Man About Town by Mark Merlis

Author:Mark Merlis [Merlis, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-06-204155-5
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2003-08-20T04:00:00+00:00

Huzzah, he thought, as he walked down Q Street to the Metro. I have four limbs and lunch money. I sit in important meetings and am privy to the innermost workings of the corporate welfare system. The fog is burning off and it’s going to be a beautiful day.

All of this was true. In the immeasurable ocean of suffering that was the world, how tiny Joel’s complaints were. He ought to have been ashamed of himself, he ought to have practically danced down Q Street on his way to the Metro every morning. And the homeless guys he stepped over ought to have been happy they weren’t in Calcutta.

He knew that his discontent—and that of all the fat, desolate Americans around him—had something or other to do with their loss of faith. But he couldn’t just turn into … Willard, that was the weatherman’s name, beaming pious Willard, who knew the world was wonderful and people were wonderful and God was in Heaven and one day Willard would be up there giving the unchanging celestial weather report.

Here was the truth: because Joel did not believe in Paradise, an eternal life, he was left believing in New Mexico. To be there with the Santa Fe boy, swimming, lounging, cruising forever. Just dwelling with him, as so many people have dreamt of a timeless dwelling with the altogether less attractive and unsmiling deity they have conjured up. Joel at least had incontrovertible evidence that the Santa Fe boy existed. Or that he had existed once. More than anyone could say about Jesus.

For an eternity they would wash his Mustang, each of them wearing his little lo-rise trunks, then take a dip in the pool to cool off, pop a couple of brews and lie in the sun. They wouldn’t touch. But he would look over at Joel from his chaise longue, raise his hips and adjust his wet trunks, lie back. Still looking at Joel, that sad impenetrable smile dawning on his face. Joel would smile back. They would not touch. For ever, Joel would live in that moment that was so much more intense than mere touching, that instant when you knew you were going to touch.

Through aeons he would be with Him in Santa Fe and would be about to touch Him.

Santa Fe. Holy faith.

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