Vertigo Park and Other Tall Tales

by Mark O'Donnell

  JANE: The day after temerity!

  JEERY: That soon?

  DINK (curtly): We’ve been enraged for over a year.

  JEERY: Well, concatenations!

  DINK: Rank you very much. (Tense pause.) … Jeery, it’s getting awfully lout! You don’t want to miss the trance!

  (From the other entrance comes ALAS, a provocatively dressed woman with elaborate hair and a loose manner.)

  ALAS: Hell’s own? Hell’s own?

  JANE (aside): Oh, no! Is that who I slink it is? Why won’t she let us align?

  (ALAS advances.)

  ALAS: Hell’s own, every burden! Hell’s own, Dink!…

  DINK (uncomfortable but heated): Hell’s own, Alas!… Fantasy seething you here!

  JANE (tartly): I thought you’d be at the Social Tub trance, Alas. Aren’t you on the degradation committee?

  ALAS (offering a gift-wrapped bottle): I may stoop by there later. I sinfully wanted to winch you both all the beast. Let icons be icons. Here’s a battle of damn pain for you. I hype you enjoy it.

  JANE (suspicious): How sweat of you. (She takes the bottle and puts it aside.) You know Jeery, don’t you, Alas?

  ALAS: Yes, we mated years ago. How’s the Nervy, Jeery?

  JEERY: Great! I was born to be a soiler.

  (There is another awkward silence as they regard her.)

  DINK (to ALAS): Um—would you like to hit with us, Alas? Jane, you don’t grind if Alas hits with us, do you?

  JANE: Well, the glider’s getting awfully clouded!

  ALAS: I’ll just loin against the railing! (She poses against the pillar seductively.)

  DINK: No, here, have my seed! (He stands.)

  JANE: Dallying! (She pulls him back into his seat.) I think she’d rather remain stunning!

  DINK (getting agitated): Jeery, you could awful her your seat! Don’t they teach you manners in the harmed surfaces? (JEERY bristles.)

  JANE (to avoid a scene): Look, qualm down! Maybe we should admit this is an awkward saturation! I have complete face in you, Dink, but I think it’s in power taste for your old street-part to come around so soon before our welding!

  ALAS (offended): I can’t bereave this! There’s no reason to be subspecies, Jane!

  JANE (affronted): No?

  ALAS: This is a good-wall visit, that’s all! You’re just high-stung!

  DINK (chiming in his objections): And what about Jeery here! I don’t luck having him luring at you!

  JEERY (contemptuously): Oh, relapse, Dink! Afraid she’ll realize her must-ache before the sorrow-money? (to ALAS:) He’s in debt, it’s a mortgage of convenience!

  JANE (frightened by this sudden passion): Toys, please! Clam yourself! (Earnestly, to DINK:) Dink, don’t drought yourself this way! Where’s the strong, stabled man I’m taking to be altered? You know I lug you, I’ll always lug you. (She puts her arms around him maternally.) I want ours to be a beautiful cremation-trip. But it has to be based on truss. (She hugs him even more suffocatingly, and not erotically.) I want to be able to truss you.

  DINK (too independently to suit JANE): All I did was offer Alas my seed. You act like I rammed off with her!

  JANE (feeling dressed down before company): Well, maybe you’d rather ram off with her! She’s been trying to reduce you since she got here!

  ALAS (angry): Don’t spike like that to me! I bitter go.

  JANE (her insecurity making her hysterical): Stew where you are! You’re the claws of this! You slot!

  ALAS (sneering at JANE): What a little squirrel! I have nothing but potty for you!

  (The women suddenly slap each other; the men must intervene.)

  JEERY (restraining ALAS): The whole tissue is ridiculous! Fighting over a man who’s in doubt up to his ears!

  DINK: At least I’m not diddled with funereal disease, you bellow-jellied bullbottomed sin of the beach!

  JEERY: You sod-damned cowbird!

  (The men fight; now the women must intervene.)

  ALAS: Stomp it! Stomp it this minute!

  (There is a momentary silence, as they all recover from their wounds.)

  JANE: Why are we having such trouble trying to communicate?

  DINK (taking the lead): Look. Alas … I heave nothing but harpy memories of our time together. I depreciate your good winces, but Jane and I are to be marred, and that’s that. (He looks to JANE to match his definitive renunciation.)

  JANE (taking JEERY’s hand briefly): And … Jeery … I leave you very much. You know that. But that’s all winter under the fridge. (She turns to ALAS.) Alas, I’m sorry I lost my torpor.

  ALAS (with dignity): I understand. And I axe-up your apology. Anyway, for your inflammation, I’m getting marred myself. To Henry Silverstone.

  JANE (impressed): The banker! But he’s rather old for you, isn’t he?

  ALAS: Luckily, he’s in very good wealth. (A car horn honks from offstage.) There’s my chauffeured limbo now. I’d better get gilding. Conglomerations, and gall the best!… Goad bye!

  DINK (feeling bested): Bile!

  JANE (feeling outdone): Bile!

  (ALAS exits. JEERY now feels superfluous.)

  JEERY: Her own limbo!… Well, I guess I should leave you two lifeboats alone!

  JANE: Thanks for the foul airs, Jeery! Enjoy the trance!

  JEERY: Maybe I’ll meet my future broad!

  DINK (as if to a buddy): That’s the right platitude!

  JEERY: So long! Have a lot of skids!

  DINK: Bile!

  JANE: Bile! (JEERY goes.) He’s a good spore, isn’t he?

  DINK (reluctantly): I gas so.

  JANE (hugging him consolingly): But you’re the uphill of my eye!

  DINK: Oh, hiney! (He holds and tries to kiss her, but she resists him.) Oh, come on! Ploys? Pretty ploys?

  (She relents and gives him a peck and then quickly raises ALAS’s gift bottle between them.)

  JANE: Oh, look! A vintage battle of damn pain! Let’s celibate! (She pops it open and pours some of it into two empty lemonade glasses on the porch table. She raises her glass.) Here, let’s test each other! (They toast.) To ice!

  DINK: To ass!

  (They drink.)

  JANE: Oh, galling! Our life together is going to be blitz!

  (Blackout.)

  A TALL TALE

  America’s privately owned, fertilizer-enriched soil has nurtured some mighty big men—legends like Slipp’ry Joe Hartford, who actually sold Mother Nature unemployment insurance, or Lightnin’ Lefkowitz, the Wall Street Flash, who traded bonds so fast that no one could tell if they were really there or not. And every boy in B school has heard the story of Loophole Sam, who got out of both death and taxes. Yes, the doings and boastings of these tall-in-the-portfolio characters have filled many an annual report, but none of them has ever been bigger or more diversified than a horizon-blocking butte of a booster they call Johnny Business, and if the busboys have finished clearing the tables, lend an ear to the story I’ve been so well paid to tell. Lights, please?

  Johnny was only the biggest man that ever gripped a boardroom table, and that includes your ex-football players in public relations. Why, when he was born, he was fifteen stories high, with a view of the park on two sides! His pa was a profiteering man with an automobile so long, it started pulling into the hospital driveway the morning Johnny was born, and to this day it hasn’t completely arrived. Johnny’s mother was the infamous Ma Bell, a broad-shouldered woman who could hear a million conversations at once, and still not change her mind.

  One day when he was three, she took him out to lunch and said to him. “Son—you gonna be a deal-drivin’ man, like yo’ daddy?” And Johnny—through a representative—answered, “I have no problem with that.”

  When Johnny Business was a little baby

  Sittin’ on his Mammy’s knee,

  He said, “Government restrictions on my right to make a profit

  Gonna be the death of me, Lord, Lord,

  Gonna be the death of me.”r />
  Well, it wasn’t long before Johnny’s pa was reduced to nothing by revenooers, and his poor old Ma got divested, so Johnny quit Junior Achievement and headed out on his own. Next slide, please. He made himself an attaché case out of an old airplane hangar, and along with his trusty secretary, Babe the Blue Blood, headed south.

  “South, Babe!” he told her, and held on high a billfold the size of a billboard. “South—to the Sunbelt!”

  Johnny Business went to the Sunbelt,

  He rented a penthouse there—

  It was up so high, he looked down on the sky,

  And he had to pay extra for the air, Lord, Lord,

  He had to pay extra for the air!

  Johnny was such a fast talker, he could sell feathers to a fish, retail, and in no time he cast a long shadow from Dallas to Atlanta. Old Babe had to do a mountain of Xeroxing as high as the Wrigley Building every morning before breakfast, and what they didn’t want kept they used for landfill to build high rises on. He had more credit cards than there are things to buy, and he worked it so he could charge the new ones on the old ones, and the old ones on the new ones, and not even your auditor could have figured out who was due what. And when Johnny took a client out to lunch, he drank his martinis out of old water towers from bankrupt railroads. “Here’s how!” he’d laugh. “Happy hour is here to stay!”

  Of course, people always get jealous when you’re big and jolly. Some sunken-eyed baloney-for-lunch types tried to get Johnny tied down, though of course they were too cash-scrawny to take him on in any leveraged way. No, they had to tattle, like a runt to a playground monitor. What happened was, one day Johnny was visiting a mining operation he was thinking of selling, and when he lay on his belly and squinted down that shaft, he didn’t like what he wasn’t seeing.

  “It’s Monday, Frank,” he told his foreman. “Where are all the miners?”

  Frank took to trembling so his clipboard started to splinter. “They ain’t workin’, Johnny!” he stammered. “Some kind of itty bitty scraggly ol’ foreign birdy told ’em to go out on strike for safer conditions!”

  Johnny’s scorn fell like acid rain on alkaline earth. “Nothin’ in life is safe!” he roared. “America didn’t get built on safety! Gimme that shovel, Frank, I’ll do the mining myself!”

  Johnny took hold of a gigantic shovel and was about to be labor and capital both at once, when suddenly, three little tiny woman lawyers you could barely see came up behind him and hit him with a Cease and Desist whammy. The first one had once got Christmas tabled till Easter, and the second one had taken over Hell until the Devil could refinance. The tiniest of the three was also the meanest. She was from the IRS, and was so good at tax collecting she could find pockets on a shadow. The three of them together carried a roll of red tape so thick a man couldn’t even think of home without a dozen feasibility studies first.

  Of course, Johnny’s back was broader than those little woman lawyers were motivated to wrestle, since they worked on salary only, and he threw them faster than rodeo clowns off a bronco. Then he went ahead and dug into that mine until it plumb collapsed from happiness, and to this day they call the hole he left the Grand Canyon, in honor of the thousand dollars he paid himself to do it. Then for dessert he cut down all the forest in those parts, slicker than a ballplayer shaving on a TV commercial. And without those pesky regulators, Johnny started growing and growing and growing—right in front of the media, so ask them if you don’t believe me—and pretty soon it took three strong men just to conceive of how rich he was!

  Finally, right when Johnny was so big he was actually twice as large as himself, there was a market-rattling explosion that made analysts bark as far away as Tacoma, and when the hype had cleared, there wasn’t anything left in Johnny Business’s shoes but the air rights.

  He was true to his code, even if he did explode—

  And you have to give him credit, yes you do, Lord, Lord,

  You have to give him credit, yes you do …

  Where did he get to? Oh, some say he went and jumped out a window, but you and I both know there’s not enough distance on this earth for a man that big to fall far enough to hurt himself. Others say he died from a heart attack after all that hard work he should have been delegating, and still others have the gold-plated brass to say they’ve seen his carcass on display at Neiman Marcus—but after all the bespectacled Sunday morning commentary floats off into what no one watched yesterday, the real question is, Do dreams like Johnny’s ever really die? Sometimes, on an autumn evening, when trading has been particularly heavy, give a listen to the wind. Maybe you’ll hear a distant voice saying, “… I’ll get back to you!”

  That’ll be Johnny.

  QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW

  1. Where is the story set? Do you think having a setting adds to the story? Where are you set? Defend your answer.

  2. Dinah repeatedly complains about the darkness at Seven Birches. Is it really darkness? What does she really mean? Think of examples from real life of someone saying things you can barely understand to show everyone how unhappy and alone they are. Make a list.

  3. Who survives the fire Dinah sets, and why? Who flees into the night? What happens to Wobbles? (Hint: Grrrrrr.)

  4. Of the three kinds of conflict—Man versus Man, Man versus Nature, and Man versus Himself—which kinds are in evidence here? (Example: When Doctor Luger’s eugenically bred killer ants attack his experimental Ape Maiden, it counts as both Man versus Nature and Man versus Himself—and, arguably, Nature versus Nature.)

  5. When Squiffy decides to kick Lars, something unexpected follows. What? Go kick someone larger than yourself and describe what follows. Be specific.

  6. What famous character does Brannigan resemble? Consider his miraculous powers at Dinah’s poorly planned party, his death in Crossville, and his surprising resuscitation at Doctor Easter’s clinic. Defend your answer.

  7. Discuss the perfectly good reasons someone might have for shooting another person, especially in the unorthodox way Dinah shoots Lars. Make a list of people who are bucking for just such treatment. You may include world figures as well as family members and friends.

  8. What is it with Dinah? Be specific.

  9. Stories consist of rising action, climax, and denouement. Is this true of life? Why or why not? Is it true of New Year’s Eve? Why or why not?

  10. If this story were a pie, what flavor would it be? If it were a pie that happened to be able to speak, what kind of story would that pie be likely to tell? Would it be this story? If it were a pie that could talk but something was terribly wrong, maybe something psychosomatic or a scandal in its past, and it just didn’t, or wouldn’t, talk, what kind of thing might be done to that pie to encourage it or even force it to talk? Think before answering.

  EXTRA CREDIT PROJECT: Defend yourself.

  THE CORPSE HAD FRECKLES

  The summer air hung as heavy and still as a significant pause in a personal hygiene lecture. Overhead, the desert sun glared down like a censorious, fire-lashed cyclopean eye on tourist and tarantula alike. Inside the thick adobe walls of Rancho Contento, however, all was so cool and dim that tomatoes wouldn’t even ripen. Bitty Borax and her legitimate cousin Anodyne sat in their grandfather’s well-dusted library of old deeds and desert realty law books, chatting away the afternoon. Ice cubes made the milk in their glasses even colder than regular cold milk, and their own mild dispositions contrasted with the scorching day outside.

  “Mmmm,” Bitty murmured, idly fiddling with the tiny cattle-skull motif that capped her swizzle stick. “It looks hot enough out there to roast a ghost!” Ordinarily, Bitty was as pert and direct as a prize show terrier, only with straight hair, but the languorous pace of her desert vacation had relaxed the young crime-solver to the point of whimsy.

  “Could you really roast a ghost?” Anodyne wondered aloud, and tried to sip her milk through her swizzle stick, forgetting for a moment that it wasn’t a straw. Anodyne wasn’t the brightest light on the Chri
stmas tree, but she was always glad to be brought down out of the attic.

  “I don’t know, Anodyne,” reflected Bitty. “It’s metaphysical, isn’t it? There was that time in the Hindi fanatics’ tomb when I set what I thought was a ghost afire, but it was just a thuggee soapnapper in a bedsheet.”

  “Yes, I got your postcard,” Anodyne remembered. “I didn’t think you were going to make it!”

  “Well, that’s all lemonade under the bridgework now,” Bitty countered breezily. “Let’s dwell on the utter safety of this moment.”

  “All right,” said Anodyne sportingly. “I’m thinking of going sunbathing in the gulch. Would you like to join me?”

  “No, thanks,” Bitty smiled. “I’m too high-spirited to sunbathe. I would never lie down if it weren’t to go right to sleep. And anyway, Aunt Addle should be back soon from gathering stalagmites for luncheon centerpieces down at the old cavern. She may need help cleaning herself up. I know the radiation level there is next to nothing, but she’ll want to be decontaminated—just for ritual’s sake.”

  “Poor Aunt Addle,” Anodyne mused. “She’s been so restless since Uncle Fleck disappeared.” Aunt Addle was neither of their mothers, but the Boraxes were a close extended family.

  Suddenly, the sound of careening flesh knocking knickknacks off pedestals resounded from the ranch’s vestibule. The two girls leapt to their feet as if in reflexive response to an unholy but irresistible national anthem.

  “Prairie dogs on loco weed!” guessed Anodyne, edgily snapping her swizzle stick in two.

  “Maybe it’s the surly half-breed gardener getting the jump on happy hour!” Bitty postulated speedily. “But we’ll never know if we don’t go look!”

  They rushed to the vestibule. There stood Aunt Addle, shaking like a guilty verdict held by a jury foreman afraid to read it. Bits of cat fur clung to her hair and apron, and if she had gathered any stalagmites, she was empty-handed now.