Man Out of Time

Mary's supposed to meet Eddy and me at the bar by seven o'clock, so when I see her come through the door I know it's her even though she's changed her hair again. She's with her friend Jeanne from the West Side who wears ankle-length dresses and thinks she's some kind of Earth Mother type. Jeanne's always talking about women and their rights and the Wicca cult she belongs to somewhere north of Westchester, and I figure Jeanne must have heavy legs because I've seen a lot of women go "Earth Mother" because of their legs. Mary's told me that Jeanne is a rare and special person, a "diamond in the rough," a font of wisdom and arcane information, untainted by anything as pedestrian as attending school or gaining professional certification. Mary doesn't come right out and say it, but she's taken up Jeanne because a small part of Mary reserves room for the exotic, and a large part of Mary patrols the outer borders of herself through the lives of those who appear to live there. "We did it," Mary says, making her way through the happy-hour crowd, snapping her fingers over her head with a move that is vaguely Continental and somewhat out of place. I'm not sure what she means when she says, "We did it," though after she starts in on Eddy about the tax question on Tuesday (which I didn't even know was a tax question), it's clear she's talking about law school and graduation and how we, meaning Mary, Eddy, and I, had somehow gotten through the bar exam. "You can't deduct those items on a state return," Eddy says, his voice loud with intent but thin with uncertainty, the two of them facing off on something ridiculous about credits and estates, while Jeanne just stands there trying to look enigmatic and poised and peaceful all at the same time. "And that's got nothing to do with the 'Rule Against Perpetuities,' " Mary says, and I wonder what it is about law students that compels them to test one another in their relentless quest for the simple certitude of being right. Behind Jeanne, a few stools down the bar, there's a kid with a Mao hat with a red star above the bill. He's been on a jag for hours, saying he's one of the chosen few because he goes to Harvard, preaching to no one in particular about the proletariat and the working man and Labor's failure to give Management what it really deserves. He looks around for somebody to bother and I give him a don't-even-try-it look, but before I can ask Jeanne about the summer solstice and what really happens on the shortest night of the year, the Mao-kid's got his face over her shoulder and he's complaining about lawyers and how they're completely fucked, with their money and the way they screw society. I figure I might have to do something about this, nothing chivalrous, just the normal mind-your-own-business stuff, but Jeanne just stands there and listens to him as if she's not put off by it, all the time smiling her hippie-bliss smile as if the Mao-kid were some kind of noble and savage entertainment. Later, after Eddy has the good sense to get us to the back room where we can sit in overstuffed leather booths and order from walk-about waitresses, Jeanne says people like the Mao-kid are just "young souls" who haven't been reincarnated more than a few times and that "old souls," meaning herself, of course, have a responsibility to lead them gently through experience. It's all such a crock that I look at Eddy with my eyes doing the 180-roll-around-the-ceiling thing, but Eddy likes this stuff about old souls and young souls, and he and Mary ask Jeanne what they are, and I wonder what's the big deal about having been around the block a couple of thousand times. Mary orders another drink and doesn't hesitate or debate the big "yes" or "no," or whether she's going to have some sugar-laden, syrupy, doesn't-taste-like-liquor drink. Mary just orders gin straight up and stHogan, Michael is the author of 'Man Out of Time' with ISBN 9780385336932 and ISBN 0385336934.