Victor LaValle - Ecstatic

He had a black baseball cap in his left hand and slapped it patiently against his thigh.

— What are they commemorating? I asked.

The boys were bored already. I think they were ten years old and without a vigilant chaperone they got frisky; punching arms, mushing foreheads.

— We’re up early because they’ve been forgetting their drills. It’s our historical society that sponsors them. I’ve got a newsletter on me. You can take it. Hey now, said the guy to the boys. Hey now!

They stopped, stood calmly.

Through the picture window at the far end of the hall I could see the bright sign for Sheetz gas station still alight. This was more comforting than it should have been; it proved I hadn’t shortcircuited the town. Anyway, a little neon always makes me feel like I’m near people I understand.

The imperturbable man in Hagar slacks, probably a size thirty-two, walked close enough to shake hands. That’s when his shoes made a — squish— noise on the soaked carpet. My leaky shower had made all the way out the room door into the hall.

— I had a problem in the bathroom, I admitted.

He jumped back, yelled, — It’s not piss, damn it?

— It’s just water. His raised voice surprised me so much that I even wondered if it was pee.

He looked at it for some time; I wondered if urine made a different discoloration in cheap carpeting; if he could detect such a thing it was the strangest kind of survival training I could imagine.

— That would have been a lot, he finally decided. He grinned, but stood outside the ring of moisture.

— Go get towels from downstairs, he said to the boys who had stopped bothering with historical accuracy and stood together regardless of uniform.

— How many? two asked in unison.

The coach walked into my room then poked his head back. — Much as you can carry.

The tiny replica war veterans tore off; happy to help, but gladder for the fun of running. After swaddling my floor in blankets they were sent to their rooms by 5:30 AM. I thanked the man another dozen times then put on my shoes. I spent the earliest hours of November 11th reclining in the passenger seat of our Dodge Neon. When I woke up a few hours later a dozen ‘Goodness Girls’ handbills had materialized on the windshield of my car and every other.

‘Disheveled’ is a generous adjective to qualify my appearance at the family breakfast in conference room C at the Comfort Inn on Saturday morning. I was early since the insistent sun woke me at eight in the car. Afraid to go to my room at Hampton Inn, even into the lobby, I walked to the Comfort Inn and used their mainfloor’s bathroom to wash my face. My body would have to wait.

In the largest conference room tables were already made. Instead of fifty small round places there were four long rows, cafeteria style. On each was a white table cloth. More dogwoods again, but they’d been left in the palms of small ceramic angel figurines. There were three to each table, twelve altogether in the room. A dozen kneeling baby boys, their wings tucked under rumps, hands held open on the thighs.

The ceilings were twenty feet high and since I was alone in the room I started jumping up and down. Do you ever do that when you’re alone? How high could I get, that was the game and it was miserable. I’d have to count my leaps in millimeters. It was silly to do that in some conference room, but it made my nature rise; circulating blood throughout my body. I felt pretty good.

At the other end of the conference room a microphone and podium were just in front of an enormous white screen hanging from the ceiling. I wondered if they’d show slides of pageants past, diagrams of acceptable hemlines. I walked closer just to see if the microphone was on, but when I tapped the mesh end for feedback it didn’t.

A server leaned out a door way. — I can turn it on for you.

— Thanks, I said, though I wasn’t planning on singing.

The difference between a waiter and a server is that the former gets tipped, but the latter doesn’t have to stand around blithely waiting to take orders.

We misunderstood each other, that server and I; voltage wasn’t funneled to the microphone. It was the colossal hanging screen instead. That thing started speaking so loudly it surprised me. I shuffled down the earth tone carpet to get away. It was playing cable news.

The volume of the news was then turned lower. I sat at a table, halfway between the pictures and the exit. There were remote shots from Bosnia and Newt Gingrich. There was footage of a mouse with a human ear on its back.

The mouse story might have been two weeks old, but I was still hard pressed to turn away. Even without the grotesque accessory the red hairless mouse was grisly. It shivered and limped and its eyes were moist.

The anesthesiologist who’d done this breakthrough work hadn’t simply stuffed a human ear down some rodent’s hole. He’d twisted a polyester fabric into the shape of a human ear then went under the mouse’s skin and attached it to the body. The polyester ear had been dosed with human cartilage cells that survived like a parasite, living off of the mouse. As the polyester decayed the human cartilage cells grew to take its place until a human ear was generated where there had been an artificial one. After that the new human ear could be removed to be used in cosmetic surgery while the mouse lived on unhazed.

Why these games the reporter wanted to know as he interviewed the scientists. Build a better ear? A bigger one? Different colors? Would each have a corporate logo and bar code? Would this turn into another dumb fashion craze? The reporter was snide throughout the interview.

Then those researchers explained that some kids are born without ears; terrible car accidents occur that split faces to bits; a young boy lost his nose to a neighbor’s champing mutt; a girl fell from a fifth floor window and her ear was crushed. Because of this spiny mouse many people could be fixed.

I’d like to tell you about when my Uncle Isaac taught me how to organize Japanese honeysuckle in a basket. He really did. At the time I thought his bouquets made a Thanksgiving day table warmer than any fireplace could. I’m afraid that I’ve never let him go. Purgatory might be the place a soul goes until everyone stops needing him in any way. A second life that penalizes the well-known or loved.

By 9:15 AM the conference room should have been filled; if not then how about 9:30? The television was on, but I’d stopped watching. I wished I was a smoker to pass time. I wanted to ask the server if I’d come to the wrong room, but that guy was gone.

I walked out to the front desk, but the clerk must have been in the bathroom because I heard water running from behind a door marked ‘Employees Only.’ I waited, but after the water stopped going there was nine minutes’ silence and nothing more.

I took a pen from the front and walked back to the conference room; the television screening had been turned off. Breakfast was still warming at the rear. I made a plate of eggs and one banana. A cup of apple juice, too.

Besides the flyer that had survived the f looding in my room I had ten others, taken off my car. They said the same thing, only their colors changed. ‘Goodness Girls.’ ‘Haven’t you always wanted to win?’

Lumpkin wasn’t hosting one beauty pageant, but two. Miss Innocence was regional, but the other was a local show. If the Miss Innocence festivities didn’t start until this evening there was still a place for young ladies to compete. And there was no fee to participate. ‘Come down this afternoon and get involved.’ ‘Reputable Prizes.’

On Braddock St. In downtown Lumpkin. The typewritten instructions at the bottom of the handbill were very easy to understand. I would even have offered to take Nabisase, but I had a movie to write. I used the blank backs of each handout.