by John Sladek
‘But wait, what business? Did he leave Slumbertite?’
‘Got canned, so did all the execs. They got some new system there now, some, I guess they call it BIGSHOT or something, some kind of decision-maker – so anyway he’s in the restaurant business now. I don’t see much of him. I dropped out of the University and just been doing odd jobs, even tried working in a tattoo parlour, how’s that grab you?’
Ma continued to grab at his arm, to stare at his sullen profile. ‘ … you were always good at people, the human figure and the, the human face …’
‘Well I got fired from the tattoo parlour just the same, wrote something about T. S. Eliot on a guy’s arm, the illiterate old bastard running the place thought it was “toilets”, how does that –?’
‘Lyle, listen. I want to commission you to do a portrait.’
‘What?’ He turned full-face in surprise, showing the birthmark, a red shadow over half his features, a glimpse of Harlequin, before he turned it away again. Poor boy, she thought. Not just to have it, but to be hated for it.
‘Well, not a portrait exactly, more a painted head. I’m working it up now, maybe I could send you a cast of it to study …?’
The profile looked pleased. ‘Well sure. Sure Ma, sure. Only you don’t mind that I do it symmetrical?’
‘That would be just fine, Lyle. Just what I wanted.’
‘Art, well I leave it to the experts,’ said Mr Kratt. ‘I’m just the money man.’
‘Oh but you should take an interest.’ Mrs McBabbitt looked at him through lowered lashes as black as her sable coat. ‘Dr Tarr has just been telling me it all has deep religious significance. Are you a religious man, Mr Kratt?’
‘I manage to keep pretty busy without it, you know? Ha! But of course I respect the next guy’s religion as much as anybody – just like I respect the next guy’s wife.’ He leaned a little closer. ‘Mr McBabbitt’s a lucky man.’
She seemed to agree.
‘What was that?’ said the taller critic.
The building rocked from the crash. The shorter critic peered through the waves of people running towards the sound. From here it looked as though two cars had tried to drive into the gallery together and wedged themselves in the doorway. Shards of mirror lay strewn over the green carpet like peculiar angular lakes.
‘Mr K.’s Rolls there, looks like. And isn’t that other car flying the flags of Ruritania? The consul’s car I suppose, only those boys getting out of it don’t look like diplomats to me.’
‘God, I hope this isn’t someone’s idea of a happy accident or –?’
‘That would be unfortunate,’ said the taller critic. ‘Did you cover that boring exhibition of wrecked cars last May?’
‘Not me, you mean the freeway thing, when all those cars and trucks piled up? I wanted to go, really, thought it sounded enterprising at least, getting out there and casting the whole mess in fibreglass right on the spot, I mean whatsis-name, Jough Braun must have been actually cruising the city with a ton of epoxy – imagine getting an actual body in there!’
‘He was just lucky, though, what he was really out doing was dog turds. Trying to get a casting of every pile of doggy do-do in the city on one particular day, kind of Conceptualist record – anyway he gave that up in a hurry once he saw what kind of money these German museums were bidding for Freeway Disaster. I still say he’s a boring little prick.’
‘But you gave him a good review?’
‘Wouldn’t you?’ said the shorter critic. ‘I mean with two German museums going bananas over him, wouldn’t you?’
‘What happened?’ the taller asked someone else. ‘Accident?’
‘Nothing. Just some college kids smacked into Mr Kratt’s car. Nobody hurt. A chauffeur killed.’
‘Drunk, were they?’
The stranger shrugged. ‘Sure, but they got diplomatic immunity, see? On account of the car. Cops won’t do a thing.’
It was true. The police came and went, the cars and the body were discreetly removed, but the three grinning members of Digamma Upsilon Nu remained to sip champagne and brag of their adventure.
‘Sure I’m religious,’ said Mr Vitanuova. ‘I’m a good Cat’lic, what else? Just because a guy gets his hands in garbage don’t mean he ain’t got a soul, ya know.’
Allbright, holding a champagne glass in each dirt-encrusted fist, leaned in an unpremeditated direction. ‘That’s goddamn profound.’
Dr Tarr said, ‘Yes, what’s interesting about these Catholic miracles like levitation, take the flying monk for instance, Giuseppe Coppertino in the sixteenth What I mean is I’ve been working out the psychic forces involved …’
Allbright leaned another way. ‘Look, you want my advice? You want my advice? You want to get close to God you just go out and buy yourself the biggest goddamn computer you can buy. You know why?’
Mr Vitanuova kept shrugging and smiling. ‘Look, I pay my dues, I figure –’
‘… our little mascot,’ said one of the fraternity boys. ‘Our little robot mascot. Roderick, go on, say hello to the nice lady, hee hee hee.’
Across the room Ben Franklin looked up. Just a minute, thought I … thought I heard …’ But a second later Mr Kratt’s heavy hand was on his shoulder.
‘Have fun, bub. Just taking Mrs McBabbitt home now, but you stay, have a – have a good time.’
‘Yes sir.’
‘Oh one thing, all these people yakkin’ about religion gave me another brainstorm here, make a note of this: edible talk-backs. I figured maybe break into the Catholic market there, Mr Vitanuova just telling me how they do it in the mass and all –’
‘Yes sir, but I just wanted to see someone –’
‘In a minute, bub, you just listen. Howsabout a talking host, see?’
Franklin turned to face him. ‘A what? Television …?’
‘You don’t listen, see? Nobody listens, I mean a host, a piece a bread they use for masses, Mr V. tells me the priest just holds it up and says this is my body. This is my body. Well look, wouldn’t it be more convincing if the bread itself does the talking?’
‘I don’t know …’
‘Hello, Ma,’ said a small voice.
‘Hee hee hee, hello Ma he says, here lady you can hold him a while if you want, I gotta find my buddies – Hey you guys!’ One Digamma Upsilon Nu sweatshirt went to join two others at the table of drinks. Near by, the two critics looked over copies of the beautifully-printed catalogue.
Mr Kratt’s hand squeezed Ben’s shoulder. ‘No, well just make a note of that, we’ll talk it over some other time, okay? Could be a whole new market there.’
Allbright was shouting: ‘The Mormons, they got a big goddamn computer out in Salt Lake City, counting up the souls – they got it made, see? Because you know who’s gonna get into Heaven? I’ll tell you who, the big insurance companies, the government, the credit card companies, the Pentagon, all going to Heaven! Everybody that gets control of the magic numbers, that’s who!’
Dr Tarr began filling his pipe. ‘Yes there could be something in that, the psionic effect of complex machines, pure complexity …’
‘I know.’ Mr Vitanuova winked. ‘Like they say, garbage in, garbage out. And I know garbage.’
Ben Franklin thrust his face between them. ‘Listen, has anybody seen the white-haired woman? She was here a minute ago holding this little robot mascot thing, anybody …?’
Next he tried the two critics, who shrugged and went on reading:
The paintings of EDD MCFEE, though superficially identical (each being a 1 cm square of Bohème 0085 Violet centred on a 74 cm square white ground) draw their individuality from the time and locus (solely determined by random numbers) in which they were painted. No. 1, Juryroom Trout, was painted at 3 a.m. GMT on May 2, 1979, at an exact location in the Sahara, for example (2°W, 29°N). Yet McFee’s work, while rigorously Conceptualist in performance, manages at the same time to defy the canons of that limited and uncongenial mode. A bold form, an unexpected col
our – these interact to both direct and keep pace with his concept, welding precision of thought to plasticity of expression in a carefully orchestrated equation of space/time. It is, moreover, a transcendental equation. Form is embedded in time, space in colour, design becomes discovery. The result, a reified Conceptual-ism, displaces the traditional stylized ‘thought-experiment’ with a new, holistic approach. Performance is redeemed by object. His aim, then, is to …
‘His aim,’ said the taller critic, ‘is to produce some hard goods collectors can buy, without feeling they’ve been ripped off even when they have.’
‘You playing this one down, then?’
‘Hell no, Mr K. shoots a grand an inch for a good review …’
Edd McFee, looking dapper even in his Army fatigues, was talking to the woman in the Abbott & Costello t-shirt when Ben approached.
‘What old lady? Naw, I never seen her, ask, ask somebody else … now like I was saying, Carrie, religion is fine, like it’s a deep one-to-one interpersonal relationship with Somebody, sure that’s what everybody wants. Only as an artist I got this problem: I can create but I can’t really love, see? So what I’m looking for is a woman to have a deep interpersonal relations with, I mean relationship with …’
Ben Franklin tried to ask the fraternity boys, but they had begun to sing. There was no one else to ask but the waiters and that guy with the birthmark. But the waiters were busy packing up, and the guy with the birthmark was sitting on the floor playing with pieces of mirror. Ben took a last glass of champagne and, standing alone, tried to arrange his face in a nonchalant expression. He pretended to look at the nearest painting, though in fact he failed even to notice that someone had defaced it (adding to the small purple square a large black moustache). ‘… garbage out,’ said Allbright. That’s profound, you know?’ Dr Tarr giggled. ‘In vino, veri true.’ ‘Right. The C-charged brain, the C-charged …’ Lyle Tate picked up two pieces of mirror and held them so that he could see himself perfected, the dark blaze gone, his face become a bright symmetrical mask. The smile was slightly V-shaped, but so much the better, he thought, murmuring, ‘… animal lamina … burn, rub … th’ gin forests, er, of night …’ and finally, ‘Eye sees tiger dreg, it sees eye …’ as the howling chorus crashed about him.
Roll me ooooover
In the cloooover
XII
Miss Borden unreeled a gold chain with a tiny ballpoint pen at the end. ‘Okay Bill, spit it out.’
‘Shouldn’t you see the boy yourself first?’
‘He’s off today. Mr Wood’s taking him to the city I guess for some eye tests, anyway you have observed him?’
‘Yes, well no not in a direct observational, more in a peripherally informalized situ –’
‘You’ve seen him in the hall, I know. Go on.’
‘Yes, contacted him a few times in the hall and elicited a response or two, nothing def –’
‘How’s his reading?’
‘Reading skills, yes he did say he was having trouble with this new reader Mrs Dorano assigned.’
She marked on the yellow form. ‘Reading problem. I was afraid of that, now how does he get along with other kids?’
‘Socially he’s, there seems to be a nomenclatural mixup there, some difficulty with meaningful involvement in the cultural mainstream … maybe an identity crisis even; other kids keep calling him a robot you know? And when I asked him why, he said, “Because I am a robot.”’
She shook her head. ‘All too familiar these days, schizoid pattern: usually parents both work, kid’s alone too much –’
‘Divisive destructuring of the ego conceptualiza –’
‘That’s right. I ought to send him to George for a battery, I mean a battery of reassessment tests, only right now George has a pretty full case-load over at the junior high, you know what with that Russian roulette club –’
‘I imagine. How is the Vulich boy by the way?’
‘As well as can be expected, understand his parents are seeking a court order to have the machine turned off – where were we?’
‘Think we ought to do something, this Wood boy told me he dreams of skulls and scissor trees …’
‘Well sure, I’ll try to get George to fit him in, otherwise we’ll just have to let him go on thinking he’s a Martian – yes, at least we can send him to Ms Beek for some remedial, hand me one of those green forms will you, Bill? No, the leaf green ones …’
The new eye cost Pa and Ma a lot of money, but at least he could go right back to school. The other kids seemed glad to see him, even Chauncey.
Roderick couldn’t figure Chauncey out at all. Whenever they were alone, the bigger boy called him ‘Rick’, treated him like a pal, and even shared stuff with him, as now:
‘Hey Rick, wanna see some real dirty pitchers?’
‘Dirty?’
‘Yeah I found ’em in old Festy’s desk. And these really neat binoculars too, only Billy keeps ’em at home, me and him take turns with ’em. Here, take a look.’
He pulled up his sweater and fished out a dog-eared magazine, Stud Ranch. Hiding behind Ogilvy’s security hut in the corner of the playground (Ogilvy was never in it) they turned the pages and stared at pictures of people without clothes.
‘Hey looka that, wow!’
‘Yeah wow, but how come –’
‘Look, looka that! Boy they sure do weird stuff out West.’
A pair of people were wrestling like Bax and Indica. ‘Hey is it dirty because like this they wrestle on the ground or –?’
‘Naw, dirty is dirty, you know like sexy. Dincha never play doctors or nothing?’
Roderick said, ‘Sure, plenty of times. Once.’
‘Okay then. See this is how they get babies.’
‘This? With all this, these whips and spurs, this barb wire –?’
Chauncey hesitated. ‘Well sure. Must be, look it probably tells all about it here –’
‘Lemme see.’
Whoa there! While Calamity Jayne shucks her buckskins to saddle up for some bunkhouse fun, Miss Kitti is ‘bound’ to please some lonesome cowpoke. But what’s Brazos gonna do with thet there branding iron?
‘They don’t get babies like that.’
‘Sure they do, ask anybody, ask Billy, when his old man’s cow had a calf, they tied a rope around her neck and look here at this one, this “necktie party girl” she’s got –’
‘Yeah but hey wait a minute why do they have to wear all this stuft?’
Chauncey said, ‘Look stupid, it’s called Stud Ranch so they all gotta wear these belts with studs, boy, when my little brother was born my old lady had to wear all kinds of stuff to keep the baby from coming out her belly button too soon I guess – hey wow, looka that rattlesnake – men don’t have babies because they take pills I guess – looka that, “Bathtime at the Rocking 69” – see we had all about it last year, these little tadpoles inside and the Vast Difference –’
‘Hahaha, looka that, he thinks this other guys a girl, look it says “When a gay cabaleero …” What’s a cabaleero anyway?’
‘Just some word, who knows. Wow! Looka that pair!’
‘Yeah, Colt .45 Peacemakers, the sheriffs got one like that only not so fancy … Hey but Chauncey, what about the tadpoles?’
‘Aw who cares, sex is too complicated. Let’s play guns, okay?’
But whenever he was with the gang, Chauncey called him ‘freaky’ and threatened to take a can-opener and rip his guts out. You just couldn’t figure out some people.
Roderick couldn’t figure out Mrs Dorano either. She was always telling the other kids to be especially nice to him because of his handy cap, and then when they passed out the readers she gave him a different one, real hard and no pictures at all, and all long words. He had to spend hours every night at home going through the dictionary, and it still didn’t make sense.
Billy agreed, it wasn’t fair. ‘Heck my reader’s okay. All about this here Dick and Jane and how their mother works hard at
the car factory, and like how they get helped by Big Joe the social worker. How come yours is different, boy, I’d make a stink about that.’
‘Yeah, listen to this, it don’t make sense: “The actualization of catalyzing factors in inter-personal relationships is provided first by the furtherance of participatory options within the framework of an unstructured data base of conceptual parameters, notwithstanding the counter-productive and often marginal motivational mix inducing affectual restructuring of the –” Shit man, this doesn’t even tell a story. I mean it’s supposed to be about this girl, a doll-scent girl, only here I am on page twenty one and they don’t even have her name down here yet.’
‘Boy, I’d make a stink –’
‘Yeah I guess it don’t matter now they’re switching me to Miz Beek for redeemial anyway, I got this other reader where they spell everything like it sounds …’
Jump. Jump. Jump.
See Bob jump.
Bob jumps on a fast wagon.
Bob gøz fastr ðan a skūl bus.
The hour started off well, with Miz Beek cheerful and pleasant. She sat with Roderick and two other kids around a little table. While they read aloud, she nodded and smiled and occasionally swallowed another of her little white pills.
But towards the end of the hour she no longer seemed to be listening. After making a quick note in her Teacher’s Manual, she got up and left the room.
‘I bet thee’th going wee-wee,’ said one of the kids. ‘Thee hath to go wee-wee.’
The other said, ‘L-let’s g-g-get outa here hey.’
‘But thee might come back after thee taketh a pith.’
The door opened, but it was only Mr Fest, telling them he knew all of their names and not to try anything just because Miz Beek was out of the room, understand?
‘Yethir, Mithter Fetht.’
‘Y-y-y – sure.’
‘I’m glad you know my name,’ said Roderick, ‘because everybody else around here keeps calling me –’
‘At ease! At ease! I don’t want to hear another peep outa this room.’
He went away. They waited.
‘Look, thee forgot her pillth. Let’th get high, come on.’
