The Impossibly Read Free

found that charming.
    Her hair grew longer, as did mine. She commented favorably upon this development, and it was not until she had countered that favorable comment with another on the same subject that was less favorable, but really only slightly less favorable, that it was cut. So you can see that it was a confusing time. Both very clear and very confusing, which is likely news to few, and perhaps even to none.
    I know all about that, for example, said a new acquaintance in the old establishment, quickly switching the conversation back in the direction it had been going.
    So now, at any rate, I knew, is what I mean.
    Then my friend came to town.
    Once upon a time, this friend and I had lived together in a very small room in a very large city with big buildings and a big river, and at night or in the early morning after we had finished working I would talk. I would talk and talk, and he would doze and doze, and then he would tell me to shut the fuck up. This arrangement continued for a remarkably long time. Once, however, upon the conclusion of a particularly tricky job, one that had gone wrong in several ways, I said something and my friend went berserk and, after a short interval, went away, and that was, or had been, the history of our friendship. Now here he was again. He had arrived, he said, near the end of a tour he had been taking and was much refreshed and was visiting me.
    So.
    So.
    Still up to it, I suppose, he said.
    John is his name.
    Yes, I am, John, I said.
    John clapped me on the back, told me I needed a haircut, and said, how about some dinner, I’m buying.
    It was a cold night in late November, and he said he would like to have some turkey. I told him that I thought this would take some maneuvering. He said he was willing, if I was, to maneuver. I was. We did. It was an interesting night.
    No, they all said.
    John’s tour had taken him to several places since I had last seen him, and the quality of his hostility, when it came—and when they kept saying they did not have turkey it came—had been tempered, though I could not imagine by what. It had become a hostility, at any rate, the engine of which was a not unsubtle use of tone and syntax and carefully measured unreasonability, rather than, as preface to action, blunt volume added to a somewhat stock selection of words. I suggested at one point, for example, a chicken or pheasant or game hen substitute for the turkey. He suggested, at some length, using words like “mock” and “erudition,” not.
    On we went.
    No, I am sorry, we do not serve turkey, said yet another man in a white shirt and black vest with just a touch too much oil in his hair.
    Yes, but do you have turkey?
    No, we do not have turkey, I am sorry.
    Ah, and while I do believe that you are sorry, I do not believe you do not have turkey, why wouldn’t you?
    We do not, sir, have turkey, nor do I have for you any explanation.
    And all I am asking for is an explanation.
    Please leave.
    Etc.
    We did, finally, and following something a little like the interaction I have just described, get our turkey— they had some, by chance it seemed, in the freezer. Neither of us at the end of eating it entirely believed it had been turkey, but it had been called turkey with maximum enthusiasm by the man whose head John had placed in the sink, and it had been appropriately garnished, so we didn’t complain.
    It was a very pleasant meal. John told me a little bit about where he had been and how long he had spent in each place and who he had spent his time with. He then told me that he was ready to go back to work, but that his line of work would now change, or would now perhaps change—he hoped so.
    I raised my eyebrow. He winked.
    He then quoted something that he had memorized.
    Quoting was new for John.
    I told him I approved.
    That night he lay in my bed, and I lay on my floor.
    Like the old days, a little.
    It was not quiet outside the window, it was a variety of sounds, not such pleasant sounds