Mark Leyner - Et Tu, Babe

“Eighty-six him, babe. No freelancing means no freelancing, no exceptions. And impound the sod.”

“OK, Mr. Leyner.”

“Joe, any paternity suits this week?”

“Only two, Mr. Leyner. Both women are members of the Ecuadorian Olympic Equestrian Team, and their attorney’s hired a forensic DNA-fingerprinting laboratory to provide incontestable evidence that you’re the father.”

“As soon as the meeting’s over, Joe, I want you to Fed Ex the director of the lab a Team Leyner belt buckle and insignia magnet, and an official Team Leyner trivet. OK, babe?”

“Consider it done, Mr. Leyner.”

“Anything else, Joe?”

“Two more things. While you were away, a Japanese industrialist named Takeshi Oshiro, who owns the Uchiyama Paper Manufacturing Company, paid $19,250 in a public auction at Sotheby’s for one of your discarded deodorant sticks with a stray armpit hair and — this is such a weird coincidence — he’s hired the same DNA-fingerprinting lab to confirm that it’s your armpit hair, and if it’s not, Sotheby’s has agreed to refund the 19K and change. And lastly, I just wanted to remind you that this coming Friday they’re shooting the commercial for Becker Surgical Devices and they need you on the set at about ten A.M.”

“Thanks, Joe, good job. Desiree, you’re up.”

“Well, first of all, I’m happy to report that we’re close to completing a comprehensive demographic analysis of your readership, which means that now we’ll be able to develop software that can alter your texts depending on which regional or even local audiences we’re targeting. For instance, in a forthcoming novel, you have a giant who eats postmenopausal crossing guards. OK — we now know that you have a rabidly enthusiastic following in the rural northwest, but in the rural northwest they don’t have crossing guards because generally kids out there don’t walk to school. So with the new demographically based software, the computer can flag something like that and change the postmenopausal crossing guards to postmenopausal school-bus drivers or whatever is appropriate for the rural northwest edition. It’s yet another way of making readers feel as if you’re writing just for them.”

“That’s really cool.”

“It’s also a pleasure to report that the initial response to the 1-800-T-LEYNER number has been just fabulous.”

“What’s the deal on that, Dez? You get a choice of different messages when you call or what?”

“A fan calls 1-800-T-LEYNER and — using a touch-tone phone, of course — dials 1 to hear an excerpt from your upcoming book, 2 for your most intimate thoughts about weight-lifting, 3 for dating advice, 4 for an up-close-and-personal tidbit from Arleen, and 5 for a cute anecdote about Carmella. And the messages change every week. It’s $2 for the first minute, $1 for every additional minute. Fans under 18, please don’t call without your parents’ permission.”

“Excellent stuff, Desiree.”

“Mark, based on the notes that you made before you left for D.C., we’ve worked up a draft of the press release you want put out, and I just want to make sure that we’re all in synch here. You basically want to inform book critics that, in the event of a bad review, Team Leyner will not be held responsible for the wrath of fans who see you as the articulator of their vision and who see your detractors as a threat to their way of life. Consequently, Team Leyner cannot be held responsible for the physical safety of the reviewer and his or her family, in the event of an unfavorable notice. Is that about the gist of it?”

“That’s it exactly.”

“And you want this put out in general release?”

“I want this sent directly to our friends themselves — to the Lehmann-Haupts and the Kakutanis, to the Yardleys, to the Wolcotts and the Atlases and the Raffertys … understood?”

“Understood.”

“I wane everyone here to remember something. Team Leyner plays hardball. If anyone — and I don’t care who it is, I don’t care if it’s my own grandmother — if anyone attempts to impede the fulfillment of our destiny, we fuck with them big time.”

“We fuck with them big time,” everyone chorused.

“Anything else, Dez?”

“This is somewhat of a corollary to what we’ve just been discussing. Joe and I have been analyzing a trend we see developing in media coverage of Team Leyner, and we’ve come up with a means of countering what we perceive as an incipient problem that could become dangerous unless we act decisively now. There are, increasingly, those in the media who would twist the work we’re doing in our writers’ vocational counseling intensives into something sinister. Scurrilous rumors abound about your supposed steroid use, your messianic fantasies, your weakness for Hispanic women … Joe and I propose a public relations program designed to resuscitate your image in the media. We propose that you engage in a well-publicized personal campaign to help agoraphobic housewives with their poetry. We see two options here: video teleconferencing, which enables you to counsel agoraphobic poetesses wherever they live without having to leave headquarters — signals are relayed through a satellite over the Yukon to a ground station in northern Michigan, to a satellite over the West Indies and finally to a fiber-optic link in Atlanta. Or you can simply visit the women at their homes. What do you think?”

“I think I’ll make housecalls.”

“You like the proposal?”

“Desiree, Joe — it’s top-notch work. I’m proud of you both.”

“Thanks, Mark.”

“Thanks, Mr. Leyner.”

“Baby Lago, why don’t we finish up with your concert report.”

“OK. Well, we have Libidinal Hegemony at Maxwell’s tonight. And tomorrow night at CBGB’s, there’s Fried Wind and Dick Cheez. And all three bands are comping you and anyone from Team Leyner who wants to go.”

“Thanks, sweetie. Folks, it’s getting late. I’m sure you’re all tired. So I’d like to just say good night, thanks again for all the hard work you’re doing, and … it’s great to be back.”

“Mr. Leyner …”

“Yes, Joe?”

“Mr. Leyner, do you have a few minutes? There’s something kinda private I’d like to talk to you about.”

“Sure, babe. Why don’t you meet me at The Triggerman in about ten minutes. We’ll have a few drinks and talk.”

The Triggerman is a bar/pistol range that we opened for Team Leyner staffers so that, at the end of a long day, there’d be a place “on-campus” where they could have a few drinks and shoot firearms — a place for them to blow off steam. I like to come down to The Triggerman after a late night meeting to unwind and maybe chat with some of the lower-echelon employees with whom I don’t normally interact.

I’d just emptied a magazine of 125-grain jacketed hollow-points from my six-and-a-half-inch.44 Auto Mag, when I noticed Joe on the bar stool next to mine.

“Mr. Leyner, I’m in love.”

“Hold on a second, Joe,” I said, removing my ear protectors. “You’re what?”

“I’m in love.”

I ordered two triple Chivases and another fifteen rounds of hollowpoints.

“In love with whom, babe?”

“Mr. Leyner, I’m in love with Desiree. Y’know, we’ve been working really closely together on that press release for the book critics and on the PR program and … I just fell totally in love with her. And the trouble is that I know she doesn’t feel the same way about me. I mean she’s such an incredibly beautiful woman, and I … well, I’m not trying to be self-deprecating, but I’m not like traditionally handsome. And this unrequited stuff makes me feel like a bit of an A-hole.”

Joe will not say the word asshole . He says, instead, “A-hole.” Similarly, he will not utter the epithet douche-bag , preferring the more delicate “D-bag.” “Go develop E of the S, you FS-munching MG-head” is “Go develop elephantiasis of the scrotum, you foreskin-munching Merv Griffin — head”—invective overheard when a careless tailor accidentally pinned one of Joe’s flippers to his inseam while fitting him for a Team Leyner soft ball uniform.