Love is a Marketing Tool

Jeff Goldberg

Jeff Goldberg is a former executive at an insurance company. His next story will be published in The Apocalypse Reader (Thunder's Mouth Press, May 2007). He lives in Manhattan.

Basically, suicide is a self-indulgent, cowardly, and irresponsible reaction to outside emotional stimulation, a showy, melodramatic resort for arrogant and indifferent individuals, and that’s why it should come as no surprise to anyone, including myself, that I'm standing on the outermost ledge of my apartment building's rooftop pool holding a cigarette in one hand, a rapidly diminishing martini in the other, my left foot hovering over empty space, with the full intention of my right one joining it just as soon as I finish this final drink.

I am an independent marketing consultant. I should say I was an independent marketing consultant. Actually, let’s say that I will have been an independent marketing consultant. No, I take it back, I was right the second time. At 4:54 pm, when I stepped over this useless knee-high railing, I think it’s fair to say I stopped being an independent marketing consultant and became, simply, an independent market. We’re an elite group with high turnover, the market of those who are about to kill themselves, but it isn’t much of a target demographic since our purchasing lifespan is limited. For our whole lives, from the moment we’re old enough to look at a stylized Tonka Truck Mobile spinning around our impressionable little heads, we’re in some company’s sights, being tracked and labeled, statisticized and demographed. It feels good, my one moment of freedom, the few minutes before I die, the only time they don’t expect or even want my business. This is my only conscious moment of being a wholly independent market of one single unsellable unit, unadvertised to, unmarketed to: free. Time to live it up.

I met Penny at a covert marketing event, an independent gig in Austin, Texas, a city that had been drifting a little too far left and becoming too anti-establishment for commercial comfort, breaking away from the traditional conservative spending mores of the rest of the Lone Star state. My specialty had always been anti-marketing-marketing, breeding positive purchasing response from ostensibly anti-corporate press: the sort of reverse consumer psychology needed in a town that starts thinking it doesn’t need us.

My job took me around the city hosting elementary school seminars on the dangers of smoking cigarettes – all part of a justice department ordered program obligatorily funded by tobacco companies. Obviously a conflict of interest rested squat between the purported goal of this charitable pogrom and the interests of its backers. Hence, me. It was going well, but I should have known. Eventually my equal tracked me down. She was the anti-Randy, the overly emotional marketing tool of the people. Not that emotions had anything to do with it. This was business. I’m not up here on this ledge because of her. Love is propaganda, engineered and artificial, manufactured by the selling machine. I am a man incapable of love.

I stood in the back of the Rodriguez Elementary School all-purpose room, chain-smoking cigarettes, trying to stay invisible, shrouded like a ghost in my carcinogenic cloud – making sure everything went well while keeping out of the spotlight, or, in this case, the overhead projector. Hundreds of children watched blankly as my front man, Bill Verleye, gave his carefully sculpted slide show. Bill regurgitated whatever I scripted, appearing handsome and dumb on a level children could appreciate. He flipped from slide to slide, showing the anti-smoking messages I’d painstakingly chosen so as to have the least mental impact on the children. The presentation flashed pictures of dirty lungs and iron breathing apparatus: scary enough to revolt the teachers yet cool enough to enthrall the students. We employed posters comparing smoking to the dangers of fighting tigers or sharks, ridiculous messages I couldn’t believe didn’t raise more eyebrows. But most of the teachers checked their watches and looked bored, probably dying for a cigarette themselves, and if Bill started showing photos of happy children puffing away in the playground I bet it’d go unnoticed. Bill wrapped up with the coup de grâce, introducing elderly Horace Winters, the retired fighter pilot and alligator wrestler come to tell the students about the damage a lifetime of smoking had caused him. The follow up Q&A session for the pupils went as expected:

“Did you ever shoot any enemy planes down, Mr. Winters?”

“Did you ever get bitten by an alligator Mr. Winters?”

Things devolved into a recap of Horace’s exciting exploits, all completely fictitious inventions written by me. As long as Horace didn’t collapse into a fit of hacking coughs – which he sometimes did – it would cement in the children’s mind an unbreakable link between cigarettes and adventure. Questions continued for a few minutes until one of the teachers clapped her hands together and instructed the masses of smokers-to-be to get back to regularly scheduled class. (That, of course, the ultimate in subliminal programming: the whole anti-smoking assembly infused the children with the pleasant experience of skipping schoolwork.)

While my stooges Bill and Horace packed up the presentation materials, I stood in the large double exit doors and finished my cigarette, the sunlight filtering into the darkened auditorium and turning me into a hazy silhouette. A woman sauntered up, mid-twenties and attractive, her hair pulled back prudishly in a way that fooled no one, the sort of teacher prepubescent boys fantasized about when masturbating at home.

“Put that thing out. This is a school.” She pointed to my cigarette.

I dropped the butt and ground it out with my toe into the hard floor of the multi-purpose room, then kicked it into the corner with the others. “What’s your name?” I asked.

“Don’t think I don’t see what you’re doing,” she said, ignoring me.

“What am I doing?”

“That presentation. I bet half those kids run out to find some cigarettes first thing after the final bell.”

“Statistically speaking, there’s been on average a 12.4% decline in underage smoking incidents in every school we’ve attended.” Not a lie, per se, as the actual reported number of smoking incidents did decline. Part of Bill’s presentation, in a weakly purported attempt to teach kids “what not to do,” provided instructions on how to avoid getting caught with contraband. My conservative estimates held that the number of actual smokers increased in inverse proportion to that at which they were discovered. I earned my paycheck. My unscrupulous backers could rest assured in my good works. Statistics, regardless of their accuracy, are all about style.

“Baloney,” she spat. “I bet the exact opposite is true.” Smart girl. She continued, “You must think teachers are pretty stupid.”

I decided to shut this conversation down. “The poor quality of teachers is the fault of the socialist-driven improperly-focused government funding of education.”

She put her hands on her hourglass hips and stuck her sculpted face close to mine, “What, you think these lower-class children would benefit from the increased segregation resulting from a privatized school system?”

“They’re not segregated already?” I pulled another cigarette out of my pocket, but she grabbed it from my hand and threw it in the corner with the others. She was ideologically naïve, willing to chase a tangential cause that had nothing to do with her initial complaint, but I had to admit she had a brain and a body. An unusual combo for a woman. “You’re pretty sure of yourself.”

“Like I said, not all teachers are idiots.” She poked me in the ribs, and I relished her irascible touch.

“You teach here?” I asked.

She blushed and mumbled, “No, not really,” and I sensed something amiss.

“Are you a teacher at all?”

Had it been me, I’d lie. Fabrications of reality slide from my mouth like spittle, my lifestyle necessitating constant masking of the unfortunate truth I spread. Before you half-balances, half-hovers a creature unmannered and immoral. But she was obviously not me, thank god. “No. I’m a grad student, doing some sociological research,” she said.

“Well, then,” I said, “since you’re the only one complaining, either you’re correct about our presentation and incorrect about the intelligence of teachers, or vice versa.”

She flipped me the middle finger and spun around, storming across the gymnasium floor and creating one hell of an echo. I shouted after her, “Hey, what’s your name?” Before shutting the hallway door behind her she yelled in reply, “Penny Nichols.” I shouted back, “Randy MacAllaster.” But she had already vanished, so I snagged the unlit cigarette from the pile of butts and lit it up.

“You two clowns ready to go?” I said to Bill and Horace, who perched on the edge of the stage next to a couple of duffle bags with our packed equipment. They hopped up and said, “Yes, boss,” and we loaded into my business-usage – and therefore tax-deductible – oversized SUV parked illegally by the curb. I offered them congratulatory cigarettes for a job well done and though Horace happily lit up, Bill shook his head and said, “Those things will kill you. Weren’t you watching the presentation?”

I shuddered and hit the gas, fleeing to a place more accepting of smoke and drink: the crappy office of the newly renamed Austin branch of Innovative Local Marketing Solutions, LLP. ILMS, LLP served as the professional cover for a nomadic, Big Tobacco funded, black-ops organization peddling cigarettes to pre-teens. Now that traditional methods had been rendered illegal, the big firms searched out more dubious mechanisms for insuring the continual growth of their consumer base.

Don’t think I took pride in this vocation, but it paid well and made use of my limited talents. And few things bring a man satisfaction like making use of his limited talents while being paid well. Plus, since I’m about to step off a ledge and might as well be honest, I took great pride in this vocation. Every corporation has a right to market itself. We founded this country on that unflagging principal: we create our image and sell it. We polish our message and pitch it.

“That girl sure chewed your ass off,” said Bill, chortling in the back seat.

“I’d chew her ass off any day,” said Horace, the dirty old man.

“Shut up, both of you.” And like good little cronies, up they shut.

What the hell kind of moniker is Penny Nichols?

A throng of people gathers below, pathetic stimulation cravers, and what looks like a couple of news crews. I’m not sure how they all knew to be here to watch me take the plunge, though it’s probably something to do with the fact that I called the TV stations and told them to show up at five fifteen, just on time for the peak of local broadcast. I’d resent their eagerness to witness the demise of a poor, miserable thirty three year old, struck down in the prime of his purchasing years, a true loss to capitalism, except I’m not miserable and I’m certainly not poor.

From up here in the overcast twilight I can spot the smokers in the crowd. They have a little extra personal space cleared around them, miniature curls of artificial cloud above them, and a tiny, muted orange glow bobbing in front of them. To my disappointment their numbers are few. I’d hoped for more solidarity from my people but we’re a dying breed. I’m just one more long-term user kicking the habit.

Innovative Local Marketing Solutions, LLP, had faced its share of scares before. Over the years three bomb threats had arrived with the daily mail as well as one actual bomb, the last resulting in the unfortunate loss of my secretary Nancy’s right hand, reducing her typing speed by half but increasing her devotion to me by thrice. I suppose it could have been much worse – the bomb could have reached its intended target. I’d taken it upon myself to change the company name every twelve months to keep morally-confused vigilantes off track. We’d done business as National Marketing Consultants, Marketing Services Solutions, Innovative Marketing Consultants, as well as my personal favorite, National Innovative Services Solutions Consulting. To avoid implicating myself in these organizations I always listed a fake owner and president: Xavier Young Zigfield, Jr. Obviously a fabricated persona, X. Y. Z., Jr. existed only as an offshore holding company, but an ambiguity in most states’ incorporation paperwork made it difficult to tell the difference between a corporate entity and an actual person when researching hierarchical possession.

These new threats, however, came addressed to me. Normally such missives missed the mark, directed to the company or to Mr. Zigfield, Jr., leaving Randy MacAllaster out of the crosshairs. Nancy handed me the crudely typed letter, shook her head and said, “Somebody’s got your number, boss.”

Dearest Randy MacAllaster,

We know what you’re up to.

Leave our children alone or else.

Yours truly,

The Textbook Liberation Front

A division of Eco-Corps North American Operations Unit

Eco-Corps North American Operations Unit was an environmental group made up of disconnected cells and only partially organized efforts. While most members didn’t even know their own direct leaders, they’d all probably consider me their arch-nemesis. (It’s good to have an arch-nemesis: it keeps you on your toes, it proves that someone cares about you. You’re never lonely when you have an arch-nemesis.) Wacko radicals always behave so stupidly about this sort of thing. Whoever typed this letter no doubt thought himself clever and noir with his old-fashioned typewriter. But the thing about old-fashioned typewriters is they’re old-fashioned: police can easily determine their make and model and point of sale. Normally I’d ignore it, especially with such a vague and anemic threat, but two things made me nervous, so I told Nancy to pass it on to the cops and sent her on her way.

The first item of concern was that personal salutation. The second was the sign-off. The Textbook Liberation Front: what sounded like a moronic appellation actually sent an ominous message. It signaled a direct response to my brainchild “Carton Tops for Education,” modeled after a popular cereal campaign. Starting next month tobacco corporations would solicit smokers to collect and mail-in cigarette carton tops, and for each one these corporations would donate money to underfunded schools. This money would be earmarked towards the purchasing of new textbooks, replacing the aging tomes on which most of these schools relied. But, of course, the program rules allowed only specially prepared textbooks for purchase, doctored volumes containing subtle advertisements: historical “facts” about how early colonial settlers grew tobacco, scientific “experiments” involving the rate at which cigarettes burn under various conditions, specially selected short stories including characters with popular brand names, and finally, math equations spaced with such minute precision that viewing them at a distance would reveal a corporate logo.

The epistolary intimidation served only to heighten my resolve. The use of fear is just another way to market your cause, and I was not about to let these Eco-terrorists turn my own games against me. I summoned Nancy into my office, pulled out my notes, and began dictating some final chapters for the fifth grade history primer. Nancy’s left hand whirred across her laptop keyboard, keeping astonishing pace with my words. Her fingers stretched in a complicated dance every time she required three keys for a bold or italic. I’d never get closer to someone taking a bullet for me so I kept Nancy employed despite the unsettling disability. And, I suppose, because I felt slightly guilty, though guilt is just a twin tactic to fear.

Her left hand came to an eventual halt as my voice trailed off at the chapter’s end. For years I’d been preparing this three-pronged assault: the creation of the doctored textbooks, the organization of overly generous industry participation, plus some necessary governmental palm greasing. It worked on so many levels; my finest achievement. The tobacco companies would get undeserved good press for supporting schools. People would feel better about buying more cartons of cigarettes because of the charitable donation. And innocent children would be inundated early into the marvels of nicotine.

While penning subversive elementary school manuals I also had Bill working a side operation on the local university campus. He’d been posing as a grad student and networking among the intellectual riff-raff. Such a delicate operation I typically reserved for Horace’s more steady hand, but I suspected even malleable graduate students would have a hard time accepting the sixty three year old Horace as a peer. The most cemented of cynics are secretly eager to stomach whatever nonsense you feed them, but for now I’d feed them Bill.

This clever undertaking came directly from the playbook of Eco-Corps North American Operations Unit. For years ECNAOU had been posing fledgling members on college campuses to launch roving protest organizations. Under the guise of university brotherhood these covert operatives would rally other like-minded students together (and by like-minded I mean simple-minded) to stage pickets and rallies and letter writing campaigns. Once stabilized and self-sufficient, the ECNAOU confederates would move on to a different institution, leaving a trail of smug, anti-establishment establishments behind them like breadcrumbs or little ideological seeds, a cancer of impractical environmentalism.

One could not help but find this insidiously brilliant in its militant altruism, so I stole the idea. Bill spent various afternoons rabble-rousing on the campus, passing out fliers I’d written, soapboxing speeches I’d composed. When drafting subversive textbooks began to get tiring, I went to the university to check up on progress, standing in the background smoking cigarettes while Bill roused the rabble.

He stood before a crowd of ten or fifteen people, grungy looking academic types who had become regulars at these events (they called themselves the Society for Free and Objective Expression), plus a few other curious onlookers.

“And who determines the morality of our habits?” he chanted. “The government?”

The loyal SFOE’s shouted angry approval while the newcomers mumbled skeptically.

“And who determines the proper usage of our airwaves? Who is to say what we want to think, to eat, to buy?” he intoned. “The government?”

Bill was a dunce, but a good speaker and a good looker. Put a doe-eyed boy on the stage and he could read a phonebook to applause. Give him Shakespeare and you’ve got a standing ovation. Give him Randy MacAllaster and you’ve got a revolution.

Just as Bill began spooling off rhetoric about the right of a corporation to market indiscriminately to a consumer base and about the consumer base’s complementary right to discriminate markedly (i.e. make up their own damn minds) someone tapped me on the shoulder. I whirled around, unused to and displeased with surprises I hadn’t orchestrated myself.

“I’d expect to see you at such a questionable event, Mr. MacAllaster,” Penny Nichols said, a backpack slung over both shoulders, the straps pushing her breasts together revealing delicate décolletage. Apparently she’d heard and remembered my name; my heart skipped a moronic, suggestible beat.

“I’m just listening,” I said.

“Objectivist philosopher moonlighting as grade school brainwasher?”

“If it’s sociological research you’re up to, watch how these supposedly free thinking scholars respond to Bill’s words.”

“I know how they’ll respond. These ninnies fawn over anyone with the courage to put two sentences together in a forum outside the classroom. But I’m willing to bet those aren’t Bill’s words.”

What can I say? Perhaps like any good puppeteer I resented all the applause going to the dummy. Or perhaps I just succumbed to a pretty girl. Pretty girls: the oldest form of marketing there is.

I didn’t respond. I just looked at my feet, blushing like a teenager, giving it all away. Emotion is always used against us by those who have less.

“And what did you study to prepare for this career, Mr. McAllaster?”

Actually, I studied psychology with a focus on the early stage learning and development process, my unfinished thesis tentatively titled ‘How to Effectively Reach Children by Engaging Them as Active Stakeholders in Their Own Education, Both In and Out of the Classroom.’ A high paying advertising firm whisked me away before I completed my graduate degree. This seemed more information than I wanted to reveal, so I replied, “Communications.”

“Something tells me you’re not being quite honest.”

As we stood and bickered, Bill solicited signatures for a petition intended to encourage the Texas legislature to protect the financial rewards of psuedo-charitable promotional campaigns, a recent logistical legal maneuver I invented to secure some otherwise questionable carton-top assets. Wrapped up in our discussion, Penny Nichols absent-mindedly put her name to the paper. Give a man a straight enough dotted line and he’ll sign anything.

“I suspect your exterior of lies might exist to conceal deceit of an entirely different nature,” Penny said as Bill wrapped up his speech.

“Care to peel the layers over dinner?” I asked.

“I’m too ethical for you. I only date men who are willing to die for a cause.”

I laughed, and the laughter sent me into an accompanying coughing fit, stifled only with a drag of my cigarette. “You don’t consider this dying for a cause?” I gasped.

“Your hands could probably do some good if they weren’t covered in tar,” she said. “I see something in you, God help me. I do.” She gave me a business card and dispersed with the crowd, swinging her hips and leaving me doubly breathless.

This girl knew both verbal marketing (that flattery) and non-verbal marketing (those hips). Who doesn’t want someone else to see something in them? Even a battle-scarred soldier like me. Bill jogged over to bum a ride, but I told him he could keep on jogging all the way to the office. Too many people had already noticed our mutual involvement. Besides, his good looks and his healthy lungs were starting to irk me.

And since when do graduate students carry business cards?

The office atmosphere did nothing to relax me. For one thing, threatening letters from the Textbook Liberation Front waited in the mailbox. For another, Horace spent more time in the hospital these days then out of it. Six years ago the doctors removed a portion of his lung but apparently didn’t get all the malignant cancer cells. Now it looked like operation number two. For another, Bill wanted to discuss some employment issues. He didn’t like the way I kept making him walk home and calling him an idiot and kicking him in the shins. Bill said I acted that way because of my sudden jealousy of his youth and good looks now that I wanted someone hot and smart and eight years my junior, but, really, it was because Bill was an idiot. Not to mention my sudden jealousy of Bill’s youth and good looks now that I lusted after someone hot and smart and eight years my junior. Oh, and also, Nancy had been having phantom hand syndrome again. Strange itches and sensations materialized in the place where her right paw used to be and she kept taking dictation as if she had two. I had her type up some letters, and they came out like this:

Dear Ct Cca

Te est wa t ecrage te regated grwt f ew sess ad ew cartale revee r ct s srtg te Cverage f art Cartae Advertsgased Assets As earer dscssed t arge crrats are sed t r fdg ad s t r dstrct f te acg fr ts egsat s avaae

Scere

Rad caaster

I’d signed and mailed three such mangled letters before stopping to read the text. Give a crooked man a straight line and he’d sign away his soul if he had one. I stood there examining Nancy’s latest composition, staring into the gibberish, looking for some sort of meaning, sure that the truth left out by a phantom hand must be the key to my existence. I found nothing. It was just the left half of my political mumbo-jumbo:

Dear City Councilman,

The best way to encourage the unregulated growth of new business and new charitable revenue in our city is by supporting the “Coverage of Partially Charitable Advertising-Based Assets.” As earlier discussed, multiple large corporations are poised to pour funding and jobs into your district if only the backing for this legislation is available.

Sincerely,

Randy McAllaster

No more meaning than Nancy’s version, but at least hers contained the promise of beauty. My attempt to encourage the passage of the “Coverage of Partially Charitable Advertising-Based Assets” legislation – nicknamed by opponents as “Cover Your Ass” – would now have some very confused city council members puzzling over secret-decoder-ring messages from Rad Caaster. I considered dictating messages using letters only found on the left side of the keyboard, but instead I dropped the whole thing; the bill didn’t need more help considering how much tobacco slush money slushed its way.

The moment of ratification, Project “Carton Tops for Education” would be a go, the proceeds protected from any resulting lawsuits. All the questionably charitable donations would be funneled directly to one dirty book publisher, and we’re talking tens of millions of dollars a year in targeted cigarette carton top contributions. And that lucky book publisher – a newly formed independent press called Innovate Publishing, Inc. – was a wholly owned subsidiary of the small offshore holding company known only as X. Y. Z., Jr.

Nancy fielded a phone call while Bill practiced his latest elementary school assembly presentation, but we all paused when Horace walked in hacking and wheezing.

“How’s it going, Horace?” asked Bill.

Horace shook his head. Not well, not well. He was an old, old man at only sixty-three. We watched as Horace lit up a cigarette.

“I’m going to have to tender my resignation, boss,” he said. “I’ve been doing this too long.” Did he mean smoking or the job? Probably both.

“Resignation denied,” I said.

“No more lying to school children,” he said, “I’ll be bedridden soon.”

“Well, then, I’ll send the paychecks to your bed.” It didn’t really matter, I could afford to be generous: he wouldn’t be around much longer. Horace nodded.

Nancy put down the phone, managed to knock over her coffee mug with her invisible right hand, and announced, “The police just called. They’ve identified the Textbook Liberation Front’s typewriter.”

She paused for dramatic effect. I told her to spill it.

“It’s an L.C. Smith & Brothers No. 2 model, purchased online two months ago and signed for at the post office. By Xavier Young Zigfield, Jr.”

Another pause. This shaped up to be a real mystery. Somebody extremely clever wanted my attention.

“A self-hating company.” I said.

We all averted our gaze as Horace stifled another coughing fit. It occurred to me that this might be the last time I saw him, and though I was correct in my conclusions I was wrong in my reasoning.

“When I was a kid,” Horace said, “I wanted to be a fighter pilot.”

The imminent dinner with Penny generated more stress than any high stakes business presentation. Did I wine and dine her at the most expensive establishment Austin had to offer or would such egregious waste offend her liberal nature? Good-hearted, good-looking college vegans might take her to cheap holes-in-wall and still get laid but if I couldn’t throw money around it limited my seduction options. I settled on a place based on location rather than price – walking distance from my building meant she’d have less time for the wine to wear off if some miracle of poor judgment sent her towards my bed.

Our meal began like an ideological dispute instead of a date, perhaps more my fault than hers. I don’t know how to turn off the defenses. But the waiter kept pouring wine into my emptying glass and while the conversation never turned towards those neutral things normal humans talk about when they want to pretend to get to know each other, at least we managed to move from political conflict to personal discord.

“How can you subject children to subliminal cigarette propaganda?” she asked.

“It’s no different than sugar cereals or soft drinks,” I said, sure of my political footing though fumbling with the salt shaker to steady my shaky hands. “You worry about the subliminal but forget the open front door. The real influences on a developing child’s mind are the ads they run between cartoons, not Randy McAllaster.”

“That’s third-person rationalization and it’s irrelevant to my question. I want to know if you feel good about what you do,” she said, emphasizing each pointed “you.”

“Few things bring a man satisfaction like making use of his limited talents while being paid well,” I said, quoting from my own backlog of lies. She picked up the shaker the moment I put it down; a sign of attraction according to body language basics. Though it’s possible she wanted me to stop spilling the salt.

“Who are you trying to fool?” She asked, and I struggled to respond. These days it became more and more difficult to identify the fool. “I almost have you figured out, Randy,” she said, and she was right about that “almost.”

There’s a reason super-villains confess their secret plans in the penultimate act: they want to be appreciated. My evil revelation veered in a different direction, instead of talking about textbooks and cigarettes I told her about parents and school, about siblings and ex-girlfriends, all the truth that I thought didn’t matter. She laughed and she fluttered while I kept second-guessing my own limited charm. It had been so long that I’d forgotten courtship’s intentional triteness, the best self-advertising those simple things we say to feign our basic humanity.

“You’re so clever at getting your way,” she said, “If only you knew what your way was.” I paid the bill and we walked back to my place, my breath shorter than the walk, not from exertion but anticipation. Well, that and the exertion. Three packs a day catch up with a man, left me winded and breathless before getting started. I tried not to panic about impressing a twenty five year old in the peak of her health, it had been such a long time, such a long, long time, I wanted this so badly.

“I want you to admit everything to me,” she whispered into my ear as we tumbled into bed. “I want to hear you say that you are a vile, evil man.”

“I’m vile,” I said, panting, nothing I wouldn’t admit to at that moment.

“Tell me like you mean it,” she said, biting me hard on the shoulder.

“I’m really, really vile.” Had fate sent me a woman turned on by evil men? Or simply by men who hated themselves? It didn’t matter either way.

“Not like that!” she slapped me across the face, “Say it like you know it’s true.”

“I’m a vile, evil man,” I yelled, shocking myself, “I’m a liar and a fraud, I’m the personification of immorality, I am a husk of a man, I am the limitless corruption of society!” No one does self-loathing like I do self-loathing. I’m the best at the worst. I’m the worst of the best at the worst.

“More,” she cried, raking her nails deep into my back, breaking the skin.

“My hands are stained with the blood of thousands of children! I don’t deserve to live!” I shouted and collapsed next to her, gasping for air, choking on my own over-exertion, happier and blanker than I’d been in years.

“It’s okay,” she whispered, curling up next to me. “You deserve to live.”

Maybe I had it wrong. Maybe she was turned on by good men gone astray.

When I woke up she was gone, and she’d taken the draft copies of my textbooks with her.

I stormed into the office, looking for someone to throttle, but saw no sign of life but a blinking message light on my phone. I put on the headset and checked my voice mail. It was Nancy:

“Mr. MacAllaster, I’m so sorry. I can’t be at work today because I’ve been arrested. Apparently I’m the one who purchased that typewriter. Honestly, I don’t remember writing all those nasty notes, but the police tell me I did it. I’m so sorry, Mr. MacAllaster, I didn’t mean it, really I didn’t. Maybe that’s where all those missing keystrokes have been going. I guess my left hand didn’t know what my right hand was doing.”

Poor Nancy. I’d have to go bail her out. She’d been so loyal to me, I suppose I could forgive a few slips in mental acuity. Besides, I doubted anyone else would take the job. And, also, I still felt partially responsible for her accident.

How much longer could I hold this crumbling office together? We were like some demented version of the Wizard of Oz. Horace, the wheezing lion, short one lung. Nancy, the tin secretary, lost a hand. Bill, the straw man, missing his brain. And me? Dorothy, looking for payoff and the long step home.

The cancer that grew inside of Horace, probably me as well (if not yet then soon), what were these renegade cells trying to accomplish? No one understands why the body betrays itself in such a way, our own cells spreading out of control, unchecked, with no seeming purpose other than destruction. Is there some secret we don’t understand? Could cancer grow back a hand or a lung? A soul?

As I hung up the phone Bill walked in with a smirk on his face and I immediately wanted to punch him in the mouth before he opened it. When he did open it the urge just got worse.

“Have fun last night?” he asked.

I glared at him.

“Don’t worry,” he said, “I’m just here to collect my things.” He began throwing a few items off his desk into a backpack: a University of Texas mug, a very battered but still-unsolved Rubik’s Cube, a box of ultra-soft lotion tissues made from recycled materials. He picked up a miniature earth stress ball ominously emblazoned with the corporate logo of a tobacco company, examined it, and dropped it in the trash. “It’s the last you’ll see of me.”

“Those tissues are company property,” I said.

“Let it go, Randy.”

This bothered me. I didn’t like not knowing what was happening. Usually everyone else didn’t know what was happening while I made those things that everyone else didn’t know about happen. Bill’s role did not include having the upper hand.

I said, “Okay, Bill. What’s going on?”

“You think I’m an idiot, but I’m not. I’m actually an operative for Eco-Corps. We’ve been monitoring you for a long time and we’ve got enough information to shut your little roving consultancy down for good.”

I clenched my fists, digging the nails into my palms. “I still think you’re an idiot, Bill.”

“My name’s not Bill.”

“Get out of my office.”

“I’ve leaving, Randy, I’m leaving. I just came back to rub it in. I wanted to let you know that you’re the real fool.”

“Am I?” I asked, my face growing red and my breath growing short, I fumbled for a cigarette and failed to find one in my pocket, so I reached into the trash and started pumping the discarded stress ball. “Think about it, Bill…”

“Scott.”

“Think about it, idiot, who’s been the stooge here? How many school children have you imbued with my propaganda? Do you realize how effective your anti-anti-smoking seminars have been? How many letter-writing campaigns have you organized on behalf of my industry? Did you know that yesterday the state government voted to pass our legislation? That’s all thanks to you, Bill, or Steve, whatever. Can you live with that? Think about how many children are going to die early because of you. Was it worth it? Can you live with the black tar scraped off the lungs of thousands of twelve-year-olds dripping from your hands?”

I’d backed Bill/Steve into a corner, tapping him on the chest with a smoldering cigarette, which apparently my hands had found and lit on their own accord. When I finished my tirade we lingered in silence, Bill/Steve looking angry and afraid, and maybe a little guilty as he thought about what he had done. He breathed deep and said, “Your girlfriend works for me.”

I threw the cigarette in his face and grabbed his backpack, trying to wrestle out the tissues – the rightful property of Innovative Local Marketing Solutions, LLC – but he was younger and he was healthier and he was stronger, and he easily shoved me off and walked out the door.

Goddamn Bill or Steve or whatever the hell his name was. I didn’t care about him, who cares if he spied on me, as long as he did his job. I didn’t care about any of it. I didn’t care about the cigarettes or Horace or the children or anything. I didn’t care at all, except maybe, for a brief moment, embarrassingly, about Penny. If Penny Nichols was even her real name.

I shut the lights and locked the office behind me, though it wasn’t much of an office anymore, with Bill gone, Nancy incarcerated, and Horace hospitalized. Despite the light rain I decided to leave my car in the parking garage and walk home. That meant tomorrow morning I’d have to walk back to work whether I wanted to or not, but we all know tomorrow morning wouldn’t be an issue.

The wet, fresh air did me some good, washing away or at least temporarily patting down the eternal smell of smoke in my clothes and my hair. It’s hard for me to be mad when I’m damp. It’s hard for me to be mad when everyone acted towards me just like I’d act towards myself, when they did just the things I wanted them to do. I’m not the only one with layers; we could all use some washing away. Yes, the rain worked, and when I got home I decided there was nothing to do but go upstairs for some more.

Which brings me here. To the slender ledge of the roof top pool on the twentieth floor of my apartment building. I mean tenth. I can’t stop exaggerating even here. No five-step plan exists for compulsive frauds. There is, however, a one-step plan, which I’m about to take.

The crowd has thickened below me. The masses I summoned serve no purpose, except that I’ve lived my life behind them and it’s my desire to end it in front of them. But they’re not, and never have been, important to me. No one else shares the pool because it’s drizzling and, probably, because I’ve padlocked the door. While I can hear the clamor down at the street, it wafts up here in a fairly peaceful way, a nice place to enjoy a final drink and a penultimate smoke. (One extra cigarette won’t kill me. It won’t get the chance.)

A commotion stirs the crowd down below, drawing my wandering attention. Someone takes the police megaphone which until this point I’ve been ignoring. It’s Penny Nichols.

“Xavier!” she shouts, producing a piercing whine that has all the sheep clutching their ears. A policeman leans over to tell her something, probably explaining that you don’t need to shout when using a megaphone since that’s sort of the whole point of the oral device.

“Xavier,” she says again, this time sans feedback. No one’s called me Xavier for a long, long time. I consider flicking my cigarette at her, but it’s my second to last one and it’s only half done. It’s not worth wasting.

“I read your manuscripts,” she says, “and they’re wonderful. Not subversive at all. They’re engaging and educational and creative and they’ll be so helpful to so many children. They’re brilliant. You’re brilliant!”

“What do you think of that?” I say, though she can’t hear me down there, I’m just whispering into the drizzle. “I guess Nancy screwed up the dictation. I guess all my subliminal messages got lost to the phantom right hand of God.” What I don’t tell her is that I studied psychology with a focus on the early stage learning and development process. What I don’t tell her is that those textbooks were my thesis and that I always wanted to complete them.

She frowns, I can see her frown from here it’s so big, and says, “What? I can’t hear you?”

I shout, “Nothing,” and she says, “What?” and I yell, “Never mind,” and she says, “What?” and I can sense the event-hungry crowd growing impatient for a less repetitive conversation, so I call her cell phone. In the process of dialing I spill my martini, which is too bad, because that was my last drink. Now I have only one cigarette to go, its slow burn counting down the last moments of my existence.

She answers, “Xavier?” and she still has the megaphone to her lips so I hear her voice in stereo, echoing in my ear and around my head.

“What’s your real name?” I ask, just to set the matter straight.

“It’s Penny Nichols, it is, it is,” she pleads, willing me to believe her, which I do and it makes me smile. It’s nice to know there’s only one complete liar in this relationship. I suppose I could accuse her of her many wrongdoings, of misleading me, of stealing from me, of working for that idiot Bill, but it all seems so insignificant compared to the sum of my life, and I just don’t feel like talking about it right now. Even a man like me has regrets. Especially a man like me. Of course a man like me. My cigarette burns past its halfway point.

“Why are you up there?” she asks.

“I’m dying for my sins,” I say. What I don’t tell her is that in the will of Xavier Young Zigfield, Jr. it states that the newly formed independent press, Innovative Publishing, Inc., will fall under ownership of the Xavier Young Zigfield, Jr. Trust, that the guaranteed charitable contributions from cigarette companies will allow hundreds of elementary schools to purchase new undistorted textbooks, and that the multi-million dollar cigarette funded charity revenue from those text books will be controlled by the kind-hearted and one-handed Nancy Price, distributed right back to the elementary schools. What I don’t tell her is that I’m Xavier Young Zigfield, Jr. But she already knows that. Sometimes marketing is what you don’t tell people, sometimes marketing is what people already know.

How does one make up for his life? How much money would it take to repair damage irrevocably done, lives ruined? I don’t mean the children. I mean me.

“Oh, Xavier,” she whimpers, “Please don’t jump.”

“I have nothing to live for,” I say. What I don’t tell her is that I have everything to die for. Alive, the tobacco companies take me to court for fraud and embezzlement, they win, they keep the profits, they alter the textbooks however they want. But dead, thanks to the tobacco-supported legislation passed yesterday, the partially charitable advertising-based assets of the Xavier Young Zigfield, Jr. Trust are completely protected. What I don’t tell her is thanks to her and Bill’s efforts I lost the option of turning back, the public knowledge of my actions will insure I lose and the tobacco companies win. Of course, as the police discovered, that was my typewriter. I used it to send those letters and tip off Eco-Corps and create The Textbook Liberation Front. Because stepping off a ledge isn’t easy unless you’ve made absolutely sure there’s a drop on either side.

What I don’t tell her is that I control every aspect of the universe, that everything always goes according to my plan, that I have to jump. My last cigarette smolders down to the nub.

I know exactly how much my life is worth: an estimated thirteen point seven million dollars a year in dirty money gone clean. It’s a start, at least.

“But, Xavier,” she cries, “I love you.”

Great, just what I needed: Something to live for.

Penny Nichols, you’re not according to plan. I don’t like when things don’t go according to plan. The last thing I want right now is a choice; I could really live without the doubt. Or perhaps I should say I could really die without it.

“I’m sorry,” I say. What I don’t tell her is that love is a marketing tool designed by people like me to sucker people like her into buying more stuff. What I don’t tell her is that sometimes marketing is what I don’t tell her. What I’m not telling her is that I love her. It’s nice we can still learn things about ourselves this late in the game.

I flick my last cigarette, undeniably finished, just a smoldering butt, and I watch it tumble in the wind and rain down to the crowd below.

 

Ever So Clever

Quentin Poulsen

Quentin Poulsen teaches in Spain, though is currently on sabbatical in Istanbul.

Ed and I were at the pub one sultry evening, having a chinwag about the prospects of a bonza day to follow, when this stocky middle-aged bloke rocks up to the bar and plants himself on the stool beside us.

"Reckon you'd be wrong there, cobbers," he butts in. "We're in for a spot of heavy rain tomorrow."

"Heavy rain?!" says I, laughing into his face with gusto. "Are you not familiar with the balmy climes to which we are accustomed here on the Sunshine Coast? Go back to the Black Stump, you ignorant fly-swatting bushie."

He lights a rollie and smiles serenely back at me. "Fair suck of the sav, mate. It's the good oil, I tell ya. There'll be forty millies at least."

"Forty millies? Ha! ha! ha! What part of the Never Never did you just crawl out of, you shonkie dill? Do you not watch NNC via Satellite, which keeps us informed of all things Australia? I'll be donnin' the budgie-smugglers tomorrow and headin' straight for the beach. No worries."

"Well, better take your storm stick, cobber. The heavens are set to open. Ridgy-didge, it's a dead-set cert."

Now I myself am normally a mild-mannered sort of bloke, but this stickybeak fruit-loop has got me right ropeable cranky with all his raw prawn conjecture. "Fair-dinkum there's a few roos loose in your top paddock, sport. She'll be a ripper tomorrow. Saw it live on NNC this arvo."

"Direct from Hollywood?" he chuckles. "Let's just say it's my job to know these things, and NNC's not worth a brass razoo."

"Bloody oath, you'd be one up-yourself dipstick!" says I, brushing aside a squadron of mozzies. "Your job? Pig's arse it'll rain tomorrow! I'll be in me cossie and thongs knockin' back tinnies and tossin' snags on the barbie. Now rack off back to the Back of Beyond and tell your porkies to someone who cares."

He just puffs away on his cancer-stick; smug as a pink-eyed Koala with a gob-full of gum. "Strewth," he turns to Ed, "your cobber's mad as a cut snake. Just tryin' to put him right. What's he chuckin' a spas over?"

Ed flashes a gobsmacked mug my way. "Crikey, Joe! Why spit the dummy, mate? This bloke sounds like he might know a thing or two."

"Aw, fair crack of the whip, Ed. You wanna stay and yabber with the drongo, good luck to ya. But I'm headin' out for a macka. Spot ya later."

Well, Ed's not much of a conversationalist on anything besides pest control and fumigation services--nature of our business--but they're still at it when I return to the bar an hour or so after. At least this self-acclaimed dipstick 'weather guru' has the gumption to make himself scarce when I walk in the door.

"Hey, Joe," says Ed. "You'll never guess who that was."

"Some full-as-a-boot nong with his head up his own arse?"

"No. Bruce Rosakis, head of the National Meteorological Service, author of several books on atmospheric science and editor of the Sunshine Coast Weather Review."

"Oh yes," says I. "And what would he know?"

*

Next day it pours and pours, cats and dogs. There is no let-up til evening, at which point I don the driza and wellies and make a dash through the flooded streets to join Ed at the pub. We sit at the bar and watch the NNC coverage of the Sunshine Coast rains. Only thirty-nine millimeters had fallen.

"So, you see," says I to Ed. "He was wrong."

End

 

History of Electricity

Scott Larner

Scott Larner studied science and writing in Michigan. He now lives in Brooklyn.

December, January, February and most of March elapsed since White kissed me and today, finally, he asked if he could drive me home. We linger for a moment on his back porch. White sifts his pockets. Through the neighbor’s back yard I can see the small one bedroom house I rent. The neighbor, Jim Howard, is also my landlord. White finds his keys, opens the door, and, not being not invited in, I follow him.

In the small, cold, room, White sets his car keys and a pack of cigarettes down on a small table, slips his shoes off. Winter coats hang on hooks. A snow shovel leans against the wall by the door. There are no windows and the only lamp is off. A small alligator mouth of natural light rises behind White’s white sock and disappears down the hallway.

“How long have you lived in that house, David?” Whites asks. “In one of Jim’s houses?”

“Since the summer,” I shift my body, feet planted on the plastic door mat, trying to see around White, around the corner of the hallway, and into the rest of the house. Trying to see what kind of stuff this man keeps around him, but he is in the way. Eight months teaching together in the same building, I physics and he English, and this is as close as I have been to his stuff. There are no artifacts in his classroom, one old poster of Mark Twain, stapled student work. It was dreary and already cold—September—a full month into the school year, when I invited myself into White’s room. He sat, his shoes resting on his almost empty desk, drinking coffee from a white Styrofoam cup and reading a magazine while a girl finished a test. It was a test straight from the text book manual. The kind of test that I would never give. His dark hair was still pristine, the strands still progressing in congruent waves. He didn’t smile. Outside the window a group of boys were playing illegal tackle football waiting for the buses. I had felt desire in him. I could feel that White in the hallway looking at me. I hadn’t said much that first day. I had asked him about school. He evaded, going to the window, as the chaperon whistles went off and scrambled the boys. He whispered that the girl had to finish her test. That we couldn’t talk right now. I I felt desire in him, for him. In the room I felt lust, pushing back against me as if two like charges had been brought together. He wanted more of me, even as he flipped the magazine in front of his face and told me we’d talk later. I wanted to know more about him. He seemed so sad, so out of place.

But here in his house we are stalled in this anteroom, this cold outside inside place, differentiated from his screened in porch only by the computer and its monitor, leaking its cold electric light into the room like water from a dripping spigot.

White pulls a cigarette out of the pack and lights it. He leans his face against the corner of the room, and looks at me. Through me, the way he looked through the road on the drive home. I sat, watching the half mile of sidewalk, on which I usually walk, zip by, toeing the blue immaculately vacuumed carpet, stiff in the too upright passenger seat, staring at the tuning knob, wondering why White doesn’t bother to change the channel. And before that in the parking lot, wind blowing his tan collared jacket out in a puff around White. Let me drive you home David, he asked.. Yes, White I said. Finally. And then. Your home or mine.

White smiled at this and then went quiet.

The computer hums, coughs. I wonder if there is pornography beneath the quivering red lines of the screen saver, wonder what kind it would be. White sees my eyes looking at the monitor, but does not move automatic and quick to the on/off switch, the way I can feel myself wanting to do now, as if it was my own non porn. White flicks cigarette ash into a try on the table. He toes a streak of mud on the white carpet.

“Do you like Jim?” White asks.

“He’s all right. He’s always busy?”

White looks down the hallway into his house, and then back at me. He inhales from his cigarette, straightens his body out to its full height. He rubs his head, pinching a knot of hair into his fist. He lets go, stretches his arms above his head, exhales the smokes, all at once, like he’s letting the whole rest of the day out at once. The impulse to close the door on White as he steps on to the first stair and run into his living room strikes me. I want to see his TV. I want to see what color his couch is. Are there magazines spread out across his end tables, book, or is everything in its place? I want to see if he has knick-knacks. I want to see if there are open Pizza boxes lying on the ground. But I don’t do it. I follow White up.

One step below him, my eyes come to the middle of his back. He is tall. Taller than in my school memories of him. On a curious prep hour walk, I spied in on through his class room window, White pinned to his chair, hidden by the desk in the corner, the class reading quietly, writing quietly, without him. The racket of some nearby science experiment filled the hall. But White sat silent and languid in his silent languid room with the silent languid students. A group of polo-shirted, pimpled boys, arrived from that long English hour hissing derisive whispers at White. Their gossip burned the back of my neck like I was still clinging to the edge of their group, still listening to them snipe secretly at some girl I had kissed when I was fourteen. He had kissed me in the parking lot the night before.

I let him walk ahead of me on the staircase, let him get to the top step, turn the doorknob and force the door free of the frame with his shoulder. He moves as if he has no solid parts. He moves like he is aware of the million million molecules he must push out of his way to get from place to place, with a sensitivity so heartbreaking I almost think that I can’t follow him up. White turns the corner and I can see trees scraping against the window glass. White is gentile.“Are you coming up David?” He calls down to me. The railing wobbles as I pull myself along. Everything feels slow and heavy around me. White’s house seems to amplify the lethargy of after school afternoons.

Upstairs the ceilings are low. The carpet looks unworn, though its brown color is dulled at the tips by dust. The empty electrical sockets on the wall evoke furniture arrangements, stereo systems and entertainment stands, some spectral pattern of passed human motion. But there is nothing like that up here. Just White, standing on his toes looking at the top shelf of an empty closet, and me. He is so long and thin that it is impossible not to think of him as beautiful. His clothes hang from his body like robes. He looks sacred and meek.

Just White and me. Like the night of the first kiss: It was a winter night then, a pre Christmas break parent teacher conference night, the winter moon out and bright, cold cold dry air, standing with him under the black sky on the black top pavement of the school parking lot. White had been detained by the principal, some infraction I’d never hear about, some parental complaint; I had run over, run long, taken an extra forty minutes to run down my line of eager eager parents wanting to talk to the nice new science teacher. The kiss had come in the middle of some inconsequential sentence of mine, White, like always, leaning back, sitting on the hood of his car, curious and solid and detached one moment, and then, there and warm next to me.

The kiss had been thirsty, and I could feel static electricity lingering on White’s lips, my finger tips, the car door handle, the flag pole. Cold dry air is good for static sparks.

“What is this place?” I ask “Why is it empty.”

“It’s private.” White says, he rubs his socks across the carpet and reaches over and shocks my wrist. “It’s away from all the clutter. All the rest of the stuff that gets in the way.”

“Are we… I mean right here on the empty floor.”

“There’s a bed in the other room.” I feel compartmentalized. I am in the house, but I not part of White’s downstairs life.White opens the only door and moves through. I follow him into the next room. This room is bigger but almost as empty. Closed, taped boxes huddle beneath a window, and old teachery clothes puff out of an open closet. The bed is pushed into a cove along the west wall.

“I had someone stay up here a couple years ago, but I haven’t used it since,” White says. I don’t know if he is answering my question directly, or if he had decided on his own to justify this place.

“Another lover?” I say.

White flicks the wall switch up and down without effect. We stare at the caramel brown patterns on the lamp shade. There is a pulse of nothingness each time I hear the switch flick and the light does not come on. December, January, February, most of March had gone, Christmas with my parents, number twenty-eight in a row, New Year, back to school, classes and classes and classes, had all passed, between the kiss and now. Flick. I walk by White going to his car. Flick. I do not ask for a ride. Flick. He does not ask to give one.

White sits down on the bed, on a blanket tucked in tightly, the way only hotel room beds are tucked in. I lay down next to him but he stays upright. Looking at the back of his head, it occurs to me for the first time that he is not just older but old. Sitting, the lines of his loose clothes look more tired and less angelic. Blue veins run through the back of his hands.

“Was the boarder, the lover, some other little boy from the neighborhood?” I ask

White twists his torso around and as his eyes hit mine; he looks disgusted, and though he doesn’t say it I can here him asking me if that’s why I’m here: to be the little boy with the old man. White pulls the pack of cigarettes out and goes to window. He opens it and I can hear Jim Howard shouting something from next door.

“I was just joking,” I say moving to him, laying my palm across his back as he bends down to let a stream of smoke out through the open window. Outside, Jim Howard is lining up a row of heavy-duty lawn mowers. He owns a landscaping business.

White, tall inflexible cold, stands in front of me at the window, motions with his cigarette at Jim on the lawn below. “Do you know how many of those he owns?”

“Lawn mowers?” I ask.

“He’s franchised. He has businesses all across the state.” White bends his knees so I can see over his shoulder out the window. “He makes a million dollars a year mowing grass.”

I let my chin rest on White’s shoulder, and he turns to gage my reaction, bringing our lips almost together. I smell cigarette smoke and the peppermint candies he swirls in his mouth at school. I can feel warm pulses of breath on my forehead, one... two... three... four, traffic noise and kids shouting in the street and wind rattling trees between each one. Five. Outside, Jim’s son Brent steps onto the lawn, shouts something at his father, and then disappears back into the house.

White’s mouth moves up and away. He moves across the room and sits back down on the bed, leaving me crouched by the opened window. Below me, Jim Howard tips the lawn mowers up, looking underneath each one. I knew vaguely about Jim Howard’s enterprise, knew about the lawn mowing, and the six or seven small houses like mine scattered around town. And then school board and township contacts, barbecues at his house with varsity coaches. Rusted hinges squeal as Jim opens his large storage shed and rolls the lawn mowers in one by one.

I sit down and the cold air falls through the window, cooling my hair. White has moved away again, balancing the room out. Like we were electric charge– negative and positive. I taught that in class today. Benjamin Franklin and the history of electricity, the advent of the dual charge theory, and the fallacy of the electric fluid– the fallacy that electricity derived its current from osmosis, like salt balancing in cells, that electricity was like water.

I wonder what White taught about today. “Why don’t I remember you from highschool?” I ask him.

“Why did you come back home to teach?” he says coldly not looking toward me.

“I knew Principal Walker,” I get up, move toward him, stand above him, unbalancing everything. “I swam with his son on the highschool team. He was willing to give me a job. I needed money.” The sun moves low enough that it hits the west window behind White, casting shadows through the Venetian blinds.

“You could’ve had a job anywhere,” White lays back onto the bed, the bars of shade and light making a piano keyboard across his face and chest.

“I had some trouble,” I sit down next to him, my leg touching his leg.

“Trouble?”

“Inappropriate conversations with the students,” my fingertips play an imaginary cord across White’s piano chest.

“What about?” White turns to look at me. I strike a lower cord.

“About choices,” I say. “About not hiding. About life.”

White shifts, not away from me, not towards me, skewing the alignment of my fingers on his chest. “I was gone for three years. When you would have been a student,” he says. “That’s why you don’t remember me.” I want to ask him where he went, why he left, but I know that he wouldn’t answer, that what he’s already said is a breach of personal code. Push him harder and he would move away, back to the window, or to sift through the clothes in the closet, balancing the charge, removing the current.

We sit on the bed, silent, waiting. The bars of light narrow as the sun moves lower, and then White moves closer.

I hit a lower chord still, feel vibrations. The disc of the sun comes full into the pane of the window, light flooding the room thick and yellow, like electric fluid. I wonder if this is what Franklin saw when he dreamt of electricity.

*

“Should I come back,” I ask White, descending the staircase with him.

“I’m not sure,” he says.

“When should I come back,” we pass through the living room. There is a couch, a TV, a chair, but White moves me through too quickly for details.

“I don’t know, David,” he says.

I am already through the door.

The sun dips behind the trees. It is beginning to get cold. White stands back, hidden from would be passers-by on the street. I step down into the grass. The rest of the neighboring houses have cement pathways from the front door to the sidewalk, but White’s is long gone. I can imagine the grass coming up and up through the cracks, breaking it into chunks, and then, piece by piece, some hired man, some other Jim Howard, loading it into a wheelbarrow and hauling it away.

I look up at White. He lights a cigarette. “Sometimes I wish I could be like Jim,” I say. “ I mean have money and influence. To make a place change. To make a place better.”

“I know.” White says. “I know that about you.”

*

From the plastic lawn chair in my bark yard, class notes for Monday in my lap (Faraday, Electric Fields), I can see White’s house. Shadows strike the upstairs window just right, and for a moment I see a figure looking out. But it is not White; it’s just an optical illusion. He isn’t up there. Why would he be? He is sitting in his livingroom, watching TV, reading a book.

In between Jim Howard and his son Brent are preparing for spring.

Brent makes a circuit. The baseball fires from his hand, smacks against the storage shed wall, and then returns to his glove. He does this over and over, his arm rising, snapping the ball downward, glove accepting uniform short-hops off of the grass.

Jim Howard is laying on his back, left hand holding the lawn mower off the ground, right hand digging with a large flathead screwdriver at the hardened grass pressed like sedimentary rock into the cavity below the lawnmower blades. The rotting smell intensifies as grass flakes off in layers, piling near his stained green running shoes.

Jim swears out loud, and Brent’s rhythm breaks as he looks over at his father. Jim drops the lawnmower, the metal in its body briefly humming as it hits the ground. He slings the screwdriver down, its handle sticking straight up, and wipes his forehead with the sleeve of his Notre Dame sweatshirt. Grass moisture has soaked in and left dark splotches across his back. He watches his son complete a few circuits, his breath, warmed by exertion, pouring out of his mouth. Jim lays back down, lifts the lawnmower again, reaches back for the screwdriver, but it is too far away. The lawnmower crashes down again, this time accelerated as Jim shoves it away in disgust.

He idles on his knees, looking confused, before he makes eye contact with me. I slide to the edge of my chair as Jim moves to the chain link fence, and throws the gate open. “You think you can help?” he says, and the turns and walks back without waiting for an answer.

I set my book down, jog to catch up, and fall in stride next to him. He is not much taller than White, but he takes up a whole lot more space. White slants and curves, but Jim is big. He has big shoulders and he torso stays big all the way down to his waist. Being next to him is like being next to a mountain, he changes the horizon.

In the middle of Jim Howard’s fenced in back yard White’s house is closer; I can see the blank wall of the upstairs bedroom through the window, the illusion is gone. But standing next to Jim, hearing the thud of the baseball over and over, the house feels farther away.

“Hold that up.” Jim points to the lawnmower, as he pulls the screwdriver out of the ground with a violent swipe.

“How should I do this?” I ask him.

“Get behind it and pull it up towards you. On it’s side.” The lawnmower is heavier than I expected. A sharp pain runs through my forearm.

. Jim grabs the screwdriver handle with both hands and, from his knees, digs at the remaining grass. The force shakes the metal beneath my hands. “Hold it tighter.” Jim says, and lays down on the ground to get a better angle. I clench my muscles. He swears at the grass that won’t come off. I put my knee against the protruding engine to help stabilize the lawnmower.

“How are you liking the school?” he asks me, pausing, repositioning himself beneath ]to get a better angle.

“Can’t complain.”

“You work with, uh, Mr. White.”

“Yeah. Same school,” I say. White’s car is in the driveway.

“He’s a good neighbor.” Jim says, sliding again, his face disappearing beneath the blades. “Good Guy.”

I want to ask him why he says that; what does he know? What has he talked to White about? But he can’t know White enough to be able to say he’s a good guy. I took me so much work, so much time to get into White’s life, to make him take down the veil. I cannot believe that Jim Howard would have had the patience. I cannot believe that Jim Howard would have pried something out of White that I could not. He must be lying. Or just being nice, just being neighborly. Guys like Jim ingratiate themselves to everyone. I imagine dropping the lawnmower, making Jim scamper out of the way. “Tighter,” he says, and I automatically brace myself, digging my heels into the ground a little harder.

“You ever play baseball, Mr. M. ?” Brent asks me, not stopping the motion of his arm, as if snapping the ball against the wall and catching have become as natural as his breathing.

“A little?” ” I have to unclench my teeth to answer him.

“How many you up too?” Jim asks his son. He stops digging for a second, and I catch my breath.

“Hundred fifty.”

“You’re only half done so stop talking.” The ball hits the wall harder on the next throw, and skips past Brent, leaving a wake of spray as it spins in the wet grass. Brent turns and runs the ball down.

Jim scrapes with the screw driver faster and faster, his force becoming greater and greater, and I lean in with all my body weight just to hold the lawnmower still. With the piles of dead grass beneath him and his heavy breath like smoke, it looks as though Jim is trying to start a fire. Across the lawn Brent is throwing the ball more quickly than before

“That’s better. That’s how you should be doing it all the time!” Jim yells at Brent. Brent stops, collapses to the ground, and then fires the ball into the air as high as he can. The ball arcs and lands a few feet from Brent’s head.

Jim scrapes at the grass two more times with the screwdriver.“Let it down,” he says finally, and takes the edge of the lawnmower away from me, lowering it himself. “You want a drink. Brent come here!” Brent get to his feet quickly and jogs overs, stands between his father and I. “You finished with the drills.” Brent nods. “Then take David in and show him where the beers are, and then I have a job for you.”

Brent leads me through a sliding glass door into the kitchen. He pushes the sections of the sprawled newspaper around the table, before finding the sports page, opening it, and after quickly satisfying whatever curiosity he had, abandoning it in the center of the table. I slide a bowl over, cereal bobbing in the stagnant milk, and lean my elbow against the counter.

“I’ll just go get them, o.k,” he says. “But just don’t say anything. I’m not supposed to get into that refrigerator.”

“No problem,” Brent thumps down the stairs. There are two TVs on somewhere in the house, sitcom laugh track mixes with a music video– or maybe its just a commercial. I don’t know if Jim’s wife is home, but there is no sign of her. The refrigerator is lined with school pictures of Brent’s friends. Two of them are in my class and I recognize two, maybe three others.

I return to my spot on the counter as Brent comes through the door, two unopened bottles in his hand. Sliding out of his way, he moves to a drawer underneath the counter, and pulls out a bottle opener. He pries the tops off quickly, like he’s done it before, hands me both bottles, and sprints back out to his father in the middle of the lawn.

The bottles are freezing cold in my hand as I move through the backyard. Brent throws his hands up, exacerbated, after brief instructions from Jim, and then pushes the lawnmower back toward the shed.

I hand Jim his beer and he takes a quick swig. “You know White pretty well?” I ask.

“Yeah,” he wipes beer from his lip with the back of his hand. “Not bad, I mean.”

“That’s weird,” I say. Jim holds the beer bottle to his mouth, idling. “I just mean he’s so private at school.”

Jim tips the bottle back, finishing the drink, and then shakes his head. “I don’t know about that. He and I, we have a chat almost every morning.”

“Oh,” The beer is not as cold as the spring air and the chilled glass led me to believe. Jim takes one more big drink and his beer is gone. He tosses the bottle into the grass back up toward the house just to get rid of it. My bottle is still almost full and I try to drink it down in one gulp, thinking about White and Jim talking across the fence. I bring the bottle down, not having finished half of what was there. I want to ask Jim what they talk about. I want in on White.

Jim begins as if he’s read my mind, “We talk about my business mostly. He’s interested. Not sure why.”

“Did he ever talk about the three year break he took from teaching?”

“He mentioned divorce once,” Jim says. “He asks a lot of question just about what going on around here... He asked about you the other morning.”

“What did he ask?”

“Not much. What you were like.”

“What did you tell him?”

“That you’re rent check was always on time.” He doesn’t smile, and I don’t think that he is joking. White’s house, just yards away, looks deserted. But as far as I can tell, he never leaves. Just goes to work in the morning and then comes home. But then there is Jim Howard’s information: Curious White in the morning, by the car. Jim could be misrepresenting the conversations. I’m the one he talks to David, not you, not any of the other teachers. Me. He talks to me. Or this could be a failure to understand the conversations. White moving quickly to his car, while Jim talks, and gets furtive responses. But Jim said White asks questions. Jim said White asked a question about me. I try to fit this new information into my picture of him, this protected, defended, isolated, man; this apathetic teacher, this man of thirsty static kisses, this man of cold quick gone upstairs sex (I don’t know when you can come back David). This man is also fringe living off his neighbor, pumping Jim Howard for information about this town he’s lived in for more than twenty years. What does he get from Jim Howard? What goes back out? You can lose a job telling kids that they don’t have to hide if they don’t want to, and here is White, curious but locking himself away. Why not come out into the town White? Why not come out and ask the questions yourself?

The cold and the rotting grass make my head ache. I feel nauseous from the pain.

“What morning was that?” I ask Jim. “The question about me, I mean?”

“Friday. Yesterday morning,” Jim says and then he looks back over his shoulder, towards the shed, towards his son. “Brent you finished!” he yells. I notice that Brent hasn’t put the lawn mower away, that he has a large red gasoline container out. Now that I am thinking about it I can smell the gas in the air when the wind picks up.

“Take the mower over to Mr. White’s house and cut his lawn.” Jim says to his son.

Brent shoves the contraption at his father’s feet. “You said gas it up for you.”

“I know but I have to go in and do paper work.”

“I’m supposed to go over to Kelly’s later.” Brent says.

“She’ll wait. You’re going to do this.” Brent kicks the rubber tire. “You’ll get paid like everyone else.” Jim says.

“I can’t do it.”

“Why not?”

Brent looks at me. Physics test on Monday won’t work, he knows I wont corroborate. He looks away, pauses for a moment, like he’s accessing a back catalog of information, searching for excuse fodder.

And then contact: “I heard he’s a fag.”

My chest tightens and my hands feel instantly numbed. All I can see is Jim, pushing the lawnmower back and forth, checking the wheels. “You did not here that,” he says.

“Ryan says he saw dudes go in their all the time last summer while he was working on the mowers here.”

Jim flips the lawn mower around so that it is facing Brent. “Ryan’s an ass,” he says.

Ryan is one of Jim’s teenage employees, and in the same grade as Brent. Jim Howard’s assessment of the kid isn’t far off.

“Ryan’s not an ass,” Brent says.

“Ryan is an ass. He doesn’t even remember to clean his machine out..” Jim kicks the lawnmower, the handle crashing into Brent’s stomach.

“All I’m saying is that Ryan told me that, and some other people too.”

“Get out of here!” Jim yell at his son.

“I still have to do it?”

“Yes.” The lawn mower creaks as Brent moves off. Without saying anything Jim takes the beer bottle, still half full, from my hands, scoops up his own off the grass, and enters the house. I stand alone, not knowing what to do. Most likely Brent’s rumor started as just a malicious teenage lie. But there it is on Brent Howard’s tongue– from Ryan and other people too. I think of White, stuck in his house, avoiding what’s already there, syphoning information off of his neighbor. Jim comes back out. His legs look small beneath his massive body.

He hands me another beer and takes a drink from his own bottle. “What Brent said,” Jim starts, “You haven’t heard anything like that? I mean around school or anything?” The concern in Jim’s tone tells me that this is something that he hasn’t considered, that this is something that might change things. I want to run back to my chair and my class notes, but Jim is looking at me.

“Have you heard that?” Jim asks again.

He wants an answer.

I look at Jim and then at White’s house. I say no and White keeps things the way he’s got them. I say yes and Jim Howard would take it back to White, demand further clarification from the man himself. Jim is that kind of guy. White’s fictive isolation would end: White’s house is quite and dark. I imagine the upstair rooms of Whites house, the trees trimmed back and the blinds ripped off the wall. Light flooding in. I could do that to him. I could bring the light back to his house.

I answer Jim’s question slowly.

 

The Red Notebook

Sarah Jane Shute

Sarah Jane Shute’s work has appeared in AGNI, Natural Bridge, and Dust-Up, among others. She lives in Portland.

They stood, four maroon suitcases of various sizes, medium to large, shoulder strap to single handle, two on one side and two on the other of a mother-daughter team that stood too, in their matching knee-length white cotton skirts and yellow cotton tops, mouths agape, at the base of a fifty-foot-tall white marble statue of Chairman Mao.

The hotels were full, their Chinese business associate explained, dancing around the six of them, circling one way around then the other, stepping over a large suitcase on the mother's right to point to Beijing, the teeming city out the door of the lobby, to his black 1960 Mercedes with permanent gauzy curtains, to the multitudes of Chinese humanity cycling by on their three speeds, to the fact: the hotels were full. Look at the Mercedes, the bicycles, the babies in baby seats, the women or men who rode side saddle, look how they were dressed the same, charcoal gray or dark blue or black. Of course the hotels were full. There weren't that many hotels in any case, he explained, dancing in front of their gaping mouths, back and forth over the suitcases, full to bursting with white cotton skirts and yellow or likewise pastel cotton tops. They understood. Even though it was a museum, there were good rooms on the fifth floor. He paused in his dance, to stare, mouth agape, straight up, into the marble walls and ceiling of the lobby of the Chairman Mao Museum. "There are rooms here," he said.

And rooms there were. Too much room, really, for the two of them. A suite, double doors that opened from large sitting room into somewhat smaller bedroom with a huge four poster bed shrouded in thick mosquito netting. Another door opened from this room into a bathroom blanketed with foot after foot of shiny white tile extending across the floor and straight up the wall. "Was that a bidet?" the child asked the mother. "Yes it was," the mother replied, still having not closed her mouth from where it had hung open to better view the large statue.

The rooms overall were gray, a different gray from the one seen so frequently on the streets of Shanghai, Nanjing, Beijing and other points east: charcoal gray. This gray was more fleshy, more pinkie gray than black gray. More like the inside of something alive. The carpets, though patterned, gave an overall impression of gray, as did the wallpaper, the transparent billowy curtains, made possibly from the same fabric as the mosquito netting covering the bed, and the solid, big, puffy furniture, so big and fleshy it made one fear it might actually be moist to the touch and question whether the hand crocheted doilies partially covering the tops and backs and arms of the chairs and couches served the function of fig leaves, attempting to cover that which should be hidden.

They put down their suitcases somewhere in the middle of the sitting room but did not sit. They stood, letting the summer humidity wash over them from the open windows, letting the sunlight play over their matching features, little noses, round faces, dark hair, one version the miniature of the other. Shadows appeared and disappeared behind couches, in corners, from under the bed, advancing and receding like ocean beaches and shallow water. All this movement made the mother hungry.

"Where do we eat?" she asked, noticing for the first time their business associate flitting like a shadow around the room, adjusting this doily, opening this curtain, turning this vase so the flowers faced light. He stopped mid-adjust to say, "There is a restaurant next door," turning around as he said it, pointing vaguely with a thin arm to the left. "Over there."

The restaurant then, to eat. To have a reason to close one's mouth, at last. The business associate left them alone (disappearing out the door with a wave) to unpack what they could of the four maroon suitcases they carried with them from city to city, adding something here, leaving something there. In the process, the mother found her red notebook in which, at her request, one of her employees had written in careful Chinese characters Stir Fried String Beans, the mother's favorite dish, which she hoped to have today. Freshly washed, red notebook in hand, dressed in clean matching outfits retrieved from the suitcases, they set off, still in white cotton skirts and yellow cotton tops, to find the restaurant.

Through the museum they went, past countless pictures of Chairman Mao framed in gold and bronze, hung squarely on flesh gray walls, flip flopping down the marble corridor to the elevator. The child pressed the button down, and as they waited they noticed the pictures were all the same, the same as each other and the same as pictures they'd seen of Chairman Mao all over China, the same one that hung, fifty by fifty foot, in Tiananmen Square. Here they extended down the hall in both directions, interrupted only by the elevator on one side and the door to their suite on the other. The circular hall continued entirely around the building, creating a partially interrupted, but mostly unending infinity of Chairman Mao.

The elevator arrived, and the two of them stepped in reluctantly since they feared small spaces, and this space was particularly small. They had more room now than when they were squeezed in with the business associate and four maroon suitcases, but even so, their arms touched.

Child's elbow touched mother's sweaty forearm as they stood next to each other in the elevator looking at lighted numbers above the door.

They emerged into the lobby whose centerpiece was the enormous marble Mao and strode out into the thronging multitudes of humanity going about its business just outside the glass-paned revolving door. The mass swallowed them into itself, dragging them to the left then to the right, as they were pushed and pulled into opposite eddies of movement. It engulfed them entirely for a time, but deposited them finally in front of the building directly left of the Chairman Mao Museum, where they faced a looming ten story facade, a smaller version of the entrance to the Forbidden City, except that this was dark green instead of red and stood on mud instead of stone. They looked up at the wall, then peered into the arched entryway before them. From across the street where their business associate stood discussing the price of silk with a friend, they looked like bright spots of white suspended at the edge of a dense sea of green, the arched entryway no bigger than a mouse hole.

Undaunted by the appearance of the building, mother and daughter persevered. A restaurant might not look like a restaurant in a strange country where food usually didn't look like food, and hotel rooms looked like the inside of large intestines. Holding her red notebook in front of her as a shield, the mother strode through the entryway into a dank courtyard that smelled of wet fur. The daughter followed, and they found themselves in a coliseum of sorts in which they were the only two in the ring, surrounded on all sides by a gray building and rows and rows of windows that stretched up into the sky.

Instantly, they knew they were watched. Heads and shoulders began to appear silhouetted in windows, soon followed by more heads and more shoulders until each window had its own small crowd, all staring down, focused on the small mother-daughter team. Undaunted, the mother found a black felt tip pen in her pocket, wrote USA in huge letters on the back of her red notebook, and spun stiffly about, displaying the three letters for all to see. "USA, USA." Yes, we are Americans.

A buzz of incomprehension came from the building in general, and a group of five Chinese factory workers emerged from a wide passageway directly in front of them. They approached rapidly, confidently, each handing the mother a business card. They shook hands with the mother and spoke to her in rapid Chinese. The mother looked at the group of Chinese men and women, looked at her daughter, looked around her at the gathered crowd behind the windows, bravely raised her right hand, first finger extended, and pointed deep into her mouth. "Food," she said. "Isn't this a restaurant?"

This caused no small amount of perplexity among the group and another general buzz from the multitudes behind glass. The man who looked to be head of the delegation of factory workers furrowed his brow, looked the mother in the eye, raised his own hand, pointed to his own open mouth, and said, "Something unintelligible." The mother nodded vigorously. "Hungry," she said, rubbing her roundish stomach.

"Something or other," the man said, rubbing his own flat, dark blue cotton covered belly. The mother nodded again. "Food," she said, pointing into her red mouth. "Hungry," rubbing her belly. "Something or other," the man said, pointing in his own mouth, and, "something else," he said rubbing his belly. The mother nodded, repeating her gestures, hand in the mouth, rub the belly, gestures now echoed not only by her daughter and the entire five-person delegation, but also by the thousands of silhouetted figures in the windows pointing in their own mouths and rubbing their own numerous bellies. "Yes," the mother nodded more vigorously still, her ample bosom shaking, distracting the factory workers in general who seemed now to be saying, "my what big breasts that woman has," in their extended collective attempt at sign language. The sight of the shaking bosom seemed to clarify the situation, and the man in charge turned abruptly and took off in the direction of the door out of which they had all emerged, motioning for mother and daughter to follow.

And follow they did, mud flying up from the backs of their flip flops onto the seats of their white cotton skirts, feeling confident. A restaurant it was. And food soon forthcoming. They tracked mud right onto the tan floor as they followed the delegation up dark flights of stairs, down loud, tightly packed halls, over catwalks into more buildings, each one hotter than the next, until they came to a dead stop in front of a textured glass door. The leader opened the door and motioned mother and daughter into the large room to sit.

The room was almost an exact replica of the sitting room in their museum suite, huge flesh gray overstuffed chairs, gauzy white curtains breathing weakly in the humid air, hand crocheted doilies on the backs and sides and arms of the chairs, short wooden tables with thin plates of glass protecting their antique wooden tops, shadows creeping in and out of corners as the sun moved west in the deepening afternoon. Here too hung the huge portrait of Chairman Mao, his olive green worker's jacket and matching green hat with the bright red star in the center, his stoic look of discipline, hard work, concern. The picture filled an entire wall and had a large seam down its center. The mother-daughter team sat, each on opposite sides of the largest couch in the room, sinking deeply into the gray fabric as they stared a bit wide eyed at Chairman Mao who stared back. A factory worker appeared through a door to their left, placing covered mugs of hot green tea in front of them on the glass, then, standing, rubbed her stomach and pointed at the mother. "Yes," the mother said. "Hungry."

It was then that the mother remembered her red notebook, still clutched against her side, held tightly in her left hand. She brought it forward with some pride, as though it contained an original annotated manuscript of "The Cat Who Played Piano" or perhaps "Miss Seaton and the Unbelievably Dangerous Peruvian Poisonous Dart Murderer." Of course. She opened the notebook, found the clearly written Chinese characters. She offered it to the woman who stood looking down, her hand still on her belly.

Taking the notebook from the mother's outstretched hand, the woman read the characters near the bottom of the page and creased her brow.

She passed the notebook to the factory manager, standing with the other workers near a window. He took the notebook, read the characters, gasped, frowned, and passed the notebook to his colleagues who gasped and frowned as well.

"Something very animated and frantic," he said to the group of factory workers.

"Something even more animated, even more frantic," they all replied at once, waving their arms over their heads, like a large gray sea anemone.

Mother and daughter sat transfixed, missing most of the loud conversation that followed and the great jumping up and down and pulling out of one's hair that ensued. Staring straight ahead, they saw only Chairman Mao. They must find out what it hid, the huge red and green portrait. Unnoticed by the factory workers, who seemed to be shouting insulting epithets at one another, taking turns holding each other back from pounding the manager to a pulp, mother and daughter rose and approached the portrait, fingers outstretched, as though they had suddenly gone blind, prepared to run their fat white fingers down the center crease and look for a way in.

The factory manager threw the red notebook on the floor, stomped on it, yelled something very loudly, and the room suddenly went quiet.

All five factory workers stood, mouths agape, staring at the mother-daughter team who were slowly forcing the huge portrait apart.

It groaned and creaked. Pulleys and gears clicked. Chairman Mao's right eye and nose separated from the rest of his face, and the mother forced her arm through the gap. The daughter's arm followed, then their bodies, and they stood back to yellow pastel back, wedged between two halves of Chairman Mao's face.

"Something panicked and loud and frightened," the small crowd of factory workers yelled as they lunged toward the mother-daughter team, quickly disappearing into the portrait. One grabbed the daughter's hand, one the mother's sweaty ankle, but mother and daughter slipped from their grasp and disappeared into the picture, Chairman Mao's face snapping together with a satisfied click. The workers stood, all of their collective eyebrows raised, their eyes wide, astonished, for exactly thirty minutes. Then they walked down dark halls, across catwalks and outside, squishing through the mud to a rusty door on the side of the factory closest to the Chairman Mao Museum. The factory manager slid open an iron hatchway and out fell a rubber baby-doll, the kind the factory manager used to pack into crates full of straw and place in dank ships to be opened on the shores of the USA. The kind that usually end up having their heads ripped off by the neighbor's dog, or if they're lucky, hairless, dirty and naked, clutched upside-down in the tight grasp of a toddling child of two. The factory manager lifted the baby-doll out of the mud and, wrapping it in a bit of silk the mother would have known to be Taffeta, set off to find the Chinese business associate, who, he happened to know, lived somewhere in the vicinity of the airport.