Anything Can Happen Read online

  Which acts would have been perfectly understood by Chekhov's horse, to whom the narrator of Chekhov's story told of his little boy's death because there was no one else to tell his story to. Neigh?

  Why did they bother, you know? You know.

  For the same reason the ancient mariner, crazy as a loon, grabbed the wedding guest by the lapels and would not let go until ... for the same reason that the messenger in Job says: "And I only am escaped alone to tell thee." To tell thee. Which was Ishmael's reason, too, practically word for word.

  You know. You know. They had a story to tell. They had to tell a story, which is why you are here and I am here. Sing it: "We're here because we're here because we're here because we're here."

  And Kilroy, the very-short-story writer? Well, you certainly know why he was here.

  The Puppet Theater of Your Irrational Fears

  has the twisted pleasure of presenting: "Your Friend Hasn't Called in Two Weeks." Plus: "You Discover a Dead Crow on Your Lawn." In Theater 2: "Someone Tells You That You're in for a Big Surprise." And: "Letters Received Written in Pencil with No Return Address." Coming soon: "R.S.V.P. We're Having an Intimate Dinner Party—Just Eight or Ten of Us." And: "Dawn."

  Teach the Free Man How to Praise

  I never got that line until I'd lived a little. "Teach the free man how to praise." It comes from Auden's elegy to Yeats, and one has to slow down at "free" to understand the whole thought. The free man is free to do everything, which is the nature of his freedom. So he is free to moan, rail, and curse; and this is what he does most often. But he is also free to praise. He may use his freedom to give praise.

  These ducks, for example, that whet out in arrowhead formations over the Atlantic. And the Atlantic herself that gushes in the half-light after a hard rain. And the beach that contorts to shapes of angels on tombstones, awls, hunchbacks, lovers lying thigh to thigh. And the driftwood from a mackerel schooner that still bears the stench of the catch. And the slant of the sky. And the shingles of the sky. And a cloud like Tennessee. And the face of our dog—ill, old, uncomplaining dog.

  And you, with your Welsh courage and your girl's profile and your tireless sense of me. Did I mention you? Ave.

  The Day I Turned into the Westin

  Fortunately, on the day I turned into the Westin, it was still early enough to allow me to prepare for the onslaught of guests. My brain, which had become the lobby-level bar and grill, began to cook the home fries and open-face steak sandwiches, a favorite with the afterhours crowd; and the piano player, my left ear, though hungover from the previous night and slumped atop a D-seventh, had plenty of time to straighten up and fly right. My wrists, the bellhops, donned their red uniforms with the brass buttons and got the baggage carts ready. My knees, the swimming pool and spa, made certain that all was spic and span and that the towels, my eyelashes, were nice and hot.

  In the pit of my stomach, which was the terrace lounge for the higher-paying guests, I wondered if my nose, the housekeeping staff, could get up to speed in so short a time. I had, after all, just turned into the Westin that morning. I wondered the same thing about my right elbow, which was room service, and my lower back, maintenance and security. It takes constant vigilance to be a hotel. Much coordination. When the guests emerge from the revolving doors, my index finger and thumb, they expect everything to be shipshape, which is why my Adam's apple, the escalator, is developing a case of nerves.

  How I became the Westin, I cannot say. But I was not always like this. My heart, the concierge, would like to inform the guests that not all that long ago, say twenty-five or thirty years, I might have been taken for the Grand Hotel Villa Serbelloni with its high burnt-ochre walls that stretched to twenty-four-foot ceilings, with playful cupids painted on them, and with the enormous open windows cut in stone that looked out upon the gardens where the German nannies watched over children of false nobility and out upon Lake Como and the Villa Serbelloni itself, once the home of Pliny the Younger—the blue, still shell of the lake and the orange-tile roofs beyond and beyond that, the snowy Alps. To be sure, I was not really the Grand Hotel Villa Serbelloni, but I might have passed. In any case, I was certainly classier than I am now. First class. Ask anyone.

  Chaucer slept here. And Shakespeare. Donne and Marvell dropped by the tavern, my liver, more than once; and Milton, though he needed the help of strangers, would stroll around the ballroom and hear the tinkling of the vast crystal chandelier, my throat. Swift, Pope, Johnson, they all knew my place and would regularly book rooms in my tongue for a night or two. In later years, Jane Austen took an apartment in my ribs, and when George Eliot saw how comfortable Jane was, she did the same. Musicians, painters, philosophers—they all thought of me as their home away from home. You should have seen the silverware in those days, how heavy it felt in one's hands. And the thick, cool linens.

  Now look at me. It's not that I have anything against the Westin I've turned into. I could have become a Marriott, I suppose, or a Hyatt, or a Hilton, and not felt any different. I'm no Motel 6—not yet. No complaints. Fact is, I'm not sure how I became a hotel in the first place, because I can remember way back—long before the Villa Serbelloni days—when I thought of myself as a guest, as one for whom all services were created. But then one day I found myself making accommodations, small ones at first, then more ample, more elaborate, until ... ah, well. C'est la guerre, as they say. And, frankly, there is simply too much for me to do to worry about where life took a detour or any such self-indulgence. Only I wish that there weren't quite so much upkeep when one is a hotel these days. People expect everything.

  I'm thinking of changing my toes, the pizzeria, into a Japanese restaurant; everyone is crazy for sushi. My feet are working on becoming trainers for the gym. Hands, masseurs; lips, a hotel playroom for kids. A kennel, even, in my right thigh. They take their dogs everywhere.

  Sometimes at night, when my lungs, the registration desk, have stopped throbbing from anxiety, I wander about my jaws, the kitchen, and dream of being something else. But then night softens into day, another day, and there are all the guests' demands to attend to. They complain that they are unable to turn off the clock-radios in their rooms. They want square, not round, chocolate mints on their pillows. The most difficult part will come not when I have shaved my awning face or brushed my elevator-bank teeth, or even tied my tie around my WELCOME TO THE WESTIN sign, my neck. It will be when I begin to smile my smile, which has become my smile.

  Cliff's Other Notes

  Cyrano

  Don't for a moment believe that it was Cyrano's nose. Anyone can see that it wasn't his nose. Women actually found it alluring, kind of sexy. But he deluded himself and blamed the nose. If only someone, Roxanne, for example, had told him the truth—that what women could not take was his ardor, his passion, the overflowing vessel of his heart. It was too much. They found it—what?—grotesque. So he hid in the shadows to speak his oversized heart, when it was the heart itself that scared them off.

  Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

  It has to be about drugs. Jekyll is a junkie. Right?

  Gatsby

  If you hold The Great Gatsby upside down and shake it hard enough, the only real human being who falls out is Wilson the garageman. Gatsby is obsessed to the point of madness. Daisy is a dangerous nitwit. Tom is a thug, Jordan a crook, Meyer (though decent) a gangster. Even Nick, for all his moralizing, is mere talk, and not even that when it counts. Only the poor deceived Wilson is identifiable as one of us suffering slobs. So what is Fitzgerald saying by this—that one does not make memorable fiction out of ordinary suffering slobs? That no one would read The Great Wilson? I think so.

  Dorian

  The lesson of The Picture of Dorian Gray is thought to involve inner corruption as opposed to outer appearance. But the lesson is more easily learned without reference to the aging portrait. Look at Dorian as he is—forever youthful, pretty, and unwrinkled. He is living proof that if one thinks of oneself throughout one's life, one may go o
n and on without showing the faintest signs of aging. Eternal youth is thus another name for perpetual selfishness. I wouldn't worry about the attic, if I were you.

  Ulysses

  Everyone who followed Homer minced words about Ulysses, including Dante. All of them pussyfooted around the story, which seems to me to be as plain as daylight. What made Ulysses's eye rove, along with the rest of him, was the irresistible attraction of doing the wrong thing—of doing it again and again, and knowing that he was doing the wrong thing. It shows what a good man Dante was that he could not bring himself to say that outright.

  The Secret Agent

  There's a scene in Conrad's novel that merely appears to be part of the plot, but I think that it explains everything one needs to know about Verloc, the anarchist. Verloc is lying on the couch. His wife is in the kitchen. She has just figured out that he is responsible for the death by bomb of her young son. She gets a kitchen knife and heads for Verloc. Conrad describes the scene by telling us that Verloc has time to see her, time to see her get the knife, and time to see her walk toward him; but he does not have time to do anything about it. That's Verloc, and all anarchists. They have no sense of time.

  Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, "Kubla Khan," A Christmas Carol, Moby-Dick, The Maltese Falcon, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Remembrance of Things Past (all eight books), The Wasteland, "September 1, 1939," and Hamlet

  All these works have their moments, but not one of them makes an ounce of sense—especially Hamlet. For God's sake, Goldilocks and the Three Bears makes more sense than Hamlet. I just wanted to get that off my chest.

  Environmentalists

  I have often been in this spot, and of recent years I have felt that this might be the last time that I should look down from here upon the kingdom of the world and their glories; but see, it happened once again, and I hope that even this is not the last time that we shall both spend a pleasant day here. In future we must often come up here.

  That was Goethe to his friend, Eckermann, on September 26, 1827, as the two men sat on the grass and had a picnic at Buchenwald.

  Hearing Test

  Can you hear this?

  Sounds like church bells, people laughing, glasses clinking.

  Can you hear this?

  What? The baby's cry? Yes, I can hear it.

  Can you hear this?

  A door slamming, I think. And china breaking.

  Can you hear this?

  It's faint. I can barely make it out. It sounds like the wearing away of the inside of a tunnel or a universal joint or maybe the underside of ice on a frozen pond. Something eroding out of sight, from the side one cannot see. But I can't be certain.

  Very good. That's exactly what it was.

  Everywhere a Hit Person

  Friends sometimes ask me why I am aloof with people. I tell them I have learned that a hit man (or woman) has been hired to bump me off. I do not know who did the hiring; and, of course, I have no inkling as to the identity of the hit person. It could be anyone, I say. Not all hit people are as attractive as Kathleen Turner or Angelica Huston in the movies. Or as appealing as John Cusack or William H. Macy. My hit person could be the grouchy redhead in the laundromat, or the Korean Fuller Brush representative at my door, or the pet-store manager, the one with the lisp who has difficulty pronouncing "marsupial." Any one of these people could be the person hired to do me in, along with a thousand others I have yet to meet.

  And, I explain, because I have no way of knowing who that person might be, it is only prudent for me to keep my distance as a general practice.

  They usually stop asking after that.

  Lessons for Grades 1 to 6

  About Language

  Soon enough, you'll find English to be inadequate for your needs. Make up your own language and be sure not to know the meaning of the words you make up. A language of your own will keep grown-ups at a distance. They'll call it cute. Flarto.

  About Money

  It may not be everything. But remember that the tragedy of every Irish play could be solved or prevented by eight or nine pounds.

  About Political Correctness

  It's okay to demonize demons. That's what they're here for.

  About Thinking

  Up to a point, it's fine. This point is where your thought comes to a pause and you feel compelled to extend it, as if you are walking through a rain forest in Suriname and you have come to a log of a bridge and you have the choice of either walking over the bridge on your march through the forest or stopping in your tracks and feeling the sweet, wet heat of the sun on your arms. Nothing more than that. The sweet, wet heat of the sun on your arms.

  About Plato

  He said, "Light is the shadow of God." I'm not sure what it means, either. But try to recognize a superior mind when you meet it.

  About the Shapes of Things

  Socrates spoke of the beauty of shapes "quite free from the itch of desire." That's a very intelligent thing to say. Very high-minded. But know, too, that your urge to scratch did not appear from nowhere.

  About Animals

  A friend I made in Ireland many years ago—much older than I, full of poetry and mischief, and a good Catholic as well—had known James Joyce in his last years. He said that Joyce could not abide his darker side, his baser behavior, his low and dirty thoughts. "We're all animals," my friend told him. But Joyce, he said, would not accept that.

  About Face

  Make two pictures of yourself—a photo and a portrait. Be sure they are as good as they can be. The photo catches you in the most flattering light. The portrait, less precise, shows the hazier but deeper you. Place them side by side and, once in a while (not every day), study them, first one, then the other. Then study the space between the pictures. Somewhere in that space, you exist. That's you. That's your face.

  About Being Scared

  Since nothing in life can go on without the wind, I wouldn't worry about trembling if I were you.

  About Writing

  If you have to do it, do it. But do it because you have to. Not because you think it will cure your sciatica.

  About Latin

  Learn it.

  About Obstinacy

  The trouble with hardening one's heart (as God discovered when he was toying with Pharaoh) is not that the heart turns to stone, but that stone endures.

  About the Body

  Trust it. Keats wrote of his beloved Fanny Brawne: "Everything that reminds me of her goes through me like a spear."

  About ADD

  It's bad for you. Everyone says so. But without it, how else will you get in the car one day, all by yourself, and without any advance warning, and without telling a soul, drive to Mexico?

  About Your Conscience

  It, too, can lie.

  If You Had Given It a Moment's Thought

  If you had given it a moment's thought, you might not have made that lame joke about dying to a cancer patient. But you didn't think, of course. Just like you. This happens to you more often than it should. Then you think: Life's like this—a perpetual pursuit of small satisfactions such as being funny, or being charming, or being anything. Nickle-and-dime decisions, and yet the repercussions are often bedlam. Chaos without the theory.

  I wish that I could tell you how to stop. But frankly, the consequences of one's little stumbles get so tumultuous sometimes that one's amazement at them overtakes the desire for self-improvement. So you go on as before. An ice storm comes to mind. The interesting thing about an ice storm is that it isn't defined until it's over. Then you see the ice.

  The Bathroom for You

  Today's bathroom is more than a sink, tub, and a toilet. It's a personal space where you can retreat from the stresses of everyday life.

  —Home magazine

  The bathroom for you will have more than a sink, tub, and a toilet. It will have a walk-in shower made of the finest Belgian marble. The floor will be of Mexican tile to give the room that expansive feel of the American Southwest, and the lighting
fixtures will be recessed and attached to a dimmer, which will allow you to change the room's moods, brighter or darker, according to your own, and will allow you to retreat from the stresses of everyday life.

  The bathroom for you will have a patio and a swimming pool, with little jets built into its side to create the effect of a whirlpool. In another part of the room, there will be armchairs and a sofa to offer a place where you can stretch out and relax. You will also have a large-screen TV that gets 212 movie channels, each playing your favorite movies, and a wet bar, in case you get wet (ha ha). Don't confuse the walk-in closets with the walk-in shower. Just kidding.

  The bathroom for you will look out on the Atlantic Ocean to the south and on the Grand Tetons to the west. There will be a separate guest cottage for guests, and an artist's studio for art. It will also contain your own office tower that rises over a hundred stories, and which you alone occupy, except for the shops that are there to satisfy your every need—more drains, more faucets, and so forth. In your tower you will be CEO, so that if you wish to cash in on stock options before you go under, feel free.