After the show ended, I logged on to the Internet, wanting to check my e-mail. The only new message I had was from someone named "Surf- erdude." It said to look up a personal ad.
I would do no such thing.
Instead, I speed-dialed Ransom's house. Jamie picked up. I asked her about the baby in her belly, and she said, "Oh, I'm getting fat and we think it's a boy and you won't believe the name we've picked out." But before I could even ask, she had Ransom on the phone.
"Duuude," he said, sounding half awake.
"So tell me the name."
"What name?" he asked.
"Of your yet-to-be-born baby, of course."
"I think we're going with Wally Kahuna."
"Wally Kahuna Delaney?"
"The third."
"Wally Kahuna Delaney the third?"
"Yeah. There isn't a first or second, but it sounds cool. Whaddaya think?"
"I think you should rediscuss it with your wife."
"Hey, I've been reading here about the cost of diapers. Unbelievable how many you gotta buy. Think if we feed it only twice a day, it'll only mess half as much?"
"Can we change the subject?"
"The key word, jaybird, is superabsorbent. Man, I have never changed a diaper in my life."
"Me either, but can we please change the subject?"
"To what?"
"To this personal ad you forwarded to me."
"So did you figure it out? Another A girl?"
"I haven't even looked at it. And I'm not planning to."
"You'll be sorry, dude."
"No way, Ransom. No more Presbyterian girls whose names start with A."
`Just look it up."
"No! You got me to go out with crazy Alexis. But that is it. I am not so desperate that I need to resort to personal ads."
"You'll be sorry if you don't look it up."
"Not doing it. I am maturing in the faith and do not need to use the Net to meet a girl."
"Just look it up. Although, yeah, it could be a joke. Debated Jamie on that last night. She says it's real. I can't decide. Might be fake."
"A fake personal ad from a third girl whose name starts with A? Oh, man, I am not your friend anymore."
"Darcy thinks it's real."
"So now you're telling me lime-lovin' Darcy knows the third girl whose name starts with A?"
"I dunno," he said, laughing now, "but she passed the ad to Jamie, who passed it to me, and now I'm passing it on to you. But again, it may be a joke ... planted by Steve or someone bored outta their skull. Anyway, I need to go, dude. My night to cook."
"Ransom?"
"Yeah?"
I cleared my throat. "There is one mediator between God and man and that is Christ and those aren't my words they're his words and the living words and the eternal words and those are the only words you're gonna need."
"You musta really whacked your head hard."
"Thanks for stopping the bleeding."
`Just look up the ad."
Right before bedtime, with a load of whites churning in suds, I could stand it no longer. Barefooted and curious, I logged on, fully aware that deceit usually lurks behind anonymity.
No, I cannot do it. I will not do it.
Why couldn't I do it?
Because I was flustered.
So much so that I rose from my desk, strode into the kitchen, and poured myself a heaping bowl of cereal.
I stood there, barefoot atop ceramic tiles, trying to crunch perspective from each spoonful. No, I told myself, this net stuff could be habit-forming. I am maturing in the faith and should just log off, remove this hint of waywardness from my house. Ransom is a deceiver. He has a malfunctioning surf brain. Too much salt. He is stressed over his approaching daddyhood and is now trying to set up his single male friends with Internet kooks posing as Presbyterian girls whose names start with A: Presbyterian Amy, Presbyterian Amanda, Presbyterian Ashley, and Presbyterian Aretha. There will be no end to it. Soon he will have me scroll to the Baptists, and waiting there will be Baptist Amy, Baptist Amanda, Baptist Ashley, and Baptist Aretha until finally I'll be right back where I started-watching multidenominational Alexis rearrange the spoons while slurping in a posh French restaurant. Jarvis, you should just wait until New York, and maybe try to meet some nice Hispanic girl of the faith, whose name begins with a more exotic letter like V, X, or Q.
Cereal gone, I convinced myself that this was just one little personal ad.
Couldn't hurt. No life-changing consequences involved. With the glow of my flat-panel monitor giving urgency to desire, I shut off the living-room lights, went to my desk again, and placed my hand on the mouse.
After scrolling past the deceptive and the twisted, the liars and the just plain lonely, I found ad #74522.
I read it three more times.
Then a fifth, each time mulling the risks of response.
But it was late by then, and words seemed distant and hieroglyphic, hovering just out of reach, eluding me in the murky manner of language.
I would have to think on this one.
It took me six days and five boxes of cereal to think up a reply. First I was timid; then less so; then I thought I'd simply type the word hello and see if anything happened. I even considered posing as a Brit and typing an uppity response in the King's English.
But late Thursday night-armed with a brand-new anonymous e-mail address and with my corn flakes piled high but unmilked in a pasta bowlI decided that, whether or not the personal ad was for real, whether or not she was who I thought she was, and whether or not she had anything going with Thomas the Peruvian evangelist, it deserved my best shot. Just in case.
I logged on, found the ad again, and hit reply.
That was my absolute best shot, so I clicked send. Time to trust God and cyberspace.
The second batch of yellow dahlias had wilted all over our office lobby, failing in their attempt to ward off a premature autumn.
"Mr. Franklin Gruber on the phone again, sir. "
With coffee sloshing over the rim of my UT mug, I hurried to my speakerphone, sat down, and propped my feet on the desk. "Thank you, Glenda. Put him on."
But this time, she did not put Mr. Gruber on. Instead, Glenda, our mild-mannered secretary with great nails, lowered her voice. "He's been a difficult client, hasn't he, Jay?"
"Yes, Glenda, he sure has."
"He's made me some good money, though."
But how was that possible? "How is that possible?"
She whispered into the phone. 'Well, the very minute he sold the Toys `R' Us, I bought. I always do the exact opposite of Mr. Gruber. It's how I supplement my secretary salary."
"You're my hero, Glenda."
"We're gonna miss you, Jay. "
I had almost forgotten about closure with Glenda. So between sips of coffee, I wrote myself a note to buy more dark chocolates.
Near day's end, Vince Galbraith called me from his trading desk in Manhattan. Said he had sent me a book titled Running Money: Secrets of Institutional Block Trading.
Block trading is large blocks of stock-ten, twenty, fifty thousand shares at a time-sometimes bought and sold on the floor of the exchange and sometimes pedaled to other big-shot Wall Street firms. When too many of these blocks line up on the sell side all at once, it's called, in layman's terms, a market crash.
It's all numbers, said Vince. Just add two or three zeroes to the transactions I've done with individual clients, and there's nothing to it. Just make the numbers. Mirror the performance of the S&P 500 during good weeks, outperform during bad weeks, and I would make the numbers and a lowsix-figure bonus. He guaranteed it. Just make the numbers.
The firm must've really wanted me to make the numbers, because with only two weeks left to my move date, they told me to take Wednesdays and Fridays off, to stay home in my renovated house on the cul-de-sac and study Secrets of Institutional Block Trading.
Follow along on the Internet, they said. Sign up for free real-time quotes and watch
big blocks of stock as they trade. Try to gauge the flow, the movement; feel the momentum of the market. Pretend a million dollars rides on your next trading decision.
Above all, they stressed, prepare strenuously to make the performance numbers.
Friday morning I was home at my computer desk, deep into the book, studying how to scale out of large, million-share stock positions.
Thing is, I already knew how: feed the shares to the market like a duck waddling up a bank.
I logged on to real-time, streaming quotes to watch the trades execute. Since my specialty would be oil and gas companies, I concentrated first on refiners like Exxon, Phillips Petroleum, and Amerada Hess; then the oil drillers like Transocean and Nabors Industries. Tens of thousands of shares processed every few minutes, and I was feeling the momentum on the drillers but was at a complete loss on the refiners. The big trades seemed to cancel each other out, and I was worried that this would be harder than I'd thought, nothing at all like trading Toys `R' Us with Mr. Gruber. But maybe I could get Mr. Gruber to buy and sell the stock of oil companies and I could just do the exact opposite with big blocks of stock, thus setting the all-time performance record for a rookie Wall Street trader.
Just before noon I was into my third cup of coffee, savoring such prideful thoughts, when an Instant Message appeared on my screen, asking if I would like to chat on-line. I had only cyberchatted once in my life, so I typed Okay, let us commence to chat.
I had spilled coffee all over Secrets of Institutional Block Trading, and the Friday cram session for Wall Street would have to wait. After scrolling to the top of our Instant Message, I realized how fast we'd been typing, and I simply wanted to reread the entire dialogue.
Transcontinental cyberchats ... much preferable to hieroglyphics.
There were no spooky costumes spooking the room during the Circle of Nine's late October meeting. Even though the meeting took place on Halloween, not a man dressed up, save for Ransom and his plastic pumpkin hat. He had it tilted down over his left eye so that he had to raise his head up to see. Around him were the eight other men, circled chairs, eighteen feet crowding the edge of Steve's lime-tinged rug.
Stanley sat two chairs away from me, a quarter way round the circle. And he had worn his too-small religious T-shirt again.
"Men," said Ransom, "if it were up to me, we'd spend this night doling out candy to some poor little dudes and dudettes. But we need a unanimous vote to do that."
He got seven votes, plus his own.
Only Stanley dissented. "You won't get my vote, Delaney. Theologically, Halloween is a demonic convergence of universal proportion, and our participation would only de-edify the maturity which we've already attained."
"Is de-edify a word?" asked Steve, leaning back in his chair.
"If spongedom can be a word, then so can de-edify."
Ransom nudged his pumpkin hat up an inch and said, "I don't think it's a word."
"Me either," I offered. "But spongedom is."
Young Barry squirmed, raised his hand. "Instead of arguing over Webster, why don't you guys show some charity, toss out a little cash. It's been a long eight weeks."
He had already removed his navy blue Nike cap when the doorbell rang. And rang.
Steve had developed a knack for gadgetry and had installed a new doorbell for himself-when pressed, it played the first line of "Take Me Out to the Ball Game."
"I'll get it," said Steve. Barry plopped back in his chair and frowned.
"No, let me get it," said Stanley, jumping in front of Steve.
Steve stuck out his chest. "It's my house."
"But I'm good with kids," countered Stanley, reaching for the doorknob. "And someone needs to explain to them this evil holiday."
Steve shrugged and told him to be his guest.
The baseball tune rang out a fourth time as Stanley opened the door. Our circle turned to spectate, and all we saw were three paper grocery sacks held high, jiggling. They stayed that way for a good ten seconds, but when nothing rattled the insides, the bags lowered, revealing, in order, Casper the Ghost, the Lone Ranger, and Pocahontas, who could not stop grinning.
They shook their bags and repeated a second time, "Trick or TREEEEAT!"
Stanley looked back at our circle and raised his index finger, as if to say he needed a moment. He stepped outside, between Casper and Pocahontas, and shut the door behind him.
We were out of our chairs in a flash. Eight right ears quickly pressed against the inside of Steve's door and his living-room wall.
Stanley stayed out there forever, but we could barely hear the sermon. He preached so long that Ransom whispered we should just go ahead and call it a full service, do a hymn, and take up an offering.
So curly-haired Barry got his wish, each man turning from the wall to pull out a wallet, the navy blue Nike cap filling fast with dollar bills while Steve hummed a pitiful version of "Have Thine Own Way."
Our one-eared snoop resumed, and we heard young voices utter phrases like "You crazy, man" and "Stingy of preacher." Then we heard feet pattering down the sidewalk, bags shaking as they ran.
We hurried back to our chairs, and for camouflage I began the impurethought confessional, raising my arm as Barry counted cash. We had nearly completed a right-hand revolution-seven of nine members in sinful agreement-when, in a quest for symmetry, Steve raised both his left and his right, a proxied vote for Stanley.
Just then, Stanley walked back in, rejoined our circle, and smiled big.
"Dudes," said Ransom, "this is getting monotonous. None of us ever goes a whole week without an impure thought."
"Let me think on that," said Stanley.
"You know you did," said Barry. "Steve voted you in."
"Well, maybe once."
"What if we met hourly instead of weekly?" asked Steve.
"That still wouldn't work," said Ransom.
Stanley turned in his chair and wiped something from the back of his religious T-shirt. A blue, sticky substance clung to his fingertips. "Silly kids," he mumbled.
"What happened, dude?" asked Ransom.
"The Lone Ranger is a pagan child," said Stanley. "If I ever have kids, I'm home-schooling 'em."
We tried our best to keep straight faces, but it was of no use. Stanley went to get a paper towel from Steve's kitchen. Upon his return, we saw him standing behind our circle, coughing loud, calling us to attention. "I have a big announcement for you guys."
"What?" Ransom asked.
"I'm engaged."
While the Circle of Nine peppered Stanley with questions and congrats, Ransom motioned for me to meet him in the kitchen. As soon as we were alone, he grabbed me by both shoulders. "Did you reply to the ad? Please tell me you replied to the ad."
"It was her."
"You sure?" He had surfer breath.
"She Instant-Messaged me Friday morning."
"From South America?"
"I didn't know you could do that either ... gotta love AOL."
He released his grip, took a step back. "So, what're you gonna do?"
"She wants me to visit next spring."
"Then go visit next spring. Or better yet, fly her to New York City."
"She hates concrete jungles."
"Nah, dude, all girls love that sorta thing."
I wasn't sure whether to trust the advice of a man who could name his firstborn Wally Kahuna. But maybe he was just trying to make amends for setting me up with crazy Alexis.
I could not decide.
On Wednesday night, November 5th, a cold front slid down from the Appalachians. The smell of duct tape and cardboard mingled with the gas heat as I packed boxes in my living room, four and a half days before I would leave the South.
It was time to move on.
I had spent a week saying good-bye to Greenville. Performed closure with eighty-seven clients. Turned in my office key to Mr. Brophy. Mailed one share of Wal-Mart to Mrs. Dawson and her wacko, rhyming thirdgraders. Took one last call from Mr. Gruber,
who wanted to buy a thousand shares of Gillette because he thought global warming would cause men the world over to shave their beards.
I gave no rebuttal, just bought him the stock.
And I said congrats to Stanley and Number Eight, cops, Rona, over their engagement.
After that last meeting, I had made my peace with of Stanley, and he with me. Two young men agreeing, between syllables, that there are many rooms in the Father's house, and although we shared eternal life, most likely we'd never share bunk beds.
While packing, I thought of that long Instant Message, Allie's uncluttered thoughts, her quiet beauty and commitment to God. Then I remembered the last stanza of her poem, the one she had scrawled in wet sand, and wondered if my own roots would grow through polished concrete.
By midnight I had cleared my closet, except for a black turtleneck and one maturing pair of black wool pants. New York fashion. Travel attire.
There was only one thing left to do.
My umbrella had not moved from that hall rack in four months; every Sunday I would leave without it.
Maurice was sweeping autumn from the sidewalk as I parked in the empty church lot. It was late afternoon, and the leaves had scattered their color across the manicured lawn of North Hills Presbyterian. He waved, set his broom against the brick sanctuary, and wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his jumpsuit. I paused at my back bumper to retie my sneakers.
"Well, well," said Maurice, twirling his keys on a chrome ring. "Mr. Oblong Head 'bout to leave for New Yawk without his umbrella. How is the head?"
Sneakers tied, I walked over and shook his hand. "Much better. But this time, do not let me get distracted."
He grabbed his broom, and through a side door we entered a church hallway laced with the fresh, lemony scent of Pine Sol.
"Your umbrella is still there," he said, pulling an envelope from his pocket, "but the church asked me to give you this." He handed me an official church envelope, addressed to Jay Jarvis.
Flabbergasted: A Novel Page 23
