by Matt Witten
Behind me Young Gray Suit tapped his feet restlessly.
"So here's what happens," I said, opening my day pack and frantically stuffing it with The Penn's papers. "One day Leonardo is out walking in the park and there's this odd-looking little bug. A mutant beetle."
"A mutant beetle?"
I reached down and grabbed a couple of heavily scribbled-on paper towels that had fluttered to the floor. "Exactly. And this mutant beetle jumps onto Leonardo." I checked The Penn's box—empty. His life's work was now inside my day pack. All I had to do was get his safety-deposit box back into its slot, and I'd be home free.
"So here's the twist," I announced loudly, to cover that damn scree-eek! as I shoved in the box as hard as I could—
But it got stuck halfway.
"Here's the twist!" I called out even louder, as I desperately tried to twist the box back onto its tray. I yanked and rattled and shoved—"Here's the twist!" I shouted—and finally, finally, the box slid in. Just in time too, because that final shout turned Young Gray Suit around to look at me.
I heaved a huge sigh of relief. "Okay, we're all set," I said to Young Gray Suit.
"So what's the twist?" he asked.
I thought about it for a moment. "I don't know yet. We'll have to leave that to Spielberg."
Young Gray Suit shot me a disappointed look as he led me out of the bank vault—
—and straight into Thin Lips, who was carrying her takeout lunch—salad and plain no-fat yogurt, no doubt—back to her desk. She stopped and glowered at me suspiciously. "What are you doing here?" she snarled.
"Mutant beetles," I said briskly, and pointed a thumb at Young Gray Suit. "Ask him. Long story. Got a plane to catch."
Then I hustled off as fast as I could without running, expecting at any moment now to hear her yell for the bank guard to stop me. I could already feel the handcuffs tightening around my wrists.
But I guess Ms. Thin Lips was too hungry to pursue the issue.
Or maybe I was just plain lucky that day.
And like my agent always tells me: It's better to be lucky than smart.
4
I jumped on my bike and dashed off, eager to examine what I hoped would be a masterpiece. Some seemingly poverty-stricken derelicts squirrel away millions of dollars. Had The Penn squirreled away millions of precious words?
I needed to find someplace quiet and solemn, where I could let the dead man's thoughts envelop my soul. A church or synagogue would be perfect, except that places of worship always gave me the heebie jeebies, so I went to the next best place.
Madeline's.
Early afternoon is their slowest time and the front room was deserted except for Rob, my ex-film major friend, and the one and only Madeline herself. Madeline is a slightly plump but attractive young dynamo who used to work at the mall. Like most people who work at malls, she hated it. Unlike most people, though, she figured out a way to do something about it. She opened up her very own espresso bar.
Madeline's was a classy joint with marble tabletops, comfortable sofas and easy chairs, and esoteric magazines. At first, we Saratogians just shook our heads. We already had one bagel place and one upscale coffee shop, and we figured there was no way our little town could support an espresso bar too, for goodness sake. But Madeline proved us wrong, and now, at age twenty-nine, she was one of Saratoga's most impressive, successful young citizens. Almost enough to make you believe in capitalism.
Madeline and Rob were behind the counter leafing through a bridal magazine when I walked in. She was exuberantly pushing the merits of baked salmon as a main wedding dish, and he was indulgently nodding his head. I smiled. They made a cute couple: the bubbly outgoing type and the quiet artistic type. Kind of like my marriage with Andrea.
They looked up as I came over to the counter. "Hey man, where'd you run off to this morning?" asked Rob.
I knew if I told him the truth he wouldn't believe me any more than my agent had, so I went ahead. "I was robbing a bank," I said.
"Yeah, right," he snorted, as Madeline came around the counter and gave me a hug. "Oh, Jacob, we're gonna miss that guy," she said.
I nodded. "So what do you know about him, anyway? What was his shtick?"
Madeline furrowed her eyebrows. "All I really know is he liked Ethiopian. I used to make it just for him—hardly anyone else ever drank it."
Rob smiled wryly. "I guess people don't like eating or drinking stuff from a country where everyone's always starving to death. It's bad karma."
Madeline sighed. "I made a pot of Ethiopian this morning, and it's just sitting there. Makes me sad."
"I’ll have some," I told her. She looked at me and nodded gratefully.
Rob took her arm. "Hey, you know what would be really cool? When we do our memorial ceremony for The Penn, we should give everyone a cup of Ethiopian."
"Yeah, that'll bring people in for sure," I teased Rob. He looked a little hurt, so I added, "Just kidding. That's a real nice touch."
I paid for my coffee and headed for the corner table in the back room, my favorite spot. But unfortunately, Madeline had just hung a new exhibit, and right above my head was a bizarre pointillist painting of a grossly overweight, naked man sunning himself on the beach. The kind of thing that can ruin your digestion.
I angled my chair so I wouldn't be facing Pointillist Fat Man, but the walls were covered by other obese nudes, and no matter how I angled my chair I couldn't escape them. I muttered "Oh phooey," or words to that effect, and just then Rob came up behind me. "You know," he said, "the way you sit back here muttering to yourself, you'd make a fabulous character in a low-budget art film."
"An anarchist? Plotting to blow up the Statue of Liberty?"
"No, I was thinking comic relief. Crazy old Uncle Fred."
Is that how he saw me? Shoot, I really must be getting old. I was tempted to tell him I truly did rob a bank.
Instead I opened up my day pack and brought out a fistful of pages. "Check this out. The Penn's masterpiece."
Rob's eyes widened, and he reached out his hand. "Let me see."
"No, they're mine," I said.
Rob laughed. "Yo, come on." Then he picked up a few pages from the table and started reading.
I snatched the pages away from him. I knew I was being unreasonable, but I couldn't stop myself. Rob eyed me, annoyed, and I shrugged apologetically. "I'm sorry, Rob, The Penn wanted me to have it. I'll let you read it after I finish."
"You're a nut, you know that? So why'd he want you to have it, anyway?"
"How the hell should I know?"
"Hey, I got it!" Rob snapped his fingers, excited. "We should, like, cover the walls with these pages. As a tribute to The Penn. Be an awesome exhibit—better than this garbage, anyway," he added, pointing up at a portrait of a gargantuan Asian woman who looked like she was leering at me.
I turned away from her. "That's a beautiful idea, Rob. I think The Penn would really have appreciated that."
Rob nodded. "I'll clear it with the boss lady."
As if she'd heard him talking about her, Madeline called out from the other room, "Or chicken if you want. We can always go with that, if you don't want salmon."
"Either one is fine, honey," Rob called back, then whispered to me, "I'll thank God when this wedding is over."
I laughed. "Don't worry, it won't be half as bad as going to the dentist."
"Yeah, but at least when you go to the dentist, you don't have to wear a tux." He stood up. "Well, happy reading, dude. Let me know if it's the next Ulysses."
"I hope not. Ulysses is junk. James Joyce is the worst famous writer that ever lived."
He threw me a disgusted look. "I don't know why we even let you into a high-class eatery like this."
As Rob walked away, I spread Penn's writings on the table in front of me. It was a huge jumble. None of the notebooks, loose pages or scribbled-on envelopes were numbered. No way of knowing where to start.
I decided to try a green spiral notebook th
at looked relatively recent. It was bought at Staples, which only opened up in this area about four years ago. I turned to page one.
At the top of the page was the word Preface.
I sipped my Ethiopian and dove in.
It was a dark and delirious day in December, I read, when I first learned that my mother and father did not love each other.
If only Bob Dylan and Joan Baez had stayed together. He was righteous anger and she was kindness. But how to harness the two? How to combine Tupac Shakur with Liberace?
They say no two snowflakes are ever alike. But then they say a lot of things, and where's the proof? In my mother's case, 151 proof, the result of much research: The Cheapest Way to Ingest Alcohol. Studies show 151 Clear Sky beats MD 20 20, which has it over the generic no-name beers hands down.
Myself, I go for Ethiopian, zero cents a cup where possible, until death do me part. Never touch clear sky or anything else, since the snow came down that day.
Of course, all would have transpired otherwise in these days of waxless skis. No more carefully stored containers of red, blue, and purple wax, to say nothing of glisters and clisters, which were at issue that cold winter morning. All my father wanted was a simple little ski, but where was the clister? A man has a day off, just one day, and does he want to spend it looking around the whole frigging—frigging, not fucking, because they were simpler days then, and yet harder—house for his glister, or clister, memory fades, but stays with this thought: A man wants a substance, a substance to put on his skis, so his skis can glide, so he can fly, so the air rushes by, so the whish of the wind and the snow enters his soul, and the factory disappears and so does his wife and even his child—yes, I must say from this vantage point of time, yes, even his child.
But Dylan will never marry Baez, and Tupac will never marry Liberace, except in heaven perhaps though studies show that heaven probably does not exist. For if they did marry, it would be like my father and mother, in contravention of the natural order. Do gorillas marry? Or baboons? And if they did, would the male work in a shoe factory all day? Highly unlikely, and this is what we must remember when we evaluate the actions of mere mortals for whom the merest act of love brings unbearable responsibility. And this is why we, all of us, choose to live our deepest lives in isolation—in clear sky, in Ethiopian, in newspapers. And if you choose to interrupt our lonesome glide, you do so at your peril, for one man's Ethiopian may be another man's clister, and he will fight for that ion of deepest life with every weapon at his command.
And this is why I am entitling this tome "The History of Western Civilization Careening, as Seen through the Eyes of One of Its Primary Practitioners." Volume 1, as you shall see, is History. Volume 2 is Careening. And Volume 3 is Practicing.
Pretty darn weird, I thought to myself, but intriguing. Not really my cup of tea, but then again, neither is Joyce.
I took another sip of Ethiopian and turned the page.
Preface, I read. It was a dark and dreamy night when I first learned that O.J. Simpson and Paula Barbieri did not love each other. To those who would say, no, O.J. was at this time a mere child with rickets, and it was your own progenitors at issue, I would reply: All life is metaphor, and one man's clister is another man's Ethiopian.
Indeed, all might have transpired otherwise in these days of waxless skis. The years of red, green, and blue wax are no more, and you can travel the streets for many years, as I have, without meeting a man who knows whether it's clister or glister...
I skimmed the rest of the page long enough to determine this was a reworking of the same preface. Again, there seemed to be some indication that his father had been searching for clister, or glister, one snowy morning so he could put it on his cross-country skis. Beyond that, the narrative once again twisted, turned, and ended with the now-familiar announcement that this was a preface to a three-volume "History of Western Civilization Careening, as Seen through the Eyes of One of Its Primary Practitioners."
I turned the page.
Preface, I read. Snoopy might have said it was a dark and lonely night, and he would have been correct, the most common and even comical clichés being the truest. Here, of course, the wrinkle was clister, or as some would have it, glister.
I flipped the page.
Preface, I read. Beware of clister; or as it may be, Ethiopian.
I flipped again.
Preface, I read.
I flipped. Preface. I flipped again, and again, and again. Preface. Preface. Preface.
I put the notebook down and picked up another one. A red one, with a date on the cover: June, 1983. Beneath that Penn had written: Civ Careening: Vol. 2.
Volume 2. Okay, here we go. I opened up the notebook. Preface, I read. Every man has a clister, or glister, as I learned one dark and snowy night...
I quickly turned the page. Preface. Shit. I flipped the pages faster and faster, reading that ugly word Preface over and over, getting more and more frantic.
I flung the notebook down, snatched another one and opened it. My heart sank.
I threw open every single notebook. They went back thirty years, to 1968, and with every goddamn one it was the same. I shook all of The Penn's restaurant menus, Kleenexes, and cereal boxes out of my day pack. Each and every available writing surface had the word Preface at the top.
I threw the whole mess on the floor and sat there. Donald Penn.
His whole life had been one big preface.
And that was all.
Finis.
5
I sat there gloomily puzzling over the clister—or glister—of life, when suddenly a cheerful voice interrupted me. "Writing the Great American Screenplay?" said the voice.
It belonged to Gretchen Lang, the one and only executive director of the Saratoga Arts Council for the past fifteen years. If all arts administrators were as top-notch as Gretchen, then art galleries would be as crowded as Knicks games, theater would still be alive, and ballet dancers would be so famous they'd get their own shoe commercials.
Sweet as Adirondack maple syrup on the outside but tough as a Mamet play inside, Gretchen had almost singlehandedly transformed the Arts Council from a genteel coffee klatch of lady landscape painters to a powerhouse quasi-public nonprofit corporation with a yearly budget of $200,000. Which was huge, by Saratoga standards. Gretchen's Arts Council was involved in financing just about every theater opening, gallery exhibit, or other cultural event in the entire Saratoga County area. If you were a Saratoga Springs artist, you definitely wanted Gretchen Lang on your side.
Gretchen's biggest coup came last year when, after a decade of ardent lobbying, she convinced the mayor and city council that what Saratoga needed to attract more tourists and keep business away from the malls was a glamorous new Cultural Arts Center right in the heart of downtown, which would be run, of course, by Gretchen herself. The city fathers voted to lease the old library building on Broadway to Gretchen and her Arts Council for the grand sum of one dollar a year for the next twenty-five years. Not bad. Especially since the building was in a great location, solidly built, and probably worth close to a million bucks.
The Cultural Arts Center as envisioned by Gretchen would feature a grand, high-ceilinged gallery on the main floor for showcasing Saratoga painters and sculptors to the rich summer tourists; a plush three-hundred-seat theater with state-of-the-art lighting and sound equipment; plentiful studio, darkroom, and classroom space; and a host of other goodies. For the past month and a half, downtown traffic had been snarled by all the construction and renovation work that was being done to turn Gretchen's glorious vision into reality.
Like a mother duck with her ducklings, Gretchen generally had artists in tow whenever I saw her. Today her flock included Bonnie Engels, the boxer/theater impresario, and four other artists who fell into the "struggling" category, like most artists in Saratoga (and everywhere else). I knew everyone in today's entourage, and except for Bonnie, some of whose shows I had truly enjoyed, I didn't think any of them was particularl
y talented. But maybe I was just being overly hard on them because they reminded me of myself, of who I used to be. And you certainly had to give them credit for trying. Who knows, maybe one of them would even break through one day.
In any case, I was glad to see them. It gave me a break from contemplating Donald Penn's wasted life. "You guys having a party?" I asked.
"You better believe it." Gretchen smiled, waving to her crew. "This is my trusty grant panel. We just finished giving out the NYFA grants."
NYFA grants. Pronounced "knife-a." For starving New York artists, thar's gold in them thar initials.
For those of you who have the good sense not to be starving New York artists, let me explain. Every year the state-funded New York Foundation for the Arts distributes grant money to arts councils sprinkled throughout the state, which in turn dole out the money to local artists. The Saratoga Arts Council gets twenty-five grand a year, and has the highly sensitive job of divvying up the dough among the eighty or so desperate local "emerging artists" who apply. The council can only say yes to about twenty of them. The losing applicants then go into deep depressions, take jobs at the post office, or both.
It may not sound like there's a lot of money at stake, but these NYFA grants are prestigious and can kick-start an artist's career. Putting that NYFA imprimatur of respectability on your resume can help you hustle larger grants, fellowships, and artist-in-residence gigs. And it's something to tell your parents when they ask you how come you're not going to law school already.
Also, in Saratoga Springs, even one or two thousand dollars goes a long way. You can still rent a perfectly decent apartment for $350 a month up here.
So I could see why Gretchen and her grant panelists would want to celebrate getting their task over with. All of the artists in town know each other, and it must be embarrassing to have to reject applications from people you'll be running into at Madeline's the next morning.
"Congratulations, guys," I greeted them as they headed for a nearby table. "So did you give me any money?"
