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Summary
Chapters 5-6
Chapter 5: You (Plural)
Jocelyn and Rhea return to Lou’s house after twenty years, and Rhea notices that the house feels empty without the flood of people and parties Lou used to have. He’s old now and has suffered two strokes, which prompted Bennie to contact everyone who knows him and tell them to visit before it’s too late. Jocelyn and Rhea don’t know what to say to Lou, and Rhea can barely croak out a greeting. Lou tells them they both look lovely, but Rhea is sure he’s lying, as both women are now in their early forties, and Lou has always preferred younger women. Jocelyn used to have a drug problem but is now clean, and she is trying to finish her B.A. Rhea, contrary to her teenage expectations of spinsterhood, has three children and is married and living in Seattle. Lou asks to see a photo of the kids and tells Rhea that her 16-year old daughter is cute. Jocelyn’s stomach turns as he attempts to wink. She wonders where Lou’s son Rolph has gone and remembers how many of her "firsts” were with him when they were younger. Lou asks the women to take him outside, and they move his bed to the side of the pool. Jocelyn thinks she sees Rolph, but it’s just one of the nurses. When she asks Lou about him, he starts to weep and tells her that Rolph died when he was 28.
Jocelyn loses her temper and squeezes her eyes shut. She imagines tipping Lou into the pool and drowning him. Jocelyn angrily tells Lou he deserves to die for everything he did to them, but he reminds her that he’s dying already. A sudden peace descends, and Lou says he’s glad they’re together again before the end.
Chapter 6: X’s and O’s
The narrative switches to the first person as Scotty Hausman sits in Tompkins Square Park. He’s reading SPIN magazine and comes across an article about his old friend Bennie Salazar, who’s had a meteoric rise in the music industry. He writes a note to Bennie congratulating him on his success. Scotty splits his time between working as a janitor and a garbage-picker, often fishing in the East River for entertainment. Scotty says he believes that all jobs are ultimately the same, so he’s happy for his friend. Bennie writes back in a friendly way, and Scotty gets his already-clean jacket dry-cleaned before visiting Bennie at work.
Scotty brings the enormous striped bass he caught the previous day and plops it down on the desk of Bennie’s secretary, Sasha Blake. Scotty admires the surroundings but says he doesn’t feel like he needs to go out much, because he can get whatever he wants brought to him. He’s working on a theory that all of human experience is really just processing information, looking at “X’s and O’s.”
Bennie invites him in and immediately assumes Scotty wants something. Scotty realizes that Bennie doesn’t think of him as either a friend or an equal, and he imagines violently ripping Bennie’s head off his body. He demands to know what happened between the Flaming Dildos breaking up and Bennie’s new, glamorous life. Bennie asks him if he’s married, and Scotty mentions his ex-wife Alice before Bennie clarifies that he means re-married. Bennie reveals that he’s married and has a son, and Scotty realizes that Bennie is scared he’s come to destroy his life. Scotty feels another rush of fury as Bennie talks, and he’s suddenly flooded with memories of Alice. Instead of hurting Bennie, Scotty takes a deep breath and wishes Bennie all the best. He deliberately smiles widely, showing that he’s missing lots of his teeth. The next day, Scotty goes fishing. He feels light and free as he walks to work and plans to get his jacket dry-cleaned.
Analysis
The chapters in this section focus on characters in later stages of their lives, investigating the perils of aging and the difficulties of lifelong friendship. In "You (Plural)," Jocelyn and Rhea visit Lou, who’s now completely bedridden and very frail from two strokes. As soon as they arrive, Jocelyn observes that the house is “all the same, except quiet. The quiet makes no sense.” She’s used to seeing Lou’s house packed to bursting with partygoers, and the lack of noise and celebration frightens her. When she sees Lou, her suspicions are confirmed, but she’s astonished that he’s so delicate. She remarks that she and Rhea knew Lou from a time when there was “no such thing as normal people dying” and that the hospital atmosphere of the house seems jarring. His frail, wrinkled body opposes their youthful memories of Lou as a powerful, charismatic figure who could command any room. Lou’s physical decline reminds Jocelyn of her own fear of death, as he’s gone from fizzing with liveliness to being a shadow of his former self. Jocelyn brings up her father's death from AIDS and Scotty’s mother’s death by suicide. However, these passing thoughts just call attention to how different those deaths were, because it wasn’t Lou dying.
Lou’s home is still opulent and tasteful, but its expensive beauty now seems tragic because of the sense of lost time and squandered potential that hangs in the air. Jocelyn is more conscious than she usually would be of the risk of wasting time, as her years spent lost in drug addiction with Lou now feel like a waste. The narrative bounces back and forth between past and present rapidly here, and sometimes fades into fantasies or daydreams that Jocelyn falls into. She can’t look at Lou without feeling hatred and resentment, but she also still loves him. When Lou and Rhea have to break the news to her that Rolph committed suicide, Jocelyn fully loses her grip on reality and daydreams about violently drowning Lou. She feels how intensely unfair it is that he’s still alive and Rolph is dead. There’s nothing she can do about it—it was fated that it happened that way—but she’s still impotently furious. The revelation also makes her more aware of how much of her own time Lou has stolen, which gets tangled up with the loss of Rolph in her mind. She’s frantic with fury and grief because nothing is as it would be if the world were fair.
Lots of other things in this section also seem contrary to expectations. Rhea, who was once consumed with worries about being a spinster, is now married with children. Jocelyn’s gradually getting her life back together, but the tables of privilege have turned since she and Rhea were teenagers. The difference between Jocelyn’s uproarious, dangerous past with Lou and Rhea’s present stability shows the divergent paths their lives have taken. It’s unclear how much of this is chance and how much is destiny, but neither woman feels equipped to talk about it.
Scotty’s bizarre visit to Bennie’s office is also a reminder of the different trajectories their lives have taken. Scotty’s job as a janitor starkly opposes Bennie’s successful career in the music industry. Scotty keeps himself sane by hatching theories about how every job must feel the same to do, a transparent attempt to convince himself he isn’t jealous of Bennie. Even the heights at which they live are opposed to each other: Scotty lives in a basement, and Bennie’s life happens in a soaring building’s highest floor. This physical and metaphorical distance between them calls attention to the theme of self-understanding. Scotty deludes himself into thinking he is happy, but his attempts to convince the reader ring hollow. He’s obsessed with keeping his one nice jacket clean, as though having a perfectly starched garment will allow him access to the upper echelons of society. His obsession also represents his futile attempts to hold onto a semblance of dignity and order in his life. When Bennie is patronizing and suspicious, Scotty takes his revenge on him by letting him see the large, black gaps between his remaining teeth. He knows it will make Bennie feel guilty, which shifts the power back Scotty. Scotty is actually pleased when he leaves the building after seeing Bennie; even though Bennie’s life is the polar opposite of his, he feels like he’s living more honestly.
