The Egg Code

by Mike Heppner

  But here is my confession. No one cares if you’re motivated. The word itself means absolutely nothing. Motivational speaker. More nonsense. Let me hone that statement even further. Not merely nonsense, but an utter void of sense, an emptiness of thought. For twenty-five years, I contrived and executed public seminars. That was my job. To make a pleasing noise. The truth that I have been protecting you from is a grim one. There is a controlling party in this world. You will never be a part of it. The men and women who inhabit this closed circle of power are a minority group. Many of these people are friends of mine. They don’t need to take my course. Those distractions are for you alone.

  This triangular arrangement of society is not only important, it is inevitable. Establish any form of government—whether left- or right-wing in nature—and in a few years, that system will coalesce into a new structure, rooted in capitalism, necessarily based upon an uneven distribution of wealth. From this trend, we may draw several conclusions. The first is that people like to own things. Without ownership, there is no ambition. The desire to possess fuels every creative act. Moreover, this same desire prevents society from falling into dependency and sloth. Given a standardized economy, the incentive is not to work more, but to work less. The wonderful thing about capitalism—and, in turn, America—is that all things are not equal. The surgeon earns fifty times the going rate of the average fry cook, and for good reason. The top-dollar physician—through taxes and other contributions—provides employment and financial security to low-level consumers. The surgeon—if he or she is culturally responsible—donates to arts organizations, medical research facilities, educational programs, and urban renewal projects. The fry cook spends his two hundred dollars a week on rent and food for his baby. It’s nice, but it’s not quite the same thing.

  Which brings us to the next aspect of this whole equality nonsense, the idea that value distinctions are somehow wrong, that they run counter to the egalitarian ideals prescribed by the Constitution. Americans do not like to acknowledge that certain members of the population may be better suited to certain tasks than others. Dissenters are branded as fascists, their sometimes complicated and self-contradictory belief systems generalized and written off by the opposition as so much bigotry. This dilemma is most pervasive in our educational institutions, where once challenging programs are yearly watered down to accommodate the limitations of a student body who, in the main, clearly do not belong in college. Most professions do not require a strong academic background. By catering to the average, we deprive those uniquely talented students of the rigorous education that once produced the great minds of the early 1900s, men and women whose efforts helped make America the technological and cultural center of the Western world. In Japan, children commit suicide when they bring home a failing grade. In America, they blame the teacher for writing an unfair examination. We need more suicide, I say!

  Of course, this problem arises long before students reach the post-secondary level. The sad truth is that our public school system does such a poor job of supplying young people with basic skills that universities are forced to act as surrogate high schools, nursing the troubled majority along its remedial course and cheering every minor and ultimately meaningless triumph like a couple of giddy parents taking pictures of baby’s first poopie. The administrators’ reluctance to discipline poor academic performance stems from the fact that parents rarely support the staff’s decision to impose real and substantive standards on the struggling child. Somewhere along the line, we’ve forgotten the value of failure, its tough challenges, its hard yet effective lessons. Instead, we see failure as a threat, a judgment upon our own abilities as parents. Rather than encourage our children to learn from their mistakes, we scream and pout and threaten to sue the school board until finally someone from the superintendent’s office sends us a form apology in the mail, an appropriately ass-licking recantation complete with a “revised” copy of our child’s report card. As a result, the nation’s public school system—in compliance with the demands of the American people, who, after all, pay their salaries—produces a team of graduates steeped in the philosophy that if you stamp your feet loud enough, you can pretty much get whatever you want. Graduates able to function well enough as consumers, but who lack the tools necessary to attain true financial independence. Citizens well primed for a life in the peasantry.

  Here, I suppose, is where I take over, for it is precisely this climate of simulated equality, this glorification of the average, that allows me to pitch my delusional, self-congratulatory rubbish to millions of mediocrities around the world. The message I sell is simple and infallible. According to this doctrine, depression occurs when a person cannot perceive the positive forces in his or her life. Unhappy at the workplace, unfulfilled by empty relationships, we need only to change our perception to realize our full potential. What this technique amounts to is a heightened form of inactivity, a slightly belabored way of doing nothing. Its corrective properties are nil. It’s a lot like trying to cure brain cancer by wearing a hat—the cure and the disease are utterly unrelated, the prescription inept, the change merely cosmetic. This behavior—psychotic in the most precise sense of the word—is designed to distract the practitioner from the hard realities of his or her regulated fate. My dogma provides a service to you, the questing mortal. It changes your perception. It makes it easier for you to accept death, to believe that life has structure, that God actually cares about your emotional well-being. Your problems, as we have seen, cannot be solved. They are defining problems. What we can do, however, is recondition your perception of reality. No longer A, we will call it B, and once B no longer pleases us, we will move on to C, and so on and so forth. Having changed the terminology, we then gladly commit the same dumb mistakes, convinced—like medieval serfs—that our true reward lies just beyond the grave. Our sick reality festers from our refusal to see it for what it is. Is there a name for this illness? Lacking a better alternative, we will call it the Adam Syndrome—the renaming of the beasts. I believe that America is dying of it.

  Skye Versus Skye

  Christ, Reggie . . . where are you?”

  Voices swirl and spit. The shadow of an overpass skims across the windshield. Outside, orange and leather-brown leaves spill past the median. In the country, they are gathering for the harvest, splitting logs, testing the draw of the flue.

  “Donna? Lost you for a sec.”

  “Are you in your car?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s these damn car phones.”

  “It’s these damn I-don’t-know-whats, and I think my battery’s low.”

  Reggie Bergman shakes the phone, his other hand on the wheel. An indicator screen shows three dashes, now two, the second one flashing. Power running out.

  Donna yaps, her voice small, cramped inside a tiny hole. “So, where was I? Ah, yes. The book.”

  “Since when do you write?”

  “Since now, what difference does it make? The point is it’s a great idea. There’s nothing else like it.”

  “There’s always something else like it. That’s the nature of the business.”

  “Nonsense. People talk about it all the time.”

  “About what?”

  “About the hole in the marketplace.”

  “There is no hole in the marketplace. This is the myth. This is what we tell ourselves. There are no holes. If there was a hole, what would it look like? I’m trying to imagine it. It’s too abstract.”

  “Then what’s the point in living, Reggie? Why don’t we all just shoot ourselves right now?”

  He shakes his head as the car pulls up a steep grade. “Good question.”

  “Just think about it, then decide. Many Voices, One Vision . Isn’t that just the greatest thing you’ve heard all day? A book of collected lore.”

  “What do you know about lore?”

  “I know!”

  “And why does it have to be collected?”

  “People want it to be collected, who care
s? They’re stories. You collect stories.”

  “Who collects stories? It’s like they’re bottle caps or something.”

  “Oh, Reggie, please stop resisting me and just say yes.”

  He shudders, imagining the implications. “This . . . I don’t like. I’ll see what I can do, but as Derek’s representative, it puts me in a very difficult position.”

  “That’s fine. Now what do you think of my chances?”

  “Of what—selling it? It’s sold already. Just finish writing the book, and we’ll take it from there.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Look, Donna. Twenty, twenty-five years, I’ve been working. It’s the name recognition. This is what sells.”

  “I don’t want to do it that way.”

  “Well, that’s how it’s done. You want to be Jesus Christ, get yourself another agent.”

  The road spreads into four lanes. Reggie passes a block of shops—the town, apparently. Side streets wisp off into nothing, a few houses.

  “I’m sorry. I’m just uneasy. I don’t want Derek to think that I’m . . . moving in on his territory.”

  “But you are.”

  “But I don’t want him to think that.”

  “But you are.”

  “But I don’t want him to think that!” The car passes under a net of fiber optics. Donna’s voice fades, returning with a new cadence. “Look, Reggie, I’ll call you back. I want to talk with Derek about this first.”

  “Don’t. You stay away from that man. Don’t even call him on the telephone.”

  “I feel awkward.”

  “Feel awkward while writing your book. You asked me to represent you on this project and I said yes. Fine. Over and done. Now your job is to get a draft together so when I go down to New York, I don’t look like a big joik, as they say in—”

  “Okay.”

  “—as they say in—”

  “You’re right.”

  “Ah, to hell with it.”

  “This is great. Reggie, you’re so sweet. Why couldn’t I have married you?”

  The old man winces and hangs up the phone. The idea of marrying Donna Skye settles inside his brain. Easing the car over to the curb, he kills the engine and surveys the apartment complex across the road. Crude battens join a series of narrow A-frames at the hip. So this is where Derek Skye lives. His client. A motherly sense of grief overwhelms the man. Only weeks ago, he could’ve done something about it, could’ve talked to the Gloria Corporation himself. Now it’s too late. Tired from the long drive, he reaches across the automatic transmission and grabs a bottle of fancy water from the unoccupied passenger seat. Breaking the plastic seal, he unscrews the cap and downs the contents in one fluid motion. He can feel the water flowing directly into his bladder. Glancing at the dashboard, he checks the reading on the odometer. Fifty miles from Crane City to this place in the woods. He sighs and rubs his cheeks. He hopes Derek isn’t going eccentric on him.

  The warm autumn sun burns into his dark slacks as he walks across the street. Reggie is a man of inconsequential height, heavy within the acceptable norms. His skin is beige, almost adobe. He has aged in none of the interesting ways. Struggling to describe his appearance, a friend would mention the fact that he wears bifocals. He has lost little of his hair, though it has all turned gray, like pavement. He has recently had his teeth done—a mistake, in retrospect. They are too white, calling too much attention to the rest of his face. They are held in place by a row of steel screws driven into the roof of his mouth, an application that has distorted his sense of taste. Everything smacks of metal to him now. His oral surgeon has assured him this will not go away.

  Derek comes to the door dressed in a pair of pajama bottoms and an old silk shirt. His breath is foul, the smell of fitful sleep. He hasn’t shaved in several days, and his stubble has risen to meet the level of his mustache. Taken aback, Reggie glances down at the welcome mat. Derek’s toenails are black with filth. The pajama bottoms are crimped and worn, and they cling to his skinny legs like detritus blown against a lamppost. Reggie wonders how long it has been since Derek last changed his clothes. It’s very easy to fall into the pajama lifestyle—a real temptation for a man in Derek’s position. Days and nights bleed into one another; naps become more frequent, real sleep more dear. A kind of minuteman mentality sets in. Regular meals give way to constant snacking. One notices a marked decline in the quality of one’s bowel movements. The patient starts to question his ability to digest food properly. He has turned into a sieve. He masturbates constantly, and without any pleasure. The muscles are too run-down to muster a successful ejaculation. Instead, it just sort of limps out into the open, cold even as it leaves the body. Only the smell still makes him smile. Reminds him of his youth. Swimming pools and erections. A full head of hair. A future.

  Reggie follows his client upstairs and into the apartment. He will refrain from making any comments. An agent’s job is to encourage, to inspire. To goad, if necessary. Never to berate. He has worked with enough writers to know that self-pity is rarely in short supply. He must remain optimistic, for his sake as well as for Derek’s. After all his hard work, he cannot allow it to end like this.

  “You’ll never guess who I just got off the phone with.”

  “Reggie, don’t mind me. Keep talking while I get dressed. My assistant’s due any minute now.”

  The agent smiles, finding a spot on the sofa. “You’re working with someone? That’s wonderful.”

  “Well, we’ll see. She’s young.”

  “I’m glad to hear you’re working.”

  “I’m sure you are, Reg. So. This person?”

  Derek steps out of his pajamas and strides bare-assed across the room. From the closet, he takes a pair of khakis and a lavender dress shirt, the collar buttoned around a hanger. A thick blue vein stretches across his right buttock. His legs look spindly and long. Reggie focuses on his own glasses, trying not to notice.

  “Huh? Oh. Oh! Donna called. Out of nowhere, Donna called.”

  “Lovely. Let me guess. She’s writing a book.”

  “She told you?”

  Rooting through a pile of undershorts, Derek halts in mid-reach and stares at the old man. “She’s writing a book?”

  “She’s writing a book! She wants me to represent it.”

  “Oh. What did you say?”

  “I said yes, sure, all in the family, why not?”

  “Why not? Anything for a—”

  “Anything for a buck, right. Well, I’ll have you know, Derek, that I did this for you.”

  “For me.”

  “For you! This is the best thing that could happen to you.”

  “Explain that one to me, Reggie.”

  “Donna writes her book. It’s terrible.”

  “How do you know it’s terrible?”

  “It’s terrible!”

  Derek sighs, giving up. “Right, it’s probably terrible.”

  “So, she writes her book. The Sad Poor Me Chronicles, Volume One. Big press, we send it out, advance copies all around.”

  Derek fiddles with the cuffs of his shirt, trying to button them. “I don’t want to hurt Donna, Reg.”

  “Well, having just gotten off the phone, let’s just say the feeling’s not mutual.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Why else would she write the damn thing? What other motivation could she possibly have? For twenty-five years, you were the woman’s life, Derek. She’s got nothing else to write about!”

  “She’s writing about us, our marriage?”

  “No, she’s writing a monograph on European economics.”

  “She told you all this?”

  “Look. What she said and what she said are two different things. I’m not concerned with that. I’m thinking, How do I sell this? What angle do I take? What’s my line?”

  Derek folds his slacks in half and carries them into the kitchen. From over his shoulder, Reggie hears the sound of fabric shifting, first one leg and then the
other. The refrigerator door opens. Glass on steel. A desperate glug. The refrigerator door closes. The audible silence of day.

  “So. Skye versus Skye. It’ll make for an interesting publishing season.”

  “That depends, Derek. On you. If you’re planning on sitting out for the summer, well, then that’s different. If not . . .”

  “I’ll have something together.”

  “Excellent.”

  “A few more months. You’ll see.” Derek returns to the living room, his fly open, his belt loose. His lips are orange with fruit juice. He smooths his shirt with the knife of his hand and tucks it in place. “No tours, though. No appearances.”

  “Ahh, the cult-of-personality bit. I like it.”

  “I’m not making any more speeches, Reg. I’m done with that. One more book and I’m through. A few last thoughts.”

  Reggie crosses his legs and scans the apartment. He hates this—not knowing where to look. “Derek, you’re only fifty-one. This is an old man’s game. You’re just getting started. We might need to work on your presentation, that’s all. The wizened coot. Mad eyes. Long, snowy beard. People will listen to you, now that you’re older. You’re what they want to see.”