Beneath the Eyes of Venus and Jupiter

Mulvihill doesn’t know where he is. He wanders in off the street, not knowing what to expect. It occurs to him that he is naked, has been naked too long. Tis might explain the anxiety he medicates with strong Giraf. His job, his spiritual discipline, is to be naked, to strip off layers, to dive into deep mind and root around in rock and weed and see what he can find there of words shaped like comprehensible things, or sometimes incomprehensible things, of clear or possible value.

“A Giraf, please,” he asks in Danish.

The woman behind the bar peers over reading glasses at him. Still looking at him, she reaches for a Cecil from the pack next to the cash register, lights it with a red plastic Bic. She has an unusual, interesting, possibly stimulating face. Perhaps older than Mulvihill. Or maybe she has lived harder. She reaches into the cooler and pops the cap off a bottle, sets it on the bar, takes his money, asks, with a bantering smile, “Can you come up with a rich American guy for me?”

“I’m American,” he says.

“I know you’re American. I can hear it. That’s why I asked. But you’re not rich.”

“Are you asking or telling?”

She only peers at him, smiling speculatively over her clear plastic reading glasses. She probably bought them in the dollar shop. It is late. The bar is empty. It is not an upscale bar—he has roamed into a dicey sector of the northwest part of Copenhagen and he is slightly buzzed, in search of something or other. Always searching. That’s how he wound up in Copenhagen, how he came in off the street. The woman is extraordinary looking: long and lean, her gray-blond hair arranged with tortoise combs, a long, morosely merry face, full lower lip, thin upper, those half glasses perched low on her stubby nose. Long legged in gray tights.

“Why not a rich Dane?”

“Danes aren’t rich. Rich Danes squeeze shillings till they squeak.”

“Well, why do you want a rich American?”

“Because I’m tired. And tired of being alone. Because Americans are naïve and generous. For as long as it lasts. And I won’t last so long.”

They are still smiling, but he angles his face. “Are you sick?”

She shakes her head, and a couple of alluring hairs break loose from one of her combs. “Just old. You won’t last long either, the rate you’re going through that Giraf.”

People often speak to Mulvihill this way. He supposes something in his face invites it. His eyes maybe. He is tired, too, but not tonight, not with two Girafs in him. Or is it four? Alone, too, but the kind of alone that has become permanent. And naked. He swims naked, down, for things that glitter with interest. He is not tired of that. Not yet. But he is tired of being naked sometimes. What is it really for? He has done a decent life’s work. Hasn’t he? Why does he have to keep diving? All the things that he has found over all these years will vanish slowly—maybe quicker than that—after he is gone. He has seen it so often with people ten or fifteen years his senior. Many called, few chosen, and he will not be one of them.

Yes, he was called, and yes, he responded eagerly, got up early, worked hard, did the long, slow disordering of the senses or whatever it’s called. But maybe he didn’t work hard enough. Maybe he isn’t lucky enough. Maybe it was doomed from the start. Maybe he just didn’t have it. Almost. That close. Celebrated . . . somewhat. But never a part of the canon. If you’d done something else, you’d have a town house or an ornate, high-ceilinged apartment and a house in the country, too, big car and cozy pension, Persian carpets, art, designer furniture. But that doesn’t last either. Moths eat the carpets, rust gets the...