The Broom of the System

13
1990
“So you’re upset, then.”
“I think I’m too tired to be upset. I don’t know why I’m so tired.”
“Like your brother.”
“Which brother? The one who’s flapped all the time, or the anorexic one who we’ve had to watch go around the bend for years and now just disappears and is maybe dead for all I know? I just want to sleep. Just put your arm ... like that. Thank you.”
“I thought you said the thing with John was that he was so reluctant to be in any way involved with anything’s death that he usually refused to eat, since every eating entails a death. That’s not anorexia.”
“It is, sort of, if you think about it.”
“And that he had a horizontal proof of the indisputability of the proposition that one should never kill, for whatever reason.”
“A diagonal proof.”
“Diagonal proof.”
“I guess.”
“He ... want it published, maybe?”
“I doubt he ever wrote it down, since that would involve paper, and so trees, et cetera.”
“Quite a fellow. A certain nobility.”
“I don’t really even know him. He’s like this stranger who drops in from Auschwitz every Christmas. He’s also lately been very weirdly religious. He told me he wants to write this book arguing that Christianity is the universe’s way of punishing itself, that what Christianity is, really, is the offer of an irresistible reward in exchange for an unperformable service.”
“Obvious problems involved in actually writing the thing, of course.”
“I think I’m even more worried about John than I am about Lenore.”
“I certainly know one particular feathered animal I wouldn’t mind him eating.”
“That’s not even a tiny bit funny, Rick.”
“I’m sorry. To be honest, though, I think it will be good for you, to have the bird out of your hair, so to speak, until this nursing-home and thin-brother business gets cleared up.”
“Poor Vlad the Impaler. All he ever wanted was a mirror and some food and a dish to go to the bathroom in.”
“A dish he used with distressing infrequency, remember.”
“I just can’t believe Mrs. Tissaw was saying he’d done thousands of dollars of damage to the room. That’s just a lie. She was standing there lying to me.”
“She’s clearly in some sort of religious ecstasy. People in religious ecstasies put live snakes in their mouths. Mate with the eyesockets of rotting skulls. Smear themselves with dung. Bird-damage delusions are small potatoes.”
“I’ve never had a shower feel any better than that shower did.”
“You must have been in there quite a while, for them to have time to spirit the bird away before you returned.”
“No one spirited anyone away. They just had him down in a van. And actually I guess that was sort of good, because it at least in a way took the decision out of my hands, right then. So I didn’t have to make any split-second decisions with those white-hot TV lights on me, which would have been spasm city.”
“But you laid down the law that it’s just for a month.”
“Candy and I squeaked faintly that it’s just for thirty shows as they all peeled away in their dumb vans, with the antennas. I told Mrs. Tissaw that if it’s more than a month without my permission I’ll take legal action. But I don’t think she was too impressed.”
“We will take action, if necessary. We can use that man F and V has on retainer. God knows he owes us some sort of work for his fee. Or I’ll get us one on our own, and pay for it. The bird is after all legally mine, remember.”
“What do you mean? You gave him to me for Christmas. I said that was the best Christmas present I’d ever gotten, remember?”
“And plus you hate Vlad the Impaler. You make that clear all the time.”
“I’ll admit I regret buying him for you. But, legally speaking, I have the receipt from Fuss ‘n’ Feathers pet shop. And, more to the point, as you may recall, on the relevant Christmas I did give you what you asked for, while you did not give me what I asked for. Had there been some sort of emotionally fulfilling Christmas exchange, that would have been one thing. As it was, it was one-sided. I never received my gift. Thus in some emotional dash legal deep sense the bird remains technically mine.”
“You said you liked the beret I gave you.”
“But it’s not what I asked for.”
“Look, we’ve been through this. I told you I just won’t do that stuff. If you cared in any non-creepy way, you’d only want to do what I want to do. And I don’t want to be tied up, and I’m sure not going to hit your bottom with any paddles. It’s just sick.”
“You don’t understand. Any possible sickness is obviated by the motivation behind it, as tried—”
“Incredibly dangerous territory, Rick. Let’s abort.”
“If you really loved me you’d let me.”
“That’s not even going to get dignified.”
“You do love me.”
“Let’s not do this.”
“ ....”
“....”
“Anyway, the point is that my emotional and economic and legal resources are behind you all the way. As it were. And don’t think this has anything to do with any royalties. You can keep all the royalties Swaggert promised you, though I must say I think the figure’s got to be a little inflated.”
“Sykes.”
“Sykes. He really wore white leather, with letters on the chest?”
“It would have been funny if it hadn’t been so obscene. And I hated his cowboy boots.”
“Footwear, again.”
“And Lang was being incredibly obnoxious to Candy, I thought. His tongue was swinging down around his knees, practically. God knows what all happened after we dropped him back off.”
“Nothing she won’t want to happen.”
“You’re mean. Anyway she’s snagged the president of Allied Sausage Casings himself, now, she told me. Nick Allied. She finally bagged him, she said. She wore that violet dress about a week in a row. That dress is way too small for her.”
“And of course when push comes to shove Lang is married, as well, to your—”
“The worst thing about the Vlad thing is going to be the embarrassment. The money, well I don’t know what to think about any money-promises. But Sykes’s career is going to be shot for sure when Dad and Neil Obstat come out with the pineal food and the talking business becomes clear and people make the connection that he’s my bird, and I’m related to Dad. And eventually the police are just going to have to get called about Gramma, and the other residents and staff, and then there’ll be newspapers. It’s going to look like Sykes tried to put something over on all those poor people who like send his club their medicine money every week so they can be partners with God or whatever. It’s going to look like I maybe helped him perpetrate a fraud.”
“You tried to tell him, Lenore.”
“It was totally impossible. He was incapable of listening. I’d mention the word ‘father,’ and off he’d go, stomping his foot and pointing his finger at the ceiling. And he had horrible breath. I think maybe the worst breath I’ve ever smelled, on anybody. He absolutely dwarfed ludith, who was the previous champion.”
“I loathe Prietht.”
“....”
“At least Lang got the room. He’ll be of help to me.”
“And you know I’m going to miss him. I liked bitching about his mirror with Candy. I didn’t mind vacuuming his seeds and his gunk. And I really didn’t even mind hearing him say obscene stuff. His talking was almost sort of nice.”
“What are your thoughts on Lang, overall?”
“Although there was something cruel about it—it was almost like Gramma was being deliberately cruel. She got me all used to hearing her talk to me all the time ...”
“He’s not what we’re used to, but I do feel affinities.”
“... and then off she goes, and takes off, and won’t talk to me, but fixes it so that now Vlad talks to me, except all Vlad can really do is repeat what I say to him, and even that not too well ...”
“Not precisely sure why I feel affinities, but I do. Two inside outsiders ...”
“... so that it’s like I’m sort of talking to myself, alone, now, except even more so, because there’s now this little feathered pseudo-myself outside me that constantly reminds me it’s just myself I’m talking to, only.”
“Except of course not anymore, now, right? Thanks to Mrs. Tissaw and the evangelist.”
“I guess so.”
“And what am I, Lenore, in terms of talking? Am I a mannequin? Am I a Bloemker-doll?”
“You know what I mean, Rick. I’m grateful for you. You know I am.”
“So you do love me, then. I do have you, after all.”
“You know I hate this ‘having’ stuff.”
“So I’ll settle for the fact that you love me.”
“All right, you can settle for it.”
“So you do love me.”
“What did I just say?”
“What did you just say, Lenore? As usual I’m really not sure. I certainly didn’t hear the word ‘love’ exit your mouth.”
“Some words have to be explicitly uttered, Lenore. Only by actually uttering certain words does one really do what one says. ‘Love’ is one of those words, performative words. Some words can literally make things real.”
“You and Gramma Lenore should get together, is who should get together. I’m sure she’d hit you with all the paddles you want. Bats, mallets, boards with nails in them ...”
“For Christ’s sake, Lenore.”
“I do the best I can, Rick.”
“So you do love me.”
“I do the best I can.”
“Meaning exactly what?”
“....”
“So then why do you love me?”
“Oh, gee. I’d really rather not do this now.”
“No, I’m serious, Lenore, why? On the basis of what? I need to know, so that I might try desperately to reinforce those features of me on the basis of which you love me. So that I can have you inside myself, for all time.”
“You could just stop the having-talk, for one thing.”
“Please, please. Oh, please.”
“....”
“I know I’m more than a little neurotic. I know I’m possessive. I know I’m fussy and vaguely effeminate. Largely without chin, neither tall nor strong, balding badly from the center out, so that I’m forced to wear a ridiculous beret—though of course a very nice beret, too.”
“....”
“And sexually intrinsically inadequate, Lenore, let’s please both explicitly face it, for once. I cannot possibly satisfy you. We cannot unite. The Screen Door of Union is for me unenterable. All I can do is flail frantically at your outside. Only at your outside. I cannot be truly inside you, close enough only for the risk of pregnancy, not true fulfillment. Our being together must leave you feeling terribly empty. Not to mention of course more than a little messy.”
“....”
“So why, then? List the features on the basis of which you love me, and I will exercise them unmercifully, until they grow and swell to fill the field of your emotional sight.”
“What is with you?”
“Please tell.”
“Rick, I don’t know. I think you and I maybe just have a different conception of this, you know, this ‘love’ thing.”
“....”
“I think for me there gets to be a sort of reversal, after a while, and then mostly things don’t matter.”
“Reversal? Explain, explain.”
“This is embarrassing.”
“Please.”
“At first you maybe start to like some person on the basis of, you know, features of the person. The way they look, or the way they act, or if they’re smart, or some combination or something. So in the beginning it’s I guess what you call features of the person that make you feel certain ways about the person.”
“Things are not looking at all good, here.”
“But then if you get to where you, you know, love a person, everything sort of reverses. It’s not that you love the person because of certain things about the person anymore; it’s that you love the things about the person because you love the person. It kind of radiates out, instead of in. At least that’s the way ... oh, excuse me. That’s the way it seems to me.”
“Oh God. And that’s what’s happened with me? There’s been the reversal?”
“Well Rick it’s just dumb for you to go to like a features-gym and start exercising features. That’s just dumb.”
“So things have indeed reversed, then.”
“....”
“Lenore?”
“Stop trying to pin me, Rick. I feel like a butterfly on a board.”
“But if such a propensity-to-pin is a feature of me, then you must love that feature, if there’s been the reversal.”
“I guess I’m not saying it right. I’d really rather not do this now. I feel all public, saying this stuff.”
“What about, for example, Lang? Do you suppose a Lang-love involves a reversal? Does a Lang ever stop loving on the basis of features and qualities?”
“Especially don’t want to talk about him, OK?”
“Why not?”
“....”
“Don’t just grit your teeth, tell me why not. It’s vital that I know, and surely you see why.”
“No, Rick, I don’t.”
“Why, if the reversal issue remains ambiguous, how am I to feel about you and me and, for instance, just to take an instance, Lang? For here we have, in Lang, a male creature surely far more worthy of love than I, features-wise, if we’re to be objective. Tall, feet easily reaching bar-stool supports, wincingly handsome, easy, loose, mildly funny, widely travelled, wildly wealthy, muscular, intelligent, though in my perception not threateningly so ...”
“....”
“And in uncountably many other respects features-love-deserving, Lenore. I’ve been in a men’s room with the man. Do you hear me? I’ve been in a men’s room with the man.”
“I feel like bundling you into the car and rushing you to Dr. Jay’s right this minute. I think new plateaus of spasmodic weirdness are being reached.”
“I must know things, Lenore. You must begin to tell me things, or 1-will implode. I must know whether I have effected the reversal in you. I must know how Lang fits in.”
“What does fitting in have to do with anything?”
“I must know. Lang doesn’t even know whether you remember him or not. He expressed doubts and anxieties on the plane, to me, while you were into your twentieth consecutive hour of sleep.”
“Oh I remember him all right. Don’t worry about my not remembering him.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“I really just don’t want to talk about it. What are you, trying to sell him to me or something? I just would rather not discuss it, and a feature I’d love to see in you right now would be your not wanting to discuss things I don’t want to discuss.”
“The next sound you hear will be that of implosion. Say I’ve effected the reversal in you, Lenore. Please.”
“There a towel around here?”
“No showers, until you tell me things. I’ll do something to the water main.”
“Look, Lang’s a big reason why I got my whole family really mad at me by not going to Mount Holyoke, OK? The time I visited, he and this other guy, with an adolescent, Amish, armpitty beard, came and barged in and banged their heads on the wall and made people sign on their bottoms, bare, and Lang practically molested Mindy Metalman on the spot.”
“They’re married, now, you know.”
“I heard you two talking about it at the Aqua Vitae, Rick. I heard. I heard everything you guys said, when I wasn’t busy keeping Stoney’s head from plopping into his pizza.”
“So there’s been a reverse reversal with Lang. You anti-love him, in the face of all the features that seem to cry out for and necessitate love. And yet through the reversal you love a man approximately one twentieth the man he is ...”
“You want to know what I really definitely don’t love? I don’t love this sick obsession with measuring, and demanding that things be said, and pinning, and having, and telling. It’s all one big boiling spasm that makes me more than a little ill, not to mention depressed.”
“So you don’t love me, after all.”
“Maybe I’ll just go down to Atlanta and be with Vlad the Impaler and get my royalty checks while you soak your head for like the next month, OK?”
“....”
“What do you need him for, anyway? What’s his function in all this?”
“Translation, I told you.”
“Norslan herbicide stuff into idiomatic modem Greek? That makes no sense at all.”
“Unfortunately, we’re not always in control of the decisions on the basis of which business is conducted, life lived.”
“How encouraging. But why him? You met him in a bar, is all. Cleveland must be crawling with actual Greeks, from Greece, if you want stuff translated.”
“I’m really not sure why. There are affinities: Amherst, fraternity, the Scarsdale connection. But something ... I simply felt ... I don’t know how to describe it. That was a strange day.”
“You’re making no sense at all.”
“Please note that what we have here is an inability, rather than an unwillingness, to tell.”
“I just think it will be weird to have him at Frequent and Vigorous. He’s just going to add to the chaos. Walinda will be retroactively on the ceiling about my being gone, once you’re upstairs, and plus Candy was dropping ominous hints about the phone situation.”
“More than a hint-matter, I’m afraid. One of my tasks at the office while you and Lang were ostensibly settling in was to check phones. The story is not a happy one.”
“What do you mean, ‘ostensibly’ settling in? Did 1 detect a tone?”
“I was referring to the unexpected and troubling Vlad matter.”
“Oh.”
“....”
“If poor Vern’s been working double shifts to cover for me, he must not even have a stomach left. You really ought to hire somebody extra, at least to cover, at least while the phone deal is the same.”
“From the payphone near the Cleaveland skeleton, I was in communication with a Mr. Sludgeman at Interactive Cable. He promises the very promptest possible action.”
“I think it’s possible to be prompter than eight days, which is what it’s been. I don’t see what kind of phone company-lets all its tunnel people go off fishing or wherever just when there’s a hideous tunnel problem. And that guy who looks like a negative, who refuses to do tunnels, and says tunnels are nerves, is about zero help.”
“Mr. Sludgeman claims new avenues are being explored. Highly sensitive equipment is being rented, to be brought to bear on the tunnel below the Bombardini Building. Sludgeman alleges the locus of the problem has been identified as Erieview Plaza.”
“Super. Just not at all thrilled about the prospect of answering Den of Pain calls for the next six months.”
“Which brings us to the really central issue of the night.”
“Rick, sleepiness is shooting out of every pore in my body.”
“No chance you’d want to hear a story, then.”
“Time just doesn’t seem right, somehow.”
“A number of interesting ones on my desk right now.”
“....”
“For instance, a man is completly faithful to his wife, but only because he is impotent with all of the truly staggering number of women he tries to be unfaithful with, although he is not at all impotent with the wife. We’re invited to speculate about whether he’s a good man, or a bad man, deep down. Interested?”
“Not ... pretty sleepy.”
“You don’t enjoy stories anymore?”
“That’s not it. You do awesome ... stories. I’m just either going to sleep or die, here.”
“Well, you may or may not be interested to know ...”
“Fffnoof.”
“... that I’ve had a not insignificant inspiration.”
“....”
“Bearing directly on you.”
“Fnoof.”
“And so of course on me.”
“....”
“What an anticlimax.”