The Weirdness(31)

“You say this,” Elisa says, “like you had a choice.”

He settles the tab for both of them even though he still doesn’t know how he’s going to make rent. When he does this, as nonchalant as anything, he can detect her, out of the corner of his eye, watching him.

This could be good, Billy tells himself, as they cross the street. Just don’t fuck it up. Let it be easy. He doesn’t raise the question of whether it’s a good idea to get involved with someone who has killed a man.

They reach Barometer’s heavy set of doors. He holds one of them open for her in a showy display of half-ironic gallantry, his motions a little broad from the buzz he has going.

See? he thinks. You can be charming when the situation calls for it. He watches her enter, permitting himself a glance at the segment of black panty hose he can spot between the hem of her red tartan coat and the top of her boots. Maybe it’s more than a glance; maybe it borders on a leer. But he feels like it’s the quickest, most subtle leer he can possibly manage with three shots of bourbon floating around in his circulatory system. Still, a little embarrassing.

Don’t worry about it, he tells himself, nobody noticed, but even as he tells himself this he feels the prickling sensation of disapproving eyes on him, and he tracks over to the source of the sensation, and that’s when he sees her, alone at a table for two: Denver.





CHAPTER SIX


LISTEN, AUDIENCE


IMMANENCE • AMBIGUOUS INTRODUCTIONS • I’M NOT SAYING BUDDY • TOTAL FAILURE OF CHARACTER • ABSOLUTE CORPOREALITY • KAFKA TELLS A JOKE • FAMOUS LITERARY BRAWLS • A STORY ABOUT SOME THINGS • SOULS • STOUT • RHETORIC




There had been a night, at the tail end of summer, when Billy and Denver had gone out for drinks with Bingxin Ying, a petite gallery owner with violet lipstick, an asymmetrical haircut, and an intense manner of aggressively probing the air while she spoke. The outing was in celebration of the closing of a deal: Bingxin was putting together a new show, Eidetics, to run at her gallery for the next three months, and she’d acquired five of Denver’s early shorts. The conversation, half conducted in art-speak, quickly went over Billy’s head, but he’d been content to lurk in the back of the booth, eat the skewered selection of fruits that had come with his drink, and watch Denver glow in reception of what he guessed was a rather abstract form of effusive praise.

Content for a while, anyway. Then came a moment when Bingxin made a vigorous stabbing motion with both of her hands and, over the music, had shouted “What impresses me the most about your work is its commitment to immanentization of the ephemeral.” Billy had watched Denver beam, had watched her say “Thank you” with a real sincerity that he wasn’t sure he’d ever successfully invoked, and he actually felt a little jealous. No, more than a little: straight-up capital-J Jealous. He made a mental note of the phrase. Immanentization of the ephemeral?

Later that night, in bed, Billy tried it out. “The immanentization of the ephemeral,” he said, apropos of nothing.

“I know,” Denver had said, propping herself up on one elbow. “Didn’t you love that? Bingxin really gets me.”

This was not, ultimately, the reaction that Billy had wanted, and he withdrew into a kind of sulkiness. It took Denver only seconds to notice.

“What,” she said.

“I don’t get it,” Billy said. “What does it mean?”

Denver clucked her tongue at him. “It’s not so complicated, Billy,” she said.

“It sounds complicated.”

“You’re a writer,” she said, which went some way toward cheering him. “You know what words mean.”

“I don’t know what immanentize means,” Billy had said, still in a bit of a pout.

“It means to make immanent.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Yes you do. Think about it for a second.”

But Billy was in no mood.

“It means,” she said finally, “to bring into being.”

“Okay,” Billy said. “I did know that, I guess.”

“And the ephemeral?”

“Yeah, okay,” Billy said. “I know that one.”

“Lay it on me,” Denver said.

“It means things that won’t last.”

“Yeah,” Denver said. “And that’s the thing about the world that’s so beautiful and so sad. Everything is ephemeral. Nothing lasts. And that’s why I go around, you know, with a stupid camera strapped to my shoulder all the time. Because I want to capture some of those things. I want to bring them back into being. Just to make them last for a little bit longer.”