William Gaddis - J R

— That’s the only bid that came in.

— And there’s this twelve thousand dollars item for books.

— That’s supposed to be twelve hundred, the twelve thousand should be paper towels. Besides, there’s already that bequest for books for the library.

— Did it say books in so many words? No. It’s just a bequest for the library.

— Use it for a pegboard. You need a pegboard in a library. Books you don’t know what you’re getting into.

— Right. Remember Robin Hood? That man Schepperman…

— Schepperman! That reminds me that lettering over the front door, Gibbs’ idea…

— It’s worked so far but it can’t work forever, sooner or later somebody will show up who reads Greek. Then where are we?

— Up the creek, Miss Flesch obliged with a promptness that lost her some coffee down her chin, — like the smut mail.

— There’s an issue. The smut mail rise.

— My boy sent off for a ball glove and what he got back in the mail was…

— Mouthpiece puller, sleigh bells, strobotuner, choir risers, tympanies, marching bell and stand, two thousand five hundred and… what’s all that for?

— Breakage. Here, replacing glass, repairing doors, painting, refinishing and so forth, thirty-three thousand two eighty-five. Thirty-three thousand dollars for breakage, isn’t that what we’re really talking about? Plain unvarnished vandalism? And another fourteen thousand plus item down here, repairs and replacement, chairs, desks, project tables, pianos, same thing isn’t it? Breakage…?

— But two thousand dollars for filmstrips and five more on filmstrip projectors, movie projectors, record players, tape recorders, projection carts…

— It’s already on the books…

— That’s what I mean books, Miss Flesch scattered seeds. — All this audio-visual bla bla bla and we’ve practically promised Duncan and Company a textbook order to Mister Skinner for…

— Thirty-three and fourteen, that’s forty-three, forty-seven thousand on breakage.

— Waffle iron, sixty dollars?

— Predictable, deliberate, you might even say prescheduled breakage…

— And doing a very fine job, too.

— I see it at the corporate level all the time. Now, getting back to the point, how about Friday for bringing your mobile tv over for a looksee at my shelter, get across the remote capabilities of microwave transmission with a good cable system…

— But not Friday, Friday we’re getting a visit from the Foundation. They’re sending out a team, a program specialist and a writer, to give our whole in-school television setup here the real once over for a book. I don’t hardly need to say that the point in all this is to show them how we’re using, utilizing this new media to motivate the cultural drive in these youngsters should give things a nice boost right up their…

— Up their alley, check. My shelter…

— My Ring… Miss Flesch got in at a bite.

— My wife… ventured Mister diCephalis, who had been busy responding to Mister Pecci’s stylish appearance by squaring the handkerchief in his own breast pocket, leaving it with apparent satisfaction and a clean margin showing between the pocket’s edge and the line of dirt that had distinguished the initialed fold on view there now for some weeks.

And as though calculating the effect, Hyde stepped from the window and reduced the figure behind the desk to the less pungent proportions of natural lighting. — The Foundation is committed up to its, it’s deeply committed. They’ve sunk seventy or eighty million into this school tv project nationwide and they’re not pulling out and leaving setups like this one holding the bag. The point like I’ve been saying from the start is that in-school tv, to be in-school tv, it has to be in-school tv with lessons piped into school receivers in school classrooms for school kids in school classes, a simple interference-free closed-circuit school setup where every Tom Dick and Harry can’t tune in on the kind of open-circuit broadcast you’ve got now and write letters telling you off on the new math.

— Educationwise it isn’t hurting us PRwise, I’ll say that, Miss Flesch said it, and mashed out her cigarette.

— Now the Senator here, Assembleyman Pecci that is, he has a bill he’s introducing that makes all this mandratory, it will get this in-school television out of the community entertainment field and back into the school, and the only squawk we’ll get from the Foundation is because they stuck you with this whole open-circuit setup in the first place.

— I don’t get mail telling me off… Miss Flesch threatened with a buttered thumb. — I get all this mail…

— She gets all this fan mail.

— All this fan mail you could call it even, she pursued from the desk top to Mister Pecci who seemed, just then, to realize that from where he sat he might appear to be looking up her skirt, and lowered his eyes to adjust a gold tieclasp representing an unfurled American flag to match his cufflinks. — Not just mail from kids’ parents but from shut-ins, jobless, old retired people and everybody like just last week I got this letter of commendation from the Senior Citizens, you need popular support to run a school system and you don’t get that without the support of the community look at this budget vote coming up and all that bla bla bla, they want to see where their money goes. I got nothing to hide, she came on, and pinioned a passing eye with the barest movement urging — my Ring, you take my Ring…

— We take her Ring, Pecci responded to this invitation, and then raised his eyes to the others, — there might even be some way to tie it into the cultural, something cultural?

— Let’s give Pecci here an A for breakthrough. Tie it in with this Culture Center, locating it here, bring in your Spring Arts Festival expanded with a few remote specials stressing the patriotic theme, you might even do one on my shelter, what America’s all about, waste disposal and all, and wrap it all up with the whole in-school television program once that’s on a good interference-free closed-circuit system bring in a little Foundation backing and you’re on your way.

— Once we have their confidence…

— Now whether or not a campaign…

— I think nationally…

— PRwise…

The telephone rang. — Hello…? Oh. Yes. Long distance, for you Mis…

— Me? Oop! my coffee…

— My office… Pecci inclined across the desk avoiding the puddle. — I told them where to reach me if… Hello?

— And something else, Whiteback reclined with a squeak, — this young man what’s his name, Bast? He’s a composer, he writes music, he’s here from the Foundation or rather they placed him here, in this pilot program. Handed to us on a platter, he’s ahm…

— Me? paid to me? No, it was paid to the law firm, my partner. Just say twenty-five thousand paid for consultation, representation, and what? No, say legal services, rendered by Ganganelli during this legislative session in conjunction with… no, conjunction, conjunk, junk…

— Motivating the music appreciation drive in these youngsters, we have him helping out Miss Flesch while we work something up for him maybe with the high school band.

— In conjunction with certain amendments to the state law relating to highway construction standards, just say standards in highway construction.

— I talked to him about it on the way over this morning, motivating this cultural drive and seeing it pay off in mass consumers, mass distribution…

— No, standards. I said standards, standards, with a d…

— Like automobiles and bathing suits.

— Law! They can’t pull that law on him tell him, it wasn’t even passed till after he wasn’t reelected… Goodbye, call me if there’s any snag.