Free The Enthusiast by Charlie Haas Page A

animals’ philosophy was?”
    â€œTheir philosophy? No.”
    â€œYeah. You watched them all day, and then you said all the animals had the same philosophy. It was ‘I think I’ll go over here for a while.’”
    Another pause. “How old were we?”
    â€œI don’t know,” I said. “Young.”
    Â 
    I took the bus back to Wellfleet, and in the morning I went to Cerise’s house to show her the photos of Wendy’s new throws. “This one is a social worker from the county,” I said. “This one—”
    â€œOh my God.”
    â€œThat’s her friend’s daughter. She was ten.”
    â€œIs she okay? Wendy?”
    â€œI couldn’t really tell.”
    â€œWell. We can send her a little money.” She squinted at a picture. “How is she doing this? It’s very fine yarn, but still.”
    â€œIs there something we can put in instead?”
    She nodded. “I have some penguins I can move up.”
    That night Rensselaer called me at my motel and said he was quitting. I said, “How’s Arnold taking it?”
    â€œReally well. I said I’d stay long enough to finish the issue and he said to stay the fuck out of the building.”
    I told Rensselaer I’d been thinking of quitting too. “It’s up to you,” he said. “I think he’s bringing a guy in from Nine-Hole Golfer . I feel bad about this, but, yeah, you might want to push on.”
    â€œDo you know where you’re going?”
    â€œA daily paper in Ellis. The, hold on, ‘The Award-Nominated Voice of the Tri-County Valley.’ I’ll be doing state politics.”
    â€œThat sounds good.”
    â€œYeah. If you want, there’s a guy I can talk to at Ultra Running . It’s in Nevada.”
    The next day I told Cerise I was quitting and asked if I could leave her the negatives of Wendy Probst’s throws and keep the prints. She said okay. I took a bus back to Clayton and walked into the office at 4:00 P.M. The receptionist looked alarmed and said, “Henry, you don’t want to go—”
    It was too late. Dobey came out of the inner office with a half-crumpled page proof in his hand and yelled, “You little shit! You have the nerve to come back here?”
    â€œWhat?” I said. “Wait, what—”
    He backed me toward the door, holding up the proof of the L.A. story. The noun motherfucker jumped out. I’d somehow put the unedited Chief Boy R.D. interview into type.
    â€œThis was on plates !” he said, backing me into the hall. “The press was turned on! The truck was waiting!”
    â€œIt was a mistake,” I said. “On the computer. I sent the wrong—”
    â€œI know what you did! Let’s take what Arnold built up from printing eviction notices and piss it away! It’ll be funny !”
    â€œNo. I’m sorry. It was—”
    â€œI live here! I have to walk down the street here!”
    I almost fell down the stairs, but I caught the railing and held on to it while he told me never to show my face there again. He did such a good job of yelling that he became the hectoring voice in my head for years to come—not Dad or Barney or Freddy Krueger, from my childhood, but the Popeye whose smeary invitations were the third choice of wedding planners even in Clayton.
    When he finally went back to his office, I went outside and sat on a bus bench. Jillian found me there and said, “We would have caught it. He swooped in and read it first.”
    â€œHi,” I said.
    â€œHow long are you in town for?”
    â€œI’m not sure yet. I have to find a job.”
    â€œYou can stay at Megan’s a few days. She’s in Kenya.”
    We went to the bottomless-pasta place on Meader with the five friends, but I was too shaken by Dobey to eat, and it took Scott and Jeff to beat the house edge. Megan’s apartment was filled with foreign