Absolutely Golden by D. Foy

Author:D. Foy
Format: epub

Beats me, sure, but the next thing you know I’d become a celebrity, if that’s the right word, or perhaps curiosity is more like it, though that’s not right, either, especially when the notion is further in-between, since, after all, when you think about it, what are celebrities if not curiosities, people whom everyone knows but rarely understands, endowed, somehow, if only consensually—which is to say superficially—with a peculiar luminescence that’s as obvious as mysterious and draws the world to them like blood draws sharks, and this can be the case whether they’re an actor or a dog—witness Rin Tin Tin or Ronald Reagan, the governor, for crying out loud!—so much so, obviously, that others are driven both to inquire about these people and to covet them, study them, stalk them, even to pattern cults around them, all without knowing any more about the human they’ve glorified than the pixels that make their image on a screen or in the paper or magazine, though sometimes it’s less than that, sometimes it’s just a voice they’ve heard, on the radio of a bus perhaps or from a neighbor’s car being polished in the weekend shade, though sometimes, too, less than that, much less than that will suffice, a snippet of talk, for example, the weest of wee white lies, one here, one there, a name on paper, blobs of ink, fact and fiction mounting till a person’s smallest, most commonplace histories and routines have attained the gravest import, from their hometown swimming holes and mothers’ maiden names to the way they wipe their bottoms and the brands they use to do it, it’s so awfully sad, if only someone told them all how silly or resplendent, since it must be one if not the other, I don’t know, maybe it was I who was confused, yes, it’s better to be wise than rich, as it’s said, I really do know, I do.

But whatever the case, no one knew me, not Merle and certainly not Jack, nor had I committed some noteworthy feat.

And yet for all of that, or for none of it, in a ridiculous day and a half I’d somehow become “famous” at Freedom Lake. I say somehow only because it seemed impossible that Merle’s spreading my name about had been enough to have bestowed on me this appalling status. Wolfgang and Usch had helped him, no doubt, but still.

Late Monday morning I woke to a roomful of flowers, store-bought and wild, and gifts, as well, abundant gifts, intriguing gifts, the gifts of strangeness from strangers.

One woman gave me a towel she’d spent the night embroidering with my name, a courtesy cloth, Merle called it, for laying across public furniture, poolside, for instance, or at the picnic tables round the Wagon.

There was a cribbage board with ivory pegs shaped after the silhouettes of women, its deck of cards backed by naked people, men and women plus children, too, singly and together, a special edition hot from the presses of the INF.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.