David Wallace - Oblivion

‘If you ask me, there’s something sketchy about a guy whose bathroom is all full of those little deodorizers and scented candles. I always tend to think, here’s somebody who kind of denies his own humanity.’

‘It’s bad news if it’s a big deal either way. It’s never a good sign.’

‘But you don’t want him totally uninhibited, don’t get me wrong.’

‘Because if he’s going around farting in front of you or something, it means on some level he’s thinking you’re just one of the guys, and that’s always bad news.’

‘Because then how long before he’s sitting there on the couch all day farting and telling you to go get him a beer?’

‘If I’m out in the kitchen and Pankaj wants a beer or something, he knows he better say please.’

The shade who wore Pucci and two other research interns were evidently going with three guys from Forbes to some kind of infamous annual Forbes house party on Fire Island over the holiday weekend, which, since the Fourth was on Wednesday this year, meant the following weekend.

‘I don’t know,’ THE THUMB’s head intern said. ‘My parents pass gas in front of each other. There’s something sweet about it, like it’s just another part of life together. They’ll keep right on talking or whatever as if nothing happened.’ THE THUMB was the name of the section of Style that contained mini reviews of film and television, as well as certain types of commercial music and books, each review accompanied by a special thumb icon whose angle conveyed visually how positive the assessment was.

‘Although that in itself shows there’s something different about it. If you sneeze or yawn, there’s something said. A fart, though, is always ignored, even though everybody knows what’s just happened.’

Some interns were laughing; some were not.

‘The silence communicates some kind of unease about it.’

‘A conspiracy of silence.’

‘Shannon was on some friend of a friend thing at the Hat with some awful guy in she said an XMI Platinum sweater, with that awful Haverford type of jaunty misogyny, that was going on and on about why do girls always go to the bathroom together, like what’s up with that, and Shannon looks at the guy like what planet did you just land from, and says well it should be obvious we’re doing cocaine in there, is why.’

‘One of those guys where you’re like, hello, my eyes are up here. ’

‘Carlos says in some cultures the etiquette actually calls for passing gas in some situations.’

‘The well known Korean thing about you burp to say thank you.’

‘My parents had this running joke — they called a fart an intruder. They’d look at each other over the paper and be, like, “I do believe there’s an intruder present.”’

Laurel Manderley, who had had an idea, was rooting through her Fendi for her personal cell.

‘My mom would just about drop over dead if anybody ever cut one in front of her. It’s just not even imaginable.’

A circulation intern named Laurel Rodde, who as a rule favored DKNY, and who wasn’t exactly unpopular but no one felt like they knew her very well despite all the time they all spent with one another, and who usually barely said a word at the working lunches, suddenly said: ‘You know, did anybody when they were little ever have this thing where you think of your shit as sort of like your baby and sometimes want to hold it and talk to it and almost cry or feel guilty about flushing it and dream sometimes of your shit in a little sort of little stroller with a bonnet and bottle and still sometimes in the bathroom look at it and give a little wave like, bye bye, as it goes down, and then feel a void?’ There was an uncomfortable silence. Some of the interns looked at one another out of the corner of their eye. They were at a stage where they were now too adult and socially refined to respond with a drawn out semicruel ‘Oooo-kaaaay,’ but you could tell that a few of them were thinking it. The circulation intern, who’d gone a bit pink, was bent to her salad once more.

Citing bridgework, Atwater again declined the half piece of gum that Mrs. Moltke offered. All the parked car’s windows ran in a way that would have been pretty had there been more overall light. The rain had steadied to the point where he could just barely discern the outline of a large sign in the distance below, which Amber had told him marked the nitrogen fixative factory’s entrance.

‘The man’s conflicted, is all,’ Mrs. Moltke said. ‘He’s about the most private man you’d ever like to see. In the privy I mean.’ She chewed her gum well, without extraneous noises. She had to be at least 6'1". ‘It surely weren’t like that at my house growing up, I can tell you. It’s a matter of how folks grow up, wouldn’t you say?’

‘This is fascinating,’ Atwater said. They had been parked at the little road’s terminus for perhaps ten minutes. The tape recorder was placed on his knee, and the subject’s wife now reached over across herself and turned it off. Her hand was large enough to cover the recorder and also make liberal contact with his knee on either side. Atwater still had the same pants size he’d had in college, though these slacks were obviously a great deal newer. In the low barometric pressure of the storm, he was now entirely stuffed up, and was mouth breathing, which caused his lower lip to hang outward and made him look even more childlike. He was breathing rather more rapidly than he was aware of.

It was not clear whether Amber’s small smile was for him or herself or just what. ‘I’m going to tell you some background facts that you can’t write about, but it’ll help you understand our situation here. Skip — can I call you Skip?’

‘Please do.’

Rain beat musically on the Cavalier’s roof and hood. ‘Skip, between just us two now, what we’ve got here is a boy whose folks beat him witless all through growing up. That whipped on him with electric cords and burnt on him with cigarettes and made him eat out in the shed when his mother thought his manners weren’t up to snuff for her high and mighty table. His daddy was all right, it was more his mother. One of this churchy kind that’s so upright and proper in church but back at home she’s crazy evil, whipped her own children with cords and I don’t know what all.’ At the mention of church, Atwater’s facial expression had become momentarily inward and difficult to read. Amber Moltke’s voice was low in register but still wholly feminine, with a quality that cut through the rain’s sound even at low volume. It reminded Atwater somewhat of Lauren Bacall at the end of her career, when the aged actress had begun to look more and more like a scalded cat but still possessed of a voice that affected one’s nervous system in profound ways, as a child.

The artist’s wife said: ‘I know that one time when he was a boy that she came in and I think caught Brint playing with himself maybe, and made him come down in the sitting room and do it in front of them, the family, that she made them all sit there and watch him. Do you follow what I’m saying, Skip?’

The most significant sign of an approaching tornado would be a greenish cast to the ambient light and a sudden drop in pressure that made one’s ears pop.

‘His daddy didn’t outright abuse him, but he was half crazy,’ Amber said, ‘a deacon. A man under great pressure from his own demons that he wrestled with. And I know one time Brint saw her take and beat a little baby kittycat to death with a skillet for messing on the kitchen floor. When he was in his high chair, watching. A little kittycat. Well,’ she said. ‘What do you suppose a little boy’s toilet training is going to be like with folks like that?’