Highly Irregular Stories

Critical acclaim for Richard Grayson’s earlier books: “Grayson shows a sense of humor and appreciation of the weird. This writer is not afraid to take risks, and he can be very funny indeed…A versatile, interesting experimenter…Grayson knows New York City, where many of his stories are set, inside and out…Compulsively talky and engagingly disjunctive.” – Publishers Weekly “The incessant familiarity of the writer’s secret self makes his world entertaining and bizarre. The dialogue is consistently, even ingeniously funny…bright and keenly made.” – The New York Times Book Review “Grayson is a born storyteller and standup talker. Highly recommended.” – Library Journal “An underground post-modernist who writes comic fiction crammed with details adopted from pop culture and the daily news…capable of less selfconscious, more serious (though not less comic) work." – Kirkus Reviews “Grayson is able to create a full range of masks behind which the artist peers out to make his criticisms of modern life. Among writers born in the mid-point of our century, he holds an important spot.” – Israel Today

“Where avant-garde fiction goes when it turns into stand-up comedy.” – Rolling Stone “Grayson is shaking funny ingredients together like dice.” – Los Angeles Times “Convulsively inventive…The reader is dazzled by the swift, witty goings-on.” – Newsday “Shines with intelligence and even wit.” – Cleveland Plain Dealer “Grayson has a splendid command of language; he is steeped in literary history, is highly inventive.” – Orlando Sentinel “Slices of life as we know it right here and now…funny, intelligently written and original. These stories accurately capture snapshots of our culture at a very interesting moment.” – South Florida Sun-Sentinel “A satirist and parodist so timely that his brothers and sisters may not yet discern themselves in his mirror…Clearly a master of the genre…Wherever Grayson casts his gaze, he manages to isolate panoramas of city and small town life in America from the 60s to the present.” – American Book Review

HIGHLY IRREGULAR STORIES

Other Books by Richard Grayson Disjointed Fictions With Hitler in New York Lincoln’s Doctor’s Dog Eating at Arby’s I Brake for Delmore Schwartz The Greatest Short Story That Absolutely Ever Was Narcissism and Me I Survived Caracas Traffic The Silicon Valley Diet Diary of a Congressional Candidate in Florida’s Fourth Congressional District And to Think That He Kissed Him on Lorimer Street

Highly Irregular Stories

Richard Grayson

Dumbo Books ◊ Brooklyn 2006

Highly Irregular Stories Copyright © 2006 by Richard Grayson All Rights Reserved

Published in the United States by Dumbo Books of Brooklyn 72 Conselyea Street Brooklyn, New York 11211-2211 dumbobooksofbrooklyn.blogspot.com E-mail: [email protected]

ISBN 1-4116-5796-9

First Edition

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Brian Pera

INTRODUCTION

This book is a compilation of four out-of-print chapbooks. Disjointed Fictions was first published in 1978 as a special issue of the literary magazine X, A Journal of the Arts. George Myers Jr., the magazine’s Harrisburg-based editor and publisher, received a grant from the Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines and asked me to compile a short collection of stories to be published as both a special issue of the magazine and as a book, with a cover price of three dollars. I rented an IBM typewriter and typed out the six stories in it. Unfortunately, the typewriter store had given me only an italic ball and I was too shy to complain, so the whole book was “typeset” in italic font. The book was almost square and had a plain red cover I designed myself. It was quite ugly. The sole bookstore that ever carried it was the Eighth Street Bookshop in Greenwich Village, and only because I had friends there. In 1981, George reprinted it in a more professional-looking edition under the aegis of Cumberland Journal, the new name of his literary magazine. It included an introduction by Richard Kostelanetz and a bibliography of the hundred or so stories I had published, along with an author photo. Eating at Arby’s: The South Florida Stories was published by Grinning Idiot Press in the fall of 1982. The press was an offshoot of Jerry Weinberger’s Grinning Idiot literary magazine in Brooklyn. The chapbook was the result of a $3,000 fellowship in fiction writing from the Florida Arts Council. When I applied, I gave as my grant project

“a collection of stories about South Florida.” One local paper called the book “a draught of gall for the Arts Council,” but the 500 copies sold out quickly after I appeared on the Neil Rogers radio show and it was featured in various South Florida newspapers, which thoughtfully printed our post office box and the price (three dollars). Checks came in quickly, with some people ordering as many as ten copies each; I wished we had money for a second edition. I recently saw that a copy was selling online for over $350. The other two chapbooks were a result of other state arts council grants. For 1988-89 I received a second fellowship in fiction writing from Florida and also a writer-in-residence award from the New York State Council on the Arts (I did not have to be a resident for the latter grant). This gave me the money to help subsidize two more chapbooks of my stories that had appeared in various literary magazines. The Greatest Short Story That Ever Was was published by Tom Whalen’s Lowlands Press in New Orleans, a publisher connected with his longrunning literary magazine Lowlands Review. One of Tom’s former fiction writing students at the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts selected the stories to be included. I took some of the remaining stories and published them myself as Narcissism and Me. The publisher of record was Mule & Mule – my best friend and Manhattan roommate Nina Mule and her sister Linda graciously allowed me to use their names and the address of our apartment on the Upper West Side. I am enormously grateful to the editors and friends who helped me publish these stories.

CONTENTS

From Disjointed Fictions: A Disjointed Fiction … 1 Inside Barbara Walters … 9 Progress … 15 The Facts Are Always Friendly … 23 Escape from the Planet of the Humans … 35 17 Fragments in Search of a Story … 42

From Eating at Arby’s: At the beach … 51 A visit to Calle Ocho … 53 A drive down I-95 … 55 Shopping in the mall … 57 A pleasant visit … 59 A long boat ride … 61 Snowbirds … 63 Vacation plans … 65 A nice chiropractor … 67 A brand-new American … 69 A scary warning … 70 A strange experience … 71 A Chanukah party … 73 Fun with a gun … 75 Eating at Arby’s … 77 Unhappy Zelda … 79 July in South Florida … 81 Some sad news … 83

From The Greatest Short Story That Absolutely Ever Was: Myself Redux … 84 Let the Reader Beware … 88 My Twelfth Twelfth Story Story … 92 Sixteen Attempts to Justify My Existence … 96 There Are Eight Million Stories in New York; This is One of the Stupidest … 103 An Irregular Story … 109 The Greatest Short Story That Absolutely Ever Was … 116

From Narcissism and Me: Narcissism and Me … 121 My Grandfather’s Other Son … 127 My Life as an Old Comic … 134 The Governor of the State of Depression … 142 Innovations … 150 Some Arbitrary Answers … 156 Other People … 158 I Saw Mommy Kissing Citicorp … 163

HIGHLY IRREGULAR STORIES

A DISJOINTED FICTION

Raison d’être The anarchist’s bomb that killed Czar Alexander II in St. Petersburg in 1881 led to the Russian pogroms and the anti-Semitic May Laws of 1882. To these events we Americans owe countless things: the comedy of Woody Allen and Lenny Bruce; the popularity of psychoanalysis; the vaccine against polio; the radical movement on America’s campuses; the novels of Nathanael West and Philip Roth; the entrance of the noun “chutzpah” into The Random House Dictionary of the English Language; Al Jolson’s rendition of “Mammy” in blackface; seven gold medals won by the United States Olympic swimming team in 1972 in Munich; the Ziegfeld Follies; a certain kind of suburban vulgarity typified by the town of Woodmere, Long Island; the establishment of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union and that of Murder, Incorporated; Father Coughlin’s radio broadcasts; Sunday brunches featuring bagels and lox; the condominium culture of southern Florida; the fact that it is no longer considered good form to use the word “Jew” as a verb meaning “to bargain.” Furthermore and more importantly, these events in Russia a century ago led indirectly to my being here in the United States, to my becoming a fiction writer, to my writing of this story, and ultimately to your reading of it. So if you have any complaints about the rest of this story, address them to the anarchist whose

2 bomb snuffed out the life of the Czar. I take no responsibility for this whatsoever. (For the original model on which the first paragraph of this story is based, see Borges, Jorge Luis, “The Dread Redeemer Lazarus Morell,” A Universal History of Infamy, translated by N.T. di Giovanni, New York: E.P. Dutton & Company, 1972.) (For more background about me, see the paper by my former psychotherapist, Butler, Pamela, “The Treatment of Severe Agoraphobia by Employing Induced Anger as an Anxiety Inhibitor: A Case Study,” Journal of Behavior Therapy, December 1973, Volume VI, pages 327-329.)

Look Ma, I’m Writing I am having dinner in the East Side apartment of Hilary Cosell, daughter of the sportscaster Howard, and a beautiful, intelligent, industrious woman in her own right. “Do you like zucchini? You don’t, do you?” Hilary calls from the kitchen. I grow exasperated. It is the third time Hilary has asked me if I liked something on the menu and then answered her own question in the negative before I had a chance to respond. “You’re nearly as neurotic as me,” I tell her. “I’m not neurotic. I’m just a paranoid hostess,” she calls out. I saunter into the kitchenette, rest my eyes on sizzling zucchini. “I like that,” I say. “’The Paranoid Hostess.’ A great title for a story. I kind of see it as

3 the lead story in a collection: The Paranoid Hostess and Other Stories.” Hilary smiles. “If you use my name, I’ll sue you for every Lincoln penny you’ve got.” We eat our dinner by liquid candlelight. Hilary hates overhead lighting. I am shorter than she, so I sit propped up on two of her books: Bed/Time/Story by Jill Robinson and Haywire by Brooke Hayward. They are about real people. I don’t touch my zucchini because in fact I do hate it. After dinner we go into Hilary’s bedroom to watch The Pallisers. Hilary plays with her doggie, Tory – short for Victoria and not an indication of political sentiment – who is afraid of all men except Howard Cosell. Tory won’t come near me. We are watching Susan Hampshire acting the part of the Duchess of Omnium. She is very good. “Do you this was all written by a Trollope?” I ask Hilary. An old joke, but she laughs. I love her for that. She goes out of the room to answer the telephone. It must be an old boyfriend. While she is out of the room I leaf through TV Guide. I notice that it is possible to watch, all on this one day, episodes of I Love Lucy, The Lucy Show, Here’s Lucy, The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour, CBS Salutes 25 Years of Lucy, and the late movie, The Long Trailer, starring Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. I flick the dial. On Channel 47 the Three Stooges are on in Spanish. I realize how much we English speakers lose in translation. I flick the dial back to Channel 7 and I see Hilary’s father doing Monday Night Baseball. I switch back to The Pallisers before Hilary can come back into the room.

4 She is hugging her doggie. Next to her on the bed is a copy of The Forsyte Saga. “Are you reading that now?” I ask her. “I can’t get into it,” she tells me. “I’ve been stuck in one of Old Jolyon’s thought patterns for three days now.” Hilary would not have that problem with my fiction. She is a wonderful person, and I say that because I’m still a little afraid she might sue me. Abe Goldstein comes into my tiny adjunct’s office at the Long Island University’s downtown Brooklyn campus. “What’s doing?” he asks me. “Nothing.” “You look like you’re high.” “I’m writing a story,” I tell him. “I’m in a frenzy of creation.” “Oh,” Abe says. He looks down at the paper. “I see it’s about Hilary.” I nod. “You know, Abe, you could be like that visitor from Porlock who interrupted Coleridge when he was writing ‘Kubla Khan.’ What if I don’t remember the rest of my story after you leave?” “Gee,” Abe says, “I’d better get out of here. That’s too much responsibility for me to bear… Have a nice weekend.” Abe’s specialty is Chaucer. I am awakened by the phone in the middle of the night. It is Hilary. She knows that I have put her into one of my stories. “Until this moment, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness,” Hilary is saying into my ear.

5 “Little did I dream that you could be so cruel or so reckless.” Hilary’s words sound strangely familiar. “If it were in my power to forgive you for your reckless cruelty, I would do so,” Hilary tells my ear. Then I realize: She is quoting the lawyer Welch in his famous confrontation with Senator Joseph R. McCarthy (R-Wis.). “Have you no sense of decency left, sir? At long last, have you no sense of decency at all?” We are all children of television. My first word was Boraxo. “If there is a God in Heaven,” Hilary is saying, “this will do neither you nor your cause any good.”

Whom is Kidding Whom? Theodore Roosevelt was born in New York City, just like me. He was a delicate boy and so was I. But like myself, Teddy was determined to overcome his physical weakness and to strengthen himself for a strenuous life. He was graduated from Harvard College just like my next-door neighbor and the following year he married a Boston girl, a great-grand-aunt of my friend Caaron. He studied law at Columbia, where I once attended a lecture by Margaret Mead. He was elected to the New York State Assembly (my assemblyman, Dave Greenberg, was once one of those “Super-Cops” they called Batman and Robin). Roosevelt’s wife died in childbirth just like my cousin Sydelle. Roosevelt ran for mayor of New York on the Republican ticket, as John Lindsay was to do many

6 years later with my help. Defeated, he became police commissioner and then assistant secretary of the navy. When the Spanish-American War broke out (I did a term paper on it once), Roosevelt organized the Rough Riders, who led a successful cavalry charge at San Juan Hill in Cuba, where my parents honeymooned. A national hero like my fellow Brooklynite Barbra Streisand, Roosevelt was elected governor of New York and then vice-president. The only vice-president I have ever seen was Lyndon Johnson, and I only saw him presiding over the Senate from the gallery. (Misplaced modifier?) President McKinley was assassinated in Buffalo, where I once saw a Don McLean concert, and Roosevelt became President of the United States just two years before my Grandma Sylvia was born. Roosevelt believed in conservation, just like a girl I once went out with who worked at a recycling center in her spare time. He thought everyone was entitled to a “square deal,” including my eye doctor’s family who lived in Delaware at the time. After his reelection, Roosevelt led the fight for the Panama Canal, located near my friend José’s parents’ estate, which I was invited to one Christmas. He won the Nobel Prize for ending the Russo-Japanese War, a war my great-grandfather wanted to avoid fighting in so badly that he knocked out all of his own teeth to stop the Russians from drafting him. At the end of his second term Roosevelt went to Africa, scene of several of my dreams. He ran for President again in 1912, forty years before my birth, but was defeated. Roosevelt devoted the rest of his life to conservation, politics and writing, although I

7 have to admit I don’t think he paid as much attention to his writing as he should have. I’m involved in my writing twenty-six hours a day. Of course Roosevelt was too involved with himself to buckle down and work like I do.

Ordinary Peepholes While riding the IRT to see my literary agent, I am trying to ignore the amputee with the steel drum, the Black Muslim collecting for the Lamar 37X Breakfast Program, the junkie trying to sell his fouryear-old daughter, and the shopping bag lady with the Shavian talent for insults. My eye catches an unauthorized advertisement scrawled on the subway map across from my seat: FOR A GOOD LAY CALL 969-9970 It’s bad enough that this is my sister’s phone number, but what really hurts is that the handwriting is unmistakably my father’s. Note: Any nutjob out there attempting to dial my sister’s number will get a busy signal. This is because I cleverly changed her number to a fictional one. The suffix 9970 when preceded by any three digits will always produce a busy signal. A useful thing to know, especially if you’re a fiction writer.

Running out of Gas This is such a disjointed fiction. It is a mess. There are two kinds of fastidious people: those who recoil from messes and those who stay to clean

8 them up. Put me in the latter category. I’m going to stick around till the bitter end. Besides, I have no place to go. There is a terrible energy shortage and I do not wish to waste gasoline. It’s so expensive anyway. I wish I could write well-constructed stories like my friend Sally, my loose Sally of the mind. But I can’t. Leave us face it. Faced with what I have written, I feel like Adlai Stevenson when he felt like the little boy who stubbed his toe – too old to laugh and hurting too much to cry. I feel as though I am disgracing my whole family. And my ancestors too. Maybe I should write under a pen name the way Emily Bronte did. She called herself Ellis Bell. I could call myself Ellis Ireland. A famous little critic tells me I can do much better than these disjointed fictions. I ask that man: How, Irving, how? Let’s blow dis joint.

9 INSIDE BARBARA WALTERS

When Barbara Walters was in second grade, the teacher’s name was Miss Gura. One day Miss Gura got engaged and went up and down the aisles showing all of the second graders her diamond engagement ring. Each of the students had to say something about the ring, like “Ooh” or “It’s nice” or “Very pretty.” On Friday, Miss Gura told the boys and girls not to forget that Monday was Hobby Day and that they all must bring something from their hobbies to show the class. As soon as she got home from school, Barbara put her stamp album in the downstairs closet. But on Monday morning she was rushed and forgot it was Hobby Day. She didn’t remember until she was on the bus and saw the other children with their stuffed animals and kites and coin collections. Barbara got a sharp pain in her stomach and wondered how she would get out of the situation. Hen she remembered that she had a book with her: Curious George Goes to the Circus. She had taken it along to get Miss Gura’s permission to do a book report on it. When Miss Gura called Barbara up to the front of the room to show off her hobby, Barbara brought the Curious George book with her. “My hobby is reading,” said Barbara, and she went into a three-minute impromptu speech about reading and how much she liked doing it. Miss Gura was very interested and no one ever guessed that Barbara had forgotten her stamp album at home.

10 Years later, Barbara brought a Curious George doll home to her daughter. Barbara liked to say things in a funny screechy voice and pretend that her words were coming out of Curious George. Her daughter would laugh till she cried. On Today, Barbara was interviewing Senator McGovern. “I’m curious, George,” she said. “How does it feel to be so overwhelmingly rejected by the American electorate?” “Not so hot,” Senator McGovern told her. “To what do you attribute your crushing defeat?” “I think it happened because I wasn’t as well-read as President Nixon. You know, former President Eisenhower always admired Nixon’s reading skills. That’s why he picked him as his running mate in the first place. And I have to admit it: I just couldn’t keep up with Nixon in the reading department. Nobody can. Why, the President could tell you the author of any book – even the old Curious George ones we used to read when we were kids.” Denise Gura Kirmedjian, who had become a professor of Communication Studies after her children were born and her husband died, once graded a student’s term paper. The term paper was titled “The One-of-a-Kind Barbara Walters and Her Effect Upon Other People.” It was a bad term paper, rambling, disorganized, filled with comma splices and run-ons and fragments. Professor Kirmedjian gave it an F. She debated whether to write “I knew her when” wit the rest of her comments on the

11 bibliography page. “President Nixon,” Barbara asked, “what is the biggest problem facing your administration today?” This was in 1973. “Well,” said the President. “I think we would have to say it was poor reading skills. Recent studies have indicated that one out of every five Americans is functionally illiterate. This means that they cannot write an effective paragraph or do simple sums or read even juvenile books like Curious George, not to mention adult books like my own Six Crises or General Eisenhower’s At Ease: Stories I Tell My Friends. Old Ike was such a good story-teller, you know, and it’s a damned shame many people can’t appreciate his stuff today.” Barbara nodded her head in agreement and thought: This man is broadminded, shrewd, modest and kindly. We are lucky he reads so well. “I’m afraid your daughter is failing English,” said Ms. Ruga to Barbara Walters. “How can that be?” said Barbara, totally mystified. Ms. Ruga smiled. “Don’t be so alarmed, Ms. Walters. It is unbecoming in so famous a television personality. No, what I meant to say, what I should have said, is that your daughter lacks the necessary skills. It is no reflection on her upbringing, I assure you. But she just cannot read or write. She is a very good television viewer, however. She did an excellent report – oral, of course – on that new children’s series on CBS…you know, the one with the monkey.” Barbara frowned. “Yes, I let her watch it. It’s the first situation comedy featuring a single character,

12 only one, week in and week out. No other sitcom before it, no matter how realistic or bold or relevant or controversial, ever showed an individual isolated, alone, atomized….” “Yes,” said Ms. Ruga. “Other programs depend on a large cast of supporting characters, a family. I find this incongruous considering the current abominable state of family life in America. You are divorced like myself, I understand.” “This is true,” commented Barbara. Barbara Walters’s daughter could not get used to seeing her mother in person. Mostly she watched her on television. It was hard to get used to seeing her mother without problems in color adjustment, without the contrast too low and the brightness too high, without ghosts in the reception, without the distortion of the rounded cathode-ray tube – without, above all, the essential 525 alternating lines of tiny electrons that formed the familiar picture of Barbara Walters. The little girl was more than a little confused. “Look at this,” Harry Reasoner said, showing Barbara a news item he had just ripped off the UPI ticker. It was about a school principal who had been discovered to be functionally illiterate. The man’s name was Dr. Georg Kyrios. “Why, that’s my own daughter’s principal,” Barbara exclaimed. “This man has written things like ‘This student was suppose to get there language instruction without delay’s.’ Can you imagine that, Harry?” “No, I can’t,” said her co-anchorperson.

13

On television Barbara was interviewing a panel of scientists. These are some of the questions she asked them: “What is matter?” “In what way did the universe come into being?” “How does evolution work?” “Why is there sex?” All of the scientists just puffed on their pipes and shrugged their shoulders and looked at each other helplessly. Finally one of them said: “Our ignorance is atlantic.” “Could you be more specific?” Barbara asked him. When Barbara Walters went to the moon, she was accompanied by the President of the United States. It was a long trip and they had to sleep on the way there. During this time, the neurons in the pontine stem at the back of Barbara’s brain fired rapidly and automatically, generating nerve impulses that activated her forebrain. Barbara’s forebrain imposed images and narratives on the arbitrary firing of her pontine. The results of all this were dreams. On the spaceship on the way to the moon, Barbara dreamed that she was back in second grade. It was Hobby Day and she had left her stamp collection in the downstairs closet at home. Miss Gura called on her and Barbara just stammered. “I…I forgot it,” she said. Miss Gura looked very displeased and the children started to laugh.

14 “You will never be a television personality now,” Miss Gura told her. Barbara felt ashamed and very small. She started crying because this mistake had cost her her destiny. Then the President shook her back to reality. “It was just a nightmare,” he told her. “Nothing to worry about. You’re here with me and millions of television viewers and we are on our way to the moon.” “Thank God,” said Barbara Walters. “You’re welcome,” said Curious George.

15 PROGRESS

After the bus arrived at the Port Authority I started walking. I walked to the East Side and went into Bloomingdale’s. I was trying on cotton shirts in front of the mirror in their Young Men’s Shop and trying to see what I would look like in them when I felt him touch my shoulder. “You shouldn’t wear cotton shirts,” he said. I could see him in the mirror. He was just about an inch or two taller than me. “You should really wear knit shirts. Have you ever tried on a Huk-a-poo?” He brought one over, laid it out over my chest and stomach. “This should be your size. You’re a small, all right. Try this on.” I went into the dressing room, took off the cotton shirt, put on the knit shirt. It was clingy and it had women’s faces as the design on it. He was waiting for me in front of the mirror. His own shirt was pulled up. He was examining his stomach. “That looks great on you,” he told me. “But you shouldn’t button those top two buttons. It looks sort of stretched-out over there.” He unbuttoned the buttons. “There! That looks nice. I wish I could wear these kind of things, but my belly sticks out. I’m doing a lot of sit-ups now, thirty every night just before I go to bed, but they just make you firm, they don’t really take off the pounds.” I looked at us both in the mirror. A floorwalker was staring at us. I guess he thought we were brothers. “I’ve been skipping rope also,” he told me. He was scratching his elbow. “Muhammad Ali does a

16 lot of that. In fact, I think he endorsed the rope that I have at home. It’s called the Rope-a-Dope after him.” He and I went into the dressing room and I put back on my own shirt. It had a small mustard stain on it, from the frankfurter I got at the Port Authority. He didn’t watch me as I changed. He turned away but he kept talking. “Do you like yogurt?” he asked me. I shrugged. “Never tried it.” “No? Come on and we’ll get some frozen yogurt. I’m supposed to be eating yogurt anyway because I’m taking tetracycline for my acne. The tetracycline takes away bacteria and if you don’t want diarrhea you should eat a lot of yogurt.” He paid for my shirt. The cashier smiled at us when she gave me the package. “Of course frozen yogurt really doesn’t have that much bacteria,” he said as we walked out of the store. “I think it gets killed off when they freeze it. But you’ll probably like it better than non-frozen yogurt. I think you should get banana the first time. It isn’t so sour.” I really didn’t think much of the yogurt. The banana tasted pretty sour to me. It reminded me of when I was a little kid and my parents took me to a rum distillery in Puerto Rico and there were these big vats of fermenting rum. That smelled sour, too. I didn’t get sick then – in fact I even drank a rum coke they gave us for free – but in the fall, when I had a stomach virus up at school, I couldn’t get that sour smell of fermenting rum out of my mind. So I didn’t eat much of my yogurt. He was disappointed. “You can’t just not eat anything,” he said, annoyed. “No wonder you’re so

17 skinny. Frozen yogurt’s got less calories than ice cream, though.” He ate my yogurt, too. Then we went to the parking lot to get his car. “It’s a Chevette,” he said. “See, it’s good on mileage and it’s just small enough so I don’t have to be bothered chauffeuring all my friends around. I have a lot of friends and hardly any of them have cars. They depend upon me a lot, but I’m trying to stop them from taking advantage of me.” I frowned. He put his hand on my shoulder again. “Hey, I didn’t mean you….I’ll take you anywhere you want to go. Except the Bronx. I don’t know my way around there too well.” Some man screeched up with the Chevette and we got in it. “My name’s Eric,” he told me as we drove off. “Eric St. James Cornell.” “I’m Ricky,” I told him. On Lexington Avenue he went through a red light. It was more or less decided that I was going to stay with him. He had a circular apartment. Every room was connected to every other room. The first thing he said to me when we got there was: “Listen, if the phone rings, I want you to answer it and say I’m not home. I can’t be bothered with any of my friends tonight. I’m tired and I want to cook us a nice dinner. Do you like stuff cooked in a wok?” I said I wasn’t sure. “Don’t worry, you’ll like it,” he said, smiling. “It’s chicken, but Vietnamese style. There’s pineapple in it, and coconuts. You’re not allergic to any of that stuff, are you?” “No,” I said, and then I cleared my throat.

18 I sat on the bed, which was round, too. I could hear his voice from the kitchen. He was cooking things already. “I bet you’ve been living on junk food,” his voice said. “I bet you eat all that stuff with empty carbohydrates and additives in it. Like Pringles Potato Chips.” He stuck his head in the bedroom. “You know they’ve got all these chemicals in it, don’t you?” “I like Wise better anyway.” He winked at me. Or maybe it was a twitch – I hadn’t known him long enough to be sure. “Wise isn’t so good for you, either. You should try the sesame sticks I buy in the health food store. I’d let you have some now except I had a big party the other night and everyone ate them. I’ll get some more tomorrow.” He was back in the kitchen. I started to open his desk drawer, wondering if he could hear the noise. Then I heard him tell me to put on my new shirt for dinner. His table was low so we had to sit on the floor like Japanese. The Vietnamese chicken was pretty good. I didn’t eat the mushrooms. “…So then this girl said, ‘I’ve only had three major beaus.’ And I said to her, ‘That puts you two up on The Amateur Hour, except they had Ted Mack, too.” He laughed so much he started coughing. I laughed too, a little. The phone rang. He sort of jumped up. “You answer it,” he ordered me. “Tell them I’m not home but be sure to find out who it is.” It turned out to be a wrong number. They wanted a lady named Diane.

19 Eric didn’t talk much for a while. We had fresh pineapple slices for dessert. I figured he really must have liked pineapple a lot to have it twice in one meal. Suddenly he jumped up again. “My meeting!” he said. “I forgot. I have to go to this important block association meeting. I’m the head of the tree parent committee and I’ve got to bring the chart I made of all the trees on the block so that people can sign their names by the tree they’re going to be tree parents of.” He rushed to the bedroom and got his chart. I could tell he had spent a long time on it. It was on oaktag, and he drew the chart with different colored magic markers. “Will you clean up?” he said as he hurried out. “Sure,” I said. But he had already slammed the door. I was nervous because it was three o’clock in the morning and he hadn’t come back. I couldn’t imagine a block association meeting taking that long. Nobody could argue for that many hours about what trees they were going to take care of. I started wondering if Eric got mugged or murdered or had an accident or something. I thought of calling the police but they would have asked me what I was doing in his apartment. By four o’clock I was scared out of my wits. I began to think about the time they called me into the headmaster’s office up at school and told me what happened to my parents, and I hate thinking of that. The only pills in his medicine cabinet were tetracycline and Tylenol and I had already taken four Tylenols and they hadn’t helped.

20 I found the number of an all-night drugstore who delivered in the phone book and I called them up. “Can you deliver to my apartment right away?” I asked the druggist. I gave him the address and then said, “The name’s Cornell.” “Certainly,” the druggist said. “I’ll send our boy out right away. What is it you want?” I thought for a moment. “Compōz,” I told him. I figured that would help me sleep. “Well, you sound pretty composed right now, Mrs. Cornell,” the druggist said. He thought I was a woman. I guess I have a pretty high voice. I guess I sounded calm too, even though I was anything but. I laughed a little, trying to keep sounding like a lady. “Yes,” I said to the druggist. “But a little more composure couldn’t hurt.” I waited and waited but nobody came. I closed my eyes for just a minute and before I knew it, I was having this really bad dream. It was about my parents and the accident and Eric came in at the end without a head and said how he needed my head to replace his, which had been cut off. I woke up sweating bullets. The digital clock was it was after six a.m. I had no idea what to do. I put on the TV and watched a test pattern. It made me feel less alone. At seven o’clock The Today Show came on. They were just about to have Floyd Kalber give the news when I heard the door open. “Eric?” I shouted out. “No, drugstore,” a voice said. At first I thought it was Eric joking, because it sounded a lot like him, but then I realized he wouldn’t have known about the drugstore.

21 The boy came into the bedroom. He was wearing a Huk-a-poo shirt similar to the one I’d bought, only his designs were of dancers. “You wanted Compōz?” he said. I stood up and went over to take the package from him. He was just an inch or two shorter than me. “How come you took so long?” I asked him. I opened the bottle and swallowed two tablets without water although it was probably too late. On TV Lew Wood was giving the weather. He shrugged his shoulders. I figured he was waiting for a tip. All night I had gone through all of the drawers and couldn’t find any of Eric’s money. I didn’t know what to do. The kid looked tired. He was Italian or Puerto Rican. “Hey,” I said, embarrassed. “I don’t have money for a tip and I don’t even have money to pay for the Compōz.” I thought he might get really mad, but he didn’t. “That’s okay, man,” he said. “Maybe I could make you breakfast or something,” I said to him. “I’m not sure of where things are in the kitchen, but maybe I could find a skillet and make us French toast.” He smiled. “That’s cool, man. I dig French toast.” “Yeah,” I told him. We went into the kitchen. “Of course you have to be careful not to get too many eggs, for when you get older,” I said. “Cholesterol.” He sat down on the floor by the table, unbuttoned another button on his shirt. ”My name’s Rico,” he said. I found the skillet in a cabinet below the stove.

22 “I’m Ricky,” I told him.

23 THE FACTS ARE ALWAYS FRIENDLY

On December 21, 1972, at 11:48 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, the sun entered the sign of Capricorn and winter began in the Northern Hemisphere. On December 22, 1972, at 11:49 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, Kevin Miller stopped to kiss Ronna Berkowitz on a deserted beach and told her that he loved her, a statement to which Ronna responded, "It's been awfully hard without you lately." On December 23, 1972, Kevin Miller and Ronna Berkowitz attended a showing of Sunday, Bloody Sunday, a film in which the actress Glenda Jackson speaks the following lines of dialogue: "I'm sick of all this bullshit that anything is better than nothing...Sometimes nothing has to be better than just anything." On December 24, 1972, Avis Feintuch read a letter to the editor of The Village Voice written by her friend Kevin Miller, a letter which read in part: "...Is the world so depressing a place that there's never anything good to report? Maybe we should just chuck the whole thing...." On December 25, 1972, following Christmas dinner with her father and his wife, Ronna Berkowitz asked Kevin Miller if he ever got angry, a question to which Kevin responded, "Not as often as I would like to." On December 26, 1972, Avis Feintuch heard a ripping sound and knew that this meant that Alan Karpoff was tearing the wrapper off a lubricated latex condom.

24 On December 27, 1972, Avis Feintuch told Kevin Miller that Alan Karpoff treated her so nicely she couldn't believe what was happening; "I'm so used to being shitted on" were Avis's exact words. On December 28, 1972, Ronna Berkowitz went to the college library to do research for a term paper about bird symbolism in Yeats, only to find the library closed due to the national day of mourning for former President Harry S. Truman. On December 29, 1972, Kevin Miller unsuccessfully attempted to write a "statement of purpose" on an application for admission to graduate study in the Department of Government at George Washington University. On December 30, 1972, Kevin Miller and Ronna Berkowitz, on their way to dinner, encountered Scott Koestner, the former boyfriend of Avis Feintuch, who informed them that Avis was "having a nervous breakdown over her term papers and calls me three times a day," a statement which Kevin later suggested might be wishful thinking on Scott's part. On December 31, 1972, at 11:50 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, Ronna Berkowitz refused a marijuana cigarette which had already been smoked by Avis Feintuch, Alan Karpoff, Kevin Miller and several other persons attending a New Year's Eve party at Alan Karpoff's house. On January 1, 1973, at 4:24 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, Ronna Berkowitz asked Kevin Miller if he had ever been in love with his friend Avis Feintuch, a question to which Kevin replied, "It doesn't really matter now, does it?" On January 2, 1973, at 3:19 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, Kevin Miller fell asleep while typing up a research paper comparing the Liberal

25 Party of the United Kingdom with the Free Democratic Party of the Federal Republic of Germany. On January 3, 1973, Avis Feintuch made the statement, "I wonder what Scott Koestner wants from my life," a statement referring to the fact that her old boyfriend Scott had sent her an empty package of Benson & Hedges cigarettes in the mail. On January 4, 1973, Ronna Berkowitz asked Kevin Miller if they could go back to the beach again during the coming weekend, a request to which Kevin responded affirmatively. On January 5, 1973, Scott Koestner telephoned Avis Feintuch and asked if he could see her, a request to which Avis responded negatively, telling him that she would be spending the weekend mountain-climbing with Alan Karpoff. On January 6, 1973, Scott Koestner told Kevin Miller that Avis Feintuch had become, in his words, "a real bitch," a statement which Kevin denied in silence. On January 7, 1973, Ronna Berkowitz, in responding to a question from Kevin Miller wondering how long it would take for them to start having quarrels, said, "God, give us a few weeks at least." On January 8, 1973, Scott Koestner had a nocturnal emission while dreaming about Avis Feintuch. On January 9, 1973, Scott Koestner said to Kevin Miller after they saw Ronna Berkowitz get on the B-36 bus, "Finally you've got a girl I approve of," a statement to which Kevin responded, "Yeah, but I'm waiting for the balloon to burst."

26 On January 10, 1973, Avis Feintuch and Alan Karpoff lay in the back seat of a 1968 Pontiac, fogging up the automobile's windows. On January 11, 1973, Ronna Berkowitz took a short break from studying for final exams to have coffee with Scott Koestner, to whom she confessed that she had for some unknown reason become depressed lately, a statement to which Scott responded, "Do you and Kevin see much of Avis and that mountain-climbing jerk?" On January 12, 1973, Leo Wolfson, novelist and professor of English, told Ronna Berkowitz that he found a great deal of anger hidden in the short stories that Ronna had written for his Fiction Writing course. On January 13, 1973, Ronna Berkowitz called Kevin Miller in great distress following an argument with her mother, who had told Ronna that she was just as selfish as her father, Mrs. Berkowitz's former husband. On January 14, 1973, Kevin Miller stayed in bed all day, feeling ill and depressed, wondering if he was doing the right thing in getting involved with Ronna Berkowitz, and wondering if he really loved her or if their relationship was a neurotic one. On January 15, 1973, Scott Koestner asked Kevin Miller if he would accompany him on a trip to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, during their intersession vacation, a request to which Kevin responded negatively. On January 16, 1973, Alan Karpoff asked Avis Feintuch if she would accompany him on a trip to Atlanta, Georgia, during their intersession vacation, a request to which Avis responded enthusiastically. On January 17, 1973, Avis Feintuch's parents informed her that they would no longer continue to

27 support her financially if she went ahead with her scheduled trip to Atlanta with Alan Karpoff. On January 18, 1973, Ronna Berkowitz told Kevin Miller that his illness might be a way of avoiding something. On January 19, 1973, Kevin Miller began to feel better following a session with a clinical psychologist, Dr. Ellen Porter. On January 20, 1973, at 2:43 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, Alan Karpoff, while waiting on Interstate 95 just outside Dunn, North Carolina, for representatives of the American Automobile Association to arrive to repair his broken-down car, gave Avis Feintuch a look which she would later describe to Kevin Miller as one "that could kill." On January 21, 1973, Scott Koestner had sexual intercourse with a seventeen-year-old girl in a motel room in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. On January 22, 1973, Avis Feintuch had sexual intercourse with Alan Karpoff in the bedroom of a friend's house in Atlanta, Georgia. On January 23, 1973, Kevin Miller attempted to have sexual intercourse with Ronna Berkowitz, who protested that she was not yet ready to do so. On January 24, 1973, Kevin Miller registered for twelve credits for his last semester as an undergraduate, "pulling" two courses for Ronna Berkowitz, who, as a lower junior, would not legally register for two days. On January 25, 1973, Scott Koestner, noticing Alan Karpoff and Avis Feintuch walking hand in hand on the college campus, sarcastically asked Kevin Miller, "So when's their wedding?" On January 26, 1973, Kevin Miller, while breathing hard and lying horizontally on top of Ronna Berkowitz, said jokingly, "Gee, I really

28 appreciate your doing this, especially since I know it's not any fun for you," a statement to which Ronna replied laughingly, "Who have you been talking to?" On January 27, 1973, a cease-fire of all hostilities in the Viet Nam conflict went into effect as provided by an agreement signed in Paris by Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho. On January 28, 1973, Scott Koestner phoned Avis Feintuch, who had earlier in the week told them that they could do something together that weekend provided Alan Karpoff went mountainclimbing; Scott said, "So Prince Charming's away?" -- a statement to which Avis responded, "Look, do you want to do something or not?" On January 29, 1973, Avis Feintuch was called a "slut" by her mother. On January 30, 1973, Avis Feintuch asked Kevin Miller about the criminal penalties for matricide. On January 31, 1973, Kevin Miller told Avis Feintuch that he could be happy seeing Ronna Berkowitz "twenty-four hours a day." On February 1, 1973, Ronna Berkowitz dreamed that Kevin Miller left her to sleep with Avis Feintuch. On February 2, 1973, a groundhog in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, almost saw its own shadow. On February 3, 1973, Ronna Berkowitz came down with influenza. On February 4, 1973, Alan Karpoff climbed to the summit of a mountain just outside New Paltz, New York, while Avis Feintuch had sexual intercourse with her old boyfriend Scott Koestner, regretting the act even as it was happening.

29 On February 5, 1973, Avis Feintuch fell asleep during a Classics class, an 8 a.m. lecture course entitled Women in Antiquity. On February 6, 1973, Kevin Miller felt uncomfortable as he noticed the great tension between Scott Koestner and Alan Karpoff, who were sitting on the either side of him in the lobby of Hamilton Hall. On February 7, 1973, the United States Senate voted 70-0 to establish a special committee headed by Senator Sam J. Ervin of North Carolina to investigate what had become known as the Watergate affair. On February 8, 1973, Kevin Miller told Ronna Berkowitz that he had never seen Avis Karpoff looking happier than she did in Alan Karpoff's presence that afternoon at lunch at The Golden Roost. On February 9, 1973, Ronna Berkowitz opened a note which she had received from Kevin Miller in that morning's mail, a note which told Ronna that Kevin loved her even though she was paranoid. On February 10, 1973, Avis Feintuch told her father to tell Scott Koestner, who was on the telephone, that she was not at home. On February 11, 1973, Scott Koestner got into a fistfight with another student over a parking space, a fight which resulted in a cut lip on Scott's part and no injury whatsoever to the other student. On February 12, 1973, Kevin Miller asked Ronna Berkowitz if she would mind if Scott Koestner, who had been very depressed of late, came over to Ronna's house with Kevin, a request to which Ronna acceded, though rather reluctantly. On February 13, 1973, at 1:41 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, Ronna Berkowitz kissed Kevin

30 Miller at the door of her apartment and said, referring to Scott Koestner, "Next time please leave him home." On February 14, 1973, Avis Feintuch gave Alan Karpoff a Valentine while they were sitting on a Castro convertible couch, eating navel oranges and watching the Marx Brothers film A Night at the Opera on television. On February 15, 1973, Alan Karpoff gave Avis Feintuch a Valentine, apologizing for not getting one earlier and stating that he had not realized "those kinds of things" were important to her. On February 16, 1973, Scott Koestner asked Kevin Miller why Avis Feintuch was ignoring him. On February 17, 1973, Kevin Miller asked Avis Feintuch why she was ignoring Scott Koestner. On February 18, 1973, Alan Karpoff had lunch at The Golden Roost with Ronna Berkowitz because there was no one else around, a lunch during the course of which Alan wondered several times what Kevin Miller or anybody else could see in someone like Ronna. On February 19, 1973, Scott Koestner received a letter notifying him that he had been accepted for admission to the Law School of the University of Pennsylvania. On February 20, 1973, Scott Koestner received birthday cards from several people, among them Kevin Miller and Ronna Berkowitz; he did not receive one from Avis Feintuch. On February 21, 1973, Avis Feintuch wondered why she had missed her menstrual period. On February 22, 1973, Scott Koestner was fired from his part-time job as an assistant manager of a store owned by the CVS pharmacy chain because he

31 had been trying to organize the store's employees into a union. On February 23, 1973, Kevin Miller was awakened following a disturbing dream in which he had enjoyed sexual relations with Alan Karpoff. On February 24, 1973, Kevin Miller found Avis Feintuch sitting on a bench outside Hamilton Hall, looking upset because she had been waiting twentyeight minutes for Alan Karpoff, who was apparently not going to appear as scheduled. On February 25, 1973, Ronna Berkowitz returned from her kitchen with two cups of rose hips tea to find Kevin Miller asleep on the floor in front of the television set, which was broadcasting the third episode of the Public Broadcasting System's cinema-verité documentary series, An American Family, dealing with the day-to-day lives of William and Patricia Loud of Santa Barbara, California, and their four children. On February 26, 1973, a sonogram would have shown a fetus in the uterus of Avis Feintuch. On February 27, 1973, Ronna Berkowitz told Kevin Miller that she was thinking of spending the summer traveling in Europe with two girlfriends, a statement which upset Kevin a great deal, though he successfully attempted to hide it. On February 28, 1973, Scott Koestner wondered if Kevin Miller and Ronna Berkowitz actually had sexual relations together. On March 1, 1973, Kevin Miller told the clinical psychologist Dr. Ellen Porter that "sex makes a person defenseless and vulnerable" and alluded to various hurtful experiences he had had in his past. On March 2, 1973, Avis Feintuch consulted Dr. Steven Polk, gynecologist and obstetrician.

32 On March 3, 1973, Scott Koestner told Kevin Miller, while they were drinking from a pitcher of dark beer in The Golden Roost, that "Life sucks," a statement with which Kevin did not agree or disagree. On March 4, 1973, Avis Feintuch, while smoking a marijuana cigarette, told Kevin Miller that she felt all of her neuroses were coming back because she was so busy with her Classics homework and her part-time job in a lingerie store, and because Alan Karpoff was always so busy with his mountain-climbing that they rarely saw each other anymore. On March 5, 1973, Avis Feintuch cried continuously for fifty-one minutes. On March 6, 1973, Avis Feintuch saw Scott Koestner during a crowded passing between classes and smiled and waved to him, gestures which Scott did not respond to or acknowledge. On March 7, 1973, at 3:45 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, while spreading Deaf Smith peanut butter across a slice of whole wheat bread, Ronna Berkowitz told Kevin Miller for the first time, "You know I love you, don't you?" – a statement to which Kevin responded with a smile and a nod of his head. On March 8, 1973, Avis Feintuch told Kevin Miller a secret. On March 9, 1973, Kevin Miller told Ronna Berkowitz a secret. On March 10, 1973, Ronna Berkowitz, Kevin Miller and Avis Feintuch sat in chairs in Ronna's kitchen debating whether they would tell the secret to Alan Karpoff and/or Scott Koestner. On March 11, 1973, Ronna Berkowitz took Kevin Miller's hand as they witnessed Ronna's cousin step on a wine glass under a wedding

33 canopy, thus confirming the sacrament of marriage in the Jewish religion. On March 12, 1973, Scott Koestner had sexual relations with two different women, neither of whom was Avis Feintuch. On March 13, 1973, Alan Karpoff failed a geology midterm. On March 14, 1973, Alan Karpoff and Ronna Berkowitz joined others in a debate about the merits of various films and performers nominated for Academy Awards. On March 15, 1973, President Richard M. Nixon, in a policy statement on the use of executive privilege, barred staff members and former staff members from testifying before Congressional committees. On March 16, 1973, Avis Feintuch slept over at Ronna Berkowitz's house following a dilation and curettage performed at a clinic in downtown Brooklyn. On March 17, 1973, Alan Karpoff could not understand why Avis Feintuch's mother had told him Avis was spending the night at Ronna Berkowitz's house since Avis and Ronna were not particularly close friends. On March 18, 1973, Scott Koestner, after a 10 a.m. Political Theory course, told Kevin Miller that Kevin's lifestyle was "self-satisfiedly neurotic," a statement to which Kevin did not respond. On March 19, 1973, Ronna Berkowitz began writing a short story featuring fictional characters that were based upon herself, Kevin Miller, Avis Feintuch, Alan Karpoff and Scott Koestner, already contemplating the reaction to the story by Professor Leo Wolfson, novelist and professor of English, and

34 her fellow students in the Advanced Fiction Writing Workshop course. On March 20, 1973, at 7:07 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, the sun entered the sign of Aries, thus ending the season of winter in the Northern Hemisphere.

35 ESCAPE FROM THE PLANET OF THE HUMANS

Look: A man is writing a story. That man is me. I am a man even though I do not think of myself as a man. Most of the time I think of myself as a guy. Sometimes I think of myself as a fiction writer. If I were to be killed when my car turned over on the New Jersey Turnpike, the headline on page 23 of The Daily News would read MAN, 26, DIES IN JERSEY AUTO CRASH. If I were to be found dead and decomposing in Morningside Park one early spring morning, the headline on page 17 of The New York Times would read BODY DISCOVERED IN PARK; POLICE TERM IT ‘SUICIDE’. If I were to write wonderful books and grow old gracefully and become a member of the Literature Panel of the National Endowment for the Arts, the headline on page 11 of The New York Post might read WRITER HONORED AT FORUM, but I doubt it. I doubt it because of the trouble this writer, this body, this man is having writing his story. The man gets an idea for a story and begins writing it. The first three pages come off his typewriter like apple butter. Then he stops to read over what he has written. He realizes that the conception of his story is brilliant. It is clever and would be just the thing for The New Yorker. When the man realizes how good his story is, he cannot go on with it. He puts away his typewriter and the pages he has written and he remembers back to a

36 social psychology class in college where the instructor lectured on fear of success. The man goes to the mirror and stares at himself. He takes off his glasses so he doesn’t appear so clear. “Oh, well,” he says aloud to his reflection, “I never promised you a prose artist.” Then he puts on his glasses and goes outside. Listen: One of his stories contains a character who asks the question “Can you repeat the past?” This refers to a line in The Great Gatsby, a book by another man, another body, another author. How does his other character react when he is asked this question? “You can repeat the past only on the final Sunday in October when you set the clocks back an hour for Standard Time,” he says. How does his first character react when he hears this sentence? We do not know. The story ends with that sentence. Pay attention: A man is doodling in a notebook. The pages of the notebook are light green with darker green lines. This man is doodling because he should be writing. This is what he is doodling: A rectangle with a straight vertical line under it. This is supposed to represent a placard or a picket sign. There is lettering inside the rectangle. The rectangle says THE UNIVERSE BELONGS TO THE ORGANISMS. Watch this:

37 A man is thinking that watching videotapes can be scary. It can be scary because it is unlike film. Videotape makes people look as if they are alive. It is 12:39 p.m. Eastern Standard Time and the man is watching Chico and the Man on Channel 4. It is a rerun. The actor in the show killed himself a year back. The man watching the show is scared because the actor looks too alive. Film is much easier to deal with for scared people. Eavesdrop: These are some of the things a man says at a Halloween party: To a tall widow with one breast who is dressed like a witch: “Yes, well, I once held a Ph.D. from Harvard but he wriggled out of my grasp.” To two former colleagues who are impersonating a happily married couple: “I hear all people do in Buenos Aires is go to the movies.” To a man who has corrected his pronunciation of the noun commune: “This morning I read about a man who was fatally shot three times. Apparently the first two fatal shots didn’t take.” To his best friend of twenty years, a childhood playmate, a Jew who is dressed as an Arab and who has been discussing his apprehension over the circumcision of his yet-unborn son: “You’re making a mountain out of a mohel.” To his own reflection in the bathroom mirror: “Feeling sorry for yourself is wonderful.” Consider: A man is thinking about values. Formerly he didn’t give much thought to values. If somebody had asked him why he didn’t give

38 much thought to values, he probably would have said, “Because I don’t think about things that I don’t think about,” or something similar in intent. He thinks of a woman who was upset because Helen Gurley Brown had fired her as an editor of Cosmopolitan. He thinks of his grandmother urging him to make her a great-grandmother before it is too late. He thinks of a third woman who loves Hummel figures more than she does trees. He thinks of an entire organization that loves trees more than it does people. He thinks of various things that he has read and various things, some resembling this story, that he has written. He thinks of mnemonic devices; of the college president telling the protesting disabled students, “You haven’t a leg to stand on”; of Einstein saying the universe is subtle but not malicious; of a singer singing a song entitled “Why Do People Criticize My Lifestyle?” on the Mike Douglas show. He thinks of his own brother-in-law, a cocaine dealer, saying on the phone to a customer: “I don’t have anything at the moment, but tomorrow’s another story.” Then he stops thinking of values and starts writing a story entitled “Tomorrow’s Another Story,” a story about values which he never finished. Pay attention: In a room at a hospice on a planet in an outer and obscure spiral arm of the vast pinwheel of gas that is called, among other things, the Milky Way Galaxy, a man’s sister is dying.

39 The man is aware that there will never again be anyone like his sister in the Milky Way Galaxy. The long-drawn-out sequence of mutations and selections, of false starts and dead ends, stretching over four billion years of geological time that led to the existence of his sister can never recur. Even if the Milky Way Galaxy were started over again and only random processes allowed to operate – when a particular molecular collision happens, say, or when the genetic material is altered by a cosmic ray – it is extremely unlikely that his sister would ever evolve again. As the sister dies, the man calculates the odds against her living again. By the time he has arrived at a tentative answer, his sister has completely oxidized. This man’s sister was a woman, a body, a writer. Imagine: This man’s sister was also another man’s sister. Believe this: This man’s sister once wrote a story about a planet on which the dominant life forms were intelligent insects. This planet was six quadrillion miles from the planet on which the sister lived. The sister’s story took place in the year 1977. The intelligent insects were only just beginning to receive radio signals of The Forsyte Saga, a television series first shown by the British Broadcasting Company in 1967. The intelligent insects thought these signals must have come from a very interesting planet. The last line of the story reads: “But the insects were wrong.”

40

Be a part of this: The story is not real. The sister is not real. The man is not real. The Forsyte Saga is not real. Halloween is not real. Insects are not real. These words are not real. A man is making all of this up. Tell me: If a man said to you, “Oh no, did you invite that big blowhard to our Halloween party?” would you: A) Lie and say “No”? B) Not say anything? C) Ask to meet his sister the writer? D) Say, “That big blowhard, as you call him, just happens to be our gust of honor”? If you answered D, was your use of the word gust: A) Intentional? B) Unintentional? C) Both of the above? Feel this: The pain of frustration that a man feels when he is trying to write a sentence about how a character feels at his sister’s funeral and can only come up with this fragment: Better her than me. Behold: Hark: Be my audience, my only friend:

41 I have finished writing another story. It is not the story I wanted to write. They almost never are. This story is called “Ma Petite Soeur” and is about a Florida congressman flying to the funeral of his sister, a desertologist who theorized that all the higher forms of life were a product of planetary decadence. The Florida congressman thinks that his sister, who died of breast cancer, really suffered a kind of desertification of the body. This is not an especially good story, so I go to have it xeroxed at the copy center. I stand next to a young woman who is having her applications to graduate school xeroxed. She is tall, slightly chubby, with frizzy long brown hair and a scar on her nose. She wears a flannel shirt over a turtleneck, faded jeans, work boots, hoop earrings and a red kerchief. She reminds me of something else. Our eyes meet once. Neither of us really smiles. I look down at her application to graduate school and mentally note her name and address. I hand another man two dollars and receive some coins back in return. Then I go home and I write this letter: Dear Rebecca Archer: You do not know me but I stood next to you today at the copy center. You are the most beautiful lesbian I have ever seen. Good luck with your grad school applications. Sincerely yours, (my name) Guess what happens next.

42 17 FRAGMENTS IN SEARCH OF A STORY 1 Simon Garfinckel’s the name, parajournalism’s my game. No, no, I might as well admit it: I’m not and it’s not. So why should I try and kid you, right? As my Grandma Tutie always says, “Never kid a kidder.” And she’s right, of course. You? You’re a kidder, aren’t you? Otherwise why would you be reading a story like this when you could be sitting around thinking of something important like how the OPEC oil ministers are meeting in Jakarta and how the next rise in petroleum prices will affect your life. This story won’t affect your life one bit. The most that can happen is that you’ll say it was pleasant or fairly interesting or a big fat bore – but it won’t touch you. Not like the OPEC oil ministers’ meeting will. 2 My Grandma Tutie was born in Russia in 1907. Her cousin Tutie was also born in Russia, but in 1908. Grandma Tutie came to America. Her cousin Tutie went to Argentina. When Grandma Tutie’s cousin Tutie came to New York to visit her last year, we couldn’t tell them apart. They looked like two peas in a pod. (Yes, I know that’s a cliché, and no, they weren’t green, but let it pass, please). They even started dressing alike after a few days. To this day my Grandpa Schnitz isn’t sure if it was his wife or his wife’s cousin whom they put on the plane back to Buenos Aires.

43 3 I was an alternate delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1972, the one that nominated McGovern and Eagleton. I drove down to Miami Beach with my buddy Fritz O’Day, who was one of the soldiers who had invaded Cambodia two years before. We got as far as Dillon, South Carolina, the first day of driving, and then we had to stop at the motel called South of the Border because I needed a bed and Fritz had to squeeze a pimple under his beard. I was still nervous because we had passed a billboard that showed a man with a white hood and a burning cross; the billboard said THIS IS KLAN COUNTRY. But Fritz said not to worry, it was no worse than Cambodia. There were a lot of firecrackers in South Carolina and pecans in Georgia and oranges in Florida, and we got to Miami Beach the night before the convention. We stayed at Grandpa Schnitz’s condominium. He and Grandma Tutie can’t take the summers in Florida. 4 Sometimes I wonder if I’d be happier if I did something besides parajournalism, so I said to myself one day, I said, “Simon, you’re wasting your life trying to write stories that don’t make sense. Either fall in love or find a job as a messenger.” So I got this job in the city. I had to deliver pulsating showers to rich women on Park Avenue and Sutton Place. Sometimes they had me install the showers too, and a couple of times I even had to demonstrate how they pulsated. It was an okay job. The rich women didn’t tip so hot, but I got lots of exercise and learned my way around Manhattan. I thought I’d get a lot of material for my stories, but I didn’t,

44 and so there’s not going to be any more about that job in this story. 5 Grandma Tutie and I were playing pool in the basement once. Grandpa Schnitz and Uncle Wendell were watching us and playing cards to see which of them would get nexties. I was standing behind Grandma Tutie as she took her shot, and I wasn’t paying attention. I was thinking about changing my name from Simon Garfinckel to Fiedler Onderoof. Grandma Tutie’s cue stick went back and nearly poked out my eye. “Wow,” I said to Grandma Tutie. “Now I can play Oedipus.” “No,” Grandpa Schnitz said. “You play Uncle Wendell next.” 6 I drove Grandpa Schnitz to the dentist so he could get his choppers cleaned. He’s an old man, but he doesn’t have dentures. Grandpa Schnitz is very proud of his teeth and his gums. He claims that’s why Grandma Tutie was swept off her feet by him. “She was going with your Uncle Wendell first,” Grandpa Schnitz told me. “But Wendell had rotten teeth, really stinky, you know? So I came downstairs to tell her Wendell had the hives and couldn’t take her out to the poetry reading, and I flashed my piano keys at her. That was it. We were ball-and-chained three weeks later. Wendell was our best man; he had recovered from the hives by then.” “Come on, Grandpa Schnitz,” I said. “You’re just telling a story. None of that ever happened.”

45 Grandpa Schnitz grinned at me ferociously. “An old man’s got to have some fun,” he said ruefully. “I expected you’d be the one person to understand that.” I nodded, and then we crashed into the back of a ’72 Dodge Dart. 7 I send my stories out to magazines and they come back with these rejection notices stuck to them. Sometimes there are coffee stains on my manuscripts. One editor just wrote back, “We get the feeling in your work of being told a story rather than entering one, and that is the problem.” As the Great Schnozzola himself might have said, “Hacha-cha-cha, dey missed de boat completililily!” Holy smokes, ladies and germs, have you ever actually heard of entering a story the way a guy enters a barbershop or a kitchen or a house of ill repute? Actually, once my Grandma Tutie tried to enter a story while she and Grandpa Schnitz were on a tour of the Hawaiian Islands. She tripped on her first step inside the story because it was as dark as hell in the there, and poor Grandma Tutie ended up in the Wing Wing of Oahu General Hospital with two broken hips and a stiff concussion. It ruined the whole cruise for Grandpa Schnitz. 8 Fritz O’Day threw away all his Vietnam War medals on Collins Avenue in 1972. A very sarcastic guy whose brother was a Wallace delegate from Tennessee exclaimed, “You’re throwing away America, son, and you’ll live to regret it.” Well, Fritz didn’t live to regret it, because one day he and Uncle Wendell were taking a

46 constitutional on the Grand Concourse when some eleven-year-olds came over to them, bopped them on the heads, took their money and left them there to die. Uncle Wendell pulled through, but Fritz died because at the city hospital they stitched up his head with infected stitches and his brain turned to jelly. Luckily he died; otherwise he’d be a living vegetable today and I’d be stuck taking care of him. Now, whenever I go on the subway, I look out for ten- and eleven-year-olds. They’re the ones you’ve got to watch for. If they commit murder, the most they can get is eighteen months detention. It’s like they have a license to murder. Serially, something should be done. How come the OPEC oil ministers never discuss things like that, huh? 9 Well, this is my story, Simon H. Garfinckel’s, so if I want to have it this way, I can. The OPEC oil ministers have called an emergency meeting in Jakarta to discuss the problem of juvenile crime in the Bronx. Sheik Yamani, the Saudi Arabian oil minister, thinks they should fill those young punks full of gasoline so that they’ll never kill a good goddamned American like Fritz O’Day again. Doctor Lopez Portillo of Venezuela thinks that inflation, bad housing and bad breeding cause crime. “There are no bad boys,” he says. “Only misunderstood murderers.” Prince Khaleel of the United Arab Emirates gets on the conference table and starts jumping up and down wildly because I can’t think of anything else for him to do. The OPEC oil ministers vote 13-4 to end their participation in my story. Phooey on them, I say.

47

10 Grandma Tutie is going to Israel. Grandpa Schnitz is going to Palestine. They are both going to the same place. Because of pressure exerted by the OPEC oil ministers, it has been decreed that the two nations of Israel and Palestine shall exist in the same space simultaneously. Now there is no more war in the Middle East. Everyone can go about his or her business. Nationhood is all in the mind. At a séance, I contact the spirit of my dead buddy Fritz O’Day. Fritz says he hopes the idea of coterminous nationhood will spread. Then people like him will not have to invade places like Cambodia anymore. People like Fritz can be put to better use rounding up pre-teen hoodlums and forcing gasoline down their throats. I ask Fritz what being dead is like. “It’s all right,” he tells me. “It’s better than being in the army.” 11 Grandpa Schnitz gets on the wrong plane and lands in Ghana in the year 1967. There are cows on the runway. Grandpa Schnitz does not know what to do in Ghana, but eventually he cuts a few records and becomes Ghana’s top pop singer. His hit singles are “Ghana, Build a Mountain” and “Kwame, How I Love Ya.” Then he wakes up and he is sitting next to Grandma Tutie in the present, whenever that is, in an El Al airliner. 12 If it isn’t obvious to you by now that I’m not qualified to be a short story writer, then you must

48 have taste up your ass. I’m floundering while my story is foundering. How do I put this all together to make some sense, to give Simon Garfinckel’s view of the multiverse? Maybe if I had more experience in life, my stories would be better. I should have traveled more, but I have a phobia about traveling. I’m scared to ride on planes because I think I’ll wind up in Accra, Ghana, in a different year. I’ve been scared to drive ever since Grandpa Schnitz and I were in that terrible car accident. I’ve never been as far east as Boston or as far west as Pittsburgh, so longitudinally I don’t have much range. Latitudinally I’ve done a little better; I’ve been as far south as Miami Beach (when Fritz and I went to the Democratic convention, remember?) and I’ve been as far north as the Concord Hotel in Kiamesha Lake upstate. Yesterday I got a letter from my Grandma Tutie’s cousin Tutie in Argentina inviting me to spend the summer (their winter) in Buenos Aires, but I don’t think I’ll go. I think I’ll just sit in my room and write stories. If God had wanted me to be in a different hemisphere He wouldn’t have given me all these phobias. 13 Confession: There never was anybody named Fritz O’Day. I never had a good buddy whom I went with to the Democratic National Convention in 1972. That was all fictional. I suppose I’ve always wanted one very close friend, somebody you could talk to and who would listen, somebody funny and cute and who invaded Cambodia. Not that I’m totally gay, mind you. But I’d probably have done something with Fritz in that motel room in Dillon, South Carolina, if only he’d asked me to.

49 But I do have a Grandma Tutie and a Grandpa Schnitz. That part is real. And my name really is Simon Garfinckel. I told you it wasn’t because in these short stories you’re not supposed to use people’s real names. I don’t want to get in trouble here. Come on, you knew all along that nobody could make up a name like Simon Garfinckel unless it weren’t real. 14 They say honesty is good for the soul, so I’m going to tell you something else. While it’s true that I have a Grandma Tutie and a Grandpa Schnitz, they’re not married to each other. They are only machatunim, as we say in Yiddish. Grandma Tutie was my mother’s mother and Grandpa Schnitz was my father’s father. They see each other occasionally, but they’re not really very close. I decided to marry them off to each other to give this story a semblance of unity and structure, which, heaven knows, it cries out for. Yes, I’m beginning to feel much better, getting these things off my thirty-six-inch hairless chest. Perhaps I should stick to confessional writing. What I really need is to find something I’m good at. 15 Do I have to tell you I don’t really have an Uncle Wendell, or that I don’t even know anybody named Wendell except for the old TV host Bill Wendell who used to be on the program It Could Be You? 16 This story should be a real hit by this point. But it’s not. It’s another failure in my long endless stream of failures starting with my first premature

50 ejaculation. I’m probably the only guy in the world who ejaculates prematurely when he masturbates. By this point I’m really depressed. I can’t pinpoint the cause of my depression, but I think it centers around you. Why is it we seem to get close to people, open up to them all our secrets, and then despise them for knowing so many of our weaknesses? I also feel bad because I don’t think Grandpa Schnitz likes me very much. I sent him a birthday card but he didn’t say thanks or anything. I also wrote to Grandma Tutie in Florida even though she didn’t write me. All my friends – all two of them – have gotten letters from Grandma Tutie by now, and after all, I’m the one who’s her grandson. I wish I knew why I have this compulsion to be liked. 17 I just wanted to say goodbye. I’ve taken an overdose of sleeping pills and will probably be dead soon. I’m going to join Fritz O’Day in the Great Beyond. No, that’s not right – I remember now, there is no Fritz O’Day. I wonder if Grandma Tutie will cry when she finds out. I can’t concentrate on my story. I suppose that’s for the best. It’s funny, though, because now I think and all these thoughts are jumping into my mind, really important things I’d like to say, not trash like this story. Oh I’m scared. I wish you could come here and hold me, but nobody can enter a story, right? Try not to think too badly of me. I can’t write any mo

51

EATING AT ARBY’S

At the beach Manny and his wife Zelda were walking along Fort Lauderdale beach. “This beach is lovely,” said Zelda. “I like the sand the palm trees and the ocean.” “Yes, Zelda,” said Manny. “Fort Lauderdale beach is beautiful. I am glad we are here.” “I am glad we live in South Florida,” said Zelda. “I am glad we do not have to go through cold winters anymore. I hate snow.” “Don’t think about snow, Zelda,” said Manny. “We are on the beach in Fort Lauderdale. Look at all the people who are having fun.” Zelda saw their friend Chip. “Hello, Chip!” she cried. She waved to him. “Hello, Zelda and Manny,” said Chip. “What are you doing here on Fort Lauderdale beach?” “We are having fun,” said Manny. “It is beautiful here.” “Yes, it is beautiful here,” said Chip. “My gay friends and I like it very much. We have fun here. People are nice. The weather is good. We can enjoy the beach and make friends.” “Friends are important in South Florida,” said Zelda. “Whether you are straight or gay, it is good to have friends.” Chip smiled. “Zelda, I am glad you and Manny are my friends. Many people make friends here at the beach. Now that it is spring break, college students come down here and make friends.”

52 “College students can have fun,” said Manny. “Some of them get wild and take drugs and drink too much beer, but they are very nice girls and boys.” “Yes, there are some very nice college students here. I met a nice boy from up North who was glad to get away from the snow. Some college students are wild but they know how to have fun.” “There are always people who know how to have fun,” said Zelda. “It’s easy to have fun on Fort Lauderdale beach.” “Let’s go to the Marlin Beach Hotel and drink piña coladas and have fun,” said Chip. Manny smiled. “Every day in South Florida is fun.”

53 A visit to Calle Ocho One sunny day Manny and Zelda drove into downtown Miami. “Look at all the signs in Spanish,” Zelda said. “That is because most of the people in downtown Miami are Cubans,” said Manny. “Cubans are nice people. They helped make Miami a big city.” “Let’s go visit our Cuban friend José. José has a clothing store on Calle Ocho.” They parked their station wagon. “What does Calle Ocho mean, Manny?” asked Zelda. “Calle Ocho means Eighth Street in Spanish. You should learn more Spanish, Zelda. It will help you talk with our Cuban friends.” “Yes, I must learn more Spanish. One day I will be bilingual like you, Manny, and I will make new Cuban friends.” “It is important to have friends in South Florida,” Manny said to Zelda as they walked into José’s store. “Hello, Manny and Zelda!” shouted José. “¿Como están Ustedes? How are you, my friends?” “Muy bien,” Manny told José. “I hope you will look around my store. There are some nice Sasson jeans that just came in. They fit well and look nice. I hope you will buy some.” “Perhaps we will,” Zelda said. “Manny needs some jeans. It is important to dress well in South Florida.” “Excuse me,” said José. “I have to speak to some customers from Colombia. They are here to buy some clothes.” “Will you speak to your customers in Spanish, José?” Zelda asked.

54 “Sí, Zelda,” José said. “They speak Spanish just like I do.” “I speak Spanish too,” said Manny. “I am bilingual. I can talk to people from Colombia too.” “I wish I could speak Spanish,” Zelda told José. “It would be nice to make new friends.” “Amigos,” said José. “In Spanish amigos means friends. Please excuse me while I talk to my Colombian friends.”

55 A drive down I-95 One sunny morning Manny and his wife Zelda took a drive down I-95. “The cars drive very fast on this highway,” said Zelda. “Sometimes I get scared that we will have an accident.” “Some people have accidents,” said Manny. “If you are not careful driving down I-95, you could have an accident.” “Be careful, Manny. I don’t want us to have an accident.” “Don’t worry, Zelda. Most accidents are caused by people who drive too fast.” “I heard that some old people here in South Florida drive too slowly and they get into accidents because of that,” Zelda said. “Yes,” said Manny. “And some teenagers take Quaaludes and that makes them drive badly. They can get into accidents that way.” “Manny, why do teenagers take Quaaludes?” asked Zelda. “Why do they take something that can make bad things happen?” Manny shook his head. “It is very sad, Zelda. But we must remember that most teenagers here in South Florida are good boys and girls who would not take Quaaludes.” “I’m glad of that,” said Zelda. “Look, Manny! You just missed our exit! We were supposed to get off at Hollywood Boulevard so that we could go to the Seminole Indian Bingo Parlor and buy cigarettes and Western clothes. Manny, you just passed the Hollywood Boulevard exit!” Manny laughed. “Zelda, that was a silly thing to do! I was so busy talking about bad drivers that I became one myself. I did not notice the exit sign.”

56 “Don’t worry, Manny. We can get off at the next exit. Hallandale Beach Boulevard is the next exit. Just don’t miss it!” “I won’t miss the next exit,” said Manny. “Drivers must be very careful here in South Florida.”

57 Shopping in the mall Manny and Zelda went to the Broward Mall one sunny day. “Look, Manny!” said Zelda. “There is Burdines. I want to do some shopping there. You need some clothes. I will buy you some nice Sasson jeans. It is important to have nice clothes here in South Florida.” “You are right, Zelda. People dress nicely here. They wear bright colors. Bright colors are cheerful. I like to see people wearing pink pants and white shoes.” “The Broward Mall is cheerful,” said Zelda. “I like the malls in South Florida. I like Dadeland the best, but the Broward Mall is a nice mall.” “All malls are nice,” said Manny. “I like the Omni best, but I also like all malls. This mall is nice. We can go into Burdines and buy Sasson jeans. We can go into Jordan Marsh and buy a burglar alarm. We can go into Sears and buy bug spray. We can go into any store and buy anything.” “South Florida has so many malls,” said Zelda. “South Florida has many malls so people can buy nice things, Zelda. Look! There is a book store. We can buy books there.” “I read a book once, Manny. It made me think.” “Thinking is fun,” said Manny. “I like to think. In South Florida there is a lot to think about.” “Sometimes I think about all the malls and condos here. Sometimes I wonder how they all got to be so nice.” “They are nice because nice developers built them that way. There are many nice things for people here in South Florida.” Zelda smiled. “The weather here is always nice.

58 It is always good weather for going to malls.”

59 A pleasant visit Zelda went to visit Grandma and Grandpa one sunny afternoon. “Hello, Grandma! Hello, Grandpa!” shouted Zelda. “Hello, Zelda,” said Grandma and Grandpa. “We have missed you. We have not seen you in a very long time.” “I know,” said Zelda. “You have not seen me in a very long time because I have been busy. How are you both? How is life here in Century Village?” “We like it very much,” Grandpa told Zelda. “There are many things for old people to do here in Century Village. We can play pinochle. We can sit by the pool. We can take courses and make things and visit with our granddaughter Zelda.” “Yes,” added Grandma. “It is a good life for old people here in South Florida. We have Social Security checks that come every month. Grandpa also gets a pension from his old job up North.” “Brrr!” Grandpa said. “When you talked about up North, I felt cold! I am glad to be in South Florida where it is never cold.” “Oh, Grandpa!” said Grandma. “You are a funny man. You always make me laugh. We are here together all day and all day you say things that make me laugh.” “Grandma, you make me laugh, too. Sometimes I sit out by the pool and think about the things you say all day and I want to laugh.” Zelda showed Grandma and Grandpa her station wagon. “Would you like to go for a ride?” she asked them. “Would you like to go out to a restaurant?”

60 “Yes, I like restaurants,” said Grandma. “We could go to Arby’s. I like the salad bar at Arby’s.” “I like Burger King better than Arby’s,” said Grandpa. “We went to Arby’s last time. Today let’s go to Burger King. I want to go to Burger King.” “Grandpa, you are a funny man!” said Grandma. “Every day here in Century Village you say things that make me laugh.” “My Grandma and Grandpa make each other laugh all day,” said Zelda. “Many people here in Century Village say funny things all day. They make each other laugh.” “Let’s go to Burger King,” said Grandpa.

61 A long boat ride Manny and his wife Zelda were walking along Miami Beach. “I like these old Art Deco hotels,” said Manny. “They are pretty to look at.” “Yes, they are pretty. The tourists must like to stay in them.” “The tourists can have fun here. They can swim. They can eat good food. They can get sunburned and see good shows. Miami Beach has everything!” “Miami Beach has everything but casino gambling for people from all over the world,” Zelda said. “Tourists come here from England. Tourists come here from Germany. Tourists come here from Buffalo, New York.” “Look, Zelda!” said Manny. “Look at that little boat! Some tourists are coming to Miami Beach by boat.” Zelda laughed. “Oh, Manny! Those people are not tourists. Those people are Haitian refugees. They have come here by boat from Haiti.” “Those Haitian people look tired,” said Manny. “They must have been in that little boat for a long time.” “Soon they will be happy,” Zelda told Manny. “They took a long boat ride to get here, but now that they are in South Florida, they will be very happy.” “Everyone is happy here,” said Manny. “I am very happy to be in Miami Beach. Let’s make friends with those Haitian refugees. Let’s take them with us to eat brunch at the Rascal House.” “Oh, Manny!” cried Zelda. “You are so silly. Haitian refugees do not come here to eat brunch at the Rascal House. They come here for freedom. You cannot get freedom at brunch at the Rascal

62 House.” “Zelda, you are right,” said Manny. “I made a silly mistake. You cannot get freedom at brunch at the Rascal House. But you can get onion rolls and Danish there, and I am very hungry.” “I am hungry, too. Lucky for us the Rascal House is not far away. We will not have to take a long ride on a little boat to get to the Rascal House.” “Someday I hope those Haitian refugees will have brunch at the Rascal House,” said Manny. “We should give them free Danish and onion rolls so they know they will be welcome here in South Florida.” “Oh, Manny!” Zelda laughed. “You are being silly again! Even in South Florida there is no such thing as a free brunch.”

63 Snowbirds Manny went to meet his sister Norma at the airport. It was very crowded that night. Many people were flying to South Florida because the winter up North was very cold. Finally Manny saw his sister come into the Air Florida terminal. “Hello, Norma!” he cried. “Hello, Manny,” Norma said. “It is good to see you again. It is good to be back in South Florida for the winter. Up North it is too cold.” Manny laughed. “You are a snowbird, Norma! My own sister is a snowbird!” “What is a snowbird, Manny? How did I get to be a snowbird?” “Norma, people like you who come to beautiful South Florida for the winter are called snowbirds. They are snowbirds because they fly away to escape the snow.” “I hate snow,” said Norma. “My wife Zelda hates snow, too. But here in South Florida the weather is always sunny and warm. On the news every night they tell us how cold it is everywhere else.” “Where is Zelda, Manny?” asked Norma. “Usually Zelda is with you.” “Zelda is sick, Norma,” said Manny. “Zelda was fine all day. Then when I told her that you were coming to spend the winter with us, Zelda got a bad headache.” “Oh, no,” said Norma. “I hope she will be better by tomorrow. Headaches can make people unhappy.” “Zelda is very unhappy,” Manny said. “But by tomorrow she will feel better. Winter is so beautiful here in South Florida that you cannot be sick or

64 unhappy for long.” “After I pick up my luggage, we will go back to your condo and I will talk to Zelda and make her feel better,” said Norma. “I will be here for the whole winter so there will be lots of time to talk.” Manny smiled. “Come on, Snowbird! Let’s go get your luggage from Air Florida!” “I hope that they did not send it to Tampa this time,” laughed Norma. “I want to spend the whole winter with my brother and his wife.”

65 Vacation plans One sunny afternoon Manny came back to the condo with an idea. “Zelda,” Manny said to his wife, “why don’t we take a vacation? It would be nice to take a vacation.” “Oh, Manny,” said Zelda. “It would be very nice to take a vacation. But we do not need to go anywhere. We live in South Florida. South Florida is already a vacation place. We can go to the Seaquarium to see Flipper. We can go to the Monkey Jungle and the Parrot Jungle. We can go to the Everglades or Key West.” “You are right, Zelda,” said Manny. “South Florida is the best vacation place. But I have heard people talking about taking a trip to another vacation place.” “What place is that?” asked Zelda. “Colombia,” said Manny. “Colombia is the place that many people talk about.” “Oh, yes,” said Zelda. “I have heard many people talk about taking a trip to Colombia. Many people have told me that they would like to make just one trip to Colombia.” “A trip to Colombia must be fun,” said Manny. “This morning, when I took Grandpa to the bank to deposit his Social Security check, we met two boys in line. These boys had just taken a trip to Colombia and said that their trip was fun.” “But we already have fun right here in South Florida,” said Zelda. “How could we have any more fun in Colombia? What is there to do in that place?” “I am not sure, Zelda. Those nice boys had to deposit a lot of money and they could not talk with Grandpa and me for very long.”

66 “Oh, Manny,” Zelda sighed. “I think I would like to make a trip to Colombia. I would like to make just one trip there to see what the fuss is all about.”

67 A nice chiropractor One sunny morning Manny woke up with a sore back. “I have a sore back,” he told his wife Zelda. “What should I do?” “Oh, Manny,” said Zelda. “For a sore back you should see a chiropractor. Chiropractors help people with sore backs.” So Manny and Zelda went to see a chiropractor. The chiropractor’s name was Lois and she was a nice black woman who wore Sasson jeans. “Hello, Manny,” said Lois. “I will make your sore back feel better.” “Thank you, Lois,” said Manny. “How will you do that?” “I will twist your back and put needles in it. Then you will feel much better.” “I feel better already just talking to you,” said Manny. “How did you become a chiropractor?” Zelda asked Lois. “I have never before seen a black woman chiropractor in Sasson jeans.” Lois cracked Manny’s back. “Zelda,” she said, “in South Florida a person can become anything she wants to be. I love it here. I was born in Liberty City and I still live there today. South Florida is a good place to be a chiropractor.” “Lois, you have made my back feel much better,” said Manny. “Now you will always be my friend.” “Thank you, Manny,” said Lois. “It will be nice to have you and Zelda for friends.” “Someday you should come and visit us at our condo,” said Zelda. “Yes, I will,” Lois told her. “And someday you

68 should come and visit me and my friends in Liberty City.” “Wasn’t there a riot in Liberty City once?” asked Manny. “Oh, yes,” said Lois. “Some people in Liberty City felt they were being treated unfairly. This made them unhappy.” “It is wrong to treat people unfairly,” said Zelda. “In South Florida everyone tries to be as fair as possible.” “Yes, this is a nice place to live,” Lois told them. “Everything is here. We have friends. We have sunshine. We have the Miami Dolphins and many patients for chiropractors. I am happy to be a chiropractor here in South Florida.” “Here, Lois,” said Manny. “This check will make you even happier.” “Thank you, Manny,” said Lois. “It is always nice to make someone feel better.” “I feel better myself,” laughed Zelda. “I feel better even though nobody has cracked my back!”

69 A brand-new American One sunny morning José came over to Manny and Zelda’s condo. “Buenos días, Manny and Zelda,” José said. “I have brought my cousin to meet you. This is my cousin Ortenzia. Ortenzia, meet my friends Manny and Zelda.” “Buenos días, Ortenzia,” said Manny. “Hello, Ortenzia,” said Zelda. “I am happy to meet my cousin José’s friends,” Ortenzia told Manny and Zelda. “I have not been in South Florida for very long and I like making new friends.” “Where do you come from, Ortenzia?” asked Zelda. “Cuba. I came here from Cuba last year. I came with the rest of the refugees on the Mariel boatlift.” “Sí,” said José. “My cousin Ortenzia is a brandnew American.” “Are you happy here?” Manny asked Ortenzia. “Do you like South Florida?” “Sí, Manny. I love South Florida. Everyone has given me a great welcome. They have been nice to me. Everyone has made me feel at home.” “We like having brand-new Americans in South Florida,” Manny said. We like having people like you here because you work hard and help us.” “Sí, Manny,” said Ortenzia. “I have a good job at Arby’s. I am in charge of the salad bar.” “I love the salad bar at Arby’s,” said Zelda. “Let’s all go there for lunch right now.” “Vamos, amigos!” cried José. “Let’s go, my friends! Our brand-new American will help us eat lunch at Arby’s.”

70 A scary warning “Oh, oh,” said Manny one afternoon. “What’s wrong, Manny?” asked his wife Zelda, who was in the Florida room sweeping away little salamanders. “They just said on NewsWatch 10 that there’s a hurricane warning.” “Oh, no,” said Zelda. “What does that mean?” “That means a hurricane is probably going to strike South Florida. We must get ready for the hurricane, Zelda.” “How do we do that?” “First, we have to make sure we have food in the house. If there is a hurricane, we cannot go to buy food at Publix or to eat out at Arby’s. Then we have to board up our windows. After that we need to buy batteries for our flashlight. And then we should fill up our station wagon with gas.” “I’m scared of hurricanes, Manny.” “The important thing is to be prepared. If you are prepared, Zelda, there is no reason to get scared.” “I suppose hurricanes are just a fact of life for us here in South Florida,” said Zelda. “Yes, but hurricanes are not always so bad. Besides, our weather is almost always beautiful.” “Yes, Manny, our weather is almost always beautiful. I guess hurricanes aren’t that scary. I feel better now.” “Good for you, Zelda,” said Manny. “Now we can get out our map and track that hurricane!”

71 A strange experience One sunny day Zelda came home to the condo. “Look what I have got, Manny,” she said to her husband. “I have some cocaine.” “So that white powder is cocaine,” said Manny. “I have heard a lot about it from many people.” “A lot of people in South Florida know about cocaine,” said Zelda. “People bring it here by plane. The planes fly at night without any lights. That is why José told us never to fly here at night. José said our plane could crash into one of the planes with no lights that are bringing in cocaine.” “Cocaine brings a lot of money into South Florida,” Manny said. “It is good to have money. Money can buy nice things. Money can buy you a condo in Kendall or a shiny new Corvette or many gold chains.” They sniffed the cocaine. “This cocaine is strange, Zelda,” said Manny. “It is strange that a white powder can be so important.” “It must be important, Manny. Remember how much money it brings into South Florida.” “Oh, yes. Cocaine helps us here. It helps our banks. It helps our businesses. It helps our policemen. It makes some people very rich and some people very happy.” “Are you happy, Manny?” Zelda asked. “Does cocaine make you happy?” “I am very happy, Zelda. I am happy to be here in South Florida with you. Cocaine makes everyone happy.” “Happy people make good friends,” Zelda said. “Many of our friends are happy people, Manny. Our friend Chip is happy. Our friend José is happy. Our friend Lois is happy. We have happy friends.”

72 “Happy friends are important in South Florida,” Manny said. “It makes life here much more fun. Happy friends are important, just like cocaine.” “I like cocaine,” said Zelda.

73 A Chanukah party Zelda and Manny were having a Chanukah party. “Hello, Chip!” said Zelda. “Welcome to our Chanukah party!” “Hello, Zelda,” said Chip. “I am glad to be here. It is good to be with my friends on their holiday.” “Chanukah is a happy time,” said Manny. “Hello, José! Welcome to our Chanukah party!” “Hello, Manny and Zelda!” said José. “I am glad to be here. I want to help you celebrate your holiday.” “We are glad you are here, José,” said Manny. “We are glad you have brought your Cuban friends. They will learn about our culture and we will learn about your culture. There is a lot of culture here in South Florida.” “Sí,” said José. “Hello, Chip! Como está Usted?” “Muy bien,” said Chip to José. “I am fine.” “You speak Spanish very well,” said José to Chip. “You are bilingual.” “Sí, I am bilingual,” said Chip. “José, I would like you to meet my friend Bob. He is here to help Zelda and Manny celebrate Chanukah.” “Happy Chanukah, Bob,” said José. “Are you bilingual like Chip?” “Happy Chanukah, José,” said Bob. “No, I cannot speak Spanish. I am not bilingual. I am bisexual.” “Hello, everyone!” cried Grandma and Grandpa. “Happy Chanukah! We have come from Century Village for the party. We left Century Village four hours ago. We just got here because the traffic was so heavy.” “The traffic is very heavy at Chanukah time,”

74 said Manny. “And the buses do not always come quickly. My sister Norma had to wait a long time for a bus to her chiropodist in Boca Raton.” “Yes,” said Norma. “I had a very long wait. But now I am glad to be back at the condo. Where are our friends from Liberty City?” “Here we are!” said Lois. “Our car got stuck when there was a big accident on the Palmetto Expressway. I stopped to see if anyone was hurt and needed a chiropractor. But now we are all here to help Zelda and Manny celebrate Chanukah. This is a fine party.” “Yes, we are having fun,” said Zelda. “Who is your friend, Lois?” “Zelda, this is Hassan. He is my old pal from chiropractor school. He is my Palestinian pal.” “Happy Chanukah, Hassan,” said Zelda. “Welcome to our party. You will be our Palestinian pal, too.” “Thank you, Zelda,” said Hassan. “I will be glad to be your pal. I like your Sasson jeans and the food you have brought in from Arby’s.” Zelda smiled. “In South Florida we are all friends. We are lucky to be here. We have malls and condos and happy, friendly people.” “I love it here in South Florida,” said Manny. “Every day is like a Chanukah party here.”

75 Fun with a gun One sunny morning José took Manny and Zelda to the Tamiami rifle range. “This is a rifle range,” José told his friends. “At a rifle range you can shoot at targets and learn to use a gun.” “Porqué, José?” asked Manny. “Why do you want to learn to use a gun?” “Manny, guns are muy importante in South Florida. You and Zelda should learn to shoot a gun.” “Oh, José!” Zelda laughed. “Manny with a gun! That is funny. I cannot imagine Manny having any fun with a gun.” “Guns can be fun,” said José. “Guns can be fun and help you if you own a clothing store like I do. Guns can help you if you live in Liberty City like Lois does. Guns can be fun if you want to protect yourselves.” “We want to protect ourselves,” Zelda said. “Manny, don’t we want to protect ourselves? Maybe we should get a gun like José has.” Manny looked at his wife and his friend. “Zelda you are right. José, Usted tiene razón. You are both right and we should get ourselves a gun.” “Guns can be your friends,” said José as he shot at a faraway target. Bang! “Amigos,” said José. Bang! “Guns can be your amigos.” “It is important to have friends here in South Florida,” said Zelda. “Manny, I want to shoot that gun. That gun will become our friend, just like José is our friend.” “Nuestro amigo,” Manny said as José handed

76 him the gun.

77 Eating at Arby’s One evening Manny and Zelda stood on line at the counter at Arby’s. “I want the salad bar,” said Zelda. “I like the salad bar at Arby’s.” “Yes, Zelda,” said Manny. “I know you like the salad bar at Arby’s. You like the lettuce and the beets and the beans and the applesauce.” “Don’t forget the crackers,” Zelda told Manny. “I also like the crackers.” “Thank you,” said a barefoot, long-haired man standing next to Zelda. “I am glad you like crackers.” “What a funny thing to say,” Zelda told the man. “I said that I liked crackers and you are thanking me for that.” “Yes, Zelda,” said the man. “I am thanking you because I am a cracker.” “You are a cracker?” asked Manny. “How did you become a cracker?” The man laughed. “I became a cracker when I was born. I was born in South Florida. People who were born in South Florida are called crackers.” “Oh, Manny,” said Zelda. “I have never before met anyone who was born in South Florida. Tell me,” she asked the man, “what do crackers do in South Florida?” “Crackers have fun just like you do,” the man told Zelda. “We eat at Arby’s. We ride pickup trucks with rebel flags on them. We drink beer and fish in the canals and listen to country music. We watch our boots turn blue with mildew.” Manny laughed. “Zelda, this cracker is a funny man. Of all the people we have met in South Florida, this cracker is the funniest of all.”

78 The man took his Super Roast Beef sandwich and large French fries. “Yes,” he said. “I am a funny man. Living your whole life in South Florida can make you into a funny man. I have seen many funny things as the years go on. Life in South Florida seems to get funnier and funnier.” Manny laughed again and ordered two salad bars and two iced teas with key limes in them. “Don’t forget the crackers,” Zelda reminded him.

79 Unhappy Zelda “I feel unhappy today,” Zelda told her husband Manny. “I feel unhappy because there is nothing to do today.” “Zelda, you are a funny woman,” said Manny. “There are many things to do today. We can go to the jai-lai games in Dania. We can go to the greyhound track in Hollywood. We can go to the orange groves and watch a little boy wrestle with an old alligator. We can watch thirty-nine channels on our cable TV.” “Oh, Manny,” said Zelda. “I do not want to go to the jai-lai games or the greyhound track. I do not want to go to the orange groves. I am so unhappy that I do not even want to watch cable TV.” “Zelda, this is serious. You are very unhappy. What is making you so unhappy?” Zelda sighed. “Manny, I miss our old house up North. I miss our old friends. I miss the way things used to be before we moved to South Florida.” “Zelda, you are unhappy for silly reasons,” said Manny. “Our old house up North was not as nice as our brand-new South Florida condo. Our old friends from up North are now living right here in Delray Beach and Plantation and Homestead. You don’t really miss our old life, Zelda. Do you miss snow?” “No, I hate snow,” said Zelda. “See, Zelda,” said Manny. “I know what will make you less unhappy. I know what will make you feel better. We will watch one of our thirty-nine cable TV channels. We will watch the channel from up North. Then you will see the news and weather and look at ugly pictures and snow. And then you will be very happy to live here in South Florida.” An hour later, Zelda was happy again. “I was

80 unhappy for silly reasons,” she told Manny. “I was unhappy because of things that really didn’t mean anything. Now I see that I am lucky to be here in South Florida.” “Happy, happy Zelda,” said Manny. “Now we can drink piña coladas and watch the good news from a channel here in South Florida.”

81 July in South Florida “Oh, Manny,” said Zelda one sunny day. “It is ninety degrees again today.” “Zelda, it is ninety degrees every day this time of year. That is because it is July. It is ninety degrees every day in July.” “I am hot, Manny,” Zelda said. “I am hot and our bathrooms are full of mildew.” Manny laughed. “Of course you are hot, Zelda. When it is ninety degrees out, a person can become hot. Why don’t you put on the air conditioner so it will become cooler. Then you will become cooler, too.” “Oh, Manny,” sighed Zelda. “I am keeping the air conditioner off to save money. We need to save money. Our last electric bill was too high. The Florida Power and Light Company gave us a big bill.” “The Florida Power and Light Company gives everyone big bills, Zelda. They have to give big bills to pay for their nuclear power plant. Southern Bell and the water company have to give us big bills, too. So does the county property tax assessor. All of them must give us big bills.” “Do they like to give us big bills?” asked Zelda. “No, they don’t like it,” said Manny. “They don’t like to give us big bills, but they have to. It is not their fault. They are not being mean to us.” Zelda laughed. “In South Florida nobody is mean. Nobody is mean even when it is ninety degrees every day and everyone is hot.” “Zelda, you shouldn’t be mean to yourself, either,” said Manny. “Turn on that air conditioner so you can become cooler. When you are cooler, you will be happy again.”

82 Zelda kissed her husband Manny. “I love you,” she told him. “Manny, I love you because you are so smart. I love you because you let me put on the air conditioner despite the big bills.” Manny smiled. “Step on that palmetto bug,” he told Zelda.

83 Some sad news “Zelda, come here,” said Manny one sunny evening. “What is wrong, Manny?” Zelda asked. “You sound upset.” “I am upset,” said Manny. “On NewsWatch 10 they just said that our friend José was murdered in his store in Miami.” “Oh, no,” said Zelda. “That is bad news.” “Murder is always bad news,” Manny told her. “I feel sad about José’s murder,” Zelda said. “Murder is always sad.” Zelda looked unhappy. “This murder rate is too high. I hope no more people in South Florida are murdered. Murder is not fun.” Manny took Zelda’s hand. “Don’t worry,” he said. “Soon the murders will stop and everyone in South Florida will be happy again.” “I hope so,” said Zelda. “But right now I think of José’s murder and I feel sad.” “Let’s go out to dinner,” said Manny. “That will cheer us up. You can enjoy the salad bar at Arby’s.” “I like the salad bar at Arby’s,” Zelda said. “But I wish José were alive to enjoy the salad bar with us. This South Florida murder rate is very sad.”

84 MYSELF REDUX

On Wednesday, the thirteenth day of October in the year many people call 49 B.C., Caius Julius Caesar, a Roman general, crossed the ancient watery boundary between Cisaplin Gaul and Italy known as the River Rubicon, thus making immortal the phrase “to cross the Rubicon,” meaning “to take a decisive and irrevocable step.” Precisely two millennia later, on Wednesday, the thirteenth of October in the Christian year 1951, my Jewish parents took a decisive and irrevocable step in a room of the Quality Courts Motel outside Corning, New York. Within a week, the embryo that was to become the person writing these words was as large of one of Caius Julius Caesar’s fingernails. A tube formed within the embryo. This enlarged at a certain point, and then it began to pulsate. Eventually this pulsating tube developed into a four-chambered organ which circulated the fluid known as blood throughout my body. On Sunday, October 17, 1971, 185 years and one day after the establishment of the United States Bureau of the Mint, I decided that my fourchambered pulsating organ had been broken because I had found the 18-year-old female whom I described as my “girlfriend” in bed with my 16year-old brother, their four-chambered organs pulsating rapidly. One week later, on the twenty-sixth anniversary of the establishment of the United Nations, I attempted to stop the pulsating of my fourchambered organ by making a three centimeter incision with a razor blade across my left wrist.

85 The following Monday, October 25, 1971, known that year as “Veterans Day” due to federal legislation enacted to give citizens a three-day holiday weekend, I found myself in the offices of the clinical psychologist Marilyn Wertheim, crying into a tissue. On Tuesday, January 18, 1972, while I was taking a final examination in a college course titled American Foreign Policy, writing an essay imagining I was Henry A. Kissinger, Presidential adviser for national security affairs, setting forth position papers on several topics in international relations, my brother’s heart stopped after a New York City Transit Authority bus (route B-41, Flatbush Avenue from Civic Center to Kings Plaza) hit his Schwinn ten-speed bicycle. It was two months and one day later, Passion Sunday, when I decided I was going mad. This took place following a number of events: my brother’s funeral, my mother’s heart attack, my father’s business failure, the victory of President Richard M. Nixon in the New Hampshire Republican primary, and my former girlfriend’s telling me that she had missed four monthly menstrual periods. I was to become either a father or an uncle. That came five months later, in July. Before that, on Saturday evening May 6th, I stepped on a glass, recited a few words in Hebrew, and became a husband. One month after that year’s autumnal equinox, forty days after the start of my junior year of college, twenty-one years and a week following my own conception, ten months and two days following my brother’s fatal accident, 2021 years and seven days after Caesar crossed the Rubicon, on the day when Henry A. Kissinger asserted over national

86 television that “peace is at hand,” the female infant who was either my daughter or my niece died, of mysterious causes. The police called it “crib death.” The doctors called it “sudden infant death syndrome.” My wife called it “punishment.” A year or so after that, my wife and I took the decisive and irrevocable step of having our marriage legally annulled by the courts of the state of New York. Today, things are different. The past is all behind me. The future is ahead of me, and I am raring to go. I’ve psychoanalyzed away all the unpleasant memories of those years. I’ve loved again, and I’ve been loved. I’ve earned a Ph.D. in English and American Literature and have published numerous short stories in literary magazines across the United States and Canada. My brother’s grave is well-tended. My ex-wife has remarried, this time to a wealthy man much older than herself. He has given her a healthy son and two stepdaughters. My parents live in Boca Raton, Florida, where they run a small health-food store. I am active in the Democratic Party. I jog. I teach. I wear contact lenses. My resume is quite impressive. Currently I am working on a novel about Julius Caesar. You know what the title of it will be. I am a student and practitioner of literature. I love to read. The literary life is for me. My favorite writer (isn’t everybody’s?) is Virginia Woolf. No one had her sensibilities. Some tends in recent literature disturb me, however. One of these is what has become known as “confessional writing.” This is something I cannot sanction. The fiction I write is mostly

87 historical stuff, like my novel on Julius Caesar. I can’t understand why a writer would expose himself on paper. There is something unpleasant and smarmy about self-aggrandizement. And selfdebasement is even worse. All of my former psychotherapists would agree. That is why, when I wished to tell you some facts in my own life, I presented them this way, as what they are: mere facts. You may speculate on my motives all you want. I neither encourage nor discourage speculation on my private life. My life is irrelevant to my work. I want to be remembered for my work. When the young poet James Russell Lowell was asked which member of the Supreme Court went to Harvard, he replied: “It’s Justice Story.” When Earl Grey, Prime Minister of Great Britain, was asked his opinion of Sir Robert Peel, he said: “He’s just a Tory.” When the German philosopher Oswald Spengler was told of various historical inaccuracies in his great work The Decline of the West, Spengler told his critics: “Adjust history.” When you ask me if what I’ve written here actually happened to me or not, I tell you in all candor: “It’s just a story.” Of course everything’s a story in the end.

88 LET THE READER BEWARE Pamela Zaslow’s face was contorted with grief. For the moment, though, she had no features, so no one could tell how she felt, or indeed, if she felt at all. However, Pamela’s friend Binky Meyers was a very perceptive fellow; indeed, up until now, he was nothing more. “Why so glum, chum?” Binky asked her. Pamela wiped away a tear. “My father just died. I got a telegram.” Binky laughed. “Oh, is that all? Listen, sweetie, you didn’t even have a father until the last paragraph, until your last line of dialogue…So why get all hot and bothered?” Pamela was confused. “What do you mean, Binky? Of course I had a father!” “Okay then, kiddo,” Binky said. “tell me something about him.” “Uh…well…uh,” Pamela stammered. “See, Pammy, girl,” Binky said, “the author hasn’t thought up a set of referents to go with your old man yet. Ergo, your poppa never existed.” “I suppose what you’re saying is true,” Pamela said reluctantly. “Furthermore,” said Binky, sitting down at a hitherto nonexistent table, “we’re characters in a story.” “But aren’t we supposed to be people?” Pamela persisted. “Oh sure,” said Binky. “Coleridge and suspension of disbelief and all that. Let’s look at it this way, kiddo: you’re Pamela Zaslow, right?” Pamela nodded.

89 “Okay, then. Pamela Zaslow is a character in this story,” Binky said, a toothpick dangling from his teeth. “You’re Pamela Zaslow: we’ve established that little fact. But what is Pamela Zaslow? I’ll tell you, chum… Pamela Zaslow is a noise, two words, a proper noun, a controlling conception, a complex system of ideas, an instrument of verbal organization, a pretended mode of referring, and a source of verbal energy. But you are not a person.” “I’m not?” “Face it, babydoll,” he told her, “the author makes no mention of your nose in this story. Therefore, you don’t have a nose.” “I don’t?” Pamela said, feeling the space on her face where a nose should be. It was flat. “I get it,” Pamela said, “it’s like in that Gogol story.” “Wrong!” chimed Binky cheerfully. “Totally, one hundred percent wrong. And anyway, kiddo, you never read Gogol… How could you? Look, later on in the story – don’t ask me how I know, but I know, believe me – later on in this story, you and I are going to make love. The old roll in the hay, you know? But the author never writes one word about our sex organs. What that means, baby, is that you and I are going to screw without benefit of a penis or a vagina… How do you like them apples?” “I don’t get it,” Pamela said. “You will, you will…but really, why do we go on? I mean, why bother? This is all mucho absurdo, after all.” “You mean we should kill ourselves? I should shoot myself with the gun in that bedroom that I didn’t know existed until this sentence?” “It makes no diff, really,” Binky told her.

90 Pamela was shocked. “But life is precious, Binky. Suicide is a serious thing, a moral issue. People would cry; they’d mourn me terribly.” “Why should they?” Binky asked. “I probably will, old girl, but after all, I’m just another character in the same story. I could just as well kick your corpse in the belly-button if the author wanted me to.” Pamela got up from the table and went over to a hitherto nonexistent window overlooking the rush hour traffic of the city, any city. “Oh, God,” she said. “I’m so full of ennui and angst.” “Can it, chum,” Binky told her. “You never went to kindergarten. Nowhere in the story does it say anything about your education. So where do you get off, using terms you don’t even understand? You don’t know what ennui and angst are.” “And I suppose you do?” “But of course,” said Binky. “Ennui is boredom and angst is anxiety. Simple definitions, but they’ll do for you.” Pamela screamed a high-pitched scream. “Then why bother going on?” “Search me,” Binky said, sipping a Coke. “Look, it’s impossible – and I mean impossible – for anyone reading this to picture Pamela Zaslow. Let’s say the author describes you as ‘pretty’ or ‘blonde’ or ‘statuesque’…that would still mean absolutely nothing to the reader. Can you see the ‘prettiness’ apart from what you really see?” “No, I can’t,” said Pamela. She became highly agitated. “But I can’t see at all! I’m blind! That bastard, Binky…he made me blind!” Binky looked at her. “Don’t get your dandruff up. You’re going to have an operation later in this story, and then you’ll see again, and you’re going to

91 fall in love with the ophthalmologist and forget about the terrible pain you felt when your father died.” Binky was lying. Pamela felt her way towards the table and sat down again. There was a long silence. Then Pamela said, “This fiction business – it’s ridiculous, really.” “You hit the needle on the head, kiddo,” Binky told her. “But look at it this way, if it’ll make you feel better: You’re just as real as Julien Sorel or Anna Karenina or Stephen Dedalus.” “Small comfort,” Pamela said, her head in her hands. “So we just have to sit here and wait?” Binky nodded. He produced a book and said, “If you want, you can read this William Gass novel. I hear it’s pretty good, and it may help to pass the time.” Pamela shook her head sadly. “It’s so unfair,” she said. “John F. Kennedy said life is unfair.” “Was he a character or a person?” “Both,” Binky said. They sat at the table for endless minutes, talking softly. Then Binky took Pamela’s hand and they retired to the bedroom, where they made exquisite, lonely love. The best, or the worst, was yet to come.

92 MY TWELFTH TWELFTH STORY STORY

I live on the twelfth story. I have written eleven stories about life on the twelfth story. This is my twelfth twelfth story story. I shall begin it soon. As I stare out the terrace, stare down, until finally it no longer exists and I am one with what surrounds me, my five-year-old daughter says: “That is gross, Daddy.” I tell her I do not write stories for children, not even this twelfth twelfth story story. Stendahl says there is no joy greater than that of anticipation. I found him to be correct in all matters save that of fatherhood. I never expected I would love my daughter. Yet somehow I do, very much. Mostly she is not a pest. Her name is Lisa, and she draws human figures with their arms coming out of their necks. Lisa’s own nape of the neck, when uncovered by blonde strands, is something else to see. A description of it appears in my seventh twelfth story story. Lisa’s mother is dead. Suicide, last year. It happened while I was gone. The cleaning lady was here. She told Lisa her mother had an accident in the bathtub. The police had to be called. The rabbi was a Reform rabbi, so he let us bury Lisa’s mother next to her parents. My parents are also dead. A character sketch of my late mother appears in my first twelfth story story. My book is supposed to be a unified collection of short stories. All of the characters in each of the eleven stories (plus myself, the author, in this one, the twelfth story) live on the twelfth floor. Each story has a protagonist who lives in an apartment

93 building in New York City or North Miami Beach or Newark, Delaware, but each lives on the twelfth story. I have written them all since my wife died, since I have been taking care of Lisa alone. Sometimes Lisa thinks she lives on the planet Jupiter. This is a game of hers. When I call her to breakfast, she pouts in bed and says, “But, Daddy, I’m on Jupiter now!” When Lisa lives on Jupiter she watches the five inner moons. They revolve around her all day. Their names are Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto, Amalthea. Only the latter was unknown to Galileo. Lisa watches all five moons; they arc the sky; they shine gaily; they make Lisa happy. On Jupiter, Lisa’s days are ten hours long. But Lisa’s years on Jupiter are twelve years long. There is no way to reckon the months; with so many moons, it is impossible. Still, some mornings it is hard to pry Lisa away from Jupiter and into her seat at the breakfast table. Lisa says this is because the gravitational pull is so strong. In my sixth story about people living on the twelfth story, a widower confronts his daughter with the reality that she does not live on the rings of Saturn. Eventually the girl dies. This is only a story of mine. I do not believe in handling things that way in real life. My ninth twelfth story story concerns another widower, a linguist whose wife died in a fire. This man is a world-renowned scholar famed for his landmark study of Indo-European reflexive verbs. But there is one reflexive verb that escapes him, and that one is “to save oneself.” I am certain this is no way to bring up a daughter. I sit at my computer all day, hoping for connections, gearing up, persisting even when the

94 eyes cannot make out the words on the screen. Mostly Lisa watches television, a poor substitute for life. Lately they have cut most of the violence from children’s programming, and Lisa is becoming less interested in television. She has taken up finger painting, and this is an activity I encourage. She urges me to try it myself, but I am too squeamish. I do not like to get my fingers messy. When the police came, they wouldn’t clean up the blood. My third, fourth, and fifth stories have a similar plot. In the third story, a West Point cadet goes to his aunt’s apartment in Newark, Delaware, to celebrate his twenty-first birthday. Because the cadet’s parents are vacationing in China, his aunt has offered to make him a party. He brings two of his friends, fellow cadets, down with him for the weekend. During the night one of the friends goes berserk, bludgeons the aunt to death, maims the boy’s uncle. The boy’s parents are summoned home from China. The police will not clean up the apartment; the boy has to do it all himself. He even takes up the blood-soaked carpeting. Later he has a nervous breakdown and is forced to leave West Point. My fourth twelfth story story concerns a man who has his car simonized by a young fellow who turns out to be the cadet in the third story. He tells the man, who lives in a Manhattan highrise, of the guilt he feels when he thinks of his dead aunt and his poor uncle, paralyzed for life. On the anniversary of the murder, the ex-cadet attempts suicide. Later he decides to enter the Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, on the advice of the man whose car he has simonized. The fifth story is a little different. In this one, the murderer-cadet, sitting in his cell on the twelfth

95 floor of a Delaware prison, imagines his old friend’s guilt and fantasizes about him telling his story to a man whose car he is simonizing. Of these three, I would let my daughter read only the fifth story. The others are too violent, too gross. Yet Lisa is aware of death. She is always asking about funerals and wants to know how you can be certain a corpse is dead before you bury it. I am told this is not an uncommon question. I know I am not much of a writer; probably this book of twelve stories will never get published. Yet I am a better writer than I am a father, as hard as I try. Lisa senses my diffidence in the role, and she makes do. She will have to grow up hard and fast. Sometimes she wishes to go up on the roof, but I tell her we are not allowed up there. We are on the next to last floor. Above us is the top floor, the fourteenth story. There is no thirteenth story in our building. Lisa, who can count up to twenty, cannot understand this. Turning away from my computer for a moment – from the conclusion of my twelfth twelfth story story – I tell her that when she is older she will understand.

96 SIXTEEN ATTEMPTS TO JUSTIFY MY EXISTENCE 1 When I was in high school, I was unhappy. I had gym first period, at seven in the morning, and I used to hide Pepto-Bismol tablets inside my white athletic socks. I tried not to do too much in gym. Usually I pretended to be waiting for the weights. My gym teacher yelled at me. Behind his back, I kept sneaking Pepto-Bismol tablets from my socks. The gym teacher called me Mister America. He had discovered my secret identity. Seven years later, I ran across my gym teacher in a funeral parlor. My father had died, as had his half brother. The funerals were in different rooms. I went up to him and said, “Hi, it’s Mister America,” but he just turned away and pretended he didn’t hear what I said. 2 I almost had a baby brother, but the doctors couldn’t find one in the bed. My mother and father were sitting downstairs all during the delivery, and they were getting nervous because it was taking so long. The gym teacher’s half brother came down the steps and started the rumor that we had twins, but we knew right away it was a lie. My mother thought she should go upstairs because it was supposed to be her baby, after all, but my father said he needed my mother there to keep him calm. I offered my father a Pepto-Bismol tablet but he didn’t want it. I got tired of waiting so I went outside and pretended I was riding a motorcycle in my secret identity. When I came back, all the

97 doctors had left. My mother sat me down and told me they couldn’t find a baby in the bed. She said maybe we could have one next year. 3 I wrote the class notes for my Alumni Association Bulletin and always made up things about myself and my friends. I usually made everyone sound more important than they were in real life. My friend Stephen runs the newsstand at the Abbey-Victoria Hotel, put I put down in the class notes that he directed two plays that had limited runs in Off Broadway theatres. My friend Wendy is a secretary for the Girl Scouts of America, but I made her the chairman of the board of a vitamin manufacturing company. My friend Scott, the hair stylist’s assistant, I turned into a radio talk show host on the Gulf Coast. In every issue of the Alumni Association bulletin, I said something different about myself. I was a professor of linguistics and a state senator and an official of the Arab-American Anti-Defamation League and the owner of a pet shop. In next month’s class notes, I’m going to be deceased. 4 Sometimes, usually around the middle of February, I can smell death. At these times, I am sure I am going to have another breakdown. I get afraid to leave my room, but then again, I am afraid to stay in my room because it is too bright. I ask everyone if they have painted my room while I was sleeping and everyone says no. So I cry myself to sleep, and eight hours later I wake up and decide that there are worse fates than being Mister America in the last third of the twentieth century.

98

5 I tell myself that my life has been better than those of ninety-seven percent of the human race throughout history. I have family, I have friends, I have Pepto-Bismol tablets in my socks. I have good health and a roof over my head and protection from the cold and the ability to go to funerals. Sometimes I even have Carole, when she lets me have her. She gets so hoarse but she won’t see a doctor, ever. “They’re for the birds,” Carole says. I tell Carole that she should be grateful that she lives in a time of doctors, but she just looks at me differently whenever I say that. 6 Once I had to introduce a man who was so famous that everyone except me knew who he was. I was too embarrassed to tell the members of the Alumni Association that I had never heard of him. So I began by saying, “And now a man who needs no introduction…” but I forgot his name, too. People started whispering and that’s when I looked down and saw that my fly is open, and everyone was staring at all the pink triangular Pepto-Bismol tablets I had hidden in my underwear. My face turned red, and I felt like I did back in high school until Carole, in her hoarse voice, reminded me that I was a high school graduate, a member of the Alumni Association. Then I regained my composure. 7 I wear contact lenses. My eye doctor is a very rich man because so many people like myself wear contact lenses. He tells children that reading is good

99 for them, especially reading small print. Everyone thinks that my eye doctor and his wife are only in it for the money, but there is no other eye doctor to go to, so they keep going back to him. That is why my eye doctor and his wife are so rich that they can afford three houses in three different states. When my eye doctor went to stay at his house in Florida, there was a plane crash over the Everglades. The newspaper printed the names of my eye doctor and his wife as those killed in the crash. I called my eye doctor up and heard his voice on the answering machine saying he’d be back in two weeks. This made everyone sad. But then it turned out that the newspaper had made a mistake, and my eye doctor and his wife were all right. When they came back from Florida, everyone was so glad to see them alive that they stopped complaining about all the money he charged. Of course, this lasted only two weeks. Then people went back to complaining again. 8 Question: Did I always hate my mother? Answer: No, I didn’t hate her until my sixteenth birthday when she slept with me. Satisfied? 9 I need to be sane, calm, floating through the day with a smile. When I don’t smile, people say, “Oh, you look so sad” and “Need a vacation?” and “What’s the matter?” and (jokingly) “Are you getting your period?” When people say these things, I feel like biting their heads off. I read about the men in carnivals who bite chickens’ heads off, but I am not interested in animals. I had a cat when I was little. The cat was called Eisenhower because

100 he didn’t do anything. He was run over by a hearse. My father couldn’t stop laughing, and I felt like biting his head off then. Later, of course, I really fixed him. But by then he was an old man and it was too late. 10 In high school I wrote short stories but never finished any of them. I wrote them only in my head in gym class while pretending to be waiting for the other guys to get through with the weights. The stories all began the same way: “He was always writing stories about getting lost, literally and metaphorically. The first story he wrote was about the grey time on the highway intersection near Miami, walking towards nothing except what seemed like lights. Or he wrote about a boy set apart, in another dimension from the other people I the story.” I don’t like that type of writing anymore. It reminds me too much of high school. 11 I used to steal things from my friends’ parents’ houses. Small things, mostly: kitchen knives, ballpoint pens, lemons, prescriptions for hypertension medicine. Once I stole an electric vibrator and in my secret identity as Mister America, I did very strange things with it and a cored apple. Very soon afterwards, I grew ashamed of what I had done, and then later it got to be funny and I started amusing people at parties with the story. Then, after a few years of that, I got ashamed again. Carole says that she used to masturbate with her electric toothbrush. She thinks that shocks me but it doesn’t.

101 12 While waiting for the elevator, I was told that these were the best years of my life. I didn’t believe it then. I don’t believe it now. Something was wrong with that statement. I’ve tried to figure out what, but I can’t come up with anything. It makes no difference anyway. I don’t need Pepto-Bismol tablets anymore. 13 After my father died, my mother still talked to him. Whenever I did something that she considered outrageous, like asking Carole to go to the show with me, my mother would say in a very reasonable tone, “Your son is acting nutsy again.” My father had died of a stroke three years before, but she was talking to my father and no one else. When my mother said these things, I would fly in to a rage and throw the furniture around. When good things came my way, as they eventually do to everybody, my mother took credit for them and spoke to my dead father, saying, “Look what we’ve accomplished with our son.” The last time she said it was the night I spent walking the rainy streets, looking for someone who would kill me. After that, my mother stopped taking credit for my life. All the publicity had something to do with it. 14 Isn’t this all bullshit? What do I want, anyway? You see, I’m not even old and I’m a garrulous old bore already. I was so much better-liked when I was unhappy and Mister America. Then nobody respected me but they liked me. Of course, it’s all a matter of opportunities.

102 15 When the psychiatrist showed me the photograph and asked me what it looked like, I told her that it looked like a photograph from a thematic apperception test. She frowned. Then I said it looked like my gym teacher having sex with my mother. The psychiatrist smiled. Then she showed me the inkblot of my gym teacher’s half brother lying in his coffin with Carole crying over it and asked me what the inkblot looked like. I lied and said it looked like a Christmas tree. Then she frowned and pointed to the man’s penis and asked me what that looked like. “A Christmas present,” I said. Later I found that this psychiatrist had been married four times. Someone said it on the Johnny Carson show. 16 From the class notes of the Alumni Association Bulletin: “Mister America, ’72, died of what passed for a cerebral hemorrhage but was actually an overdose of despair, July 5, 1976. He is survived by Carole, who is always hoarse and who was his friend, and his gym teacher from high school. In lieu of flowers, please send ironic donations to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.” When I read this, I cried. I can’t remember the last time I cried.

103 THERE ARE EIGHT MILLION STORIES IN NEW YORK; THIS IS ONE OF THE STUPIDEST Mark Schickler – no, let’s call him Alan Moskovitz – Alan Moskovitz is a law student in New York City, just like his grandfather never was. Alan, whose name is always misspelled on all official records as Allen Moscovitz or Alan Moskowitz or Allan Moskowitz or Alan Moscowitz (but never as Allan Moscovitz), is walking through the streets of midtown Manhattan, thinking about torts. While he is thinking about intentional torts, I (the author of this story) have him remember an episode of the old I Love Lucy series which takes place in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Ethel’s hometown. (There is no episode of the I Love Lucy series which takes place in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, although many fans think there should have been.) Ethel is welcomed back as the hometown girl who made good in New York, good in this case meaning marrying a bald landlord who is best friend to a bandleader from Cuba and his nutty redheaded wife. A big banner is brought out, one that says ETHEL MAE POTTER WE NEVER FORGOT HER, and of course there is a show and everyone is jealous because the Albuquerquians only want to see more of their native daughter Ethel. Hmmmmn, Alan Moskovitz thinks, that is what I would not like my life to be like, I would not like to go back to my hometown, which I do not intend to leave anyway, and be greeted by banners which would probably only misspell my name anyway and have to sing and dance in a show when I cannot. I would prefer to go on strolling the

104 streets, thinking about intentional torts and other things I am learning in law school. I would like to cease all thoughts about an episode of a situation comedy that was first shown when I was three years old. Across the street from Alan Moskovitz, a man in a flannel shirt and levis is picking up an eight-yearold boy, a pint-sized hustler. The boy is also dressed in levis; he has on Frye boots, a red neckerchief and no shirt. Another, more timid man in a Brooks Brothers suit has just lost his chance with this boy. The flannel-shirted man who has not lost his chance (and who has in fact found his chance) says to the timid one: “It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken.” At this precise moment, meanwhile, some fifteen miles away in Coney Island, Emily Pazitka – Alan Moskovitz’s not-very-good friend and companion – Emily (known as Ruby for purposes of this story) has been driving and has accidentally run into another man’s accident. While the author of this story (the “I” referred to earlier) does not believe in accidents, he will include this one in the story to prove that he is as liberal as Bella Abzug. (For readers in the distant future or those who are merely ignorant, Bella Abzug was a New York politician famous for her liberal views.) Anyhow, this man (the one who has not appeared yet and probably will) hits Ruby’s car head-on… no, not head-on; I mean he sideswipes her, from the back, sort of… and Ruby’s car goes out of control and careens down Surf Avenue, through the amusement park and onto the merry-ground. Thankfully (note the incorrect use of this adverb) Emily – I mean Ruby – is not hurt, but her car is totally wrecked. And she has killed four of the horses on the merry-go-round

105 with her car; another horse breaks its leg and has to be shot. These horses are imported from Cologne from a Herr Schadenfreude for a dear sum, and the amusement park will have to close down for a while and lose all its Labor Day weekend business (for it is September second when this occurs). There will be lawsuits aplenty: the amusement park against Ruby, Ruby against the man (who finally makes his appearance in this story, albeit briefly), and so on and so forth. There will be enough lawsuits to keep Allen Moscowitz … no, Alan Moskovitz, happy and in the lawyer business for years to come. If he passes the New York State bar exam, that is. But no matter. None of this matters. Nobody cares about Ruby, that her career as a dental hygienist is ruined, that her face is not disfigured, that her life is not a gas. New York is a cold town, someone in Washington Square Park says. A black person says it. Another black person (male or female, take your choice) says, “Loose joints... loose joints.” This means that this black person is selling marijuana cigarettes, but someone walking by thinks it is a kind of arthritis. Who thinks that? Not Alan Moskovitz. No, another black person thinks that. All these black people live in New York City and appear in this story, as if by magic. And why not? New York is filled with black people, all of whom have names not mentioned here. And just because there are no Chinese people in this story, don’t make it your business to assume that New York hasn’t got its share of them, either. Who do you think populates Chinatown, the Armenians? Actually, by a curious twist of fate, this is probably true, for what was once Chinatown, not the Chinatown that exists today (September 2, 1976),

106 but the Chinatown of the eighteenth century, is now a dyed-in-the-wool Armenian neighborhood. Everyone who lives there has a name ending in “-ian.” Some have intermarried with the original inhabitants of the neighborhood, and their names are Wongian, Leeian, Ngian, Wuian, and Chowian. These Chinese-Armenians are precisely the New Yorkers that Alan What’s-his-name does not care about as he walks down the street (a new street this time) immersed in torts. Now there’s a phrase for you: “immersed in torts.” It conveys a brutal image on my part at least. Anyways, what does all this have to do with our protagonist? Who is the protagonist anyway? Why is the protagonist of this story hiding out somewhere, keeping himself or herself out of the public eye? Is he or she more than even Alan Moskovitz? Did he or she put Alan Moskovitz up to fronting for him or her while he or she goes about his or her dirty business? Isn’t sexism preferable to untidy syntax? Behind these mysteries there is no answer. There is a piece of egg roll left over from last night’s dinner at Devrishian’s, however. But too many psychotics roam the streets of New York City and most of them are quite rude when angered. Who are these people of New York to us, anyway? What is Ruby’s accident to Alan Moskovitz? Do either of them care about the chickenhawks or the Chinese-Armenian-Americans, even the most famous of them, David Chowian, who has made the breakfast cereal Chowina (an anagram of his name) a household word? Ruby never affected Alan’s life but once, that one time being when her ex-fiancé, who is now a chickenhawk, through political influence in the Lindsay administration, got Alan Moskovitz a no-show job inspecting nothing at

107 Kennedy Airport one summer while they were both in college. And Alan hated that job at Idlewild Airport, as it was known so long ago. So he has no reason to care about Ruby or be grateful he is not in Ruby’s shoes (a pair of Swedish clogs purchased at Olaf’s Daughters, a store on Sixth Avenue, formally known as the Avenue of the Americas). The rock that falls on one’s head and kills one has no relation to one. That is what Alan Moskovitz thinks. Ruby thinks differently, but who cares what Ruby thinks? By this point nobody in New York City gives a damn about anybody else, and everyone outside the city wishes the rest of us would curl up and die. The minority groups have taken over New York City, especially all the politicians on welfare. The Zionists are the worst hypocrites of all – at least that is what one of the aforementioned black people in this story says. So what kind of story is this that began so unpromisingly and has degenerated further into pure gibberish? Don’t you see what I (the author of this story, but a different author from the one at the beginning, who dropped dead of a coronary somewhere on the second page; I have tried to take over for him, but I am afraid I have contributed nothing but chaos) what I… oh, that parentheses was so long that now I forgot what I was going to say. No matter. New York is a dying city. A story like this is proof of its degeneracy. Alan Moskovitz knows this, Emily/Ruby knows this, the blacks know it (of course they won’t give us the satisfaction of telling us straight out), even the chickenhawks and the Chinese-Armenians know this. If you are reading this story and you live in New York City, let this affect your life. Take this story as a warning to leave. The air is purer in Kansas, the streets are cleaner in Vermont, the girls

108 are better-looking in San Francisco, and justice is swifter in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where people used to hold up banners instead of gas stations. So let’s all move into an old I Love Lucy rerun and get out of this damn city. And for God’s sake, no more stories.

109 AN IRREGULAR STORY

Karl calls me. We are to dine at the beach. Karl comes to my house, we go there in my car. We take my little sister along in the back seat. The beach is beautiful, Karl says. Yes, I say, I have written many stories about it. We stop near my grandparents’ apartment. Karl and I walk, with my little sister following us. I feel uncomfortable with Karl’s arm around me and I ask him if he would please let go. He does so. We take the elevator up to the twelfth floor and walk down to the end of the long dark corridor which smells of my grandmother’s cooking. My grandfather is standing outside his apartment, waiting for us. He kisses my little sister, who runs ahead. I say hello to my grandfather. Then: “I brought a friend to dinner.” “What?” my grandfather says. And I look around, and Karl is not there. I must have offended him when I asked him to take his arm away. My grandmother shouts out from the kitchen, “We’re having chicken for dinner!” I bet she is wiping her hands on her apron. After dinner I go to the Gotham Book Mart. The new one that has opened up at the beach. Although it is new, it is still dark and musty. I go into the back room where they keep all the little magazines in alphabetical order. I look through them to find a little magazine that has one of my stories in it and I find an old issue of a San Francisco magazine that has my “Let the Reader Beware” in it. There is a big crowd in the room, all authors who have published things in little magazines, all looking for

110 their own work. Frances Steloff, the Gotham Book Mart’s founder, now in her nineties, is seated at her desk, reading letters. A woman comes up to me, a woman beautiful in a New York way. She has long limbs, no makeup, and a royal blue skirt on. She busses me on the cheek. Then we kiss. I kiss her again. She seems to know me. I cannot remember who she is, but I am enjoying myself. I haven’t been with a woman like this in months. We are embracing and I smell the smell of her body and like the feeling of touching everywhere. I nudge her down to the floor of the Gotham Book Mart. “Not here, silly,” she giggles. “Oh,” I say. This wonderful strange woman and I are looking at the poetry books up front. Outside the door of the Gotham Book Mart there’s a sign that says Wise Men Fish Here. We keep pinching each other because it is fun and we also want to make sure neither of us is dreaming. Frances Steloff has looked up from her desk and is watching us walk around the store, arm in arm. It feels good. We look in the card catalogue to see if the store has the book we need to make babies. I am searching through the subject index cards, and when I pick my head up, my wonderful strange woman is gone. People keep disappearing on me. I am back by myself. I end up buying a few poetry chapbooks. I take them over to the Gotham Book Mart’s cash register. Standing there, taking cash, is my old psychiatrist Dr. Lipton. He has gotten so old. Dr. Lipton’s arthritis has crippled him. He says hello to me, inquires about my grandparents and little sister, reminds me that when I left him I was seeing Karl. Funny you should mention that, I tell him, for I

111 have not seen any of these people for years, especially not Karl, but I saw them all that very day. It is a coincidence. Dr. Lipton says he does not believe in coincidences. I ask him if he’s seen a beautiful strange woman who disappeared. Dr. Lipton smiles condescendingly and asks me how it is that I’ve never noticed that he was blind. I look at his face and it is true. He is blind. Frances Steloff comes over and says, “Of course he’s blind!” “How can he be a psychiatrist, then, if he’s blind?” I ask. Dr. Lipton tells me, “A psychiatrist doesn’t have to see anything. What a psychiatrist does is listen to a patient make Statement A, and then make Statement B. A psychiatrist’s job is to show the patient how Statement A and Statement B are related. It is the same with all these dreams you are having.” “I see,” I say. “Now,” says Dr. Lipton, “may I check out your books?” I am a mutant. I found this out recently. It was all quite scientific, quite properly done. There is very little doubt. My first cousin, Jennifer, my mother’s brother’s daughter, is a midget. Or a “little person,” as such people prefer to be called now. She is sixteen years old and under four feet tall. Jennifer has no secondary sex characteristics. My aunt and uncle (who were both once patients of Dr. Lipton) did not notice this until the child was eleven or twelve; until then they assumed Jennifer was just short like the rest of our family. But eventually they realized that she was too short and they went to the finest geneticists, endocrinologists and growth specialists in Miami. All these big doctors took tests and agreed that Jennifer would never grow. One of her sex chromosomes was somehow distorted or crippled or missing; I’m not

112 sure of the proper terminology. It seems my uncle is a mutant and his genes were defective and he was the carrier of the condition Jennifer suffers form. My aunt, one of Dr. Lipton’s favorite patients, persuaded me to fly down to Miami and have these doctors take a scraping from my cheek. They examined my genes and the patterns of my chromosomes. It seems my genes are also defective, and any female child I have will be a midget with no secondary sex characteristics. I myself am normal, but I am a carrier of this condition, which is called Lipton’s Syndrome after a second cousin of our family psychiatrist. I am, as I said, a mutant. I’m not sure I ever wanted children anyway. The phone rings in my dream. Then I realize that is the phone ringing in reality intruding into my dream. I pick up the receiver. It is Karl. “I was the strange wonderful woman in the Gotham Book Mart,” Karl says. “I disguised myself.” “What was your name as a woman?” I ask Karl. “George Eliot.” “And why did you disguise yourself?” I ask. “Because I wanted to give you a message.” “And why didn’t you?” My throat is sore. “Because I got carried away and forgot,” Karl tells me. “And what is the message?” I ask him. “Just this,” says Karl. “Why should a story not be told in the most irregular fashion that the author’s idiosyncrasy may prompt…?” “I agree, of course,” I say. “Wait, I’m not finished,” Karl snaps. “Provided that he gives us what we can enjoy.”

113 “Conditions!” I shout into the phone. “It was always conditions with you, Karl!” On television, there is a talk show. The host is interviewing Roman Polanski about his latest movies. They talk for a while, Hollywood gossip. Then the host, who looks a bit like Frances Steloff from the Gotham Book Mart, takes questions from the audience. A woman gets up from the audience and shouts: “I think our young people are terrible! They go about tings all wrong! They’re going to turn into a whole generation of Charlie Mansons, don’t you think so, Mr. Polanski?” The camera focuses in on Roman Polanski looking shocked and uncomfortable. Everyone in the audience knows what he is thinking. The host of the program is speechless. There is silence for a moment. I cannot take it. I rush over to the television and shut it off. It was the most embarrassing moment of my life. For many years before he went bankrupt, my grandfather manufactured pants. In the pants business, some pants are called “irregulars.” This means there is something wrong with the way they are made. Sometimes a pocket is a little off or a seam is not perfect. These irregular garments sell for less money. One can buy irregulars for a bargain. This story is an irregular, too. I don’t know if I am giving what you enjoy, but believe me, it is told in the most irregular fashion that my idiosyncrasies have prompted. These are the outtakes of my life pieced together, all the big bloopers from various

114 stories that never got into them because they were such mistakes. I am a mutant; therefore my stories are all mutants, too. Why should they not be? My life is not in service or is temporarily disconnected: at least that’s what I say to anyone who dials my number. I know this is all down here because I’m trying to avoid writing about the really important issues of my life. But I am not talented and so I have to leave the important issues to others. In the old days you could say, “Is the Pope Catholic?” and everyone would know you were merely stating the obvious. Today people wait for an answer to questions like “Is the Pope Catholic?” And maybe they should. I myself am not Catholic but Jewish, although I do not know much about my religion. I once told Dr. Lipton that my grandfather prayed every morning with prophylactics on, and he laughed and said, “You mean ‘phylacteries.’ I can see we need t’fill in the gaps of your religious education.” I did not get the psychiatrist’s pun. Maybe you don’t, either. Do you care? If you’re reading this irregular story over someone’s shoulder in the little magazine room of the Gotham Book Mart, that means that some editor has accepted it. Therefore, the total responsibility for this isn’t mine. That is a load off my shoulders. Right now Jim Morrison, the late Jim Morrison, is coming over my stereo, singing about how strange people are when you’re a stranger. I’m a stranger, and people are very strange to me. If they weren’t strange, maybe I could write regular stories instead of weird ones like this one. Maybe what I need is to go back to Dr. Lipton, sit on his couch, make Statement A, make

115 Statement B, and find out from him just how they are related.

116 THE GREATEST SHORT STORY THAT ABSOLUTELY EVER WAS Talk is abuzz in literary circles that supertalented Richard Grayson is to write another one of his short story masterpieces. Young Dick is apparently working on something that’s so hot his word processor is smoking! There’s a “closed set” in his study now, so we can’t help you any further than to say that this new top-secret story may be THE sensation of 1982!!!... Word comes to us that Richard Grayson’s new story is the finest masterpiece to come out of a man’s brain since Milton’s “Paradise Lost.” Richard, who isn’t exactly Mr. Modest, would probably be averse to any comparisons to Milton, whom he has despised ever since a sophomore English lit survey course. This hush-hush project is so incredible that Richard hasn’t even shown it to his grandmother! Perhaps it’s something Grandma Grayson, would rather not read, eh, Richie? But keep at it, boy!... Now it can be told! We have discovered that Richard Grayson’s forthcoming short story blockbuster is based on his own adventures on the psychiatrist’s couch and in graduate school. Rumor is that it’s a roman á clef! (For those of you who don’t dig literary lingo, that means that all the characters will be based on real-life people.) They say that Richie’s ex-shrink Dr. Abe Lipton is shivering in his size tens over whether Richard will portray him as a hero or a goat. Just remember, Abe, you can’t win them all and you can expect to

117 win mighty few when you’re up against a superstar like Richard!... Last week the advisory group to ultra-talented Richard Grayson convened to interview some ten applicants for the position of typist to the young writer’s in-progress short story, said to do for neurotic fiction writers what “Jaws” did for sharks. Since the plot and innovations in the short story are a well-kept secret, the panel wanted to choose someone totally trustworthy to hit those old QWERT YUIOP keys. Where did Gussie Grayson, Richard’s 82-year-old grandmother and chairman of the group, hold the meeting? You’ll never guess. All the candidates for the honor of typist met in the back booth of the Bagel Whole Restaurant in Plantation, Florida. And they’re keeping the identity of the ultimate nominee a tightly-guarded secret… Bigwig literary agent Mort Janklow is said to be beating his hidebound chest over losing out the rights to handle Richard Grayson’s new greatest short story to California agent Irving “Swifty” Lazar. When the complaints run this hot and heavy, lawsuits may be in order. It seems poor ole Mort complains that Swifty did him a fast one by using unfair means to snatch the highly-valued story away from him. Lazar says that Grayson’s “going quality… he don’t want to deal with second-raters like Janklow… We’ve got something terrific here, and Grayson knows I know a winner when I see one”… Can it be true? Would Tom Cruise, America’s hot young cinema sensation, actually get down on

118 his hands and knees and grovel before author Richard Grayson? Tom wants to be a character in Grayson’s new story real bad, we hear. Intimates say that in a top-secret meeting at Grayson’s grandmother’s Miami condominium, Big Bad Tom practically begged Richie to give him first rights to the film version of his as-yet-uncompleted short story. Grayson informed Cruise that he would have to put on fifty pounds and a curly dirty blond wig and aviator glasses to play the main character, said to be based on Richie himself. With his career on the line, Tom agreed to all of the super-writer’s demands. But who will produce the movie? Highpowered dickering is going on on both coasts. George Lucas is said to be in the lead, but he wants Steven Spielberg to direct, and Grayson may veto that suggestion. Richie would prefer Sydney Pollack or David Cronenberg, we hear, but those gents are holding out for money. Ah, humanity!... When Dr. Abraham Lipton, psychiatrist, took on a neurotic graduate student as a patient, he paid no mind that Richard Grayson was planning to be the next great American fiction writer. Now all Lipton’s psychoanalytic sessions are said to be grist for a great story by Grayson. In a legal action filed in federal court in Manhattan, the attorney for Dr. Lipton charges that the celebrity author is making him look like a buffoon for chain-smoking and drinking chocolate malteds during their sessions. Grayson’s lawyer, former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, denies the charge and says that the work-inprogress is a “short story.” Our dictionary defines “short story” as “a fictitious prose narrative.” Hmmmmmm…

119 Last night billionaires Donald Trump and Malcolm Forbes co-hosted one of the decade’s biggest shindigs in honor of superstar writer Richard Grayson and his upcoming short story. Grayson protégés Bret Ellis, Tama Janowitz and Jay McInerney partied the night away along with such bestselling authors as Joan Rivers, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Joan Collins. When Tama exclaimed, “It’s too bad Andy can’t be around to read Richard’s new story,” Grayson replied, “Andy who?” Blaine Trump and Larry Tisch doubled up with laughter at that witty remark by the ultimate short story writer. Funny guy, that Grayson!... Flash!!! The working title of Richard Grayson’s latest short story bonanza is said to be “The Sheldon Orloff Sheldon Orloff Doesn’t Know.” The story will apparently told in the first person and feature a character closely resembling – you guessed it – Richard himself. The young hotshot fiction writer, meanwhile, has been voted “Mr. Short Story” by the Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines. Ann Beattie and Raymond Carver trailed far behind Richard. For many Americans, “Grayson” and “innovative fiction” are now synonymous… In an exclusive USA Today interview with honcho author Richard Grayson, one of the chief architects of the contemporary short story, we found that Grayson isn’t the sort of man to worry about whether his new highly-hyped short story might flop. “I’m not worried,” Grayson said. “When you do a good job, people recognize it.” Grayson, rarely smiling, denied he had “gone commercial” and asserted, “There’s no shred of evidence to support it. My stories are as experimental and innovative as

120 ever.” As for rumored allegations that his much ballyhooed masterpiece doesn’t even exist, Grayson angrily declared, “That’s pure crap”… Richard Grayson, the dynamic young superwriter who’s shaken up America with his fantastic innovations in short fiction, gave the good news and the bad news about his latest short story at a closedcircuit press conference. The bad news was that “’The Sheldon Orloff Sheldon Orloff Doesn’t Know’ probably the greatest short story that absolutely ever was, at least as far as I’m concerned,” is dead. The good news was its reincarnation in a rewrite as “The Inevitability of Sheldon Orloff,” an experimental piece about all the furor writing the first story caused. Some of the nation’s major literary figures (Norman Mailer, Susan Sontag, Tom Clancy) joined Richard in welcoming the new short story as part of Grayson’s crusade to “overcome the public’s resistance to fiction that they can’t understand.”

121 NARCISSISM AND ME I am reading a story by Richard Grayson. I am reading the first line of the story. The first line is, “I am reading a story by Richard Grayson.” How clever of Richard Grayson to begin a story that way. It appears when you read it that you are actually reading your own thoughts. But it gets even better when I read the second line of the story. The second line is, “I am reading the first line of the story.” But the third line is the best because it makes a wonderful comment about our society, narcissism, and punctuation. The third line of the story is, “The first line is, ‘I am reading a story by Richard Grayson.’” So here I am. I am sitting in a room in a strange condo in Broward County, Florida, all alone, reading a story by Richard Grayson. Or is it Richard Grayson who is sitting all alone in a strange condo in Broward County, Florida, writing the story? Even the best of confessional writers walk a fine line between self-analysis and self-indulgence. Richard Grayson is no exception. Of course he thinks he is an exception. Do you know why he thinks he is an exception? Because he puts lines in his stories like, “Even the best of confessional writers walk a fine line between self-analysis and self-indulgence,” that’s why. But nothing is happening in this story. Maybe I should stop reading it. I am bored with the fourth line of the story, which is mere self-congratulation. Besides, this kind of story seems too easy to write. It is not real short story writing. What makes it

122 better than some self-conscious stories is that I, the reader, can get in and say a few things that need to be said. Like, “Maybe I should stop reading this story.” Maybe I should be reading the Warner Books paperback edition of Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism. That book just might give me a handle on this story. Hmm. On page 49, Lasch states, “…the increasing interpenetration of fiction, journalism, and autobiography undeniably indicates that many writers find it more and more difficult to achieve the detachment indispensable to art.” Now that is just what the problem with this story is. Richard Grayson cannot separate himself from his art. If you call stories like this “art.” Look back at the story. How many times did the author put his name in already? What a narcissist! Richard Grayson’s uncle, Moe Shapiro, thinks Richard is a narcissist but he does not know what the word means. How do I know this? Because Moe once told Richard so on the telephone. How do I know that? Guess. Either Moe told me or Richard told me or nobody told me because I am Richard writing this. But what if I’m Moe writing this? Moe Shapiro, Richard Grayson’s maternal uncle, could be writing this sentence. He could have written every sentence in this story. He could be writing this very sentence in which I am thinking he could be writing this very sentence. Moe Shapiro went with his wife to see the comedienne Pat Carroll starring in Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein, a play that once played on MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village. Can it be there that Richard’s uncle decided to

123 become a writer just like Gertrude Stein? It’s possible. In this time of crisis, anything is possible. It’s even possible that Moe’s wife Sondra saw the play and decided to become a comedienne just like Pat Carroll Pat Carroll Pat Carroll. Do you think Richard’s aunt will want to appear opposite Sid Melton in reruns of Danny Thomas’s old TV show, Make Room for Daddy? Do you think Sondra Shapiro will play Suzanne Somers’s mother in the sitcom She’s the Sheriff? Neither does Richard. Neither do I. Who am I? That is the central question of this story. To answer it, one must go back to Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism, bought on a cloudy Sunday at the Paperback Booksmith in the Broward Mall on University Drive, just a few miles from the strange condo where Richard Grayson wrote this story. On page 48, Lasch says, “The popularity of the confessional mode testifies…to the new narcissism that runs all through American culture; but the best work in this vein attempts, precisely through selfdisclosure, to achieve a critical distance from the self and to gain insight…” Hmm. I don’t think this story is what Lasch means by “the best work in this vein.” The author is too vain, and he eats so much fat, his arteries are getting clogged up. Is he creating art or plaquefilled arteries? He will never win a plaque for his fiction, not even from his periodontist. Perhaps this story is the best work in this auricle, but only an oracle could tell you if puns could be considered “critical distance.” Possibly. Richard Grayson is trying to fool me by putting all these quotes from a critic of our narcissistic culture right in the middle of this story, but I am not fooled. I won’t be fooled

124 by the sentence coming up, another quote from Lasch: “On the verge of an insight, these writers often draw back into self-parody, seeking to disarm criticism by anticipating it.” Now that’s the exact thing that Richard Grayson is trying to do here. What baloney this is! I wish his uncle Moe Shapiro were writing this story instead. Then it would be less self-conscious. But perhaps I can make this story less self-conscious by reading it differently. Perhaps I can change the sentence as I read them. Yes, maybe I can do it. For example, the last sentence Richard Grayson wrote in this story was, “I just masturbated.” But I can read the last sentence as, “Yes, maybe I can do it.” And I can read the sentence after that as, “But I can read the last sentence as, ‘Yes, maybe I can do it.’” And the sentence after that begins, “And I can read the sentence after that as…” And so on. What a great discovery. The reader doesn’t have to read what the writer wrote. The reader can be a participant in the story now. He can make the story go any way he wants to. Fine. Now that we know who’s in control here, the next sentence can be something like this: Dr. Michael Gentile, Richard Grayson’s therapist and former Midwood High School classmate, sat in his chair and stared at his client. Or it can be this: Sondra Shapiro, Richard Grayson’s aunt by marriage, stood at the door and waved goodbye to her husband. Or it can be this: I am reading a story by Richard Grayson. Wait a minute. Do you see what is happening here? Do you understand the process? I quote Lasch again:

125 “Many of Grayson’s stories, so brilliant and moving in their ‘critique de la vie quotidienne,’ suffer because of Grayson’s inability to resist an easy laugh. In ‘Narcissism and Me,’ for example, Grayson quotes this very line I am now writing, the line you are reading and have paid $2.95 to get my whole book for.” You won’t find that quote in The Culture of Narcissism. Guess who made it up. That’s right. All right, so who’s covering up? Especially in Broward County, Florida, where it may be cloudy but it’s very warm. I hate cover-ups, especially when mentioning them brings on those easy laughs Lasch was talking about. I bet Richard Grayson is getting tired of writing this story now. He’s had a writer’s block for some time, he’s tried everything to relieve it (even masturbating the way that asshole Norman Podhoretz confessed he did in Making It), but he knows he is just not making it. What is the point of writing stories, he thinks. I think the same thing. So what am I doing here as a narrator in this Richard Grayson story? Because Grayson decided to make the reader the narrator. He thought that might save his story and ultimately save himself. You know why? Because Grayson is one of those narcissists that Lasch is talking about. The late Susan Stern is another. Lasch is talking about her book about her experiences with the Weathermen in the 1960s and states that Stern, like many others, was in the New Left more for personal reasons – to find herself – than for political ones. Those two narcissists, Grayson and Stern, met in 1970 when Stern came to Brooklyn College to raise funds for the Seattle 8, a group arrested during a riot protesting the guilty verdict of the Chicago 7. Susan Stern was one of the Seattle 8 and Richard

126 Grayson interviewed her for The Ol’ Spigot, the Brooklyn College student government newspaper. But because Stern had jumped bail by coming to Brooklyn, Grayson had to say she was really the Seattle 8’s lawyer, Joan Weiss. The newspaper article appeared to be journalism but was actually fiction. How do I know this? Dr. Michael Gentile, Richard Grayson’s therapist, told me. He told me he despised Richard for falsifying the facts about Susan Stern, especially after he heard that Susan Stern was dead. Richard read her obituary in the New York Times. She died of a heart attack. She was 34. All of the above is true. You can read about Stern in her own book, With the Weathermen: The Personal Journey of a Revolutionary Woman, published by Doubleday in 10975. You can’t read any more of this story because it is over. Grayson’s a bore, Stern’s dead, and the rest of us – you, me, Uncle Moe, Dr. Gentile, Christopher Lasch – are tired of this sort of self-indulgence masquerading as art.

127 MY GRANDFATHER’S OTHER SON A rockaway is a light, four-wheeled horse-drawn carriage having two or three seats and a fixed top. You can find a picture of it on page 1239 of The Random House Dictionary of the English Language. There are no rockaways anymore. But rockaways were named for the Rockaways, a narrow spit of land on the south shore of Long Island. Prior to the coming of the railroads one hundred years ago, the Rockaways were an exclusive resort second only to Saratoga Springs. But the later accessibility caused the rich and the well-born to move to more remote parts of Long Island’s south shore: Fire Island, the Hamptons. Then the Rockaways became a seaside resort for the middle class. In recent years some of the wooden cottages and bungalows have given way to municipal housing projects, resulting in squalid slums. Of course, parts of the western Rockaways still retain traces of their former splendor. My grandfather and my grandmother live in a Mitchell-Lama state-subsidized co-op apartment building smack dab in the middle of the Rockaways. They are on the eleventh floor. Their terrace overlooks the beach. (The Architectural Guide to New York City describes my grandparents’ building as “grim in appearance and remarkably unresponsive to the beachfront spot it occupies.”) My grandparents have lived in this apartment for ten years.

128 At this very moment my grandmother and my grandfather are awaiting the arrival of the Concorde. Every morning between 11:00 and 11:29, the Concorde moves past their terrace, right to left, on its descent towards Kennedy Airport. My grandfather is peering through a pair of Nazi field glasses that were left to him by his dead younger brother, who fought in World War II. My grandmother is at his side, biting into a juicy Anjou pear. She is watching for the Concorde but at the same time she is thinking my grandfather should pare his fingernails. My grandmother is not aware of the existence of the word “homonym.” At this very moment the Concorde begins to appear in what even my grandparents think of as a giant television screen: the view from their terrace. What does the Concorde look like to my grandparents? A bird. A bird with a droopy beak and big behind. A bird that does not make as much as noise as everyone said it would. A bird that is beautiful. My grandparents repeat this last word several times as they watch the Concorde make a rapid descent across their field of vision. “Beautiful,” says my grandfather. “Beautiful,” says my grandmother. “Just beautiful,” says my grandfather, adding an adverbial intensifier. My grandparents do not think life is intense. Inside, the radio is playing. At this very moment the radio is tuned to WOR, 710 on the AM dial. Dr. Bernard Meltzer is on the air taking telephone calls. People call Dr. Bernard Meltzer with all different kinds of problems and he helps them the best he can. A man wants to know how he can get reparations from an aluminum siding company which has cheated him. A woman wants to know

129 whether her husband should make out a will; if he doesn’t, might not her stepson inherit the house? The stepson’s daughter’s best friend, a girl of seventeen, asks if there is a future in pharmacy these days. Dr. Bernard Meltzer answers all these questions with a smile. But he is on radio so nobody can see Dr. Bernard Meltzer’s smile. At this very moment my grandfather is inside his apartment. He is in the dining area, sitting down at the table with a Hebrew calendar for the years 5730 and 5731. These years correspond to the Christian year 1970. My grandmother saves old calendars for scrap paper. My grandmother knows that my grandfather needs something to write on. At this very moment my grandmother is flushing the toilet in the bathroom. Five years ago she had rectal surgery. My grandfather has recently installed a new plastic toilet seat to replace the old hard enamel one. At this very moment my grandmother comes into the dining area and asks my grandfather what he is doing. He looks up at her, says nothing, hopes she will not ask again. But our wishes do not always conform to reality, not even when we are staring at a calendar for the month of November 1970, for the Hebrew months Cheshvan and Kislev 5731. And so my grandmother again asks, “What are you doing, Herb?” And when my grandfather answers her, she says, “Not that business again.” See, my grandfather wants to write a novel.

130

What is my grandfather writing a novel for, my grandmother asks. My grandfather does not answer her question but goes on to tell her something else that he has in mind: “Well,” he says, putting down his pencil, “this is the story of a young man who falls in love with a girl.” “Hmpf,” says my grandmother, knowing she is interrupting him. “She has a baby,” my grandfather continues, “but they never get married. They separate. She brings up the baby alone. It’s a boy. She goes her way and the father of the baby goes his…” My grandmother coughs sarcastically. “I even got a name for the story,” says my grandfather. “My Other Son. How does that sound, My Other Son?” “That’s terrible,” says my grandmother. “Why terrible?” “To say a thing like that about your child,” my grandmother says. She and my grandmother have two sons, neither of whom she thinks of as her other son. “But the man forgets about him!” my grandfather shouts impatiently. On the radio, Dr. Bernard Meltzer is telling an old widower about South African gold coins called Krugerrands. “The man forgets about the son, he marries another woman, they have a son together,” says my grandfather. “That’s the story?” “No, the story is three hundred pages, that’s just how it begins!”

131 My grandmother says nothing, just clucks her tongue. “It begins with the affair. She has the baby, they separate, he goes his way and she goes hers. He knows the name of the kid, but that’s all he knows. Later in life he’s going to meet him, though. What do you think?” “Go on,” says my grandmother tentatively. “The other son, the legitimate one, is grown and has gone to work for the father. Then the other son…” “…The other other son…” “That’s right, he gets hired by the legitimate one. Now the legitimate son hasn’t got any ability for business. But the other son: he starts at the ground floor and works his way up through his ability and great effort. Even strangers at the company are pulling for him. And later, during a conversation, he meets his father…” “But his father is his boss, doesn’t he know him?” “Sure,” says my grandfather, who is exasperated at this very moment. “He knows hm, but not that he’s his son. And later on he mentions his mother’s name and his mother, and the boss realizes he’s his son.” At this very moment my grandfather’s blood pressure is 160/90. His cholesterol count is 380. There is a trace of sugar in his urine. And he is shaking his head sadly. Why is my grandfather shaking his head so sadly? Because my grandmother has brought up a point. The point my grandmother has brought up is this: “What happens at the end of the novel?”

132 “I don’t know yet,” is what my grandfather finally says. On the radio Dr. Bernard Meltzer is giving the time. It is ten minutes to noon. “I’ll figure it out,” says my grandfather defensively. “Maybe the father will give him an interest in the business.” My grandmother looks skeptical. “And what are you going to fill up three hundred pages with?” “That’s what I’m trying to tell you!” shouts my grandfather. “You got to put little stories on the side, it’s got to come to you, it isn’t easy. You’ve got to concentrate all the time… Look at How the West Was Won. They tell one part of it about the uncle, then they forget about him for a while and tell about the niece, and then somebody else gets involved, and then they switch back to the uncle.… But to put it in words with my college education isn’t easy.” My grandmother laughs, knowing her husband dropped out after the fifth grade. My grandfather likes the sound of his wife’s laughter. “I’m lucky I can write my name,” he says. And then they have gefilte fish for lunch. My grandmother sleeps in the bedroom, in her bed. My grandfather sleeps in the living room, on the Castro convertible. They have done this for years. That night, just before they go to bed, at the very moment when I am at home writing this story, my grandmother turns to my grandfather and asks him a question: “Is he an honorable man, the father?” “Certainly he’s honorable.”

133 “Then why doesn’t he marry the girl who’s having his baby?” “Hm,” my grandfather says. “I’ll have to make a reason… Maybe he comes from a good family and his parents turn him against her; he’s young, doesn’t know any better, something like that.” My grandmother gets under the covers of her bed. My grandfather, in the next room, gets under the covers of the Castro convertible. “When I put a period at the end of the book, I’ll be finished,” he calls out. My grandmother, famous throughout the Rockaways for her insomnia, is already snoring. Wide awake on the Castro convertible, my grandfather thinks of how they do it on TV: It’s early morning in the spring of 1965 in the little town of Kretchmer, Louisiana. The sun is coming up and the farmer is awaking…. My grandfather turns over on his side. If I write a best seller, he thinks, will she be surprised.

134 MY LIFE AS AN OLD COMIC Dear Editor: I am wild about your magazine and ride half a mile every Saturday for it. Do you know what happens when I get my little paws on an issue of Richard Grayson? My eyes leave their sockets, my face becomes deep red, I giggle over nothing and act like a spring chicken all day! My favorite character is Uncle Irving because he’s so paranoid. To save me from making so many Saturday trips, can you please tell me when your magazine goes on sale? Christine Wilheim Chicago, Ill. (Richard Grayson generally goes on sale the last week of February, April, June, August, October and December.—Editor) Dear Editor: If you have the slightest doubts about how “useful” your periodical is, dispel them. A few weeks ago while we were waiting for the teacher to mark our vocabulary exams, a boy asked what an agoraphobic was. The teacher said t was someone who was afraid of everything. Another fellow said it was someone who was afraid of going out places. The teacher asked us to look it up and we found it was someone who got panic attacks when he went places. I was 100% sure of this because I read an old Richard Grayson which featured Richie’s getting agoraphobia and having severe anxiety attacks when he left his home. So you can take a bow on this handy piece of information! Willie Bleimester Poughkeepsie, N.Y.

135 (Actually, the word agoraphobia originally comes from two Greek words meaning “fear of the marketplace.”—Editor) Dear Editor: Congratulations on Richard Grayson No. 15. It was one of the best you’ve put out since your magazine started! I’ve never seen an issue marked by such brilliant dialogue or so many startling surprises! Your writer took a classic situation (that of somebody’s old girlfriend getting married) and gave it a completely new variation. If he weren’t so badly needed to write other stories of the same caliber, I would recommend giving him a two-weeks’ paid vacation! He really deserves an award! Sp/4 Drury S. Moore APO New York (If you are a mystery-story fan, you’ll be interested to know that Richard Grayson writer G.O. Dougherty also writes mystery paperbacks which have drawn highly rated reviews.—Editor) Dear Editor: Richard Grayson is my favorite comic and around here (Milwaukee), they’re selling like the proverbial hotcakes. Richie’s homosexual friend Tom Bevens made a great hit with me in your last story. Even my cat Petey likes your comic—he especially likes to sleep on it. Darn that cat! John Hanfale Milwaukee, Wis. (We always figured Richard Grayson was the cat’s meow!—Editor)

136 Dear Editor: Let me say ab initio that I consider Richard Grayson the finest magazine on the market today! Consider G.O. Dougherty’s tremendous plots, complimented by Al Lang’s superb artistry, depicting Richie, his friends and family in booklength adventures, and you can easily see why. Although I am generally satisfied with your comic, I do have some complaints. Richie’s friendship with Tom Bevens does not please me for one, for I consider Tom effeminate and a ridiculous character, and this also applies to Grandma Gussie and Prof. Bombeck. The former I think inane and absurd. Imagine an elderly widow running around Miami Beach with bleached blonde hair and flirting with men young enough to be her sons! Prof. Bombeck is nothing but an unreasonable facsimile of Richie’s old high school English teacher Mr. Bader. You can send him back to Stanford anytime. To return to Grandma Gussie, she is also too old to be drinking so much whiskey. The above paragraph, if printed, will probably bring a storm of protest, as, for reasons incomprehensible to me, the three characters I have spoken against are popular. It is, however, as certain that there are others who concur with my views. Roger C. West Dorchester, Mass. (You’re right, Roger—our editorial barometer is falling rapidly—a sure sign that a storm of protest from the loyal fans of Tom Bevens, Grandma Gussie and Prof. Bombeck is on the way!—Editor)

137 Dear Editor: I think that the June Richard Grayson is definitely the best story to appear in the series so far, no easy task since most of them have been good! The story was interesting. I suggest you bring back Richie’s old therapist Dr. Lipton again, since a good old Freudian is needed to break up the monotony of Richie’s current client-centered therapy with Ms. Haldeman. I’ve been trying to figure out why I like Richard Grayson so much, and I’ve finally narrowed it down to three reasons: Firstly, Richard Grayson has a lot of interesting and different types of stories. Secondly, I really like the way you handle your characters, especially the students at Brooklyn College. You also seem to be doing a fine job with Uncle Irving. I noticed that since issue No. 11 when he was ranting against “schvartzes,” you have steadily improved in handling him. Carole Silberfarb is another character that never sat well with me because of her obesity and immaturity. But lately you have handled her excellently, and please keep it that way! Finally, you wisely include Richie in every adventure. Richie is a wonderful hero—a neurotic college student, trying to be a sophisticated New Yorker yet really very naïve, except for his intelligence. Richie is wonderful and personally, the more I see of him, the better I feel! Ken Gentry Nashville, Tenn. (To the readers who have complained about the over-emphasis of Richie in our stories, we repeat the reason we gave in a previous issue: “This popular hero is the center of our stories, but he is

138 not our only important character. In the future we will play up other Brooklyn College students, particularly Tom Bevens and Carole Silberfarb.”) Dear Editor: I just finished reading your June issue of Richard Grayson and I just had to write and tell you what I think of it. In my opinion, “The Mystery of Carole Silberfarb’s Wedding Plans” was not up to par with your many other stories. Oh, I’ll admit there were a few ingenious touches, like having Richie told the news about his old girlfriend’s wedding by his mother, who had met Carole’s parents at a bar mitzvah. And Tom Bevens and other people in LaGuardia Hall taking bets on how long Carole’s engagement would last struck me as being a very witty piece of business. But to me, these elements don’t add up to a story worthy of Richard Grayson’s attention. Don’t get me wrong. I think your Richard Grayson comic books lead all the others. The idea of having a nebbishy college student as a hero was one beautiful step in entertainment and I applaud you and your staff for all the enjoyment you have given me in the past. Diane Hruska Walled Lake, Mich. (Can it be that Richard Grayson has set such a high standard for itself that when a story comes along with only “a few ingenious touches,” it rates merely as a so-so story?—Editor) Dear Editor: Firstly, I would like to congratulate you for making Richard Grayson the successful magazine that it is. In just three years the

139 publication has become the favorite of comic fans all over the nation and overseas. Now to get down to business! The cover of issue No. 15 was superbly done: elimination of word and thought balloons gave it a real impact, and having Richie’s family in that kitchen uproar was a stroke of genius. I have one complaint: poor crazy Uncle Irving was left out of the picture. You could have at least portrayed him muttering to himself on the sidelines. In fact, you boys really underworked the Bigoted Barber this issue. But you made up for this by generous appearances of bitchy Carole Silberfarb and that creep she’s marrying. The art, for a change, was exceptionally good this time. There was a great plot and I sure would like to know who wrote it. If I had anything to complain about the story, it would be in Richie’s reaction to the news of the marriage—he shouldn’t have gone to see them the night before the engagement party! One more thing: On the last page of the story we see Tom Bevens telling Richie that he had had sex with Carole’s fiancé ten months before in the men’s bathroom of LaGuardia Hall. Boy, that must be some bathroom for all that to be going on there! How about giving us a real treat and letting us see the LaGuardia men’s room? Michael Frasetta North Bellmore, N.Y. (“Mystery of Carole Silberfarb’s Wedding Plans”— as have all other Richard Grayson stories—was written by G.O. Dougherty, who in his foxy way has avoided giving us any details about the college bathroom. Maybe this plea will prompt Dougherty

140 to stop beating around the bush and open the door to one of Tom Bevens’s favorite haunts.—Editor) Dear Editor: I wish to make a comment on the June Richard Grayson. On page 25, panel 1, Richie’s mother says that Richie’s antics are making her nauseous. This, however, is impossible because nauseous means “causing nausea.” Mrs. Grayson should have said that she was getting nauseated. (This small mistake did not stop me from enjoying the story.) Donald Howe Springfield, Ill. (Where did you get your information, pal? According to our dictionary, “nauseous” is an informal substitute for “nauseated.” And although Mrs. Grayson may be a fussbudget, she is not particularly formal in her speech.—Editor) Dear Editor: Many times I’ve written you about various topics, but never have I written a 100% rave letter, something Richard Grayson so richly deserves. In comparison to other comics, Richard Grayson never features cheap artwork, crime, violence for the sake of violence (Carole’s boyfriend punching Richie out had a point), savage monsters, pornography, and language that is often nauseous and ungrammatical. In other comics people are often shown being killed, and the characters are stereotyped, infallible sorts who are neither realistic or satisfying to the reader. Rarely will you find any other comic besides Richard Grayson providing an

141 escape from everyday troubles—instead they seem to intensify them. Ian Poupard Calgary, Alberta, Canada (Richard Grayson is happy and proud to accept the above testimonial on behalf of all our staff.— Editor) Address communications to RICHARD GRAYSON MAIL ROOM, American Periodical Publications, 757 Lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10017.

142 THE GOVERNOR OF THE STATE OF DEPRESSION Baby The Governor likes to be treated like a baby. In the morning he lies in bed until someone comes to him. He has taken to eating baby food. His especial favorite is Gerber’s Strained Vanilla Custard Pudding. It is so creamy and delicious it makes you feel as though you ware being held. The Gerber baby is on the jar. The Governor’s aunt buys his baby food at the supermarket. She makes sure that the safety button on the lid of each jar has not been popped up. If it has, then that means that someone has already opened the jar. You do not want the Governor eating custard pudding that someone else has had his hand in. Spring What a long winter, the Governor thinks. Snow everywhere. Four thousand two hundred and thirtyone people in my state alone have frozen to death in their cars. Another seventy-three people, all men, have had fatal heart attacks while shoveling snow. There have been innumerable other deaths, but because they fall into miscellaneous categories we cannot do much about them. “Cheer up,” the Governor’s aunt says at breakfast. “Spring always comes, you know.” The Governor’s aunt is a Daughter of the American Revelation.

143 The Governor has a tissue in his mouth. He takes it out. “Yes, it’s true,” he says. “Spring always comes.” His aunt smiles and nods her saturnine head. “But it doesn’t come for everyone and it doesn’t come on time,” the Governor adds. His aunt frowns. Credit A serious problem has come up in the State Capitol and the Governor goes to investigate the situation firsthand. It seems a middle-aged redheaded woman likes to stand on the steps of the State Capitol Building and say strange things. She repeats them over and over to the crowd that invariably gathers round. “I’m going to get alimony like you wouldn’t believe,” the woman is saying on this night. “That’s what kind of alimony I’m going to get…. Joe’s credit is good. Your credit should be so good.” She picks the Governor out of the crowd. “What’s your credit worth – shit? Shit, that’s what your credit’s worth.” People mumble. “She can’t say that to the Governor,” someone says. “It’s all right,” the Governor assures the crowd. “Let her continue.” And the woman does: “In Las Vegas they cashed Joe’s check. A thousand dollars. No questions asked. How many people could get that? How many men’s credit is that good?” Mine is, the Governor thinks.

144 “Even in Glenwood Springs,” the woman says, “Joe’s credit was good. And in Las Vegas they cashed Joe’s check at the Dunes. One thousand dollars. No questions asked… Sam’s sister said to Joe, ‘Joe, your credit’s good with me anytime.’ And she works for the Guaranty National Bank…” The Governor walks away when the woman begins to repeat herself. What’s to be done? he thinks. Nothing, he decides. Let the woman be. She does no one any harm. She might even be doing some good. Mother “Today would have been your mother’s seventieth birthday,” says the Governor’s aunt, sister of the dead woman. They looked nothing alike. “Really?” asks the Governor, his face buried in an ecological report. “Yes,” his aunt replies. “Her dying so young was the central tragedy of your life.” “Was it?” “You know it was… Do you remember how pretty she was? Can you remember her at all?” The Governor thinks: No, I cannot remember the person at all. However, I do recall a disembodied series of agitating stimuli. That is probably because she died three months after I was born. To his aunt, the Governor says, “No, not much.” Repeat The Governor is repeating himself.

145 He is making a speech and he is repeating himself. He is tired and he is repeating himself. He is repeating himself and he wishes he were somewhere else. As he repeats himself he thinks of a Christmas spent in San Juan, the tepid water of the ocean, the narrow streets of the Old Quarter, the perfume of the woman in the chaise longue next to his, the tepid water… The Governor is addressing the state AFL-CIO council and their members listen as the Governor repeats himself. He is repeating himself, thinks a woman in the second row. He is an intelligent, wonderful, prolabor Governor but he is repeating himself. He is repeating himself even though he is saying important things that need saying. Listening to him repeat himself is boring. I can’t wait for the cocktail party after the speech. After the speech, there is a cocktail party. “Great speech,” says one union leader. “Great speech, Governor. Boy, what a great speech. A great speech, all right.” “And it was certainly a great speech,” says another union leader. Sure, sure, the Governor thinks. Beach The Gobernador walks along the beach in San Juan at night in a suit. He feels the breeze blowing his hair. He is not wearing his glasses so everything looks almost rhapsodic.

146 The Gobernador bends down to pick up some sand. He feels its texture. He puts a couple of sand crystals in his mouth, in his ear, up his nostrils. One could never do this with grass, the Gobernador thinks. I sometimes wish I was Governor of Puerto Rico instead. Behind him, couples are giggling. Newspaper “Oh my,” says the Governor’s aunt. She is reading an anti-Governor editorial in the newspaper. “They certainly don’t think you’re doing a very good job, do they?” The Governor takes a spoonful of Gerber’s Strained Vanilla Custard Pudding. “You can’t please everyone,” he says. “Philosophical of you,” says his aunt. The Governor looks up, starts to say something, stops himself, and takes another spoonful of baby food. It goes down like ambrosia. Whatever ambrosia is. Therapy “We’ll skip the month of August,” the Governor’s therapist says. “I’m going to the Cape.” “Must you?” asks the Governor. “I never take a whole month off.” The therapist smiles. Of course she says nothing; she is waiting for the Governor to react. He reacts with a slogan: “Less time in the sand and more time with the analysand!” he shouts.

147 “Pleased with yourself?” the therapist asks the Governor. But the session is up. Campaign “Mr. and Mrs. Barton Valchavek,” the invitation reads, “request the honor of your presence at a dinner honoring Our Governor.” This is a campaign dinner. Creamed chicken tastes terrible, thinks the Governor as he sits on the dais. Why can’t they serve baby food? Everyone is formally dressed. The Governor’s aunt is regaling guest with amusing stories. The Valchaveks are marvelous hosts. They make sure everyone gets to talk to the Governor. “I’m not in love with you anymore,” says one woman, the wife of a former state senator. The Governor nods his head. “You didn’t repeat yourself tonight,” says a labor leader. “No, I guess not,” the Governor says in response. “Your credit’s nothing compared to Joe’s!” says the woman from the Capitol steps. The Governor smiles fixedly. How did she get an invitation? The Governor’s aunt comes over to him. “Your tie is loose,” she whispers. The Governor shakes her hand. Press Conference “Is it true you like baby food, Governor?” asks one reporter. “What about the additives they put in it? Do you feel it is nutritious?”

148 “It satisfies me,” the Governor snaps. Polls have told him that his image is fuzzy, so today he is giving snappy answers. “Governor,” begins another reporter, “what were you doing on the beach with sand in your mouth?” “Doing an ecological survey,” replies the Governor. Another reporter takes the floor. “There are rumors going around that if you are re-elected, you don’t intend to serve out your full term. Is there any basis for these speculations, Governor?” “None whatsoever,” the Governor snaps, the snappiest answer of the afternoon. “I have no plans for suicide now and I don’t foresee having them in the future.” That night the tabloids print out this headline: WON’T KILL SELF, GOV IMPLIES. The next morning the Governor is furious. “Implies?” he says angrily. “You poor darling,” says his aunt, sipping her Constant Comment tea. Election There are three television sets set up in the Governor’s study. He is alone. Everyone else has been chased out. All three networks have called the election by making use of the vote in sample precincts. All three networks say the Governor has lost. The Governor sits at his desk with his face in his hands. His tie is crooked. The phone rings too loudly. The Governor picks it up. “Concede already, you bastard,” the caller hisses out. It is the Governor’s opponent, now the Governor-elect.

149 “All right,” says the Governor to the next Governor. “I concede. You win. But at least I’m leaving you a clean desk.” “Yeah, and there better not be any baby food left around!” says the next Governor of the State of Depression. The incumbent Governor hangs up the phone. I did my best, he tells himself. And I will continue to do my best in the time remaining to me. The Governor looks down at his feet. They are bare. Now I am a lame duck, he thinks. He gets up from behind the desk, squats down on the floor, screws up his nose and says, “Quack!” When the reporters come in, the Governor is hysterical with laughter.

150 INNOVATIONS The rabbi tells a hilarious joke and everyone is in stitches, everyone except D.L. When I ask D.L. why he isn’t laughing too, he replies: “I’m not religious.” (Confession: I have always wanted to be known as a wag.) D.L. goes into a bank branch that looks like a split orange with spangled sunglasses. Because it is the third of the month, D.L. must stand in line with all the senior citizens and welfare mothers who are cashing their government checks. “Some line,” and old man says to D.L. D.L. just nods. “What do you do for a living?” the welfare mother in back of D.L. asks him. “I’m a fiction writer,” is what D.L. tells her. “An innovative fiction writer.” The old man in front of D.L. snorts. “This guy thinks he’s too big to be called experimental. No, he calls himself innovative. What a crock!” D.L. gets off the line, crawls under the red velvet rope to get out, slinks silently away. He goes to his study to write an innovative novel. (For my own story I foresee immediate contempt followed eventually by an even securer status in a future Museum of Literary Culture. D.L. has taught me well.) Some of his students think that D.L. looks like a psychotic D.H. Lawrence. Others claim he grew

151 the beard only to lessen the effects of his huge nose. If you look at the dust jacket of his first novel, published in 1968 when they would publish anything, you will see D.L. clean-shaven. It is a jarring picture. On the dust jacket some blurber compared him to Malamud. Needless to say, that is never done today. D.L.’s favorite word of criticism is resonant. Without the word resonant, an innovative fiction writer could not criticize a thing. If one of his students’ stories is resonant, that story works. One time I brought in a story called “Resonance,” but D.L. didn’t like it and said it wasn’t the least bit resonant. I sat through the class but I cried in the men’s room afterwards. (I’m not sure I like this story so far. I’m getting off the subject of D.L. Somehow these days most of my stories seem to be the fictional equivalents of all those recordings of “I’ve Got to Be Me.”) D.L. is not famous, but once an article about John Hawkes in The Village Voice mentioned a quote about Hawkes by D.L. The article did not identify D.L.; it just gave his name. D.L. came into class and said that that was the highest form of recognition. Most people who read the article just said, “Who?”when they read the quote by D.L. Of course half the people who read the article didn’t know who John Hawkes was, either. As for myself, I would rather not know. D.L. has been quoted (by me, in class) as saying, “There are only five American fiction writers worth reading today: John Hawkes, William Gass, Grace Paley and Donald Barthelme.”

152 That is four by my count. Guess who the other one is. (I don’t like to spell things out for the reader. The Trobriand Islanders have no words for “why” or “because”; to those happy people, things just happen. Needless to say, Trobriand Islanders do not read any fiction, innovative or not.) “Fiction is stranger than truth,” D.L. pontificates. “And far more interesting.” “Every story must have a beginning, a middle, and an end,” D.L. will lecture us. “Preferably not in that order.” “I don’t like ‘touching’ stories,” D.L. says with a smirk on his bearded face. He rips my story to pieces – quite literally. Again he has told me. None of my stories will ever “touch” D.L. (It’s now fashionable to put quotes around any word that might be challenged. Just another way of saying, “Don’t hit me, I didn’t really ‘mean’ it!”) D.L. has been married three times. Once he introduced me to the woman who broke up his second marriage. The woman didn’t even know she had done it. D.L.’s son is a little younger than me, and so D.L. asks me what Christmas presents he should give his son. “He lives with my first wife, and I don’t know him,” is what D.L. tells me. Silently he says: “And I don’t want to know him, either.” Aloud, to me, D.L. says something else: “He’s the only nineteen-year-old in America who likes Robert

153 Bresson movies.” D.L. himself writes film criticism for some boring old quarterly. D.L. is hated passionately by the English Department chairman. D.L. is hated restlessly by his first wife. D.L. is hated cruelly by his oldest son. D.L. is hated demurely by his second wife. D.L. is hated lovingly by his daughter. D.L. is hated casually by this third and present wife, the former Veronica Lape. D.L. is hated incessantly by his two youngest daughters, who are just children, after all. And of course D.L. is hated most of all by me. “Never use the passive voice,” D.L. will say in criticizing a story. (A friend of mine argues that the single most beautiful line in all of French literature is Racine’s “La fille de Minos et de Pasiphaë.” Not because the genealogy of Phèdre is inherently interesting, but just because the sound of the words themselves is beautiful. It takes all kinds, I suppose.) D.L. has me go down to the college bookstore to see if they need any more copies of his most recently published book of innovative fiction. All the copies of the book are still on the counter, all still unsold. I feel a little bad about this and tell D.L. they have sold only one since the last time I checked. He looks sad and I feel even sorrier for him. Being an innovative fiction writer is not an easy life. Of course, D.L. is also a full professor with tenure. He must make tons of money compared to what I make as a student aide. D.L. and I go out to lunch where we always go, to McDonald’s. It costs D.L. less than it costs me because he saves those coupons.

154

(Look, this story might not be very interesting to read, but then, is your own life really much more interesting? So don’t blame me. Blame D.L. if you must blame someone. Because I said so, that’s why.) D.L. is in his study where none of his children can bother him. He rents it out. He is writing one of his stories in which the main characters are named Francis Sinatra, Bobby Mitchum, Hank Kissinger and Ginny Woolf. It is so funny to have characters with these names. In D.L.’s newest story, the one still in his mind, a character named Freddy Dostoevesky writes a book called Freud and Parricide and is made chairman of the English Department because of it. D.L. is not interested in writing about good, solid, external events and objects. As he himself has told me on several occasions, “Why should I be when a good, solid, external word like duty has been turned into a vague, uneasy, internal word like guilt?” And then D.L. says if I don’t help him out with the literary conference he is planning (“Can Literature and Publishing Co-Exist?”), I will really be letting him down. (As Calvin Coolidge once – or maybe twice – said, “In public life it is sometimes necessary in order to appear really natural to be actually artificial.” Them’s my sentiments exactly.) So I have got my revenge on D.L. I have made him a character in a story and placed him in the time and place he called America’s armpit, Miami

155 Beach in the 1950s – fifties Miami Beach with it uninhibited monuments to lavish and pretentious ignorance. D.L. is sitting in the lobby of the Fontainebleau Hotel. His most recent wife has divorced him. The Chairman of the English Department has had him dismissed, for good cause. (Having tenure didn’t help D.L. one bit.) D.L.’s students are spreading vile rumors about him – all except the Jamaican boy in the class; he is spreading vile rumours. D.L. is a beaten man. Even I have deserted him. (And I will end the story there, leaving D.L. trapped in 1950s Miami Beach forever. He will never write another innovative story again. Of course, neither will I. But then I never got the hang of it anyway.)

156 SOME ARBITRARY ANSWERS I ask my mother what kind of birth control she uses. “Headaches,” she says. I ask my father why he doesn’t see a doctor about the growth on the side of his neck. “I will,” he says. I ask my brother why he loves his girlfriend. “Because she’s a bitch,” my brother says. I ask my brother’s girlfriend why she loves my brother. “His power,” she says. I ask my brother’s girlfriend’s father how he would react if he learned for a fact that his teenage daughter was not a virgin. “What could I do?” the man says. I ask my dentist why I have so much trouble with my teeth. “You’ve neglected them,” she says. I ask my grandfather how old he is. “I don’t know,’ is what he tells me. I ask a man what he’s doing. “Mumbling to myself,” he mumbles. I ask the President of the United States what I can do to help the environment. “Many things,” the President says. And that’s all he says. I ask my therapist why nobody loves me. “Why do you think that?” she asks me back. I ask my doctor if I have cancer. He just laughs and says nothing. I ask my employer if he is happy now. “Not really,” he says. “But I’ve got a wife and two kids.”

157 I ask my grandmother how her skin got so bad. “Wrinkles run in the family,” she tells me. I ask an ex-lover what I did wrong. “Regrets are stupid things to have,” is what I am told. I ask my brother’s girlfriend’s father’s grandmother’s doctor’s dentist’s mother’s therapist’s rabbi what life is all about. “Headaches,” the rabbi says. I ask myself why I bother to ask anyone anything. “Why not?” I answer myself. So I keep on asking.

158 OTHER PEOPLE Avis’s sister hates her job and is starting to have problems, so she’s going back into therapy. Jerry and Shelli invited Chip to stay with them, and after three weeks of freeloading and practically eating them out of house and home, he left. Now Jerry and Shelli are moving to the slums of Boston with a Murphy bed, and Avis says they’re really down and out. Alan is going on an arduous mountainclimbing tour that will last until January; I gather he’s not Avis’s boyfriend anymore. While they were all in Berkeley, Avis did so much partying that she wrecked her body. Louise has put on a lot of weight, but she’s into camping now and is going to law school. Royce is still hanging around Rocco, but by now even she realizes she’s a masochist. Elspeth has returned, and she seems less crazy than she did in California. (Linda had written me that the three worst problems in California were “beach erosion, forest fires, and Elspeth.”) Joshua was depressed because he failed his final, which means he can’t graduate on time; nevertheless, he kidded around as usual, honking my car horn at ugly girls and calling people “hooples.” While I don’t see how Chip could do such a thing as literally prostitute himself on West Street, he’s not really doing anyone any harm. After one night in Rome when they slept in the same bed, Mitchell confessed he wanted very badly to touch the “Y” on Fay’s Yale T-shirt; I didn’t press for details. Naturally I would run into Stanley at the screening of an old Guy Kibbee comedy, Hard-Hearted Herbert; Stanley is beginning his last

159 term, he says, but I doubt he’ll ever graduate. Eddie has been queasy lately, after all his fights with Robin. Ronna has an appointment with an ophthalmologist who assures her that she can get her eyes to work together. Nora was civil and even surprisingly friendly to Ken at registration. Ken said he felt “nothing” when he saw her, but maybe he’s putting one over on me. Avis sent Scott a letter of apology saying she hoped they could resume their friendship. “I hope that’s not all she wants,” Scott told me, “because I couldn’t get into anything heavier than that.” While in Cyprus, Timmy, Phyllis, Moe and nick each wired home for a hundred dollars, and Timmy wrote his mother a note saying, “If I’m not home by the beginning of September, contact the State Department.” Ronna thinks that if I fall out of love with her, I won’t tell her and I’ll just wait for her to tire of me. But that would be cruel. Although Carin can be very clingy around guys, Mason is not the most decisive individual. Despite the fact that Avis’s relationship with Alan is over, she is beginning to get “strange vibrations” from his brother Carl. “Lightning may strike twice,” Scott told her, and I for one think he was trying to prove something to her by saying that. Mona came by and gave Bill and me big kisses; she got back from Europe on Friday, on the same plane as Timmy and Phyllis. Tony has completely come out of the closet, thanks to Chip and his friends. Donald is busy doing work after his trip to California, which he enjoyed except for Elspeth. Fay confessed to Mitchell that she loved him, and then she rode off on her motorcycle before he could respond. Bonnie

160 lost a lot of weight, which wasn’t really necessary. I spoke to Carolyn and found out that the triangle with Van and Abe is still going on. There are bizarre stories out of Madison: allegedly, Joe is spending all day stoned, listening to old Frank Zappa records. I don’t mind my suspicion that Donald is a little in love with Ronna. After listening to Mark’s story of how he helped Jerry and Shelli move, I don’t think they lead happy lives. Carl has been climbing a lot this summer, and he told me he envies his brother for going on that mountain-climbing tour around South America. Ronna told me something that upset me: while she was seeing Brian, Brian’s father was having an affair with Timmy’s mother. Avis reported that Shelli’s father was in the hospital, though whether his difficulties were physical or psychological, Avis wasn’t sure. Mona and I had a good time remembering the time we and Nick cracked up at that Nureyev movie. When Brian and Ronna met, they talked of simple things, like how he’s back in school and who’s getting divorced in his family. Mason broke a toe this summer, but although he was in great pain, he still managed to fly to Madison to visit Joe. I told Carl about Ronna and Brian, partly because he knows Brian’s girlfriend Vicky (he said Alan used to like her), and he said he would be jealous if he were me. But after all, I’m not Carl. Carole accosted me and let me know it’s been two months since her wedding and that she’s living across the street from Ken. Scott phoned and asked, “How’s your woman?” “Fine,” I answered, “how are yours?” Avis’s friend from Belgium has arrived, Scott told me, and he’s staying with

161 Mason’s family since Avis’s mother wouldn’t let him stay at their apartment. Gladys has quit her job and nobody is sure why. It’s rumored that Royce and Nick are sleeping together, but I can’t think of anything more ludicrous. Fay and Roberta told Ronna I wasn’t being honest with her, so Ronna said to them jokingly, “He’s probably at Avis’s right now.” Which I was, of course, but for quite different reasons. Royce decided that if Rocco could provoke her into punching him in the nose on Saturday night, then their relationship had reached the point of no return. Roberta apparently has found a new love: Gordon, whose main accomplishment in life seems to be the feat of walking home from Vermont. Scott grabbed me and wanted to know the number of my shrink. When I called Sheila to wish her well in Boulder, she told me she’s got “nothing” here, and so next week she’s leaving for good. Joshua went cod-fishing and threw up twelve times; next week he plans to try skydiving. Elihu says he’s pretty happy to be at school again but there’s not much social life there; mostly he relies on television for company. Aurora sent Ken a letter beginning, “I don’t know why I’m writing you this, but…,” hinting that she’d like to see him again. Mason asked Ronna and me if we could take Carin home after she developed another one of her stomachaches, this time from eating six slices of pizza. Mitchell and Fay were acting like a couple of lovebirds, and after Nick left, Fay asked me to have “a spot of tea” with her. She’s happy to be with Mitchell but confused. Timmy is beginning to know Phyllis a little better, and he’s finding her

162 immature. Carolyn said she’d been saving a choice piece of gossip for me: Viv has broken up with Steven and is now seeing Donald. I found that a bit hard to swallow. Mason and Elayne gave contributions to the United Jewish Appeal. Stacy is probably motivated by Phyllis’s jealousy of her. Ronna is worried about Roberta, who discovered that Gordon already has a girlfriend in Vermont. Diana found Ken and Nora in a passionate embrace last night. Joshua is still in a neck brace two weeks after his skydiving accident. Shelli and Jerry decided to get married, which Avis says is pretty funny. I made a very half-hearted attempt at suicide and was in a daze all day.

163 I SAW MOMMY KISSING CITICORP The Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board is getting a $200 Visa cash advance at a Chase Manhattan ATM on Broadway. He is waiting patiently to hear the sound of money being counted in the teller machine. Already he has put in his card, identified his PIN number – 1933, the year the Glass-Steagall Act was passed – and given the necessary commands. Looking down, the Chairman notices empty crack vials at his feet. The tops of them are mostly yellow, with some blue and a few black. The Chairman wonders who manufactures these vials, what kind of profit they make, whether they pay federal taxes, and if any Federal Reserve member banks have lent them money. Still nothing is happening at the ATM. The woman at the ATM next to the Chairman's, an actress whose character on a soap opera hasn't had a story line in a year and who is now used only in crowd scenes like funerals and weddings, has already gotten her $100 from her Chase checking account. And she punched in her PIN number – 6606, assigned to her by the bank – two minutes after the Chairman punched in his. The actress takes back her ATM card and the receipt, which shows that she has $456.34 in checking, and glancing at the Chairman, leaves the lobby. To do this, she must press a button that makes a high-pitched sound. The door opens, and she is on Broadway. Her place is taken at the lefthand ATM by a man who has tested positive for the HTLV-3 antibody

164 but has no symptoms of AIDS. He wants to deposit a check from his aunt. The Chairman is still waiting for the moneycounting sound to begin. In her apartment in Trump Tower, the Chairman's mother is waiting for him. She has been disconsolate since her husband, the Chairman's stepfather, died of lung cancer last year. Her late husband had smoked two packs of Pall Malls every day since he was fourteen. He died at seventy-nine, which the Chairman thought was pretty good for someone who had been that familiar with nicotine for so long. The Chairman smokes only cigars. Naturally he does not inhale. Oh Nigel, the Chairman's mother thinks, I miss you so. Thinking that her son must be delayed by important Federal Reserve Board business, she decides to take from her videocassette library a certain tape. She places the tape at the mouth of her VCR, which swallows it obligingly. Turning on the TV monitor to channel 3, the Chairman's mother simultaneously presses the "record" and "play" knobs of the VCR and then realizes in horror that she is erasing the tape she wants to play. Pressing the "stop" button, she rewinds the tape to its beginning and then presses only the "play" button. Chuck Woolery is asking the audience whether they think Roger, a black Army captain, should go out with date number one, number two, or number three. The Chairman's mother has inadvertently taped a minute of "The Love Connection."

165 Then there is a moment of grey fuzziness and belching noise before she sees the video image of her late husband. Nigel's daughter had interviewed him two months before he died. She wanted to know all about her father's life. "The games we kids played in those days were fun," says the dead Nigel. "Stoop ball, punch ball, johnny-on-the-pony, ringalevio..." Stepping back, holding the remote control unit, his widow presses the freeze-frame button. Nigel is frozen in mid-reminiscence. His mouth is open. A Pall Mall is about to enter it. The Chairman's mother reverses the action, watches her late husband backwards. On "The Love Connection," the audience has selected date number two for Roger. Roger seems very happy about it. At LaGuardia Airport, in view of the Fed Chairman's mother should she turn her glance away from the TV and out her western window, the Comptroller of the Currency is on the Eastern shuttle. He has to get back to Washington. He has gotten his ticket by using his Diners Club card, given to him by the federal government. The Comptroller of the Currency has pushed his charge card through a scanner which has read the magnetic stripe on its back side and has spit out his ticket. The ticket costs $60. The Comptroller of the Currency is uncomfortable in his seat. These shuttles are like cattle cars, he thinks. No wonder Eastern Air Lines is in such bad financial

166 shape that it has to be taken over by another airline, the parent company of its LaGuardia shuttle rival. On the other airline they give passengers bagels, even on evening flights. The Comptroller of the Currency doesn't mind not getting a bagel, for in his carry-on luggage is a shopping bag filled with a dozen bagels from H & H Bagels on Broadway. They are the best bagels in the world. H & H's slogan is "There is no substitute for excellence." If H & H has not been written up in the new edition of In Search of Excellence, the Comptroller of the Currency thinks, it is only because the company is too small or because the authors have not sunk their teeth into one of H & H's warm, soft sourdough bagels. In Washington you cannot get a good bagel. “Excuse me," says the fourteen-year-old girl sitting in the seat next to the Comptroller of the Currency. "Yes?" he says. "Aren't you somebody famous?" the girl asks. "I think I've seen your photo in The Wall Street Journal." "Young lady," says the Comptroller of the Currency, "The Wall Street Journal does not print photographs." "Then maybe it was in Vanity Fair," she says. Reaching into his carry-on bag, the Comptroller of the Currency offers her a sesame bagel. Three blocks from H & H Bagels and their excellent slogan, the Fed Chairman is still waiting for his Visa cash advance. "Uh, sir, maybe you should call for assistance," says a man on line, the deputy press secretary for

167 the Controller of the City of New York, a politician under indictment on seven counts of extortion. "What do you know?" says the Chairman sarcastically. "Your boss can't even spell his job title right." Nevertheless, he picks up the phone next to the ATM. A woman's voice comes on the line. "Thank you for calling AT & T," she says. "You're welcome," says the Chairman. "I'm trying to get money from my Visa and it's not working." "Have you tried selling it to Haitians?" she asks. "Or those refugees from Sri Lanka, I forget what they're called. Those people would pay a pretty penny for a valid visa." "My Visa is valid," the Chairman explains. "The ATM seems to be stuck." "That's why you should choose AT & T for your long distance service," says the woman on the phone. "Companies like ATM may promise lower fees but their service is horrible. Does ATM give you automatic credit for wrong numbers?" "I'm sure I entered the right number," the Chairman tells her. "I'm the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. I ought to know my own PIN. Can't you give me any information?" "Try NYNEX for directory assistance," the phone woman offers. Some of the people on the line at Chase Manhattan get impatient. Two of them are carrying handguns. The Comptroller of the Currency hates takeoffs. At LaGuardia there's one runway that goes out into Long Island Sound and he hates the idea of ending up in the water if the takeoff doesn't go right.

168 But it does go right, and the Comptroller of the Currency is on his way to the nation's capital. Below, an air traffic controller at LaGuardia files a report of a "near miss." It is her third this week. Her superior, who's been around since 1967 and who didn't go out on strike and get fired in 1981, takes the report and shrugs. "Are the Mets playing at Shea tonight?" he asks the air traffic controller who filed the report. "I can't keep up with everything!" the air traffic controller shouts. In a minute her tears will be smudging her mascara. Twelve thousand feet up, the Comptroller of the Currency feels relieved when the seat belt light goes off. The girl next to him is on her second raisin bagel. The Ambassador from South Korea is walking out of the Benetton store in Trump Tower's rosemarble atrium. The Reverend Sun Myung Moon, one of his countrymen, has declared the Benetton stores a front for a Soviet spy ring. "Look at the crazy symbol on their logo," the Rev. Moon is quoted as saying. "That has to be some kind of Communist thing." The Ambassador thinks not, glad he has bought a Perry Ellis matching sweater and skirt ensemble. In the middle of the night he will go into his bathroom in the embassy and try it on. "Ambassador Park," says an elegant old lady. He knows he has met her somewhere, but these American faces are all the same. "We met at the Leveraged Buyout Ball at the Helmsley Palace last autumn," says the lady. "I'm the mother of the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board -- you know, the man who controls the monetary supply."

169 "Ah yes," says the Ambassador. "I remember you well. And how is your pragmatic son?" "I'm afraid he's stood me up for dinner. I was about to walk down Fifth Avenue to the Godfather's pizza restaurant across from the library and get myself something. Would you care to join me, Ambassador Park?" "Delighted, dear lady," he responds. "But I am Ambassador An, not Ambassador Park." The mother of the Chairman smiles. She is too old to be embarrassed. "Well, I knew you were Korean, so I figured I had a good shot with Park. Most of the fruit stands in Manhattan are run by people with that name. And some of the Hyundai dealerships too, no doubt." Passing St. Patrick's Cathedral, Ambassador An is about to give his companion a faint rebuke, but he notices that she looks faint. Then she passes out. "Dear lady!" he says. "Help me, someone, this elderly racist has collapsed!" A police officer comes to the rescue. She bends down close and puts her hand on the old woman's neck. "Does she have a pulse?" asks the Ambassador. A crowd is beginning to gather around a mime around the corner. The mime is making fun of the way people walk and gesture. Since the mother of the Chairman is unconscious, she is of no use to the mime or to the crowd. The police officer, also Korean, touches her hand to her nose and sniffs. "The lady has a pulse, all right," she tells the Ambassador. "What I was doing was smelling the perfume on her neck. Unfortunately, I think your companion is the latest victim of the newest wave of product tampering."

170 "My goodness," says the Ambassador. "What is it?" "We got word from Bloomingdale's that some joker has been taking bottles of Poison perfume and filling them with liquid Tylenol. Apparently this lady was wearing the tainted scent..." An ambulance pulls up to the curb, and paramedics take away the Chairman's mother while the Ambassador is questioned by young Officer Park. Meanwhile, back at the ATM on the Upper West Side, the Chairman is still waiting for his Visa cash advance. Everyone else is using the other teller machine. The Chairman, chief regulator of all Federal Reserve System banks – the Comptroller of the Currency regulates all nationally chartered banks that are not part of the Fed – believes that it is only a matter of a little more time before he has ten twenty-dollar bills in hand. In the meantime the thirty-fourth floor has gone up on the new co-op across the street and one of the homeless people who was displaced by the new construction has died of old age on one of the benches on the islands on Broadway. Passing the Chase Manhattan branch where the Chairman is awaiting contact with Visa or the Plus nationwide teller system, a man walking a purebred Jack Russell terrier points to a "NO RADIO" sign on a parked car's windshield and tells his wife, "See, I told you people are getting less materialistic." She sighs. "I know, I know, if we wait long enough, the Sixties will come back again."

171 Getting off the Eastern shuttle at National Airport, the Comptroller of the Currency is summoned by the public address system. He takes the call at a ticket counter where a perplexed customer service representative is looking at the latest automated reservations system work station and thinking, I remember when printers were people like my Uncle Joe and not just peripherals. "Comptroller of the Currency here," says the Comptroller, ignoring the woman's thoughts. “This is the Chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation." "Yes?" "We've got trouble." You're telling me, the Comptroller thinks. Wait till my wife finds out there are only eight bagels left. On the twenty-first floor of the World Financial Center, Quynchi Cao, proofreader and wordprocessor in the Junk Bonds Division of Shearson Lehman/American Express, is reading legal documents that are a necessary concomitant to the coming merger of the nation's biggest auto supply company and the third-largest bank in Tennessee. Someone could make a fortune if they knew this news, thinks Quynchi. Too bad for me I'm too poor to indulge in insider trading. You really need a million-dollar-a-year salary to do that right, setting up phony bank accounts in the Cayman Islands and such. I have a hard enough time finding anything I can afford at Benetton. "Well, enough multitasking for one night," says Quynchi's nominal boss's boss, an investment

172 banker who wants to get back to his family in Orange County. "Did you leave the Wysiwyg report for me to proofread?" asks hard-working Quynchi. "No, unfortunately not. I took the floppy that contained it home with me last night and was working on it on my PC when my wife called me into dinner. When I came back to our media room, my little boy was playing some adventure game on the computer." "So?" "So my son says that the Wysiwyg document is now in a cave guarded by a sleeping dragon. Extreme caution is called for." Quynchi nods. As she looks out the river to New Jersey, she wonders if this could be as bad as the typo that got by everyone at The Wall Street Journal. When a columnist touted "punk bands" instead of "junk bonds," the office was in turmoil for weeks – though Quynchi did get to meet those very nice guys in The Vomit Seekers. In their Georgetown home, the children of the Comptroller of the Currency are watching MTV. In a La-Z-Boy recliner in the back of the room, their father wonders why he had children. They are no longer an asset, he thinks, but a discretionary acquisition that requires tremendous upkeep for twenty years. The Comptroller's female discretionary acquisition is watching the broad shoulders and boyish smile of Xerox Sankabrand, lead singer of the Vomit Seekers in the group's top ten video, "Information in Motion."

173 Clutching dollar bills and plastic money, Xerox is surrounded by scantily-dressed girls as he sings: I pay my Visa bill with my MasterCard So what's the commotion? Money's just information in motion, Information in motion, Information in motion... In his La-Z-Boy, the Comptroller of the Currency eats the last of the H & H Bagels, more convinced than ever that there is no substitute for excellence and that children are not cost-effective. In the newsroom of The New York Post, reporters are watching the CBS Evening News with Frankly Unctuous substituting for the vacationing Dan Rather. "...And in Manhattan tonight, an ironic drama is going on at one of those automatic teller machines we all love to hate," says Frankly. "It seems that early this afternoon, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board – the man who is chiefly responsible for this nation's monetary policy – was attempting to get a cash advance from his credit card when the machine apparently got stuck. Now, some four hours later, the Fed Chairman is still at the teller machine, waiting for his money. Susan Spencer is on the scene. Susan?" "Yes, Frankly, this is quite an eventful event here. Hundreds of people have come to this Chase Manhattan twenty-four-hour bank at Broadway and West 82nd Street to watch. The Fed Chairman, as you stated, is awaiting his money. Earlier, I talked with David Rockefeller, former head of the Chase Manhattan Bank..." The Post reporters continue to watch the news as they work on their stories. One reporter writes

174 about The Cereal Killer, a fiend who bludgeons people to death people while they eat their breakfast. Another works on an article about a Tofutti vendor who went berserk on Wall Street and put ringing AT & T Nomad cordless phones next to the ears of passing stockbrokers as he said, "It's for you." The subsequent noise permanently deafened these men. Another reporter is about to take off for Coney Island, where a splinter group of terrorists is making life miserable for barefoot beachgoers on the boardwalk. "Somebody, go uptown and cover that teller machine story!" shouts the city editor. He is an Australian. The Fed chairman's mother is out of the hospital, where they gave her the universal antidote to liquid Tylenol. She has seen the headlines and the TV broadcasts, and she is worried about her son. It is after 11 p.m. and Eyewitness News is on. The sportscaster is just finishing up. "...and in extra innings, it was Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere 7, Secular Humanists 5. That's all the scores I have for tonight, Dweezil," he says to the anchorman. "Well, speaking of scores," the anchorman says, "scores of people were injured tonight in West Beirut..." The Chairman's mother switches back to her VCR tape, looks at the image of her late husband, and says aloud, "Nigel, what can I do to help my son?"

175 "Ambassador Park here," says the voice on the telephone. "I mean, Ambassador An here," he corrects himself. "This is the U.S. Comptroller of the Currency in Washington," says the other voice. The voices are talking long distance on U.S. Sprint, not AT & T, but they can hear each other just fine. "Yes, sir, what can I do with you?" "You know about this trouble with the Fed chairman in New York. We'd like you to lower your discount rate, stimulate your economy, buy more U.S. exports, and offer something besides sushi in your restaurants. Not all Americans like to eat raw fish, you know. The microorganisms in them can be dangerous for pregnant women." "Excuse me, sir, I think you want the Japanese ambassador. I'm from South Korea." "Oh, really? Sorry to have troubled you for nothing, Ambassador Park." "An." “And what?" "Never mind." It's midnight. On the Disney channel, they're showing a film called The Horrorville Amity, wherein monsters of all different races and nationalities live together in harmony in a town in Long Island. I love fantasy, thinks Quynchi Cao as she watches TV. Then she thinks about her nights with Xerox Sankabrand. The Fed Chairman is still at the ATM, still waiting for his Visa cash advance. The police, reporters, the mayor, the Comptroller of the

176 Currency, and even the President have implored him to just go home. But the Fed Chairman will not be deterred. He is staying till he gets his money, his Visa card, and yes, even a record of his transaction. He has faith in the banking system, even in states like Oklahoma. As he looks down at the empty crack vials at his feet, he thinks about the last meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee and how they debated whether to ease or tighten monetary policy, whether to buy or sell U.S. government securities, whether to lower or raise reserve requirements, and whether to order out for sushi or bagels from H & H. The Chairman is becoming delirious. At 3 a.m., Quynchi Cao has fallen asleep in front of her TV, which is playing the video of "Information in Motion." Ambassador An has fallen asleep in the Perry Ellis sweater and skirt ensemble he bought earlier at Benetton. The Comptroller of the Currency has fallen asleep in his wife's arms. Even midtown Manhattan is mostly quiet. Suddenly the elderly mother of the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board can be seen at her window on the forty-second floor of Trump Tower. She opens the window and her ample body rises off the floor and makes its way through the window. To people on the ground she looks like a balloon. The Fed Chairman has finally given up his quest for his $200 cash advance. Walking wearily through Central Park, he looks up at the sky, only to see his mother wafting through the night breezes. She must be hundreds of feet up.

177 The Chairman's mother floats over Central Park to the east, past Fifth and Madison and Park Avenues. At the Citicorp Center, with its sloped top, she stops for a minute and kisses the Citicorp logo. The Citicorp logo looks a lot like the logo for NATO. The Fed Chairman, for the first time in many long hours, feels something akin to relief. It's the float, he thinks. It's the float. Two weeks later, the President of the United States announces the retirement of the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board and his replacement by Xerox Sankabrand, former lead singer of The Vomit Seekers. (The group will now change its name to Special Drawing Rights.) At the news conference the broad-shouldered, boyish punk rocker says, "The business of America is show business," and at homes across the nation, people like Quynchi Cao and Ambassador An and the non-cost-effective children of the Comptroller of the Currency nod their heads. On upper Broadway, maintenance men replace a broken automatic teller machine with a newer model that has a computer-generated voice.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

RICHARD GRAYSON has published over 200 stories in literary journals, anthologies and webzines since 1975 and has been the recipient of three fellowships in fiction from the Florida Arts Council and a writer-in-residence award from the New York State Council on the Arts. In 2004 he chronicled his campaign for the U.S. House of Representatives in his Diary of a Congressional Candidate in Florida’s Fourth Congressional District at the website of McSweeney’s. Born in Brooklyn, he has worked as a teacher and lawyer. Visit him at www.richardgrayson.com.