David Wallace - Broom of the System

“Shit on fire.”

“In any event, hence LaVache’s leglessness.”

“Holy shit.”

“And once Patrice is psychologically out of the picture — about which Stonecipher the father apparently feels little guilt, since he, presumably through the filter of Miss Malig’s erotic spell, had already perceived Patrice as off her nut for some time — once she’s out of the house, more or less for good, the physical and emotional isolation of the children gradually stops, and Miss Malig eventually lets them live semi-normal, childish lives, including Little League and Brown ies and slumber parties, et cetera, when they’re not busy being tested, but in all events by this time all sorts of damage has been done, to the family and the individual family-members.”

“Not to mention the poor little satanic sucker’s leg.”

“Right.”

“Christ on a Kawasaki.”

“Fnoof.”

“….”

“Lenore tell you all that?”

“I think we’re getting close. I sense the closeness of Cleveland. Can you smell that? A smell like removing the lid from a pot of something that’s been left in one’s refrigerator just a little too long?”

“Can’t say as I smell anything but beer and Wrigley’s Spearmint, R.V.”

“I’m just acutely sensitive to the odor of Cleveland, I suppose. I have a monstrously sensitive sense of smell.”

“….”

“Though not as sensitive as some people I could name.”

“So what books have y‘all published? Have I likely read some books you put out?”

“We’re definitely getting close. See all the dead fish? The density of the fish goes up significantly as we approach shore. It looks as if I’m to be spared a sludge-death yet again.”

“Uh-huh.”

“….”

“So you think I can get a temporary room at this house Lenore lives at, right?”

“I’m practically positive. The young lady who lives directly below Lenore and her roommate Ms. Mandible will be involuntarily out of her apartment for at least three months, guaranteed. Mrs. Tissaw will be predictably anxious to ensure occupancy and so rent payment for that period.”

“How come you know for sure the little lady’s gone for three months?”

“She works for Lenore’s sister, Clarice, who now owns a chain of tanning parlors in the area. There was a horrible accident. The girl will be all right, but will require at least three months of hospitalization and continual Noxzema treatments.”

“You mean…?”

“Yes. Tanning accident.”

“Bad news.”

“Yes. But at least an available apartment, cheap. And your assignment with the firm cannot possibly last for more than three months, barring utter disaster.”

“OK by me.”

“Andrew, listen, may I ask a question?”

“Shoot.”

“Will Mindy be coming out to join you? You have told her the developments — she does know where you’re going to be, doesn’t she? What exactly is the Mindy situation?”

“R.V., look and listen. It’s like I told you, I just felt like I had to get out for a while. Breathe some temporarily Melinda-Sue-free air. She and I had a bit of a tiff before I drove up to school, I make no bones. But it’s more’n that. To my mind there’s just this temporary lack of wonderfulness about our whole relationship.”

“….”

“So things are just temporarily up in the air.”

“….”

“And no, I didn’t exactly call her from school, I didn’t tell her I’d run into y‘all and was coming out here to do some work. But she’ll be able to find out when she wants. I had to leave my car with Coach Zandagnio, who was my lacrosse coach, and sort of my mentor, at school, and I told him the whole story. And Melinda-Sue knows that if anybody knows where I would have gone from school, it’s old Stenetore, ’cause she knew him too, he went to our wedding when she got out of school; he gave us a gravy boat.”

“You played lacrosse at Amherst?”

“I was a lacrosse-playing fool.”

“Always struck me as a staggeringly savage game.”

“A truly and completely kick-ass game. A game that kicks ass.”

“I see.”

“….”

“Lenore darling, are you awake?”

“Fnoof.”

“Girl can do some serious sleeping.”

“May I be explicit, here, for a moment, Wang-Dang?”

“Draw and fire, R. V.”

“I am passionately, fiercely, and completely in love with Lenore. She is not quite as explicitly my fiancée as I may have inadvertently led you to believe in the Flange, but she is nevertheless mine. I have a bit of a jealousy problem, I’m told. My setting in motion the process of your possibly temporarily sharing a building with Lenore, actually, to be honest, my inviting you to come and temporarily enter our lives and work for Frequent and Vigorous, at all, was predicated on the understandable assumption that you were emotionally involved with and attached to Mindy Metalman, a woman who, just let me say in all candor, strikes me as the sort of woman an attachment to whom on, for example, my part would leave me completely uninterested in any and all of the world’s other females. Do you get my drift?”

“Go on.”

“Then the drift now becomes a tide, and I say that, in light of what I now know, given what seems to be at least a partial and temporary unattachment to your wife, Mindy, a past that includes an acquaintance with Lenore, under whatever circumstances, prior to my own, and at least clear verbal evidence of vigorous hormonal activity on your part, I feel I can be truly comfortable only in the context of an explicit recognition on your part of the fact that Lenore is mine, and thus out of bounds, that as I am to be regarded as a sort of brother, or uncle, whatever you will, so Lenore is to be regarded by you as a sort of sister, or aunt, with whom any sort of attempted romantic involvement is and would be entirely unthinkable.”

“….”

“There.”

“Damned if you’re not the most articulate little rooster I ever heard crow.”

“….”

“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a tiny bit hurt by the idea that I might do something like what you’re afraid of to a Psi Phi brother, to an Amherst uncle. But to put your mind at rest… your mind isn’t quite at rest, here, is it?”

“It can be put so with utter ease, by you.”

“OK, then let me just say, right here, that I give you my word of honor as an alumni of the single finest undergraduate institution in the land that I will not harbor any but the most honorable of thoughts toward your woman.”

“I’m all too aware that it’s silly, but could you promise not to take her away?”

“R.V., I promise not to take her away.”

“Thank you. Well there. That’s out of the way.”

“You all right? Your forehead’s wet as hell. You want to use my hankie?”

“No thank you. I have my own.”

“Gentlemen, the captain asks that you please refasten your seat belts for landing.”

“My ears are rumbling like mad.”

“You wouldn’t by any chance want to help me with my particular belt, here, ma‘am, would you?”

“Ixnay — ilotpay.”

“….”

“Fnoof.”

“Lenore.”

“Fnoof. What?”

“Damned if you can’t sleep up a storm, Lenore.”

“What time is it?”

“We’re apparently preparing to land.”

“Boy am I tired.”

“Sweet dreams?”

“I’m not sure. My mouth tastes like a barn. I would kill for a shower. ”

“Have some gum.”

“Want to try some Skoal?”

“Not for anything in the world.”

“Lenore, my ears are in their own private hell.”

“Poor Rick. What can I do to help?”

“Perhaps a bit of a temple massage…”