The
Widening Gyre
By Adrian Cole
Something momentous seemed to be happening. As is the
case with political events, one could never be sure. You look out on the
streets and see people going about their business, children in playgrounds,
pigeons on roof-tops, and things seem to be the same, always. But as Marcus
Thompson drove through town to get his car fixed the radio was revealing a
world of electoral upheaval; people around the nation were pouring out of their
homes to vote, and their votes were upsetting the apple cart, threatening the
status-quo, changing the balance of power. The country was increasingly
polarized between liberals and conservatives, the issues coming down to basic
questions which seemed to be decided by voters' temperament more than by
informed political judgment.
It had occurred
to Marcus at an early age that the more liberal a person, the nicer they were.
As a student he had felt that it would be impossible for him to date a
Republican—that particular political choice would entail all sorts of
ramifications for a person’s basic view of themselves and others, would suggest
greed, meanness of spirit, lack of compassion, and a fear of others. In order to be intimate with someone it was
essential that they exhibit the kind of baseline humanity that does not
criticize or criminalize weakness, or poverty, or for that matter idleness. He
had considered himself fairly idle, and was in favor of a reasonable degree of
idleness, as a cultural trait, because he believed that it enhanced consciousness
in its widest application—the idle mind at rest is left to contemplate itself
uninhibited.
As he drove he scrutinized the sights outside the car
window and wondered whether the excitement issuing from the radio was felt by
the people on the sidewalk. Was it
affecting them? Or was all of this taking place on television, on the radio, in
the media, in
Marcus was aware that his day-to-day experience was
limited; he worked on-site at the university, rarely needing to venture out of
town, except for conferences (where he sat inside with hundreds of people like
him) or on vacation (where he sat around with his family in the beauty of
nature). He could be forgiven, therefore, for thinking that most people thought
like him, or at least acted out of easily recognizable human instincts and
motivations which were, to a greater or lesser degree, benign. But being an academic meant that he did not
harbor that illusion fully. He knew that human motivations were often darker
and less pure than one might think from within the academy. He had learnt this,
however, mostly from books, which described the drama of everyday experience in
a broad variety of human social habitats. Ranging widely in the fields of
English Literature, Marcus well understood the psychological landscape of fear,
jealousy, anger, desire, loss, and even to some extent anomie. He
understood these emotions mostly through his association of them with one
literary figure or another: a little Mrs Dalloway here, a hint of the Tyrone
family there, some Soames Forsyte on occasion, and even, from time to time a
Kurtz in the closet, (or as he had joked once to his wife in an email from a
conference he was attending in Switzerland, a Kurtz in the kloset ). But
he always felt that he had to look hard to see any of these archetypes in his
social circles, as if the literary world had the benefit of distilling these
characters and characteristics and presenting them from certain points of view
which rendered them more easily visible than real-life characters who usually
hid their natures under endless layers of deceit, subterfuge and disguise.
Marcus passed Armando’s Pizza; he often dropped in here
for a slice of Sicilian at lunch, barring a faculty meeting or one of the
department’s endless “brown bag” seminars at which he was obliged to put in
appearances for the sake of his career.
He wondered if big old Armando would agree with him about the politics
of the day. On his visits he had often engaged Armando in light conversation,
usually about sports, sometimes about the weather, rarely had they touched on
politics. Where would his loyalties lie?
It was most likely, he thought, that he was primarily concerned that people
like his pizza, that it be “the best in town,” as proudly advertised. But maybe this was the problem with the
entire system of democratic capitalism, Marcus thought: people are too busy
making a living to wonder about politics, or even to take the time to
understand the issues, so they have to make weighty decisions out of gut feelings,
instinct—ultimately out of prejudice. Marcus continued to think about how these
divisive issues played themselves out as he pulled into the gas station. He
didn't know whether they had a good mechanic or not, but their service was
always friendly so he had decided to check them out now that his car needed
some health care.
This was his first encounter with Al. He wore a heavy
brown winter jacket and a delicate pair of silver-rimmed glasses and spoke with
an accent that Marcus couldn't quite place, although it was certainly not
local. It was a hard, stunted accent, with a sharp edge to it, some up-state
He left his car with Al, agreeing to get back to him
later for an estimate. He returned a few
days later, and listened while Al quoted for parts and labor, nodding
enthusiastically in pseudo-comprehension as he described the problem and
proposed the solution. Marcus had a vague idea of what Al was explaining, like
someone listening to a foreign language and able to discern, from time to time,
a word from amongst the torrent of alien sounds. But more importantly Marcus
knew that this was an exercise in discourse, a question of adopting the right
tone, of conveying a sense of expertise and certainty. From time to time Marcus
added a few of his own pertinent insights to give the impression that he was
not a completely gullible layman (which he was). In the absence of any concrete
understanding, and hence power, Marcus felt it important to convey the
appearance of comprehension, and for this one had to rely on illusion. He
sometimes prided himself on being able to recognize the landscape of a subject
without necessarily naming the individual plants growing on it. He occasionally
told his students this: If you can't
master the art, at least master the art of appearing to have mastered the art.
Many of them did remarkably well in applying the theory to their term papers,
and Marcus gave high marks for imaginative (or at least consistent) bluff.
As he left the garage Marcus thought about Al; he seemed
to be running a tight little operation there, but he had a worried and somehow
unhappy aspect. Anxiety hovered about his face, not an energetic kind of
anxiety, but an anxiety which rendered him lethargic and morose. Was it fear, perhaps? Fear that someone was going to question his
very right to live? It was as if he had to make a huge effort to concentrate on
his job, as if he was only momentarily manning this gas station, and at any
time he might be called back to his other duties, whatever they were. For no
apparent reason Marcus attributed Al’s moodiness to some kind of trouble at
home: wife and kids, perhaps—up all night with a new baby; Teenager worries, or
marital struggles. This seemed to fit the profile—an early middle-aged man with
his own small business, no doubt it was a struggle to turn a profit in an
owner-operated business in this parched economy. Marcus assumed that Al’s worries
came from responsibilities which were pressing on him, as they do on a man who
makes himself the center of something like a family or a business.
Al relied on his sidekick, George, for much of his
mechanical information about what was going on inside the shop. George, Marcus
figured, was his head mechanic. He was short and chubby with a cherubic smile.
He was Arab, like the three other mechanics in the shop—Lebanese, Marcus
surmised based on the fact that he had noticed other Lebanese at a gas station
up the road and thought there might be a settling pattern here. In comparison to Al, George was much livelier
and generally more cheerful. He wore a set of blue overalls with his name
pinned onto the left breast, in classic mechanic style. He spoke meticulous
English, the only giveaway was the pronounced roll of his "r" which
he did with tongue-twisting regularity. He also was in the habit of saying
“guy” instead of “man,” so that when you walked into the shop he would greet
you with: “Hey, guy! You wanna know what's up with yourrr carr, rright?”
Fall was settling into winter. The trees which had been
so brilliantly illuminated by their dying foliage were becoming bare quickly;
with every rainfall the ground would be covered with a pulpy brown matter, decaying.
Marcus took his car to Al's a couple of times—it wasn't in good condition. It,
too, was on its last legs.
“When does it
stop?” Marcus asked Al one day, with a philosophical tone, opening a dialogue
beyond the usual practicalities, “this
spending of money on old cars?” It was a general question pointing to a
universal problem with cars: the problem of knowing when to cut one's losses
and recognize a lemon for a lemon. Marcus was trying to make conversation and
inviting Al to join him in meditating on this problem. He took the bait in the
way it was offered, and gratifyingly pushed his glasses up onto his forehead,
rubbing his eyes as if he was taking off a mask and revealing something.
“Well,” he said. “Its the more complicated ones which
usually cause problems. I've got an Audi, for instance, a regular four-door
sedan, no Turbo, no nothin'. Had it six years and it never gives me no trouble.
But I treat it real good and I'll probably drive it another hun'red thou.” His
face was characteristically expressionless.
Marcus felt an absurd and unwarranted sensation of warmness, of
closeness, even, as if they were laying down their public selves, forgetting
their patient\client arrangement and meeting on common ground, as if this
exchange of simple ideas had some primal power to unite.
“I guess its the law of diminishing returns, tho', isn't
it?” Al continued. “After you've spent a certain amount you've got to recognize
you're not getting anythin’ back...” He
laid his hands on the counter. They weren't covered in oil, but there was dirt
under the nails; large hands, mechanics hands, the fingers somewhat stubby.
“You gotta get rid of a car when it starts acting like a
sieve. If you start with a sound engine then your costs are gonna be low.” They
discussed the pros and cons of foreign and domestic cars; Al mentioned the
benefits of turbos for torque, but the cost in terms of maintenance. Marcus
asked what, exactly, “torque” was, since it was something he have never
understood, among many other things mechanical. Al launched into what was, for
him, a long disquisition on torque which didn't make much sense to Marcus,
although he managed to hide that fact from Al.
Marcus paid his bill and left. Driving away this time he imagined Al
cramming his family into his large, safe, well-maintained German car with no
particular torque, but lots of security, and going on holiday, the kids
fighting in the back seat. Al would have a resigned and paternal expression on
his face as he put up with the clamor from the back seat, occasionally turning
his head to say “cut it out, guys,” or some such half-hearted attempt at
discipline.
Eventually Marcus came to accept the fact that he needed
to swap his car for something more dependable. His wife wasn't happy driving
it, knowing that there was a good chance it would sooner or later break down,
irreparably. She seemed to feel that they were doing well enough to invest in
something a little less old. After all, transportation was important to both of
them in their jobs, why not put some money into it and have one less thing to
worry about? His professorship, although not tenured, provided reasonably well
but not enough to be throwing money away on pieces of machinery. He found a
used VW with low mileage and took it to Al's one day for him to look over. The
thought of buying a used car filled Marcus with a vague sense of unease; the
notion of the powerlessness of the consumer in that transaction—having no way
to gauge what you are getting. For this reason he wanted Al to check it out
before he made an offer. Although he could not say that he knew Al well, he had
an instinctual feeling that he would give him an objective opinion—something
about Al’s sanguine manner made him draw this conclusion; as if untrustworthy
people know they are untrustworthy and are therefore jumpy all the time,
trying, neurotically, to appear to everyone as sure-fire. Give me a lugubrious
Brutus over a high-strung Cassius any day, thought Marcus. Al's low key spirit suggested he just didn't
care enough to rip someone off.
He found Al outside the office with his glasses
characteristically pushed up on his forehead, peering at the taillight of a
Mustang, as if contemplating a complex issue like torque. In his hands were a
couple of bulbs and the box they came from.
“Wow!” he said as Marcus stepped out of VW, the
price still painted across the windshield in lurid green figures. “How about
that!?” At first Marcus thought he was expressing excitement at the car, which
was considerably younger than his old one and had a fairly modern design, but
he soon realized with dismay that Al was referring to the sticker price. Al had
the car pulled into a bay and a mechanic put it up on the lift to examine the
underside. George came out of the office wearing a running suit, looking
harried.
“You haven't
bought it alrrready, have you, guy?" he said anxiously. Marcus felt as if
he had the experts on his side, about to uncover the dirt of a used car
dealer. George rolled up his sleeves.
Al's gang was going to get to the bottom of this. Marcus had always envied
empirical science’s ability to work in a pristine world without shadows,
without dark, murky areas of subjectivity, to work (within some broadly
accepted rules) towards a discovery that is finite—in this case that such and
such is wrong with this car. As members of English departments around the world
were well aware, however, larger issues were at work which suggested that none
of the so called “Earth Sciences” are any more objective than their own vague
maunderings on the nature of meaning or language, that the hard sciences are
full of drop holes and terminal flaws that would cause the scientific baby to
be thrown out with the theoretical bath water. The most important of these was
the debate over the very existence of one monolithic reality “out there”
waiting to be discovered by those of us whose antennae are correctly tuned-in
to the right wavelength. We are all, Marcus believed, scientists and artists
alike, Hamlets of one kind or another, scratching our heads and pulling out our
hair over whether or not we are floundering around in the right paradigm. But
watching George go to work examining the hard facts gave him a strong sense of
vicarious satisfaction. Another Lebanese mechanic started to take the wheels
off, following instructions from George. They examined the brake shoes, pads,
calipers and rotors. The two of them scrutinized the sump, the steering rack,
the big end, suspension arms, shocks and struts. They pulled and tapped on
brake cables. They ran their hands along exhaust manifold, catalytic converter
and muffler. They searched for signs of structural rust. Then they looked at
the engine itself, testing hoses, pushing on belts, staring at the rocker
shaft, cylinder head, alternator; running their fingers over gaskets and seals,
looking for signs of oil leaks, indications of wear. They quickly drew up a list of defects and
problems. Al came and stood to the side
with Marcus, watching the other two scurrying around.
“I can't believe they're asking $4000 for this!” he said
with a seen-it-all-before ennui. “Its in real bad condition.” He pointed to a
large dent in the driver's door.
“I'll let you have my
car for $2500!” Marcus remembered Al talking about his car.
“Really?” he
said, jumping on Al’s suggestion. “Well,
yeah, I might just be interested in that.” They wrapped up the inspection, and
George gave Marcus the list of defects and a possible breakdown of repair
costs. It looked like a hopeless cause, the list of repairs totaling over
$1,300.
Before he left the garage, Marcus asked Al about his car
again, and thought that he looked a bit hesitant in the face of his immediate
interest.
“Yeah,” said Al.
“I bought it new for $16,000. I was making more money back then, of course. At
the time I was working for Audi, so I knew what I was getting into.” Marcus
told him he would really like to have a look at it. He would rather buy a car
from someone he knew somewhat, and he wanted to buy something soon.
“Tell you what,”
said Al. “If you want, why don't you come and have a look at it sometime.” Marcus considered the benefits: A one-owner car, maintained by a mechanic!
What could be better?
“Its parked just down the street outside my house. I
would give you the keys but I think there's a car behind it in the driveway.”
Marcus nodded sympathetically.
“Your wife’s...?” he asked.
Al paused. “Er, no that's the landlady's.”
Marcus returned the car to the used car lot where he had
found it and gave the keys to the downcast dealer, announcing that he was no
longer interested. It felt good to have the information to make such a
decision, an informed decision. As he drove home he remembered what Al had
said about his car: He was surprised that Al had a landlady; he would have
thought that he owned his own house. A landlady. Maybe he didn't even have a
wife at all! Perhaps he had just imagined this, built up a fantasy life for
him. Perhaps it was not his wife and family which explained his exhausted
morose attitude, but the very absence of those things. On his way home he stopped outside Al’s
house, following the directions he had been given. Sure enough there was a
seventies’ station wagon blocking Al’s big black Audi. The house itself was a typical
It turned out that both Marcus and Al were busy all the
way up until Thanksgiving. Finally, the only solution they could come up with
was a quick test-drive on Thanksgiving Day itself. Al told Marcus to call him
some time after two, he would be done with his meal and ready by then. Marcus
was not so sure he could get away; his house was in turmoil. His sister and her
husband were staying with their three-year-old, and they had invited a couple
of foreign lecturers from the department over; cooking was going to take all
day. His wife made a half-hearted
attempt to stop him, but realizing that they needed a car agreed in the end
that this was an important mission and that she could take on the vegetable preparations
herself. By
He drove across town. The streets were empty and the
trees bare, and the November light was clear and pallid, making the naked trees
look ethereal. The road had that white look which always comes in winter, not
snow or frost, just a cold pallor coating the surface of the black-top. On the
radio there was some quiet, sleepy, interminable classical music, as if the
disc jockey had put on some long playing CD and taken his leave to eat turkey.
He pulled up next to Al's driveway and walked up to the door to the downstairs
apartment. There was some muffled commotion inside and after a few minutes Al
opened the door, and without a greeting withdrew inside again. The interior was
dark, with no artificial lights, the only illumination was from a couple of
poorly positioned windows. Marcus pushed
the door open further and called, “Hi, Al.” Al reappeared immediately,
shrugging on his brown winter jacket, and muttered “how you doin'?”
Marcus had advanced a few feet into the apartment. He
could see that it was sparsely furnished, and had the distinct air of a
bachelor’s neglect. The walls were bare and there were no rugs on the wooden
floors. There was a pile of men's outdoor paraphernalia lying by the front
door: boots, a bike tire, jackets and some heavy gloves. Immediately Marcus
realized that his image of Al as a family man had been radically mistaken. It
looked like he lived alone, or maybe with a roommate. And his living quarters
were like a student's, a poor graduate student's. If he thought that it was
family life which somehow explained Al’s peculiarly phlegmatic character,
Marcus would have to think again.
They went out to the car and Al gave Marcus the keys.
Once they were driving on the empty thanksgiving roads, Al started telling him
about the car. His tone was dead pan, tired even, and it seemed to Marcus that
he was pushing the sell a little hard, in an anxious, humorless way, especially
seeing as it was Marcus who had urged him to show him the car in the first
place, after his apparently casual suggestion that Marcus buy it. It dawned on him
that Al really did want him to buy this car. Badly. Marcus’ desire for the car
began to ebb in direct relation to Al’s increasingly obvious desire to sell it
to him. If he had only maintained his
devil-may-care attitude, Marcus would have remained the avid buyer he had been
up to this point, but something had changed in their relationship, the
easy-going nature of the transaction had vanished. Al's former lagubriousness
had almost dignified him, but now there was something else afoot, now there was
a desperation about him. Bearing in mind how Marcus’ car-buyer strategy relied
almost wholly on the good character of the seller, this change in Al posed a
major obstacle for the deal.
They soon exhausted conversation about the car. After a
few moments of silence Marcus asked how long he had worked with George; he had
a sneaking suspicion that was about to be confirmed. George had hired him about
six months previously, to man the front office. He had been in computers before
this, but his company had suffered a round of lay-offs and he needed something
to fill the gap until another opportunity came around, something more promising
than his current employment. This came as no surprise. Marcus now had a rapidly
changing picture of Al. Although the work was easy and reasonably flexible, he
didn't like working with the Lebanese, “The guys can't even speak English.” To
make it worse, the place was owned by some Lebanese fat cat who would turn up
from time to time in his brand new Mercedes. Al didn't like this guy. He would
come in and behave as if he owned a fancy nightclub, not a corner garage with
the sum total of two gas pumps and four employees.
“He's real
interesting, though, I'll give him that. He comes up with all these stories,
like, of life in
They arrived back at his house.
“You wanna glass of wine or somethin'?” Al offered as he
locked the car. It seemed as if he was warming up. Marcus hesitated, thinking
of making an excuse based on his family's demands, but for some reason he
brushed this off and accepted; it didn't feel right to bring up family when it
was so patently obvious that such demands on Al’s time were entirely absent.
They entered the apartment again. On the wall above the fireplace Marcus
noticed a large American Flag. They went into the kitchen and sat at the round
Formica-topped table on top of which was a copy of Time magazine. Al produced a
coffee mug and a bottle of white wine. He peered through the dark glass and was
confused and somewhat annoyed to find that it was, in fact, empty.
“Damn, that's odd, I could have sworn that there was
some left. Maybe my roommate drank it.
Do you want a beer instead?” Marcus told him that anything would be
fine. He produced two cans of beer and awkwardly presented one to Marcus, with
a certain stiff formality, as if not used to being a host. It was clear that he
was eager to talk, his somnolence was changing into agitation. Marcus asked him
about his roommate.
“Polish” Al said, pulling on his beer. “He's a graduate
student in engineering. He's o.k. tho', I don't see a whole helluva lot of him.
We have some pretty interesting discussions, believe me. I think he's one of
those European lefties... you know?” Marcus nodded his head, trying to appear
sympathetic. “I tell him why America is the way it is—you know, because of the lax immigration rules and the
flood of illegals into this country—and he gives me some Marxist crap that
makes it sound like we're a charity and we should be letting any Joe in.”
Marcus sat nodding his head still, ever more
energetically, as if the more virulent Al became, the more important it was
that he appear in agreement, ideologically. Looking around the kitchen as he
spoke he observed the packets of dried cereal and the empty milk cartons on the
draining board. There seemed to be a total lack of aesthetic sense about the
room, two men living in unadorned utilitarianism.
“I think we should be taking in people like him,” Al was
saying, “because—apart from his idiotic
political ideas—he's a good scientist and a hard worker and we need people like
that. But when you get a bunch of ill-educated Mexicans who want to breed like
rabbits and sponge off of our tax dollars, no way!” At this point Al paused and
looked at Marcus through his glasses. Marcus felt prodded to respond.
“Exactly.” He paused to see if this would suffice, if he
could through silence, achieve more than with an expansive barrage of words. It
was clear that he could not, however, and he continued against his better
judgment. “Actually, although you are quite right, there are some Americans who
are guilty of that too...” Marcus realized that Al might not take too kindly to
such an idea, but to his relief was quickly disproved.
“Exactly,” said Al.
“That's the problem, see, even our own can't be trusted not to abuse the
system anymore. I'm tired of the welfare
queens who just wanna go on having babies to get money, and all those other
losers who mooch off of government support.”
He offered Marcus a cigarette, and to his mild surprise, Marcus found
himself accepting and as he lit it, Al sat back in his cheap kitchen chair and
opened a can of Budweiser. Marcus did the same, and felt the warm watery liquid
sliding down his throat and resting uncomfortably in his stomach, which he had
been hoping to keep pristine for his gourmet experience later. It seemed as if
with every sip he was drifting, and the house with him, away from the “norm” of
his own house, his family and his very life, onto a rising flood where there
was nothing but barrenness and isolation.
He sat at the table and listened to Al’s opinions for the better part of
three-quarters of an hour. And slowly he came to understand what it was that
underpinned Al’s entire world-view: he had no doubts. Or more exactly, he had
so much doubt that he had, by some superhuman force of will, quashed it all,
eradicated the possibility of doubt in order to have a clear picture of the
world with no lingering shadows, no watery boundaries, no abstruse
ambiguity.
“You know, things have gotten so bad, I don't know if
American will ever recover itself, everybody selling out to the gays, the
African Americans, the abused children and all that lot.” Al continued, opening
his third can of Bud. “There's a poem by
the Irishman W.B. Yeats, maybe you know it: Second Coming it’s called, I
think.” He jumped up and ran out of the room, re-appearing a few minutes later
with a battered copy of the Norton Anthology of Poetry, just like all the old
editions that Marcus’ students bought every year.
“Here it is, listen to this line: Things Fall Apart, The center cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon
the world,/The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere/The ceremony of
innocence is drowned. He lifted his
head triumphantly as if he was a prophet reading from Revelations, Marcus
thought, and thumped the book down on the table.
“You see,” he
said. “He had it right! We've let things go too far, and we're fast loosing
control. What we need is a return to a more austere, more simple past, where
black is black and white is white. We need to return to old tried and tested
values, they worked before why shouldn't they work again?” Al stood up to make
his point, his voice rising in crescendo as he arrived at the climax of his
argument. The insipid Budweiser was sloshing around in Marcus’ belly; he had
refused a third one, although he had not had the wherewithal to refuse a
second. He nodded, frowning, then felt
like laughing out loud as the pathetic irony of the situation dawned on him: it
was Al, himself, that was the blood-dimmed; it was Al who was drowning the
ceremony of innocence, it was Al who represented mere anarchy, how could he not
see it?
The truth was that these cherished values of Al’s had
not worked so wonderfully, but had been merely an ideology of a minority ruling
class, manipulative illusions cherished by the few and forced upon the many to
create a vast, unfathomable condition of loss, longing and desire, presented
always as a god-given situation, the default setting for the human condition.
How one cherishes the past even though it almost always entailed great
suffering, and great injustice, and how we think that our problems, whatever
their nature, can be solved by recourse to a better time when the summer’s were
milder, when the winters were whiter and where the world spun in a harmonious
circuit, all beings reconciled to their place, each one receiving exactly what
they needed, no more perhaps, but no less either, and thus was society
balanced. Marcus opened his mouth.
“I know! I
suppose you're right. We seem to have come along way from good old family
allegiances. Our society is certainly torn in two by racism, bigotry, prejudice
and violence, as if something has gone haywire.”
Al seemed delighted by what he took to be Marcus’
agreement.
“Right!” He
said. “You know, if I had my way I'd be
down there on the Mexican border with a platoon of marines. It is war we are talking about, they are
invading our land like a virus attacking a body! No economy and society can
survive if it is attacked from outside like this! If they're waging economic
war on us we should fight back, its simple self defense.”
Marcus forced himself to rise, with every intention of
leaving as soon as possible. The inside
of the kitchen was dark, and it was getting darker outside. Al's features were
becoming obscured from lack of light, but his face had a look of innocence on
it, like a little boy struggling to understand his parents' divorce. The gray
light from the window reflected occasionally off his glasses when he moved into
its trajectory, and the flag on the mantle behind him dimming into deeper red.
Marcus got into his car and left Al standing in the
doorway in his socks and his sweatshirt. Before he had stepped off the porch he
had shaken Al’s hand and told him he would think about the car. Al had looked
earnestly into Marcus’ face and said, “You know, it was really great talking to
you. Any time you want, just come over and we can shoot the breeze, you're
always welcome.” And Marcus had been reeling as he shut his car door, reeling
that he could have seemed so affable to him, reeling that he could have let
that psychopath get away it, without slapping him around the mouth and standing
up for what he believe in. And as he shifted into third gear, he realized that
Al had stopped reciting The Second Coming just before the critical line,
the one which had stuck with him since he had first stumbled across it in
fifteen, sixteen years ago in college: “The best lack all conviction, while
the worst are full of passionate intensity.”
He thought of Al’s solid German car and his non-existent
family, and of George, his boss, probably enjoying Thanksgiving now with his
family,