William Gaddis - J R

— The standards yes establishing the standards in, just in the scoring area, some of the cards they have holes punched in them that don’t make any sense at all, on these tests for instance the ones to classify potential failures…

— Good, get them early. Hello? Weed out the bad risks… what…? he listened, spoke a crude syllable into the phone and laid it ranting on the desk. — Father Haight over at the parochial school letting us know they didn’t miss anything, lift your lessons right off the air and…

— When a boy that boy with the cap pistol, when he scores top on the music math index and then you check up his holes and find they don’t fit…

— Yes well of course he’s ahm, all we can do that is to say is to ahm…

— Send him back to Burmesquik.

— What was that Gibbs? Hyde sank back on the desk corner, where the telephone miniature continued to rant into his trouser pocket.

— I said maybe he hears a different drummer, Major.

— Nothing pansy about that, my boy’s as good on the drums as he is on trumpet. You’ve got a hole in the seat of your pants there too, Gibbs.

— Too? like this boy with the cap pistol? He launched a sudden step backwards, — let him step to the music which he…

— Look out!

— My, God…

— What was in it!

— That, that Leroy that idiot Leroy… Whiteback snatched up a blue cuff in a quick two step, — he brought the whole pailful to show me what was stopping up the plumbing in the junior high be careful, they’re all over the floor…

— But the, the junior high?

— There’s programming for you… Gibbs knocked a shoe against the baseboard, — speak of tangibilitating unplanlessness where’d you pick up that language, Whiteback?

— You, you have to speak it when you talk to them here Senator we, this way, we’ll get some paper towels in the boys’ room, Dan? Can you just reach over and, reach that? turn that thing off?

— treatment of waste silk, called discharging…

— Still want to get together on this remote special Whiteback, put it on tape for these Foundation people after this disgraceful exhibition you put on here today we might be able to cut our losses…

— I said off Dan, not up…

— beautiful colors, but the smell of this waste silk fermenting is so offensive that…

— Send your remote unit out to my shelter, tie the whole thing in with what we…

— Off, the knob marked off…

— improving production knowhow and eliminating waste in the cause of human better…

— Leroy must have got these knobs on backwards.

— elimination of waste and is fitted with a muscular mechanism, or sphincter…

— Out to the right, Whiteback led them in order of importance.

— Remember…? said Gibbs over diCephalis’ shoulder, glancing up at the portrait as he reached to close the door behind them — when Eisenhower’s doctor told the press this country is very interested in bowel movements?

— It’s marked boys…

The door swung the word Principal hollow behind their backs, leaving the only voice chiding in miniature from the desk where the telephone lay, the only face, where nothing had happened framed high on the wall there all this time to change the expression unchanged by a boy’s lifetime at the country’s helm “focusing on ideas rather than phrasing” with the plea “let’s not forget, above all things, the need of confidence and that, of course, I think nationally, it is what do you and I think of the prospects, do we want to go buy a refrigerator or something that is going to, that we think is useful and desirable in our families, or don’t we? And it is just that simple in my mind.”

Dead before their eyes, the clock severed another of the minutes that lacked the hour, — oh. Coming out? asked diCephalis and then, paused pulling at the lateral handle of the door under the word push, — can I ride you somewhere?

— I’d rather you didn’t, Gibbs said holding the door opened for him, stopping to find a cigarette, to pat pockets for the rattle of matches in a box, gazing up at the Greek letters over the portal as he lit it and then back after the diminuendo of diCephalis’ retreat until that reared off in the form of a car aiming its impressively gathered speed at its crippled mate in green parked just outside the gate where with a reassuring look around the blind corner, Leroy motioned him, full career ahead, a course halted shudderingly abrupt as from the green wreck at the curb emerged the amorphous figure of its owner holding a small rolled black umbrella by its handle of simulated birch, recoiling, at that instant, from the flamboyant arrival of diCephalis on the one hand and, on the other, a mail truck from the blind corner that passed like a shot.

— Gosh!

— That, that’s mine, that umbrella.

— This? Gosh… And it was handed over on a note of apology given cyclopean definition by the loss of a lens.

— She took it by mistake. Not mine exactly, my little boy’s, diCephalis shouted as the roar of his engine rose. — I took it by mistake… and as he swerved into the open Leroy’s smile hung in the rearview mirror, down the block, through the arboreal slaughterhouse of Burgoyne Street, he kept looking up to the mirror as though it might still be there, even glancing into a wall mirror passing through the studio corridor as if to find it and reflecting no recognition for the face he saw instead, none in fact till he came on three versions of his wife on as many monitoring screens doing what, in another costume and to other music, might have been the concluding swoop of a tango, prompting the director to select a static bit of folk art so that her program ended with an endearing gesture that never left the room.

Telephones right and left lay on desks, hung from cords, berating one another. — I’m looking for this Mister Bast…?

— You are, eh?

He backed out of the man’s way, turned by his wife’s emergency and swept in its wake back the way he had come. — Well? What did they have to say? she asked as he swung the car door open for her.

— Who?

— Who! And now look what you’ve done, torn my sari. Who do you think? she pulled a silk fragment from a tear in the door steel, — the Foundation people, who! About my lesson, my… they saw it didn’t they?

— Well not, not exactly all of it, they… he drowned his own voice with a roar of the engine.

— They what? Did they see any of it?

— Well they, of course, yes that part about the waste, the silk waste…? The engine quieted, absorbed by its engagement with the gears which mounted the shift column in a rhythmical shimmy as the radio warmed.

— Waste! Then they didn’t see, why didn’t they? Why didn’t they see all of it!

— Well you see they, there were some technical difficulties… he began, shifting in the seat as the space around them took life with a Clementi trio from the radio.

— Technical! tell me technical! Technical like you or one of that crew of Whiteback’s switching channels, technical! And turn off that noise. Noise, you’ll hide in noise any chance you get… look out!

— But I called you to tell you they were there from the Foundation, he said as one of Burgoyne Street’s limbs swung past her window. — If I didn’t want them to see you would I even have called?

— Unless you manage to kill me first… she ducked away from her window, — no, you knew I’d find out they’d been there even if you didn’t tell me ahead so this way you played it safe, technical! You think I can’t see what you’d do to keep them from seeing me? Because you’re afraid they might have seen some talent, they might have seen somebody creative and I might get that Foundation grant and then where would you be? I’d be in India and where would you be!