The Passionate Attention of an Interesting Man Read Free Page A

Junior. This would usually break out at about eleven-thirty of an evening, after the rest of the crowd had departed and Lloyd was alone with the central quartet.
    “Really, Clark,” goes Portia. “With your squalid blandishments and historically suspect family oil revenues!”
    “What suspect?” Clark will ask.
    Portia quotes: “‘Behind every great fortune lies a great crime.’”
    “Look who’s talking! Miss Oil Money of the Year!”
    “Portia is way collegiate, Clark” comes from Annamarie, though you could never tell whether she was serious or riffing. “She commands fantastic wisdom, and—no! You cut out that silly swimsuit dance! Junior, make Clark stop!”
    “Stop, Clark,” says Junior, looking as if he’d like to fall into Clark’s arms. After a moment, as Clark does not stop, Junior joins him, trying to imitate Clark’s moves.
    “These hopeless local beaux,” Portia remarks.
    “What do you expect,” Annamarie laments, “when you invite the neighborhood?”
    “At least we can count on our suave cosmo role-model,” says Portia, beaming at Lloyd.
    Dancing past them, Clark says, “I’m suave for my years.”
    “You?” cries Portia. “You’re rough as nails!”
    “I’m suave, too,” Junior puts in.
    “I have the edge,” says Clark, “because I’m a love entrepreneur.” He stops dancing, and Junior stops, too.
    Fetching his pad and pen, Lloyd asks Clark if he can quote him in a column.
    “It was bound to happen!” Junior cries.
    “Quote me?” Clark replies to Lloyd. “I love that concept, dude.”
    It was Lloyd’s self-defensive flattery, a way of pacifying the anger of strangers before they got angry: tell them they sound interesting.
     
    The advertisement, in Lloyd’s own paper, was brusque and concise:
     
    Housemate wanted.
    Own bedroom, bath.
    Landlord on premises. Rules apply.
    Smokers no way.
    Rent is low if I like you.
     
    The address was attractive, across the road from the very mall that Lloyd had started his columns on, with the salad bar and the refurbished gym. The area was fifteen minutes from Portia’s by bicycle, an older part of town that was half middle-class domestic and half parvenu slick: old two-storeys with cluttered garages surprised by apartment complexes and trendy leisure shops.
    The landlord, on the phone, spoke with the voice of his ad, tough and plain and maybe a bit old-fashioned, as befits a guy who places his messages in newsprint instead of on Craigslist . Lloyd arranged to look at the room in three days, on the following Saturday, but first he decided to bike over to scout the quartier.
    It was a perfect fit. The house in question looked trim and happy: a ranch-style with what appeared to be an extension built for extra bedrooms when the kids arrived, perhaps some time in the late 1980s. Revisiting the mall across the way, Lloyd noted with pleasure a laundry, a Starbucks, a vast grocery outlet, and a pharmacy (all very handy when you’re going carless) along with the gym and food shop. Lloyd took an early lunch there, before it got too jammed, and once again he was amused at the etiquette of the buffet, as the veteran gourmets swooped down on their platters of fashion while newbies stared at a bill of fare too dense for their modest sense of free will. Lloyd watched them study how the other diners did it, and “I’ll Have What They’re Having” became his next piece, this one made of interviews with the customers. Pedalling home with his notes, Lloyd outlined, wrote, and clicked the column off to his editor for a next-day printing. Twenty-four hours later, the eatery tripled its business.
    Then came Saturday, the day of Lloyd’s appointment with the house guy. Lloyd biked over early so he’d have time to get off the wheels, sweat out the exertion, handkerchief himself dry, and look good for the landlord. A big blond high- schooler pulled the door open, inspecting Lloyd and offering a handshake that smarted for minutes. Then he