They Is Us

by Tama Janowitz

  Tahnee shrugs. Just then the door to the lab opens. There is a tiny man, perhaps not abnormally small, but shrimp-like. He is very pink and his motions are darting, somehow backward, as if self-propelled in the wrong direction.

  He’s got a rumpled look: he’s wearing very shabby clothing of a style so old-fashioned it must date from, gosh, the 1970s? Something like a patchwork quilt jacket – madras, maybe – and white pumps. Tahnee and Julie have almost never seen a man in a suit, not in this area, not in their world. Next to him is a taller man normally dressed in a gown, who by comparison, almost blends into the walls.

  “So,” the pink man is saying, “in this lab we can see some of the newer projects and how they’re coming a…” Then he notices Tahnee and Julie. “Hi there, girls,” he says. “You must be the school interns! I bet you’re surprised the company president knows about you, but I make it my habit to know everything. Although, I didn’t realize there were two of you now! How are you enjoying everything so far? I’m A. Jesse March Bishrop, president and CEO of Bermese Pythion. And this is Mr Salamonder, from the Stuyvesant Technics, who has come to look at what we’re –”

  Mr Bishrop is sort of… too eager. Or maybe it’s not eagerness, exactly; it’s as if he’s translucent, or the rest of the world doesn’t exist to him. Maybe it’s just the way zillionaire geniuses are, almost slightly saudiautistic. He’s just a little… off, with his daffy glasses, his enthusiasm and flappy arms; he’s walking on tippy toes, the man is intense.

  “Oh my gosh, Mr Bishrop! C.k., as bu?” says Julie. “I am so happy to see you, I never thought you’d actually be here in person, you know all those suggestions in the suggestion box? I’m the one who –”

  Julie realizes A. Jesse March Bishrop isn’t listening. He looks stymied. Stymied, is that the right word? It is as if all of his energy has been expelled at once. He can’t seem to stop staring at Tahnee. And Tahnee is kind of smirking. What the heck is going on? Not much, as far as Julie is concerned: whenever Tahnee goes anywhere, this is what happens. Julie has watched drivers get into accidents when she walks alongside her sister. Once there was even an eighteen-car pile-up. In supermarkets men have knocked down stands of fruit with their carts. Even on the hottest days, wearing nothing but tiny shorts and a little halter-top, Tahnee does not attract jeers or hoots or whistles. Rather, something odd happens to any man she is near, and quite often women: an expression comes over them like they have been punched in the stomach. Now A. Jesse March too.

  “I should have stopped in before, to see how you girls were getting along this summer. Summer, and now fall.” He is half-muttering but doesn’t take his eyes off Tahnee. “Are you planning to keep working over the winter? You’re high school girls?”

  “I probably am going to have to look for a paying job,” Tahnee says languidly. She doesn’t look at A. Jesse when she says this.

  “I guess you girls will be getting paid to work here pretty soon! Soon. I should have made sure of that ages ago, but you know, I’m hardly ever here, my place is out in Nature’s Caul.”

  “I guess if the pay was decent, I could keep working here,” Tahnee says. “The main thing is for me to get school credit, I gotta get a recommendation.”

  “How would you like it if you had a personal recommendation from me?” A. Jesse glances at the lab. “Would that help? I can see you’ve done a good job this summer and believe me, I have seen some of the other labs and it is not easy. Anyway, I’ll be happy to say so in a letter and I’ll look into getting you started on a paycheck very soon – it won’t be much to start, but –”

  A. Jesse is in his late forties and something is happening to him. For the first time he is falling in love, although it might be something else? Never having been in love he doesn’t know, exactly. It is not something he can figure out with a formula, but, like lysis, an explosion from within.

  He has had four wives and is already planning to divorce the fourth. One was a lawyer, one was a stay-at-home mom, one was a stripper and… he has gosh, six kids? Or is it seven?

  There is Lonald, age twenty and Cheslea, fifteen, and then… there are others, that is for certain. He can’t remember the others, not at this moment, and it is A. Jesse’s belief that the fabric of the universe has gotten so thin in places that it has become as translucent as cheesecloth, or theatrical scrim. But this is something strangely different.

  “You know,” A. Jesse mutters, backing up, “I’ve just thought of something. If there are a hundred people and a hundred slices of suffering, one person is going to get, like, sixty of those slices. Like, you know how one person has breast cancer and then a child who dies in an accident and then a fire?”

  “Oh, I get it!” Julie says, as always trying to be amenable. But he is not looking at Julie, he is staring, still, at Tahnee.

  “You do?” he says, “Let’s say one person ends up with sixty percent of the suffering-pie slice, some get ten percent, five percent, one percent, well, there is one person who doesn’t get any slices at all!” A. Jesse can’t believe it, it is the first thought he has had that is not about science or business. He is so pleased and delighted with himself, for this idea. An idea about people! “I always thought, you see, that I was that person, the one who didn’t have to have a slice. And I want to keep things that way!” He crosses the room and without paying attention begins to stroke the leaves of what appears to be the common house plant Julie helped Dyllis to revive.

  Dyllis is standing behind him, unnoticed, at the door. “Oh, Mister Bishrop!” she says. “You know, I couldn’t help but overhear you jes’ now, and you are so right! No wonder you having such thoughts, you are even more brilliant than the peoples say, I guess that ees why you are a zillionaire and I am not! And how blessed – would that be the right word? – we are to have you visiting us here today in the laboratory! Maybe not the word blessed but, jes’ plain fortunate? Or lucky? Or, let us praise the Intelligent Designer? Anyway, I hope these girls, they being nice to you and showing you around! If I had only known you would be here, I would have made sure I was in the lab!” Why can’t she stop herself blabbing, she thinks, but it is impossible.

  But A. Jesse is gone, grinning nervously, with Mr Salamonder left behind, perplexed, and Dyllis still rattling on and Tahnee, both girls, really, thinking A. Jesse is old and weird. But rich, whatever that means.

  And now, a digression:

  The common house plant that Julie had nursed back to health that Dyllis had found dying in the women’s toilet has the soft silky skin of a young girl, each juicy leaf is alive, downy with hope and dewy expectation. Oh silent plant, if only you had been engineered to have a nice tight pussy as well! And taut, nubile breasts tipped with tremulous pink budded-nipples! Brainless, undemanding, to wrap your tender, admiring leaves around some old geezer and vibrate in harmonious orgasm. Oh stamen, oh pistil and nectar-rich orifice within petals, my God, I (the manly author) would so love to grab you by the stem and bury my nose in such cunning delight.

  No.5 Common House Plant

  Thus endeth the digression.

  “I guess A. Jesse thinks you girls have done a good job!” says Mr Salamonder at last. “We are already late for our next meeting, so… Nice to meet you both!” He follows A. Jesse into the hall.

  Dyllis is impressed that the founder of the company actually knows who she is, kind of. “That guy has zillions,” she says. “Billions of zillions. I saw him on HGMTV once with the President. I feel kind of sorry for him, though.”

  “Why?” Tahnee rolls her eyes.

  “I don’t know, he seem so nervous, and that patchy skin and he’s so pink. Plus, I always think how terrible it must be when a man loses his hair like that, don’t you? I guess that’s why he invented the Hair-A-Ticks, ju know? So he could grow hair again.”

  Julie’s eyes are stinging, she thinks of her own dad’s winky bald spot. Life can be terrible.

  “Yuck, I thought he was creepy, he was, you know, kind of boiled? What does he do with all
that money, anyway?”

  “My English teacher, Miss Fletsum, says he collects thimbles – ancient Unitarian thimbles? – something like that. And he breeds and shows hyenas? He’s like, one of the richest men in the world and he dropped out of college to start this business,” says Julie. “Gee, wouldn’t that be great, if we start to get paid?”

  “I guess,” says Tahnee with a shrug.

  “Believe me,” says Dyllis, “you girls are really lucky. What if he takes a stronger feeling toward you, and invites you to Nature’s Caul? Oh my God. All my life, I only hear about thees place. And, you know thees was years ago, I took a trip to see it. Of course, your normal people, they can’t go in. They got the big walls all around and the security. I went with your mother, did she ever tell you? So, we were just out of high school. We were hoping and hoping, maybe some men who live inside see us, he fall in love and, who knows? But you never go in.”

  “You don’t go in?”

  “No. You take a bus, it goes all around the outside, the man, he tell you all about the homes that are inside, and who lives there. Some of the houses, you could even see from the road, and they got the green grass and the swimming pools with real water! At night, we stay in a motel, we went to the bar, but there was no one from the inside there, just the regular outside type people. Nature’s Caul. I think it must be the mos’ beautiful place in the world.”

  For a moment Dyllis is silent. Even Tahnee and Julie can’t

  help

  but

  be

  impressed.

  7B

  8

  If Slawa had time – in happier times – he did squats, push-ups and fifty sit-ups before going out; lifted weights. He showered when he could, on days when there was enough water, which wasn’t so often, and when there was water it was filled with gray lumps and that greasy stuff. Their district was so low on the list they got the worst of the purified water. But even if he scrubs, that greasy feeling and the odor of waterproofing fluid clings to him, his breath smells of the stuff.

  He no longer worries what is wrong with him. He knows. It is somewhere inside him, his belly maybe, a huge bubble with a tough skin. He is not certain what it is, it reeks of egg and plastic and bubbles up his throat, making it difficult to breathe. All he knows now, is he wants to get out of the house.

  For years the house – and his family – meant everything to him. He would leave for work before dawn to beat the rush hour. Not that rush hour ever stops, but if he left early it could make the difference between two and a half hours and three and a half; and as soon as he locks up at night he heads for home.

  He is so good at fixing things: plumbing, electrical, painting. He cleans, he cooks. It takes Slawa a long time to realize that as soon as one thing is fixed something else breaks down; he has even seen a hologramovision program about it, something to do with the weakening of the earth’s electrical fields and the fact that the earth’s orbit is tilting, little by little.

  This may have something to do with the thin hole that was drilled, just for fun, through the entire core of the earth. Why was this done, when everyone already knew that on the other side all they will find is China? Nevertheless, now he is evolved enough to be indifferent to material possessions, she can keep the house for all he cares.

  He goes around the corner to Chez Gagna Koti to see if it is still open. But it is already shut for the night and though he bangs on the door Bocar is not there. The boy is seventeen and works at his uncle’s Ethiosenegalpian restaurant. Slawa never would have guessed, Slawa, that at his age, at this time of life, he would make such a good friend, especially with someone from such a different culture and generation.

  They met when Bocar came to get his shoes re-soled. That was unusual in itself since most men would rather go out to get a new pair of high heels than bother to have the out-of-date ones repaired; and since Slawa’s shop is located at the bottom of the first flight of steps leading down to the subway, people rarely wandered in off the street. Usually his business was by accident, someone on their way to work who broke a heel and had no time to shop for new shoes. And when one day without warning a metal grate was placed just beyond his store, and a sign on the street stated Entrance Closed Temporarily there were no more customers at all.

  The landlord wouldn’t reduce the rent, what was he to do now? He tried handing out fliers on the street, offering special discounts, he even put a poster for his business over the ‘Closed’ sign. But nothing made any difference.

  If had he been friendlier, he wonders, might he have had steady clients? But day in and day out, crouched animalistically in those dark quarters, without ventilation, roasting hot in summer, freezing in winter, he had become like… who was it, that ancient Greek guy who hammered all the time in mythology: Vulcan?…surly, scowling and the dark hairy body banded with sweat.

  So it was a surprise when Bocar first came in, coatless, shivering, taking off his sopping red pumps even before he had sat down.

  “My friend, I am wondering, I have many times passed by the sign announcing Shoe Repair, and I never knew such a thing could be done. But look –!” He waved a sheaf of bills. “Auntie has given me money for you to do so.” Of course what came out – shouted – was “mi fry-end, I am won-DER-ing, I hay-ve man-Y time-as pas-sed this show store—” etc.

  It took Slawa ages to figure out what he was saying, and because Bocar was so deaf and he himself had a strong Russian accented English, he was not sure that what he was finally able to teach Bocar was any improvement.

  No one had ever looked at Slawa in such a kindly, sympathetic way before… Or maybe the reason he was so smitten was simply a chemical response? Who knows what cinched the deal – was it that sudden look of alarm on Bocar’s face, so that Slawa thought the kid was going to flee?

  But before Slawa could ask what was wrong or try to stop him, Bocar asked, loudly, “My friend, which way is east?” And knelt on the floor, clutching prayer beads and muttering under his breath.

  It was two o’clock and Bocar did not finish his prayers for nearly half an hour. “I must pray to Allah five times a day,” he said, in an apologetic tone when he was finished. “This business of praying! Sometimes in this country it is not so easy. I am finding myself kneeling in foul circumstances, because all the time I am running, running for my uncle to the warehouses to provide the vegetables needed for his dishes, or to go for my Auntie Adamna who treats me as if I was her personal slave.”

  “Please, whenever you need a place to pray that is quiet, you will come to me,” said Slawa. “As you can judge, I have no customers and I can clear a better place for you. I too am a religious man though not in the sense of an organized religion, but from within. Did you know, for example, that here in my shop there are seventeen ley lines, which converge? Yes, here, in this place, my shop, and there is no other place like this where such a confluence occurs except where the Trade Towers were located! You have heard of the Towers of World Trade and the troubles?” But the boy had not.

  Slawa wakes with a start. He must have dozed, exhausted. His breath is sour and the flies stir, groggy, reluctant to leave the warm drowsy places on him they have selected to sleep. The cats… the hole. Still, when for a split-second he sees the eyes of one of them, the cat Murka, illuminated by his torch, he realizes he has to go down to get her. He crawls through the door and takes a step, then another, when the whole structure crashes out from under him, the whole twenty-foot-tall curving steps, totally rotten. He jumps and lands obliquely, with a thud, on something reasonably soft. Inelegant Designer, he silently curses, what can it be? A pile of cigarette butts six feet deep.

  Thousands upon thousands, still stinking, one end nice and crusty from where he guesses the tobacco has begun to burn the plastic or whatever it is the filter is made from.

  He climbs out. Geez, it looks like no one’s been down here since Judge Crater was found.

  It’s an entire room, a club, a restaurant? A padded, tufted corridor past a
coat check room, and most curiously there is a large painting: Christ with the New Testament in his left hand, blessing with the right – involuntarily he crosses himself; he wasn’t even aware he knew how to. What is this place, a church?

  “Winston tastes good, like a cigarette should!”

  He jumps. Someone else is here? But no – an ancient tune blares from hidden speakers, set off by his movement; some kind of projector throws grainy pictures onto a screen. “You’re never alone with a Strand”.

  “To A Smoker, It’s a Kent!”

  This joint, this tomb, is long abandoned. A mouse-gnawed ottoman, Empire sofa in royal blue velvet, mirrored walls, floor tiled in pink and gold, turquoise, beige, the place had apparently been sealed up, untouched, as if the club-goers had abruptly fled.

  He can’t find the cats, he can’t find his way around. The light from the projector, spitting its pictures of square-dancing cigarettes, illuminates bits and pieces: ashtrays embossed ‘The Pink Pantokrator Club’ stuffed with butts.

  Oh, he realizes, it’s a Smoke-Easy, from the time when – though you could still buy cigarettes in the U.S. – you were not allowed to smoke them and the Phillips-Maurice Anti-Smoking Homeland Police Squad had patrolled the streets and were allowed without a warrant to enter citizens’ homes.

  Drinking glasses with the contents long since congealed or evaporated, some still with stirrer. A woman’s handbag, left behind perhaps during a raid. Signs that mice or rats had once provisionally made some of the banquettes their birthing centers and sleeping quarters, though it doesn’t appear there are any around here now. Nor the cats.

  In the distance he hears the rumbling of the subway train, not too far away, then once it has passed he hears mewing and goes in the direction of the sound. There is a little wooden dance floor, badly warped, and a stage with a moldy gold velvet curtain; above his head a chandelier and below a heap of bird droppings. At some point the pigeons had set up residence, though they too are long gone.