except the worm in the mescal,” Chris said. We agreed to meet at a Mexican restaurant in the Village. Characteristically, Chris and I walked. Since both of us spent our days sitting and didn’t have much time to exercise, we looked forward to a chance to take long walks together. Even when we weren’t talking, we usually felt very much in sync. I knew when he was quiet, he was absorbing things around him, which usually ended up, in one form or another, in one of his ads or TV commercials. There were talking beagles in a commercial for dog food that reminded me of the sad brother and sister up for adoption in the neighborhood pet store. In a commercial for packaged deli meat, Chris incorporated a character with black beady eyes and curly hair who looked like a man who worked in Todaro, our favorite Italian grocery.
“Life is all ad copy,” he said. I knew what he meant. Half of the things I experienced day to day worked into upcoming columns. We walked down First Avenue past Bellevue Hospital and New York University Hospital and then past apartment complexes. Chris thought of what he could use in commercials for pain relievers, while for me, the scenery triggered thoughts of the latest hospital mergers, Medicaid and the best emergency room to go for gunshot wounds.
“When was the last time you saw Moose?”
“I visited him a couple of years ago,” Chris said. “He had just split with his girlfriend and was having a tough time, so we went skiing during the day and drank a lot of beer at night.”
“It must be hard for him to meet the kind of women who’d like the same lifestyle that he does.”
“Just the opposite,” Chris said. “Women love his mountain life—at least for a while. They’re fed up with the big-city bullshit. Land is cheap, you have all the space and quiet that you want, and you only concern yourself with the basics, like survival. You don’t go to four-star restaurants, you don’t go out to Broadway shows. You don’t run down the street and shop at Victoria’s Secret.” (How did he know?) “You’re together a lot at home working on your house or cooking and canning and doing blue-collar stuff, so you find out very fast if you’re compatible.”
“So what happened to his relationship?”
“I guess when the initial fascination faded, she felt cut off and she wasn’t pulling her weight.”
The image of a woman as a member of a dogsled team came to mind. “What do you mean?”
“He wanted to share his life and for Moose that means someone who could help him cut down trees for firewood and build an addition to the house. She liked to cook and help him fix up the house, but that was it.”
“You mean she couldn’t even chop down trees?”
He nodded, laughing.
“He’s liberated—to a fault,” I said.
Chris shrugged. “He has a lot to give, but he hasn’t found a girl who’s big enough to take it.” I thought about Ellen. I hoped that wouldn’t be a big mistake, unless he wanted someone to stand by him to fight with local industry about polluting the air or water.
When we got to the restaurant, neither one of them was there yet so we sat down in a booth and ordered a pitcher of frozen pomegranate margaritas. After sipping half of one, I started to forget about Moose and Ellen.
“We should do this more at home,” I said to Chris. His knees touched mine under the table and he reached down and took my hand.
“You’re wasted already?”
I started to laugh. I spotted Ellen as she walked in, but then wasn’t sure if I was waving at the right girl. Something was different, and then I realized that I was seeing more of her face. The haircut was short and almost boyish, an impossible style for most women, but on Ellen it looked delicate, pixieish and feminine, not to mention that the red color looked richer than I remembered. It framed her face and pale complexion. Ellen is five-four with big blue expressive eyes. She’s almost thirty-three, but could pass for ten years younger. I think it’s because she works mostly indoors, away from the sun. With less hair, her eyes seemed to pop.
“Love the hair,” I said as she took a seat. She smiled.
“I cut it off because I was fed up, but it turns out that everybody likes it. At work they call me Peter Pan.”
Chris poured her a drink and she sat back and sipped it and then shook her head. “I had a day…I’m beginning to doubt—except for present company—that there are any honest, upstanding citizens in the world.”
“There aren’t,” I said flatly. “That’s why we’ll never run out of copy.” Ellen just shook her head.
“What are you working on?” Chris asked her.
“Shabby contractors, bogus long-distance phone charges, car complaints, spoiled dog food, unsafe toys…” She shook her head. “I could go on and on.”
I looked up to see a giant standing next to our table wearing a thick suede jacket. He was bearlike, maybe six foot five, with a beard and brown curly hair.
“Hey,” Chris said, coming around the table and hugging him the way men do, in a hard, standoffish kind of way. It reminded me of a Broadway play that I saw years back called Defending the Caveman that homed in on the differences between the sexes, showing in one particular scene how old female friends greet each other, as opposed to the male approach. Women squeal in delighted high-pitched voices and then come together screeching, laughing, crying and embracing. And men? One goes up to the other and punches him in the arm while saying something endearing like: “You still driving that old piece of shit?”
Moose patted him on the back. “How you doing?” Chris introduced him to me and then to Ellen.
“Ladies,” he said, nodding.
Chris poured him a drink and we toasted. I looked at Chris, then at Moose. His blue eyes peered out, surrounded by curly locks as though he were Santa. The immediate impression that I got was of shyness.
“How come you’re in town?” I said.
“Came to see my mom. I can’t get her to come up and visit me…” He shrugged and didn’t finish the sentence.
“It’s pretty cold up there,” I said, feeling for some reason as if I had to take her side.
“Twenty below last week,” he said matter-of-factly.
“So you live in an igloo?” Ellen teased.
Moose shook his head as if he had considered that and then decided against it. “Log cabin. I built it. Great woodstove, keeps the place really warm.”
“What do you do all winter?” I said. “Doesn’t it get lonely?”
He looked at me curiously and smiled slightly. “I have work to do in the house, firewood to cut, I’m preparing to put on an addition, and I have my books, carpentry work in town, journals, my dog and I’m writing a guide to wilderness survival. Not much time to get lonely.”
“Wilderness survival?” Ellen said.
Actually, it turned out that he was working on his third book. Ever since he was small, Moose
