The Egg Code

by Mike Heppner

  “ ‘I’ll run away from here.’ ” Simon stood in front of the director as the other kids waited their turns—stiff shoulders, feet splayed in first and third. “ ‘I’ll go someplace where they ain’t never gonna find me. He cries.’ ”

  “Simon, I hate to interrupt—you’re really doing a super job—but where it says ‘He cries’? You don’t need to say that.”

  “I don’t?”

  “No, that’s something else. We’ll work on that later.”

  “Well, then, how do I know—”

  “Well, do you see those little bendy lines, right where the sentence starts? Those are called parentheses—”

  “Will you let him get on with the piece?” Lydia produced an unlit cigarette from her sleeve and thrust it in the director’s face. “It’s his interpretation of the material, and you’ve no right to question him on it.”

  “Lydia, I’m just trying to help the kid out here.”

  “No, what you’re doing is you’re humiliating him in front of the other children, and that’s discriminatory and I’m not going to stand for it.”

  “You’re—I’m sorry, you’re right . . . Simon dear?”

  “Simon, continue with your reading.”

  “Yes, please do. It’s perfection personified.”

  Lydia continued to stare at Zachary even as her son resumed his performance. Seen through the lenses of his glasses, the director’s wandering eyes seemed without anchor, like two fighting fish caged in neighboring tanks.

  “ ‘They say Mack Winslow is hiring gunners for a new run out west. Thumps his chest with the palm of his hand. I could do that. I ain’t too young. Crosses to dee ess ell and points at the audience.’ ”

  “Oh my my.”

  “ ‘It’s a new world. This country just gets bigger and bigger every day. Spits.’ ”

  “Connie, can you get me a soda from the machine?”

  Lydia snapped her fingers, breaking the cigarette in half. Sensing a scene, the other children looked up from their scripts—a vapid pose, old toys with the batteries worn down, frozen in stupid positions. One child, wanting to make a special impression, had worn a cowboy hat and tin spurs; a rawhide strap, knotted at the chin, clutched at the boy’s throat.

  “Mr. Zachary, may I speak to you in private?”

  “Well, by all means, that’s my job, that’s what I’m here for. Connie? Never mind about the soda—will you stay here and take notes on little Simon’s sterling performance?”

  “What do I—”

  “You, Simon, just give your lines to the nice lady in the blue pants while I go out and have a chat with Mummy.”

  “Starting with . . . here?”

  “Yes, starting right there where it says, ‘Printed on one hundred percent recycled material.’ ”

  “That’s quite enough, Mr. Zachary.”

  “And be sure to read every single word.”

  “Simon, we’ll be right back.”

  “Every word is vital to the meaning of the play.”

  Lydia held the door open for the director, a nasty little dig. In this town, life between adults worked on a point system: one for me, none for you. Moving into the hallway, Zachary hid his hands under the folds of his sweater. His posture was bad; pissed, he slouched against the wall. “What, shall we go upstairs? We can discuss this in my office.”

  “Now listen,” Lydia hissed, “you know as well as I do exactly what’s going on here, and it’s going to stop, and it’s going to stop this minute unless you want this whole thing to blow up right in your face.”

  “First of all, I want to know what gives you the right to come in here and sabotage my auditions? I have a whole roomful of kids out there waiting to go on, and we’ve already spent five minutes indulging your pathetic little fantasy.”

  “You’ve been nothing but rude to that boy since the moment we arrived, and I don’t know what your hidden agenda may or may not be, but I do know that my child is on the verge of tears and I won’t tolerate it any longer!”

  “Good, maybe he’s finally getting into character, instead of saying ‘He cries’ every time—”

  “Why must you be so nasty to us?”

  “Because your son has no talent for the stage, and he’s a terrible waste of my time!”

  Lydia smiled as she gazed down at the floor, finding humor in the ratty tassels of the man’s loafers. “That’s what they always say to the best ones, before they’re discovered. Before they’re appreciated for what they are. Then they all come slinking back with their hands out.”

  “Yes, well . . . I have news for you, Lydia. They sometimes say it because it’s true.”

  “Look, you fucking queen—”

  “Oh, aren’t we just the biggest bitch of all time?”

  “We are skating ever closer to lawsuit land, Mr. Zachary. I suggest that you revise your ways.”

  The director opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. The sounds of an afternoon ballet class practicing in an upstairs studio shuffled across the low ceiling.

  “All right.” Lifting his glasses, he rubbed the sore bridge of his nose. “Okay, Lydia. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. If you promise to shut up and accept my final judgment, I’ll pass Simon on to the second round at five. Now, I won’t guarantee he’ll get the part. I am still the director here.”

  “That’s understood, Mr. Zachary. I’m not looking for trouble.”

  “All right, then. But I will say one thing. I’m doing this entirely to appease you. I conduct my auditions fairly and without bias. Every child gets an equal chance, and because you’ve forced me to make an exception for your son, another young boy will have to go home disappointed.”

  Lydia opened the door to the rehearsal room. Her son’s voice came back to her as a thing both awesome and in need of protection. “The only boy I care about is Simon Tree-Mould.”

  “ ‘Someday I’ll come back and show them all—’ ”

  “Well, that’s perfectly clear.”

  “ ‘—no one pushes Shep Lawson around!’ ”

  “Simon! Great news!”

  Clapping his hands, the director continued past the foyer. Lydia stopped under the threshold, then turned and hurried upstairs and out to the parking lot. Warm air baked the pavement. Standing in front of a hand-lettered sign—AUDITIONS TODAY!—she dialed her husband’s work number. Steve sounded short of breath when he came to the phone, his thin voice straining against the clang of a cash register. Having learned over the past eighteen years how to recognize his wife’s most volatile moods, he limited his responses to yes dear and I will and sure and fine and okay and yes dear and yes.

  Paper

  Lydia Tree

  Topics in Modern Science

  Winter Term

  3-26-79

  Weather affects everything. It’s everywhere, it’s in the air that we breathe. Imagine that. Just think about that for one second. Every breath that you draw into your lungs is influenced in some fashion by what the weather is like outside. If it’s a cold day, your breath might be cold as well. If it’s raining, well you get the idea. Weather can be dangerous too. Planes crash. A foolish person goes swimming in the ocean. It is a peaceful afternoon, but because this person has not taken the time to consider the unpredictable nature of weather, she is struck dead when a storm blows in from the coast. This causes great grief and inconvenience for her family. So as I have shown, weather is a part of everything we do. And this is what makes the job of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA for short, so important. I happen to know a good deal about this organization, because I lived in Washington D.C. for eight years. I know that we’re not allowed to talk about our personal lives in these research reports, because this is a Science class, and Science deals with general matters, like gravity or the way things taste. So if you want to flunk me for not following the assignment, all I can say is oh well. I can’t help it when certain professors use unfair standards to evaluate their students’ work. That’s not m
y problem. It’s just not. And I know you stole my bag.

  This concludes the introductory portion of this essay. I will now move on to the next paragraph.

  This term paper will examine the subject of weather, or more specifically, the ways in which weather data is collected and distributed around the world. I have studied this issue for two reasons: A, because it was assigned to me, but also B, (fill in later). Did you know that nearly forty percent of marine advisories issued by the National Weather Service depend upon readings taken by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Data Buoy Office? I didn’t before I looked it up. I did not know that. The short way of saying the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Data Buoy Office is the NDBO. The letters stand for National, Data, Buoy, and Office. This is known as an acronym. The dictionary defines “acronym” as: a word formed from the initial letters or groups of letters of the words in a name or phrase. This is a direct quote from the dictionary, which I just copied out word-for-word.

  ANALYSIS

  The NDBO came under the command of NOAA in 1970. This is the impressive part that I really researched, so get ready. FACT: the first weather buoys were twelve meters across and are still in use today, although they are gradually being replaced by smaller aluminum hulls. FACT: aluminum, unlike steel, does not corrode, nor does it interfere with the homing devices inside the buoy’s payload. These buoys are moored with strands of various lengths and of various materials. Thick chains keep buoys restrained in shallow waters while links of polypropylene and nylon help to secure larger buoys in depths of up to 6,000 meters. Not all buoys are confined to deep sea and coastal regions. The nearest one floats less than a hundred miles to the north and east of our beautiful campus, but you can’t see it because it’s hard to find. Newer models called Drifters have recently been incorporated by the NDBO. Drifting buoys are primarily used to study large-scale changes in the environment. They were first used to record climatic data as part of the Global Atmospheric Research Program, or GARP for all you bureaucrats out there.

  I just read a book about a person named Garp, and the author pictured on the back cover sure looked handsome. I always thought that writers were scrawny little guys with strange sexual fixations. He must have some other problem.

  We have not yet begun to scratch the surface of this fascinating topic. Let’s talk about history for awhile—is that okay with you, Dan? You don’t mind if I call you Dan, do you? Doctor Dan. Dan the Man. Is that what your wife calls you? No, your wife probably calls you Captain. Hey, Cap. You probably sit around the house with a sailor’s hat on. When I get married, it’s not going to be like that. My boyfriend is going to be an International Businessman, and we’re going to live on Manhattan—not in Manhattan, but on Manhattan, because Manhattan is an island—and when we host parties, they’re going to be really serious parties where no one smiles, and if you don’t like the dessert, you’re dead. No one speaks to you for the rest of your life.

  By the end of the 1980s, ultra modern computers will replace the old buoy system, leaving thousands of sailors out of work, which I think is sad. At any rate, the NDBO may wind up taking over all services on the east coast, particularly if we can manage to get the Democrats out of the White House. The computerized system will be just like the buoy network already in place, except totally different in a variety of complicated ways. Now a Man of Science such as yourself might want me to elaborate on this last point. But quite frankly, I’m just not in the mood. I’m very angry with you right now. You should give me a passing grade on this paper, because I tried, and also because I never physically attacked you, which you could at least say something nice about.

  Professor’s Comments: B+. You argue your point with precision, and your knowledge of the subject is impressive. So impressive, in fact, that I feel unable to provide you with any more useful instruction. May I recommend that you take a day this week to visit the Advisory on the fourth floor and inquire about transferring into an adjacent section, one better able to accommodate your unique skills. This, of course, is simply a suggestion. You should do only what you feel is best. Good luck, Daniel Kind, Ph.D.

  Sheesh

  1998

  It was just a case of too many things going on at once, and I kind of blew my top. Not proud of it, but that’s what I did. I can only be pulled in so many directions. First there’s Lydia. She always calls when she knows she’s going to get me on the sales floor. That’s part of the game, the game we all play. I say, look, I have an office, why not call me there? Wouldn’t that be a lot simpler? Right in the middle of talking to Jim Carroll, she gets me. He’s bopping around, stinking up the joint. Steve, he says. Store’s looking pretty good. This is from the guy who changes my quantities every month without telling me. Ooh, he’s a treat. I tell him okay. Matter of fact, I say, it looks dang good, and we’re going to keep it that way. So he goes, gets a clipboard, says he’s got some display tips he wants to show me. I say fine, I’d like to hear ’em. He says okay, go grab a clipboard. So I go grab a clipboard! What the heck else am I supposed to do? That’s when the phone rings. Sometimes I think, when she calls, she doesn’t understand there’s actually some sort of activity going on, and it’s called work, and it’s a little bit important. Aah, I don’t know. Women. You can plug ’em in but you can’t get ’em to go.

  Oh, and the other thing. This girl. Let me back up. This girl. She’s a cashier. Colored girl, by the way. Which is okay. She’s not really obvious about it or anything. You just gotta be careful. All right. So she puts some candy on the counter. A little dish, puts it out—take one. Now, this is with Jim Carroll, who’s the Visual Merchandiser for the entire zone, not to mention the guy who’s probably going to make Senior Veep soon as we go worldwide, standing right there, looking at this dish, thinking I don’t know how to manage my own store. So I go up to her. Tal-Ahnka, I say. That’s her name. Your guess is as good as mine. Tal-Ahnka, let’s work this out here. We don’t sell candy, we don’t even sell this dish, what am I supposed to do when someone wants to buy the dish? She says it’s her dish. Someone wants to buy the dish, they can talk to her. So now that’s where we’ve got to go, down that lovely primrose path. Now I’ve got to be the bad guy because I happen to care about my customers’ well-being, their safety for God’s sake. What happens when a little kid comes in—mommy look at the candy—takes a bite and bam, he’s on the ground, my god he’s choking, how could you do such a horrible thing, I go to prison for the rest of my life and that’s the end of that. See, that’s where your managerial jurisprudence comes in. The blacks, they don’t appreciate this sort of thing, and I mean that with all total respect. But I’m trying to be pleasant and I’m trying to be professional, so I just say now Tal-Ahnka, I’ve asked once nicely and I’ve given you a chance to respond—see, with some people, you gotta go through all the rigmarole or else it’s lawsuit time. So I tell her look, that candy is gonna go, and that’s all there is to it, and I’m not messing around with it anymore! Enough of this noise, man! That’s what I said, word for word. A real good, slick kind of an answer, I thought.

  So you’re starting to get the idea, I think, why I darn near blew my top.

  Came dang close.

  And it doesn’t help when my customers start getting in on the act. That really ticks me off. Some dumb broad butts in while I’m having a private conversation with my cashier, just walks right up and says why don’t you lighten up on the girl, she’s only trying to be nice. Isn’t that a hoot and a half? This lady’s telling me how to run my store, that’s great, that’s just what I need with Jim Carroll standing right there, senior VM for the whole doggone kit and kaboodle, and this woman’s gonna tell me how to handle my sales staff. As if she’s worked a single day in her life. I wanted to say look, ma’am, when you come home at night and it’s time to make dinner for your family—you’ve got your meat and your vegetables all laid out—do I come over and tell you what to do, how to cut the meat properly or boil the potatoes, that sort of thin
g, do I do that? No, I don’t, I don’t think so, so here’s an idea, why don’t you just respect my thing and I’ll respect yours and we’ll all be happy. See, some of these women, what happens is, they meet some guy, they’re twenty years old, she’s looking dynamite, she’s got the dress up to here, and the guy falls for it and boom, it’s over, she’s set for life. They got a word for a lady like that, and I’m not going to say it, but you know darn well what I’m talking about. Ooo, I was hot. But instead I just said, ma’am—I don’t remember word for word, just . . . ma’am, something something, I appreciate your input, so on and so forth, but we do have certain regulations which we have to follow, and if there’s anything I can do to make your shopping experience more pleasurable, please let me know. But the way I said it, she could tell. What I was really saying was, you miserable woman, don’t you ever come into my store again and start bossing me around. That was the message, loud and clear.

  Next thing you know, Jim Carroll comes up, gives her a stack of coupons. Oh, we’re sorry if we’ve inconvenienced you in any way. I’m standing right there, I’m the stinking store manager, now I look like an idiot. I call him over and say Jim, what are you doing to me here? That’s twenty, thirty coupons, two hundred dollars’ worth, what am I supposed to do with my Gold Club customers? Jim laughs, says tough tooties, you work on your sales skills. Work on my sales skills? That’s a kick in the pants, right there. This is the guy, back in ’95, we’re waiting in line, you you ’n’ you—they didn’t pick me! That’s how those people operate. Oh, I can dig it. No problem, buddy. I’ll get out of your hair. I know when I’m not wanted.

  It was just one of those days, man, when it seemed like everything was going against me. I get back to the stock area, it’s a mess, no one bothers to put the stuff away. Fire inspector stops by, I’m out on the street. These kids wouldn’t care, half of ’em are still in high school, what do they know about safety codes, they’re too busy thinking about what Jimmy said to Ricki, meanwhile I’m digging through boxes, saying hey guys help me out here. Scarlet’s the only good one in the whole bunch. Older gal, twenty-two, twenty-three, real sweet girl. And beautiful. I mean, if I was fifteen years younger. Heck, ten even. Kind of on the petite side, maybe five-foot-one. Says she’s a dancer, but who knows. That’s usually code for something else. You go on over across the river, they got gals like that who take home five hundred, a thousand a night. Even the name’s perfect. Scarlet Blessing. Does that sound like a porn star or what? Heh. No, but Scarlet’s a real nice, intelligent young lady, and a pleasure to work with. Kind of quiet, studious. Does not have a boyfriend so far as I know, but I’ll tell you, the guys sure do look at her, you can’t hardly help it. Half the time I keep her out back doing paperwork ’cause otherwise we’d never get any work done. A woman like that, with the legs and all . . . you get one of those in the sack and you might not get up again. I go into the break room, she’s sitting there with one leg up on the counter, she’s got the dress wide open and you can see all the way from here to Toledo. I mean shoot, I almost dropped my sandwich. We get to talking, hi how are you, you know, the usual crap. I’m her boss, naturally she’s gonna be a little bit flirtatious. Older man, more experienced—you learn to brush it off. We’re sitting there, eating. I tell her, you know, you’ve been working out really well here as a sales associate, why don’t you talk to Karl Becker down at Personnel and sign up for the trainee program. That’s real money! I don’t tell her how much ’cause I don’t want her to know how much I make. Women hear that, right away the sonar goes up. Soon as I cleared forty grand, man, I stopped talking. But a girl Scarlet’s age could easily be running her own store in five years. Gotta take advantage of those opportunities. That’s when you go for it, when you’re young. And if you’re a good-looking gal, then all the better, because the world just stops for beautiful women. I mean, take me—I would hire Scarlet dead on the spot over some other gal. But she’s not interested in that. The young kids don’t think about these things. At that age, you don’t know. If it feels good, do it! Hey man, I’m all for it. Get it out of your system. Nothing wrong with being idealistic. Until you’re twenty-seven. Then it stops.