can always press the reset button, and you’re back at the beginning, and Mario is little again and running down the brick pathway ready to encounter the mushrooms and the turtles, but you, playing him, now know exactly when and where the dangers will come. When the mushrooms and the turtles slide onscreen from the right-hand edge of the TV, you will be ready for them. At least until you get to the last place where you died. Life is not like that. No matter how badly you fuck up, you cannot ever press the reset button and start over. All you can do is pull the plug.

Peter needed help. His parents wouldn’t help him anymore, his sister wouldn’t help him, his ex-girlfriend, Gina, wouldn’t help him, his friends wouldn’t help him, and he wasn’t sure he had any more friends. Other relatives were out, too. All of the possible people who might help Peter had been overfished, like a sea that has no more fish in it. But Greg, Greg had fish left for him.

As soon as we can, Peter promised himself, we will pay Greg back for the many times he’s helped us when we didn’t deserve it.

(Ever since he was a kid, Peter had always talked to himself using the first-person plural. The we was always the external, rational voice talking to him, Peter. Superego talking to id. He only did this in his head, though, or out loud when he was alone. If people had heard him talking to himself in the first-person plural they might think he was crazy.)

“As soon as I can,” he said to Greg, “I will pay you back for this.”

“Don’t worry about it,” said Greg, and went upstairs to join his wife (the word wife still sounded weird) in bed.

Greg clearly didn’t expect to ever be repaid. Part of Peter also knew he’d probably never repay him.

“We have to pay him back,” said Peter to himself when he was alone. “We have to pay him back.”

Greg’s wife disliked Peter. She had her reasons.

Most people disliked Peter. Peter disliked Peter. Even Greg seemed to dislike him sometimes, although he always helped him. Greg “loved” him. Some people still loved Peter. He wasn’t sure about his mom, but his dad loved him. His sister loved him. Even his ex-girlfriend loved him. But, coming to the point, they wouldn’t give him any money.

Greg wasn’t giving him any money, either. Just a place to stay, rent free and indefinitely, and a job, which with time and patience and work and saving and not fucking up would turn into money. Greg was doing the whole teaching him to fish instead of giving him fish thing. Peter had never been any good at fishing. He was good at staying up all night doing drugs and playing Nintendo. That he could do.

Greg had gone upstairs, said goodnight, and turned off the light. It was dark all over the house except for the weak white kitchen light above the sink. Greg and Megan’s house was in Somerville, Massachusetts. This was the first time Peter had ever been to Massachusetts. He’d been on a Greyhound all day and the previous night, and hadn’t really slept at all except for little naps in the bus seat for the last like, thirty hours. Megan had made up the futon for him in the basement. That’s what he was going to sleep on until he had enough money to move out. Which was probably going to take awhile. The basement was full of boxes and Christmas ornaments and vacuum cleaners and things like that, and a futon. Peter and Greg had stayed up talking awhile after Megan went to bed. Megan was really, really pregnant. They had gotten married like, a year ago. Peter hadn’t been there. Unless a miracle happened, like finding a magic bag of money that always has money in it, Peter was definitely going to still be living in the basement when their kid was born. This was the newest of the various reasons Megan disliked Peter.