David Wallace - Broom of the System

“Then what is it, Lenore?”

“….”

“Shall we just go? Norman has been tending to come in here, a lot; for lunches, at about this time, so perhaps—”

“And now what’s that supposed to mean?”

“My God, it meant nothing! I just thought you’d want to avoid seeing him, is all.”

“How does he even get in here anymore?”

“Apparently he simply establishes himself on the sidewalk. Newspapers are laid down. Things are brought to him in huge industrial containers. It’s not a pretty sight.”

“I guess we should go, then. I don’t want to have to try to get past him.”

“The Bombardini Company vice presidents are deeply worried. They claim in all seriousness that Norman is trying to eat himself to death.”

“Or everybody else to death.”

“Surely you don’t take those pathetic plans he was spinning seriously.”

“Don’t presume to tell me what I take seriously and don’t take seriously, Rick.”

“Good Lord, what is the matter with you?”

“…. ”

“Listen…. Listen to that.”

“….”

“Hear it?”

“I do hear something. It’s not thunder, is it?”

“Can’t be. Sun’s shining out past the shadow, see? I’m afraid I sense impending Norman.”

“We better go. You better finish your mouths.”

“Are you absolutely sure you’re all right?”

“….”

/d/

At work, Candy Mandible was smoking and sipping a Tab and enjoying Judith Prietht’s lunch break. Judith had been entering the too-much range. Today she had brought baggies full of sugar cookies in the shapes of cats and birds for Lenore and Candy. Judith was getting to be a real pain in the ass.

The console began beeping. Candy Started In and amused herself for a minute with a hoarse man wanting to know whether she preferred rough banisters to smooth banisters. Then she handled the next call.

“Frequent and Vigorous,” she said.

“Who?” said a voice.

“Frequent and Vigorous Publishing, Inc., may I help you,” Candy said, rolling her eyes.

“Christ, I thought I’d never get through,” the voice said. “Miss, did you know your phones are all fouled up?”

“There’ve been rumors to that effect, ma‘am. Can I help you with something?” Candy took some Tab, around the mouthpiece. She tried to place the voice on the phone. The voice sounded vaguely familiar.

“To whom am I speaking, please,” said the voice.

“This is Ms. Mandible, a Frequent and Vigorous operator,” said Candy Mandible.

“Ms. Mandible, I’m calling to see first whether you have a co-worker there, a Ms. Lenore Beadsman,” said the voice.

“Yes, we do,” said Candy. “Can I take a message for you.” She reached for the Legitimate Call Log.

“And second to see whether you also have a new employee there, a Mr. Lang,” said the voice. “I think he’s in the babyfood department, whatever that means.”

“Ma‘am whom shall I say is calling?” Candy said, opening the Log.

“This is Mrs. Andrew Sealander Lang, of New York,” said the voice.

Candy looked at the console, the circuit buttons in their gelatins of light.

“Hello?” the voice said.

“Yes, hello,” said Candy.

“Is my husband there, is what I need to know.”

“I believe he is with the firm at the present time, ma‘am, yes,” said Candy. “Shall I transfer you to his temporary office?”

“Does he have a direct number there?”

“All individual transfers are done through me at the switchboard, ma‘am. Please hold on.” Candy looked at the switchboard directory, got the number, Started In again, and transferred the call, just as Judith Prietht slouched wearily back into the cubicle.

“What’s happening, Candy?” Judith made a smile and changed her shoes for the slippers beneath her counter.

“Just fine,” Candy said, still staring at the lights in the console, reaching again for her Tab.

/e/

PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT OF RAP-SESSION IN THE OFFICE OF DR. CURTIS JAY, PH.D., THURSDAY, 9 SEPTEMBER 1990. PARTICIPANTS: DR. CURTIS JAY AND MR. RICK VIGOROUS, AGE 42, FILE NUMBER 744-25-4291.

DR. JAY: So as I see it we have three major and not unrelated themes for discussion. Dream. You. Lenore.

MR. RICK VIGOROUS: Preferably the latter. What did you do to her in here, today? She looked simply awful at lunch.

DR. JAY: No pain, no gain. Enormous, enormous strides, today. Breakthrough positively looming on the emotional horizon. And of course there is the Lang issue.

RICK: The Lang issue?

JAY: The young man from your dream?

RICK: Why is he an issue outside the confines of the dream?

JAY: Who said he was?

RICK: You did.

JAY: Did I? I don’t really recall explicitly saying that.

RICK: What an ass-pain you are.

Dr. Jay pauses.

RICK: I officially demand to know how and why Lang is an issue. JAY: You said the Lang dream made you wake up screaming.

RICK, Streaming.

JAY: Watch me exercise self-control.

Rick Vigorous pauses.

JAY: Penis problems, still. Am I right?

RICK: Listen to this. I’m amazed. Last time I was here you said “penis shmenis.”

JAY: But I sense intuitively that Lang has become for you the Other, no? The Other in reference to whom you choose to understand Self, in all its perceived inadequacy?

RICK: I don’t know. What, did Lenore mention Lang to you?

JAY: Why did you bring this person back to Cleveland with you, if he upsets you so?

RICK: I really do not know. We met in our old fraternity bar. Things were strange. Affinities seemed to be jutting out everywhere. He simply seemed to fit in. To click.

JAY: So you brought him within your network.

RICK: I hate to sound like a mutual acquaintance of ours, but somehow

I felt I had little choice. It was as though a context was created in which it would have been inappropriate not to bring him inside.

JAY: Inside?

RICK: Into the nexus of my professional and emotional life.

JAY: I see. And what about Lenore? Is Lenore “inside,” to continue your use of a term positively dripping with Blentnerian connotations? RICK: I hope that she will be someday.

JAY: A conspicuous hmmm. And you, Rick. Are you “inside,” in the context of Lenore’s network?

RICK: Don’t be sadistic. You know I can never be that.

JAY: The Screen Door of Union, et cetera.

RICK: Make my ears stop rumbling.

Dr. Jay pauses.

Rick Vigorous pauses.

JAY: Rick, friend, has it never occurred to you that you might actually represent the genetic cutting edge?

RICK: The what?

JAY: I invite you to think about it. We as a species used to have tails, no? A full coat of thick body-hair? Prehensile toes? Far keener senses of taste, small, hearing, et cetera than we possess today? We eventually lost all these features.Tossed them aside. Why was this?

RICK: What are you trying to say?

JAY: Rick, we didn’t need them. The context in which they had an appropriate function dissolved. They had no use.

RICK: What are you trying to say?

JAY: I suppose I am trying to bring into the focus of our emotional attention the following features of the contemporary society we both enjoy. Genetic engineering. Artificial insemination. Quantum leaps in the technology of sexual aids and implements and prostheses. Perhaps what most of us perceive as the centers of ourselves are simply no longer needed. And we both know that the absence of function, in nature, means death. There is nothing superfluous in nature. Perhaps you are the next wave, Rick. Have you ever thought of that, in the quiet times? Perhaps you are to this Lang what the first upright man was to the crouched, hunched, drooling simian. A sort of god. A prototype, seated on nature’s right hand, for the nonce. A man for the future.