Side Effects

by Harvey Jacobs

  “Lucas and I had been through plenty together, Simon. Marvelous adventures. Epic. It seems so long ago. When he quit the team it hurt me. I felt abandoned. But you don’t give a damn about all that.”

  “You’re right. I don’t.” Simon said.

  “When Luke waddles over to me, I say to him, ‘Who’d have thought you’d turn into something cuddly.’

  “ ‘People change, Brian,’ he says. ‘I want you to meet my extended family.’

  “I tell him I don’t think that’s the best idea.

  “ ‘The meditation session is over for my blessed brothers and sisters,’ Luke says. ‘This is our busy season. My flock will be going back into the fields.’ ”

  “The killing fields,” Simon said. “Not that I mean to sound judgmental.”

  “Luke takes up a pose alongside an arched stone doorway. Like he’s the Pope. I hear a chorus of voices singing about bounty from inside the monastery. His Holy Order of Digital Shadows,” Beem said.

  “It is a catchy name,” Simon said.

  “They had some beautiful setup. At least fifty prime acres on a lake. A building that looks like a castle with towers, parapets, even a little moat. Some widow willed it to the Order. She died under mysterious circumstances. Probably under Brother Lucas. I’ll bet he showed her plenty boom boom boom. Don’t worry, she got her money’s worth.”

  “Could you stop making those sounds?” Simon said.

  “I’m trying to give you an accurate account,” Beem said. “The booms seem relevant. A sound track to spice up the scene. But if you want me to censor . . .”

  “Tell it your way,” Simon said. “Keep the booms.”

  “Anyhow, out come the singers in a single line. Some hold shovels, some trowels, some spades, some carry big bags of cow shit on their shoulders. Brother Lucas nods to them as they file past. They nod back with their bald heads shining. It was a terrible turn of events. Entirely unexpected. They couldn’t help seeing me,” Beem said. “Boom boom boom. Away they go, marching toward the arbor. ‘So those are your Digital Shadows?’ I say, ‘Well fuck me, Brother Lucas.’

  “ ‘Not on the premises,’ Luke says. ‘We abstain during harvest season.’

  “ ‘Stain or abstain,’ I say to him, ‘it’s your religion and no skin off my ass. But must the artillery keep blasting? Boom boom boom. My eardrums are splitting.’

  “ ‘Those cannons fire at programmed intervals during autumn,’ Brother Lucas says. ‘Their thunder keeps greedy birds from devouring our ripening crop. If you look around, Brian, you’ll see thousands of winged creatures waiting for the signal to migrate. It’s a long, hard trip. They sense the need for sustenance. Given half a chance they’d strip our vineyards bare. Which is why our vineyard is surrounded by Howitzers from World War Two.’

  “ ‘The neighbors must love you,’ I say to him.

  “ ‘The guns do bother some of the locals,’ Luke says, looking pleased with himself. ‘Brian, I myself enjoy their thug sounds. They conjure visions of the imploding souls of those who refuse to acknowledge the terror that surrounds us and the rapture that awaits.’

  “ ‘Rapture or rupture, too deep for me,’ I say. ‘Bottom line, you’re firing blanks.’

  “ ‘Listen,’ Luke says, ‘if you’re here as a friend, you’re most welcome. If you come as an emissary of final solutions, please understand that I would refuse any assignment they have to offer no matter how urgent or lucrative. Nothing can alter that decision. The past is yesterday’s fog. I’ve quit the business.’

  “ ‘Talk about imploding souls, you were the best, old buddy. One up on the Angel of Death.’

  “ ‘I was good,’ he says. ‘I was great. But that was in another country and besides the stench is dead. All that went before was preparation for a spiritual rebirth.’ Then I see he’s crying, Simon. Actually weeping. He points at the sky. ‘See that tiny bird darting through the air?’ he says. ‘Brian, my former life is as remote to me as that distant dot. You must sample a glass of our Merlot before you leave. It tastes of echoes.’

  “ ‘Let’s get real,’ I say. ‘I hear tell the Holy Order of Digital Shadows is not averse to accepting small contributions.’

  “ ‘Our wines do nicely but we aren’t wealthy. Not yet. We do suspend pride from time to time in the cause of survival and accept generous offerings. But no dirty money, Brian.’

  “ ‘Of course not. But if I were to extend a generous offering on behalf of the Agency in exchange for a few days of your time . . .’

  “ ‘I told you, absolutely not. Besides, the Holy Order will be obscenely rich and powerful in just a few years. Ours is not a passive assembly celebrating vows of poverty.’

  “ ‘You expect this windfall from the taste of bottled echoes?’

  “ ‘No, Brian, our fortune will not come from grapes. Would that it were so simple. I’ll let you in on a little secret. War and pestilence is about to swallow what we call civilization. Chaos will give birth to a second Middle Ages. Fear and fire will rule. A perfumed toxin of secondhand smoke and mirrors will descend upon peoples eager to find security. The masses will inhale that poison with gusto, happily choking on the fumes. At first they will submit to perfect conformity. A welcome malaise will settle over the planet.’

  “ ‘At least you’re not thinking small, Luke,’ I say to him.

  “ ‘Next, those who rejoice in a global coma—the willing acolytes to unfailingly successful Target Marketing—will experience the creeping horror of spiritual bankruptcy. They’ll cry out for guidance. Our Holy Order of Digital Shadows will be perfectly positioned to provide solace to the comatose Children of the Microchip. In that deliciously corrupt utopia, we will offer redemption with stability. And the Chippies will pay what we ask for their salvation.’

  “ ‘So, bottom line, you deal in happy endings,’ I say.

  “ ‘New beginnings,’ Luke says.

  “ ‘And Brother Lucas is God’s gift to the new world order?’

  “ ‘Father knows best.’

  “ ‘I have a slightly less optimistic view of the future,’ I say.

  “ ‘Poor snide, cynical Brian Beem,’ he says. ‘So many assholes, so little time.’ Luke slaps a ladybug off his forehead. ‘Just for the record, old friend,’ he says, ‘tell me, are you here to make me an offer I can’t refuse? Some fabulous fortune to help you tumble a government or save your leader from a teenage girl who gave him a blowjob under the Washington Monument? What?’

  “ ‘I am, yes I am. Something that might help you over the hump before you climb the golden throne. And the job we have in mind requires no compromise of your principles, Brother Lucas. It has nothing to do with your lifting a hand against any living thing.’

  “ ‘What, then? For how much? And why me?’

  “ ‘It has to do with human sacrifice.’

  “ ‘The Digital Shadows deal in sacrifice,’ he says.

  “ ‘Then you are about to become Saint Lucas,’ I say, and pull out my Glock. Lucas knows that gun. Hell, he gave it to me way back when. His body shrinks like a balloon. I can hear the air hissing out of him.

  “ ‘There’s no point to this, Brian,’ he says. ‘If it’s the nonsense about my writing my memoirs, forget it. I have no intention of embarrassing myself or the Agency. You know you can trust me on that.’

  “ ‘Memoirs or not, there is a point to your termination, Luke. But it would take too long to explain. Does the name Simon Apple mean anything to you?’

  “ ‘No. Should it?’

  “ ‘No,’ I say. ‘And by the way, don’t worry about final expenses. We’ll see to it that the Digitals can pay for a first class sendoff.’ Then I fire a round into his cherubic face. Boom. That must have scared the shit out of a few birds. His mouth drips salty wine. His eyes open wide watching his salvaged soul soar up to where those birdies are. Maybe he’s thinking of migrating. Some part of him might get to spend the winter in Miami. Who knows what happens after the final curtain.”

 
“How did you get the body away from there?” Simon said.

  “A sleek new Cadillac hearse comes bouncing across the arbor. Two men lift Brother Lucas, box him and slide the box onto a rack. I get into the hearse next to the driver’s seat and off we go. I make one call on my cell phone. I tell the ear on the other side what had to be done is done but there’s a slight complication. I was seen by at least fifty chanting monks, so let the pixels fall where they may. Simon, it’s sad but those Digital Shadows had to play follow the leader; they had to die because, lousy luck, we had no choice.”

  “Boom boom boom,” Simon said.

  10

  Ingesting large doses of Nonacripthae had a profound effect on Simon Apple’s physical and mental development. The drug not only reversed the infant’s awful decline, it precipitated a renaissance that caught wide attention.

  Simon gained an enormous amount of weight, some thirty pounds in three short months. The added poundage was not the usual baby flab. It was muscle and bone. His eyes widened and brightened. His hair took on a radiant gloss.

  Premature, Simon had been a skimpy sort; his debilitating fever and the early assault of chronic skin eruptions left him sadly depleted. Dr. Fikel’s notes compared the fading child to a collapsed plastic bag. Now that same boy evolved into a mini-Hercules who Robert J. called “my power tyke.”

  When Simon went out in his stroller—he’d outgrown his carriage—strangers stopped to stare at him in awe; some crossed themselves spontaneously. His face had the eerie quality of toddlers in classical European art and Early American primitives, that wise, old expression misplaced on a child, the look of a religious icon. Victoria was enchanted with the changeling. She took quiet pride in what she considered to be her private miracle, the answer to her urgent prayers to Poland’s own Black Madonna.

  For Dr. Henry Fikel, Simon’s transformation was definitely a triumph of medical science. He wrote detailed reports on his patient’s astonishing progress complete with meticulous statistics on measurements, agility, cognitive ability, etc., along with lengthy descriptions of Simon’s extraordinary language skills. Before he could speak a coherent sentence, Simon sped through texts far beyond Goodnight Moon, Ant and Bee or The Little Red Lighthouse; he was browsing works by Rabelais, William Blake, Jack London and Herman Melville from his father’s library and seemed to understand them. He scribbled what appeared to be attempts at free verse with thick crayons.

  Dr. Fikel tested and retested Simon with the diligence of a Tibetan searching for a new Dalai Lama. His studies were sent by Federal Express to Regis Pharmaceuticals along with photos taken by Robert J. documenting Simon’s explosive growth. Dr. Fikel credited Nonacripthae with creating a prodigy.

  There were certain deliberate omissions from the doctor’s reports of observations he felt might sound negative; since the Regis people were paying him well for monitoring Simon Apple’s reactions to such a promising medication, Dr. Fikel felt it prudent to accentuate the positive, at least until there was absolute proof of any serious complication. At the moment, his qualms were merely vague suspicions.

  From the hour Simon woke until he collapsed, exhausted, every evening, he ran, jumped, somersaulted and cartwheeled through the day. He couldn’t sit still for his feedings. He had to be forcibly restrained during diaper changes. Victoria’s soft lullabies, and the daily rides alongside Polly Moon’s pram, calmed him.

  Only when Victoria sang and Polly quit her howling, would Simon cease to resemble a frantic wind-up toy and lapse into a languid, meditative trance. That passivity was a prelude to volcanic action. Suddenly, without warning, he would snap alert and leap from his stroller, literally flying toward Polly’s pink carriage. Fritzel, a trained athlete, would intercept him like a football and hurl him back into place. “Keep your piglet in his pen,” Fritzel yelled at Victoria, who stroked Simon’s frenzied ancient face until his color returned to normal. “Not yet, my little sausage,” Victoria would coo, “but don’t worry, you’ll get your chance soon enough.”

  Like her husband, Francine Apple might have gloried in her son’s quick flowering but her own life faced sudden turmoil. She too experienced a wrenching renaissance.

  Victoria Wyzowik took a half-day off every Sunday to attend mass at Blessed Queen of Angels and work as a volunteer at the church food bank. During Victoria’s absence it fell to Francine to care for Simon since Robert J. kept Quikpix open for weekend business. Francine waited out those heavy hours pushing Simon’s stroller around and around the block or down to the local shopping center, trying to look maternal.

  On one of those interminable Sunday mornings, Francine stopped her strolling to peer through the window of Fay’s 7-Day Beauty Salon. She watched her neighbors having their heads baked under green, cone-shaped driers that made them look like giant crickets. On that fateful day, while Francine stood daydreaming, Simon escaped his mother’s casual surveillance. He thought he saw Polly propped on a stool at the Sweet Tooth Ice Cream Parlor across the street.

  When Francine Apple heard a passing stranger shriek like a smoke alarm she whirled to see her Simon hop off the curb and run into heavy traffic. Only the tuned reflexes of the driver of a Jaguar convertible saved Simon from becoming a stain on the road. The Jaguar swerved, missing Simon by the width of its bumper. Francine dashed toward her offspring and gathered him up, slapping and kissing his face in a tangle of mixed emotions. The Jaguar’s driver got out of his car to check for any damage to the child or his fender. The man was about to curse out the crazy kid and his delinquent mother when he recognized Francine Apple.

  “Francine Nadel? Is it you?”

  “Sam Zane? You?”

  The flash of recognition transported them both to the backseat of a Ford Fairlane sedan where they’d lost half their virginity sharing the qualified bliss of partial penetration. The very next day, Sam Zane left for the University of Pennsylvania. He and Francine exchanged a few letters, then postcards until their correspondence ended.

  Life went on. Francine heard from mutual friends that Sam had become a Philadelphia stockbroker, married, and fathered two boys and two girls. From his sources Sam learned that Francine had become Mrs. Robert J. Apple, a match that surprised him greatly since he thought of Robert J. as a cipher, a paparazzo of pap, a loner who went around snapping pictures of weddings and babies while the nation hummed with opportunity. He didn’t know she and Robert J. had produced a son.

  There on the sidewalk Francine and Sam filled in the blank spaces; if Simon’s existence was news to him, his dirty divorce was news to her. While they talked warmly of days and nights gone by, Simon made another break for freedom. This time it was Sam who chased down Francine’s “handful.” While he wrestled Simon into the stroller, Sam asked Francine if they might see one another again. Flustered, she gave him the address of Quikpix.

  She never expected Sam to show up but he did, at noon the next day. Francine was alone in the store. Robert J. was shooting a Kiwanis Club meeting on assignment for The Glenda Express. It being lunchtime, they sent out for pizza and root beer. More memories were exchanged.

  Chewing at spongy crust, blotting hot tomato sauce from her lower lip, Francine blurted that her life was a soap opera, that she was trapped in a hollow marriage to a man without drive or ambition. Caught up in her monologue of misery, she heard herself admit that she didn’t particularly like her own son. “You must think I’m some kind of witch bitch,” she said. “But that’s the way of things. So sue me.”

  Sam told her that for ten years he’d been sleeping next to a woman without passion, that, worse yet, his sons and daughters were 99 percent Xerox copies of his ice-wife and 1 percent recognizable human beings. When he realized he was a family man in the wrong family, he bolted. Sam waved his pizza slice at Francine and yelled, “Great God Almighty! Free at last!”

  “I know what you mean,” Francine said, biting into an anchovy.

  Three nights later, Sam Zane and Mrs. Robert J. Apple met at the Rooster Motel five mile
s outside Glenda. They bathed in a heart-shaped tub, drank a bottle of Dom Perignon, ate custard éclairs and fucked on a zebra rug. Sam invited Francine to kick off her traces and move to Philadelphia. That same night she told Robert J. she was leaving, that it was best for them both.

  Though her husband knew there were crevices, even fissures, in their marriage through which he’d occasionally peek at Rowena Trask’s teenage breasts or Victoria Wyzowik’s pendulous ass, he thought of himself as a happily married man. Francine’s brutal announcement left him flattened. He wept while his wife packed essentials and filled boxes with possessions she asked him to forward via UPS when she had a new address in Philly.

  When Francine lifted her favorite figurine of a porcelain jester out of their curio cabinet and plucked audiotapes from their rack, when she marked pieces of furniture that once belonged to her mother with red stick-on dots, when she set scent on certain appliances including a blender, juicer, a chrome-plated Westinghouse toaster and an RCA stereo, Robert J. felt as if he was being torn and skinned by a metal claw.

  He didn’t oppose Francine or question her property rights. The objects she chose, like the ones she chose to leave behind, were drained of any value. There was no fight in Robert J. The look in her eyes—dead, hard and distant—froze him. “Take what you want,” he said. “Use it in good health. We’ll work out a fair financial settlement.”

  “You’re a good person,” Francine said.

  “There is one thing I’m putting on the table,” Robert J. said. “I will never surrender the right to visit my son. I want Simon with me on certain holidays and during summer vacations.”

  “Not a problem,” Francine said. “Simon is 99 percent you. He looks like you. He has your mannerisms. He belongs with you. You can have full custody. I’m leaving him here.”

  At that moment, Simon came whirling into the room like the funnel of a tornado. His momentum caused him to trip over a Hummel horse his mother had placed on the floor near one of her boxes along with six requisitioned Limoges demitasse cups and saucers. The horse, cups, and saucers were smashed. Simon cut his nose on the glass.