Free The Good Luck of Right Now by Matthew Quick Page A

table, and then stormed out of the house, slamming the door behind her.
    Father McNamee and I looked at each other.
    Then Wendy stormed back into the house and said, “You will be at that meeting, right, Bartholomew?”
    “What meeting?” Father McNamee said.
    “Bartholomew?” Wendy said, ignoring Father McNamee. “Promise me.”
    “I promise,” I said, but didn’t bring up her end of the deal. I didn’t want Father McNamee to know I was trying to woo The Girlbrarian. I don’t know why.
    “Good,” Wendy said, and then she stormed out once more.
    “She’s feisty,” Father McNamee said.
    He reached up, squeezed my shoulder once, and then went into the living room to continue his praying.
    I had no idea why Wendy didn’t want Father McNamee to live with me, nor did I understand why Father McNamee had asked Wendy to help me and then blatantly disregarded her opinions.
    But I really didn’t want to think about any of that.
    I sat in the kitchen trying to hear the birds, but they just wouldn’t sing on that day.
    Wendy’s perfume lingered.
    Apricot.
    Lemon.
    Ginger.
    What was I going to do next, now that Mom was gone?
    I kept thinking about you, Richard Gere.
    In the biography that Peter Carrick wrote—on page 17, when he is discussing your relationship with Cindy Crawford, Carrick writes, “He [you, Richard Gere] admitted it was hard for him to make decisions and saw the process as something definite rather than transitory, a situation complicated because of his oppressive tendency to over-analyse.”
    When I read that, I knew the you-me of pretending was no accident, because I have always been kept paralyzed by my obsessive thinking, which is why I began playing the you-me Richard Gere game when my mother got sick. When I was you, I didn’t have to think for myself, and this protected me from making mistakes. I wondered if you have ever played such a game, and then it hit me that you are an actor who plays this game all the time, right?
    In his book A Profound Mind , the Dalai Lama writes, “To change our lives we must first acknowledge that our present situation is not satisfactory.”
    It would seem that both Wendy and Father McNamee want me to change my life.
    But I wouldn’t say that I am unsatisfied at all, especially since I have you, Richard Gere, to advise me.
    Your admiring fan,
    Bartholomew Neil

7
    HIS USE OF THE PLURAL PRONOUN MADE ME VERY SUSPICIOUS
    Dear Mr. Richard Gere,
    There was a knock at the front door the other night, and when I answered, Father Hachette was looking up at me through his round glasses, the white of his priest collar illuminated by the porch light. He said, “I know he’s in there.”
    “Who?” I said, because Father McNamee had instructed me to “play dumb” if Father Hachette should come looking for him. The night before, when Father McNamee was very drunk, he called Father Hachette “the one left behind” and “the man with no eyes to see nor ears to hear.”
    “I think you know exactly who I mean,” Father Hachette said.
    “Sorry,” I said, and tried to shut the door.
    “Okay, okay,” Father Hachette said. “Will you at least come outside and speak with me?”
    I hesitated for a second, but couldn’t see the harm in speaking with him, so I went outside.
    “Cigarette?” Father said to me as he lit up.
    “No, thanks.” He knows I don’t smoke.
    We both surveyed the street as he took a few puffs. It was cold, so no one was out on the stoops.
    “Father McNamee is sick, Bartholomew.”
    I immediately pictured the squidlike cancer attacking his brain. But I didn’t say anything, because I knew the probability of knowing two people with brain cancer was unlikely. Still, I couldn’t help having some irrational fear.
    “He has bipolar disorder. Always has. But he went off his meds right around the time your mother passed.”
    “He doesn’t seem sick,” I said.
    “Do you know what bipolar disorder is?” he said, blowing smoke into the