Freddy Pelu is a man who doesn’t need to be told, before takeoff, to secure his own oxygen mask before assisting others.
It was just a game they were playing, waiting for friends to join them at the bar. One of those San Francisco bars that is neither gay nor straight, just odd, and Freddy still wore his blue shirt and tie from teaching, and they were having some new kind of beer that tasted like aspirin and smelled like magnolias and cost more than a hamburger. Less was in a cable-knit sweater. They were trying to describe each other in a single sentence. Less had gone first and said the sentence written above.
Freddy frowned. “Arthur,” he said. Then he looked down at the table.
Less took some candied pecans from the bowl before him. He asked what the problem could be. He thought he’d come up with a good one.
Freddy shook his head so that his curls bounced, and he sighed. “I don’t think that’s true. Maybe when you met me. But that was a long time ago. You know what I was going to say?”
Less said he did not know.
The young man stared at his lover and, before taking a sip of his beer, said: “‘Arthur Less is the bravest person I know.’”
Arthur thinks of this on every flight. It always ruins everything. It has ruined this flight from New York to Mexico City, which is well on the way to ruining itself.
Arthur Less has heard it is traditional, in Latin American countries, to applaud an airplane’s safe arrival. In his mind, he associates it with the miracles of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and indeed, while the plane suffers a prolonged bout of turbulence, Less finds himself searching for an appropriate prayer. He was, however, raised Unitarian; he has only Joan Baez to turn to, and “Diamonds and Rust” gives no solace. On and on the plane convulses in the moonlight, like a man turning into a werewolf. And yet, Arthur Less appreciates life’s corny metaphors; a transformation, yes. Arthur Less, leaving America at last; perhaps, beyond its borders, he will change, like the aged crone who is rescued by a knight and who, once she is carried across the river, becomes a princess. Not Arthur Less the nobody, but Arthur Less the Distinguished Featured Speaker at this conference. Or was it a princess into a crone? The young Japanese tourist seated beside Less, impossibly hip in a yellow neon sweatsuit and moon-landing sneakers, is sweating and breathing through his mouth; at one point, he turns to Less and asks if this is normal, and Less says, “No, no, this is not normal.” More throes, and the young man grabs his hand. Together they weather the storm. They are perhaps the only passengers literally without a prayer. And when the plane lands at last—the windows revealing the vast nighttime circuit board of Mexico City—Less finds himself, alone, applauding their survival.
What had Freddy meant, “the bravest person I know”? For Less, it is a mystery. Name a day, name an hour, in which Arthur Less was not afraid. Of ordering a cocktail, taking a taxi, teaching a class, writing a book. Afraid of these and almost everything else in the world. Strange, though; because he is afraid of everything, nothing is harder than anything else. Taking a trip around the world is no more terrifying than buying a stick of gum. The daily dose of courage.
What a relief, then, to emerge from customs and hear his name called out: “Señor Less!” There stands a bearded man, perhaps thirty, in the black jeans, T-shirt, and leather jacket of a rock musician.
“I am Arturo,” says Arturo, holding out a hairy hand. This is the “local writer” who will be his escort for the next three days. “It is an honor to meet a man who knew the Russian River School.”
“I am also Arturo,” says Less, shaking it garrulously.
“Yes. You were fast through the customs.”
“I bribed a man to take my bags.” He gestures to a small man in a Zapata mustache and blue uniform standing arms akimbo.
“Yes, but that is not a bribe,” says Arturo, shaking his head. “That is a propina. A tip. That is the luggage man.”
“Oh,” says Less, and the mustached man gives a smile.
“Is it your first time in Mexico?”
“Yes,” Less says quickly. “Yes, it is.”
“Welcome to Mexico.” Arturo hands him a conference packet and looks up at him wearily; violet streaks curve beneath his eyes, and lines are grooved into his still-young brow. Less notices now that what he had taken for gleaming bits of pomade in his hair are streaks of gray. Arturo says, “There follows, I am sad to say, a very long ride on a very slow road…to your final place of rest.”
He sighs, for he has spoken the truth for all men.
Less understands: he has been assigned a poet.
Of the Russian River School, Arthur Less missed all the fun. Those famous men and women took mallets to the statues of their gods, those bongo-drumming poets and action-painting artists, and scrambled from the sixties onto the mountaintop of the seventies, that era of quick love and quaaludes (is there any more perfect spelling than with that lazy superfluous vowel?), basking in their recognition and arguing in cabins on the Russian River, north of San Francisco, drinking and smoking and fucking into their forties. And becoming, some of them, models for statues themselves. But Less came late to the party; what he met were not young Turks but proud bloated middle-aged artists who rolled in the river like sea lions. They seemed over-the-hill to him; he could not understand they were in the prime of their minds: Leonard Ross, and Otto Handler, even Franklin Woodhouse, who did that nude of Less. Less also owns a framed excision poem, made for his birthday by Stella Barry out of a tattered copy of Alice in Wonderland. He heard bits of Handler’s Patty Hearst on an old piano in a rainstorm. He saw a draft of Ross’s Love’s Labors Won and watched him scratch out an entire scene. And they were always kind to Less, especially considering (or was it because of?) the scandal: Less had stolen Robert Brownburn from his wife.
But perhaps it is fitting, at last, for someone to praise them and to bury them, now that almost all of them are dead (Robert is still kicking but is barely breathing, in a facility in Sonoma—all those cigarettes, darling; they chat once a month on a video call). Why not Arthur Less? He smiles in the taxi as he weighs the packet: lapdog yellow, with its leash of red string. Little Arthur Less, sitting in the kitchen with the wives and watering down the gin while the fellows roared beside the fire. And I alone have lived to tell the tale. Tomorrow on the university stage: the famous American writer Arthur Less.
It takes an hour and a half in traffic to get to the hotel; the rivers of red taillights conjure lava flows that destroyed ancient villages. Eventually, the smell of greenery bursts into the cab; they have entered Parque México, once so open that Charles Lindbergh supposedly landed his plane here. Now: chic young Mexican couples strolling, and on one lawn, ten dogs of various breeds being trained to lie perfectly still on a long red blanket. Arturo strokes his beard and says, “Yes, the stadium in the middle of the park is named for Lindbergh, who was of course a famous father and a famous fascist. We are here.”
To Less’s delight, the name of the hotel is the Monkey House, and it is filled with art and music: in the front hallway is an enormous portrait of Frida Kahlo holding a heart in each hand. Below her, a player piano works through a roll of Scott Joplin. Arturo speaks in rapid Spanish to a portly older man, his hair slick as silver, who then turns to Less and says, “Welcome to our little home! I hear you are a famous poet!”
“No,” Less said. “But I knew a famous poet. That seems to be enough, these days.”
“Yes, he knew Robert Brownburn,” Arturo gravely explains, hands clasped.
“Brownburn!” the hotel owner shouts. “To me he is better than Ross! When did you meet him?”
“Oh, a long time ago. I was twenty-one.”
“Your first time in Mexico?”
“Yes, yes, it is.”
“Welcome to Mexico!”
What other desperate characters have they invited to this shindig? He dreads the appearance of any acquaintances; he can bear only a private humiliation.
Arturo turns to Less with the pained expression of one who has just broken something beloved of yours. “Señor Less, I am so sorry,” he begins. “I think you speak no Spanish, am I correct?”
“You are correct,” Less says. He is so weary, and the festival packet is so heavy. “It’s a long story. I chose German. A terrible mistake in my youth, but I blame my parents.”
“Yes. Youth. And so tomorrow the festival is completely in Spanish. Yes, I can take you in the morning to the festival center. But you are not to speak until the third day.”
“I’m not on until the third day?” His face takes on the expression of a bronze-medal winner in a three-man race.
“Perhaps”—here Arturo takes a deep breath—“I take you downtown to see our city instead? With a compatriot?”
Less sighs and smiles. “Arturo, that is a wonderful suggestion.”
At ten the next morning, Arthur Less stands outside his hotel. The sun shines brightly, and overhead in the jacarandas three fantailed black birds make peculiar, merry noises. It takes a moment before Less understands they have learned to imitate the player piano. Less is in search of a café; the hotel’s coffee is surprisingly weak and American flavored, and a poor night’s sleep (Less painfully fondling the memory of a good-bye kiss) has led to an exhausted state.
“Are you Arthur Less?”
North American accent, coming from a lion of a man in his sixties, with a shaggy gray mane and a golden stare. He introduces himself as the festival organizer. “I’m the Head,” he says, holding out a surprisingly dainty paw for a handshake. He names the midwestern university at which he is a professor. “Harold Van Dervander. I helped the director shape this year’s conference and put together the panels.”
“That’s wonderful, Professor Vander…van…”
“Van Dervander. Dutch German. We had a very esteemed list. We had Fairborn and Gessup and McManahan. We had O’Byrne and Tyson and Plum.”
Less swallows this piece of information. “But Harold Plum is dead.”
“There were changes to the list,” the Head admits. “But the original list was a thing of beauty. We had Hemingway. We had Faulkner and Woolf.”
“So you didn’t get Plum,” Less contributes. “Or Woolf, I assume.”
“We didn’t get anyone,” says the Head, lifting his massive chin. “But I had them print out the original list; you should have found it in your packet.”
“Wonderful,” Less says, blinking in perplexity.
“Your packet also includes a donation envelope to the Haines Scholarship. I know you have just arrived, but after a weekend in this country he loved, you may be so moved.”
“I don’t—” says Arthur.
“And there,” the Head says, pointing to the west, “are the peaks of Ajusco, which you will remember from his poem ‘Drowning Woman.’” Less sees nothing in the smoggy air. He has never heard of this poem, or of Haines. The Head begins to quote from memory: ‘Say you fell down the coal-chute one Sunday afternoon…’ Remember?”
“I can’t—” says Arthur.
“And have you seen the farmacias?”
“I haven’t—”
“Oh, you must go, there’s one just around the corner. Farmicias Similares. Generic drugs. It’s the whole reason I throw this festival in Mexico. Did you bring your prescriptions? You can get them so much cheaper here.” The Head points, and Less can now make out a pharmacy sign; he watches a small round woman in a white lab coat dragging the shop gate open. “Klonopin, Lexapro, Ativan,” he coos. “But really I come down here for the Viagra.”
“I won’t—”
The Head gives a cat grin. “At our age, you’ve got to stock up! I’ll try a pack this afternoon and tell you if it’s legit.” He puts his fist down at his crotch level, then springs his erectile thumb upward.
The mynah birds above mock them in ragtime.
“Señor Less, Señor Banderbander.” It is Arturo; he seems not to have changed clothes or demeanor from the night before. “Are you ready to go?”
Less, still bewildered, turns to the Head. “You’re coming with us? Don’t you have to see the panels?”
“I really have put together some wonderful panels! But I never go,” he explains, spreading his hands on his chest. “I don’t speak Spanish.”
Is it his first time in Mexico? No.
Arthur Less visited Mexico nearly thirty years ago, in a beat-up white BMW fitted with an eight-track tape player and only two tapes, two suitcases of hurriedly packed clothes, a bag of marijuana and mescaline taped under the spare tire, and a driver who sped down the length of California as if he were running from the law. That driver: the poet Robert Brownburn. He awakened young Arthur Less with a call early that morning, telling him to pack for three days, then showed up an hour later, motioning him quickly into the car. What caper was this? Nothing more than a fancy of Robert’s. Less would grow used to these, but at the time he had known Robert for only a month; their encounters for drinks had turned into rented hotel rooms, and now, suddenly, this. Being whisked away to Mexico: it was the thrill of his young life. Robert shouting above the noise of the motor as they sped between the almond groves of Central California, then long stretches of quiet while they switched the tapes around again, and the rest stops where Robert would take young Arthur Less off behind the oak trees and kiss him until there were tears in his eyes. It all startled Less. Looking back, he understood that surely Robert was on something; probably some amphetamine one of his artist friends had given him up in Russian River. Robert was excited and happy and funny. He never offered whatever he was on to Less; he only handed him a joint. But he kept driving, with hardly a stop, for twelve hours, until they reached the Mexican border at San Ysidro, then another two hours through Tijuana and down toward Rosarito, where, at last, they drove along an ocean set on fire by a sunset that cooled to a line of neon pink, and finally arrived in Ensenada, at a seaside hotel where Robert was slapped on the back in welcome and given two shots of tequila. They smoked and made love all weekend, barely escaping the hot room except for food and a mescaline walk on the beach. From below, a mariachi band endlessly played a song that only constant repetition had allowed Less to memorize, and he sang along to the llorars as Robert smoked and laughed:
Yo se bien que estoy afuera
Pero el día que yo me muera
Se que tendras que llorar
(Llorar y llorar, llorar y llorar)
I know I’m out of your life
But the day that I die
I know you are going to cry
(Cry and cry, cry and cry)
On Sunday morning, they bid good-bye to the hotel staff and headed in another speed streak back toward home; this time, they made it in eleven hours. Weary and dazed, young Arthur Less was dropped off at his apartment building, where he stumbled in for a few hours’ sleep before work. He was deliriously happy, and in love. It did not occur to him until later that during the entire trip, he never asked the crucial question—Where is your wife?—and so decided never to mention the weekend around Robert’s friends, fearing he would give something away. Less grew so used to covering up their scandalous getaway that even years later, when it can’t possibly matter anymore, when asked if he has ever been to Mexico, Arthur Less always answers: no.
The tour of Mexico City begins with a subway ride. Why did Less expect tunnels filled with Aztec mosaics? Instead, he descends, with wonder, into a replica of his Delaware grammar school: the colorful railings and tiled floors, primary yellows and blues and oranges, the 1960s cheerfulness that history revealed to be a sham but that still lives on here, as it does in the teacher’s-pet memory of Arthur Less. What retired principal has been brought down to design a subway on Less’s dreams? Arturo motions for him to take a ticket, and Less duplicates his motions of feeding it to a robot as red-bereted police officers look on in groups large enough to make futbol teams.
“Señor Less, here is our train.” Along comes an orange Lego monorail, running along on rubber wheels before it comes to a stop and he steps inside and takes hold of a cold metal pole. He asks where they are going, and when Arturo answers “the Flower,” Less feels he is indeed living now inside a dream—until he notices above his head a map, each stop represented by a pictograph. They are indeed headed to “the Flower.” From there, they switch lines to head to “the Tomb.” Flower to tomb; it is always thus. When they arrive, Less feels gentle pressure on his back from the woman behind him and is ejected smoothly onto the platform. The station: a rival grammar school, this time in bright blues. He follows Arturo and the Head closely through the tiled passages, the crowds, and finds himself on an escalator gliding upward into a square of peacock sky…and then he is in an enormous city square. All around, buildings of cut stone, tilting slightly in the ancient mud, and a massive cathedral. Why did he always assume Mexico City would be like Phoenix on a smoggy day? Why did no one tell him it would be Madrid?
They are met by a woman in a long black dress patterned with hibiscus blossoms, their guide, who leads them to one of Mexico City’s markets, a stadium of blue corrugated steel, where they are met by four young Spanish men, clearly friends of Arturo’s. Their guide stands before a table of candied fruits and asks if anyone has allergies or things they will not or cannot eat. Silence. Less wonders if he should mention make-believe foods like bugs and slimy Lovecraftian sea horrors, but she is already leading them between the stalls. Bitter chocolates wrapped in paper, piled in ziggurats beside a basket of Aztec whisks, shaped like wooden maces, and jars of multicolored salts such as those Buddhist monks might use to paint mandalas, along with plastic bins of rust- and cocoa-colored seeds, which their guide explains are not seeds but crickets; crayfish and worms both live and toasted, alongside the butcher’s area of rabbits and baby goats still wearing their fluffy black-and-white “socks” to prove they are not cats, a long glass butcher’s case that for Arthur Less increases in horrors as he moves along it, such that it seems like a contest of will, one he is sure to fail, but luckily they turn down the fish aisle, where somehow his heart grows colder among the gray speckled bodies of octopuses coiled in ampersands, the unnamable orange fish with great staring eyes and sharp teeth, the beaked parrotfish whose flesh, Less is told, is blue and tastes of lobster (he smells a lie); and how very close this all is to childhood haunted houses, with their jars of eyeballs, dishes of brains and jellied fingers, and that gruesome delight he felt as a boy.
“Arthur,” the Head says as their guide leads them on between the icy shoals. “What was it like to live with genius? I understand you met Brownburn in your distant youth.”
No one is allowed to say “distant youth” but you, isn’t that a rule? But Less merely says, “Yes, I did.”
“He was a remarkable man, playful, merry, tugging critics this way and that. And his movement was sublime. Full of joy. He and Ross were always one-upping each other, playing a game of it. Ross and Barry and Jacks. They were pranksters. And there’s nothing more serious than a prankster.”
“You knew them?”
“I know them. I teach every one of them in my course on middle-American poetry, by which I don’t mean the middle America of small minds and malt shops, or midcentury America, but rather the middle, the muddle, the void, of America.”
“That sounds—”
“Do you think of yourself as a genius, Arthur?”
“What? Me?”
Apparently the Head takes that as a no. “You and me, we’ve met geniuses. And we know we’re not like them, don’t we? What is it like to go on, knowing you are not a genius, knowing you are a mediocrity? I think it’s the worst kind of hell.”
“Well,” Less said. “I think there’s something between genius and mediocrity—”
“That’s what Virgil never showed Dante. He showed him Plato and Aristotle in a pagan paradise. But what about the lesser minds? Are we consigned to the flames?”
“No, I guess,” Less offers, “just to conferences like this one.”
“You were how old when you met Brownburn?”
Less looks down into a barrel of salt cod. “I was twenty-one years old.”
“I was forty when I happened upon Brownburn. Very late for us to meet. But my first marriage had ended, and suddenly there was humor and invention. He was a great man.”
“He’s still alive.”
“Oh yes, we invited him to the festival.”
“But he’s bedridden in Sonoma,” Less says, his voice finally taking on the fish market’s chill.
“It was an earlier list. Arthur, I should tell you, we have a wonderful surprise for you—”
Their guide stops and addresses the group:
“These chilis are the center of Mexican cuisine, which has been labeled by UNESCO as a World Heritage intangible.” She stands beside a row of baskets, all filled with dried chilis in various forms. “Mexico is the main Latin American country that uses hot peppers. You,” she says to Less, “are probably more used to chilis than a Chilean.” One of Arturo’s friends who has joined them for the day is Chilean and nods in agreement. When asked which is the spiciest, the guide consults the vendor and says the tiny pink ones in a jar from Veracruz. Also the most expensive. “Would you like to taste some relishes?” A chorus of Sí! What follows is a contest of escalating difficulty, like a spelling bee. One by one, they taste the relishes, increasing in heat, to see who fails first. Less feels his face flush with each bite, but by the third round he has already outlasted the Head. When given a taste of a five-chili relish, he announces to the group:
“This tastes just like my grandmother’s chow-chow.”
They all look at him in shock.
The Chilean: “What did you say?”
“Chow-chow. Ask Professor Van Dervander. It is a relish in the American South.” But the Head says nothing. “It tastes like my grandmother’s chow-chow.”
Slowly, the Chilean begins to guffaw, hand over his mouth. The others seem to be holding something in.
Less shrugs, looking from face to face. “Of course, her chow-chow wasn’t so spicy.”
At that, the dam breaks; all the young men burst into howls of laughter, hooting and weeping beside the chili bins. The vendor looks on with raised eyebrows. And even when it begins to subside, the men keep stoking their laughter, asking Less how often he tastes his grandmother’s chow-chow. And does it taste different at Christmas? And so on. It does not take long for Less to understand, sharing a pitying glance with the Head, feeling the burn of the relish beginning anew in the back of his mouth, that there must be a false cognate in Spanish, yet another false friend…
What was it like to live with genius? Well, then there was the time he lost his ring in the mushroom bin at Happy Produce.
Less wore a ring, one Robert gave him on their fifth anniversary, and, while it was long before the days of gay marriage, they both knew it meant a kind of marriage: it was a thin gold Cartier Robert had found in a Paris flea market. And so young Arthur Less wore it always. While Robert wrote, locked in his room with the view of Eureka Valley, Less often went grocery shopping. This day he was in the mushrooms. He had pulled out a plastic bag and had just begun choosing mushrooms when he felt something spring from his finger. He knew instantly what it was.
In those days, Arthur Less was far from faithful. It was the way of things among the men they knew, and it was something he and Robert never spoke of. If on his errands he met a handsome man with a free apartment, Less might be willing to dally for half an hour before he came home. And once he took a real lover. Someone who wanted to talk, who came just short of asking for promises. At first it was a wonderful, casual connection not very far from his home, something easy to grab on an afternoon or when Robert was on a trip. There was a white bed beside a window. There was a parakeet that warbled. There was wonderful sex, and no talk afterward of I forgot to tell you Janet called, or Did you put the parking permit on the car? or Remember, I’m going to LA tomorrow. Just sex and a smile: Isn’t it wonderful to get what you want and pay no price? Someone very unlike Robert, someone cheerful and bright, with affection, and, maybe, not terribly smart. It took a long time for it to be sad. There were fights and phone calls and long walks with little said. And it ended; Less ended it. He knew he had hurt someone terribly, unforgivably. That happened not long before he lost his ring in the mushroom bin.
“Oh shit,” he said.
“Are you okay?” a bearded man asked, farther down the row of vegetables. Tall, glasses, holding a baby bok choy.
“Oh shit, I just lost my wedding ring.”
“Oh shit,” the man said, looking over at the bin. Maybe sixty cremini mushrooms—but, of course, it could have gone anywhere! It could be in the buttons! In the shiitakes! It could have flown into the chili peppers! How could you paw through chili peppers? The bearded man came over. “Okay, buddy. Let’s just do this,” he said, as if they were setting a broken arm. “One by one.”
Slowly, methodically, they put each mushroom into Less’s bag.
“I lost mine once,” the man offered as he held the bag. “My wife was furious. I lost it twice, actually.”
“She’s going to be pissed,” Arthur said. Why had he made Robert into a woman? Why was he so willing to go along? “I can’t lose it. She got it in a Paris flea market.”
Another man chimed in: “Use beeswax. To keep it tight until you get it fitted.” The kind of guy who wore his bicycle helmet while shopping.
The bearded man asked, “Where do you get it fitted?”
“Jeweler,” the bike guy said. “Anywhere.”
“Oh, thanks,” Arthur said. “If I find it.”
At the grim prospect of loss, the bike guy started to pick through the mushrooms along with them. A male voice from behind him: “Lose your ring?”
“Yep,” said the bearded guy.
“When you find it, use chewing gum till you get it fixed.”
“I said beeswax.”
“Beeswax is good.”
Was this how men felt? Straight men? Alone so often, but if they faltered—if they lost a wedding ring!—then the whole band of brothers would descend to fix the problem? Life was not hard; you shouldered it bravely, knowing all the time that if you sent the signal, help would arrive. How wonderful to be part of such a club. Half a dozen men gathered around, engaged in the task. To save his marriage and his pride. So they did have hearts, after all. They were not cold, cruel dominators; they were not high school bullies to be avoided in the halls. They were good; they were kind; they came to the rescue. And today Less was one of them.
They reached the bottom of the bin. Nothing.
“Ooh, sorry, buddy,” the bike guy said, and grimaced. The bearded man: “Tell her you lost it swimming.” One by one they shook his hand and shook their heads and left.
Less wanted to cry.
What a ridiculous person he was. What a terrible writer, to get caught up in a metaphor like this. As if it would reveal anything to Robert, signify anything about their love. It was just a ring lost in a bin. But he could not help himself; he was too attracted to the bad poetry of it all, of his one good thing, his life with Robert, undone by his carelessness. There was no way to explain it that would not sound like betrayal. Everything would show in his voice. And Robert, the poet, would look up from his chair and see it. That their time had come to an end.
Less leaned against the Vidalia onions and sighed. He took the bag, now empty of mushrooms, to crumple it up and toss it in the trash bin. A glint of gold.
And there it was. In the bag all along. Oh, wonderful life.
He laughed, he showed it to the shop owner. He bought all five pounds of mushrooms the men had handled and went home and made a soup with pork ribs and mustard greens and all the mushrooms and told Robert everything that had happened, from the ring, to the men, to the discovery, the great comedy of it all.
And in the telling, laughing at himself, he watched as Robert looked up from his chair and saw everything.
That’s what it was like to live with genius.
The subway ride back to the hotel is made half as charming by being filled with twice as many people, and the heat of the afternoon has made Less self-conscious that he smells of fish and peanuts. They pass the Farmacias Similares on the way to the hotel, and the Head tells them he will catch up with them in a minute. They continue to the Monkey House (missing its mynahs), and, though Less bows a quick good-bye, Arturo will not let him go. He insists that the American must taste mescal, that it might change his writing, or perhaps his life. There are some other writers waiting. Less keeps saying he has a headache, but nearby construction noise drowns him out and Arturo cannot understand. The Head returns, beaming in the late-afternoon light, a white bag in his hand. So Arthur Less goes along. Mescal turns out to be a drink that tastes as if someone has put their cigarette out in it. You drink it, he is informed, with an orange slice that has been coated in toasted worms. “You are kidding me,” Less says, but they are not kidding him. Again: no one is kidding. They have six rounds. Less asks Arturo about his event at the festival, now a mere two days away. Arturo, his dour mood unchanged even after a bath of mescal, says, “Yes. I am sorry to say tomorrow the festival is also entirely in Spanish; shall I take you to Teotihuacán?” Less has no idea what this is, agrees, and asks again about his own event. Will he be onstage alone, or in conversation?
“I hope there will be conversation,” Arturo states. “You will be there with your friend.”
Less asks if his fellow panelist is a professor or a fellow writer.
“No, no, friend,” Arturo insists. “You are speaking with Marian Brownburn.”
“Marian? His wife? She’s here?!”
“Sí. She arrives tomorrow night.”
Less tries to assemble the wayward congress of his mind. Marian. The last words she ever said to him were Take care of my Robert. But she had not known then that he would take him from her. Robert kept Less away from the divorce, found the shack on the Vulcan Steps, and he never met her again. Would she be seventy? Finally given a stage to say what she thinks of Arthur Less? “Listen listen listen, you can’t have us together. We haven’t seen each other in almost thirty years.”
“Señor Banderbander thinks it is a nice surprise for you.”
Less does not remember what he replies. All he knows is that he has been fooled into returning to Mexico, to the scene of the crime, to be impaneled before the world beside the woman he has wronged. Marian Brownburn, with a microphone. Surely this is how gay men are judged in Hell. By the time he returns to the hotel, he is drunk and stinks of smoke and worms.
The next morning Less is awakened at six, as planned, introduced to a cup of coffee, and led into a black van with smoked windows; Arturo is there with two new friends, who seem to speak no English. Less looks for the Head, to forestall disaster, but the Head is nowhere in sight. All of this is in the predawn darkness of Mexico City, with the sound of awakening birds and pushcarts. Arturo has also hired another guide (presumably at the festival’s expense): a short athletic man with gray hair and wire glasses. His name is Fernando, and he turns out to be a history professor at the university. He tries to engage Arthur in a discussion of the highlights of Mexico City and whether Less is interested in seeing them, perhaps after Teotihuacán (which has not yet been described). There are, for example, the twin houses of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, surrounded by a fence of spineless cactus. Arthur Less nods, saying this morning he feels like a spineless cactus. “Sorry?” the guide asks. Yes, Less says, yes, he would like to see that.
“I am afraid it is closed to mount a new exhibit.”
And there is, as well, the house of the architect Luis Barragán, designed for a lifestyle of monkish mystery, where low ceilings lead to vaulted spaces, and Madonnas watch over the guest bed, and his private changing room is overseen by a Christ crucified without a cross. Less says that sounds lonely, but he would like to see that as well.
“Yes, ah, but it too is closed.”
“You are a terrible tease, Fernando,” Less says, but the man does not seem to know what this means and goes on to describe the National Museum of Anthropology, the city’s greatest museum, which can take days or even weeks to see completely but, with his guidance, can be done in a number of hours. By this point, the van has clearly taken them out of Mexico City proper, the parks and mansions replaced by concrete shantytowns, painted all in taffy colors that Less knows belie their misery. A sign points to TEOTIHUACÁN Y PIRÁMIDES. The museum of anthropology, Fernando insists, is not to be missed.
“But it is closed,” Less offers.
“On Mondays, I am sorry, yes.”
As the van rounds the corner of an agave grove, he is aware of an enormous structure, with the sun pulsing behind it and striping it in shadows of green and indigo: the Temple of the Sun. “It is not the Temple of the Sun,” Fernando informs him. “That is what the Aztecs thought it was. It is most probably the Temple of the Rain. But we know almost nothing about the people who built it. The site was long abandoned by the time the Aztecs came through. We believe they burned their own city to the ground.” A cold blue silhouette of a long-lost civilization. They spend the morning climbing the two massive pyramids, the Temple of the Sun and the Temple of the Moon, walking the Avenue of the Dead (“It is not the Avenue of the Dead, really,” Fernando informs him, “and it is not the Temple of the Moon”), imagining all of it covered in painted stucco, miles and miles, every wall and floor and roof in the ancient city that once held hundreds of thousands of people, about whom literally nothing is known. Not even their names. Less imagines a priest covered in peacock feathers walking down the steps as in an MGM musical, or a drag show, arms spread wide, as music plays from conch shells all around and Marian Brownburn, standing at the top, holds the beating heart of Arthur Less. “They chose this spot, we think, because it was far from the volcano that destroyed villages in ancient times. That volcano there,” Fernando said, pointing to a peak barely visible in the morning haze.
“Is it still active, that volcano?”
“No,” Fernando says sadly, shaking his head. “It is closed.”
What was it like to live with genius?
Like living alone.
Like living alone with a tiger.
Everything had to be sacrificed for the work. Plans had to be canceled, meals had to be delayed; liquor had to be bought, as soon as possible, or else all poured into the sink. Money had to be rationed or spent lavishly, changing daily. The sleep schedule was the poet’s to make, and it was as often late nights as it was early mornings. The habit was the demon pet in the house; the habit, the habit, the habit; the morning coffee and books and poetry, the silence until noon. Could he be tempted by a morning stroll? He could, he always could; it was the only addiction where the sufferer longed for anything but the desired; but a morning walk meant work undone, and suffering, suffering, suffering. Keep the habit, help the habit; lay out the coffee and poetry; keep the silence; smile when he walked sulkily out of his office to the bathroom. Taking nothing personally. And did you sometimes leave an art book around with a thought that it would be the key to his mind? And did you sometimes put on music that might unlock the doubt and fear? Did you love it, the rain dance every day? Only when it rained.
Where did the genius come from? Where did it go?
Like allowing another lover into the house to live with you, someone you’d never met but whom you knew he loved more than you.
Poetry every day. A novel every few years. Something happened in that room, despite everything; something beautiful happened. It was the only place in the world where time made things better.
Life with doubt. Doubt in the morning, with the oil beading on a cup of coffee. Doubt in the pee break, not catching his eye. Doubt in the sound of the front door opening and closing—a restless walk, no good-bye—and in the return. Doubt in the slow sound of typewriter keys. Doubt at lunchtime, taken in his room. Doubt vanishing in the afternoon like the fog. Doubt driven away. Doubt forgotten. Four in the morning, feeling him stirring awake, knowing he is staring at the darkness, at Doubt. Life with Doubt: A Memoir.
What made it happen? What made it not happen?
Thinking of a cure, a week away from the city, a dinner party with other geniuses, a new rug, a new shirt, a new way to hold him in bed, and failing and failing and somehow, at random, succeeding.
Was it worth it?
Luck in days of endless golden words. Luck in checks in the mail. Luck in prize ceremonies and trips to Rome and London. Luck in tuxedos and hands secretly held beside the mayor or the governor or, one time, the president.
Peeking in the room while he was out. Rooting through the trash bin. Looking at the blanket heaped on the napping couch, the books beside it. And, with dread, what sat half-written in the typewriter’s gap-toothed mouth. For at the beginning, one never knew what he was writing about. Was it you?
Before a mirror, behind him, tying his tie for a reading while he smiles, for he knows perfectly well how to tie it.
Marian, was it worth it for you?
The festival takes place in University City, in a low-ceilinged concrete building associated with the Global Linguistics and Literature Department, whose famous mosaics have for some reason been removed for restoration, leaving it as barren as an old woman without her teeth. Again, the Head does not make an appearance. Less’s day of judgment has arrived; he finds he is shaking with fear. Color-coded carpets lead to various subdepartments, and around any corner Marian Brownburn might appear, tanned and sinewy, as he remembers her on a beach, but when Less is led to a green room (painted a pastel green, supplied with a tower of fruit), he is introduced only to a friendly man in a harlequin tie. “Señor Less!” the man says, bowing twice. “What an honor for you to come to the festival!”
Less looks around for his personal Fury; there is no one in the room but him, this man, and Arturo. “Is Marian Brownburn here?”
The man bows. “I am sorry it was so much in Spanish.”
Less hears his name shouted from the doorway and flinches. It is the Head, his curly white hair in disarray, his face a grotesque shade of red. He motions Less over; Less quickly approaches. “Sorry I missed you yesterday,” says the Head. “I had other business, but I wouldn’t miss this panel for the world.”
“Is Marian here?” Less asks quietly.
“You’ll be fine, don’t worry.”
“I’d just like to see her before we—”
“She isn’t coming.” The Head puts his heavy hand on Less’s shoulder. “We got a note last night. She broke her hip; she’s nearly eighty, you know. A shame, because we had so many questions for you both.”
Less experiences not a helium-filled sense of relief, but a horrible deflating sorrow. “Is she okay?”
“She sends her love to you.”
“But is she okay?”
“Sure. We had to make a new plan. I’m going to be up there with you! I’ll talk for maybe twenty minutes about my work. Then I’ll ask you about meeting Brownburn when you were twenty-one. Do I have that right? You were twenty-one?”
“I’m twenty-five,” Less lies to the woman on the beach.
Young Arthur Less sitting on a beach towel, perched with three other men above the high-tide line. It is San Francisco in October 1987, it is seventy-five degrees, and everyone is celebrating like children with a snow day. No one goes to work. Everyone harvests their pot plants. Sunlight flows as sweet and yellow as the cheap champagne sitting, half-finished and now too warm, in the sand beside young Arthur Less. The anomaly causing the hot weather is also responsible for extraordinarily high waves that send men scrambling from the rockier gay section over to the straight section of Baker Beach, and there they all huddle together, united in the dunes. Before them: the ocean wrestles with itself in silver-blue. Arthur Less is a little drunk and a little high. He is naked. He is twenty-one.
The woman beside him, tanned to alder wood, topless, has begun to talk to him. She wears sunglasses; she is smoking; she is somewhere past forty. She says, “Well, I hope you’re making good use of youth.”
Less, cross-legged on his towel and pink as a boiled shrimp: “I don’t know.”
She nods. “You should waste it.”
“What’s that?”
“You should be at the beach, like today. You should get stoned and drunk and have loads of sex.” She takes another drag off her cigarette. “I think the saddest thing in the world is a twenty-five-year-old talking about the stock market. Or taxes. Or real estate, goddamn it! That’s all you’ll talk about when you’re forty. Real estate! Any twenty-five-year-old who says the word refinance should be taken out and shot. Talk about love and music and poetry. Things everyone forgets they ever thought were important. Waste every day, that’s what I say.”
He laughs goofily and looks over at his group of friends. “I guess I’m doing pretty good at that.”
“You queer, honey?”
“Oh,” he says, smiling. “Yeah.”
The man beside him, a broad-chested Italianate fellow in his thirties, asks for young Arthur Less to “do my back.” The lady seems amused, and Less turns to apply cream to the man’s back, the color of which reveals it is far too late. Dutifully, he does his job anyway and receives a pat on the rump. Less takes a swig of warm champagne. The waves are growing in intensity; people leap in there, laughing, screaming with delight. Arthur Less at twenty-one: thin and boyish, not a muscle on him, his blond hair bleached white, his toes painted red, sitting on a beach on a beautiful day in San Francisco, in the awful year of 1987, and terrified, terrified, terrified. AIDS is unstoppable.
When he turns, the lady is still staring at him and smoking.
“Is that your guy?” she asks.
He looks over at the Italian, then turns back and nods.
“And the handsome man beyond him?”
“My friend Carlos.” Naked, muscled, and browned by the sun, like a polished redwood burl: young Carlos lifting his head from the towel as he hears his name.
“You boys are all so beautiful. Lucky man to have snatched you up. I hope he fucks you silly.” She laughs. “Mine used to.”
“I don’t know about that,” Less says softly, so that the Italian will not hear.
“Maybe what you need at your age is a broken heart.”
He laughs and runs a hand through his bleached hair. “I don’t know about that either!”
“Ever had one?”
“No!” he shouts, still laughing, bringing his knees up to his chest.
A man stands up from behind the woman; her pose has hidden him all this time. The lean body of a runner, sunglasses, a Rock Hudson jaw. Also naked. He looks down first at her, then at young Arthur Less, then says aloud to everybody that he is going in.
“You’re an idiot!” the lady says, sitting straight up. “It’s a hurricane out there.”
He says he has swum in hurricanes before. He has a faint British accent, or perhaps he’s from New England.
The lady turns to Less and lowers her sunglasses. Her eye shadow is hummingbird blue. “Young man, my name’s Marian. Will you do me a favor? Go in the water with my ridiculous husband. He may be a great poet, but he’s a terrible swimmer, and I can’t bear to watch him die. Will you go with him?”
Young Arthur Less nods yes and stands up with the smile he saves for grown-ups. The man nods in greeting.
Marian Brownburn grabs a large black straw hat, puts it on her head, and waves to them. “Go on, boys. Take care of my Robert!”
The sky takes on a shimmer as blue as her eye shadow, and as the men approach the waves they seem to redouble in violence like a fire that has been fed a bundle of kindling. Together they stand in the sun before those terrible waves, in the fall of that terrible year.
By spring, they will be living together on the Vulcan Steps.
“We had to do a quick change to the program. You can see it has a new title.” But Less, conversant only in German, can make nothing of the words on the paper he has just been handed. People are coming and going now, clipping a microphone to his lapel, offering him water. But Arthur Less is still halfway lit by beach sunshine, halfway in the water of the Golden Gate in 1987. Take care of my Robert. And now, an old woman falling and breaking her hip.
She sends her love. No rancor, no feelings at all.
The Head leans forward with a whisper and a comradely wink: “By the way. Wanted you to know, those pills work great!”
Less looks over at the man. Is it the pills that make him so flushed and grotesque? What else do they sell here for middle-aged men? Is there a pill for when the image of a trumpet vine comes into your head? Will it erase it? Erase the voice saying, You should kiss me like it’s good-bye? Erase the tuxedo jacket, or at least the face above it? Erase the whole nine years? Robert would say, The work will fix you. The work, the habit, the words, will fix you. Nothing else can be depended on, and Less has known genius, what genius can do. But what if you are not a genius? What will the work do then?
“What’s the new title?” Less asks. The Head passes the program to Arturo. Less consoles himself that tomorrow he will board a plane to Italy. The language is getting to him. The lingering taste of mescal is getting to him. The tragicomic business of being alive is getting to him.
Arturo studies the program for a moment, then looks up gravely:
“Una Noche con Arthur Less.”