I've a Feeling We're Not in Kansas Anymore Read Online Free PDF Page A

unselfish strength. I have seen (and had) my fill of brothers, but this one seemed to belong to some new genre in relationships, one of pledges made early, freely, and permanently. There were no delicacies of regret or disapproval in his affection for Mac, no fascism in his beautiful morals. He was that unheard-of thing in families, the relative who treats you as a perfect lover. Their intimacy was fearsome, like a ballet without music. I had heard it was a big tribe. “Are they all like that?” I asked later. Mac grinned and nodded.
    By day Mac was a computer programmer—by night too, sometimes, depending on the project—but his great gift was writing, in the tightest, leanest style I’ve ever known. So, too, was Mac tight and lean, very light, very swift. But his eyes weighed a thousand pounds. Letters were his forte. I met him in the mail, in a note congratulating me on some book or other, forwarded by the publisher. I answer the nice ones, and so found myself in correspondence with an address just up the avenue, reading arresting disquisitions on a host of subjects, all of them love, in penciled block letters. One letter arrived with photographs, of Mac and four friends on summer holiday in Portugal, of Mac and an older couple camping in Maine, of Mac and his three brothers and their wives and children at the Thanksgiving bash.
    “What is he, a tour guide?” asked Dennis Savage, when I showed him the pictures.
    “You don’t miss a chance to bring ants to the picnic, do you?”
    “How come he’s never alone? He’s cute, anyway. When are you going to meet him?”
    It comes down to that, doesn’t it? The quest. It was Mac who broached the question, asking me to dinner—but it was a friend of his, Rolf something, who did the phoning.
    “Mac’s held up at work,” he explained, “and we didn’t know how late a day you keep.” It sounded dotty to me, but I went along with it. On the afternoon of the date, Rolf called again. “Are we still on for tonight?” he asked.
    “Of course.”
    “Fine. Just checking. We don’t want Mac’s feelings hurt in the slightest way, do we?”
    “Did you hear I was going to hurt them?”
    “No offense. But some New Yorkers are unreliable and I didn’t want any misunderstanding.”
    “Have no fears. When it comes to appointments I’m sure as steel.”
    “That’s what Mac’s friends like to hear.”
    Maybe he is a tour guide, I thought as I hung up. I haven’t had a call that strange since the last time I spoke to my mother.
    *   *   *
    Rolf opened the door. He was tall, handsome, and slightly gray, of the stalwart type that, I was to learn, marked Mac’s cohort. My handshake is pretty solid, but his was a grip of grips: I felt like a glass of water meeting the North Sea. As I came in, Rolf stood aside and there was Mac. He pointed at himself, pointed at me, touched his heart, and indicated the apartment with a sweep of his hand.
    “I’m very pleased to meet you,” said Rolf, “and my apartment is yours.”
    I looked at Rolf. Rolf looked dead on at Mac.
    Mac and I shook hands and he picked up a glass, looking enquiringly at me. “What would you like to drink?” said Rolf.
    I asked for wine.
    Mac made a “fork in the road” with his index fingers, then upturned the palms in a questioning gesture.
    “White or red?” said Rolf.
    An incorrigible lush, I answered, “Whichever you have more of,” making my lip movements as clear as possible. I must have looked like someone in an early Hollywood talkie, overtly proclaiming the new miracle of dialogue. Smiling, Mac slashed the air with a finger, put it to my lips, jabbed himself with his thumb, and, slowly drawing his open hands up to his ears, nodded once. “Speak normally,” said Rolf, who was beginning to sound like a Conehead. “I can hear.”
    Mac poured wine for us. We sat. “I have to tell you,” I began, “you write wonderful letters. I’m amazed at how many ideas you cram onto a single