Mark Leyner - Et Tu, Babe

We checked the freezer this afternoon; the Muenster and Swiss ligament was gone, along with Rocco.

In the middle of the night, the phone rings.

Arleen answers.

I roll over and go back to sleep.

I’m in the middle of a dream. I’m leaning out the window of my car, kissing a tollbooth attendant. She’s savoring my mouth with her tongue and gently biting my lips and sighing and her kissing is so sweet and languorous that it’s breaking my heart. Traffic is at a complete standstill for over fifteen miles.

Arleen nudges me awake.

“It’s for you, babe,” she says.

“Who is it?” I ask.

Arleen inquires.

“It’s a woman named Desiree Buttcake.”

“I don’t know anyone named Desiree Buttcake. If it’s a fan calling about the solid-gold belt buckle custom-minted with the lava-surfer insignia and the words Team Leyner , tell her to call the 800 number.”

“C’mon, Mark, she say she knows you. Take the phone — I want to go back to sleep.”

I take the phone.

“Hello, this is Mark Leyner.”

“Hi, Mark, this is Desiree Buttcake.”

“Desiree, I’m sorry, but I don’t really know who you are.”

She laughs.

“Mark, of course you don’t know me … well, I mean you don’t know me as Desiree Buttcake … you know me as Francine Masiello. I wrote you a letter a couple of weeks ago. I’m the psychic who recently had cosmetic breast-and-buttock-augmentation surgery … remember?”

“Oh yeah … you’re the Hummel collector who got carbon monoxide poisoning on ‘American Bandstand.’

“That’s right, that’s me.”

“Well, what’s up, Francine … I mean, Desiree.”

“I want to work for you, Mark. And I want to start tonight. There are important things I can do for you and your organization, but they need to be discussed immediately.”

“Well, listen, Desiree, applicants for employment at headquarters usually have to undergo an extremely rigorous interview process and security check.”

“Interview me tonight. It’s critical that I start working for you as soon as possible, believe me.”

“OK, where are you?”

“Every Thursday night a cell of right-wing intellectuals, novelists, playwrights, poets, painters, architects, and psychics meet in the sauna of a different Jack LaLanne Health Spa. The location of the sauna is kept secret from members of the cabal until 9:40 P.M. on Thursday night at which time it’s announced in an encrypted fax. Let’s see here … OK, tonight we’re meeting in the sauna at the Jack LaLanne Health Spa in the Linwood Mall, Fort Lee, New Jersey.”

“I’ll be there,” I say.

When I arrive at the Jack LaLanne Health Spa, there is no sign that a clandestine meeting of ultra-right-wing intellectuals and psychics is taking place in its sauna. Yelping aerobics classes, the echo of racquetballs, sweaty florid-faced hausfraus in garish leotards slumped at juice machines, men with hairy jiggling breasts and gelatinous rolls of stretch-marked belly fat grimly tramping on treadmills and Stairmasters — nothing out of the ordinary. I undress in the locker room, walk down a short hallway, come to a door marked SAUNA and open it. Through the thick steam, the first face I recognize is that of Dr. Claude Lorphelin, a gynecologist, surrealist poet, and neo-fascist pamphleteer who lives in the posh 16th Arrondissement of the Paris, France, simulation at Epcot Center.

“ Bonjour , Dr. Lorphelin,” I say, extending my hand into the fog.

A latex surgical glove emerges, gripping my hand.

“ Bonjour , Monsieur Leyner. We are very happy to see you. Your article was magnificent.”

“ Merci ,” I say, acknowledging the concordant murmurs of approbation with a crisp bow of the head.

Lorphelin was referring to an article I’d written deploring the fecklessness, physical cowardice, and political disloyalty of the current literary community. Published on the Op-Ed page of the New York Times , the article exhorted artists to stop their incessant whining; to stop crawling on their knees with their hands out, begging for grant money and fellowships; to stop exalting self-marginalization; to emerge from their academic sanctuaries where they huddle like shivering, squinting, runty, sexless, nihilistic mice — to emerge into the intoxicating, palpitating, nutrient-rich sunlight of the marketplace, to intermix with the great people of a great nation, and to be emboldened by the truculent spirit of the populace.

“Mark, over here,” a woman’s voice emerges from the corner.

“Desiree, is that you, babe?”

“It’s me. Listen, why don’t we go somewhere where we can conduct our interview more privately.”

“OK. There’s a diner across the street. I’ll meet you there in ten minutes.”

I turn to say good-bye to Lorphelin.

“ Au revoir , babe. If I’m ever in Orlando …”

Lorphelin stands and salutes me.

“Until Victory!” he says.

* * *

“Miss, I’ll just have a cup of black coffee. Desiree, do you want anything?”

“I’ll have a scoop of vanilla ice cream with cough suppressant whip and a cup of PMS tea.”

The waitress left and Desiree rummaged in her gym bag, extracting a resumé, which she handed me across the table.

“Hmmmmmm, very impressive,” I said, perusing her vita. “Captain of the Ossining High School track team, played ‘ancient instruments’ in the high school orchestra, Student Council President, President of Thespians and Yearbook, National Merit Scholar, combined SAT scores of 1590, attended Princeton University, spent junior year in Papua New Guinea, graduated summa cum laude, attended Yale Law, editor of Law Review, hired right out of law school by Swazy, Cummings and Bass, made full partner in six months, elected president of the American Bar Association at the age of twenty-six, appointed Attorney General of the United States by President Hallux Valgus — a post you left after a year to become a Supreme Court Justice — a position which you in turn resigned after eight months to race Formula One cars in international competition including the Monaco Grand Prix, which you won for three consecutive years … very, very impressive, Desiree.”

“Thank you, Mark.”

“There are a couple of questions I’d like to ask you. It says here that you played ‘ancient instruments’ in the high school orchestra … what exactly are ancient instruments?”

(Desiree seemed unflustered by the question and I made note of her poise in the margin of her resume.)

“When an orchestra performs a piece of music that was written in a certain era, it’s best to perform that piece using coeval, autochthonous instruments, as opposed to modern instruments — that is to say, instruments of that era and region, the instruments for which the music was presumably written. Most high school orchestras can’t afford ancient instruments, but I was quite fortunate in that Ossining High was a particularly well-endowed school, and to give you an example: in my senior year we performed an orchestral piece written in 3000 B.C. by a Mesopotamian composer; I played an instrument which consists of the inflated bladder of an emu, which is either scraped with a bone plectrum or bowed with stiffened flax fibers. It produces an extraordinary plaintive tone quite unlike anything else I’ve ever heard.”

(I found Desiree’s response to be forthright and thoughtful, and again jotted down my evaluation.)

“Desiree, you stepped down as Attorney General after only a year and then stepped down as a Supreme Court Justice after only eight months. Do you think that this exhibits an immature restlessness and inability to honor long-term commitments or do you think that it exhibits a wonderful kind of boundless, nomadic intelligence and creativity that can’t and shouldn’t be constrained by a single vocation?”