Cult Classic(52)

The pharmacy doors gaped open periodically as customers came in and out. Looks of disgust flashed across their faces, revulsion that anyone would choose to congregate in this inhospitable vestibule. Over Oscar’s shoulder, an aisle of tampons and adult diapers framed the beginning and the end of things. Light from the stoplights across the way got trapped in the droplets on the glass.

“And you came here? I thought you lived in Williamsburg.”

I knew Oscar lived in Williamsburg; he’d moved in before it was a glimmer in the Apple Store’s eye. There was no way he was moving unless he became nomadic.

“All the pharmacies are closed so I meandered over the bridge.”

I imagined Oscar looking up the hours of pharmacies and would you look at that? The closest one open was on the Lower East Side.

We moved out onto the sidewalk, into the humidity, where Oscar told me he had just come from a “religious retreat,” mortar-and-pestling an unpronounceable psychedelic drug, the effects of which made ayahuasca sound like cough syrup.

“Since when are you religious?” I asked.

“We’re all religious,” he said, bemused.

“Sure.”

“I always worried your skepticism was isolating for you. Forces larger than ourselves are the most logical thing to believe in. Like peeing before you poop. Have you ever pooped before peeing? Think about it. Never. You gotta give yourself over to what’s natural in this world. The cosmos wants you to be happy. Hey, double rainbows!”

He pointed at the sky and, sure enough, two faint arches stretched across the rooftops. People on the street aimed their phones skyward.

How the hell had Oscar not been the first guy I saw? His psyche was such low-hanging fruit.

Oscar and I ended because of his “structural wavelength nonconformity.” Oscar was not monogamy-averse in the way Amos was monogamy-averse. Oscar could not commit to another person because he could not commit to his own person, to being in his own body, a spirit vessel he was only ever borrowing. To date Oscar was to date a tenant of the world. Air or salt or bark. One cannot expect loyalty from air or salt or bark. I wondered what it was I was supposed to get from Oscar now that I didn’t get from dating him then.

“How are you,” he asked, cocking his head at me, “truthfully?”

I told him I was fine, just fine, and spun my ring face down. I didn’t want him telling me how great it was that I’d found my “soul partner,” which was just the kind of shit he would say, earnestness that I would have no choice but to match unless I wanted to get into a longer conversation. Now I had a hand in each pocket, one holding the cigarettes and one squeezing the ring, as if these were equivalent objects. Somehow everyone from Eliza, whose only ritual was going to Starbucks, to Oscar, who’d never set foot in one, had decided I was a pathological cynic.

Really, the only person who did not list cynicism among my flaws was Boots. Maybe he just didn’t know me as well as we’d hoped.

“Well,” I said, shrugging, “I’d hug you goodbye but…”

I eyed Oscar’s neck.

“Yeah, better not. But hey, it’s wonderful to see you in alignment.”

I remembered how little I cared not only for this language, but also for his particular use of it. As if Oscar were a fully reformed kid from the suburbs, and I was unevolved because I relied on indulgences like separate bars of soap to wash your hands and your body. And my own toothbrush. But perhaps this was why I saw him now, these prickling memories of the kind of person I almost was. If I could be with anyone if only I’d commit to a version of myself, then Oscar was both the definition and the limit of that idea. Perhaps the point of Oscar was to show me how unnecessarily irritated I’d been, how I’d inferred his actions were for me, to convert me, when they were barely in conversation with me. Vadis was right: just because something had entered my field of vision did not mean it was for me.

“Hey, Oscar!” I shouted as I watched him walk away. “Don’t scratch!”

The doors opened and shut behind me once more, chomping at a sloth’s pace.

“I wouldn’t dream of it!”



* * *



One thing this atrium could use was chairs. Maybe something cute, like a banquette upholstered with the pubes of my former lovers. Clive took the stairs down to meet me. The Golconda was the reverse of every other building on the planet in that the stairs were for efficiency and the elevator was for theatrics. Also, the elevator was being tended to by one of the members, practically a teenager, on a ladder, rubbing metal polish onto the wheels from the inside. He had a single black braid over his shoulder and was concentrating so hard on his task, for which he appeared unqualified, I worried he might fall. It was liking watching a marionette, working another marionette.

Clive had a manila folder pressed tightly to his ribs as he strolled in my direction. Errol sidled up next to me, bowing in Clive’s direction and then burping loudly into his fist. He looked mortified.

“Are you okay?”

“Fit as a fiddle.”

His eyes were bloodshot, his forehead slick with sweat.

“I’m fine,” he insisted. “Clive took me to that restaurant he likes.”

“You had the General Tso soufflé.”

“Yes!” he said, gripping my forearm. “It’s mostly picked one direction and stuck with it, but for a while there … it was like ‘you don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.’”