The Keyhole Opera

by Bruce Holland Rogers

  Ben laughed.

  “It’s not funny!”

  “Your whole life! For that one moment! Really!” He chuckled some more.

  Then she was laughing with him.

  5. President of Baseball Operations

  The secretary never had a chance to say, “Do you have an appointment?” Washington was already past her and opening the CEO’s door. Benjamin Rush, the man behind the enormous desk, was on the phone. He looked up and said, “I’ll call you back. Something’s come up.”

  The secretary hovered in the doorway behind Washington, but Rush said, “It’s all right. I’ll see him.”

  Washington shut the door.

  The CEO stood up and extended a hand. “Always good to see you, George.”

  Washington ignored the hand. “You’ve owned this team for two months, and I haven’t heard a word from you. Your assistant calls. You don’t want an appointment, but your underling does. When I let a player go, I have the guts to do it in person.”

  Rush. “All right. I’ll be straight with you. The team’s been stuck in neutral—”

  Washington looked at two glass encased baseballs on the desk. “Ruth and Williams. Any chance those are authentic?”

  “They…of course they’re authentic.”

  “How would you know? I ask because you seem to have a hard time recognizing the genuine article.” Washington thumped his own chest with his fingers. “I am the genuine article. Did you know that I take batting practice with the team? At my age? Why do you think I do that?”

  “George, it’s not a question of your leadership—”

  “Those guys would walk through fire for me. Hell, they have walked through fire. We were twenty-five games out of first place when we played the Yankees. Did you see that series? Did you see my guys lose in fourteen innings and then play their hearts out the next day to avoid the sweep?”

  “When a team changes hands, some adjustments—”

  “Yes. So here are the changes we’re going to make. First, you’re promoting me to president of baseball operations.”

  “Promoting you.” Rush smiled a thin smile.

  “But I’m still managing the team in the dugout, so I’ll need to hire an assistant. Someone I trust. He’s not in baseball any more, but Al Hamilton would be perfect.”

  “Alexander Hamilton?” Rush laughed. “He makes the kind of money I make!”

  “He’ll come down a peg for me. He will. Anyway, you’re going to have to get used to spending. Pitching is going to cost us. Two top starters and a middle reliever. Then we’re going to buy the best closer available. You’re going to bid against the Yankees ownership until they blink.”

  Rush seemed to be fighting to keep a genial smile in place. “George, we’re rebuilding.”

  “You’re saying you don’t expect to win.”

  “These things take time.”

  “We’ve got the bats, Rush. We don’t have to go for the long ball. Singles. Men on base. Patient offense. Give me the pitching staff I want, and I’ll bring you a pennant with the position players we already have. They’ll walk through fire, but I want them walking through fire because there’s something on the other side.” He leaned over the desk. “So is there going to be something on the other side? Or is this a hobby for you?”

  Rush’s face reddened. “I want to win.”

  “But that’s not enough. You’ve got to want to win as much as I want to win.” Then Washington pushed at his dental work as if the bridge were loose. It wasn’t, but the gesture would remind Rush that when Washington was a player, he’d stood in at the plate, bases loaded, and taken a brush-back pitch right in the mouth. He lost five teeth and won the game.

  Washington reached across the desk, picked up the phone, and handed it to Rush. “Call publicity. Tell them about your new president of baseball operations.”

  And Benjamin Rush, to his lasting credit, made the call.

  6. Madison of Madison Avenue

  James Madison surveyed the conference table, the litter of scratch paper and chewed pencils. The waste basket in the corner overflowed with crumpled, rejected ideas. “There’s got to be something here, something we’ve already thought of.” he said. Then he looked at his watch. “It’s going to be light outside soon, and we still don’t have an idea we can run with.”

  Adams stood at the coffee maker, watching the carafe fill. “I love the smell of fresh coffee. It’s somewhere between oak and chocolate.” He inhaled. “Could we do something with smell?”

  “New car smell has been done to death,” said Madison. “Besides, this isn’t just any car. This is the new Camaro. We’re selling youth, nostalgia…something sexy. Where the devil did Jefferson get off to?”

  “He had an idea. He said he needed to work on it alone. Coffee?”

  “Heaven preserve me from another cup of coffee,” Madison said. Then, “All right. Fill my mug. We have to stay sharp. Unless we dig deep and come up with something brilliant in the next…” He checked his watch again. “Six hours. We’ve got six hours to be brilliant, or we’re going to lose this account.”

  Adams filled Madison’s mug, brought it to him, and sat down. “I don’t suppose we could say, ‘The interior yields to your caress with the firm warmth of a young girl’s breast’?”

  Madison stared at him until Adams looked away.

  “No,” Adams said. “I don’t suppose we could. But you must admit that it’s youthful, nostalgic, sexy.”

  “It’s not pithy, John. It lacks subtlety. Look, let’s think in terms of argument some more. What are the reasons that someone would buy the competition? We list those reasons, then compose the advertising around counter-arguments.”

  “I don’t suppose we could compare the wide wheel base to a woman’s hips? A mature woman, I mean. Sturdiness and sensuality combined—”

  The door flew open and Jefferson strode in waving a legal pad. “I’ve got it!”

  “Great!” said Madison. “Let’s hear it!”

  Jefferson began to read: “When in the course of a lifetime of driving pleasure a driver enumerates those qualities which most contribute to satisfaction behind the wheel, he will…”

  “Stop,” said Madison. He looked at Adams. “When that comes out of your radio, do you or do you not change the station?”

  “That’s just preamble,” Jefferson said. “Afterwards, the copy lists every positive attribute of the car. From horsepower and handling to the optional moon roof and CD changer…”

  Madison rubbed his temples.

  “I know what you’re thinking, Jim, but I omitted nothing. It’s all here. The Camaro is everything anyone could want in a car, and I prove it!”

  “No,” Madison said. “No, no, no. First of all, that’s only every positive attribute you can think of. As soon as you begin to enumerate things, you begin to limit them! In spite of your best efforts, there will be people who will look at your list and will decide that just because you forgot to mention the cigarette lighter, the Camaro doesn’t come with one.”

  Jefferson looked at his draft, then wrote something between the lines. “I mention the cigarette lighter,” he said.

  “What about all the reasons that people won’t buy the Camaro?” Madison said. “You have to think about the immediate self-interest of the consumer. People are perverse. Give them half a chance, and they’ll buy a Ford.”

  “He’s right,” Adams said. “There’s a certain wicked impulse that inheres in all of humanity.” From down the hall came the sound of a door opening and shutting.

  Jefferson shook his head. “You’re pessimists, both of you. I believe in the inherent goodness of every consumer.”

  A young man leaned in at the doorway. “What are you blokes doing here so early?”

  Madison gritted his teeth. “So late, you mean.” Paine was an intern from England, still wet behind the ears but convinced that he already knew all about what worked in American advertising. “We’re working.”

  Paine looked ov
er some of the scribbled notes on the table. “On the Camaro account? Oh, I have some good news about that. Had an idea of my own and faxed it to GM.”

  “You faxed a proposal?” said Jefferson.

  “On our letterhead?” said Adams.

  “Well, of course. I wanted them to take it seriously. The campaign is…” Paine gestured as if to an invisible marquee. “Bite the Night!”

  “Bite the Night?” Madison pursed his lips. He stood up. He felt his face getting hot.

  “Yeah, and the graphics that go with that are a leggy model taking a bite out of the moon as if it were an apple. There’s a snake in a tree, and in the background, the Camaro.”

  “Bite the Night,” said Adams. “You sent that to the client on our letterhead. Without asking.”

  “Another graphic could feature a good looking werewolf or vampire with a castle or forest. The car’s always going to be in the background, in the shadows with the lights on.”

  Madison’s temples throbbed. He fought to keep from shouting when he said, “‘Bite the Night’ doesn’t even begin to make sense.”

  “Well, it’s not really about making sense, is it?” Paine said. “It’s all about getting the blood to pump. Anyway, they loved it. Called me up yesterday and asked to see mock-ups. Thought I’d come in early and get to work. Would have told you about it yesterday, but you were in a meeting.” He looked at the three of them and once more at the table. “This meeting, apparently.” He looked at Madison. “So I’m guessing you won’t mind if I do up some art to show them?”

  Madison sat down. “Use whatever you need.”

  “Cheers,” said Paine.

  When Paine had gone, Jefferson said, “Bite the Night. It does have a certain…something to it. Doesn’t it?”

  Madison glared at him.

  Adams said, “Dear God. I have a feeling that we’ll all be working for that boy one day.”

  Even more miserably, Madison said, “I have a feeling we won’t be.”

  7. Give Me Amaranth!

  Patrick Henry wasn’t the first to think about amaranth. Some of his neighbors had put in a few rows between their corn and soybeans after the county extension agent had done a presentation at the grange. A big processing plant had opened in Danville. The market was new, but expanding. Folks were feeling the edges of amaranth.

  No, Pat Henry wasn’t the first to think about amaranth, but once he started, he couldn’t let it go. In November, he went to Champaign to talk to some professors. He looked up recipes and just about drove his wife crazy, shooing her out of her own kitchen to try things out. He showed up at the Short Line Cafe with a platter of cookies and went from table to table.

  “Taste the malt?” he said. “But there is no malt. That’s amaranth!”

  At an auction in Mahomet, Pat circulated with a seed company brochure in his back pocket, ready to tell anyone who would listen about how amaranth was really both a grain and a vegetable, depending on the variety. Some varieties might go both ways. You could harvest the early plants like spinach—only they had more calcium and iron than spinach. Amaranth was drought resistant and not particular about soil.

  After he told someone all of this, Pat would hand over the brochure from his back pocket. A minute later, he’d have another one back there, tucked in casual like.

  “Hey, Pat,” folks said, “are you fronting for the seed company?”

  He swore that he just loved amaranth. “Did you know it’s loaded with lysine? Beta carotene? Vitamins C and E? It’s high in fiber. The nutrients in a grain of amaranth are concentrated in a ring around the starch. That protects them during processing. Amaranth isn’t just good nutrition in your field. It’s good nutrition on the plate.”

  “Okay, Pat,” folks admitted. “It’s a good crop.” Then they rolled their eyes when he wasn’t looking.

  Well, some did. But others were beginning to think that maybe he was on to something. When folks work their fields hard, have a decent harvest, and end the year worse off than they started it, they begin to wonder if they shouldn’t try something new.

  The kicker was Pat’s local access cable TV show. In January, he taped “Give Me Amaranth!” He featured a table spread with packaged amaranth products. He interviewed the extension agent about crop yields and futures contracts for amaranth. He did a cooking demonstration with popped amaranth and interviewed a health food store owner. Local access programming was always on the lean side, so the show repeated three or four times a day through February, when those farmers who didn’t have winter jobs in town had time on their hands. At the end of the month, they started ordering seeds.

  Every spring, there’s a sweet tension on the land. Farmers watch the sky, walk their fields, and wait for the ground to dry out enough to be worked. This might be the year, this might be the crop that turns things around. They plant, and in two weeks, green shoots have transformed the bare soil into something beautiful.

  In farm after farm, all across the county, that something beautiful was amaranth. Everyone was growing it. Even the family living on the old Henry place.

  As for Pat, he had moved to town by then.

  Hail. Drought. A soggy spring. Early frost. A bumper crop in Asia that drives down prices. Some men can take the uncertainties of farming all their lives. Patrick Henry couldn’t.

  He manages the grocery store. Judging from what he stocks in health foods—the cookies, breakfast flakes, flour, pancake mix and crackers made at the plant in Danville—he’s still crazy about amaranth.

  8. Adams Consulting

  In his study, John Adams sat writing a chapter about management theory. His phone rang.

  “Adams Consulting.”

  “Hi, John. John Paul Jones checking in.”

  “What’s up?” Adams checked his watch and wrote down the time. He billed by the minute.

  “My supervisor is breathing down my neck. My programmers are months behind where they should be.”

  “And what are you thinking of doing about that?”

  “I’ve called a meeting for this afternoon. I’m going to fire one of the programmers at random. As motivation.”

  Adams winced. He was glad that he did his corporate coaching over the phone so that Jones couldn’t see that. “Okay,” he said. “So let’s hear your self-assessment. Industry over sloth?”

  “Makes work for me. I’ll have to hire a new programmer. Ninety-eight percent.”

  “Courage over compromise?”

  “One hundred percent.”

  “Propriety over pleasure?”

  “I still don’t get that one. Can’t something right be pleasurable, too?”

  “Of course. Married sex is one hundred percent. Sex with a mistress, zero.”

  “Well, I’ll enjoy it, and it’s the right thing to do,” Jones said. “One hundred percent.”

  “John,” said Adams. “Is it possible that the pleasure of firing programmers is counter productive? Do you think that the programmers who are left will likely feel that you did the proper thing?”

  “What the hell do I care what they feel, as long as they—”

  “John, that kind of thinking interferes with your professional advancement. If you’re going to manage people, it does matter how they feel.”

  “Oh.”

  “You can’t command loyalty out of fear.”

  “Sure you can!”

  “Not for long. Now from that perspective, reassess again. Propriety over pleasure?”

  “Hm. Maybe seventy-five percent.”

  Adams sighed. “John from where I sit, it’s five percent.” That was generous.

  “Oh.”

  “Develop another strategy. Call me back.”

  There was a long silence. “All right.” Then, “Adams, where did you learn this stuff?”

  “I had my own coach.”

  “Who?”

  “Get busy. Think about what you’re going to do this afternoon.”

  As Adams set down the phone, someone knocked on the stu
dy door. It was Abby. She entered with tea and freshly baked cookies.

  “Hello, my dear,” Adams said.

  “How’s your morning?” she asked, pouring his tea.

  “Good.”

  “Be specific,” insisted his wife. “Industry over sloth?”

  He smiled. “One hundred percent.”

  9. Headhunter

  “Ethan? Benedict Arnold here. Is this a good time?”

  “Hey, Benedict. I was about to call you.”

  “Can you talk?”

  “I’m alone in my office with the door closed.”

  “Good. I’d like to suggest a change in timing. Could we hold off on your career move? For a month or two?”

  “Motorola getting cold feet?”

  “Not at all. Not at all. They want management talent, and they’re willing to pay for it.”

  “So why this call?”

  “I’m jumping ship myself.”

  “The head hunter got head hunted?” Ethan laughed.

  “Actually, no. I didn’t get recruited away. I’m hanging out my own shingle.”

  “Ah. Now I see. If I go along and pretend that you landed me for Motorola after you were a free agent, then there must be some way for you walk with all of Motorola’s fee instead of a mere commission, right? You are a piece of work.”

  Arnold said nothing.

  “No offense intended,” said Ethan. “We both swim with the sharks.”

  Arnold cleared his throat. “You’ll wait?”

  “To tell you the truth, Benedict, I may not take the Motorola job at all. Around here, I’ve made them understand what goes with me if I ever leave the company. They’re scared. I can write my own ticket. My loyalty grows by the day.”

  “I thought we had an agreement.”

  “I thought you had a non-compete clause with your firm.”

  “They can sue me,” said Benedict Arnold. “I’m going.”

  “And you can sue me,” said Ethan Allen. “I’m staying put.”

  10. Hamilton Industries

  You haven’t told anyone where you were going. Coming alone at midnight to this parking garage to meet with Aaron Burr would not strike your friends and associates as a good idea. The union leader is ruthless. He takes everything personally. But you’ve had it up to here with him. He isn’t pushing the workers to reject the latest offer because that’s the best thing for them. He’s manipulating the process for his own stature. And out of spite. It’s hurting everyone. Workers need work, factories need workers. He needs to be made to understand that. Meeting in secret is an opportunity to talk sense into him. And if you can’t, well, the garage is dark, deserted. A gun lies heavy in your coat pocket.