David Wallace - Broom of the System

“Right, Centrex twenty-eight.”

“I know it’s a Centrex, that’s all I do, I’m bored as shit with Centrexes, excuse my French.”

“Well what did the guy from the tunnel say?” Lenore asked. Candy was answering a phone.

“Dunno, ‘cause I haven’t talked to him. I sure can’t call him, am I right?”

“What, we can’t dial out on this, either?”

“I was just makin’ a joke. You can call out OK. Just try again if you get an automatic loop into one of the other in-tunnel points. No, I just hafta talk to the tunnel guy in person, back at the office. We hafta write up reports.” Peter looked at Lenore. “You married?”

“Oh, brother.”

“This one’s not married either, right?” Peter Abbott asked Candy, nodding over at Lenore. His hair wasn’t blond so much as just yellow, like a crayon. His face had the color of a kind of dark nut. Not the sort of tan that comes from the sun. Lenore sensed CabanaTan. The guy looked like a photographic negative, she decided.

He sighed. “Two unmarried girls, in distress, working in this tiny little office…”

“Women,” Candy Mandible corrected.

“I’m not married either,” Judith Prietht called over. Judith Prietht was about fifty.

“Groovy,” said Peter Abbott.

“So can Bambi and Big Bob and all the others even get any calls, now?” Lenore asked. “Do their phones ring at all?”

“Sometimes, sometimes not,” Peter Abbott said, jingling his belt. “The point is they can’t be sure where it’ll ring, and neither can you, which is obviously subpar service. Your number’s not picking you out of the network like it should, it’s as we say picking out a target set and not a target.”

“Lovely. ”

“At least now you’ll have some calls to answer,” said Judith Prietht. “All you ever get is wrong numbers anyway. You guys are going to go bankrupt. Who ever heard of a publishing house in Cleveland?”

“I like your shoes,” Peter Abbott said to Lenore. “I got some shoes just like that.”

“Does Rick know about all this?” Lenore asked Candy.

Candy stopped. “Rick. Lenore, call him right away.”

“What’s the matter?”

“Who knows what’s ever the matter. All I know is first he just had a complete spasm about your not being here. This was at like ten-o-one. And then now he keeps calling down all the time, to see if you’re here yet. He keeps pretending it’s different people asking for you, holding his nose, putting a hankie over the phone, trying this totally pitiful English accent, pretending it’s outside calls for you, which he should know I can tell it isn’t because he knows the way the console light flashes all fast when they’re in-house calls. God knows he spends enough time down here. And now he hasn’t come down for his paper, even, he’s just sitting up there brooding, playing with his hat.”

“What else does he have to do?” said Judith Prietht, who was unwrapping wax paper from a sandwich and blinking coquettishly at Peter Abbott, who was in turn trying to stare down over the counter into Lenore’s cleavage.

“God, well I really need to talk to him, too,” said Lenore.

“Sweetie, I forgot for a second. How just totally horrible. You must be out of your head. Are you sure you’re all right?”

“I think so. Vern’ll be in at six. I’ll call Rick as soon as I can. I have to call my father, too. And his lawyer.”

“I sense something in the wind,” said Peter Abbott.

“You hush,” said Candy Mandible. She squeezed Lenore’s arm as she passed. “I’m late. I have to go. You come home tonight, hear?”

“I’ll call and let you know,” Lenore said.

“What, you guys are roommates?” Peter Abbott asked.

“Partners in crime,” Judith Prietht snorted.

“Lucky room, is all I can say.”

“Let’s just have a universal dropping dead, except for Lenore,” said Candy. She walked off across the marble lobby floor into the moving blackness.

“She’s got another job?” Peter Abbott asked.

“Yes.” The console beeped. “Frequent and Vigorous.”

“Where at?”

Lenore held up a finger for him to wait while she dealt with somebody wanting to price a set of radials. “Over at Allied Sausage Casings, in East Corinth?” she said when she’d released.

“What a gnarly place to work. What does she do?”

“Product testing. Tasting Department.”

“What a disgusting job.”

“Somebody has to do it.”

“Glad it’s not me, boy.”

“But I do assume you have some kind of job to do? Like fixing our lines?”

“I’m off. I’ll be in touch — if possible.” Peter Abbott laughed and left, jingling. He walked into a moving patch of light in the middle of the lobby and the light disappeared, taking him with it.

The console began to beep.

“Frequent and Vigorous,” Lenore said. “Frequent and Vigorous.”

TRANSCRIPT OF MEETING BETWEEN THE HONORABLE RAYMOND ZUSATZ, GOVERNOR OF THE STATE OF OHIO; MR. JOSEPH LUNGBERG, GUBERNATORIAL AIDE; MR. NEIL OBSTAT, GUBERNATORIAL AIDE; AND MR. ED ROY YANCEY, VICE PRESIDENT, INDUSTRIAL DESERT DESIGN, INCORPORATED, DALLAS, TEXAS; 21 JUNE 1972.

OVERNOR: Gentlemen, something is not right.

MR. OBSTAT: What do you mean, Chief?

GOVERNOR: With the state, Neil. Something is not right with our state. MR. LUNGBERG: But Chief, unemployment is low, inflation is low, taxes haven’t been raised in two years, pollution is way down except for Cleveland and who the hell cares about Cleveland — just kidding, Neil — but Chief, the people love you, you’re unprecedentedly ahead in the polls, industrial investment and development in the state are at an all-time high….

GOVERNOR: Stop right there. There you go.

MR. OBSTAT: Can you expand on that, Chief?

GOVERNOR: Things are just too good, somehow. I suspect a trap.

MR. LUNGBERG: A trap?

GOVERNOR: Guys, the state is getting soft. I can feel softness out there. It’s getting to be one big suburb and industrial park and mall. Too much development. People are getting complacent. They’re forgetting the way this state was historically hewn out of the wilderness. There’s no more hewing.

MR. OBSTAT: You’ve got a point there, Chief.

GOVERNOR: We need a wasteland.

MR. LUNGBERG and MR. OBSTAT: A wasteland?

GOVERNOR:Gentlemen, we need a desert.

MR. LUNGBERG and MR. OBSTAT: A desert?

GOVERNOR: Gentlemen, a desert. A point of savage reference for the good people of Ohio. A place to fear and love. A blasted region. Something to remind us of what we hewed out of. A place without malls. An Other for Ohio’s Self. Cacti and scorpions and the sun beating down. Desolation. A place for people to wander alone. To reflect. Away from everything. Gentlemen, a desert.

MR. OBSTAT: Just a super idea, Chief.

GOVERNOR:Thanks, Neil. Gentlemen may I present Mr. Ed Roy Yancey, of Industrial Desert Design, Dallas. They did Kuwait.

MR. LUNGBERG: Hey, there’s apparently a lot of desert in Kuwait. MR. YANCEY: You bet, Joe, and we believe we can provide you folks with a really first-rate desert right here in Ohio.

MR. OBSTAT: What about the cost?

GOVERNOR:Manageable.

MR. LUNGBERG: Where would it be?

MR. YANCEY: Well gentlemen, the Governor and I have conferred, and if I could just direct your attention to this map, here…

MR. OBSTAT: That’s Ohio, all right.

MR. YANCEY: The spot we have in mind is in the south of your great state. Right about… here. Actually here to here. Hundred square miles.

MR. OBSTAT: Around Caldwell?

MR. YANCEY: Yup.