The Egg Code (32 page)

“Right, and finally I said to hell with it. Anyway, I’ve got the manuscript all set to go, and I’d really like to . . . that is, I should say . . . I would hate to—”

“I’m just covering my ears.”

“Mmmm?”

“I can still hear you. I’m just trying to keep my ears warm.”

“Oh! Sure. Absolutely.”

“Lord, it’s raw!” Julian felt his lips stiffen, and he huffed a few times behind his closed teeth.

“But the bottom line—it’s Julian, right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“The bottom line is, I feel confident that I can cover the production costs myself and still make out pretty well. So what I was wondering is— and I’d pay you, of course, that’s not a problem—but if I could just hire you to take care of the design, the cover and layout and all that—”

“And then what you got is . . . you’ve just got your distribution to worry about.”

“Which is expensive but . . . you know, I’ve made a lot of money over the course of my career.”

“Sure, sure.”

“I mean a
lot
of money.”

“Don’t be ashamed.”

“Oh, I’m not. I’m grateful, is what I am. I’ve had a good life. It’s been . . . very satisfying.”

Nodding, Julian tried to smile, but his lips were blue and hard, frozen around a thin space. “And now you wanna give back . . .”

“Now I want to say that was that, and now this is something else. But in a way that’s professional.”

“You want a nice, clear quality presentation.”

“Absolutely. And that’s why I think that you could do a bang-up job for me here, with your experience and—”

“Mechanical skills.”

“But it’s not just that.”

“Oh no.”

Taking his hands out of his pockets, Derek made a bold, professional gesture, swiping his hands high and wide. “I think it’s a generational thing. And I feel—you know, I’m fifty-two, so we’re both coming at this from a similar perspective.”

“Aw . . . you’re a young man!”

“Wellll . . . not so young. But young enough—or old enough, I guess—to appreciate the difference between . . .”

“. . . something of today . . .”

“. . . something of today . . .”

“. . . versus something of . . .”

“. . . twenty, thirty years ago, where the quality was so much better.”

“I agree.”

“Even the simplest things, like—”

“Shoes.”

Derek pointed at the old man and nodded appreciatively. This was the man’s great talent—to make any answer seem like the right one. “Shoes. The manufacturing quality of shoes has just gone through the floor.”

“Appliances.”

“Yes. And if there’s something that . . . if there’s anything in this world that should be of the highest quality imaginable . . . it’s books.”

“Thank you.”

“There’s no excuse—”

“Books and furniture.”

“Yes, but books, I think, even more so . . .”

Meanwhile, Gray Hollows was sitting alone in his tiny office on the second floor of Enthusiasms Inc., his head on the desk, the metal edge just starting to hurt as it pressed against his forehead. The lights inside the office were off, and in the diffuse glow of the computer screen, he could see a big bug moving toward a ventilation duct. Leaning back, he picked up the telephone and dialed the number of a Ms. DuChamp, whom he’d spoken to earlier that afternoon. If he gave it up right now, they could put something together in time for the evening news. Hating himself, he stared out into the corridor, where a dying fluorescent winked, then stayed off, then suddenly switched back on, wild and bright. I’ve got to get out of here, he thought. The line picked up.

“Where the fuck have you been?”

“Um . . . oh.”

“Oooo. Oooo. I’m sorry! I thought you were—”

“That’s all right.”

“Oh my God, I’m so—”

“That’s okay . . . This is . . . Ms. DuChamp?”

“Yeah, yeah, it is, umm . . . hold on, give me a sec . . .
Denny, get
these flowers out of here
. . . I’ll be right there—”

“No problem.”

“—
because I don’t want them
! . . . Oh . . .”

“Sounds hectic.”

Ms. DuChamp’s voice came and went, talking to two people at once. “Oh no, we’re one great big happy . . .
goddamnit
! Look, are you at a place where you can—”

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Good. Why don’t we start with, uh . . . get started.”

“Okay. The kid’s name is Simon Tree-Mou—”

“Whoa-whoa-whoa! Simon . . .”

“Tree—”

“Ho! Okay. Simon . . . ?”

“Tree . . . That’s T-R—”

“Look, can you just fax it to me?”

“Oh, sure.” Something shifted out in the hallway, and he covered the receiver with his hand. Like an old house, the Enthusiasms Inc. headquarters creaked at night.

“Okay, so, Simon something-something . . . and you worked with him?”

“Yeah.”

“And where was that?”

“Living Arrangements.” He closed his eyes, trying to stay calm. “The furniture store.”

“I bought a divan there once.”

“Yeah?”

“It’s a really nice divan. It takes a standard-size mattress, but it folds up, so you can use it as a couch during the day, and then at night, if you’ve got guests, you can take it down and convert it into a sleeper. They had a different kind, with a brass frame, but I didn’t like it because I thought it looked too seventies. Brass is seventies, Chablis is seventies. Ficus plants are
totally
seventies. Anyway. Simon whatever-whatever.”

He shook his head and thought,
what an idiot
. Wedging one hand between his legs, he said, “Here’s the address.”

“I’ve been there. It’s out by the Vega Mall.”

“No, of the Web page. The computer . . . the . . .”

“Oh. Wellll . . .”

“What.”

“I don’t really ‘do’ computers.”

“I see.”

“I just ‘do’ e-mail. That’s it.”

“It’s just . . . it’s kind of central to the story.”

“No, I know . . . Aw, hell, just give it to me. I’ll take it down to Frank in Post.”

Gray stopped, aware of a change, as if a door had been left open, letting the cold in. Already he could sense himself drifting away from the building, away from this corporate lifestyle. “Okay, it’s double-u, double-u-”

“WWW. I
know
that part.”

“WWW dot eggcode, one word.”

“Eggcode?”

“E-G-G . . . no space.”

“Okay.”

“C-O-D-E.”

“They always make it so long.”

“And then dot com.”

She did something with her pencil—set it down, or tapped it against the telephone. “Great! Got it.”

“And then you’ll see it right away.”

“With the kid.”

“With the kid and all that good stuff.”

She sighed; Gray could almost smell her smoker’s breath through the receiver. “It’s terrible, using a young child for something like that.”

“I agree, ma’am.”

“I did a story last month about a kid who was chained to a furnace for three weeks.”

“Yeah?”

“Chained to a furnace. With handcuffs, they did it. They had him once around the wrist and once around the ankle. And once a day, they came down with food, and they gave it to him in a dog dish. And then the rest of the time—nothing. For three weeks. They wouldn’t talk to him. They wouldn’t even turn the light off at night. And there was a dog, and every now and then it walked down to the basement, looked at the boy, and then walked back up again. What was the dog thinking? That’s what I kept wondering, the whole time I covered that story. What was that poor dog thinking?”

“It must’ve been very upsetting.”

“It was, but that’s my job. Look, I’ve got to go—but listen, thank you so much ...”

Sheesh Is Rich

Hey, I’ve got a store to run here! That’s what I
should’ve
said. I’ve got a truck out back, I’ve got people on the phone, some hoity-toity ditz from Hedgemont Heights, thinks she’s the queen of the world, wants to know how much the brass candlesticks are—well here’s an idea, lady, why don’t you come down and look for yourself! My God, these women have nothing to do all day, just sit around drinking Scotch, yapping with their girlfriends,
Oh, Linda, I’m so unhappy.
I don’t need that junk. I make $43,000 a year. That’s
real
money! So finally I said to heck with it. Got my assistant, I said if anyone starts throwing their weight around, you get the coupon book out and you say
right what it says on the coupon
and that’s it! Enough of this noise, man. I shouldn’t even have to deal with this crap. If a customer has a problem and needs to speak to the manager, I shouldn’t be out there pushing a broom,
Yes ma’am, I’ll be
right with you, just let me finish peeling these price tags off the floor.
See, that’s where your cult of personality comes in. If I had a decent sales staff, there’d be enough qualified people to manage the day-to-day stuff, and I could focus on the important business at hand. Just like any other corporation.

That’s the problem, man. No one gives a
crap.
I’m losing thousands of dollars, you can’t even reach the checkout stand, there’s too much stuff in the way—the TV crew, cameras and lights, and everyone wants to be on the six o’clock news. Cords running all over the sales floor, hanging from the ceiling. Then this woman jams a microphone in my face, starts asking questions about my son—like I know the first thing about what goes on with those people. This time it’s the Internet. That’s right—Lydia’s latest brainstorm. Never mind that we’ve already got the kid rented out for the next six months. Tell
that
to Cam Pee. We’re trying to sell furniture, not blow up the White House. So I tell the woman, I say this is my store, these are my people, I’m in charge of 1.5 million dollars worth of unsold merchandise, and as a licensed representative of the Living Arrangements Family of Fine Retail Establishments, I order you to get off this property . . . and
now!
She’s standing between two cameramen, making her pen go in and out, hitting the button with her thumb, trying to look concerned. These stupid women with their made-up jobs. Now she wants to come up to the house, take a few pictures of me and the family on the computer. I tell her, Look, ma’am, we don’t even
own
a computer! Just the one with the shoot-’em-up games, cost me an arm and a leg but Simon nagged and nagged until finally I said okay. Other than that, we don’t mess around with the junk—haven’t even bought a stereo in thirteen years ’cause the new ones don’t play the old LPs, and all my Cars records from college are still in good shape so why bother?

But all this is beside the point. I just don’t like being bossed around in my own store. That’s what I said. Words to that effect. I didn’t want to cast a negative light on the company, so what I said was, Look, I understand that you have a job to do, and I respect that, but as far as my son goes (and I stressed this point, for various legal reasons), the Living Arrangements company as such is completely in the dark vis-à-vis the whole issue, and we want to know the facts as much as you do, and that’s that. And I don’t know anything about any Egg Code, if that’s what you’re asking, and neither does my boss. And then I told them to leave.

I had to get that last part in, otherwise that’s my job, right there. Cam Pee shows up,
Steve, can I see you in my office
, next thing you know I’m out on my rear end, Lydia leaves me with a frying pan and a tub of butter, I’m walking around in a potato sack, singing a sad song,
Buddy, you
got a light
. I’m not stupid. I know how it works.

So finally things cleared out—I’m watching my sales drop, wondering how on earth I’m gonna hit five grand by nine o’clock. One of the cameramen,
one
of ’em, bought a candle. Thanks pal. Fifty cents, fiftythree with tax, like I need this nonsense. The way he did it, too. Comes up to the cash stand while his buddies are packing up, getting ready to go. Wants me to ring it up for him. The manager, the big man. I’m doing my job,
That’ll be fifty-three cents, please
. They’re laughing! He’s got this little smile on his face. Counts the cash out, dimes and nickels and pennies. I ask him,
Do you want a bag?
Oh, yes sir, I would like a bag. All noble about it too. So I give it to him. Thank you, thank you, sir. Still smiling. You guys sell a lot of candles? This is what he asks me. Oh yeah, a whole bunch—what do you think? Of course we sell a lot of candles, I sell eighty-ninety candles a day, close to two hundred on the weekends, I sell—ah, to heck with it. I didn’t say all that. It gets confusing when you’re not in the biz. I had to go to a special class myself, just to learn the terminology. Three days, they made us sit in a big conference room, nothing to eat, just a plate of powdered doughnuts—got white stuff all over my pants—and the coffee was terrible, and everyone had to wear a sticky star that said SOOPER SALES LEADER, and if you didn’t want to wear it, a person from the home office would pull you aside and whisper, “Where’s your star?”—meaning put it on now.

It’s a hard job, managing a store. Every day, it’s like hand-to-hand combat. It’s like that scene in
Star Wars
where they’re all trying to blow up the planet, and all the planes are flying in and out of the trenches, and you’ve just gotta close your eyes and say to yourself, Okay, some days you’re only going to sell a few dozen toss pillows, and it’s going to be scary because that money’s coming out of your pocket, but there are other days when you come to work thinking nothing’s gonna happen, and you wind up selling a camelback sofa, or a bedroom set, and when you average it all together, you generally pull in about five grand per day, which is more or less consistent with the other stores in the region. And that’s a good feeling.

XIX

The Sad Poor Me Chronicles, Volume One

The Disease
of Disease

Over the years, I’ve had the opportunity to visit dozens of hospitals across the country—big-city receiving centers, county generals where the RNs are all named Sallie, and someone somewhere always has a nephew who’s retarded. On occasion, I’ve even had to shake the poor kid’s hand. There are many varieties to this specialized handshake. There’s the one where he’s not really paying attention, and the only reason you’re even doing it is to please the parents, who for fifteen years have been secretly wishing that the kid would up and fucking die; then there’s the one where he’s jerking and convulsing and chewing on his tongue, and you don’t even want to touch him because you know it’s just going to be embarrassing for everyone. Sometimes the boy smiles; a big, gay, meaningless smile. Mom and Dad weep, sharing a Bible. Oh, yeah, like you’ve
cured
him or something. You feel sick to your stomach. Seeing this boy’s vacant, disconnected smile, you want to tear your voice box out of your throat, cords and all, and chuck it out into the waiting area, gore leaving a greenish trail across the floor.

Perhaps my experience has colored my judgment. After all, these sicknesses are real, they’re not delusions. So why am I not more sympathetic? My own emotional bankruptcy, I suppose. There’s nothing in here, folks. It’s all gone. I’ve led a very healthy life. I should be grateful, but I’m not. I resent every sick hand I’ve ever touched.

Many of my clients are members of the elderly population, dying men and ladies named Walter and Betsy who need my caring words to soothe their palpitations, their nightly chills, their mounting sense of dread. Some of my patients are not so old: middle-aged businesswomen unfairly stricken with leukemia; adolescent transplant recipients lying in jaundiced wrecks on the hospital bed, awaiting the inevitable rejection. They beg me to abet their denial. I can’t do it. I
have
done it, thousands of times, but only at a terrible cost to my own emotional well-being. They ask me to reveal the great meaning behind their senseless sacrifice. Because you must languish and die before your fortieth birthday, there will be eternal peace in the Golan Heights. Because of this supreme act of courage, not one more child shall suffer the pain of starvation. I say these things, and I smile, and I envelop their hands in mine, and there we sit for the better part of the afternoon, listening to the outpatients complain about the long wait to see the doctor.

Just once I’d like to tell you the truth. Before it’s too late for all of us. They’d welcome me into your private room. From your bed, your marble-dark eyes sparkle. You have been looking forward to my visit for several weeks now. The prospect of touching my hand, of hearing my voice, gives you a reason to go on. Derek Skye is coming. He will make a difference. For my part, I’ve seen twelve others just like you this morning. You’re boring! Your death is not interesting. It needs a hook, a clever twist. Flashing a tepid smile, I try to amuse you with a quick game of got-yernose. You do not understand. You were expecting something more profound. This, I cannot provide. Derek Skye is all talked out. My tie spills into your lap as I lean across the bed and whisper, “This is really happening. You are really dying. It’s really going to hurt. When you die, all sense of awareness will instantly disperse. Put simply, you will no longer exist. There’s nothing important about this. You’re not being singled out for some special form of abuse. By needlessly clinging to life, you’re causing your family no end of grief and financial misfortune. This is vanity, you understand. Your death is not unusually cruel or tragic. The world will go on.”

This, I suspect, would be considered unprofessional. Well, so what? I declare my liberation from the “profession.” I myself have never understood this fear of disease. My own death feels more like a destination than a thing to be avoided. I want to know the date. Make it on New Year’s Eve. Good lord, wouldn’t that be marvelous? I can see it now. The scene is New York, December 31st. A few hundred of us have gathered together at Lincoln Center to observe the holiday. On the plaza in front of the Met, a visiting company is staging a listless performance of
Aida,
an unconventional interpretation with the entire cast whizzing about in wheelchairs. We’re not sure why, but, suspecting social commentary, we willfully turn and toast the traffic on Broadway with glasses golden and wet with champagne. I linger near the fountain, alone. A man several yards away is singing a snatch of Strauss, his breath counting out the meter in huffs of white fog. Midnight approaches. Men wander the length of the plaza, searching for their dates. Overhead, an illuminated clock shows the time as an aquamarine disc against the night sky. A bovine din greets the new year.

Leaning against the fountain, I stare across the plaza as my ex-wife hurries toward me. In one hand, she is carrying a long paper party horn, the kind that unravels when you blow into it. I have not seen her for many years. She is gross and overweight. Dabs of cream conceal unimaginable imperfections. I can smell her breath from here. On the first gong of midnight, she reaches the edge of the fountain. She is almost upon me. Lacking any real alternative, I spread my arms to embrace her. Torn between her mad desire and a mindless need to celebrate the new year, she raises the party horn to her lips and blows. The paper rod extends to a great length, a dozen feet or so. In terror, I open my mouth and gape. The party horn, still unraveling, forces itself down my throat, scraping the sides of my larynx as it hooks the base of my large intestine. Time passes; a beat, then another. I can taste the paper, the glue, the ink. With a tug, the party horn begins its awful retreat, tearing my digestive tract away from its anchor, causing the whole thing to turn inside-out like a sock. I keel over, breaking my jaw against the radiating brickwork. My death comes in seconds. On Broadway and Sixty-fourth, the light changes, the traffic moves, a stack of leaflets ruffles under a bus stop. The shock recedes as my entire life dwindles to a few greatest hits.

So you see? Everyone dies, even the great Derek Skye. Celebrate your disease. It is simply your body’s way of reclaiming your soul.