I’ve been seeing him around a lot lately. Not a casual sighting now and again, but a near-daily run-in, sometimes more than once a day. I usually see him at the coffee shop, but also at the playground, the bookstore, or just passing by on the street. We have stood arm to arm at the farmers’ market. I once opened a door into his face.
Seeing the actor so much started to short-circuit my brain. It was a feeling not so different from the cognitive dissonance of seeing my teacher in the grocery store as a small boy, but amplified a million times. The actor should be frozen in my TV forever the moment I click “off” on the remote. That he was not, and that with his autonomy and Hollywood money was choosing to do the same stuff as me, felt frankly weird.
I quit my job last fall. The company I was working for was beginning to melt down and I figured I’d be laid off soon, so I might as well go out on my own terms. I decided to finally write a book, something I’d longed to do for decades. Things would be tight, but we’d be okay for a year, my wife and I figured as we did the math. I’d pack a lunch, tap into savings. More worrisome was the potential social isolation.
To get me out of the house, my wife bought me a membership to a co-working space nearby, a no-frills office lacking in power outlets where people sit around at tables quietly. One day, the famous actor started showing up there. It is not a big place. I saw him in the bathroom line, at the water fountain. No KN95, no pretense. He was, with a bit of a stretch of the imagination, now my co-worker. There is no way he didn’t recognize me. Right? But, if so, he never let on. No smile, no nod.
My wife took my daughter to the jungle gym, so I went to sit down on a bench. Nearby, rocking his sleeping child in the stroller, I saw a guy reading a book. He had a mustache, a denim shirt, a lazy stylishness I myself tried to cultivate. A good prospect. As I looked closer, I saw the book was by French philosopher-novelist Michel Houellebecq.
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