ONLY FART
WHEN EXITING
The next afternoon, I went to Professor Flesh and pleaded for some minuscule-interest, ceaselessly long-term payment arrangement for my last semester registration fees. He said he was the wrong person to appeal to; however, my presence was required in the place where such decisions and revisions were made—Butler Hall.
“Why? Who knows about me?” I asked.
“I just got a phone call requesting the presence of the Whitlock Fellowship recipient, and you were the last dinosaur of that species.”
“Do you think it might be an eleventh-hour reprieve?”
“I’ll cross my fingers.” He illustrated the point and told me the room in which I was to report.
Eagerly, I went back to Butler, past the angst-filled security guard, who confirmed my appointment. I located the room. A pretty secretary kept vigil out front. I noticed a Hadassah calendar on the wall behind her, a fellow tribesman.
“Aeiou is the name,” I said suavely, “reinstatement of the Whitlock Award is the game.”
“You’re the creep I spoke to yesterday,” she started in.
“I spoke to you? What’s your name?”
She held up a name plaque—Veronica. Young, chipper, smartly dressed, she looked like a personals ad from the Christian Herald Trombone.
“I kind of lost myself yesterday. That was my telephone persona,” I said amorously. “I hope you didn’t take anything I said to heart.”
“Actually, I was quite amused.”
“How’s that?”
“Well, I never heard anyone use insults so creatively. I was particularly touched by your attempt to try and find out my nationality.”
I explained that I was a bit of a historian and that I had the dirt on every nationality. “No people are free from some kind of guilt.”
“I’m a history major here, too.” She explained that she was on foreign exchange from Israel.
“No kidding,” I said, nodding my head Michael-J.-Foxishly, “maybe we can get together. Interpret the Talmud.”
“I’d like that,” she replied, and then notified the Dean that I was there. She listened for instructions, then hung up and told me to enter.
I opened the door. Two men were standing very quietly before large windows in a darkly-lit room filled with polished-walnut furniture. Sunlight was pouring in behind them.
“Hi, guys,” I said.
“That’s him,” a deep bellow of masculinity made identification. My eyes and ears instantly adjusted. I realized that before me was Whitlock the Goliath, whom I had brought down just yesterday. If this meeting had taken place in the subway or on the street, I’m sure they would’ve beaten the shit out of me. But in such a nice room, with pipe smoke and heavy brocade drapes, they’d no doubt elect to go through legal channels.
“First of all,” I began my defense, “I didn’t do anything.”
“I never said you did,” Whitlock replied calmly.
“You fell down of your own volition. Admit it! You panicked on your own! Admit it!”
“So I did.”
“When you chased me into Rizzoli’s, you scared me; don’t deny it ‘cause you did.”
“I probably did,” he conceded.
“No judge or jury would ever believe a tiny person like me would try to accost a tall, Olympian like you.”
“Absolutely.”
“You’re a witness! You’re a witness!” I exclaimed to the Dean.
“Have a good day, Mr. Aeiou,” replied the Dean.
“May I ask who the hell you are?” I said to the Dean.
“A dean; now leave my office,” he said very calmly.
I walked back to Professor Flesh’s office to try and work something out tuition-wise. But when I entered Flesh’s office, he said he’d just received a phone call ordering him to bar me from the building. Furthermore, all my academic records with the university were seized, pulled, and probably shredded. That included my baccalaureate transcripts, so I couldn’t even transfer to another school.
“That’s illegal!” I hollered.
“I was only following orders,” replied the history professor.
I dashed back to Butler and past Veronica into the Office of the Dean of Covert Operations. They were both still there, bathed in shadows, hushed tones, phlegmatic laughter, and facelifts.
“Please, Mr. Whitlock.” I threw myself to the ground. “I’m sorry for what I did, I beg you to have mercy.”
“Notify campus security,” the Dean said to Veronica, who entered behind me. She nodded with a smirk and left the room.
“Let me clarify something,” he said. “I’m doing you a favor.”
“What?”
“I could hurt you a lot more.”
I kept begging, but the man kept ignoring me. He was talented at it. Arrogantly, he inspected a gilded portrait of some rich cocksucker. Soon the campus security, the large dumb animal in a uniform, grabbed me and forced both my hands behind my back. He pushed me out. As the security guard walked me past Veronica, she murmured, “Call me.”
He took me to the phony-marble steps and let me calmly return to my decimated life. I walked down the steps and took a seat on a marble bench near the small, dry, penis-shaped fountain donated by alumna Margaret Dodge.
What the hell, I thought. Ever since I’d entered the graduate program I had pondered over a subject for a thesis. I was supposed to write one this semester and I had neither the subject nor the inclination; it was a good time to be thrown out of school. What was I going to do with a masters, except bullshit around academia? Maybe try for a teaching spot in some exclusive Alpine girls school, like Sly Stallone in his pre-Rocky days, and try to do as many of the religiously crippled virgins as possible? Be that as it may, this expulsion put some new possibilities into what otherwise might have been a life of joy and waste. As I passed through the gates donated by alumnus George Delacorte, I thought to myself, I can’t let all this go. I mustn’t. I took the subway downtown to Whitlock’s office and waited outside of his glass-and-steel castle. An hour passed and then another, just like the first. A succession of limos came and went, until finally the door of one opened, and he got out.
“I beg you, Mr. Whitlock,” I said, running up to him. His driver walked in interference between him and me.
“I only meant to appeal to you, but you kept walking away,” I shouted around the stocky driver. But Whitlock walked toward the rhombus-shaped building and wouldn’t even look at me.
“Please, Mr. Whitlock, you are obviously a very powerful man, but don’t you agree that, in the words of that innovative financier Michael Milken, ‘with power comes the veneer of responsibility’”—Milken, who used three-card monte as a model for the investment banking industry, never said any such thing, but I figured that Whitlock might respect one of his own—“For a miscalculation on my part, you’re sentencing my whole life to incompletion! I beg you…I had no preconceived plan, and whatever embarrassment or damage I might have caused you was, ironically, only self-inflicted by your humongous ego.”
But Whitlock entered his palace without acknowledging my words.
Upon my entering the building, security blocked my entrance. I took position across the street and waited out of view, watching covertly. Another hour came and went before Whitlock exited the building. I raced over. This time, his driver grabbed me and cranked his arm back, about to punch.
“No!” said Whitlock.
“Mr. Whitlock, I am not going away. I will be here every day, every waking hour, until you rethink this!”
“I am warning you. Leave me alone.”
“I can’t. You hold my future. I will be here every day, I warn you. Mr. Whitlock, Andrew, if I may call you that, the worst thing you can do to a person is to empower him and then knock that power away.”
“You think so?” he asked matter-of-factly, and for the first time, he seemed to really hear me.
“Yes sir, absolutely.” He smiled, got into his car, and drove away.
A tall order of sleep was the prescription. But New York was an awful city for sleep. Added to which, sleep had a bad rap. People who slept were assumed to be lazy. But sleep was the seat of man’s power. His prophesies, his fantasies, his visitations to death, his real confrontations, his magical strength—all arose from sleep. And it was in sleep that I saw them: farmers in black pajamas, Asiatics racing around on a battlefield, scurrying into a myriad of tunnels, submerged under rice paddies. Learning the lesson of Vietnam, these pajama farmers defeated our mega-tech GIs. I realized a nothing-to-lose, grassroots guerilla operation was the only way to combat this.
It was morning of the next day, a good time to prepare for my Tet Offensive. I collected some of my late, unknown uncle’s camping gear from around the house: a pup tent, a sleeping bag, a transistor radio, and a book on how to hold together under interrogation.
Manhattan on a map hangs like an old sock into the Narrows. I hopped on a bus to the big toe. Stopping by a Korean grocer, I acquired food staples, a cup of coffee, a black magic marker, and some cardboard boxes. Then I set up base camp on the sidewalk across from the rhombus building—Whitlock Incorporated.
I broke open the boxes and created instant placards (I love that word—placards). Using the magic markers, I scribbled my message to the world:
ANDREW WHITLOCK, WHO WORKS ACROSS THE STREET, USED HIS POWERFUL POST TO RUIN MY LIFE, BECAUSE HE THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO MUG HIM. ASK ME ABOUT IT. DONATIONS ENCOURAGED!
I put down a donation cup and set up the cardboard signs so any passerby could see them. For the first couple of minutes, I considered other fronts to fight on: The media eats up shit like this. If I could write a press release and fax it around, I was sure they’d send out one of those vans with the satellite dish on the roof. Then there were the talk show circuits; I could easily get on Jerry Springer. If I handled it right, I could even work my way down to Geraldo.
After fifteen minutes, I considered the possibility of writing a book proposal. This could be for me what the NEA grant-yanking had been for Karen Finley and the “defunded four.” I pitched out a working title: Let Me Learn in Peace! The Joe Aeiou Story.
After twenty minutes, I started getting cold, and I realized that no one had stopped to even glance at my signs. My signs needed spicing up, so I scribbled, “Whitlock killed JFK!”
I unrolled the pup tent and decided to let time do its work. I cocooned myself within, plugging my transistor radio into my head, trying to find WBAI to hear the latest development of the war against the rich. Soon, though, I wound my way to the magical kingdom of sleep until the baton of one of New York’s Finest woke me up by patting along the ribs of the tent, ergo my ribs (New York’s Finest what?).
I felt an increasing frustration as I broke camp. When I was folded and packed, I bee-lined to the nearest payphone. I didn’t know Whitlock’s number offhand, and probably wouldn’t be able to get him to come to the phone, so I decided to call that Dean and tell him that I wouldn’t attend his flea-ass, matchbook school if he sucked a token out of my turnstile. But as soon as I heard the juicy voice of his secretary, Veronica, my heart started farting, and my eyes palpitated.
“Is that you, AEIOU?” She pronounced my name lovingly.
“Hi, I was just wondering…”
“You little sex pod.”
“I thought maybe…”
“Where do you want to meet?”
“Well, I figured…”
“Tower Books on Lafayette Street and Fourth at 6:00. Till then, you little love ghoul.” Click. She must have been in season. I wasted no time in getting up there. I hung out for six hours, browsing through their anything-goes porn/zine section.
“Joseph!” she surprised me suddenly, sending that month’s issue of Tattooed Cycle Sluts whizzing through the air. I grabbed an over-testosteroned copy of World Wrestling Federation Magazine.
“I wasn’t looking at nothing!”
“I don’t care,” she said. But they really do: They want boys sanitized, slim, silent, and smiling.
We ended up going to some pretentious over-priced bistro where we sipped teeny demitasses of “micrappacini.” She talked a storm, and although I understood every word she said, I couldn’t piece them into sentences. I nodded a lot, smiled a lot, and kept looking for excuses to accidentally touch her body parts. When we finished our drinks, we walked around the skeletal remains of the once-exciting Village. By nightfall, we wound up kissing in Washington Square Park. I tried to feel her boobs, but…
“I have to know you better first,” said she.
“Why? Even if I turn out to be a mass murderer, it’ll still be me.”
She said she would let me feel the outlying parts of one breast, but no nipple. I asked her if I could trade it to feel her Golan Heights, just a couple upper lockets. I had just read The Art of the Deal, and this is how The Don made it.
“I’ll let you feel my armpits,” she cleverly countered.
“Both pits?” I raised the ante.
“I suppose,” she said, after a limited reluctance.
“Can I trade one of those pits for a Gaza Strip?”
“This is crazy!” Suddenly angry, she dashed out of the park via the walkway where five people had been killed by that runaway car. As I raced up University Place to catch up to her…
“Aeiou,” I suddenly heard someone slide down the circular vowel congregation of my last name. Whitlock was waving at me from a slowly cruising limo.
“Come with me,” he summoned.
“I’m on a date, sir,” I replied to the deus ex limo.
“We have an understanding,” Whitlock said. I wasn’t certain if he was talking to me or Veronica, but she insisted that she had to go home now anyway and wanted to walk there alone.
“But I’m obliged to walk you home,” I explained to her.
“This could be your reinstatement,” she whispered, pushing me toward his tacky-ass batmobile.
He threw open the door. I assumed a seat next to him and unsuccessfully tried to evict a fart. Without a word, he took out a pocket cassette and replayed the conversation we had had in the Dean’s office earlier that day, right down to my “ooofff” sound when the security guard yanked my arms behind my back. The limo made a right on Waverly Place and drove down Broadway as he spoke.
“What you don’t understand, Aeiou, is that I am both judge and jury.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Your little appeal was quite persuasive. It touched me.”
“Thank you.” The false Milken quote must’ve worked.
“I’m referring to your encampment. I saw you outside my office today. I had the cop scare you off.”
“Oh?”
“If you had held your ground, I would’ve respected you more.”
“But…”
“But I give you credit. You scared me more than I’ve ever been scared before, and that touched me. It says a lot for you.”
“Sure.”
“See, usually I have at least one bodyguard with me, and that was the one day that I decided to try and go for a walk. So you can understand when I heard you behind me, I assumed it was someone who had deep access to my schedule, someone with true econ-political motives.”
“I didn’t…”
“Real revenge takes time, planning. You have to study someone to really hurt them.”
“Oh, I know.”
“I was certain I was dead when I realized you were following me. I mean I was never more afraid in all my life. And for that I want to thank you.” He took my hand and shook it.
“You’re welcome.”
“You blasted away all the calcification that comes with cash. I actually forgot terror, fear. Began to think of myself as a god. You made me mortal again. Returned death to me. So anyway, I’ve reconsidered several rulings.” I prayed as he spoke.
“I pieced together that you learned of my identity and resented my rescinding the family grant.” He took out a small notebook as he spoke: “Fifteen hundred hours (3:00 p.m.): You called my secretary pretending to be a bike messenger.”
Again he flipped through his Day Timer and checked the military-timed schedule of that misbegotten day.
“Around sixteen hundred (4:00 p.m.), you arrived claiming you were a cousin from England.” 1588 was the destruction of the Spanish Armada.
“You spotted me when I came out to the waiting area. Yes or no?” I didn’t remember anything but decided to plead guilty and rely on his mercy.
“Yes, sir.”
“Then you followed me when I left my office sometime between seventeen hundred (5:00 p.m.) and seventeen thirty (5:30 p.m.). Perhaps you didn’t mean to scare me. It is frankly a sensation that I hadn’t experienced since the last great market correction. It’s usually a role I put others in. This was like a jolt, quite traumatizing. You were very fortunate; I used to carry a Glöck. Is there anything further you want to tell me in your defense?”
“Just that I was desperate, and did something out of character, and am more than willing to pay any kind of penance.”
“Anything else?” He wanted more.
“I’m very delicate, I have a weak heart.”
“Yes.”
“And…and you’re very mighty and will live long, and I might have subconsciously resented that.”
“Perhaps.” He thought a moment before speaking. “Well, maybe I was a bit too harsh in condemning you. But I can’t simply reinstate you. You did do an injustice to me and you do deserve punishment.” He paused again and finally issued, “No, I can’t let you back into my college.”
“But what will I do, sir?”
“You have a part-time job at the Strand Bookstore, don’t you?”
“Yes, but it’s only for added indulgences. It’s not enough to live on. My existence was founded on your stipend.”
“Is that your girlfriend?” Whitlock pointed into the distance, referring to Veronica.
“No, I just bumped into her.” I didn’t want to expose Veronica to anyone other than myself.
“She certainly knows how to manipulate information.”
“Pardon?”
“Relatives?”
“No, I’m adopted.”
“Well,” he paused and looked silently, directly into my eyes for so long I thought he was going to kiss me. “Who said that the cruelest punishment is actually the finest rehabilitation?” Not the same person who said that to err is human and to forgive is divine, I thought.
“It’s time you worked in the real world. Ever read Thoreau? Self-reliance—that’s the key.”
It was funny he should use that phrase; Mr. Ngm via Mrs. Ngm had been throwing that phrase in my face for a long time. “What’s it the key to?”
“We have to consider your aptitudes and altitudes.”
Although I had never given him my number, he called me at home later that night.
“What are you doing tomorrow?” he said without introduction.
“The usual. Who is this please?”
“I want you to call in sick, and come by my little shop tomorrow. Don’t come later than, oh, say nine hundred hours. I want to hire your services, my boy.” And he hung up without saying goodbye.
The next day, I somehow succeeded in waking before noon and grabbed a train downtown. It was back to the rhombus building.
I sped up to the horse-eyed secretary and gave my name. By the jaundiced expression, it was safe to assume that she recognized me. Before letting me enter Whitlock’s office, she pointed me to an empty conference room. “In the closet of that conference room are three suits. Mr. Whitlock wants you to put on the one that fits best. Then report to him. And you better hurry up, he’s going to be taking off in twenty-five minutes.”
Although I tried on all three garments, they didn’t vary much in tightness-of-torso or floppiness-of-extremities. I put on the one that best complimented my butt, but had to leave my waist unbuttoned and roll up the sleeves and cuffs.
The horse-eyed secretary pulled out a Polaroid camera and inexplicably took a flash photo of me. Then she shoved me toward his office door. “Quickly, he’s waiting for you.”
I entered a room with a dozen men and women seated at a conference table. A magic marker board was vibrating with multi-colored arrows and notes. Prospectuses and presentations were spiral-bound before everyone.
Whitlock was sitting at the helm of the table, facing away from all, staring out on that fabulous view of the East River bracketed by the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges. The FDR vanished at his feet. I noticed a refreshment table, complete with coffee, a plate of bagels, bialys, lox, cream cheese, donuts, and so forth. I quickly went over, poured myself a coffee, and started stuffing donuts and other delectables into my pockets.
“Can we help you?” one of the execs asked me in a ‘What-the-fuck?’ tone.
“Is that you, Joey?” Whitlock asked before I could answer. He was still staring in the direction where great destroyers were once assembled, the Brooklyn Navy Yard, away from all.
“Yes sir,” I sputtered through a mouthful of donut.
“Everyone, this is Joey,” he introduced, “the efficiency man I warned you all about.”
“Efficiency man?” I repeated.
“What department do you plan to look at first?” one of them inquired nervously.
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said, chewing down some herring in cream sauce.
“Joey’s not doing a systematic; he does sporadics. Here and there. He’ll pop in, peruse, and vanish like sand, only reporting to me,” Whitlock said. Then, turning around dramatically, he added, “Joey might look like an odd combination of grunge and suit, but that’s because he’s an unincrementalized genius.”
“Well…” I sputtered modestly as stuff fell out of my mouth.
“Right now, though, me and Jojo have a plane to catch,” Whitlock said, and bouncing up, he trotted out the door. I moved quickly on his heels.
Out the corridor to an awaiting elevator, the horse-eyed wonder accompanied us. In the elevator, without even asking me, she clipped a laminated ID to my suit pocket. On the ID was the face photo she had taken of me with her Polaroid.
“Where are we going?”
“Several stops,” he said. With that he took a tiny cellular phone out of his pocket and talked in whispers as we moved through that hi-tech cavern of a lobby, out the automated door, and into an awaiting limo. Still on the phone, we zoomed up the FDR to a heliport. Still on the phone, we hopped into an awaiting chopper. A little desk was set up. He was still absorbed in his hushed conversation. On the desk top: a Wall Street Journal, New York Times, a fax machine, a box of Havana cigars. In the cup that held sundry writing instruments, I spotted a platinum-topped, midnight blue, Montblanc pen that had to be worth at least twenty-five bucks. Up until then, I had devoted the time to wolfing down the food that I had stuffed in my pockets. But as the helicopter approached landing at JFK Airport, I polished off my snack and made my way to his end of that tight cabin, near the little efficiency desk.
“So what say you, Jojo?”
“Really something,” I said, awestruck. He gave me a powerful slap on the back and turned to his left just long enough for me to reach into that leather-wrapped pencil cup and snatch the Montblanc. Landing, we got out with the chopper blades still revolving and ran across a tarmac into a large, awaiting corporate jet. When we got into the plane, he turned to me and said, “So are we having fun yet?”
“Sure,” I replied. I got in my seat, over the wing, and tried on the headphones. Yes, I wanted breakfast. Yes, I wanted the steak lunch with the artificial grill marks. Yes, I wanted to see the film, though I already knew it was a dud, and I had probably seen it.
The plane soon took off. I looked down at that overpacked island, bordered between silver slivers of polluted rivers, a frail vein just waiting to burst like a cerebral hemorrhage, havoc in miniature. I had probably got out just in time. Several execs stood up at the tail of the plane and made presentations to Whitlock about various holdings and plans. He asked several questions; the secretary did several calculations. Once or twice, he got back on the cellular and confirmed some facts. Over the wing of the plane was a small bar, where I loaded up on a variety of courtesy drinks.
“Do you want to ask them anything about this deal?” Whitlock turned from the band of execs and asked me as I was pouring a small bottle of rum into my coke.
“I’m sorry, I really wasn’t listening. I better sit this one out.”
“These guys are proposing a two hundred million dollar investment in a string of manufacturing plants in Eastern Europe. We would be with a consortium of other American businesses.”
“I see.”
“Any questions for them, Jojo?”
“Well, if you buy all the cheap real estate in the area of the plants, you can open up diners and gas stations and stuff.”
“Good point,” Whitlock said without a hint of sarcasm. That was the last time he asked me if I had any questions. I was looking forward to all those plane frills. But soon after we were in the air, I drifted into a deep and productive sleep. When I awoke, I feared I’d missed the fun and quickly pushed the button for the stewardess. I was taken aback by her response time.
“Can I get my breakfast, lunch, and the film?”
“I’m sorry, but the pilot just turned on the no-smoking sign.”
“I don’t smoke.”
“We’re going to be in an angle of descent in a few minutes.”
“Okay, just bring me a drink and some honeyed nuts.”
“Sorry, sir, we’re in descent.” To avoid the issue, she then vanished down the aisle. With a bump and screech, we were in Washington.
Outside the terminal, a limo was waiting, identical to the one we’d left in New York. We drove past the Beltway, past the Vietnam Wall and a variety of other monuments. We finally arrived at an old office building and strode into another large office, to another meeting—a swirl of people who looked like those we’d just left in New York.
A series of presentations by counselors and consultants came and went, and soon, when my vanity—which compelled me to believe that I was all-knowing and all-powerful—finally faded, I wondered what the hell I was doing there. I ended up reading glossy, smelly women’s magazines filled with jackass articles about How to Land a Husband next to declarations on the New Breed of Feminism. Around sixteen hundred hours (4:00 p.m.), Whitlock raced out of his final office and called to me, “Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“We’re returning to Gotham.” Limo to plane to New York to chopper to the city proper. During the entire journey, he divided his conversation between cellular phones, lackeys, and me, in that quantitative order. He let me loose at Times Square.
“Can I go back to school now?” I boldly asked him.
“Not quite, but here.” He handed me a five dollar bill and his business card, and said, “Come to my home tomorrow. We’ll have din-din.”
“Can I at least get my transcripts and papers?”
“What are you talking about?”
I explained that the school was holding my transcripts and other vital papers. I was unable to transfer to another graduate school, even if I could manage to finagle the money.
“Okay, just come on time tomorrow,” he replied. Then, turning to Horse-eyes, he said, “Secure the boy’s papers. In the event I’m late, my man Wylie will look after you until I get in.”
“Great.” I got out, looked at the tourists, and went home.
(I could wax rhapsodic about the shades of sunlight creeping across symbolic objects of the figurative. I could produce metaphors and similes for the minute-stirring hours and the dissipation of the human spirit through sterile or rococo exercises in postmodernist prose style, but suffice it to say—) Time passed.
The next day, I walked across town to his house. I was fairly tired and dizzy. As I approached, a beggar from a nearby street corner followed me like a hungry dog, telling me pathetic details of his fictitious life.
“Hold it, now,” I said, trying to locate the address. I should have given him the courtesy of a quick refusal, but he seemed to feel good telling about his ills, so I let him follow and talk. The address on Whitlock’s business card brought me to an upper East Side town house with a beautiful row of steps out front. The beggar followed me up to the top step. I rang the bell and waited.
“Hey,” my homeless companion said, “I have a life, too. You mind if I get on with it?” I gave the guy a dollar-fifty.
“Fuck you!” he yelled, just as some long white guy wearing a tarboosh opened the front door.
“Oh dear!”
“Fuck you!” I said to the homeless guy.
“Could you both please take your melee elsewhere,” the long, white tarboosh-wearer replied, slamming the door shut.
“No, wait,” I banged on the door. When he reopened it, the tarboosh was gone. I introduced myself to the doorman, shaking his hand, man-style.
“Who was that?”
“A crazy, I don’t know. He followed me here,” I replied. Delicately hinting that I wanted to be fed, I added, “Boy, am I hungry!”
“Oh, yes. I’m Wylie. Andrew informed me you’d be here around now. Come on upstairs, you chowhound, and let’s get you chowed down.”
It was apparent that not all was well in this man’s state of Denmark. Wylie led me through a glorious brownstone: cherry wood paneling, furniture pieces that had been stolen from different periods, a rolled-up carpet from the Orient. The moldings were sculptured with haloed cherubs and demons with tongues twisted out. Banisters were dragons’ heads. The fretwork of the baseboards and detail of the artwork seemed to improve with every upward landing. When we finally reached the top flight, he led me into a beautiful dining room, and said, “Take a seat. Whitlock and the meal will be here shortly.”
“Do we have to wait?” I asked.
“I suppose not. Master Whitlock has already eaten.”
I sat at the right side of a long dining table with two place settings. All I could think as he brought out a serving bowl was, I’ve spent twenty-four hours waiting for the feast in that bowl.
“Pass your…”—I did. As he started filling my plate, tears came to my eyes. When he slid the plate over in front of me, I stared down into a bowl of macaroni and cheese. I looked up at him, and watched as he spooned clumps of noodles onto his own plate. Then, placing the bowl in the center of the table, he proceeded to fork the noodles into his mouth. I smiled and did likewise. They tasted gooey and powdery.
“Jeepers, am I one hungry hound dog,” Wylie said, as he tunneled through his plate of crap. Then, to himself he replied, “‘Course you are.”
When I discreetly spat my mouthful of macaroni into a napkin, I realized the cheese was made from a powder that wasn’t quite mixed. Pushing my fork through the bowl, I spotted unmelted chunks of margarine and unblended clots of cheese powder.
“Say, what exactly is this?” I asked as politely as possible.
“Macaroni and cheese—eleven cents a serving! Isn’t it wonderful?”
As I resentfully chewed it down, I couldn’t help remembering that Whitlock—according to Fortune—was worth about $3,500,000 per year. Which means he must’ve made roughly $10,000 per day, seven days a week. Was spending $20 for a real dinner so exorbitant?
Maybe it wasn’t Whitlock’s fault. This Wylie character, Whitlock’s manservant, was an obvious flake. He had incredibly white hair that looked like the belly feathers of a goose. His face was punctuated by spaces: gaping eye sockets, large red ears that resembled toilet plungers, a big cantaloupe-sized mouth with a stupid inbred grin. He bantered a strange preemptive conversation at me as I tried to eat.
“So how was your trip, young man?” He.
“Not…” Me.
“It was awful of course, you boob…” He.
“No, I didn…” Me.
“Don’t ask me such dumb questions you say…” He.
“No, it’s oka…” Me.
“Tell me what you can do for me, Wylie, and stop being such an old nuisance!” He.
“You weren’t being…” He might have been insane but he wasn’t dangerous, so I just listened to him talking to himself with a fictitious character representing an irate me.
“Why in heaven’s name don’t you go to the Walter Raleigh and play the Charles and Diana? Who’s the Walter Raleigh, you say? Aren’t Charles and Diana royal monarchs, you nincompoop? Indeed they are, my boy. Indeed they are. But, you see, I give inanimate things animated names. Inanimate names, you say? Yes I bloody do in fact….” He continued rambling as I snuck into the kitchen. It was new and clean, and held the promise of other foods. But when I opened the refrigerator, all I saw was a tub of margarine, a rotting onion bulb, and individually wrapped American cheese slices.
Suddenly, an electronic doorbell emitted the sound of birds chirping. It didn’t have any effect on Wylie’s external monologue which eternally continued, questioning and answering itself in strange, dialectical senility. Then Whitlock appeared in the doorway.
“Ahh, Mister Whitlock,” Wylie muttered, “She’s waiting for you downstairs.”
“I’m a he, and I’m here,” I corrected.
“Not you,” Wylie replied.
“How are you?” I asked Whitlock, as I moved from the barren fridge to a sofa in the living room.
“Ahhh, cestui que vie.” He sighed, flopped down next to me, and pressed my hand.
“Mr. Whitlock, I don’t know what that Dean said about me, but…” I began nervously.
“Res ipsa loquitur.”
“I just want to say that none of this was my idea.”
“Molliter manus imposuit.”
“I didn’t do nothing wrong.”
“Mallum prohibitum?”
“At least nothing I knew about.”
“Ignorantia legis non excusat.”
“I mean, I didn’t mean to do what I did to you and, well, when I think about it, it makes me want to…” I caught myself.
“Exturpia causa non oritur actio.”
“Yeah, well, it still makes me feel angry.”
“Facinus quos inquinat aequat.”
“Master Whitlock,” Wylie spoke up, “the boy was in the middle of his noodle.”
“This should take no more than a moment.”
“What?”
“Your future.” He murmured this as he vanished out the door. I pursued. He kept vanishing behind landings and doorways just as I got to them. All the while, he was talking confidentially about something I couldn’t follow. Finally, at the ground floor, I entered a room to find him standing in a closet holding clothes, assessing them like a tailor.
“So, Wylie was making you dinner, was he?”
“Macaroni and cheese—eleven cents a serving.”
“Apologies. If you wish to excuse yourself, the vomitorium is down the corridor to your left.”
“It stayed down.”
“Put this on, if you would. Bring your clothes and come with me.”
“Where are we going?”
“Ours is not to question why…”
As he marched out of the room, he called back, “I’ll be waiting outside.” A pressed-yet-loose suit, a brand-new white shirt complete with pins in the collars, and a formal blue tie sat on an old Arts and Crafts armchair. Whitlock started walking again westward, back into the hall of the building with endless rooms. We marched through corridors and stairways. Finally, outside a large, old door, he stopped and waited for me.
“Here,” he handed me a roll of breath mints. I slipped one into my mouth and took four for later.
“If you don’t mind,” he said, “I want you to agree with everything I say.”
“God gave me a mind,” I cowered courageously.
“No, no,” he responded. “I just mean when we go into this room. We’re visiting Mama and her society.”
“Oh, I thought you meant in general, like about gun control and national health care. Sure, I’ll go along.”
He opened the door and we skipped in. An attendant was on duty. Inside were four ancient and sexless humanoids who all looked equally close to death laying side by side, yo-yo-ing between consciousness and all points north. Whitlock steered me toward the ghostly skeletal form by the window.
“How are we today, Mama? You look to be in top form…” Eight tubes were anchored to various parts of her drifting body, making her look like a sun-dried octopus.
“I dieeeee…” she muttered, or something like that. As far as I could figure, she was very, very tired, or paralyzed.
“Nonsense, you’ll be dancing on my grave.”
“Ahhhhh…” She should have taken better care of herself.
“Mama, do you know who I am?”
“Yahhh…”
“Mama, allow me to introduce my heir and protégé, Joseph Aeiou. Come here, Joey, and shake Mama’s hand. He reached under a sheet and handed me a hand. It was weightless, cold, hard, and dark, like a wooden walking stick. I wondered for a moment if it was connected to anything.
“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” I said cheerfully. What kept her alive? What kept all these people alive?
“Ahhhhhh…”
“Twenty-three. And how old are you?” I asked. She hadn’t asked my age, but I had to know hers. She had an extraordinary translucence. I wanted to know how long one had to live in order to get that.
“Mama is 103 years old.”
“Wow! You know, that weatherman on NBC’s Today Show will announce your birthday on the air if you tell him.”
“Mama was suspended in the air by Queen Victoria.”
“No fooling!”
She smiled faintly.
“The Queen, in the last year of her life, held mama, who, at the time, was in the first year of hers.”
“No kidding.”
The silver lady nodded yes. Suddenly, some elderly guy in a clerical collar was standing at the door.
“Ah, I see you have another visitor. We shan’t keep you. Ta-ta, Mother.” And we were out of there. He led me back through the corridors to the room with the closet.
“Change back into your clothes, and let’s figure out a racket for you.”
“I don’t want to sound uppity,” I explained, “but I always wanted to do a little more with my life. And I’m not really a scholar.”
“I see what you’re saying.”
After I changed back into my clothes, Whitlock went behind a small bar where a tiny refrigerator was hiding. Reaching inside, he took a tunafish sandwich wrapped in cellophane and offered it to me. “I have a gift for finding people’s vocations. If you have a calling, I’ll see it in your eyes.”
“Well, I can certainly use the help.” The tunafish tasted like chicken salad.
“All right, kiddo, tell me if I’m wrong. You’re looking for a profession that is wide open. Good money. Shot at the top. And a shot at your name being carved into stone. Yes or no?”
“That’s it.”
“Okay, kiddo, I’ve got the answer right here, but I got to tell you something. Nothing comes without its price, without its trade-off.” It was chicken salad.
“What do you want?” I asked him.
“Not a thing. The trade-off will be the job I’m going to tell you that fits that area.”
“If you’re going to tell me a high-labor, risky job…”
“This job allows you to sit on your caboose most of the time: unlimited booze, TV, housekeeper, free wardrobe. And although you need to attend another, different kind of graduate program, you can virtually start this job tomorrow.”
“I’m interested.”
“The priesthood.”
“You’re joking, right?” When I had finished the sandwich, Whitlock took two cans of soda from the fridge, one for him and one for me.
“A little, but not in the main, no. Let me weigh some of the pros and cons for you. First of all, there’s an employee shortage. Second, you can work anywhere in the world. Third, you have high respect within the community. With a little politicking you can rise up the ranks to Bishop, Cardinal, maybe even to the top-dog seat. They’re now hiring non-natives. Also, you cheat taxes and maybe death.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Just give it some thought.”
“I don’t believe in God,” I nullified.
“De Minimus. I don’t believe in the law. This isn’t a theological discussion—it’s employment counseling.”
“Look, I appreciate the suggestion, don’t misunderstand me. I’d just feel like I was pulling a big con job.” I finished my soda, and he started walking me somewhere. Again, I followed faithfully.
“I’m a lawyer. People come to me asking for confidence in matters that no one can give them confidence in. But I let them get things off their chest. I give them the best counsel I can. If I had to be honest, it would be a very, very bleak world indeed. You shouldn’t be insincere, but find a pragmatic angle to help others.” We were now at the front door, and his man Wylie was waiting there with my coat.
“Take care, my boy,” he said.
“What now?” I asked, feeling like an umbrella asking where its owner was taking him.
“Even though you don’t know this, you are presently going through a complete thought scrub.”
“What’s a thought scrub?”
“I have a tank of people working on your problem. And when the problem is worked out, you’ll be notified. Go home now. Digest your macaroni and cheese. Sleep.”
“What about my vital papers?”
“Oh, glad you mentioned them.” He vanished a moment and returned with a large, plain, brown paper bag. Inside were my transcripts and a variety of vital statistics about me.
I went home, to sleep. Sleep inverts time. Sleep a few seconds, they seem like hours. Sleep hours and they seem like seconds. I awakened what seemed like moments later to a knock at my door. I wondered if I hadn’t somehow caught a dose of muscular dystrophy or cerebral palsy. Some of me just wasn’t responding to the messages from central command. My fingertips and toes were wiggling but the longer muscles wouldn’t cooperate. I couldn’t get the door, but apparently it was unlocked. A bike messenger entered and saw me lying on my bed wiggling and blinking.
“You okay, man?”
“I…don’t know, don’t know…sick…me sick…”
I remembered the last thing I ate was that cellophaned sandwich at Whitlock’s place. “I ate chicken or tuna.”
“It’s probably your cavities, man.”
“Huh?”
“They’ve discovered a bunch of problems stemming from metalloid cavities. Do you have metalloid or ceramic cavities?”
“Dunno.”
“Let me look.” The nut looked in my mouth.
“Metalloid! I don’t want to be an alarmist, but you might consider getting them replaced with ceramic.”
“Okay.”
“You want to sign for this? I got other stuff to deliver.”
“Okay.”
He put a pen in my hand; I wiggled it against a clipboard. He put down a parcel and left.
I slept for an untold conspiracy of hours. By the afternoon, I had reached the shores of semi-consciousness. In an effort to arise, I fell to the floor. I stumbled to the bathroom, stepped on a cockroach, and peed in a series of short and confusing lines. I opened the parcel I had signed for in my dream state. It was a copy of a book, My Saber Is Bent by Jack Paar. There was a note inside: “It’s solved! Call me—Whitlock.”
Without any interest in speculating what it could be, I called him. His secretary informed me that he had been waiting for me to call all day and she put me right through.
“Is that you, Joey?”
“Yes, it’s me, Joey.”
“We’ve got it. Ready for this? Are you ready for it?” He was speaking too fast for a response: “How would you like a job that you can work whenever you like. It’ll make you oodles of money. You’ll enjoy it. You’ll be in control and you don’t have to say any mass or anything.”
“Well, I…”
“A stand-up comedian.”
“A stand-up comedian?!”
“I have a friend; he owns a very popular night club. He books comics. I can get him to give you a break.”
“I don’t know the first thing about comedy.”
“You’re a natural.”
“I haven’t the foggiest notion of…”
“Public speaking,” he cut me off, “specifically the art of amusing an audience, is essential to a winning personality.”
“I depress people…”
“Look, I’ll get you a ten-minute spot on one of his amateur nights. Read up on the topic. Nobody’ll expect a thing from you.”
“I really don’t think so.”
“I’ll tell you what,” he muttered. “I’ll give you recommendations and tell you exactly how to get a job that pays three times the wage you’re making now at the bookstore. You won’t have to see me again, and there’s a lot of down time.”
“Down time? As what, a scuba diver?”
“It’s a proofreading job.”
“What’s down time?” I asked.
“Time when you’re not working, but getting paid for it.”
“Why are you doing this?” I asked.
“Did you get the book?” He ignored my question.
“The Jack Paar book?”
“Yeah, he’s my fave. Just learn some jokes and be yourself. You’ll knock ‘em dead, son. And remember, there are agents in the audience.”
His secretary got on to fill me in on some background details. I was to meet Mr. Whitlock in seven days for an amateur night at what he referred to as a classy uptown nightclub called YUK!