David Wallace - Broom of the System

An unprecedentedly enormous veer around North Dormitory, effected with hands over ears, flings me out past Memorial Hill and into the bleeding forests south of the campus, and I wander, crunching needles and the weak leaves already down, as I used to wander alone for hours as a student, elbowing through the throngs of other students wandering alone, as I elbow students and parents aside now and head for the really isolated, natural part of the New England forest, beyond the road, past dry fields of baking, screaming crickets, out through the wind, elbowing, to find the really secluded places already full, lines of belongers cracking like whips around the sap-sprung trees, sending nonbelongers spinning into the brush. I am outside. And I wait my turn for admission, and smoke two clove cigarettes under the angry eye of a blue-haired mother in a yellow Bonwit pantsuit unfortunately right downwind from me, hissing into the ear of a son with a note concerning laundry pinned to the sleeve of his brand new AMHERSTjacket. I buy a hot dog from a vendor and watch the sun glitter faraway against the windows of the buildings on the southern face of the broad ridge, the southern wall of the citadel. One of my R. V. ‘s“ was still here, and I had, in the back of my mind, one other place where I might still be, and these things somehow made me unreasonably happy — as happy as seeing the immoderate curve of Lenore’s hip under her scratchy Howard Johnson’s blanket, here, next to me. I love you, Lenore. There is no hatred in my love for you. Only a sadness I feel all the more strongly for my inability to explain or describe it. My ears rumble still.

/g/

There was simply no getting around the fact that Stonecipher LaVache Beadsman looked satanic. His skin was a dark, glossy red, his hair an oily black and swept back without care over a deep widow’s peak, his eyebrows Brezhnevian in thickness and starting up high off to the side to slant down evilly over his eyes, his head small and smooth and oval and not too securely attached to his neck and tending to flop, like the head of a shoe tree. An OBERLIN sweatshirt and corduroy shorts and a hurricane of hair on his foot, beside his black hightops. A clipboard with a pen hanging by a string was attached to his leg as he sat in an easy chair, watching television, his profile to Lenore, at the door. On television was “The Bob Newhart Show.” In the big social room with LaVache were three boys who all seemed to look precisely alike, although Lenore wasn’t completely sure about this, because the heavy window curtains were drawn against the afternoon sun and the room was dim. The room smelled of, in descending order, pot, Mennen Speed Stick, hot alcohol, feet. The three identical guys all sat sockless beside tumbled empty pairs of those shoes.

“Lenore, this is Cat, this is Heat, this is the Breather,” LaVache said from his chair in front of the television. “My sister Lenore, guys.”

“Hi,” said Cat.

“Hello,” said Heat.

“Hi,” said the Breather.

Heat and the Breather were on a spring-sprung sofa, sharing what was obviously a joint. Cat was on the floor, sitting, a bottle of vodka before him, and he clutched it with his bare toes, staring anxiously at the television screen.

“Hi Bob,” Suzanne Pleshette said to Bob Newhart on the screen.

“Merde du temps,” Cat said. He took a swig from the bottle.

LaVache looked up from his clipboard at Lenore. “We’re playing Hi Bob. You want to play Hi Bob with us?” He spoke sort of slowly.

Lenore made a place to sit on the luggage. “What’s Hi Bob?”

The Breather grinned at her from the sofa, where he now held the bottle of vodka. “Hi Bob is where, when somebody on ‘The Bob Newhart Show’ says ’Hi Bob,‘ you have to take a drink.”

“And but if Bill Dailey says, ‘Hi Bob,” said Cat, tending to the joint with a wet finger, “that is to say, if the character Howard Borden on the show says ’Hi Bob,‘ it’s death, you have to chug the whole bottle.”

“Hi Bob,” said Bill Dailey, on the screen.

“Death!” yelled Cat.

The Breather drained the bottle of vodka without hesitation. “Lucky it was almost empty,” he said.

“Guess I’ll probably pass,” said Lenore. “You’re out of vodka, anyway.”

“The duration of a game of Hi Bob is according to the rules determined by the show, not the vodka,” the Breather said, getting another bottle of vodka from a rack behind the sofa and breaking the seal. The liquor-rack was a glitter of glass and labels in the sun through a gap in the curtains. “The serious Hi Bob player makes it his business never to run out of vodka.”

LaVache drummed idly on his leg with his pen. “Vodka gives Lenore lung-troubles, anyway, as I recall.” He looked at Lenore. “Lenore, baby, sweetheart, how are you? What are you doing here?”

The Breather leaned close to Lenore and told her in a hot sweet whisper, “It’s a Quaalude day, so we all have to be accommodating.”

Lenore looked at LaVache’s lolling head. “Didn’t you get my message? I left this detailed message about how I was coming today. I left it with one of your neighbors, next door, a guy from New Jersey. The college operator connected me to him.”

“Wood, yes,” LaVache said. “He’s actually coming by real soon. He and the leg have an appointment. Yes, I got the message, but why didn’t you just call me?”

“You told Dad you didn’t have a phone, Dad told me.”

“I don’t have a phone. This isn’t a phone, this is a lymph node,” LaVache said, gesturing at a phone next to the television. “I call this a lymph node, not a phone. So when Dad asks me do I have a phone, I can in all good conscience say no. I do, however, have a lymph node.”

“You’re horrible,” said Lenore.

“Hi Bob,” said someone on the screen.

“Zango,” said LaVache, and took a big drink.

“Dead bird, here, A.C.,” Heat said to LaVache.

LaVache detached the clipboard and slid out a drawer in the plastic of his artificial leg and tossed a white new joint to Heat.

“You have a drawer?” said Lenore.

“I’ve had a drawer since high school,” said LaVache. “ I just wear long pants, at home, as a rule. Come on, you knew I had a drawer all the time.”

“No I didn‘t,” said Lenore.

“Crafty girl.”

There was a knock at the outside door.

“Entrez!” Cat yelled.

In came a tall thin guy with glasses and an adam’s apple and a notebook and a baggie.

“Clint Wood,” Heat said from over the bottle, which he was blowing into like a jug, sounding a deep note.

“Guys,” said Clint Wood. “Antichrist.”

“What can we do for you, big guy?” LaVache said, slapping the leg affectionately.

“Introductory Economics. Second quiz. Bonds.”

“Feed the leg,” said LaVache.

LaVache opened the drawer in his leg and Clint Wood put the baggie inside. LaVache slapped the drawer shut and patted it. “Professor?”

“Fursich.”

“All you need to remember for Fursich is, when the interest rate goes up, the price of any bond already issued goes down.”

“Interest rate… up, price… bond… down.” Clint Wood wrote it down.

“And when the rate goes down, the price goes up.”

“Down… up.” Clint Wood looked up. “That’s it?”

“Trust me,” said LaVache.

“What a guy,” said the Breather. “A little Hi Bob, Wood?”

Clint Wood shook his head regretfully. “Can’t. I got class in like ten minutes. I gotta go memorize what the Antichrist told me.” He looked over at Lenore and smiled.

“Well, hey, good luck,” Cat said.

“Thank you very much for taking my message, if you were the person who took my message,” said Lenore.