Хелен Девитт - Some Trick - Thirteen Stories

Now , anyway, here was a chance to actually try out Inference in PowerPoint, with Lattice plots, in a legitimate business activity! And it was only his third day in New York!

On his fourth day in New York Gil went to B&H just to check the place out, because a tech store, run by Hasidic Jews, recommended by Joel Spolsky on joelonsoftware.com, it’s hard to get more quintessentially New York than that. He talked to some dudes who were studying film at NYU and had just won a prize for a short at Sundance. He went to fourteen galleries on 11th Street, four of which were having vernissages that very night. He met a transvestite who had unresolved plumbing issues. He met a woman who had nearly been electrocuted by her refrigerator and said it was preying on her mind — who knew when it would lash out again?

On his fifth day in New York Gil went to see Lohengrin at the Met with Loopy Margaux. On his sixth day he met Mr. Margaux, who said his sound system had a mind of its own, with an IQ of about 68.

“Uh huh, uh huh,” said Gil. There seemed to be no tactful way to say that he had better speakers in his treehouse. (His treehouse, admittedly, did not have a triptych by Francis Bacon, a Rauschenberg, a Jackson Pollock, and four flags by Jasper Johns.) He confined himself to the factual, making a number of recommendations which could easily be implemented with modest expenditure at B&H. He mentioned, shyly, the thing uppermost in his mind, the amazing Inference in Powerpoint presentation on which he had been working for the past four days, and Mr. Margaux, as a personal favor, looked at the prez on Gil’s laptop, and was sufficiently charmed to offer, as a further personal favor, to pass the word along to a couple of people who might be interested.

Gil walked back down the island through Central Park. He bought a New York hot dog with New York mustard and a New York pretzel. A troop of men on fixed-wheel bikes sped past. Pedestrians told them to fuck off. New York, New York, it’s a wonderful town!

On his seventh day in New York Loopy Margaux had scary news. She had decided to move to Berlin.

“Ber lin ?” said Gil.

Loops was 26 years old and had nothing to show for it. She was throwing her life away to keep a roof over her shoe collection. This was the gist.

“ Look ,” said Loopy, and she took a print-out from her Marc Jacobs bag. “I can get a 1,000-square-foot apartment with 13-foot ceilings and crown molding for $800 a month including bills . What have I been thinking ?”

If Loopy had explained that she had just tried cannibalism, and that human flesh actually tasted better than pork, this he could have coped with, because cannibalism, this is something that you can imagine a New Yorker, not any New Yorker but some kind of New Yorker, doing. Or if she had confessed to a string of serial killings. But moving to Berlin ? And the whole shoe stockpiling thing, the point is, this is a very New York thing to do. The idea that you would rather have a month’s rent in Berlin than a pair of Manolo Blahniks, well, huh.

Loops was saying she had sacrificed her goals, her dreams, everything she ever wanted to achieve, just to live in the City.

This sounded totally reasonable to Gil, who did not really care whether he ended up being a bartender, waiter, short-order cook, or homeless dude living out of a shopping cart as long as he could stay in New York, [12] Did Giuliani realize that being President would involve moving to Washington ? For four years ? was the question Gil had naturally asked himself when the nomination was up for grabs. Or, was it just part of a deep-laid plan to move the nation’s capital back to New York , where it belonged ? but Loops made it sound like some kind of indictment.

Gil went back to the loft in Dumbo. Brooklyn was already starting to feel like exile. At some point he was going to have to break the bad news to Benny, namely that another dude must be found who had not read the Automatika series as a kid.

When he got in there was no sign of Benny. Instead there was a man who had the tormented, windswept look of Andrew Jackson as seen on a $20 bill.

“You must be Gil,” said the dude. “I’m Benny’s father. I had to come into town on business.”

Gil had heard so much about Mr. Bergsma (one night had not been nearly enough to exhaust Benny’s fund of aggrieved reminiscence) that he was surprised by how reasonable the dude sounded. Not a flamethrower in sight.

Gil said something polite. He wanted to try something new for his PowerPoint presentation. What if he used Hadley Wickham’s ggplot2 package? He took out the Sony Vaio and was soon deep in thought.

Mr. Bergsma came up behind him.

“What’s that?”

Gil explained the MicroCharts backstory, he explained about R and Bill Cleveland and Deepayan Sarkar and Hadley Wickham, and as he explained he did, in fact, generate a plot in Inference for R using ggplot2.

“When I was a kid my parents wouldn’t even let me touch their Smith Corona,” said Mr. Bergsma.

Gil remembered his chagrin at the belated release of Inference for R with PowerPoint interface. He could totally empathize.

“But yes, yes, yes, there is definitely a certain appeal. If they ever make the movie this kind of thing would be perfect for the Automatika machine.”

“Is there going to be a movie?” asked Gil.

“All I want is a crap-free deal,” said Mr. Bergsma. “It doesn’t seem much to ask. What is there about the concept that is hard to grasp? I’ve been sent a contract which includes clauses about the ice show and theme restaurant rights. They want me to get it notarized. I can’t just snap my fingers and conjure a notary public out of thin air.”

He extended a longfingered, largeknuckled hand and gently stroked the glossy metal. “Sparklines, though. Multivariate plots. I was trying to think of something fun for the new Automatika book. This looks like something kids would get a kick out of. I’ll just download this now, if you don’t mind. Maybe I can do some actual work for a change.” He sighed again. “Is it just me, or is there something sinister about Vista? Have you ever wondered whether the Church of Scientology might be behind it? It would explain so much.”

Gil went back to tinkering with ggplot2.

When he looked up five hours later Mr. Bergsma was at the far end of the loft, typing morosely into an antiquated IBM ThinkPad.

Gil went out to the kitchen for a cold Sam Adams. The contract was in the trash. He took it out.

He started looking through the clauses, and for sure the contract went on a long time.

On Day 8 Gil went back to the Margaux’ to finalize work on the sound system. [13] He was not able to go back on Day 7, which was Saturday, because B&H is closed on Shabbat. This time he met Mrs. Margaux, who turned out to be the woman with electrocution issues. Which he was naturally also only too happy to resolve.

“Uh huh, uh huh,” said Gil, inspecting the rogue appliance, while Mrs. Margaux deplored Loopy’s new plan.

“What if she comes back with a German boy?” said Mrs. Margaux. “I don’t want to think of Hitler every time I sit down to dinner.”

“Eeeeeezy does it,” said Gil, edging the fridge gently forward.

“As if I don’t have enough on my mind. Kooky Fairweather has maneuvered me into resigning from the Board of the Met. Lottie Rosenthal has just asked Dodie Pierpont onto the Board of the Balanchine. I can’t take much more of this.”

“Uh huh, uh huh,” said Gil. “Yep, I think I see what the problem is.” Three tiny mice slept unsuspectingly in a small nest of shredded paper towel.