Guitar lesson 8 : Beginner -- How to play 'Yellow Submarine' with A, D a...

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                                                                                                                           January 18th, 2013

       Dr.Fu emailed me she will visit Uchicago sometime later this year as a visiting professor. I hope to help her our at that time, we are close friends for many many years, when I was in hot water, she is always so generous and always willing to give me a hand.

      I wonder why didn't I miss QP at all, I guess I didn't like her from my deep heart, but even my self could not give me a reason why should I gave the precious present? Am I mad that day? I think I just want remove her from my life, that's the reason I deactivated my Facebook, I need sometime all alone, everybody need sometime all alone.
     
     I lend my Les Miserables to YF, but I really can't understand she even didn't mention anything when she saw me the next day, it took juts two hours to finish the DCs, I have no idea how long she want to keep it, everything you lend to her, she took it for granted, I guess, give her a couple of days, and then suggest her to import the CDs to her itunes, I guess. It's my precious, take almost half a month for ordering. I don't know why she was in that night we were hanging out? Who invited her?
 
   AnHui   Chicago

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                                                                                                                                   January 17th, 2013
The first blog in English.
       Last night went to Insight Studio Chicago to have my ear pierced, thank you Gator and Daniela, thanks for your kind company.
       When Gator ask me which ear I'd like to pierce, I answered without any hesitation, " the right one",
" No!!!" Gator shouted at me, " it indicates you are a GAY if you have your right ear pierced"!!!
       Funny, right?
       It took just ten minutes, and it doesn't hurt at all, the guy who's taking care of my ear is smart, although I don't like his huge hook earrings at all. He has a beautiful tattoo on his arms, a Japanese figure which he told me is from a famous book I supposed to be "源氏物语", but I am not very sure.
The funny thing is he has a lot of knowledge about Chemistry and Biochemistry, Breast Cancer, so we've had a very good conversation, maybe that's the reason I didn't feel any pain  during the piercing.
      Afterwards, we went to Piece for dinner, the Pizza is super delicious, I almost order one to take out. But they told me it's not good if it get cold and reheated.
   
     I almost forget the pain in my heart, I regret how could I have the impulse to gave her the precious gift, I'm so sorry, I think I lost this friend forever. And the AnHui who can take care of her and her cat has gone, the cat which I can take care of has also gone.

      The heart is a lonely hunter, it will never stop hunting, sometimes it pause for an heart,  then it will move on, until it finds an heat they can talk to each other, they can understand each other, they are not alone any more. Sometime I think every person is just like a star in the sky, each one has it's own orbit, when some one try to come close to another one, especially when you gave some precious gift to her, her orbit will change, maybe she will kick your ass, " get out of here" because she want fly freely, I guess. Then this poor little star gave her a smile(pretend to be smiling), maybe burst into tears, and then left, wishing the best wishes to her, just left, and they will never meet again.
 
     Year two thousand Thirteen is awesome, right? I have my new Yamaha digital piano, I got new CDs of Les Miserables 10th anniversary concert, I have my ear pierced!!! I think my mom will kill me if she know I did it!!!
   
     I need find a new badminton partner I Guess, but not QP, NOT QP any more. I just want to remove every single piece of memory about the two weeks we had practice together, that's might be the only thing I can do for you and for me.
   
     AnHui, Chicago, 17th 2013 2:41am
   

 
     

无题－记在2012岁尾

好久好久没有blog了，真的好像有年月了。 2012年一眨眼就逝去了，几乎没有留下任何气息，也没有任何痕迹可寻。

回首2012，无所谓成功失败，无所谓得与失，你在这里失去些什么，也一定会在其它地方寻回来。

生活经常是一个圆，跌跌撞撞走过一段坎坷路，你会发现你又从终点回到起点。年初的时候很痛苦的去喜欢一个人，到现在完全放低，而且做了算是不错的朋友；

谢谢所有可爱的同事书会的朋友在2012年对Hugo的支持，没有你们，我的生命失去了众多的意义，起码不完美；其实生活中哪里来那么多完美？！

2012买了部新车子；一部新电脑；一只新吉它；忘不了夏日里网球场上的飞奔；放射性试验对身体带来的影响；同事放弃自己的时间帮我做试验；

蛮多感动，很多值得感谢的人；

2012有了羽毛球的新搭档，我希望我们的亲密友谊可以长青，
不再去奢望些什么，只希望我们有机会在一起训练的时候会永远这样快乐！！！
Hugo   记于2012年岁尾

Healthy Start by Etgar Keret

By request, the vault brings you a story by Etgar Keret, from issue 30. We’ve featured this issue quite a few times on the blog. With work from Stuart Dybek, Jim Shepard, Ron Carlson, Justin Torres, Charlie Smith, Jillian Weise and Anthony Doerr (just to name a few) can you blame us?

Healthy Start
by Etgar Keret
Translated by Miriam Shlesinger
Every night, after she had finally left him, he’d fall asleep in a different spot: on the sofa, in an armchair in the living room, on the mat on the balcony like some homeless bum. Every morning, he made a point of going out for breakfast. Even prisoners get a daily walk in the yard, don’t they? At the café they always gave him a table set for two, and sat him across from an empty chair. Always. Even when the waiter specifically asked him whether he was alone. Other people would be sitting there in twos or threes, laughing or tasting each other’s food, or fighting over the bill, while Avichai sat by himself eating his Healthy Start—orange juice, muesli with honey, decaf double espresso with warm low-fat milk on the side. Of course it would have been nicer if someone had sat down across from him and laughed with him, if there had been someone to argue with over the bill and he’d have to struggle, to hand the money to the waitress saying, “Don’t take it from him! Mickey, stop. Just stop! This one’s on me.” But he didn’t really have anyone to do that with, and breakfast alone was ten times better than staying home.
Avichai spent a lot of time watching the people at the other tables. He’d eavesdrop on conversations, read the sports supplement or inspect the ups and downs of the Israeli shares on Wall Street with an air of detached concern. Sometimes someone would come over and ask for a section of the paper he’d finished reading, and he would nod and try to smile. Once, when a sexy young mother with a baby in a stroller walked over to him, he even said to her, as he gave up the front page with the banner headline about a gang rape in the suburbs: “What a crazy world we’re bringing our children into.” He thought it sounded like the kind of statement that brings people closer together, pointing as it did to their common fate, but the sexy mom just glared at him with a half-angry stare and took the Healthy Living supplement too without asking.
Then one Thursday a fat, sweaty guy walked into the café and smiled at him. Avichai was surprised. The last person who’d given him a smile was Maayan, five months before she left him, and hers had been utterly sarcastic, whereas the fat guy’s smile was soft, almost apologetic. The fat guy gestured unmistakably that he’d like to sit down, and Avichai nodded back almost without stopping to think. The fat guy took a seat.
“Meir,” he said, “I’m really sorry I’m late. I know we said ten but I had a nightmare morning with the kid.”
It crossed Avichai’s mind that maybe he ought to tell the fat guy he wasn’t Meir, but he found himself checking his watch instead, and saying, “What’s ten minutes? Forget it.”
Then neither of them spoke for a second, and Avichai asked if the kid was okay. And
the fat guy said she was, it was just that she’d started a new kindergarten, and every time he took her there she had a hard time letting him go.
“But never mind,” he stopped short. “You’ve got enough on your plate without my problems. Let’s get down to business.”
Avichai took a deep breath and waited.
“Look,” the fat guy said. “Five hundred is too high. Give it to me for four hundred. Know what? Four hundred and ten even and I’m good for six hundred pieces.”
“Four hundred and eighty,” Avichai said. “Four hundred and eighty. And that’s only if you’re good for a thousand.”
“You gotta understand,” the fat guy said. “The market’s in the shitter, what with the recession and all. Just last night on the news they showed people eating out of garbage pails. If you keep pushing, I’ll have to sell high. You’re pricing me right out of the market.”
“Don’t worry,” Avichai told him. “For every three people eating out of garbage pails, there’s someone driving a Mercedes.”
For some reason, this sentence made the fat guy laugh out loud. “They told me you were tough,” he muttered with a smile.
“I’m just like you,” Avichai protested. “Just trying to keep body and soul together.”
The fat guy wiped his sweaty palm on his shirt, then held it out. “Four hundred and sixty,” he said. “Four hundred and sixty and I take a thousand.” When he saw
Avichai wasn’t reacting, he added: “Four hundred and sixty, a thousand pieces, and I owe you a favor. And you know better than anyone, Meir, that in our business favors are worth more than money.”
This last sentence was all Avichai needed to take the outstretched hand and shake it. For the first time in his life, someone owed him a favor. Someone who thought his name was Meir, but still. And when they’d finished eating, as they argued over who would pick up the tab, a warm feeling spread through Avichai’s stomach. He beat the fat guy to it by a tenth of a second and shoved the crumpled bill into the waitress’s hand.
From that day on it happened almost routinely. Avichai would take a seat, place his order, and keep a lookout for any new person who came into the café, and if that person started searching the tables with an expectant look, Avichai would quickly wave and invite him or her to take a seat.
“I don’t want to have to take you to court,” a bald guy with thick eyebrows told him.
“Me neither,” Avichai conceded. “It’s always better to settle things amicably.”
“Just remember I don’t do night shifts,” a silicone-lipped bleach blonde announced.
“Just who do you think you are? Do you really expect everyone else to do night shifts, except you?” Avichai grumbled back.
“Gabi asked me to tell you he’s sorry,” said a guy with rotting teeth and bad breath.
“If he’s really sorry,” Avichai countered, “tell him to come and tell me himself. No middlemen!”
“In your e-mail you sounded taller,” a skinny redhead complained.
“In your e-mail you sounded less picky,” he snapped.
And somehow everything worked out in the end. He and baldy settled, the silicone lips agreed to ask her sister to babysit so she could do one night shift a week, the bad breath promised Gabi would phone, and the redhead and Avishai agreed they weren’t quite right for each other. Sometimes they picked up the tab, sometimes he did. With the redhead, they went dutch. It was all so fascinating that if a whole morning went by when nobody took a seat across from him at the table, Avichai’s heart began to sink. Luckily, this didn’t happen too often.
Almost a month had gone by since the sweaty fat guy when a pockmarked man walked in. Despite the pocked face and the fact that he looked at least ten years older than Avichai, he was a good-looking guy with loads of charisma. The first thing he said as he sat down was: “I was sure you wouldn’t show.”
“But we agreed to meet,” Avichai answered.
“Yes,” said the pockmarked guy with a sad smile, “except that after the way I yelled at you on the phone, I was afraid you’d chicken out.”
“So here I am,” Avichai said, almost teasingly.
“I’m sorry I yelled at you on the phone,” the guy apologized. “Really, I just lost it. But I meant every word I said—you got that? Now I’m asking you to stop seeing her.”
“But I love her,” Avichai said in a stifled voice.
“Sometimes you can love something and you still have to give it up,” the pockmarked guy said. “Listen to someone a little older than you. Sometimes you have to give it up.”
“Sorry,” Avichai said, “but I can’t.”
“Yes you can,” the guy shot back. “You can and you will. There’s no other way. We both love her, but I happen to be her husband, and I’m not about to let you break up my family. Got that?”
Avichai shook his head. “You have no idea what my life has been like this past year,” he told the husband. “Hell. Not even hell, just one great big stale chunk of nothing. And when you’ve been living with nothing for so long and suddenly something turns up, you can’t just tell it to go away. You understand me, don’t you? I know you understand me.”
The husband bit his lower lip. “If you see her one more time,” he said, “I’ll kill you. I’m not kidding either. I’ll kill you.”
“So kill me.” Avichai shrugged. “You don’t scare me. We’re all going to die in the end.”
The husband bent across the table and socked Avichai in the jaw. It was the first time in his life that anyone had hit him so hard, and Avichai felt a hot wave of pain surge up somewhere in the middle of his face and spread in every direction. Seconds later, he found himself on the floor, with the husband standing over him.
“I’ll take her away from here,” the husband kept shouting, as he went on kicking Avichai in the stomach and ribs. “I’ll take her far away, to another country, and you won’t know where she is. You’ll never see her again, you got that, you rotten piece of shit?”
Two waiters jumped on the husband and managed somehow to pull him away from Avichai. One of them yelled to the barman to call the police. With his cheek still glued to the coolness of the floor, Avichai watched the husband run out of the café. One of the waiters bent over and asked him whether he was okay. Avichai tried to answer.
“Do you want me to call an ambulance?” the waiter asked.
Avichai whispered that he didn’t.
“Are you sure?” the waiter insisted. “Your lip is bleeding.”
Avichai nodded slowly and shut his eyes. He tried as hard as he could to imagine himself with that woman. The one he’d never see again. He tried, and for a moment he almost succeeded. His whole body ached. He felt alive.
Etgar Keret is the author of six bestselling story collections. His writing has been published in Harper’s Magazine, the New York Times, the Paris Review, and Zoetrope. Jellyfish, his first movie as a director along with his wife, Shira Geffen, won the Camera d’Or for best first feature at Cannes in 2007. Suddenly, a Knock on the Door: Stories will be published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in April.

Hoodie in Xanadu by Ann Beattie

Hoodie in Xanadu

Ann Beattie

Most nights my neighbor, a middle-aged man in a red hoodie, would stand on his front porch, reaching up every now and then to knock the icicle Christmas lights dangling from the porch roof back and forth. He’d survey the street and usually smoke a cigarette. When he finished, he would fumble for his keys, then open his front door slightly, ducking his head to enter as if the doorframe were too low. If he saw me watching, he’d give me a desultory wave, or I’d lift a hand in his direction. He didn’t go out at night, and he seemed bored or not too bright or, like many Key Westers, pretty incomprehensible—at least, he would have been in any other context. The icicle lights burned all night.
Sometimes I could hear Glenn Gould playing loudly, and then my neighbor—the drawstrings of his red hoodie tied under his chin—would emerge and stand with a blanket wrapped around him, shivering in his jeans and clogs, looking forlornly down the empty street. If Hoodie had anything much resembling a life, you wouldn’t know it by his chagrined expression and by the way he sagged in the chair on his porch like a shot duck, too heavy-assed to rise, even when he needed to sign for a package: quite a heavy fellow, for someone who smoked dope—I’ve smelled it—and whom I’ve never seen carrying a bag from the grocery store. When, and how, had he put up the Christmas lights?
Hoodie—on the night in January we became better acquainted—silently greeted me as we stood across the street on our porches: “two citizens of planet Earth,” as my late husband used to say. What does Hoodie do all day? I’m in my sixties, so if anyone wonders about me—which I doubt—I’m sure they assume I creak and groan and sprout chin hairs. My own son, Roland, appears once or twice a year for a brief visit, then returns to Miami. He’s never invited me to visit wherever he lives. He’s never even given me an address. If Roland knows that Christmas has come and gone, he’s given no indication. My best guess about Hoodie? He sleeps late (many in Key West do), then does errands (which occupy everyone, always, until the second you pitch over dead)—errands that, in his case, might include a certain number of doctor visits, given his weight. I assume he has a hobby, as well, because of the number of boxes delivered to the house. I’ve been asked many times by the UPS or the FedEx driver to sign in his absence. One recent rainy afternoon I’d taken in two boxes, and walked across the street with them later that day. The shippers had names like OxyLoxy, in Newtville, TN, and StarLady in Winches, NH. The boxes were heavy, though not so heavy they might contain OxyLoxy or StarLady themselves. They often smelled nice (though sometimes they smelled of smoke) and were more or less the same size. Once, when a box was shipped through the U.S. mail, I’d paid the postage due of thirty-four cents, for which Hoodie had thanked me profusely.

I arrived in key west in 1986, leaving a cruise ship that could continue to transport its weary just fine without me: passengers tainted with flu; not-quite ex-wives, giving the marriage one more try; geezers under the delusion that the high seas were a watery limbo where they could revert to their youth and not take their medicine; shrilly entitled, run-amok grandchildren; the eccentric who came aboard with his parrot in its cage. My husband had died in 1985, Roland was in boarding school in Connecticut (courtesy of his grandmother), and I’d impulsively responded to an ad in The Washington Post for discounted cabins on a winter cruise whose first stop was Key West, Florida—which also became my last.
When I’d left, I’d gotten a job cleaning at Tra La La Tropics Guesthouse (I was also given a teeny room there and permission to swim in the pool). I had
soon branched out—there’s a pun!—creating displays for their entryway from flowers discarded after rich people’s parties, or stuffed in florists’ trash cans the night before garbage pickup. Fallen palm fronds have always been free, and a gold-and-silver glitter stick costs next to nothing and really adds panache. I would pinch-hit for the cook (Zachary “Zit Man” Chisholm) when his diabetes made him too weak to serve the last meal of the night. I’ve been retired for years, living on my—and my husband’s—social-security payments.
I still do the flowers for Tra La La, which morphed into Sea Breeze House when straight people bought it in the nineties—though I don’t Dumpster-dive anymore. I supplement my income when I’m called upon to make bridal bouquets and—to my surprise—wrist corsages, which are especially popular in transsexual commitment ceremonies. Who knows what Hoodie made of me, with these people coming and going from my apartment.
Well, here’s what he makes of me: he crossed the street, after all this time, wearing his customary red sweatshirt with the hood pulled up, which he untied and pushed off his head as if gallantly removing a fedora, and said, “I’m embarrassed to say we haven’t really met,” and I said, “Joe, I know your name because of the packages addressed to you,” and he said, “Right, so let me ask: what’s your name?” 
Audrey Ann was the answer, but no one had ever called me either name, and Annie wasn’t my favorite nickname—Flora was. It had been bestowed on me in 1986 by Zit Man, whose nickname had preceded our meeting. I told Hoodie I was Flora.
“Happy to know you,” he said. “I’m taking a pill called Zoloft, and I find I’m able to extend myself to people now, so I think it’s about time we made each other’s acquaintance.”
This, of course, made me feel bad. The poor man was depressed, and I’d never so much as introduced myself. After my husband died, I had retreated inward. 
“I’d like to ask you in for tea,” he said. “I’m feeling much better these days. We’ll have a chat. Not about anything in particular, just a neighborly visit.”
“Joe, that would be a pleasure. What would be a good time to come over?”
“In half an hour?” he said.
Half an hour! Well—why not? “Fine,” I said. “Thanks so much.”
I went inside and saw the answering-machine light blinking. The red light upset me about as much as seeing a palmetto bug scurry under the sink. You can do it, I told myself silently. I hit play.
“Mom, hi, I’m calling because I’ve sort of got a situation here. Is there any way you could use your Triple A card to get us towed? I’m in Georgia.” (!) “Yeah, we’re over here in Marietta, picking up Cindy’s daughter, who’s got an issue with school or something” (?) “and where I was parked in a parking space over here right on the street? Yeah, a tree fell on our car. I’m maxed out on my credit card and I could use some help with towing. Cindy’s cell is five-one-eight—” then silence. I stared at the answering machine; if I waited, the other digits of the telephone number might be magically filled in. Roland had a girlfriend named Cindy, who had a child, and they were in Georgia? Ohh-kay (as the exterminator always said, when a bug started running). Surely he would call back.
But time passed, and there was no new message. I went into the bathroom and took a quick shower, toweled off, put the same clothes back on, looked again at the answering machine, then headed off across the street.
“Please come in, Flora,” Joe said, stepping aside ungracefully in his doorway but not shaking my hand, though he made a move in that direction and then stifled the impulse. He was wearing enormous, baggy jeans. He tried to stuff his unshaken hand into the pocket and failed. He had on what looked like a red cashmere sweater. He’d done something to slick back what was left of his hair.
“Oh! Isn’t this something!” I said. I was in Xanadu. The front room was an enormous, vibrant, multicolored tent. The materials were radiant; some sparkled with tiny mirrors that threw off light; others were woven with threads that seemed to lift off the surface like three-dimensional TV test patterns. I’d never been to Morocco, but maybe this is what things looked like there. Fabric was draped over the walls and swags dipped from corner to corner. The walls were hung with quilts in various geometric patterns. Only the two front windows, with white shades lowered, were not somehow blanketed. Your eye was constantly drawn to where the material converged midceiling, punctured by a dazzling pink spotlight that looked like it might have just vaporized a flamingo. This must have been what had come in the boxes: the quilts and fabric, the shimmering threads. People thought the back gardens were the hidden secrets of Key West? They should see this!
Joe reentered the room—I’d hardly noticed he was gone—wheeling a two-tier cart carrying a silver tea service. A lovely aroma mingled with the room’s other smells: a bit musty, somewhat cinnamony, lemon-tinged. “White rooms drive me crazy,” he said straight-faced, as if delivering the punch line of a joke. He poured tea into a china cup and handed it to me, the cup teetering on a mismatched saucer. “Cream and sugar,” he gestured. He poured a cup for himself. His free hand swept in the direction of two black butterfly chairs, which of course hadn’t been apparent amid the riot of color. We retreated to the chairs. “Lady Grey,” Joe said, sighing the words, and at first I entertained the notion that it might be a new nickname for me—that he could be making a remark about the color of my hair. He held up the tea bag’s paper tag, like a little magnifying lens, or a bit of unreflective mirror, or a tiny shape from one of the quilts: Lady Grey. “Thank you for coming,” he said.
As you would imagine, we talked about how he created the room. It took a year, he told me. He had the AC re-vented at his own expense. He called the room “my personal vision.” This was the guy who stood outside smoking, gazing at nothing? I felt like I was a shard inside a vast kaleidoscope. “It’s for rent, now that it’s exactly the way I want it,” he said. “To be perfectly frank, it’s something I hoped to interest you in.”
 “Me, rent your living room?”
 “No, no. But I’ve seen your talent for flower arranging, and I thought that when very special people came, I might call on you to arrange some flowers.”
“Special people? What do you mean?”
“Flora, if you promise to keep this in the strictest confidence, I can be specific about the first arrivals,” he said.
In the second before he whispered their names I wondered: might they be the Queen of Hearts and the White Rabbit? The first name, the woman’s, I recognized, but I wasn’t sure I could pick her out of a lineup. The man’s name meant nothing to me, but he was, apparently, the husband.
“You know, this is just incredible,” I said. “Are they—I mean, they’re checking in?”
“I’d say checking out,” he said, pleased with his turn of phrase.
“You want me to do the flowers?” I said. “Where would you put them?”
“I have a table in the other room,” he said, sounding a bit hurt. “I’ll bring in the table.”
We sipped our tea in silence.
“So these celebrities are on their way?” I asked. “When?”
“Saturday. They rented it from noon to midnight.”
“I have to do the flowers for a wedding on a catamaran this Saturday, Joe.”
“Won’t they blow away?” he said.
“The vases have bricks in the bottom. I bundle the stems together and put sink weights on them.”
“I’ll give you five thousand dollars,” he said.
“Well . . . do we know what kind of flowers they like?”
“I can ask.”
I nodded. “I feel like that would be taking advantage, though,” I said. “It’s too much money.”
“It isn’t a lot of money to them, I guess.”
I thought about it for a moment. Five thousand dollars was more than I’d make in many months of doing wedding arrangements.
“Well, I can’t very well say no, can I?”
“Good. More tea?”
“No, thank you. But it’s delicious.”
“I’m glad you like it.”
“No one could possibly suspect that walking through your front door, this is what she’d find.”
“I never raise the shades,” he said.
“How did you get the word out that—”
“Craigslist.”
“They were reading Craigslist?”
“Their people were. It’s an anniversary. Not a wedding anniversary. The day their child was conceived, or something.”
“Should I allude to that in the flower arrangement?”
“I wouldn’t say so, no. I think that information was just personal. For some reason, the secretary felt she had to explain herself.”
“And you really do believe—”
“The deposit cleared.”
“Wow. All right. Well, I’ll have to give this some serious thought. I’m glad I’ve got time to get flowers flown in from Miami. This is really incredibly kind of you, Joe.”
“I just look like a fat schmuck, don’t I?”
The question startled me. If there’d been anywhere to put my teacup, I’d have set it down.
“No worries,” he said, gesturing to the walls. “This is definitely the revenge of the nerd.”
“It’s truly amazing. To think this exists right across the street from me! So—can I come up with some sketches? How would that be?”
“You don’t have to show me sketches. You’re a genius.”
“Oh, far from it,” I said. “And you’ve barely seen my work.”
“I didn’t exactly level with you before: the UPS guy told me your name, because you’re always so nice about signing for my packages, and I’ve got a book about designers who’ve done amazing Key West interiors, so I realized instantly who you were. I saw one arrangement where you wrapped lace around bamboo shoots and scattered snails on the table! It took a while to get up my courage to approach you.”
“The UPS delivery person knows who I am?”
“He used to have a design store with his wife in Marathon. His wife used to be a guy. She was the roommate of a cook who used to be a friend of yours at Tra La La? I think he took photographs of your flower arrangements for their brochure, right? The cook?”
“Yes, he did do that. You know, I fell out of touch with him. I didn’t know he had a roommate. I mean, except for work, I guess I didn’t know him very well.”
“I heard he’s working at a restaurant in South Beach. His health is apparently much better. Has some pump in his chest, or something.”
“I see. So the UPS man married Zachary the cook’s roommate, who had sex-change surgery?”
Joe nodded.
“That’s a very Key West story.”
“It’s why we’re all here, right?”
I momentarily considered the possibility that he’d been referring specifically to sex-change surgery. “What do you mean?” I said.
 “So that everything can be a Key West story.”
 Relieved, I found myself on my feet, preparing to leave. “This has been quite the day!” I said. “To be continued.”
 He rose also, on the second attempt. He said, “I’ll e-mail their secretary and get information about what flowers they like.”
“Good. Let me know.”
He reached out, but it was for my teacup, not to shake hands. Nevertheless, he did shake my hand because it was extended. Then he took the teacup and saucer and returned them, with his, to the cart. He said, over his shoulder: “Isn’t it really sad when you lose touch with people you once cared about? Technology has made everything worse, because you feel like you could potentially get in touch, so you assume you will, and then instead of writing a letter, you’re looking for somebody on Facebook, and half the time they’re not there.”
He opened the door enough to let me out. A kid flew down the sidewalk on a skateboard, with all the dexterity of a fledgling. When the boy passed, Joe quickly stepped out behind me, unlit cigarette in hand, and pulled the door closed. “Now you know,” he said.
The words echoed in my head as I reentered my apartment, which looked more than a little shabby, with an afghan thrown over an old chair and a picture hanging crooked. But who lived like Joe? There was something very odd about it—well: of course there was.
The answering-machine light was blinking, and I knew who’d left the message: Roland, calling to get my help so his car could be towed. “Mom,” he said the second I pushed play, as if his voice had been waiting to jump out of the machine. “Hey, Mom, we had that little trouble there, but some good Samaritan gave us a ride to the school, so we met up with Frieda, no problem, but when we got back to the car it’d been towed, so I was wondering if you could call the towing company and point out that a huge tree fell on our car and it wasn’t just a matter of not respecting the rules by moving our car by five o’clock. We had no way to do that with some tree crashed down on it. I’ve got the name of the place here. The thing is, we’re all going to have to get back to Miami, like get a bus or something, and the cash machine won’t take Cindy’s MasterCard. If you—” The line went dead.
I already felt like Alice expelled from Wonderland, but Roland’s phone call was too much of this world. I would have loved to have been able to tell my husband about my adventure, though if he’d lived, we’d still be living in Washington, DC. I had heard on the Weather Channel that Washington had gotten two feet of snow. Snow that deep would paralyze the place. I undressed and stepped out of my shoes to lie down and take a nap. I lay on my side, pulling the bedspread from the far side of the bed over me for a little warmth. What a sad little chenille cover it was, balding a bit here and there as if a caged animal had bit its fur, a gloomy beige to begin with. Joe would disdain such a cover, though under its warmth I fell quickly asleep.

Her favorite flowers were anthuriums, birds-of-paradise, and proteas. Mixed in with these would be white irises, which, when I ordered them, I requested have the tightest buds possible, since once they open, they die in a day. It was risky, I knew, but it worked out. I found some white ribbon with red sparkles at the dollar store out on the highway and asked a friend if I could prune his bougainvillea—awful, thorny stuff, but it would just be at the base of the arrangement, and what was beauty without a little danger? I found some gallon milk containers in people’s recycling and rinsed them and cut off the tops with pruning shears. I would use bricks as platforms of various heights to support the gallon bottles, and disguise them under beards of Spanish moss. Under cover of darkness, I grabbed Spanish moss from a tree on White Street. I asked Joe if I could come in Saturday morning to assemble the flowers on-site. There were many flowers, brought at little expense, because Manolo’s assistant (Manolo owned the florist’s in Miami) would be driving to Key West anyway, to deliver orchids to the Marquesa Hotel and to see his girlfriend. Manolo had a very entre nous way of talking. He thought two hundred dollars to deliver them was more than generous. If you’re wondering whether the check to me cleared, there was no check. I had five thousand dollars cash, which Joe had handed me in a bank envelope the day after we spoke. It was a perplexingly large amount of cash to have, but I seemed unable to deposit it in my bank account. I just kept looking at the envelope, which I tucked in the yellow pages and put in a cabinet drawer in the kitchen. Joe told me I could come whenever I wanted that morning, and we agreed that I would begin around ten.
The night before, I had slept badly, and it took two espressos to get me going. I had hoped Joe would volunteer to help me carry the boxes—the birds-of-paradise had been too long-stemmed to keep in my emptied-out refrigerator, so they’d been in the sink overnight, soaking in the porous insert of the asparagus steamer—but he seemed so nervous, I didn’t want to do more than hint, making it a point to stagger during the three trips I made carrying the big boxes.
I arranged and arranged, repositioned, plucked and tucked, and when I was finished, I used the tips of my hedge clippers to pick up the bougainvillea branches, feeling as powerful, but as humble, as a blacksmith dipping into the forge. It was a truly magnificent arrangement. Big-headed proteas dowsed above the bougainvillea. Birds-of-paradise shot upward like torches. The delicate, waxy anthuriums, in white and pink, added an odd texture and were perfectly interspersed with the white irises. I alternated the two, like the rails of a curving staircase Bette Davis would descend. Below the basket I scattered gold stars (appropriate!) I’d gotten at CVS and musical notes I’d cut from black construction paper, consulting one of my son’s boyhood songbooks—its pages perforated by silverfish—to make sure I’d gotten them right. Move over, Martha Stewart. At exactly eleven a.m., Joe again pronounced me a genius. He had centered the table under the spotlight. It was really riveting. We hated to leave, but we did, Joe dropping his key in the mailbox, then withdrawing his hand and crossing his fingers. “This is sort of embarrassing,” he said, “but I don’t really have anywhere to go. Do you think I could spend a bit of time in your apartment?”
He could tell I was taken aback. My apartment? What would he think of such an uninspiring place? And how long might he be there?
“I’m agoraphobic,” he said. “I can go a little way from home, but really not that far. This wouldn’t be the day to pass out on the street.”
“No, it certainly wouldn’t. Well. Of course, come over.”
“They had a lot of hope for the Zoloft. Although it’s facilitated our friendship, it doesn’t seem to have stopped me from feeling that if I go far, I might stop breathing.”
“What a terrible affliction,” I said. “I know something about what you’re feeling, because my late husband had asthma.”
“He didn’t die from an asthma attack, did he?” Joe said, eyes wide.
“No, not from that. Joe, are you OK?”
He’d stopped in the middle of the street.
“I look up and down this street, practicing,” he said. “It’s easier at night. I made it to the library three days ago. Then today—wouldn’t you know.”
“Joe, let’s just—” I took his hand, which was quite cold.
“Assholes, you think you’re at a cocktail party?” some skinhead who swerved around us on a bike sneered. He puckered his lips as if he were spitting over his shoulder, but since the wind would have blown it back in his face, I doubted it was anything but pantomime.
“I don’t think I can take another step.”
“Joe,” I said calmly, “there are chairs out front of my house, and if you can make it there, you can look right over at your house. Let’s try that.”
“I’m dizzy.”
“Well, Joe, it’s not really safe to stand in the street. How about heading back to your house, so you can rest for a minute? Your own house?”
He crumpled. He was almost bent over double, but he managed not to sink to his knees.
“Everything OK?” a young woman said, passing by, talking on her cell phone.
“Fine,” I said, sounding doubtful.
“So sorry. I can’t—” He was gasping. “Is there a siren behind us?”
There was nothing. Not even a car. Though as soon as the light changed on the next block, a line of cars would be arriving. The young woman stood on the curb frowning. She’d snapped her cell phone shut.
“Joe,” I said, “we don’t want to call an ambulance or have the police drive up, you know? We don’t want a scene outside when your company might be arriving. Joe?”
“It’s good I haven’t passed out. I’ll be fine in a minute. If only that noise . . .”
The girl walked on. A man with his little boy on his shoulders held his son’s ankles and pretended not to notice us. Slowly, inch by inch, Joe started to straighten up. He leaned on me heavily. His eyes were slits. “So sorry,” he said.
“Much better! You see, you’re coming out of it! You can do it, just over to my porch chair. You’re standing up much better, Joe.”
We lurched forward as the first car slowed to a halt. I met the driver’s eyes, and he met mine. I understood from his eyes that he thought Joe was drunk. Just then, Joe took off, a little lopsided, more or less dragging me with him. We made it to the other side. “All right,” he panted, cupping his hands over his ears. “OK, but I don’t think I can make it to the chair.”
“I’ll bring it to you,” I said.
“Yes, please, so sorry, thank you,” he said.
I ran up onto the front porch and folded the wooden chair and carried it to where he stood, sweat running down his face. I’d found the chair curbside, then worried it might have termites, so I’d never taken it inside. Joe sat down and rubbed his hand over his face, then down the leg of his jeans. “So sorry,” he said. His breathing was less frantic, but he stared straight ahead. If he’d been Superman, he would have been looking through the clapboards into the gorgeously swirling tent, where my flowers sat center stage. I stood at his side with my hand on the top of the chair. I felt a little rattled, myself. I no longer seemed able to think beyond the next minute.
Time passed, and he got better. I went in to get him a glass of water. We chatted about his guests’ arrival—how soon they’d be there, that sort of thing. “I was going to sit in the reading room of the library,” he said, tilting his head to look at me.
“Well, when you feel ready, we’ll have some tea, or whatever you’d like.” I tried to sound encouraging, but I wasn’t sure he’d ever make it into the house. I was worried that the famous people would show up and we’d be there, gawking.
We did make it inside, we had tea, and afterward Joe agreed to lie down for a minute to rest. He stretched out on the sofa and fell asleep. He snored a bit. The sun came out from behind the clouds and I thought the light would awaken him, but he threw his hand over his eyes and continued to sleep. As the day went on and it got colder, I considered putting on the space heater, though the thing made an awful crackling noise, and I was afraid it might wake him. I lightly placed the afghan over Joe. I picked up the book I was reading, In Transit by Mavis Gallant. The stories were very involving, though every now and then I’d look up to see if anything was happening across the street. Gradually I let the worry I’d tried to suppress take over: What if they never came at all? Though he did—we did—have the money, at least. What would it matter if Xanadu sat there, unseen? I went on to the next story. I was so engrossed that I forgot about dinner, as I’d forgotten about lunch. To be honest, I might have been reading a bit desperately, as a way not to think about what was—or, more accurately, what was not—going on.
When Joe woke up, we had tomato soup and we moved one of the chairs so we could sit side by side in the dark, watching a bit of late-night TV, trying to pretend to each other that we weren’t watching his house. Not long before midnight, an enormous white shape appeared in front of the windows: a white stretch Humvee limo. We couldn’t have been more surprised if Moby Dick had beached himself. We sucked in our breath. We raced to the window in unison and closed the curtains, then peeked from either side, as if we’d rehearsed this. “There they are!” he said. “My God! They’re here!” I whispered. It was like being a little child looking in on Santa Claus. This was no Santa, though. As I’d read in the tabloids at the checkout line, she was very curvaceous. She had on a long white strapless gown, plunging in the back and looking I don’t know what way in front, because she got out on the side near the curb and I never saw anything but her coxcomb of fancifully upswept hair, her long neck and back. A fur stole was handed out of the car and then, on the same side from which she’d disembarked, with the chauffeur now holding open the door, the husband emerged, quite a bit shorter than his wife, reaching up to place the fur around his wife’s shoulders, though she didn’t stop walking, so instead he carried the stole like a pet. I was trying to remember every detail, as if it had begun happening hours ago: for instance, that she’d gotten out of the limo before the chauffeur had managed to get to her door. “Look for them, they’re in there!” Joe whispered. The chauffeur was reaching around in the mailbox for the keys. He pulled out the day’s mail—hadn’t thought about that as an impediment to finding the key!—then he found the key, we could see that. He and the husband stepped in front of the woman, who had on very high heels, probably as high as they could be made. She took several perfect backward steps, and finally swept up her stole and tossed it over one shoulder. Then they were all three inside and the door was closed. The chauffeur was in there with them. Behind the limo, someone tried to inch past, gave up, and began backing up. The limo glowed brightly under the lamplights. We said nothing. Some people passed by, commenting on the limo. They stopped and stared, but since nothing was going on, their loud voices drifted away as they continued walking. 
The chauffeur came out, closing the door behind him, putting on his cap. He went quickly to the trunk and took out an ice bucket and a stand. “They didn’t say they wanted anything,” Joe whispered, hurt. Our eyes met, but we didn’t want to miss anything. With a bottle of something—champagne?—tucked under his arm, the chauffeur went back in, carrying the ice bucket in its stand. “There’s no ice,” Joe said. “I locked everything but the bathroom.” I shrugged. “Well, you said they didn’t tell you they wanted anything,” I said uneasily. The chauffeur exited in about three minutes. He stood on the porch looking left and right, much the way Joe did at night, and then, removing his cap, he bounced down the stairs and got in the driver’s seat and pulled away, some car honking behind him, a bicyclist, alone, sliding through the narrow space between Humvee and parked cars. Then there was darkness.
“Did you see the height of those heels? You don’t see those down here, unless it’s tourists from New Jersey or drag queens,” I said.
He looked at his watch. “She had a phenomenal ass, if that isn’t too crude to say,” he said. “It’s after midnight. How long do you think they’re going to stay?”
“At least as long as it takes to drink a bottle of champagne.”
“Let’s open the curtains,” Joe said. “They won’t see us if we turn off the TV.”
We did, then continued to sit in the dark. I wondered whether the two of them might be in there all night, and what that would mean in terms of Joe.
Then the big white limo pulled up again, and the chauffeur, putting on his cap, got out and went around to . . . what? He lifted a big bag of ice from the floor. He carried it in the crook of one arm, and I saw how powerful that arm was. He went into the house and was out in another few minutes, in time to move before the car behind him with its pulsing, deafening sound system sounded its horn again.
Joe yawned. I got up and turned on the space heater. I offered him the afghan, but he insisted I have it. I spread it over my legs. I had never known it to be this cold in Key West. She must be freezing, in her low-cut dress. And doing what, inside? They didn’t seem like the types who would get down on the floor, but you never could tell. I wondered if Joe was thinking the same thing.
“Smelling the flowers, drinking champagne, dancing,” Joe said, as if reading my mind. Then: “I hope neither one of them smokes. The ad very specifically said no smoking. I go outside, myself. They’re probably not smokers, though,” he said. “Although a lot of those people are.”
“Did you make it clear that they had to leave at midnight?”
“It was very clear. Confirmed with the secretary.”
“Why do you think they came so late?”
“Those people have no sense of time,” he said.
Wait! The husband was standing on the street, talking on his cell phone. He was hunched over in the wind, hand to his ear, then he was reaching behind him for the hand of the woman descending the stairs, who threw the bottle into the bushes! Good God, it disappeared right into the hibiscus. Joe and I looked at each other. The man and his wife clasped hands as she leaned her head, with its big tower of hair, on his shoulder—having to duck down a bit to do so. The stole was fastened around her collarbones. She bent a bit to kiss him. He slid his hand down her back as their lips locked. He clutched her, but kept looking over her shoulder. Then she stepped out of her shoe and handed it to him. He dropped his cell phone in his jacket pocket and held her shoe. His other hand remained around her waist. She bumped down again and handed him the other shoe, and he tried to give it back, but she put her hands behind her back. The dress had to be satin. Her husband stood there with his funny little pencil mustache, holding the shoes by their heels, searching the street. The limo pulled up and the driver jumped out with another bottle of—I guess—champagne, but the husband put his hand up like a traffic cop and turned and pulled open the back door. His wife’s shiny, amazing ass tipped into the air for a second, then she was in, head first. He tossed her shoes on the floor, rearranged something, and closed the back door. He hopped in the front seat and the limo idled for a minute, then the chauffeur got out, went up the stairs, put the key in the mailbox, returned, and drove away. 
Joe and I were both so tired, we were rubbing our eyes. The question was: could he make it back across the street? Or: would I really prefer that he stay, just in a neighborly way, of course. Or did I simply dread taking the chance and being caught out in the cold again, with Joe unable to take another step? The same thoughts had to be going through his head.
“Your son that you were telling me about earlier? You think he gets scared and can’t continue speaking. Did you mean he suddenly seizes up, or—”
“I don’t know. I guess I don’t want to think he’s drunk or stoned.”
“He could be having panic attacks, you know. It sounds like he’s finding himself in some strange situations—not that the most ordinary thing can’t provoke an attack. I could talk to him. They have a lot of new drugs for that. Not that they’ve done me any good.”
He’s forthcoming, and he’s willing to address my problems, and I like that. Maybe this is it, I thought. How much do I need to go out gallivanting, when I’m happy to take an afternoon nap and am yawning by midnight, even in the midst of a fairy tale? Also, he’s proven he’s no deadbeat. Between us, we’ve just made what used to be my entire year’s salary. You miss out on life for years and years, and then you meet the guy across the street, who thinks you’re a genius, and you’ve got money again, and love . . . well, it was hardly love with Joe, but it was clear that even though this was the last thing I expected, it was the way things did conclude for two citizens of planet Earth, and in spite of all odds, I had a partner. I had a partner on a night when the animals sang and danced in the moonlight, and the old people sat and stared.

Like Nothing Nameable

By GUY DAVENPORT

LOST IN THE FUNHOUSE Fiction for Print, Tape, Live Voice. By John Barth.

n his new and thoroughly confusing work of fiction John Barth seems at first blush to be like a great architect making a batch of doll houses just to show that his virtuosity includes mastery over the elegant trifle and the deft sketch. This, of course, is exactly what we were not expecting from the author of "Giles Goat-Boy" and "The Sot-Weed Factor," the two most wildly rambunctious novels in American literature.
A useful analogy is the story of the Imperial master of cavalry who one day was asked to exhibit his horsemanship to an array of visiting field marshals and kings. Famous as he was for teaching cadets to make a horse to everything short of flying, he chose on this occasion to mount a glossy charger and ride him in a perfect walk before his distinguished and (one hopes) admiring spectators. So Mr. Barth gives us 14 prose designs, none of which is quite like anything for which we have a name handy.
The first is a standard mathematics puzzle that must be snipped from the book, twisted 180 degrees, and joined end-to-end. The result is a Mobius strip: the two sides of the original piece of paper having mysteriously become a single continuous surface, so that the text reads, "ONCE UPON A TIME THERE WAS A STORY THAT BEGAN ONCE UPON A TIME ..." and so on. The last text is about a Bronze Age bard skilled in the tales of his tribe. His patron is Agamemnon, his city Mycenae. The Trojan War breaks out; our bard is then by a fluke stranded on a small island in the Aegean, where for want of something better to do, being without audience, he invents the alphabet so that he can write down an even more astounding invention, namely fiction. Even though he cannot know what is happening at Troy, he can imagine it. From what he knows of the principal characters, he assumes that Clytemnestra strikes in a surprise move, and with Helen, as her cook rules the combined kingdoms of Troy and Hellas with a high hand.
Most of these peculiar exercises are concerned with what happens (as Wittgenstein would say) when a writer writes. He writes for an unseen audience that in turn must read an unseen author. He writes, moreover, in a tradition; that is, with a set of rules. If, for instance, he quotes a character, he places the character's words in double inverted commas; if within that quotation the character speaking quotes another character, the quotation within the quotation is indicated by single inverted commas. A quotation within a quotation within a quotation reverts to double inverted commas, and so on, alternating double and single forever, if anyone were to choose to be so complex.
Mr. Barth chooses to be nearly so complex in a story called "Menelaiad," where at one point the hero Menelaus, husband of Helen of Troy, is telling us what he told Telemachus what he told Helen what he told Proteus what he told Eidothea the sea-nymph. There are details of the story told to Eidothea which he cannot tell to Proteus, just as he does not care to tell Helen all that he told Eidothea, and here he is telling it all to us (to us!) as he told it in Sparta to Telemachus, who, because Helen is listening close by, cannot be told everything, either. Quite literally, one finds oneself reading quotation marks more carefully than one reads the text. And then we discover that it isn't Menelaus we've been listening to ... but here I must send you to the text.
There are stories here about how a story might be written; upon finishing one, have we read a story or merely listened to an author talking about a story? It is not the author who is taking 14 difficult and unusual stances in this curious book; it is rather 14 unfamiliar situation sin which the reader finds himself. That the writer wrote these unclassifiable pieces is from the reader's point of view wholly fortuitous; that we are reading them is a deliberate act, and at one point the writer asks us if we know just what we are doing. The answer is that we don't but we're trying to find out.
The conventions by which we read are ancient; most literate people have mastered them by age 11. Mr. Barth in his four novels has written within these conventions, enriching them with a new vigor. In this new book, which ought to be regarded as a kind of sketchbook, he is trying out alternatives to these conventions. In "Night-Sea Journey" and "Autobiography" he frankly uses modes invented by Samuel Beckett. He is interested in other sketches to test the McLuhan formula that the medium is the message by sinking his matter into prose, that is, for all we can see, simply prose. For the sake of contrast, two of the pieces, "Ambrose His Mark" and "Water-Message," are in traditional modes.
For all his hankering to experiment, Mr. Barth does not change his style, one of the most plastic and delightful in American writing today. Nor finally is he really experimenting with form; almost helplessly he writes a story even when he is squirming like Houdini to transmute form into as strange a permutation as he can. His real interest is in the reader and in the metaphysical plight of imagination engaging with imagination. Critics are so many buzzing flies to a writer: his real critics are his readers, the Caliph to his Scheherezade.
Mr. Barth has served his readers as handsomely as the best of storytellers. Now he chooses to philosophize with us, between novels, and we find that we are on trial. We must not only read, but also think about what we are doing. Literature, Mr. Barth seems to say, is so much tushery if you want to be blunt about it; nevertheless, the world has been in love with it for several millennia, never quite aware of what it is. It is Mr. Barth's privilege to look into the mater, and to make us look too, but he seems to have made himself as uncomfortable as the reader invisibly across from him.