The Revelations by Erik Hoel (e ink ebook reader txt) 📕

face that Jessica can’t see but Kierk can, causing Kierk to darkly laugh-sputter into his beer.

“What is this, the attractive academic support group?” the white girl who’d introduced herself as Jen says.

“Yeah,” Carmen replies, “we’re having T-shirts made.”

Soon, the other girl, Chelsea, is deep in conversation with Jessica and Alex, while Jen has integrated herself with Carmen and Kierk. Jen is good-looking in a girl-next-door kind of way. Kierk notices that she wrinkles her nose when she laughs, which he likes. Soon they’re hitting it off. Jen is apparently getting her MFA in creative writing at NYU, but knows Jessica through Chelsea, and the two of them go back to high school. Jen and Kierk end up talking about literature.

After some time she says—“Are you sure you’re a scientist?”

“No,” Kierk responds, drawing a laugh.

Eventually Carmen gets up to go get more beer, and Jen hands her cash.

“Just get us whatever.” Carmen pauses for a moment before nodding her head and as she turns and walks to the bar she mimics under her breath—“Oh just get us whatever!”

At the bar the lone bartender is taking forever to service some forty people, and Carmen is stuck behind all of them. Two men have already approached in just the time she’s been waiting here, each independently asking if she’d like them to muscle their way through and get her whatever she is waiting for, on them of course. Carmen wonders if people knew how predictable they really were, thinking of that Borges quote, something like—“the universal history is the reapplication of a limited set of metaphors.” You could say the same thing about people.

While looking at her phone and trying to project unapproachability she keeps glancing back at Kierk and Jen, who are leaning in closer to hear each other.

“Hey, are you waiting for a drink? Want me to wade through? It’s on me,” someone says to her, and Carmen looks up to see a well-dressed man. Glancing back, Carmen sees that Kierk and Jen are still head-to-head. Turning back to the guy, she flashes a smile, bites her lip. Ten minutes later, they each carry a tray of drinks, maneuvering through the crowd. Approaching the table, there is some kind of a scene going on. Jen is standing up angrily.

“Oh, I’m sorry, am I boring you? Am I boring you?” Jen is saying. Kierk is kind of slouched back, looking up at the ceiling like he cannot believe what is happening. Jen continues—“I’m sorry, sorry that my fucking opinions are so inferior—”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Yeah, you basically did. Jessica, where did you find this guy?” Jessica kind of looks helplessly around. Both Chelsea and Jen are gathering up their things to leave. Kierk rolls his eyes, acting exasperated.

“Real nice sociopath friend here, Jess,” Chelsea says.

“That term hasn’t been used since the seventies. It’s technically a psychopath.”

“Fuck you!” Jen says.

“You would have,” he says, smiling. “But I’d have died of boredom from your cadaverous taste in literature before we got that far.”

Chelsea and Jen both give him the middle finger, to which Kierk shrugs. After hugging Jessica goodbye they pass Carmen and the guy she’s brought with her.

“This is ah . . . Rob.” Carmen lays out the drinks, mentally cursing.

Rob sticks out a hand. Kierk reaches past the proffered hand and picks up one of the gin and tonics and drains the entire thing, his Adam’s apple bobbing. The empty ice-filled glass is still vibrating on the table as he wipes his mouth and says loudly—“Thanks, Ken!”—and then disappears into the crowd toward the bar. Carmen calls his name once before he vanishes.

Rob turns to Carmen. “Who the fuck was that?”

Carmen ignores him, debating internally, watching the crowd for sign.

The night is full of eyes, inhuman, a peacock’s tail. Momus would have laughed. Everything left, even the city. Carmen comes out of the bar wearing Rob’s hat. Alex pirouettes down the steps like an acrobat. Kierk is across the street already, had been for some time, sitting on the curb with his head in his hands. Distant voices call his name, looking for nothing at all. Kierk is thinking that materialism is a clock wound up by a macrocephalic god. The group is soon standing around him, including Rob the investment banker who has been hitting on Carmen all night with remarkable persistence and, so far, considerable charm. He hands out cigarettes to everyone. A lighter is passed around. Kierk shrugs off a hand on his shoulder.

“What’s his story?”

Looking up from his hands—“This has all just been a terrible misunderstanding. Thank Galileo for that, that old fuck, for establishing some goddamn assumptions that are going to fuck us over in the end. He took the observer out of science . . .”

Kierk’s head lolls about like a puppet with its strings cut. He shrugs off another offer to stand. Talk goes over and around him. A wall of legs, jeans, slacks, a dress. Some shoes are nicer than others.

“Materialism is a chrome clock wound up by the palsied hands of a macrocephalic god!” Kierk says loudly.

There is a drunken silence.

“Is this guy for fucking real?”

Carmen shoves Rob the investment banker into the street. A taxi honks as it swerves around him.

“Whoa! What the fuck! You could have killed me! You can’t just shove people into the street to get hit by a car. What the fuck is the matter with you people!”

“FUCK OFF.” Carmen gives him the finger.

“Hey, hey, I didn’t start this, and—”

“YOU FUCK OFF.”

“Christ, you frigid cunt, take a fucking pill.”

Kierk, dark deeds on his mind, tries to get up, but instead, betrayed, becomes a caving scarecrow of night, tumbling back on his hands. The investment banker recedes offstage. Nervous laughter comes from Jessica until Carmen gives her a hard look.

Carmen, bending over him—“Here, Kierk, you want another hat? Take this hat.”

With a green baseball cap that reads AIG firmly secured to his head, the three of them enter a process of lifting Kierk to his swaying feet.

“Just leave