Chapter 28

What did John Lennon say? Success happens to you while you’re busy doing something else? Somewhere along the way, I guess I was doing something else and this happened. I haven’t felt dizzy since I started working outside. The agoraphobia still kicks in occasionally, but other than that, I’m doing okay. I feel pretty good, to tell you the truth.

The psychiatrist called yesterday, saying Iris talked to him. “You still getting panic attacks, Sam?” he asked. I told him I was better. “Better in what way?” I told him I was walking, talking, taking out the garbage. We agreed it might be better to wait. I wasn’t having any attacks lately, although he warned it might be temporary. “Some people only have a few attacks and it’s over. Others go on for years. Call me if they come back with any regularity. We’ll go from there.”

I got off the phone feeling partly relieved, partly offended. These psychiatrists only seem to want the meatier cases. Give them a straightforward occasional panic attack and they practically yawn on the phone. He made me curious about one thing, though. I’d like to know why some people only get a few attacks while others have them all the time. After supper, I do a little research on the Internet. Most information sites are sponsored by the drug companies. They obviously want to get you hooked on their latest product. None of them tell you to pick up a paintbrush. It’s all about endorphins, and you’re seriously fucked if you don’t take their medication. To use Bisquick’s words, they’re all cocksuckers. I checked The Rec Room of Sound. Otis was passed out with his face on the keyboard. A record was skipping—funky chicken, funky chicken. Bisquick was asleep on Otis’s head. Every so often, Otis swatted at him like a fly.

We came home tonight, fighting the usual traffic on Lincoln. I was taking back streets for a while, cutting along Burling. Everyone’s trying to get home. Pulling up at one stoplight, I saw this old couple. The woman could barely see over the steering wheel. The light changed, but the car didn’t move. Horns honked, the car jolted forward, then it stopped in the intersection. The light turned yellow and she backed up.

“God damn old people,” I said, realizing the irony. One of these days, Mary and I will be driving around like this. Mary’s reasonably tall, so seeing over the dashboard won’t be a problem. But I can imagine her hesitating. Whenever we’re driving now, and I start harping on about old people on the roads, she’ll look at me and say, “They’ve got as much right to be here as you do, Sam.”

Muller sits there with one of his bent cigarettes. He still keeps them in his back pocket. By the end of the day, they’re a twisted mess. He smokes and looks out the window. I think he was in better spirits today, probably because Ruby told him he had a cute jiggle on the ladder. He started attacking the blistering paint, sending the chips down on my face below. “Take it easy, Muller,” I said.

We both ended up with paint chips all over us. Muller never shakes himself before getting in the car. The floor mats are covered in the stuff. Pulling in the driveway, I say to Muller, “Shake yourself before you go inside,” and he gets out of the car doing what looks like a hula dance. “Why can’t you shake like normal people?” I said to him. Now there’s paint chips mingling with oil, running down my driveway to the culvert. Muller doesn’t even notice. Sometimes I think his eyes only see as far as a cookbook or Ruby’s bandana.

Lasagna is waiting when we come through the door. We shower, eat, and then watch a movie. Mary found this place where you get ten movies a week for a set price. Her taste runs to sad tales, people wailing as the boat leaves, kids holding their dogs before the father grabs his shotgun. Muller blubbers through them all, grabbing tissues, while Judy hugs his face. “He’ll get another dog, Muller,” she’ll say, taking him off to bed. Mary and I stay up to watch the news, then we turn in as well. “How was Muller today?” Mary asks.

“He’s coming along.” Most of the time, he makes a hell of a mess, tripping over cans, tracking paint into people’s houses. Ruby’s more patient than most, but you see her give the occasional sigh. I think he’s only tolerated because he’s a loveable lug with an innocuous disposition. At the end of the day, he’ll make his brownies and all offences will be forgiven.

Kept within reason, his brownies calm me down. Go beyond one or two and it’s lights out. Otis gobbles them up like potato chips, and then starts telling people the dumbest things. One woman called to say she’s putting her father in a home. Otis started sobbing away until she explained she’d won a lottery and was buying him a split-level up near Seward Park. “Oh,” he said, and then Margot pushed him out of the way.

“What part of Otis Cries for You don’t you get?” Margot said. The woman said she just wanted to talk about it. “You’re barking up the wrong tree here, sister.” she says. “Otis doesn’t know good deeds from bad ones. How old’s your father?” The woman said he was eighty-four. “In a split-level, for God’s sake? They’ve got beautiful retirement homes all over the place. Friendly staff, physicians, psychiatrists, the works. Didn’t you think of that? What happens when he takes a header down the stairs?”

The woman started crying. Margot pulled Otis back in his chair. “She’s all yours.” Otis let out a few sobs and the woman thanked him.

I drift off thinking of Margot the way she used to be, sitting in her office, bifocals low on her nose. I see Frank, standing at her door, saying, “We need to charge these bastards more,” and Margot saying, “You’re a vulture, Frank.”

That always sent Frank over the edge. He’d rant away about capitalism and free markets. She’d finally push him out of her office, and Frank would storm down the hall saying, “I should put that woman in a facility.” I wake up laughing and get an elbow from Mary. I try to get back to sleep again, and when I do, I dream of the time Frank pulled us all in on a new pitch, a sports equipment manufacturer out in West Town. We worked for two weeks, taking stuff into Frank’s office each morning. Nothing got him excited. “Bollocks,” he said, getting up and going to the window. Down below, these two guys were walking along carrying two cases of beer. It was a hot afternoon. They put the cases down, took out a beer, and sat down, using the cases for seats.

“There’s ingenuity,” he said. “Take your bar with you.” Frank went back to his office. Ten minutes later, he was shouting down the hall, “Get in here, all of you!”

We came in his office and he was standing there at the window, pointing down at the two guys. “See those bastards there?” he said. “Fucking geniuses.” Then he started laying out this campaign, telling us his idea for hockey equipment. “They’re selling everything separately,” he said. “Skates, gloves, upper body protectors. We gotta start bagging all this shit together. The bag’s the thing. Every kid wants a hockey bag. Why sell all this shit separately? Start selling the whole getup. Make your money on the package.”

Was that how people bought hockey equipment? We didn’t know, but Frank made the bag concept work. One commercial had this kid coming home, seeing his father on the front porch. The father takes him inside. There’s this full hockey bag in the hall. The kid’s over the moon, the mother’s wiping away tears. It was a hell of an emotional spot and parents ate it up. Frank had those bags everywhere: commercials, end-of-aisle displays, contests to win a bag of hockey equipment. The slogan became an instant catchphrase in the industry: “Now, play!”

That fall, the client sold more sports equipment than he could manufacture. Frank was a hero, a legend, and O’Conner Advertising took home awards, big awards; gold, silver, bronze awards. The trades called him a genius, another Leo Burnett. “They’re comparing me to Burnett?” he laughed. “I never put a homo in green tights on a can of peas. A right pansy.”

“I’m starting to worry about you, Sam,” I hear Mary say. I open my eyes. She’s up on her elbow, staring down at me. “What’s so funny?”

“Frank,” I say. “He was calling Leo Burnett a pansy.”