in Los Angeles, a city I know nothing about. The names of certain neighborhoods are familiar from watching TV, but I don't understand what it means to be in Culver City as opposed to, say, Silver Lake or Venice Beach. Someone suggests a destination and I just sort of go along and wait to be surprised.
I thought the Apple Pan would be a restaurant, but it was more like a diner — no tables, just stools arranged along a U-shaped counter. We ordered our hamburgers from a man in a paper hat, and while waiting for them to arrive, Anne pulled out some pictures of her bull terrier. She's a professional photographer, so they were portraits rather than snapshots. Here was the dog peeking out from behind a curtain. Here was the dog sitting human-style in an easy chair, a paw resting on the paunch of his stomach. Gary, I think his name was.
When she's not taking pictures of her dog, Anne flies around the country, on assignment for various magazines. A day earlier she'd returned from Boston, where she photographed a firefighter whose last name is Bastardo. 'That'sbastard with ano on the end,' she said. 'Don't you think that's funny?'
Hugh told her about some neighbors in Normandy whose last name translates to 'hot ass,' but unless you speak French, it's hard to get the joke.
'Is that hyphenated?' Anne asked. 'I mean, did Miss Hot marry Mr. Ass, or is it all one word?'
'One word,' Hugh said.
Thinking the conversation would rest there for a while, I prepared myself to contribute, wary of how easy it is to fall into a game of one-upmanship. If you know a Candy Dick, the other person is bound to know a Harry Dick or a Dick Eader. I'd recently learned of the race-car driver Dick Trickle, but for the time being we were operating on a higher plane, and so I mentioned Bronson Charles, a woman I'd met earlier that week in Texas. Had she been young, I would have wondered, not about her but about her parents, who obviously thought they were being clever. But Bronson Charles was in her seventies and had married into the last name. It wasn't funny, just odd — the well-bred matron and the action hero, their sexes, names, and natures reversed. It was like meeting a timid man named Taylor Elizabeth.
Anne and Hugh met in college, and when our hamburgers arrived they reminisced about some of the people they had gone to school with. 'What was that guy's name? I think he was in the Art Department, Mike, maybe, or Mark. He used to go out with Karen, I think her name was. Or Kimberly. You know who I mean.'
Talk like this can go on for hours, and while you do have to accept it, you don't have to actually pay attention. I stared straight ahead, watching a broken-nosed cook top a hamburger with cheese, and then I turned slightly to my left and began listening to the two men seated on the other side of me. There was about them the weariness of people who could not afford to retire and would keep on toiling, horse-like, until they dropped. The man beside me wore a T-shirt endorsing the state of Florida, and as if the weather were completely different on the other side of the ketchup bottle, the man beside him wore a thick wool sweater and heavy corduroy pants. A coat rested in his lap, and before him, on the counter, sat a newspaper and an empty cup of coffee. 'Did you read about those worms?' he asked.
He was referring to the can of nematodes — tiny worms — recently discovered on the Texas plains. They'd been sent up with the doomed space shuttle and had somehow managed to survive the explosion, the cause of which was still a mystery. The man in the sweater massaged his chin and stared into space. 'I've been thinking we could solve this problem in no time,' he said. 'If only… if only we could get the damned things to talk.'
It sounded crazy but I remember thinking the same thing about the Akita in the O. J. Simpson case. 'Put it on the stand. Let's hear what it's got to say.' It was one of those ideas that, just for a second, seemed entirely logical, the one solution that nobody else had thought of.
The man in the T-shirt considered the possibility. 'Well,' he said, 'even if the wormscould talk, it wouldn't do much good. They was in that can, remember?'
'I guess you're right.'
The men stood to pay their bills, and before they reached the door their stools were taken by two people who did not know each other. One was a man dressed in a fine suit, and the other a young woman who sat down and immediately started reading what looked to be a script. Over on my right Hugh had decided that rather than Karen or Kimberly, their classmate had been named Katherine. While I'd been listening to my neighbors, Anne had ordered me a slice of pie, and as I picked up my fork she told me that I was supposed to eat it backward, starting with the outer crust and working my way inward. 'Your last bite should be the point, and you're supposed to make a wish on it,' she said. 'Hasn't anyone ever told you that?'
'Come again?'
She looked at me the way you might at someone who regularly tosses money into the fire. The senselessness! The waste! 'Well, better late than never,' she said, and repositioned my plate.
As Anne and Hugh resumed their conversation, I thought of all the pie I had eaten during the course of my life, and wondered how different things might be if only I had wished upon the points. To begin with, I would not be seated at the Apple Pan, that much was certain. Had I gotten my wish at the age of eight, I would still be rounding up mummies in Egypt, luring them from their tombs and trapping them in heavy iron cages. All subsequent wishes would have been based upon the life I had already established: a new set of boots, a finer whip, greater command of the mummy language. That's the problem with wishes, they ensnare you. In fairy tales they're nothing but trouble, magnifying the greed and vanity of the person for whom they are granted. One's best bet — and the moral to all those stories — is to be unselfish and make your wish for the benefit of others, trusting that their happiness will make you happy as well. It's a nice idea but would definitely take some getting used to.
Since we'd entered, the Apple Pan had grown progressively busier. All the seats were now taken, and people leaned against the wall, their eyes moving from stool to stool, determining which customers should pay up and get out. Looking around, I saw that we were the likeliest candidates. The man in the paper hat had removed our hamburger wrappers, and all that remained was a single plate, supporting the tip of my pie. I wished that the people against the wall would stop staring at us, and then quickly, but not quick enough, I tried to take it back.
'I guess we should get going,' Hugh said, and he and Anne pulled out their wallets. There was a little struggle over who would pay — 'It's my treat,' 'No, it's mine' — but I stayed out of it, thinking of what might have been had I not wasted my wish. A laboratory filled with sensitive equipment. Men in white coats, trembling with hope and wonder as they lean forward, catching the sound of one small voice. 'Come to think of it,' the worm says, 'Ido remember seeing something suspicious.'
Chicken in the Henhouse
IT WAS ONE OF THOSE HOTELS without room service, the type you wouldn't mind if you were paying your own bill but would complain about if someone else was paying. I was not paying my own bill, and so the deficiencies stuck out and were taken as evidence of my host's indifference. There was no tub, just a plastic shower stall, and the soap was brittle and smelled like dishwashing detergent. The bedside lamp was missing a bulb, but that could have been remedied easily enough. I could have asked for one at the front desk, but I didn't want a lightbulb. I just wanted to feel put-upon.
It started when the airline lost my luggage. Time was lost filling out forms, and I'd had to go directly from the airport to a college an hour north of Manchester, where I gave a talk to a group of students. Then there was a reception and a forty-five-minute drive to the hotel, which was out in the middle of nowhere. I arrived at oneA.M. and found they had booked me into a basement room. Late at night it didn't much matter, but in the morning it did. To open the curtains was to invite scrutiny, and the people of New Hampshire stared in without a hint of shame. There wasn't much to look at, just me, sitting on the edge of the bed with a phone to my ear. The airline had sworn my suitcase would arrive overnight, and when it didn't, I called the 800 number printed on the inside of my ticket jacket. My choices were either to speak to a machine or to wait for an available human. I chose the human, and after eight minutes on hold I hung up and started looking for someone to blame.
'I don't care if it's my son, my congressman, what have you. I just don't approve of that lifestyle.' The speaker was a woman named Audrey who'd called the local talk-radio station to offer her opinion. The Catholic Church scandal had been front-page news for over a week, and when the priest angle had been exhausted, the discussion filtered down to pedophilia in general and then, homosexual pedophilia, which was commonly agreed to
