Wake Up, Sir!: A Novel

by Jonathan Ames

  Doris led me down the short hallway that was to the left of her desk. This poorly illumined passageway culminated in a door half composed of frosted glass. She knocked and then opened the door a crack and said, “Alan Blair is here.”

  I didn't hear any response, but Doris opened the door wide. Clearly, a signal from the master had been given.

  “Go in, Alan,” Doris said, and so I walked bravely into Dr. Hibben's office, an image of Ava's profile pinned to my heart to give me courage, like Don Quixote fighting his battles for his lady, La Dulcinea.

  Doris closed the door behind me.

  Well, I wasn't prepared for what I then saw. I don't know if any sane person would have been. All my courage drained to my ankles and with it went my blood sugar. My bone marrow turned to butter. I took flight again and went for a spin around the ceiling, cleaning cobwebs, and then returned to my station in front of the door.

  I wasn't looking at a man. Standing behind a large antique desk was some kind of hybrid of man, woman, animal, fruit, and vegetable. If only I had found those two bottles of wine!

  I'll start with the dimensions. Dr. Hibben was a seven-footer, if you can imagine a pear that big. He had unusually wide hips and unusually narrow shoulders.

  At the top of the pear was an enormous head, in the shape of a rugby ball, and this rugby-ball head was disastrously covered with orange-brown freckles, like an overripe banana. Had the man never heard of skin cancer?

  There were tufts of orangish hair on the sides of the head, and near the top of all this, high on the rugby ball, were two kindly blue dots—his eyes, I presumed. His nose was hard to make out, lost as it was in a galaxy of freckles. A small pink hole, like the anus of a starfish, opened, and from far away I heard a deep voice say, “Alan. It's very nice to meet you.”

  He came around his desk and moved toward me, an arm the length of a python extended in my direction. I was in danger of a seizure; not only was he an incredible, frightening specimen, but he had draped his prodigious organism in seersucker! Not just a jacket, like I was wearing, but also pants. I don't own seersucker pants, relying, as I do, on khaki trousers to go with my jacket. And so looking at that much seersucker on Dr. Hibben—yards and miles of it—was like staring at one of those disco balls, which cause epileptic fits in people with weak minds, and my mind definitely qualified as weak due to alcohol abuse and reading without glasses in poor light. But the alcohol abuse turned out to be a positive. Instead of a seizure, the sight of him had me excreting reserve ethanol that my liver must have been holding on to in case of an emergency. So this shot of stashed-away booze calmed me down and I went from experiencing sheer terror to feeling simply afraid.

  With two long strides, he was upon me and I was offered a freckled hand that I could have sat in. I put out what looked like a toy hand by comparison and watched it disappear, ingested all the way to the wrist, and I wondered if I'd ever see it again. He squeezed my swallowed hand in greeting, and some orange juice I had drunk in the fourth grade may have been extracted, and then Dr. Hibben's fingers, which were the size of aerosol cans, unfurled, and I took my hand back and was overjoyed to see it, and he said, “We're so glad to have you at the Rose Colony.”

  “Thank you,” I managed to whisper, and I tried to look up at his head, but I hadn't done yoga for a few days and my neck wasn't that flexible.

  He then repaired to the other side of his desk and indicated that I should take the chair in front of the desk. The room was cool, an air conditioner hummed in a window, and on the walls were paintings, which were obviously the works of former and present colonists—mostly mad abstractionist efforts, including one entirely black painting that must have been perpetrated by Sophie, whom I had breakfasted with. Also on the walls were old black-and-white photos of the colony from earlier in the century. As with most pictures from long ago, there are far fewer trees visible than are present today. At some point in time in America, trees have made something of a comeback, while of course suffering great losses elsewhere. But why no one comments about all the trees we have running around is something of a mystery to me. Seems like it's at least one delusional positive we could hold on to, while everything else goes up in flames.

  “So how are you making out so far?” asked Dr. Hibben. “Settling in okay?”

  “Very well, thank you,” I said, feeling apprehensive, waiting for him to stop with the sweet talk and broach the slipper issue. I avoided his watchful gaze and stared mournfully into the vibrating field of his seersucker. I think it was reflecting off my own seersucker. Rarely—except maybe in Newport, Rhode Island—are two people dressed in seersucker found in the same room at the same time; it happens with the frequency of a solar eclipse and is probably as dangerous to the human eye.

  “I understand you had a car accident before coming here.”

  “Yes … I wasn't wearing my seat belt, hit my nose on the steering wheel.”

  I wondered if word had spread from the inmates that I had been bragging about a bar fight. Well, it would be better to be caught in a lie to them than to Doris. If he confronted me on the two differing tales—car accident and bar fight—I'd tell him I was trying to save face, literally and figuratively, with my peers, while telling the truth to Doris. Though of course, I had actually lied to Doris and told something closer to the truth to the colonists. Well, it was all a mess.

  “You don't need to go to a doctor?”

  “No, I think I'm healing nicely, thank you.”

  I risked taking a look at his face, which sent a fresh jolt to my nerves, and I gripped the arms of my chair. Somebody had to ban this man from being allowed in the sun; he needed to be hooded, like a hawk, at all times. I directed my stare back into his seersucker, and the lines oscillated and I almost expected them to congeal into a television broadcast.

  “I'm glad to hear that you're all right,” said Dr. Hibben, and he paused, uncapped and recapped a pen, and then he pulled the rope on the guillotine and down came the slippers. “There's something I want to talk to you about … Sigrid Beaubien came to me this morning rather upset.”

  “Yes, I understand that something strange has happened.”

  “She says that her slippers have been taken. And … this is very embarrassing … you know, but she says you took them, and so I have to ask you, did you take her slippers? I'm sure you didn't, you know, but I have to ask. Each artist's stay here has to be protected so that they can work.”

  “I didn't take her slippers. I swear. She brought all this up at breakfast and I had a sugar attack. I don't know why she thinks I would do such a thing.”

  I looked him in the face, found the two blue marbles that were his eyes, and sought to convince him of my innocence. I was growing somewhat used to his appearance, like a nurse working on a burn unit.

  “A sugar attack?” he asked.

  “When I'm upset, it's like I've eaten a carton of ice cream; I become feeble…. This one time in New York, I was walking along and a rat mistook me for a garbage can and raced up my leg and made it to my knee before it realized I was human. I guess if I was an infant, he might have tried to eat me. But he simply reversed direction and went and told all his friends, I imagine. Well, after he left, I screamed and then my sugar disappeared, and I had to buy a bottle of lemonade to bring myself back around.”

  I regretted shooting out that rat story—I can't seem to help myself with that tale; I'm like a war veteran blurting out “Take cover!” at the most inappropriate moments. But Dr. Hibben didn't seem to hold it against me.

  “I'm sorry to hear about this rat, sounds terrible,” he said with empathy. And then he asked, “So you didn't take the slippers?”

  “No, I swear, I didn't even know that Sigrid owned slippers…. But since I've learned of this crime, I was thinking of leaving my own slippers outside my door and maybe attaching a string or something to my wrist, so if I fall asleep, I can still apprehend this slipper thief. … I'm on a hallway, though, that doesn't see a lot of action, but still it'
s a plan.”

  “That's very nice of you … but I don't think someone is going around stealing slippers. I spoke to Charles Murrin and he thinks it's just a silly prank, and I'm in agreement, but I did want, you know, to talk to you, and now I can reassure Sigrid that it's not anything to worry about.”

  “I'm sorry she got so upset.”

  “Everyone responds differently to stress,” he said.

  “Yes, stress is very stressful,” I opined rather moronically, and then continued in a more interesting vein, “I have noticed—in old novels anyway—that people used to say they were distressed, but nowadays they're so upset that they've shortened it to stressed…. I do think we should take a page from the navy's book and develop signals for distress, rather than yelling at one another. I think a flare is more effective than bad behavior.”

  I was alluding to my disapproval of Beaubien's attack that morning, but Dr. Hibben didn't respond. He just looked at me. He couldn't defend her actions, and so we had just about run out of dialogue on the Beaubien matter, and no cue cards offstage were presenting themselves. The good news was that it looked as if everything was going to be all right. Other than his appearance, it had been a rather easy grilling. We were free to pursue other topics, if we liked, and so I really wanted to ask him if he had sought counsel with a dermatologist, but I didn't want to overstep my bounds. I decided, therefore, to practice giving compliments, the way Jeeves and Murrin had complimented my mustache. So I said, “I like your seersucker suit. Between the two of us I don't think there's been this much seersucker in one place since the British colonized India.”

  “That's very funny,” said Dr. Hibben. “And I admire your jacket, as well….You don't have pants?”

  “At the time, when I bought the jacket, I couldn't afford the pants,” I said, which was true, but I also think a whole seersucker suit is just too much, too pajamas-like, too bright. Of course, on Dr. Hibben it was beyond too much; I wouldn't have been surprised to learn that Doris, Barbara, and Sue were coming down with glaucoma and were going to file a class-action suit against his suit.

  “I see,” said Dr. Hibben. “Well, khaki pants work very well with seersucker. And I like your tie. Are those hummingbirds?”

  “Yes. This tie is beloved by all…. By the way, do you know the derivation of the word seersucker? After all the years of having this jacket, it just dawned on me that it's a very odd word. What do you think? Seersucker—a visionary who is easily deceived?”

  “I don't know,” said Dr. Hibben, “but I can look it up.”

  He consulted his dictionary and read aloud, “‘Noun. Indian blue and white-striped linen. From Persian, shir-o-shakar.’ Which, according to the dictionary, means “‘milk and sugar.’”

  “That's very interesting,” I said. “I knew that seersucker came from India, but I didn't know about this Persian connection…. I wonder if in Iran they ask for seersucker in their coffee?”

  Dr. Hibben chose that moment to open his little pink mouth rather wide, revealing an impressive set of bunched-together, yellow teeth, which he may have stolen from the George Washington museum, and he laughed quite loudly, with several heroic snorts. When someone Dr. Hibben's size laughs, it's like a gigantic bellows is pushing up a great reserve of repressed air, since the volume of their chest cavity is so much larger than the average person's.

  Well, it was quite apparent that we were really hitting it off over this issue of seersucker, and I had to give all the credit to Jeeves. He had outdone himself that day with his selections. Both Ava and Dr. Hibben had fallen under my sway due to my wardrobe. My whole destiny might have been different if I were wearing my blazer and my floating-fountain-pen tie. With Dr. Hibben, I felt I had gone from death-row to favorite-son status.

  When the snorting subsided, he smiled and said, “Well, it's very nice to meet you, Alan, and I'm sorry, you know, that I had to ask you about those slippers, but what we do here is very fragile in a way—the making of art—and so we have to coddle one another.”

  “I'm all for coddling.”

  With that, Dr. Hibben stood up and my stomach did tumble; I had grown accustomed to half his body, and seeing the whole thing again was a bit daunting. But I got to my feet, and out came his hand and so I sacrificed mine for another juicing.

  “You might not know this,” said Dr. Hibben as he let go of my desiccated hand, “but on Fridays my wife and I have everyone over for drinks after dinner. We're in the house on the dirt road beyond the pool. You'll see everyone walking in that direction. I hope you can come by.”

  “I will … thank you,” I said, and left his office, trying to shake some blood back into my fingers. Dr. Hibben would be a good guy to have around if you needed someone who could remove lug nuts without a wrench. I said good-bye to Doris, Barbara, and Sue and walked back to the Mansion and contemplated what lay ahead of me:

  Drinks before dinner.

  Drinks during dinner.

  Drinks after dinner.

  It wasn't what you call an ideal program for someone struggling to stay sober.

  CHAPTER 26

  Preoccupations of artistsA ribbon of pavementAn emerald glade with a blue poolAn inspiring talk with Kenneth about homosexuality

  Jeeves wasn't in our rooms when I returned. Either he was taking his lunch in the kitchen or he was still out communing with nature. I wondered if maybe he was trying to achieve an out-of-body experience to show off for me later. In any event, regaling him with the tale of my interview with Dr. Hibben would have to wait.

  Wanting to proceed with my earlier plan, I put on my bathing trunks, wrapped a towel around my neck, grabbed my current volume of A Dance to the Music of Time, and headed out, once more, from the Mansion. In the distance, I could hear the announcer from the track, and I made a mental note that Jeeves and I should go over there someday soon and lose some money.

  As I walked to the pool, the colony seemed deserted: everyone must have been off in their studios working or taking naps or hating themselves, the usual preoccupations of artists.

  I had a good idea what Tinkle was up to, and I was sure he wasn't the only one engaged in this manner, it being another preoccupation of creative people and a by-product of the solitary work environment. This is not to say that noncreative people don't go in for that, but they usually work with other people in offices, and self-release in public is not tolerated, though of course it does happen.

  I crossed paths with no one, and walking along the ribbon of pavement that wound through the colony, amid lawns, patches of forest, and outer buildings, I made my way to the pool, which was in its own private glade, enclosed by a thick protective wall of pine trees.

  The sun was bright but not punishing—a kindly wind helped to make for a nice air temperature. And the pool, with its water looking so blue, was incredibly gorgeous, surrounded, as it was, by the emerald color of the grass and trees.

  Beach chairs were scattered about the concrete lip of the pool, and there was a little house for changing. The great poet Kenneth, he of the beautiful nose, completing a sort of nose triangle with myself and Ava, was sitting poolside. He was the only person there, and as I approached, he motioned that I should come sit next to him.

  “Hello,” he said with a smile. It was a handsome smile that must have served him well over the course of his long life. There was something undeniably glamorous about him. Some people have it.

  It's called charm. They seem to give off a kind of magnetic field. But it doesn't so much attract as repel, but we're attracted to the things that repel us, so in the end it does attract. Seeing him lounging there, I recalled a bit of gossip I had gleaned from the New York Review of Books in a piece about the biography of Leonard Bernstein, and I made a connection with Kenneth's name that hadn't occurred to me before—he was the poet rumored to have been Bernstein's secret gay lover. “You've discovered,” he said, “the best thing about this place—the pool.”

  “It's beautiful,” I said shyly, sitting down on the beach ch
air beside him.

  “Any news on the sandal scandal?”

  “No. But I think it was slippers that were stolen.”

  “I prefer sandals since it rhymes with scandal.” This made sense since Kenneth was a poet.

  “Yes, sandal scandal does have a better ring to it,” I said, glancing at him, and I saw that his old body was hairless, white, and that his muscles sagged beneath the skin, but I could see the outline of a physique that had once been attractive, even ideal, in a Greek sense. It was strange to me, though, that his old legs were hairless. Had seven decades of wearing pants worn away his leg hair or could he possibly shave his legs? Is that what Bernstein liked? Kenneth's smooth legs? My own body, in contrast, looked practically simian. I have reddish brown curls on my chest, and my legs look like the makings of an angora sweater.

  I held in my lap, above my angora legs, the thick Powell tome, the third of the four volumes (each volume, which Powell titles movements, contains three novels; the third movement covers the years of the Second World War). Kenneth, glancing at the book, said, “I didn't think anybody read Powell anymore, though hardly anyone read Powell when they were reading Powell.”

  “There are still a few mad devotees around,” I said.

  “A few of the books are good, but on the whole the thing is a deadly bore, and he was a nasty man.”

  “But I love it.”

  “I won't hold that against you,” Kenneth said. I could see that he was one of those people who have great convictions about things, what's good and what's not good. This is often a component of charm, though not always. And usually around such people I find it hard to speak, fearing that they will continually correct me and put me in my place about the aesthetic makeup of the world. But that day I felt as if I could almost hold my own with Kenneth. The air was too nice and the sun felt too good for me to be intellectually destroyed by him. Also, I had survived my encounter with Dr. Hibben: I was a world-beater!