Free The Bend of the World: A Novel by Jacob Bacharach Page A

to be you. It couldn’t have been me.) Sorry, I said; no, no halo. Did it make a sound? Johnny asked. Not as far as I could tell. No humming, no tones? None. Vibration? I didn’t feel any vibration. In other words, Johnny said, it had no visible or audible means of propulsion. Yes, I said, that would be accurate. When you looked underneath it, did you see a slight shimmering? What kind of shimmering?—sorry, sorry!—I know I’m supposed to describe it. A shimmering, Johnny said, like a heat mirage, like you’d see on a highway on a hot day. No shimmering, but I can’t say I looked very closely; is shimmering important? It’s strongly indicative of anti-gravity, Johnny answered. And you say, when it flew away, it tracked a precise vertical path? Precisely. And did it seem to actually fly away, or would you more say that it receded ? I replied, I’m afraid I’m not entirely clear on the distinction. Johnny sighed. Do you remember Stranger in a Strange Land ? Not especially well, no. Is that the one where he fucks his own mom? God, no, never mind. What I am asking is: Did the object appear simply to fly away, albeit on an unusual and physically impossible trajectory, or did it appear rather to fade out, as if perhaps phasing out of our plane of existence? The former, I said. It flew.
    And was this—Johnny forked scrambled eggs into his mouth and chewed for a moment—was this all before, during, or after you made out with the chick?
    You said you didn’t . . . Fuck you. You’re just making fun of me.
    A little.
    I didn’t make out with her. She kissed me.
    I do like that sort of creepy, rapey aspect to the story. It plays well with your puerile Ayn Rand philosophy. It would’ve been rad if she’d taken you right then and there.
    My philosophy isn’t an Ayn Rand philosophy.
    Oh, please. Libertarian . Johnny laughed. Ridiculous. And don’t try to tell me that you’re an anarchist or whatever. You people are worse than Constitution fetishists. The individual. Natural rights . That shit makes me LOL in my pants. I happen to know that you had, and probably still have, hidden away somewhere, every book that Ayn Rand ever wrote. Including the books of you’ll-pardon-the-expression philosophy. The trade paper versions. The ones with the crackpot Albert Speer engravings on the front.
    Fuck you, Johnny. You’re just mad that I saw a flying saucer and you didn’t.
    I am, admittedly, a little regretful, but, eh, you know what they say: miracles are wasted on believers.
    Who says that? I asked.
    They do, Johnny said. I don’t know. Catholics, maybe. It sounds like something they’d say.
    I’m Catholic, I said, and I don’t remember saying that. Or hearing it. It sounds like something you would say.
    Please, you’re Catholic like I’m heterosexual. You were born to them, and they assumed you were one of them until around puberty, when suddenly they began to suspect something.
    No one assumed you were a heterosexual, Johnny.
    True, he said. I was born a butterfly.
    5
    As penance for my failing to come home the night before—Mark and Helen had dropped me off at Johnny’s, and I’d slept on his weirdly grandmotherly couch with his fat tabbies, Anton and LeVay—I’d told Lauren Sara that she could use my car for the day on the condition that she be the one to bus over and retrieve it from Oakland. The Greek had gotten a show at a gallery downtown, and Lauren Sara was going to help her move her paintings. Johnny and I left the diner. Johnny was supposed to meet some people about starting a noise band, and he said he’d walk with me as far as my apartment before heading over to Bloomfield. As usual he was wearing shorts, although it was only forty-five degrees and there was a chilly drizzle. Don’t you ever wear pants? I asked him. You used to wear pants, I think.
    And deprive the world of my magnificent calves? He shrugged. Shorts are more comfortable.
    Yeah, but aren’t you cold?
    I know that your so-called