Jonathan Lethem - Men and Cartoons

“How long are we going to keep him here?” said the first optician pleadingly.

“I told you, as long as it takes.”

“You're kidding me.”

“Help me watch him. Watch his hands.”

The customer smiled, delighted now. He could play this game and win. They'd see the scratches reappear. He focused on his hands. They were all focused on his hands. He kept his hands on his knees.

“We gotta get him out of the way at least,” said the first optician.

“Behind the counter,” said the second. In his determination he had an answer for everything.

“Here you go, Bucket,” said the customer.

“Keep your hands down!” said the second optician. “Let me move the chair. Joe, watch his hands.”

The customer was installed behind the counter, hands on his knees, chin up, waiting. The bill of his cap jutted from his back pocket.

The opticians leaned against the wall and the counter, inspecting the customer as though he were a horse on which they'd bet, and they gamblers looking for some giveaway imperfections, some tremble in its flank.

“He's gonna touch them,” said the first optician.

“He wants to,” said the second. “But he knows we're watching.”

“You'll see,” said the customer.

“Look at his hands,” said the first. “He can't take it, he's gotta go up there. It's like a tic, a whatchamacallit. He's got like Tourette's syndrome or something.”

“Fuck you, motherfucker,” said the customer genially.

“We've got forever,” said the second optician, his tone smooth, his calm restored. “We'll wait it out.”

The door chimed. They all turned. The new customer was young, in his late twenties. A boy to these men, a boy in a sweater. He turned to the glass shelves on the wall.

“Can I help you find something?” said the second optician, stepping up. Then he turned and hissed: “Watch his hands!”

“Just browsing,” said the new customer, and immediately wondered: Was browsing the right word for glasses?

And: Who was that black man in the chair?

“You have glasses before?” asked the second optician.

“Yes, uh, I don't always wear them.”

“You want to see anything, let me know.”

“Okay.”

The new customer moved along the wall of frames, searching for the expensive ones, the Japanese titanium-alloy designs.

Almost involuntarily, he glanced back, and the black man in the chair bugged his eyes at him. A plea for help?

The two opticians in their white coats, gold glasses, and puffy hair reminded him of Nazis. Nazi doctors. Or perhaps Mafia. Yes, definitely Mafia. He'd heard about this neighborhood. He knew of the dark old economic engines still humming away under the bright yuppie surface.

But should he get involved?

He slid closer along the back wall and had another look. The black man sat with his hands on his knees, obviously containing himself. His keepers' eyes shifted from their prisoner to the new customer, watching. What was it they'd said— Watch his hands ?

“Are you okay?” the new customer blurted.

“Fuck you think, jackass? Fuck you staring at? You see something wrong with me?”

The black man gesticulated, waving the new customer away, and the second optician said: “The hands, the hands.”

“What's wrong with his hands?” said the new customer, even as he backed away.

“Mind your own business,” said the first optician.

“Damn. He thinks I'm a shoplifter, Bucket. Fucking racist motherfucker.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Tell him, Bucket. I'm a paying customer.”

“It's okay,” said the new customer, moving to the door, and out, into the dying afternoon. The sun had arrived just to depart, to throw a few long shadows around as though it had worked the whole day.

The three of them watched the new customer disappear from view of the shop window.

“Now you're scaring off our customers,” said the second optician fondly.

“Screw him,” said the first optician, waving dismissively at the door. “He was a looker. Just browsing, you heard him.”

“Racist jackass got to go jumping to conclusions,” said the customer, fingers bouncing on his knees.

“Let me see your hands,” said the first optician.

“You got eyes!”

“No, I mean turn them over. Let me take a look.”

The customer furrowed his brow. The first optician took the customer's left hand in his own and gently turned it over.

“You're got very rough hands,” said the first optician. “Look at your fingertips. Very rough.”

The second optician bent in to look, and so did the customer, their heads all drawing together.

“See that?” said the first optician. “Think he could of scratched up his lenses with his fingers like that?”

“Hmmm,” said the second optician. “Plastic lenses, sure. Like his old ones. Not glass. Only smudge glass.”

“ If I touched it,” said the customer.

“Yeah, right, if ,” said the first optician, still holding the customer's hand. “We're suspending judgment.”

“That's what makes you a good man,” said the customer. “You want to do the right thing.”

“Yes we do,” said the first optician. “That's why we're sitting here. Long as it takes.”

“Don't want to go jumping to no conclusions.”

“Never.”

“Damn straight.”

The first optician went to the counter and took out a pack of cigarettes. The second optician sighed.

“You got a good man here, Bucket,” said the customer, pointing. “I spoke too soon.”

“Watch your hands,” said the second optician.

“You'll watch 'em for me, Bucket. I know you will.”

The sun was down. Shops outside rolled down their gates. Restaurant deliverymen on green bicycles began to fill the street. Men dragged home milk and flowers and shuttered umbrellas.

The first optician lit another cigarette and put it in the customer's mouth for him, so the customer could keep his hands on his knees.

The second optician moved into the back of the shop, to call his wife, to say he'd be late.

THE DYSTOPIANIST DESTROYED THE WORLD again that morning, before making any phone calls or checking his mail, before even breakfast. He destroyed it by cabbages. The Dystopianist's scribbling fingers pushed notes onto the page: a protagonist, someone, a tousle-haired, well-intentioned geneticist , had designed a new kind of cabbage for use as a safety device— the “air bag cabbage.” The air bag cabbage mimicked those decorative cabbages planted by the sides of roads to spell names of towns, or arranged by color — red, white, and that eerie, iridescent cabbage indigo — to create American flags. It looked like any other cabbage. But underground was a network of gas-bag roots, vast inflatable roots , filled with pressurized air. So, at the slightest tap , no, more than a tap, or vandals would set them off for fun, right, given a serious blow such as only a car traveling at thirty miles or more per hour could deliver , the heads of the air bag cabbages would instantly inflate, drawing air from the root system, to cushion the impact of the crash, saving lives, preventing costly property loss . Only—

The Dystopianist pushed away from his desk, and squinted through the blinds at the sun-splashed street below. School buses lined his block every morning, like vast tipped orange-juice cartons spilling out the human vitamin of youthful lunacy, that chaos of jeering voices and dancing tangled shadows in the long morning light. The Dystopianist was hungry for breakfast. He didn't know yet how the misguided safety cabbages fucked up the world. He couldn't say what grievous chain of circumstances led from the innocuous genetic novelty to another crushing totalitarian regime . He didn't know what light the cabbages shed on the death urge in human societies . He'd work it out, though. That was his job. First Monday of each month the Dystopianist came up with his idea, the green poison fog or dehumanizing fractal download or alienating architectural fad which would open the way to another ruined or oppressed reality. Tuesday he began making his extrapolations, and he had the rest of the month to get it right. Today was Monday, so the cabbages were enough.