Side Effects

by Harvey Jacobs

  “What you’re saying reminds me of some comments by Judge Luber. He was nostalgic for the power drain when the electric chair was in vogue.”

  “The dimming bulbs interrupting yet affirming the connection between the penitentiary and the town,” Warden Donal said. “Lethal injection does leave something to be desired.”

  “Maybe the pendulum will swing back,” Simon said.

  “Who knows? What I would like to do, with your help, is to provoke at least some semblance of a riot tonight. It won’t be what it once was, I don’t fool myself on that score, but at least it would make your execution more of an event. I’ve toured the entire facility and sense nothing but indifference.”

  “Maybe it’s because they know I’m innocent,” Simon said. “Or because they think my crime was horrendous, past any demonstration of sympathy.”

  “True,” Warden Donal said. “But your guilt or innocence shouldn’t be the issue. A riot is definitely in order, even a small riot.”

  “How can I help?”

  “I brought this tape recorder along,” Warden Donal said, producing a Sony from his shirt pocket. “I was wondering if you’d agree to say a few words to the boys, explain to them that a few howls and burning mattresses would mean a lot to you in your last minutes. Tell them that scraping the back of a toothbrush along the bars doesn’t make for a rattle but it does make a statement. A continuous flushing of toilets would cause the plumbing to whine. Let’s not forget the old-fashioned shouting and cursing. I suspect hearing your request for a demonstration might make a case for disobedience.”

  “If I agree,” Simon said, “what’s in it for me?”

  “I’m sorry you said that. I thought you would understand the gesture would be its own reward. You’d be doing something for others. And for yourself.”

  “I wouldn’t mind causing a riot,” Simon said. “It would give some distraction while I’m laying on the gurney waiting for the drip signal.”

  “Exactly. You have no idea of how loud that chemical drip can sound to a condemned man. Some ambient white noise would be a blessing.”

  “You think I’d hear all the toilets flushing?”

  “Seven hundred toilets in unison? Certainly you’d hear them. Here’s the tape recorder. And I wrote out a page of notes. Not a script, mind you. More of an outline. I want you to use your own words, draw on authentic emotions. We used a script the last time. Written by a professional author and it proved to be a total failure. When the clock struck midnight, there wasn’t so much as a communal sigh. Not one of the African American prisoners sang anything gospel or even a chorus of the blues.”

  “Turn on your tape,” Simon said, sipping some water and clearing his throat.

  31

  Against the advice of Marvin Klipstein, the Apples withdrew their lawsuit and agreed to sign a formal document drawn by Regis’s attorneys. In addition to providing access to Aquathaline (delivered to Dr. Fikel in unmarked capsules packaged in anonymous wrappers) their offer of a full-tuition college scholarship and a million dollar life insurance policy valid through Simon’s 21st year was confirmed in writing. After much haggling by Klipstein, the contract also granted 5000 stock options to Robert J. in trust for his son. The options, which could be exercised for five dollars each, were not for stock in Regis Pharmaceuticals but in a spin-off called EduPuss that owned exclusive rights to a system designed to toilet-train felines.

  Before accepting the EduPuss compromise, the Apples were shown an advance video of an infomercial to be broadcast on national TV. The film showed an ordinary house cat fed on a special diet. A single drop of greenish fluid was added to the animal’s drinking water. After an hour, the cat’s owner touched the single button on a remote control; a blue light flashed on the side of a metal bowl bolted to a short tower attached to a regular commode. A high-pitched whine signaled the cat to run to the bathroom, climb a ramp, mount the tower, squat atop the bowl and do its business.

  When the cat finished, EduPuss triggered an automatic flush mechanism; the cat descended and resumed normal activity. The infomercial ended with an announcer’s voice saying, “Bernard Baruch, a brilliant financier, once said that the path to success is to find a need and fill it. EduPuss does both! The litter box is a thing of the past! ”

  That film was impressive enough to convince the Apples that an investment in EduPuss was golden. Marvin Klipstein bought himself a thousand shares at market price the first morning EduPuss traded publicly. It opened at sixteen dollars a share and quickly rose above twenty. That same morning Regis Van Clay sent the Apples a complimentary EduPuss, a year’s supply of the green additive and, for Simon, an adorable black Persian male from a litter dropped by the winner of more ribbons and medals than any war hero.

  While Robert J. rigged the EduPuss in the downstairs bathroom, Simon tried hard to welcome his pet with affection. He was not a cat person by nature, but Shah (his name for the kitten) had the promise of becoming a cuddly co-conspirator, a real friend. One problem Simon had was finding his face. He could see yellow eyes blinking from inside a muff of hair and sometimes a dot of nose, but no continuity of features that fell together. Simon tried to ignore his feeling that those eyes were more malevolent than accessible. He wondered if Shah still missed his mother, a loss with which Simon could easily empathize.

  When Robert J. finished assembling Shah’s EduPuss the family was eager to test their newest appliance but the Persian refused every offer of its special food and ignored the chemically treated green water. A pamphlet that came with the device advised patience since pussies were different from dogs—not loyal tail waggers, seemingly immune to commands, fierce guardians of their independence or the illusion of independence in the framework of domestic dependence. Cats functioned on their own terms in their own space and time. The pamphlet said at first a cat might try hard to resist EduPuss’s seductive electronic signal but would soon yield to the inevitable.

  Shah bolted to some hidden refuge and stayed invisible despite coaxing purrs, coos and ersatz meowing; he stayed out of sight for nearly a week. Out of sight was not out of mind. The Apples had a nervous sense of a hostile animal presence, and with the EduPuss firmly in place they were forced to use the upstairs facility.

  Since their cat seemed devoid of appetite, the appliance remained untried. The suggested patience wore thin. Still, EduPuss, Inc.’s share price edged up to twenty-nine which was some compensation.

  One evening, when Robert J. and Rowena went out to a movie, Simon finished his homework, came down to the kitchen and opened a can of sardines. He couldn’t tolerate solid food for himself but he often thought about the lost pleasures of taste, and sardine sandwiches had been among his favorite snacks. Just gazing at the headless fish made him salivate.

  While he enjoyed a fantasy meal, marveling at the art of sardine packaging, he heard an ominous hiss. Simon thought it was a break in his air hose, until he saw that the source of that furious sound was his practically forgotten kitten. Shah was crouched on a kitchen chair. Then suddenly he flew onto the counter, buried his face in the sardine can, grabbed a few fish, dove down to the floor and crouched again, those yellow eyes glowering above a mouthful of needle teeth.

  A quick thinker, Simon emptied the sardines into Shah’s bowl and watched while the cat gobbled them down along with a dose of the prescribed EduPuss diet. After his meal, Shah lapped at the green water then vanished again.

  Simon waited out the suggested hour, found EduPuss’s remote control and pressed its crucial button. Exactly as in the infomercial, the machine began to flash blue light and presumably broadcast its invitation. In minutes Simon saw his pet come—dragging his bottom, fighting momentum with his claws but drawn to the ramp and up the EduPuss tower where he squatted and shat a series of pellets that fell like smart bombs into the metal funnel over the toilet bowl.

  Simon marveled at the sight. It occurred to him that this was a terrific time to be alive, that technology was capable of improving on Creation i
tself, taming even the miniscule inconveniences of civilization. Compared to exploring the planets, controlling when and where his cat shat couldn’t be called triumphant but it was an exciting example of applying space-age research to make a difference on Earth.

  The furry clump was still squatting when the toilet began emptying itself with a vengeance. The plumbing in the Apple house, already skittish, gave out a thunderous boom; the pipes rattled like skeletons in an animated cartoon. Shah dived off his perch, splayed himself on the white bathroom rug Rowena had brought home from K-Mart and rolled in panic, pissing emerald colored liquid in every direction. Simon watched cat piss form a mandala of incredibly complex design. Swirls, webs, circles, triangles poured from ancestral caverns in the feline mind.

  Then Simon heard a chord as vibrant as a hosanna played on a cathedral organ echo through the basement. He saw the ceramic toilet bowl split open like the bud of a tropical flower and felt water sloshing around his Reebocks. He watched the EduPuss demolish itself, imploding in a shower of sparks that formed high voltage eels prowling the flood. Shah changed to a porcupine; his fur crackled with static. Simon ran out of the house yelling for help with the traumatized kitten clinging to his shoulder.

  A fireman told Robert J. and Rowena that only a miracle spared their home and only his rubber-soled sneakers saved their son from instant death by appliance. Simon tried to fault EduPuss for the near disaster but with valuable stock options resting in their bank vault, his father and step mother focused blame on him, claiming it was Simon who’d misused the product by ignoring clear guidelines in the instruction manual.

  Worse yet, when the firemen left, Robert J. said, “Simon, how could you torment an innocent kitten? You’re not ready to care for an animal. We’re going to send it back to Mr. Regis with a note of apology.”

  Rowena overruled her husband. She cuddled Shah against her breast the way Simon’s beloved Victoria once cuddled Robert J. The traitorous cat licked her cheek. When Simon reached for him Shah swiped at his hand. That night, Shah escaped the looming threat of a replacement EduPuss by climbing through an open window in Simon’s room and disappearing forever.

  Simon realized he’d grown close to his pet. Now, with Shah’s desertion, he had no allies in that house. He faced the lonely truth that only a fragile blood tie kept any semblance of domestic gravity intact in the Apple home.

  A concerned fireman reported the EduPuss episode to The Glenda Express. The story echoed in The Wall Street Journal and Barron’s Weekly. EduPuss’s infomercial was banned from the airwaves until its advertising was altered to include a warning about a possible fire hazard or the danger of fatal shock. Sales plummeted. EduPuss stock tanked.

  32

  In Glenda, the EduPuss incident accentuated Simon’s reputation as a dysfunctional celebrity. His bizarre fame provoked a mix of envy and hostility from the boys at Glenda Middle School egged on by Albert Essman whose gang of Assassins had disbanded under pressure from school authorities.

  Simon’s infrequent classroom comments, punctuated by bubbling, provoked gurgles and fish faces from the jocks. Every few weeks some wag spray-painted graffiti on his water bottle. He found cans of mealy worms in his locker. Simon regarded those putrid gestures as twisted signs of his peculiar popularity among the chronically inarticulate.

  When he discussed some recent indignity with Rowena, she liked saying, “God works in mysterious ways His blessings to bestow.” It appeared to Simon that it was the only way God worked.

  Simon’s tainted touch of glory bothered the rutting males at Glenda Middle School. The females were compassionate, solicitous, even bewitched. Young blossoms surrounded him in the corridors, shared his table in the cafeteria where he went to keep contact with the idea of real food, offered to be his study partner. Simon was the first one invited to the A-list parties; he got unsigned declarations of love; his telephone rang into the wee hours, the anonymous callers silent except for erratic breathing and tempting giggles. Those calls forced Robert J. to pay for a private line to his son’s bedroom.

  Monogamous by nature, Simon’s own romantic fantasies generally focused on Polly Moon. For wet dreams though, the ones he called “honorable discharges,” Placebo was off limits; she was being saved for better things. For purposes of gratifying loveless lust he drew on a library of movie stars and Playboy centerfolds to exercise his privates.

  Simon was proud of his epic masturbations, elaborate productions for which he served as writer, director, producer, art director, cinematographer, costume designer, composer of intricate scores, the whole crew. He gave himself special credit for careful casting and even did his own stunts.

  As for Polly Moon, she’d emerged from childhood hibernation as part weed, part daffodil. Simon’s serious qualms when Placebo agreed to draw her skies all-the-way-down in elementary school proved unfounded. The adolescent Polly had a first-class mind. She was curious about everything, eager to challenge the most accepted bromides. She wore a peace symbol sewn onto the backside of her blue jeans and a picture of The Beatles on her blouse. She sang dirty folk songs about Nixon’s pardon after Watergate (when the President resigned his office, Simon felt abruptly disconnected from the nexus of power suspecting that Nixon lost interest in his case). Polly was sure of her own future victories, a whirling nebula. She was confident and optimistic enough to master the basics of electric guitar and write songs about lost love, separation, and ultimate decay.

  Polly might laugh at the shape of clouds or go silent as a candle in the midst of general hilarity. Her weather was as unpredictable as April; she even smelled like early spring. Most important, for the first time since Simon saw Placebo in her carriage, she turned reasonably civil.

  Over the winter—it seemed like a miracle—Simon and Polly became buddies. They went for long walks together, quoting back and forth from Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, William Butler Yeats, Hart Crane, Robinson Jeffers, Matthew Arnold and the ancient Simon considered his mentor, Omar the Tentmaker. They argued about who wrote Shakespeare’s plays and if Sylvia Plath might have been cured by a series of enemas. Polly ripped into Hemingway and Mailer while Simon accused her of chronic penis envy. They discussed the horror of Vietnam, the fate of the human species, submarines with bellies filed with nuclear bombs slithering under Arctic ice caps, lingering screams from victims of the holocaust and racial injustice, evolution versus creationism, social issues like Lucille Ball’s frantic attempts to get a life beyond the range of Desi Arnaz’s patronizing smirk.

  They sat on rocks, comparing indignities, elated over being depressed. Simon took pleasure watching Polly eat bags of potato chips, slow-lick strawberry cones, tongue the chocolate jackets off marshmallow twists. They remembered Victoria’s songs and Fritzel’s addiction to vitamin pills and exercise. The same Fritzel still worked for the Moon family three days a week. She’d married a postal clerk but the marriage only lasted a year.

  When Polly mentioned the name of an author, painter, composer, politician or overnight sensation Simon hadn’t heard of, he’d run to the library trying hard to keep up with her erudition. When he talked about pitchers, catchers, goalies, point guards, quarterbacks, tight ends, Polly tried hard to look interested. What they never discussed was Simon’s gills or the plurping noise he made when their conversations turned intense; Polly came to accept his liquid agitation as a kind of punctuation. Her pet name for Simon was The Carbonated Holden Caulfield.

  She began smoking Virginia Slims cigarettes; he held Marlboros to his intake valve. They made smoke trails like the jet planes that flew over Glenda, speculating on the destinations of those silver birds. They imagined life in Casablanca, Marrakech, Katmandu, Lhasa (Fuck Paris, Rome, London, New York, Bermuda, the predictable peasant destinations explored by tour groups sponsored by the Lion’s Club, Elks or Moose).

  Simon brought news of black holes, quarks and parallel universes into the mix; he became an avid reader of Fantasy & Science Fiction and Omni. Polly drew maps of other dimensio
ns and portraits of life forms with bulbous heads and lizard bodies, possessors of infinite wisdom come to drain humans with suction-cup lips, impregnate virgins through their elbows, giddy with superior powers, eager to kill, conquer and rule the blue planet.

  “This is so cool,” Polly said one afternoon. “I used to hate your guts, Simon. You turned my stomach. Fritzel made up ghost stories with you as the spook. I got rashes from the way you stared at me in kindergarten. To me you were dog shit on the sidewalk. And now for some reason I like you. Talk about a parallel universe.”

  “I always liked you, Placebo,” Simon said. “I hope it’s not my disability that’s changed your feelings. I wouldn’t want to be pitied.”

  “I suppose I do partly pity you,” Polly said. “The water thing does contract your horizons. Generally, I think you handle the problem very well. I admire your attitude. Still, if I can be totally honest, when I think about us, you know, together, I can’t get past that glass wall. What I’m trying to say is I want to kiss you on the lips.”

  She took Simon’s hand and rubbed his fingers. “I want you to know that Albert Essman asked me to the prom and I said yes. I like dancing as much as I like kissing but it would bug me to watch your face slosh around whenever you made a move. Besides, you didn’t ask me and Albert did.” Simon knew Polly couldn’t see that his eyes filled with tears but he turned his back on her just in case.