New Hope For Small Men: Chapter 17

Sometimes Robert saw small men with taller women walking happily down the street together. It was possible, he knew, for love or attraction to bridge that gap of inches, but the men invariably seemed successful, and walked with the wide gait of confidence only money can buy. And maybe the women liked that. Certainly, money and confidence did not hurt anyone’s chances.

But Robert was a small man of little ambition. He knew that about himself and accepted it. “What do you want from life, Robert?” Mr. Carleton had asked him once, and Robert could not answer but thought about it for several days. What did he want from life? For life to be different; for life to be different from what he knew it to be.

He had heard of religions that believed in rebirth and for a while the idea appealed to him: to be reborn as someone taller, with wealthier and better connected parents. But the suffering would still exist somewhere. He might live in a castle, but somewhere lonely women were still crying about unfaithful boyfriends to the guy who answered the phone at the cable company. He might, in his new and improved self, be unaware of it, but ignorance seemed like a hard thing to make one’s karmic wish.

Art was the answer, he knew Mr. Carleton would say, but what was that anyway? Art was just the illustration of beauty and suffering, and these things already existed. They existed without the pictures.

“You’re a young man,” Mr. Carleton said.

“Relatively,” said Robert, looking at the old man sitting at his window.

“There’s still time for you to do something.”

“Sure,” he said.