Men and Cartoons by Jonathan Lethem

I nodded.
    That night we got on a roll in safe territory, talking about high school. The Water Fountain Trick. The Literary Excuse Me. Mother Communication Hates You. Falling Down Jesus Park. Toscanini's Glasses. Then, fueled by beer, I told him a bit about my life, my short marriage, the novel I couldn't sell, the years of legal proofreading. Matthew drank and listened. He listened well.
    Then he started telling me about his idea for a screenplay we were going to write together. “Has there ever been a thriller set in Antarctica?” he asked, eyes burning.
    “
Ice Station Zebra
,” I said. “Rock Hudson's in it. It's really bad. Listen, I'm bushed.”
    He slept in. I was working at my desk for hours before I heard him go in through the kitchen, up to the bathroom for a shower. The water ran for almost twenty minutes. I'm not sure, but I think he must have come out while I was on the phone with my Hollywood agent.
    As I get older I find that the friendships that are the most certain, ultimately, are the ones where you and the other person have made substantial amounts of money for one another. Those histories have a breadth, an unspoken ease, that others, even siblings or ex-wives, just can't match. My Hollywood agent is about my age, and when I talk to him I feel he knows who I am, because he helped make me who I am. We're a conspiracy, and a much more reliable one than most.
    Some time after I'd hung up the phone, I became aware of Matthew standing in the doorway of my office. “Did you hear me talking to you?” he said.
    “Uh, no.”
    His eyes were ringed and dark. He didn't speak.
    “There's coffee in the kitchen,” I said. “It's still hot.”
    When he returned with the coffee he came all the way into the room and stood in front of me. He seemed disconcerted.
    “I think I'll go check out that old foundry today,” he said. “There's some wrecked equipment I always wanted to take pictures of.”
    “No camera,” I reminded him.
    “Well, I guess I'll just go look at it.”
    Ruins, I thought. Wrecks, shambles, margins. Zen junk.
    “That's fine, I'll be here,” I said. “I have some stuff to do. We can go out for dinner tonight.”
    “We could cook something,” he began. I could see him grasping, trying to frame some larger question.
    “I'd like to take you out,” I said—magnanimity being one of the most effective ways of ending conversations. I was thinking of my work. I had to get back to harnessing our high-school sensibility to the task of selling compact discs.
             
    H E WAS back at five, with another bag from the Piggly Wiggly. Inside was a full six-pack, and another one full of empties. He'd been out all day looking at sites and drinking beer from a paper bag. He put the empties on the porch and the six in the fridge, like an obedient dog moving slippers to the bedroom.
    I'd arranged for us to meet a couple of friends for dinner. A science-fiction writer who does scenarios for interactive video games, and a screenwriter. We all have the same Hollywood agent, which is how we met. I figured the screenwriter could sober Matthew up about his script ideas. I didn't want to eat dinner with Matthew alone anyway.
    We met for drinks first. By the time we got to the restaurant Matthew was lagging behind, already so invisible that the maître d' said, “Table for three?”
    He barely spoke during dinner. At the end of the night we parted at my driveway, me to my front door, Matthew to the garage.
    “Well, good night,” I said.
    He stopped. “You know, I realize I don't have everything quite together,” he said.
    “You've got a lot of interesting projects going,” I said.
    “I'm not asking you for anything.” He glared, just briefly.
    “Of course not.”
    “I feel strange around you,” he said. “I can't explain.” He looked at his hands, held them up against the light of the moon.
    “You're just getting used to the way I am now,” I said. “I've changed.”
    “No, it's