Manhattan Loverboy (6 page)

“Jeepers, am I one hungry hound dog,” Wylie said, as he tunneled through his plate of crap. Then, to himself he replied, “‘Course you are.”

When I discreetly spat my mouthful of macaroni into a napkin, I realized the cheese was made from a powder that wasn’t quite mixed. Pushing my fork through the bowl, I spotted unmelted chunks of margarine and unblended clots of cheese powder.

“Say, what exactly is this?” I asked as politely as possible.

“Macaroni and cheese—eleven cents a serving! Isn’t it wonderful?”

As I resentfully chewed it down, I couldn’t help remembering that Whitlock—according to
Fortune
—was worth about $3,500,000 per year. Which means he must’ve made roughly $10,000 per day, seven days a week. Was spending $20 for a real dinner so exorbitant?

Maybe it wasn’t Whitlock’s fault. This Wylie character, Whitlock’s manservant, was an obvious flake. He had incredibly white hair that looked like the belly feathers of a goose. His face was punctuated by spaces: gaping eye sockets, large red ears that resembled toilet plungers, a big cantaloupe-sized mouth with a stupid inbred grin. He bantered a strange preemptive conversation at me as I tried to eat.

“So how was your trip, young man?” He.

“Not…” Me.

“It was awful of course, you boob…” He.

“No, I didn…” Me.

“Don’t ask me such dumb questions you say…” He.

“No, it’s oka…” Me.

“Tell me what you can do for me, Wylie, and stop being such an old nuisance!” He.

“You weren’t being…” He might have been insane but he wasn’t dangerous, so I just listened to him talking to himself with a fictitious character representing an irate me.

“Why in heaven’s name don’t you go to the Walter Raleigh and play the Charles and Diana? Who’s the Walter Raleigh, you say? Aren’t Charles and Diana royal monarchs, you nincompoop? Indeed they are, my boy. Indeed they are. But, you see, I give inanimate things animated names. Inanimate names, you say? Yes I bloody do in fact….” He continued rambling as I snuck into the kitchen. It was new and clean, and held the promise of other foods. But when I opened the refrigerator, all I saw was a tub of margarine, a rotting onion bulb, and individually wrapped American cheese slices.

Suddenly, an electronic doorbell emitted the sound of birds chirping. It didn’t have any effect on Wylie’s external monologue which eternally continued, questioning and answering itself in strange, dialectical senility. Then Whitlock appeared in the doorway.

“Ahh, Mister Whitlock,” Wylie muttered, “She’s waiting for you downstairs.”

“I’m a he, and I’m here,” I corrected.

“Not you,” Wylie replied.

“How are you?” I asked Whitlock, as I moved from the barren fridge to a sofa in the living room.

“Ahhh,
cestui que vie
.” He sighed, flopped down next to me, and pressed my hand.

“Mr. Whitlock, I don’t know what that Dean said about me, but…” I began nervously.

“Res ipsa loquitur.”

“I just want to say that none of this was my idea.”

“Molliter manus imposuit.”

“I didn’t do nothing wrong.”

“Mallum prohibitum?”

“At least nothing I knew about.”

“Ignorantia legis non excusat.”

“I mean, I didn’t mean to do what I did to you and, well, when I think about it, it makes me want to…” I caught myself.

“Exturpia causa non oritur actio.”

“Yeah, well, it still makes me feel angry.”

“Facinus quos inquinat aequat.”

“Master Whitlock,” Wylie spoke up, “the boy was in the middle of his noodle.”

“This should take no more than a moment.”

“What?”

“Your future.” He murmured this as he vanished out the door. I pursued. He kept vanishing behind landings and doorways just as I got to them. All the while, he was talking confidentially about something I couldn’t follow. Finally, at the ground floor, I entered a room to find him standing in a closet holding clothes, assessing them like a tailor.

“So, Wylie was making you dinner, was he?”

“Macaroni and cheese—eleven cents a serving.”

“Apologies. If you wish to excuse yourself, the vomitorium is down the corridor to your left.”

“It stayed down.”

“Put this on, if you would. Bring your clothes and come with me.”

“Where are we going?”

“Ours is not to question why…”

As he marched out of the room, he called back, “I’ll be waiting outside.” A pressed-yet-loose suit, a brand-new white shirt complete with pins in the collars, and a formal blue tie sat on an old Arts and Crafts armchair. Whitlock started walking again westward, back into the hall of the building with endless rooms. We marched through corridors and stairways. Finally, outside a large, old door, he stopped and waited for me.

“Here,” he handed me a roll of breath mints. I slipped one into my mouth and took four for later.

“If you don’t mind,” he said, “I want you to agree with everything I say.”

“God gave me a mind,” I cowered courageously.

“No, no,” he responded. “I just mean when we go into this room. We’re visiting Mama and her society.”

“Oh, I thought you meant in general, like about gun control and national health care. Sure, I’ll go along.”

He opened the door and we skipped in. An attendant was on duty. Inside were four ancient and sexless humanoids who all looked equally close to death laying side by side, yo-yo-ing between consciousness and all points north. Whitlock steered me toward the ghostly skeletal form by the window.

“How are we today, Mama? You look to be in top form…” Eight tubes were anchored to various parts of her drifting body, making her look like a sun-dried octopus.

“I dieeeee…” she muttered, or something like that. As far as I could figure, she was very, very tired, or paralyzed.

“Nonsense, you’ll be dancing on my grave.”

“Ahhhhh…” She should have taken better care of herself.

“Mama, do you know who I am?”

“Yahhh…”

“Mama, allow me to introduce my heir and protégé, Joseph Aeiou. Come here, Joey, and shake Mama’s hand. He reached under a sheet and handed me a hand. It was weightless, cold, hard, and dark, like a wooden walking stick. I wondered for a moment if it was connected to anything.

“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” I said cheerfully. What kept her alive? What kept all these people alive?

“Ahhhhhh…”

“Twenty-three. And how old are you?” I asked. She hadn’t asked my age, but I had to know hers. She had an extraordinary translucence. I wanted to know how long one had to live in order to get that.

“Mama is 103 years old.”

“Wow! You know, that weatherman on NBC’s
Today Show
will announce your birthday on the air if you tell him.”

“Mama was suspended in the air by Queen Victoria.”

“No fooling!”

She smiled faintly.

“The Queen, in the last year of her life, held mama, who, at the time, was in the first year of hers.”

“No kidding.”

The silver lady nodded yes. Suddenly, some elderly guy in a clerical collar was standing at the door.

“Ah, I see you have another visitor. We shan’t keep you. Ta-ta, Mother.” And we were out of there. He led me back through the corridors to the room with the closet.

“Change back into your clothes, and let’s figure out a racket for you.”

“I don’t want to sound uppity,” I explained, “but I always wanted to do a little more with my life. And I’m not really a scholar.”

“I see what you’re saying.”

After I changed back into my clothes, Whitlock went behind a small bar where a tiny refrigerator was hiding. Reaching inside, he took a tunafish sandwich wrapped in cellophane and offered it to me. “I have a gift for finding people’s vocations. If you have a calling, I’ll see it in your eyes.”

“Well, I can certainly use the help.” The tunafish tasted like chicken salad.

“All right, kiddo, tell me if I’m wrong. You’re looking for a profession that is wide open. Good money. Shot at the top. And a shot at your name being carved into stone. Yes or no?”

“That’s it.”

“Okay, kiddo, I’ve got the answer right here, but I got to tell you something. Nothing comes without its price, without its trade-off.” It was chicken salad.

“What do you want?” I asked him.

“Not a thing. The trade-off will be the job I’m going to tell you that fits that area.”

“If you’re going to tell me a high-labor, risky job…”

“This job allows you to sit on your caboose most of the time: unlimited booze, TV, housekeeper, free wardrobe. And although you need to attend another, different kind of graduate program, you can virtually start this job tomorrow.”

“I’m interested.”

“The priesthood.”

“You’re joking, right?” When I had finished the sandwich, Whitlock took two cans of soda from the fridge, one for him and one for me.

“A little, but not in the main, no. Let me weigh some of the pros and cons for you. First of all, there’s an employee shortage. Second, you can work anywhere in the world. Third, you have high respect within the community. With a little politicking you can rise up the ranks to Bishop, Cardinal, maybe even to the top-dog seat. They’re now hiring non-natives. Also, you cheat taxes and maybe death.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Just give it some thought.”

“I don’t believe in God,” I nullified.

“
De Minimus
. I don’t believe in the law. This isn’t a theological discussion—it’s employment counseling.”

“Look, I appreciate the suggestion, don’t misunderstand me. I’d just feel like I was pulling a big con job.” I finished my soda, and he started walking me somewhere. Again, I followed faithfully.

“I’m a lawyer. People come to me asking for confidence in matters that no one can give them confidence in. But I let them get things off their chest. I give them the best counsel I can. If I had to be honest, it would be a very, very bleak world indeed. You shouldn’t be insincere, but find a pragmatic angle to help others.” We were now at the front door, and his man Wylie was waiting there with my coat.

“Take care, my boy,” he said.

“What now?” I asked, feeling like an umbrella asking where its owner was taking him.

“Even though you don’t know this, you are presently going through a complete thought scrub.”

“What’s a thought scrub?”

“I have a tank of people working on your problem. And when the problem is worked out, you’ll be notified. Go home now. Digest your macaroni and cheese. Sleep.”

“What about my vital papers?”

“Oh, glad you mentioned them.” He vanished a moment and returned with a large, plain, brown paper bag. Inside were my transcripts and a variety of vital statistics about me.

I went home, to sleep. Sleep inverts time. Sleep a few seconds, they seem like hours. Sleep hours and they seem like seconds. I awakened what seemed like moments later to a knock at my door. I wondered if I hadn’t somehow caught a dose of muscular dystrophy or cerebral palsy. Some of me just wasn’t responding to the messages from central command. My fingertips and toes were wiggling but the longer muscles wouldn’t cooperate. I couldn’t get the door, but apparently it was unlocked. A bike messenger entered and saw me lying on my bed wiggling and blinking.

“You okay, man?”

“I…don’t know, don’t know…sick…me sick…”

I remembered the last thing I ate was that cellophaned sandwich at Whitlock’s place. “I ate chicken or tuna.”

“It’s probably your cavities, man.”

“Huh?”

“They’ve discovered a bunch of problems stemming from metalloid cavities. Do you have metalloid or ceramic cavities?”

“Dunno.”

“Let me look.” The nut looked in my mouth.

“Metalloid! I don’t want to be an alarmist, but you might consider getting them replaced with ceramic.”

“Okay.”

“You want to sign for this? I got other stuff to deliver.”

“Okay.”

He put a pen in my hand; I wiggled it against a clipboard. He put down a parcel and left.

I slept for an untold conspiracy of hours. By the afternoon, I had reached the shores of semi-consciousness. In an effort to arise, I fell to the floor. I stumbled to the bathroom, stepped on a cockroach, and peed in a series of short and confusing lines. I opened the parcel I had signed for in my dream state. It was a copy of a book,
My Saber Is Bent
by Jack Paar. There was a note inside: “It’s solved! Call me—Whitlock.”

Without any interest in speculating what it could be, I called him. His secretary informed me that he had been waiting for me to call all day and she put me right through.

“Is that you, Joey?”

“Yes, it’s me, Joey.”

“We’ve got it. Ready for this? Are you ready for it?” He was speaking too fast for a response: “How would you like a job that you can work whenever you like. It’ll make you oodles of money. You’ll enjoy it. You’ll be in control and you don’t have to say any mass or anything.”

“Well, I…”

“A stand-up comedian.”

“A stand-up comedian?!”

“I have a friend; he owns a very popular night club. He books comics. I can get him to give you a break.”

“I don’t know the first thing about comedy.”

“You’re a natural.”

“I haven’t the foggiest notion of…”

“Public speaking,” he cut me off, “specifically the art of amusing an audience, is essential to a winning personality.”

“I depress people…”

“Look, I’ll get you a ten-minute spot on one of his amateur nights. Read up on the topic. Nobody’ll expect a thing from you.”

“I really don’t think so.”

“I’ll tell you what,” he muttered. “I’ll give you recommendations and tell you exactly how to get a job that pays three times the wage you’re making now at the bookstore. You won’t have to see me again, and there’s a lot of down time.”

“Down time? As what, a scuba diver?”

“It’s a proofreading job.”

“What’s down time?” I asked.

“Time when you’re not working, but getting paid for it.”

“Why are you doing this?” I asked.

“Did you get the book?” He ignored my question.

“The Jack Paar book?”

“Yeah, he’s my fave. Just learn some jokes and be yourself. You’ll knock ‘em dead, son. And remember, there are agents in the audience.”