by Mike Heppner
But all this is beside the point. I just don’t like being bossed around in my own store. That’s what I said. Words to that effect. I didn’t want to cast a negative light on the company, so what I said was, Look, I understand that you have a job to do, and I respect that, but as far as my son goes (and I stressed this point, for various legal reasons), the Living Arrangements company as such is completely in the dark vis-à-vis the whole issue, and we want to know the facts as much as you do, and that’s that. And I don’t know anything about any Egg Code, if that’s what you’re asking, and neither does my boss. And then I told them to leave.
I had to get that last part in, otherwise that’s my job, right there. Cam Pee shows up, Steve, can I see you in my office, next thing you know I’m out on my rear end, Lydia leaves me with a frying pan and a tub of butter, I’m walking around in a potato sack, singing a sad song, Buddy, you got a light. I’m not stupid. I know how it works.
So finally things cleared out—I’m watching my sales drop, wondering how on earth I’m gonna hit five grand by nine o’clock. One of the cameramen, one of ’em, bought a candle. Thanks pal. Fifty cents, fiftythree with tax, like I need this nonsense. The way he did it, too. Comes up to the cash stand while his buddies are packing up, getting ready to go. Wants me to ring it up for him. The manager, the big man. I’m doing my job, That’ll be fifty-three cents, please. They’re laughing! He’s got this little smile on his face. Counts the cash out, dimes and nickels and pennies. I ask him, Do you want a bag? Oh, yes sir, I would like a bag. All noble about it too. So I give it to him. Thank you, thank you, sir. Still smiling. You guys sell a lot of candles? This is what he asks me. Oh yeah, a whole bunch—what do you think? Of course we sell a lot of candles, I sell eighty-ninety candles a day, close to two hundred on the weekends, I sell—ah, to heck with it. I didn’t say all that. It gets confusing when you’re not in the biz. I had to go to a special class myself, just to learn the terminology. Three days, they made us sit in a big conference room, nothing to eat, just a plate of powdered doughnuts—got white stuff all over my pants—and the coffee was terrible, and everyone had to wear a sticky star that said SOOPER SALES LEADER, and if you didn’t want to wear it, a person from the home office would pull you aside and whisper, “Where’s your star?”—meaning put it on now.
It’s a hard job, managing a store. Every day, it’s like hand-to-hand combat. It’s like that scene in Star Wars where they’re all trying to blow up the planet, and all the planes are flying in and out of the trenches, and you’ve just gotta close your eyes and say to yourself, Okay, some days you’re only going to sell a few dozen toss pillows, and it’s going to be scary because that money’s coming out of your pocket, but there are other days when you come to work thinking nothing’s gonna happen, and you wind up selling a camelback sofa, or a bedroom set, and when you average it all together, you generally pull in about five grand per day, which is more or less consistent with the other stores in the region. And that’s a good feeling.
XIX
The Sad Poor Me Chronicles, Volume One
The Disease of Disease
Over the years, I’ve had the opportunity to visit dozens of hospitals across the country—big-city receiving centers, county generals where the RNs are all named Sallie, and someone somewhere always has a nephew who’s retarded. On occasion, I’ve even had to shake the poor kid’s hand. There are many varieties to this specialized handshake. There’s the one where he’s not really paying attention, and the only reason you’re even doing it is to please the parents, who for fifteen years have been secretly wishing that the kid would up and fucking die; then there’s the one where he’s jerking and convulsing and chewing on his tongue, and you don’t even want to touch him because you know it’s just going to be embarrassing for everyone. Sometimes the boy smiles; a big, gay, meaningless smile. Mom and Dad weep, sharing a Bible. Oh, yeah, like you’ve cured him or something. You feel sick to your stomach. Seeing this boy’s vacant, disconnected smile, you want to tear your voice box out of your throat, cords and all, and chuck it out into the waiting area, gore leaving a greenish trail across the floor.
Perhaps my experience has colored my judgment. After all, these sicknesses are real, they’re not delusions. So why am I not more sympathetic? My own emotional bankruptcy, I suppose. There’s nothing in here, folks. It’s all gone. I’ve led a very healthy life. I should be grateful, but I’m not. I resent every sick hand I’ve ever touched.
Many of my clients are members of the elderly population, dying men and ladies named Walter and Betsy who need my caring words to soothe their palpitations, their nightly chills, their mounting sense of dread. Some of my patients are not so old: middle-aged businesswomen unfairly stricken with leukemia; adolescent transplant recipients lying in jaundiced wrecks on the hospital bed, awaiting the inevitable rejection. They beg me to abet their denial. I can’t do it. I have done it, thousands of times, but only at a terrible cost to my own emotional well-being. They ask me to reveal the great meaning behind their senseless sacrifice. Because you must languish and die before your fortieth birthday, there will be eternal peace in the Golan Heights. Because of this supreme act of courage, not one more child shall suffer the pain of starvation. I say these things, and I smile, and I envelop their hands in mine, and there we sit for the better part of the afternoon, listening to the outpatients complain about the long wait to see the doctor.
Just once I’d like to tell you the truth. Before it’s too late for all of us. They’d welcome me into your private room. From your bed, your marble-dark eyes sparkle. You have been looking forward to my visit for several weeks now. The prospect of touching my hand, of hearing my voice, gives you a reason to go on. Derek Skye is coming. He will make a difference. For my part, I’ve seen twelve others just like you this morning. You’re boring! Your death is not interesting. It needs a hook, a clever twist. Flashing a tepid smile, I try to amuse you with a quick game of got-yernose. You do not understand. You were expecting something more profound. This, I cannot provide. Derek Skye is all talked out. My tie spills into your lap as I lean across the bed and whisper, “This is really happening. You are really dying. It’s really going to hurt. When you die, all sense of awareness will instantly disperse. Put simply, you will no longer exist. There’s nothing important about this. You’re not being singled out for some special form of abuse. By needlessly clinging to life, you’re causing your family no end of grief and financial misfortune. This is vanity, you understand. Your death is not unusually cruel or tragic. The world will go on.”
This, I suspect, would be considered unprofessional. Well, so what? I declare my liberation from the “profession.” I myself have never understood this fear of disease. My own death feels more like a destination than a thing to be avoided. I want to know the date. Make it on New Year’s Eve. Good lord, wouldn’t that be marvelous? I can see it now. The scene is New York, December 31st. A few hundred of us have gathered together at Lincoln Center to observe the holiday. On the plaza in front of the Met, a visiting company is staging a listless performance of Aida, an unconventional interpretation with the entire cast whizzing about in wheelchairs. We’re not sure why, but, suspecting social commentary, we willfully turn and toast the traffic on Broadway with glasses golden and wet with champagne. I linger near the fountain, alone. A man several yards away is singing a snatch of Strauss, his breath counting out the meter in huffs of white fog. Midnight approaches. Men wander the length of the plaza, searching for their dates. Overhead, an illuminated clock shows the time as an aquamarine disc against the night sky. A bovine din greets the new year.
Leaning against the fountain, I stare across the plaza as my ex-wife hurries toward me. In one hand, she is carrying a long paper party horn, the kind that unravels when you blow into it. I have not seen her for many years. She is gross and overweight. Dabs of cream conceal unimaginable imperfections. I can smell her breath from here. On the first gong of midnight, she reaches the edge of the fountain. She is
almost upon me. Lacking any real alternative, I spread my arms to embrace her. Torn between her mad desire and a mindless need to celebrate the new year, she raises the party horn to her lips and blows. The paper rod extends to a great length, a dozen feet or so. In terror, I open my mouth and gape. The party horn, still unraveling, forces itself down my throat, scraping the sides of my larynx as it hooks the base of my large intestine. Time passes; a beat, then another. I can taste the paper, the glue, the ink. With a tug, the party horn begins its awful retreat, tearing my digestive tract away from its anchor, causing the whole thing to turn inside-out like a sock. I keel over, breaking my jaw against the radiating brickwork. My death comes in seconds. On Broadway and Sixty-fourth, the light changes, the traffic moves, a stack of leaflets ruffles under a bus stop. The shock recedes as my entire life dwindles to a few greatest hits.
So you see? Everyone dies, even the great Derek Skye. Celebrate your disease. It is simply your body’s way of reclaiming your soul.
Closing In
Derek waited for a few days before giving the book to Julian. This was a part of the torture, the glorious torture. Making it last. Lately he’d been dreaming of tortures, various weird punishments. He remembered as a boy going with his mother to the ice-cream shop on the campus of the University of Michigan (in his legend-filled mind, there was only one). In those days, the proprietor distributed little slips of paper listing the special flavors for all the upcoming months. Derek always took more than his share, a dozen perhaps, and he’d roll them up into a horn and blow at his mother’s hair, trying to piss her off. How far he’d fallen, from that to this. Now he dreamed of oddly precise, almost sterile tortures—the calm extraction of a finger, that sort of thing. His erection woke him up most nights, and he could smell himself on the sheets; a kind of hyphenated light poured through the venetian blinds, and the world outside was just a moon and nothing else.
Then one day, he decided to go for it. Leaving his apartment, he locked up and cut across the front lawn. At the end of the walkway, two long black Lincolns sat with their engines running. He squinted, trying to see past the tinted windshields. The license plates were both from Michigan, an hour to the north. The numbers lurked behind a haze, a mind-scramble of sorts. They were low-series plates, he knew that much. Government? Military? One of those. He worked his jaw in a rough, obsessive arc, considering his past. Bartholomew Hasse was dead two years now, yet his was a power that never went away. There were minions everywhere, paid lackeys from uncertain points of origin. Something dangerous followed this book—one man, or a group of men, determined to snuff it out. Never before had a cash cow like Derek so willingly gone to the slaughter. At some point, every superstar comes to the same realization: My life is no longer my own. Writing this book was the most selfish thing Derek had ever done. The whole organization— so much pointless bureaucracy—stood to lose millions of dollars. And all because of his little indulgence. He didn’t blame them for being annoyed.
Behind him, he heard one car door open, then another. Looking over his shoulder, he saw two men standing beside their vehicles. In their black coats, they resembled junior vicars come to call on a wayward parishioner. They seemed hesitant to approach the complex. Hands behind their backs, they scanned the jagged roof line, searching the horizon for something awful and remote, some abstraction of their own inner fear. Derek gulped and wiped the cold sweat from his upper lip. They were thugs, no doubt about it. Crossing the street, he skipped over the curb and jogged into town. At the base of the hill, the men waited, one per car. Derek panicked, recognizing their uniforms; the worst possible solution became apparent, and he knew at once who they were.
The Gloria Corporation. Gloria all the way. Realizing this, he didn’t know what to think. He’d told them, hadn’t he? He’d sent in his letter of resignation, even made a personal appearance, Sorry, guys, getting old for this line of work, and everything seemed fine, a few regretful smiles, a handshake, an open offer to come back sometime soon. Of all his former contacts, the Gloria Corporation was one Derek didn’t wish to alienate. They would take it too personally, see it as a philosophical rejection, whereas to him the whole setup was just another job, a dozen or so speaking engagements per year and that was that. No further commitments. He surely didn’t expect to have some goddamn ideology crammed down his throat. Only as the full extent of the organization’s interests became apparent—the fact that they’d spent the past decade forging their own semi-legal monopoly, taking over damn near every Network Access Point in the country and leasing out peering “privileges” to a few lucky subscribers—did he begin to wonder what he’d gotten himself into. Those who worked for the GC were committed enough. Once idealists, they’d grown up during a time when every good idea seemed possible—public housing, public health care, decent public education for a change—and now that the bastards whom they’d tried to help had turned out to be such fucking ingrates, their desire to wallow in the corporate sludge was almost appalling to behold.
Eager now to reach his destination, Derek hurried through the small commercial district. Auburn light filled the storefronts, but the proprietors of Big Dipper Township clearly did not expect much business today. A barber sat in one of his customer’s chairs, reading the paper and smoking a cigarillo. Next door, two insurance salesmen gathered around a gray aluminum desk, tossing dice and gorging themselves on junk food. A few waved at Derek as he passed, for he was a known eccentric, and this was a small place anyway.
Approaching the edge of town, he could see the roof of Julian’s house through the woods. Although he hardly knew the man, Derek felt oddly reluctant to hand over such a disquieting piece of work, more self-incriminating than anything he’d written before. It was silly, he knew, but he didn’t want Julian to think anything bad about him. He’d even removed some of the most disturbing passages from the manuscript. The bit about his mother was the worst. It was just too awful, even for a confession like this. He remembered those years as a black murk, a word scribbled out. Coming home for the first time after his father’s death, he’d wanted to be loving and supportive, but an insistent voice urged him to misbehave, to avoid his mother’s company until the end of the visit, to reject her suggestions of fun things to do, plans they’d discussed and both happily agreed to over the phone. This was a wretched fantasy, and when he finally arrived home, the feeling had passed, and he kissed her in the doorway, bags slumped on the step, and together they spent a happy weekend, and he was grateful to himself for not heeding his darker instincts because a year later she was dead, and now she was rotten.
Stepping across Julian’s lawn, he held the manuscript out at arm’s length, watching the pages curl in the wind. Brief flashes of black on white conveyed recollections of other bad moments. There: a betrayal, and with that betrayal came the memory of a night in Phoenix in the mid-eighties, when Derek had offered to visit a child at home—a tiny wreck of a boy, deathly ill, lost in a swirl of cotton bedsheets. Forgetting his appointment, he flew home a night early—he missed Donna and things were still good then—but the next week he received a letter of thanks from the boy’s mother, “It meant the whole world to us, etc.” and he realized with a sick thrill that she’d imagined the whole encounter— Derek Skye holding her son’s hand, autographing a baseball pennant or two. For this woman, believing was enough. His actual presence was no longer necessary; like Santa Claus, he was a myth, something you told your children to help them visualize a more abstract horror, the horror of the senseless universe.
Then the pages blew, and another word, deception, burned in his hands like an accusation, and he could see a private room in a cocktail lounge in New York City, a pool table near the back where he and Reggie Bergman sat in two high leather chairs, Reggie with a glass of brandy and Derek cradling the restaurant’s last bottle of Glenfiddich. With a look of cocksure arrogance, he cleared the pool table by himself, calling his shots and improvising aphorisms for each as Reggie dutifully wrote them down on the back of a depo
sit envelope. “Number three in the side pocket: never fear the future, for the future—ha!—will surely arrive . . . ,” his voice rising as the cue stick turned slack in his hands, “Okay, number ten in the corner pocket: you are the center of your own universe . . . damn, write that down!” and Reggie wrote it down and the stick sailed out of Derek’s hands and broke against the floor, and even though the night ended badly for both men (Beer before liquor, never sicker), those same empty formulations later appeared in Derek’s 1980 schlocksterpiece, You Gotta Love It!, which wound up financing a few more years worth of equally empty, albeit comfortable, living. There: that was deception. The deliberate misuse of the public trust.
