“So tell me once a-fuckin’-gain—why?” Gregory said, and he finished with a chittering so bizarre I immediately entered it in my journal as ‘one a tiny monkey might make: Note, pen sketch miniature monkey; red, brown, green field.’

Following his odd hilarity, Gregory flung his scan like a net over the room, and his untethered, shoulder-length hair whipped first left and then right, presumably to ascertain if anyone else was as baffled as he.

So far, his eyes had swept over my head.

“It hasn’t changed,” said Jay, his voice above and to my left.

“What hasn’t?”

“The question you already forgot you asked. They drove fifteen-hundred miles to see me—”

“See you,” Rory chimed in from the brown sofa upon which he sprawled on his back, his spider-thin left leg flattened atop the back rest, “but not Clarence’s nuts.” Rory’s hair was the orange of a not-quite-ripe tomato. His eyes, perpetually amazed, lips full and mobile, his expression now conveying a readiness for full-scale retreat into an I-was-just-kidding smile. In the center of his forehead, two fresh quarter-inch indentations, the half-moon shape of the nails of opposing index fingers straddled either side of a match-head-sized pink mound. Ten years of accumulated successes scarred his cheeks. You’ll be a challenging sketch, Rory. His lips framed a glimpse of uneven teeth, and then he finished: “They’ll have a hard time keeping their eyes on their son.”

Jay hurled the decorative pillow from the overstuffed chair he occupied. It clattered against the Venetian blinds behind the sofa, leaving a ghost of the pillow’s shape, and a sprinkling of fine dust to settle on the sill.

Jamison poked his head through the kitchen door. “Christ, Jay. There’s the University of Texas or the Capital building—any number of places. But Clarence’s?”

“Never miss a thing, do you?” Jay asked, but there was a teasing warmth in his tone.

“Comes with the job.” Jamison was the counselors’ dorm leader. Everyone called him by his last name, not Harold. He preferred the respectful “Mr.” from new counselors, like me, but others told me that rarely lasted more than a few days.

He withdrew his head, leaving the door open a crack. “Flapjacks in five,” came from deeper in the kitchen.

“Flapjacks!” Gregory hollered toward the door, “You tryin’ to make this a fuckin’ dude ranch?” He made another survey of his audience. Is there a substance to Gregory worth sketching?

“What does that even mean, Saint Gregory?” Rory’s canonization of Gregory seemed to be lost on everyone, unless it would be his holiness, whose face just now carried a stricken smile.

After what he deigned a fitting time to fade that smile, Saint Gregory, who perched backwards in the rickety dining room chair, frowned over at me. I sat Indian fashion, on a throw rug between Jay and the sofa that Rory possessed. “What d’you think, George? You haven’t given your two cents-worth on this. If you have two cents-worth. You’re either drawing pictures, or you got your nose stuck in some goddam book.”

“There are worse things to do with it.” I withdrew my pencil and turned the page. “Think about what?”

“Jay.”

I looked up from my journal. “What about Jay?”

“See? You need to pay attention, school boy—taking his Mom and Dad to see Clarence.”

“And Clarence’s b-balls,” Rory added, his words vying with only limited success against the bursts of his own laughter; he simultaneously crossed protective forearms over his face.

“What are we, in the fifth grade?” Jay asked him, glaring. Jay—blond crew-cut, light complexioned, a tendency to blush, but not blushing now.

“I don’t know this Clarence fellow,” I said.

Gregory turned his gentle, recently-sainted, smile on me. “And you’ll never learn about him at U of T, my friend.”

I closed my journal, keeping the place with my finger. “So?”

Gregory’s brows peaked and he turned his weary, suffering face to Jay.

“It’s a fair question, Gregory,” Jay responded, his eyes steady on his target. “So?”

Gregory batted his lashes a few times. “You know what I’m driving at.”

“No. No, afraid I don’t.” He puckered his lips and shook his head. “I’m not a mind reader.”

“You know, he’s a—he’s my—well, our—our guru.”

“Clarence, himself, might thump your noggin for that,” Jay said.

“Don’t accept him—that’s fine, but he’s my guru.”

“He might challenge why you even need a guru. Remember the Tower.”

“What tower?”

“Geez, Gregory, and you call him your guru? The Tower card.”

Gregory cleared his throat. “Geez, Gregory, the Tower card,” he whined, wagging his head like a metronome at each syllable. “Golly-gee, Jay, so you couldn’t have meant the University of Texas Tower?”

I’d only been here a week but this wasn’t the first reference I’d heard from the guys about Jay’s reluctance—more aptly, his refusal—to swear.

Jay smiled. “It could’ve been the Eiffel Tower, except we were talking about Clarence.”

After a moment, Gregory tried to engage me in the conversation. “Jay means the Tarot deck Tower.”

I raised my shoulders and dropped them. “I don’t know anything about the Tarot, or Tower or—whatever.”

“Exactly.” Gregory grinned and nodded, sagely. He turned his still nodding head to Jay.

Jay didn’t see him since he was looking down at me. “There’s something Gregory’s not telling you about Clarence.” He used his thumbnail to scratch a spot above his blond brow. “He’s a brilliant old codger—no doubt about that. Mysterious. He’s also wily; kind of a showman, and a trickster. Right, Gregory?”

“It’s your story.”

“Sure, okay .... By the way, is Herm in his room?”

“He’s at work.” The words issued at just under a shout from the kitchen, and Jamison followed them out, bearing a platter of pancakes in each hand. He placed both on the table. “Why?”

“Herm’s covering for me at the Acorn dorm,” Rory butted in. He swung his legs from the couch and stood, stretching his arms toward the ceiling. 

Jamison stared down at the steaming pancakes like he was taking stock. “Five plates, knives, forks, butter, syrup—catsup for Rory.”

“Shut the fuck up!” Rory said in full grin, rushing to complete his stretch. He maneuvered his spindly legs around the coffee table on his way to the pancakes.

“What difference does it make anyway?” Jamison asked over his shoulder on his way back to the kitchen.

“Herm would validate my case.”

Gregory scowled. “What are you, a fuckin’ lawyer?” He shot up from the chair he straddled and swung his leg around it the way one would dismount a horse. Standing behind the chair, he pushed it, scraping across the uneven hardwood floor to the table.

I got up from the floor, took a moment to massage my knees, then headed to the table. “Glad this isn’t a lecture I need to take notes for. Not one of you’s finished a thought. Mind if I direct an inquiry?”

“Oh for Christ sake!” said Gregory. “The bell’s rung. School’s over.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” asked Rory.

I glanced at each of them, then turned to Jay. “See what I mean?”

“Go for it,” Jay told me.

“Okay.” I took a seat at the table. “What is your case, and how does this what’s-his-name validate it?”

“Herm would help me show what a trickster Clarence is. Herm has his sessions with Clarence, like the rest of us.”

“Not me,” said Rory. “I’ve got better fuckin’ things to do than visit a fuckin’ phony pervert.”

“So he’s not even a real pervert, Rory?” Jay shook his head.

“A phony and a pervert.”

“How’s he a pervert, dip-shit?” asked Gregory, standing behind his chair at the table.

“Summer and winter, always wears the same shorts with no underwear. Lives alone.”

“Living alone makes him a pervert?”

“Where’s his wife?

“You’re not married. Are you a pervert?” Gregory was obviously proud of his retort.

“I heard tell his wife died a few years ago.” Rory tore off a piece of the top pancake and popped it in his mouth. “She could be in his freezer.”

“Oh for Chrissake.”

“Ever been inside his house?”

“Remember that pancake’s yours, asshole—and, no, he doesn’t let anyone in. So what?”

“Has he invited any of you for dinner?”

Jay got up from the overstuffed chair. “Rory, you know how absurd this is sounding?”

I pressed forward between remarks. “So, how does Herm make your case about Clarence being a trickster?”

“Well ...” Jay walked behind me. “It was after my second, maybe third, session with Clarence and I was feeling proud as a peacock. You see, he had told me I was his best pupil, and I felt like I was floating all the way back here.” He chose the chair to my right, next to Rory and across from Gregory, who still stood behind his chair, frowning down at the table. “When Herm and I talked about my session—we sometimes compare notes—somehow, during the conversation, I let my little secret out.” Pink crept up from under Jay’s collar and suffused his face. “I don’t know why. I realize it was a little immature.”

“Saying you were—”

“Clarence’s prize pupil, yes. It didn’t take a genius to see how my words had crushed Herm’s spirit, and I felt rotten about it.”

“But not rotten enough to stop you from saying it in the first place,” said the grimly smiling Gregory.

“And I’m guessing Clarence told Herm the same thing?”

“Very astute,” he said. “You ruined my punchline, but yes, Herm was his best pupil, too.”

Gregory, one white-knuckled hand gripping the top of his chair, swiveled his head to the kitchen. “Goddam it, Jamison, are you milking the fucking cow to make the butter?”

“Or fucking the milking cow?” Rory chimed in with a huge grin and raised his hand to high-five Jay, looked at his fingers and brought them down to the table.

Jamison came through the door that moment carrying the five plates, the butter dish resting on top, the utensils clutched in one hand and the syrup bottle angling out from his opposite armpit. He smiled oddly, with only one side of his mouth lifting. After putting everything on the table he glanced at Jay without saying anything.

“Et tu, Jamison?” Jay asked.

The other side of his mouth lifted. “Yeah, guess so. Thought it was our little secret. Amazing. All this brilliance under one roof.”

All eyes fell on Gregory.

“What?” he asked.

“Well?” Jay asked.

“Well fuckin’ what?” He came around and dropped into his chair, facing Jay but avoiding his eyes. After a while he repeated in a softer voice, “What do you expect me to say?”

“Say what you want. I don’t care. At this point, I’d hate to think I was the only one here who wasn’t his best pupil.”

By now everyone was occupied lifting a pancake or two onto his plate. Gregory’s eyes stopped on each person’s face briefly. Seemingly out of nowhere he said, “It is kind of funny when you think about it.”

Jay smiled. “Yeah, after the shock of it wears off.”

“Okay. I—yeah.”

“And the point is, he never told me to keep it between him and me. Same for Herm. How about you?”

Jamison and Gregory shook their heads.

“Never,” said Gregory.

“Can’t you just picture him sitting back in his chair in the front of his house, his arms folded across his belly and thinking of all the possible scenarios? The drama. The clash of egos.”

“The Tower?” Gregory, directed to me, one eyebrow raised.

“With his balls falling to the ground out the side of his shorts,” Rory added, spitting pancake debris across the table.

“Jesus, Rory, will you give your obsession a rest?” said Jamison, leaning over the table and inspecting its surface from different angles to see how close the moist detritus had come to his plate.

Jay got up. “Time to go pick up my folks. Clarence awaits.”

“No pancakes?” Jamison asked.

“No time,” said Jay.

“Still can’t believe you’re doing it.”

“It best count as your session,” Gregory carped, jabbing repeatedly at his pancake.
 
“I’m really curious about this Clarence guy, Mr. Jamison.” We sat on the sofa, open cans of Pearl beer on the coffee table in front of us. Gregory had left a few minutes earlier for his shift at Arbor Heights School. Rory snoozed in the overstuffed chair. His sleeping sounds blended with the dishwasher in the kitchen. Jay was expected to return soon to get ready for his one-thirty shift. I hoped he’d have time to fill us in on his visit with Clarence.

“I’ve known him longest. What d’you want to know?” He took a generous pull from his beer and burped.

From the chair, Rory smacked his lips and mumbled something. We both turned to watch him tuck his legs onto the cushion, his thighs pressed against his chest, to form a kind of sitting fetal position.

“Like a little angel,” said Jamison.

I tried to figure the angle of my approach. “Tell me about Clarence the man, Mr. Jamison. I—

“Just Jamison. See, it’s the school that wants—no, dammit, that’s not true. ....” He pooched out his cheeks and exhaled beer fumes in my direction. “Fuckin’ Tower—just call me Jamison.”

“Thanks.” I smiled. “The Tower again. What’s so significant ...” I trailed off, remembering the raw nerve it had struck with Gregory.

“Why is it so important?” He was silent for a moment, like he was trying to get a mental foothold. “There’s a ton of books about the meaning of the Tarot cards. You’ve never read any?”

I told him I hadn’t.

“Clarence tells us we have everything we need up here, anyway,” he said, pointing to his head, “and here,” jabbing his heart, “to understand the Tarot. To me the Tower card represents the Tower of Babel, the moment God destroyed it. Here ...” He withdrew a colorful card from his shirt pocket and handed it to me. “I carry this with me as a reminder.”

As I was about to study the strange image, the front door opened and Jay entered. Jamison smiled and I raised my arm in greeting; he didn’t acknowledge either, but entered a door leading to the bedrooms. Jamison raised his brows to me, drank the last of his beer, bent the can and set it down. In silence, he stared at the door Jay had entered. I studied the card.

“What do you make of it?” he asked, at last.

“Definitely a really tall tower; struck by lightning that knocked the crown off the top of it; people falling from it, one of them wearing a crown.”

“And?”

“That God didn’t like the chosen ones building a tower to heaven?”

“Bingo!”

“Trying to be too Godlike? Ego-inflation?”

“That’s the way I figure it.” He sat with a close-lipped smile a moment and then made a jerk of his head toward my opened, but untouched, can of beer.

“Go ahead,” I told him. “I’ve got to study tonight.” I returned the card. “Okay, about Clarence ... I think we can dispense with the ‘Clarence loves me more than he loves you’ aspect.”

“Oh, I see ... so you’ll settle for the … homogenized version of him?” His words were tinged with sarcasm. Everyone seemed to want to protect Clarence. “That’s easy enough. He’s an old man, a little paunchy, out of shape; he’s a hermit, living with his dog in an old shack that he never lets anyone in. Rory talked about his huge testicles. Grapefruit sized. It’s really hard to keep your eyes off of them. They don’t make underwear that big.”

“Which explains why he doesn’t wear underwear.”

"I think he protects himself from the outside world by his appearance. He really is raunchy, and then there’s the weird way he acts until he gets to know you. He physically distances himself by the ring of trees and underbrush surrounding his place."

“Underbrush … you mean weeds?”

“Yeah. The trees are only a citizen’s complaint away from being cut down, hauled off, and probably his shack condemned.”

“Surprised they haven’t done it already.”

He stared at me, appeared to be studying me, and then he took a swig of beer. “Rory only met Clarence once. You saw what he took away from his experience.”

What’s he getting at? “The city wouldn’t wait to get to know him either, would they? Councilmen tend not to like untrimmed trees and weeds. I’m really surprised they haven’t cut them down already. When they do that’ll leave an old shack in the clearing. Doesn’t sound like it’s up to code, does it?

“What’re you trying to say?”

“Just what you already know.” I considered what I was about to say. “Appearance makes the world go ‘round.”

He started to take another drink from his can, but left it at his lips. Then he set it back on the table just as Jay opened the door.

“Hey, compadre,” Jamison said, “How’d it go?”

Jay rolled his eyes and sat on the other side of Jamison.

“George was just giving me his read on the Tower card.”

“Did my name come up in the interpretation?”

Jamison angled his body toward Jay. “That bad, huh?”

“I don’t know what the heck I was thinking of.”

I leaned forward so I could see past Jamison.

“I wasn’t aware how much I wanted my folks to like Clarence—no, not like ...” he shook his head.

“To be impressed by Clarence?” I volunteered.

Jay stuck his head past Jamison to look at me. “Yeah. Isn’t that strange? Clarence picked up on it immediately. He went out of his way to be unimpressive.”

Jamison leaned back in the couch and laughed into his hand, but turned it into a cough. “That’s Clarence for you.”

“Yeah ...” Jay inclined his head toward Rory and lowered his volume. “He’d have been in his glory. I figured since Clarence knew they’d be coming—”

“Instead, he just let ‘em all hang out,” Jamison interrupted, giving me a quick glance.

“On the way out to the car, after our visit was over, Mom kept saying, ‘That poor old man. He’s got elephantitis, son. I think it’s affected his brain.’”

“No shit?” Jamison clapped his hands. “Why his brain? What else did he do?”

"Geez, Jamison, you know Clarence. Once he found out I’d invested so much ... pride in wanting him to impress them—and it would have taken a blind man not to see how uncomfortable he made Mom—he told them how bright their son was, that I was his best pupil. Then he asked if he could get us a bowl of ice cream. The folks said no, but I accepted, since he’d never offered me a snack before, and I was curious. He went inside and returned with a bowl of vanilla for me and one for him.”

“Oh, this is good,” said Jamison, rubbing his palms together.

“Mom couldn’t keep her eyes off my bowl. I don’t think it had been washed. It had something like a Spaghetti-O stuck to the rim. But that wasn’t enough. He shared his ice cream with Copernicus.”

“That’s his dog,” Jamison turned back to tell me with a huge smile.

“Every time Copernicus licked ice cream off the spoon, Mom gagged. Every bite Clarence put in his own mouth, she’d gag again.”

“Oh, Christ!”

“She somehow kept from throwing up, but before we left—”

“He didn’t read their Tarots?”

“He asked, but Mom and Dad said no, but listen to this. Before we left, he pulled a newspaper clipping out of his pocket. He asked them if they’d been following the news about the seven-year-old boy who’d gone missing and was feared kidnapped. He gave them the clipping and then, as casual as could be, went on to say there was a similar case of a six-year-old girl whose body the police found two weeks ago. Of course, my Dad’s a cop, so his ears pricked up. Mom was—well, she needed to leave.

“Why would he do that?” Jamison asked.

Jay shook his head. “My guess is he was trying to illustrate a point he made with me, and probably you, that these are things that have always happened and will always happen. You know, like Jesus said, ‘The poor you will always have with you.’”

“Yeah … yeah … that’s right.”

“He was saying, you know, kidnappers and murderers, and the children kidnapped and murdered ... you will always have with you, too. It’s a part of life. Nothing changes.”

“I remember him saying, ‘the poor you will always have with you,’ but this? No. Christ, no. This time Clarence was out of line. What’d your Dad say?”

“Nothing at the time. On the way back, he asked if I thought he should visit the local P.D.”

“Because of the clippings? Jesus. What’d you—?”

“I told him Clarence was harmless. He wouldn’t—he wasn’t capable.”

Jamison lifted the can to his puckered lips, then put it down. “I hadn’t heard about the missing boy.”

I looked from one to the other.

Jay stood. “Anyway, I need to get over to the dorms." He took a few steps then turned back. “George, suppose I can look at your sketches some time?”

“I’d like that.”
I never got the chance to show Jay my sketches.

The next day, or the one after, he received the phone call he’d been waiting for. Margo Rice’s Writers’ Colony had accepted him to work the summer there for his tuition. He gave Arbor Heights a week’s notice. During that week, I’d seen him a couple of times—almost mentioned my sketches once—but he seemed so distracted with his departure just around the corner.

I was disappointed about the sketches. My Tower, probably. The one I’d wanted him to see was a pen-and-ink of him. Done from memory. I believe he’d have intuited, in the margins of identification, something essential in it. I think—I hope—he’d have seen it in the eyes. I find eyes are the conveyors of innocence and pride—part and parcel of his Sisyphean journey.