The Word Exchange (16 page)

Words are living legends, swollen with significance. We string them together to make stories, but they themselves
are
stories, encapsulating rich, runny histories.

Language is incarnate. It’s the way our bodies evolved—to stand upright, to walk—that enables us to speak at all. And it’s our senses that give us reasons to talk. We want to verify with others what we seem to perceive. It’s also our bodies that give our words urgency: the tiny ticking clocks in each of our cells.

Words, then, are born of worlds. But they also take us places we can’t go: Constantinople and Mars, Valhalla, the Planet of the Apes. Language comes from what we’ve seen, touched, loved, lost. And it uses knowable things to give us glimpses of what’s not. The Word, after all, is God. Some might say in fact that our ability to speak proves we’re made in the divine image (
Bildung
), as we, among all creatures, are the only ones that really talk.

The way that came to pass is really pretty remarkable. Human babies, like other mute mammals, are
incapable
of speech; their airways are separate from their nutritive passages so they can pound gallons of milk. The upshot is a facility only to emit noise. For our vocal cords and diaphragms to develop, humans had to stand. Now every time a child learns to walk, the laryngeal tract shifts, the soft palate closes, and the miracle of evolution begins again.

Language is infinite. It can be as creative, and as chillingly precise, as the human mind.
Bombenbrandschrumpfleichen
, e.g., a word coined per conditions distinct to the 20th century, means incendiary-bomb-shrunken bodies. Less distressing (in a sense) is
shitta
(Farsi): leftover dinner that’s eaten for breakfast. Or the Indonesian
jayus
, to bungle a joke so badly that your interlocutor feels forced to laugh. In Japanese,
koi no yokan
means the ineluctable feeling you have, upon meeting someone for the first time, that eventually the two of you will fall in love.

Words compress impressions into facts cold as frozen quarters. One single word—like
EMERGENCY
, or love—can revise a whole night. A whole life.

Just as language can be pliant enough to create a word for faces caramelized by firebombing, it’s elusive enough to mask them in metaphor. It can make disparate things seem alike, marry unwed ideas, hide things lying in plain sight (for instance, people, nations, wars).

Definition, like poetry, is the project of revivifying the familiar. Making
things we think we know seem newly strange. To estrange, according to Hegel, is requisite to practicing consciousness. He also thought recollection requires interiorization of language, and to describe the place from which recollections are drawn, he used metaphor: it’s a “night-like pit in which a world of infinitely many images is kept.”

And from our pits we draw: a world like a stage, the number seven, small hands like rain, time like money, lions that lie down with lambs, whoopee cushions, broken hearts.

Language seems to be the only means for linking consciousnesses, the most effective way to stifle loneliness and pull us from our night-like pits. (Maybe not the
most
effective. Some might argue on behalf of physical contact. But words are more accessible. To me, at least.)

Language also acts like love in form. The sign, according to Hegel, is a union between the external word and its inlying meaning. But this idea can also be extrapolated. A few years ago I read a quite compelling philosophical theory claiming that one could read in Hegel an argument for a universal grammar. The same argument can be applied to love. Underlying every lexicon is a hopeful faith in the existence of order: i.e., that words will be arranged to make sense. The feeling of love, likewise, presupposes the existence of an object of love around which to organize. Similarly, the concept of a universal grammar presumes specific lexicons (e.g., German, Hebrew, Japanese), just as the universal feeling “love” presumes a contingent, particular love (e.g., Anana Johnson).

Finally, language is a good distraction; it shields us from thinking of other things (like love).

Okay, writing is hard. And now I’m starving. Going to the pushcart for empanadas.

November 21 (much later)

Here’s what ended up happening when I went out to get food.

It was unseasonably mild, and I elected to eat on my stoop. Hot coffee (from a bag, wino-like) and a pair of crispy chicken empanadas. (This might seem an unfortunate combo for a person with IBS. But owing to the inflammatory nature of both comestibles, I find it more efficient to aggregate them.)

While sipping my coffee, I thought about work, in a sense. I.e., my mind went to A. You can imagine, then, my discomfiture when Max appeared on the sidewalk. He was suckling a toothpick and watching me with a roguish grin that made me very tense. Why had he come all the way uptown to materialize, like a warlock, before me? How had he known I’d be home? It didn’t bode well. But all I said, non-nonchalantly, was, “Hey.”

“Come on,” he drawled. “We’re going to meet those guys for lunch.”

I frowned, unwittingly. “But … my empanadas,” I said, gesturing lamely at the tined half-moons of food balanced on my knees. I didn’t know it yet, but the grease had worked its way through the now translucent paper and into quarter-sized spots on each trouser leg.

“Forget it, man. You hate empanadas,” said Max. His declaration was made with such conviction that for a moment I was confused. When had I told him that? Empanadas are the linchpin of my diet, such as it is. I felt compelled to say (to myself),
No. You, sir, are mistaken
. But by then we were almost at the A train and Max had eaten the empanadas.

The casualness with which he’d said we’d be having lunch with “those guys” belied the fraught nature of their four-man fraternity vis-à-vis me. In theory, we’re all friends; really, though, we’re all friends with Max. Over the years he’s collected us, like mutant moths: Johnny, at Harvard, after Deep Springs; Floyd, of London, where Max accrued a quick master’s at LSE; and Vernon, at Columbia University, the site of Max’s MBA. Before he’d even shaken the dean’s hand for that last
Hedera helix
degree, he’d assembled his Hermes Corp. team. (Not to belabor the point, but I’m the odd one out: he never asked me.)

I’ve spent a lot of time with Those Guys. Mostly I don’t mind. I’d enjoy it more if they’d excise Floyd. He’s like a chalk outline of Max: flatter, more cartoon-esque, and he leaves behind a residue that’s hard to brush off. He’s a man of unexamined tastes who believes they’re
charming and unique. He likes: large-chested redheads (also any drunk woman), whiskeys over ice, and, after the latter, starting fights. He cultivates giant, frazzy muttonchops—“face pets”—that he goads girls to stroke. A person could be forgiven for failing to infer that he’s also sort of a genius who’s won awards for game-theory work.

Given the competition, Vernon’s pretense is pretty easy to stomach. He’s a standard-issue Comp Lit ABD: short fro, stylish peacoat, and an only slightly affected cane for his bum knee, the result of a Vespa wreck back in ’03 (on which I will refrain from airing judgment). He doesn’t get total immunity, but he’s a decent guy. And fun fact about Vern: his thesis, like Dr. D’s, was on Samuel Johnson.

There’s also one diamond in the rough: the best, most inoffensive of the bunch is the calm and cynical Johnny Lee, aka Hong Kong Johnny, aka Long John Johnny, aka Jack the Jackknife (nicknames © Floyd Dobbs). Johnny was in fact born in Hong Kong, but he grew up in Bergen County. His preternatural knack for programming gained him Hermes entrée—that, and his equanimity: “eh” and “whatever” tend to dominate his vocabulary. He falls more in my camp—i.e., shy and rangy—which is why he sops up some of Floyd’s surfeit persecution. In theory, he’s as ambitious as the rest of them. But his main penchants seem to be blue Gatorade, weed, games in the
Time Crisis
franchise, and music by the rapper Lil’ Big. He’s had the same girlfriend, Lizzie, since he was 20.

Anyway, as I said, I see those guys plenty. But it’s not like the five of us “lunch.” The fact that Max made a special trip up to invite me was incongruous, to say the least, and the timing seemed noteworthy. The Dictionary launch is in just two days, and it’s been getting tons of publicity. I thought Max might want me to ask him along: an epoch-making role reversal. The thought was sweet. It was also fleeting. Because I suddenly, lurchingly, worried that he’d somehow heard I spent Friday night at A’s. Maybe the lunch was actually an invitation to a beheading. Or maybe, I thought hopefully, he just wanted a report on how she’s been. Whatever his motivation, I was feeling more than a little anxious as we lumbered down the subway stairs. “So why are we going to lunch?” I asked, trying to sound laid-back.

Max tossed the crumpled wax-paper rosette from my bygone lunch into the trash. Then he held his Meme up to the turnstile scanner and cannily replied, “We’re just having lunch, Horse. Try not to be such a
pussy about it.” “Pussy” is a term I loathe, and that also often spurs me to action. Two facts of which Max is apprised.

When I still tarried, he gave an impatient jerk of the head and uttered a salient pair of phrases. “Just come on,” he said. “We’re paying.”

A little while later we emerged in that carefully shabbied playground, the Lower East Side. Our destination, Premium Meats, delivered mightily on its titular promise. (Sadly, we were seated near the ladies’, so the meal was sullied by Floyd. His sparkling witticism—“I’ve got some premium meat right here”—got kind of flat after the fourth time. And later, when I offered to share my lunch with Johnny, who wasn’t touching his, I made the terrible tactical error of noting that I’d ordered more than enough meat for two people. “Funny,” Floyd rejoined. “That’s the name of my penis.” And there went my appetite.)

When we arrived, the other guys were already there, drinking and updating their Life statuses. Our booth was a vigorous red-vinyl affair, the mottled table shot through with faux gold veins. Lithographs of handsome cuts of meat lined the walls, and dusty light filtered from dangly bulbs, casting a romantic glow over the six square feet we’d snugly jack-knifed into. (I was smooshed up against the paneled wall, Vernon and Johnny beside me.) They all beamed their orders in—Max, a sporadic vegetarian, ordered snails, rabbit kidneys, and fried pork belly; Floyd got an ox heart; Vernon went for smoked eel; Johnny opted for a steak and fries—and I asked Max to get me black coffee.

“Come on, man,” said Floyd. “Live a little. At least get it with cream.”

“I’m lactose-intolerant,” I informed him, for maybe the fiftieth time.

“Of course you are,” Floyd said, shaking his head and snickering, as always.

“Keep it light, you two,” said Max. “And really, Horse, get what you want. On us. It’s been a good year for Hermes.”

He had me there. I shrugged and ordered a steak and sweetbreads.

Then Max removed his tattered toothpick, trailed by a strand of saliva silk. “Horse,” he drawled, “we called you here today because we want you to join our team. Hermes really needs you. So we all hope you’ll say yes.”

I’d been waiting so long to hear those words you’d think they might’ve lost their glow. His request also wasn’t executed particularly subtly or well. And in truth, I’m not very familiar with their oeuvre. (Before tonight I’d never tried any of their games. I don’t even have a Life profile.
And I obviously don’t spend much time on the Exchange.) But more importantly, I
have
a job. That I
love
. I wouldn’t trade it for pretty much anything. Despite all that, I said, “What would that entail, exactly?”

Max explained that their new contract with Synchronic let them hire a lexicographer, and he claimed I was his top choice. (I wondered how many others he knew. Besides Doug, of course, who, as Ana’s dad, I assumed wasn’t on his list.) He said the first job would be freelance, so I could get a sense of things. Basically, they’d pay me to attend a party and write “on-demand definitions” of words—what Floyd called “money words”—that guests made up on the spot. (“What party?” I asked. Max shrugged. “Just this gala thing.”)

Vernon, gently rubbing his glasses on his black sweater, offered, “It’s essentially Meaning Master performed live.”

I nodded thoughtfully, as if I got the reference. A tried-and-true method of mine. And one Max sees through every time. “He doesn’t know what that is. Do you, B?” he said. I did something kind of non-committally shruggy. Max took a swig of lager and said, “Didn’t think so,” sounding nonjudgmental. “Doesn’t matter.”

I’ve since looked it up. The lamentably named Meaning Master™ is a game—Hermes
^®
—downloadable from the Exchange. (I didn’t even know Synchronic
sold
games now. I guess that helps explain its interest in Hermes.) To the degree that I’ve discerned its machinations, it seems a player’s main goal is to coin new words. Each round is two minutes long. For the first minute, as letters stream by on the screen, you link matching colors by typing them in or pinching them together. In the second minute, you mint as many fresh definitions as you can, or just opt for automatic “meaning assignment.” (I have to admit, it’s kind of fun. High production values.)

Apparently the most “inventive” neologisms are featured on the Word Exchange and made available for download—and one “Meaning Master” a week receives $1K and is featured on Synchronic’s home page. I think they even get a little PI News feature. I read that the first winner, Haley Rutherford, a 16-year-old from Cleveland, created the appalling word “now•y \’na
-,ē\
n
: when everything important is happening.” I also found an astounding Hermes press release that claims the game produced a threefold increase in Exchange traffic in the first half of this month.