Hermit

When I got home from work, some of my neighbors were smoking and laughing on the stoop. I asked if anyone had seen Gene lately. No one had, and one of them said Gene was a few enchiladas short of a fiesta. Hilarious. I walked into the building and buzzed Gene.

Nada.

I rode the elevator to my place. I thought about cooking, and all of the weird “food porn” online. Here’s a theory: people love to share food. In any way they’ve got. If you prepare a meal, alone, and slowly eat it, and then do some other lonely thing, you shared nothing. Neither the food itself, nor the experience of enjoying it. This is more important when you made that shit, and did it right. If I cook right now, I will have no one to share this meal with.

I could spend some time doing it seriously, too. I've watched experts do it online, and I've been studying. Pausing and rewinding like a motherfucker. I’ve got this down. Nobody really knows that but me. That's why some people post the repast, I think: "Here’s a picture, anyway. It was real."

I decided to make dinner to share with Gene. I found out that if you are obliged to cook a steak in a skillet on top of a stove, the key is to do it uncovered, all the way. I used to cover the pan, to keep things hot. Wrong. I was sort of boiling it; it was grey and chewy. Unsatisfactory, you know? Then I did some research, and changed my approach. Better. Butter and olive oil. Crushed garlic. Thyme (and none of the green flakes from a plastic bottle, son—fresh thyme). Baste that shit. Don’t get twisted about how you look basting. Men who know what they are doing baste their steaks, feel me?

Sweet potatoes are dead easy, and so much better than the pasty, regular guys. I braised some kale. Gene is old, and I’m not young. Leafy greens are the closest we get to eating sunshine.

You want some of this now, don’t you?

I got it ready to go to Gene’s and went. Awkward number of knocks. He gave me his spare key a few years ago, but I know he'll answer. You could hear his TV in Saskatchewan. I did not want this getting cold, and carrying a meal around makes you look like you need company or help.

I know you’re there, you old loon. I can cook. Let me show you.

Gene opens the door. His teeth don’t look good. He smells like a cigarette butt and kind of looks like one, too, but he looks happy--the nut. I unload the food into his confusion. I walk inside all smooth, before he can talk at all. He shuts the door.

“Look, this is all very nice, but I really am not fit for company, Miles. I ought to tell you though, I’ve got an idea you might find interesting.” He goes to the window and lights a smoke. It wouldn’t have made a difference if the window was left shut. I put everything on his little table, trying to respect the old books and bills and other shit he thinks he has no other place for. I open his fridge. It has issues. He’s got ideas but no vegetables.

“You see Miles, my old man was a Catholic priest.”

“You can do that?!”

“Oh, no no—come on, Miles. He was a priest, dropped out, met my mother and, you know, ushered me in. It was not a picnic in the park, but when was the last time people felt safe doing that kind of thing?” He does laugh hard at his own jokes. I want to see that as a good sign. I’m not sure it is.

“No shit. Try the steak. I think I’ve figured something out.” I found beer. It’s not good beer, but it was there. I make him a plate and put it in his free hand. He has to put out his smoke to grab a fork. Little victories.

“I just keep trying until I get it right, but what’s right, you know?”

He was into the steak. He got lost in it for a second. Winning.

“Well Miles, you did some justice to this beast’s remains, I tell you. How did you do this?”

He hit the “you” pretty hard, but I let a lot of things slide with Gene. Most of what he says sounds like bullshit, but if you think on it, he’s alright. He’s pretty smart, if I'm honest. He just doesn’t care how he does it.

“Like the greens?”

“Suspicious lot, they are. Are you sure that stuff was grown on earth?”

Like I said. I let a lot of things slide.

“You said you have an idea. Spill.”

“Oh, right! Well, I was thinking about celibacy, of the kind my father gave up. Never having children or a wife. Just giving up love and sex altogether. That breaks the line. It means you are completely free of the worldly attachments that keep everybody else up at night. It's supposed to make you a better shepherd for the mangy flock, you see. It’s made a real mess of the modern church, but I wonder if the idea isn’t the problem."

He was loving the food. In fact, he was returning bits of of it to me while he talked, and I didn't mind so much. I didn't laugh or anything. Strong poker face.

"If you spend a lot of time without those worries, you have time to think. You also see what other people are doing, and how, in a new way.”

“New how?” I put some more food on Gene’s plate. His fork almost nailed me.

“Well, Miles…what’s the difference between looking at fish in a tank and being in the tank with them?”

“Drowning?”

Beer came out of his nose. I’ve got this. You can’t fake laughs like that.

“Miles! My point is that the player doesn’t see the game like the asshole in the stands. If you get out of it, you see how far into it most people are, whether they know it, or like it, or not. And the sad thing is, with the chance to see things from there, they blow it, ugly pun intended. I mean, they do terrible things instead. To innocent victims. It’s the worst way to be, that. They should be thinking about the best way to be, and how to help the other assholes figure that out, too. Just because there’s a script, that doesn’t mean you can’t improvise.”

See what I mean? What Gene comes up with is greasy, but it seems nutritious. I got Gene another beer. Two would be fine. He could handle two. He was digging the sweet potatoes, too. Respect cinnamon.

"So, what's the idea, Gene? You haven't gotten laid for a long time, and you think that's a good thing?"

He didn't get it. Maybe he did, and he just didn't like it. I boiled that steak.

He tapped his fork against his plate, like a conductor waking up the percussion section. "I'm convinced that it's a bad idea to bring fresh humans into this mess before we figure out what we're doing and why. That's what I'm saying. Sure, all of this subjective relativism and 'you do you, boo' cant is fine for the most part, but I'm happy in the stands. The game is trivial, and boring, and full of little betrayals."

That worried me a bit. Gene was a big deal back in the day. He wrote plays and novels and ranted in some fashionable, artsy magazines. I'm not sure exactly when things went bad for him, and I don't want to hurt his feelings by asking. He's alone most of the time. COVID turned him into an official recluse, apart from me and the bodega down the block. He feeds the birds in the park on Wednesdays. They argue.

The kale was sensational. Just enough lemon and garlic there, no matter what my mad neighbor thinks. "Well, life can be rough, but what else are we going to do? Shouldn't the solid people make more solid people, and hope for the best?" I knew this was weak sauce, but we had finished our steaks anyway.

"Miles, did you know that my parents got divorced, despite the romantic improbability of their relationship? My old man wasn't just a priest: he was part of an all priest hockey team. 'The Flying Fathers,' or something like that. My mother went to all of the games. She left roses outside his door every night for a week straight. So he dropped out, they got hitched, and I appeared. But it didn't work out. He was a drunk. After their divorce, he found a woman who liked to drink as much as he did." He took a long pull on his beer and smiled that Stonehenge smile of his. Irony?

"So one night, I wake up to a loud call of nature. I'm in the bathroom, getting down to the brown, and I hear her on the phone, full of gin and complaints. She excoriated my old man. Didn't shy away from the worst things. Right down to the lilliputian dimensions of his naughty bits. I was shocked, but I folded my cards right there. The moment you're out of earshot, they do you dirty, Miles."

He has a point, as always. I've been single for a long time. Things are weird out there, you know? It's safer to mind your own business.

"So what are you going to do with what's left, Gene? You can't just smoke and rave and scold the pigeons for the rest of your life, can you?"

He went to the window again. It was black and spiced with stars. When he opened it, we could hear Julio and his wife screaming at each other a few floors down. Dinner always makes them furious. I wondered if Gene had put them up to it, just to show me he was on to something.

"Oh, there's plenty of reading to do, and I might have one more play in me, Miles. Who wants it, though? AI will be doing most of the writing and half of the acting in no time. Eventually, it'll put on the play and sit in the seats and write the reviews, too. The silicon serpent will eat its own tail."

I don't have the Spanish to say for sure, but I think Julio just quoted Cervantes, at the top of his lungs. Gene finished his smoke and closed the window. He swirled the last of his beer and read something in it that made him grin.

"Help me clean this up, Gene. Then we'll go to the bodega for smokes and ice cream." He nodded, took his plate to the sink and started washing up.

"Thank you, Miles. I haven't had a nice dinner with a patient listener in ages," he said, slinging the ghost of a tea towel over his shoulder. I think friendship is getting more precious as it gets rarer, don't you?

About a week later, Mrs. Parsons from 604 knocked on my door. She smelled like cooked cabbage, as always, which reminded me to thank Gene for turning me on to Orwell. She told me there was a bad smell coming from Gene's place. She couldn't get him to answer the door. She was ready to call the super, but she'd seen us together on the stoop, laughing at our ice cream.

I found Gene in his crimson tub, like a disgraced Roman senator. I don't cook much anymore.