The Easy Way Out by Stephen McCauley Page A

for this weekend.” Jeffrey was a painter, who made a meager living doing illustrations for medical textbooks. He worked at home, always with loud jazz blasting on his stereo and his window shades drawn tight. I figured I could afford to joke with him about having met someone else, since he rarely left his apartment.
    He groaned, an exaggerated, unconvincing attempt at sounding contrite. An essential part of being a good liar, one of my few talents,is being able to spot a bad one. “Don’t make me feel worse than I do,” he said. “It’s just that I haven’t accomplished anything all week and I have a deadline on Monday. I wouldn’t be any fun to be with, Patrick, I swear. You don’t mind, do you?”
    It wasn’t within my rights to mind, so I told him I didn’t. “I can spend the weekend house hunting with Arthur, which is probably what I should be doing anyway. I think he’s beginning to suspect I have a mean case of cold feet.”
    â€œWe wouldn’t want him to think that.”
    â€œNo,” I said, “we wouldn’t.” I couldn’t tell if his tone had been sarcastic, meaning he was unacceptably jealous of Arthur, or serious, meaning (unacceptably) that he wasn’t. “I can come down in two weeks, if that sounds all right.”
    â€œThat’s fine. I mean, it’s a long way off, but I guess we’ll both survive. Give my best to Arthur.”
    â€œSure,” I said. He and Arthur were always sending messages of goodwill back and forth, even though they didn’t much care for each other. As far as Arthur knew, Jeffrey was just my good friend. Arthur and I had a strictly monogamous relationship, which I interpreted somewhat loosely as meaning I could do whatever I wanted as long as it was in the realm of “safe” sex and Arthur never found out about any of it. Sharon Driscoll, my best friend and mentor at the travel agency, had been influential in making me believe that telling the truth and lying convincingly are more or less the same thing.
    I went back to trying to find a room for Professor Fields. I felt fatigued. It really is exhausting to spend eight hours doing a job with no redeeming political or social value. Arthur often tried to make me feel better about my profession by telling me there was something noble in having one of those jobs about which it could be said, “Well, someone has to do it,” but the way I looked at it, the world would be better off if no one dirtied his hands in the travel industry. Tourism is destroying the environment and culture of entire continents, not to mention the perspectives of a lot of silly people who honestly believe they’re gaining an understanding of the world by sitting in an air-conditioned bus for six days, speeding through China.
    I certainly didn’t plan to spend the rest of my life booking reservations, but it wasn’t as if I had a wealth of other options to choose from. Unlike my younger brother, I was born a bit too soon to be genuinely comfortable with computers or to admit that there are real advantages to having an MBA. I’m pretty much grounded on the wasteland between capitalism and idealism, incapable of either changingthe world or making money. I had expected to spend my life teaching school, but that had lasted only three years. One thing I learned from the experience is that it’s dangerous to tempt vengeful fate by making long-term plans. Tony’s wedding was an obvious example of the pitfalls of that practice.
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    In my early twenties, I sincerely believed the world would be a better place if teenagers could only learn to love literature. It really was an audacious notion, since, it occurs to me now, I didn’t love literature all that much myself in those days. I read in a steady, random fashion, choosing whatever books I happened to find at stoop sales or on top of friends’ coffee