William Gaddis - J R

— On her Ring, yes and, and doing a very fine job…

— He helps some, rehearsing and all that stuff and junk but he hasn’t got much personality for it… here, gimme one of those, will you? She swooped at Mister diCephalis quietly disposing of a cigarette package in the wastebasket.

— No, I… they’re candy, he blurted. — The children’s. I picked them up by mistake, they look just like mine, the package…

She laughed at him.

The telephone rang.

— Hel… oh, what? Now? They’re here from the Foundation? They can’t be, this isn’t Friday. Well try and stall them…

— Gimme the phone, my…

— My boy’s in this thing of hers, Hyde dropped to Pecci, — quite the little musician. No piano or violin, nothing pansy. Trumpet.

— My wife’s taping something this morning, Mister diCephalis got in abruptly. — A resource program…

— Let’s just turn on the tube and see what we’ve got to show them.

— Taping? what, said Miss Flesch over the rim of the telephone.

— A resource program. On silkworms, she has her own Kashmiri records…

— If your Ring isn’t ready, your Wagner, what is there?

— My Mozart. She hung up the telephone and dialed again. — No answer, I’ll call and see if my visuals are ready… and she found her bun, washed in another bite with cold coffee and chewed into the mouthpiece, listening.

— gross profit on a business was sixty-five hundred dollars a year. He finds his expenses were twenty-two and one half percent of this profit. First, can you find the net profit?

— What’s that? demanded Hyde, transfixed by unseeing eyes challenging the vacant confine just over his head.

— Sixth grade math. That’s Glancy.

— percent this would be of the entire sales, if the sales were seventy thousand dol…

— Sixth? That?

— Glancy. They’re doing percents.

— merchant, and this merchant sold a coat marked fifty dollars at ten percent discount…

— Glancy reading cue cards. You can tell.

— Don’t show them that, just Glancy writing on a blackboard.

— that this merchant still made a twenty percent profit, let’s find the cost of the original…

— Try switching to thirty-eight.

— original cost of the… combustion in these thousands of little cylinders in our muscle engines. Like all engines, these tiny combustion engines need a constant supply of fuel, and we call the fuel that this machine uses, food. We measure its value…

— Even if the Rhinegold is ready it’s Wagner, isn’t it? But if the Mozart is scheduled the classroom teachers, they’re ready with the followup material from their study guides on the Mozart. They can’t just switch to the Wagner.

— the value of the fuel for this engine the same way, by measuring how much heat we get when it’s burned…

— That’s a cute model, it gets the idea right across. Whose voice?

— Vogel. He made it himself out of old parts.

— Whose.

— Parts?

— Some of them might never even have heard of Wagner yet. — No, the voice. — That’s Vogel, the coach.

— that we call energy. Doing a regular day’s work, this human machine needs enough fuel equal to about two pounds of sugar…

— If they thought it was Mozart’s Rhinegold and get them all mixed up, so you can’t really switch.

— He put it together himself out of used parts.

— fuel in a regular gasoline engine, and converts about twelve percent into the same amount of real work.

— To forty-two, try forty-two.

— that the engine has an alimentary system just like the human machine. When you pull up at the gas pump and ask for ten gallons the fuel is poured through an opening, or mouth, and goes into the gas tank, the engine’s stomach… who earns a hundred and twenty-five dollars a month pays four percent of it to the Social Security…

— I said forty-two, try forty-two. I think Mrs Joubert has something.

— how much he’s paid to the Social Security Board at the end of ten years, and… American Civil War, that was fought to free the slaves, and… in the carburetor, where the fuel is digested and…

— Omigosh! Miss Flesch erupted into the mouthpiece. Her free hand dug for a tissue — they’re what? Over at the temple? Not the Rhinegold, the Wagner no, the… No m, m like Mary. O. Yeah like zebra… she wiped her mouth, — What do you mean will I play the piano the only prop I’ve got is a… no a book, a book… A book yeah so it looks like I’m reading from this book and don’t forget the music for my singalong, I always sign off with a singalong…

— Go back to whatever that was about the Civil War, I think that’s history…

— that we wouldn’t like the taste of gasoline but luckily our car engine…

— Or Social Studies.

— the American Indian, who is no longer segregated on the reservation, but encouraged to take his rightful place at the side of his countrymen, in the cities, in the factories, on the farm…

— Just hang on, I’m coming over there anyway. Yeah, driving, I’ll get a ride over if… she banged down the phone, dismounting the desk in an open slide toward Mister Pecci. — Is Skinner’s car still out front? It’s a green one, this textbook salesman. He’ll ride me over…

— My wife, said Mister Pecci withdrawing a knee from the sweep of her heel, — she was one of the original Miss Rheingolds, maybe she still has a specialty number she could help you out with introducing your Rhinegold story…?

— See you all on the hungry eye, said Miss Flesch winking one of her own and threatening one of Mister Pecci’s with a sweep of the umbrella under her arm, and whether Mister diCephalis was making a last grab for it or fending it off was not clear as she passed him for the door that banged hollowly on her call to — Skinner, Mister Skinner, can you ride me over…

Mister diCephalis had by now reached and dialed the telephone, where he kept in undertone — Yes I know it that’s why I’m calling, because… from the Foundation yes they’re here now, that’s what they’re coming for, to… what? The silkworms, yes, the Kashmiri… cultural aspect of… yes. But I do want them to see you, that’s why I’m calling…

— They must be out there now they, we can’t keep them waiting… Whiteback inclined to meet the screen’s glassine stare with his own reaching the channel selector, — if there’s something on while we’re waiting for the, for Miss Flesch something in the, something…

— about money… to free the slaves and… typifying the grandeur of our natural resources and the national heritage that makes all of us proud to be Amer…

— That’s good, there…

— What is it Dan, what’s…

— I’m cleaning up this coffee she wait, wait this must be hers this book about Mozart Mozart’s letters, she…

— Look out you’re spilling those what’s all that it looks like her script, part of her script get it over to her, there’s a page under the…

— Mind moving your foot…

— There’s another one…

— the mighty Sequoia, which may reach a height of three hundred fifty feet and be almost thirty feet at the base. An age of a thousand years old is still young for the mighty Sequoia…

— Wait the pages are getting mixed up she’ll be…

— Let her straighten them out just get it over to her wait there’s one under the desk, have you got your car Dan?

— national parks. In the vast public domain, the federal government owns one hundred seventy million acres in our glorious west…

— No just hurry Dan, hurry up or she’ll come in! We thought you’d never get here… and he opened the door full on the two figures standing there as the wall clock beyond them dropped its longer hand with a click for the full minute and hung, poised to lop off a fragment of the next as Gibbs passed, looked up and saw that happen, fingering the change in his pocket on his way to the outside door and the cloudless sky filled with the even passage of the sun itself in brightness so diffuse no shadow below could keep an edge on shaded lawns where time and the day came fallen through trees with the mottled movement of light come down through water, spread up an empty walk, over gravel and empty pavement, and lawn again, lending movement to the child motionless but for fragmenting finger and opposable thumb opening, closing, the worn snap of an old change purse, staring in through the glass with an expression of unbroken and intent vacancy.