Free The Enthusiast by Charlie Haas Page B

fashion magazines and watercolors of her dress designs. I fed her cats, Housebrand and Co-Pay, and then opened the closet to hang up my jacket.
    Masking-taped to the inside of the door were ten Polaroids of Jillian modeling clothes Megan had made. It was a designer’s portfolio, ranging from benefit-dinner dresses to I’m-dinner lingerie. A lot of women, posing in the latter, would have looked down with a bashful grin or affected homicidal ennui like the pros, but Jillian’s face, a clear sky, said, “Sex, I know. We’re so lucky to have bodies that can do this.” The pictures in the dresses said she didn’t need a tertiary town at all, that she could move to New York or L.A. and be in charge there in a week. I got my camera out, took a picture of each picture, jerked off in the shower, got yelled at by Dobey for it, and tried to sleep.
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    R ensselaer called his friend at Ultra Running and faxed him my spring break and low buggier stories. They hired me at a lower salary than I’d been making at Kite Buggy but promised me first dibs on review shoes in my size.
    The day before I left town I called Steve and asked him tomeet me for dinner at the Hotel Clayton. He said yes, though he sounded wary. I was a little nervous myself. We’d been avoiding each other since I’d walked in on him and Jillian at Riddenhauer’s.
    I spent the day dealing with U-Haul, U-Store-It, and Massey’s Used Furniture, till I owned only what I’d brought to Clayton plus a purple towel and enough money to last till my first paycheck in Nevada. While Steve and I waited for our soup, I spread the photos of Wendy Probst’s throws on the table.
    â€œWow,” he said. “Are those knitted?”
    â€œCrocheted,” I said. “You sell your work in art galleries, right?”
    â€œHouseware galleries. But I know those people, yeah.”
    I gave him the pictures and Wendy’s phone number, and said the gallery people might have to explain to her why they were calling. Putting the photos in his pocket, he paused and said, “Is that what you wanted to see me about?”
    â€œYeah,” I said. “I’m leaving town.”
    He nodded. “I’m looking at that myself.”
    An hour later I met Jillian outside the bus station and got her to go in and buy my ticket from my ex-neighbor. When she held it out to me, I pulled her in and kissed her. She pulled away and said, “Henry ‘Hank,’” like I was full of zany surprises. I took a seat on the bus and watched her recede through the window.
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    I stayed at Ultra Running three months, then did ten weeks at Row! magazine, “The Coxswain That Comes in Your Mailbox,” in Swint, Massachusetts, and moved on from there, associate-editing my way across the country. I never stayed anywhere long, and I was the civilian at every magazine I worked for. At Ice Climbing I was the only staff member who still had all tentoes, and at Metal Detector Treasures I was the only one without twenty rings on his fingers.
    I kept calling Barney, and he kept being distant. The towns were small and slow, but they weren’t Clayton. Maybe it had been the river air there, or the borrowed friends, or just the fact that it was my first real town, but I couldn’t duplicate it any more than I could Jillian or Gerald. They all went in my loss column, along with Barney’s blessing and the late-boyhood dream of saving Dad.
    On the plus side, being in the enthusiasm business let me see people being happy, doing what their bumper stickers said they’d rather be doing, what they braked for. For a long time I was able to coast in the wake of that happiness. Winning the prize for biggest geode or scariest wipeout changed their faces, and I was there, writing down the shop talk of the work that’s not for money. It was a country of fevers, and I only had to deal with the harmless ones.

4
    A year after I left