He crossed the room like a dancer in a trance and opened to the cover article. His eyes skipped across the page.
Bonner’s violent elation is among the few games in town grandiose and surreal enough to compete with this year’s headlines. . His limb-jutting, head-swiveling choruses dance through Tiananmen, chain across the Baltic states, and climb on the sledgehammered Berlin Wall, before most of us have even registered the events.
The list of the man’s achievements read to Els like parody: a revival of Gershwin’s Oh, Kay! with the Prohibition bootleggers changed to South Bronx crack dealers. A Handel Xerxes that came straight from Idi Amin’s Uganda. A Glimmerglass succès de scandale casting Nancy and Ron Reagan in a phantasmagoric Verdi Macbeth. Bedlam-filled ballets featuring Iranian revolutionaries, prancing running backs, and camouflaged Sandinistas — spastic kaleidoscopes of rapture and cataclysm. A sidebar in large type quoted Bonner: “The best art always feeds gossip.” The idea seemed to have earned him an international reputation.
In disbelief, Els tracked down every magazine mention of Richard Bonner that the library owned. So when, a couple of months later, early in the new year, Bonner came stumbling up Els’s gravel drive near dusk, it seemed like just another coup de théatre. The diatribe started from twenty yards away.
How the fuck is anyone supposed to find this place? There aren’t any house numbers. No damn street names. And you’re living in some kind of reconditioned chicken coop.
Els stood in the door of his besieged home. Bonner jogged up and bear-mauled him. He kissed Els Russian-style. Then he shoved him back into the cabin.
Look at this: The works! Electricity. Furniture. Running water. I’m crushed, Maestro. I thought this was supposed to be the woods.
What are you doing here? Els asked. How did you get my address?
Bonner twisted Els’s head one way then the other. Hmm. This whole nature fad agrees with you.
Els tore free. Thought you’d just pop in, after six years? Seven?
Bonner pouted and dropped his hand. Could be.
You remember the last thing you said to me?
Hey! Statute of limitations.
My music was shit and always would be.
I know. I’m a pig, aren’t I?
Bonner broke away and toured the room. He picked up and sniffed a fireplace log. He ran his fingers down the spines of Els’s books. He glanced out the window at some invisible assailant. The man had put on maybe thirty pounds.
Amazing trip up here, he said. Got me a five-hour education in West Coast hip-hop.
Bonner stopped fiddling, crossed to Els, and rested an elbow on each of his shoulders. How would you like to help ruin my career?
I take it you’re staying for dinner, Els answered.
ELS POACHED A WHITEFISH. Richard contributed a bottle of Malbec out of the trunk of his car, two fistsfuls of dietary supplements, and an account of his latest coup. Els listened in monosyllables.
It seems, Richard said, that City Opera wants a work for their 1993 season.
Els had to laugh, and did.
I know, Bonner said. Not possible, right? The kind of thing they offer to real artists. Not punk boho kids.
Bravo, Richard. You’ve arrived. What’s the piece?
You’re not listening, dickhead.
And then Els was. The opera board had decided that a bankable iconoclast of Bonner’s rep might revive a dying house on controversy alone. They’d given him carte blanche to settle on a libretto and choose a composer.
I told them I want you. They think I’m nuts.
Only when his chunk of fish went down did Els bother to say, They’re right.
But they hired me to be nuts. You see the beauty here?
Night had fallen. Outside, above the town’s holdout lights, the mountains darkened. A raiding raccoon clicked across the roof shingles. An owl sang half a mile away.
Don’t make me beg, Bonner said.
When could I ever make you do anything?
Richard slumped back in the Shaker chair, his neck against the top slat. Something’s happened, Peter. The game’s gone flat. I’m playing myself. Formula transgression. Turn the crank, and out come the little predictable spurts of stylized outrage.
Els stacked the dirty dinnerware, studying the problem as if it were the Sunday crossword.
Doesn’t sound like anything I can help you with.
Richard manacled Els’s wrist. Don’t game me, asshole. You want me to tell you I need you?
Els withdrew his trapped wrist, sat, and steepled his fingers to his lips.
Don’t give me that Buddha shit either, Bonner said. You remember everything. We used to discover things. Laws of science. We worked for God, once, you and me. And anyone who didn’t like it could go save themselves.
As Els remembered it, God’s preferences had been largely unknown to them. Yet he held still and listened.
Bonner slipped into a fantasia for the audience of one. The whole globe’s convulsing. But this country is walking around in a gauzy, super-sized, antidepressant-laced, MTV-fueled cocoon. Game Boys and Party Girls. Fuck: I’m not making art. I’m just the next consumer-friendly dose of distraction for people who’re bored by halftime spectacles.
You want something, Els said.
Bonner looked at him, startled by the insight. Dying for it.
And you don’t know what.
Oh, but I do. I want to wake people from their dream of safety.
And you think I can help you do that.
You’re the only person I’ve ever met who wants more than I do. Look at you! Not afraid to torch your entire life. Writing for no one.
Els didn’t bother to correct either lie. He stood and took the dirty dishes into the kitchen. He returned with two cartons of ice cream and two spoons. Bonner grabbed a spoon and set to work on both cartons at once. Els just watched, thinking the man might be abusing some prescription drug.
He said, You are a miserable human being. Why should I put myself through that again?
Bonner nodded mid-scoop, agreeing with everything. Because your stuff with me is the best work you’ve ever done.
You’ve got a problem, Richard.
You don’t say. Bonner raised his spoon in the air and sang, News, news, news, news, news, news, news has a. . has a. . has a kind of mystery. .!
So what is it? You’re a repressed queer? Is that your great secret?
Bonner swung the spoon like fencing foil. Oh, fuck off. Queer, straight: Who makes these things up? Is anybody anything?
You’re manic?
Bonner dove back into the box. What does that even mean? He fished for bits of nut in the melting mass of cream. We’re either hungry or dead. Don’t talk to me about finer distinctions.