The Broom of the System

by David Foster Wallace

  “Lenore!” Mr. Beadsman was calling, looking at his watch again.

  “Lenore?” Lang was saying. “You all right?” Lenore was staring into space.

  The very top of Dr. Jay’s head reappeared at the counter. “Really have to advise in the very strongest possible terms that we leave,” he said through his handkerchief, lifting himself up again. “Really strongly advise it, Lenore.”

  “What’s up?” Candy said. “What’s the noise?”

  “I’m afraid it seems to be poor Norman,” Dr. Jay said. “He is in considerable distress, and is ... having at the rear wall of the whole Building with his ... his stomach. He looked Candy up and down. ”He is demanding, and here I use his words, ‘admission to Ms. Beadsman’s space.’ “

  “Space?” Candy said.

  “Having at?” Lang said.

  Jay turned his head to look up at Lang. “Battering, you might say.”

  Lenore looked up at them.

  “Heat problems,” Peter Abbott said. “Let me just say temperature-problems, for starters, and then let me apologize for not doing my job as good as I maybe should have on this one, I guess. I’m sorry.” He rubbed his hands on his pants. “Like Mr. Sludgeman said to me he said Peter, if you got line trouble, and it’s affecting targets over more than just one circuit, you start to look around for some kinda temperature problem, is what you do if you’re smart.”

  Mr. Beadsman appeared overhead. “Lenore,” he said. “I’ll assume you were unable to hear me calling. Please come. We must talk. This is a family matter.” He threw a bit of a sidelong look at Lang, who stared straight ahead and made as if to tip his hat. “A family matter,” Mr. Beadsman said. “Please come out of there and over here with me immediately.”

  “You the chump be makin’ that nasty food my child like to choke on one time?” Walinda Peahen put her hands on her hips and glared at Mr. Beadsman.

  “My what a perfectly charming negress,” Mr. Beadsman said.

  “Boy, I gonna kill you for that.”

  “Lenore, please note that this is professional advice being given here,” Dr. Jay said from under Mr. Beadsman’s arm. “Really think it would be best to come back another time.” He shifted on his elbows and looked at Walinda Peahen, who was giving Mr. Beadsman perhaps the world’s biggest fish-eye. Mr. Beadsman was looking expectantly at Lenore.

  . “Just a second, please, Dad,” Lenore said, looking at the shoes in her hand. “I’m in the process of quitting.”

  “Family emergency, Lenore.”

  “Sir, Miss Lenore and I were hopin’ to be on a plane to Nugget Bluff, Texas, by suppertime,” Lang said.

  Candy stared at Lenore. “Nugget Bluff, Texas?”

  Mr. Beadsman seemed not to hear. He was looking at Lenore’s wrist. “And what may I ask is on my daughter’s wrist?” he said.

  “Chief!” Sigurd Foamwhistle was calling from the rear of the lobby.

  “Well sir whyn’t you just ask that little dung beetle right back there?” Lang said, pointing at Rick Vigorous, back in the shadow.

  Mr. Beadsman turned. “Mr. Vigorous?” he said. There was a particularly loud rumble, and the marble floor shook a little. Mr. Beadsman looked over at his group. “Foamwhistle!” he yelled. “What’s going on?”

  “See,” Peter Abbott was saying to the women in the cubicle, “the thing you got to remember is that the tunnels are incredibly temperature-sensitive. There’s just few things in this world more temperature-sensitive than a phone tunnel.” He bent and took a crowbar out of his toolbox.

  “Lenore.”

  “ ‘Cause see you got to remember that all the calls in the lines are is just basically lines of heat,” Peter said, hefting the crowbar. “They’re just little lines of a kind of heat going back and forth, is all they really are.” He ran a hand through his bright yellow hair. “So it’s only logical that to get satisfactory service, the tunnels’ve got to be one temperature, and the lines another, and the calls in the lines another.” Peter happened to look over the counter at the Stonecipheco group and Neil Obstat, on his stomach. “Hey buddy!” he yelled. “You wanna just get back from there? What’re you trying to do?” He turned to Walinda. “They’re right over where your tunnel is, ma’am,” he said. “That guy’s trying to get into your tunnel. Who is that guy?”

  “Baby food chemist,” Candy Mandible said.

  “Hey boy you just get on out of here!” Walinda was yelling.

  “Do not yell at my employee,” said Mr. Beadsman.

  “Why don’t you just go and sit on somethin’ sharp, chump?”

  “Well if he gets in there like it looks like he’s tryin’ to, without some trained personnel on hand, he’s gonna be sorry,” Peter Abbott was saying.

  “How come?” Candy asked.

  “Lenore, your behavior is now becoming unacceptable,” Mr. Beadsman said.

  “I’m afraid I’m forced to agree,” came Dr. Jay’s muffled voice from behind the counter.

  Lenore closed her eyes. The lobby thundered.

  “Peter for Christ’s sake how come, ” Candy Mandible said.

  “ ‘Cause according to our data it’s gonna be bitchin’ hot,” Peter said, turning to Candy and looking briefly down into Lenore’s dress. “ ’Cause what I’ve been trying to explain is that it looks like that’s your whole trouble right there. Hot tunnel.”

  “Hot tunnel?”

  “Well yeah,” Peter Abbott said. “See there’s supposed to be special temperature levels in each tunnel. Tunnel’s supposed to be sixty, sixty-five degrees, tops.” He looked around. “Otherwise, see, the heat of the tunnel infects the heat of your calls, and you get what we call call-bleeding into the circuit. Which actually it turns out is what you’ve been having, we think. Mr. Sludgeman told me he’s suspected some kind of bleeding all along, really.”

  “Infection? Bleeding?”

  “Just like a big old cranky nervous system, like I been tellin’ you,” Peter said. He was looking back at Neil Obstat, who along with Alvin Spaniard was trying to pry up a whole section of the lobby floor, which was now revealed not to be real marble at all. “Hey you drips!” Peter yelled. “There’s gonna be trouble!”

  Obstat looked up and over at the cubicle in alarm, but Mr. Beadsman motioned to him that it was all right. Mr. Bloemker was cleaning his glasses on his tie.

  “So that’s all it was?” Candy Mandible said shrilly. “Hot frigging tunnels? That’s why our job’s been biting the big kielbasa for two weeks? The lines are nerves and the nerves are too frigging hot?” She was really mad. “That’s all it is? Heat? I don’t believe it’s just heat.” She looked at Walinda Peahen.

  Peter was still watching the Stonecipheco group. “But see the whole thing’s exactly right for nerves, if they were nerves, is what’s weird,” he said. “Your test cable shows it, too.” He looked critically at the length of dark cable on the counter.

  “Shows what?”

  The rhythm of the rumbling in the lobby walls and floor increased. The wreath of roses abruptly fell off the switchboard wastebasket. Cigarette ashes and part of Mr. Bombardini’s latest note fell on Lenore’s socks. She didn’t see them.

  “Lenore,” said Mr. Beadsman, “I am now officially insisting.”

  Lenore’s eyes stayed closed. She looked as if she was asleep. Mr. Beadsman looked at Dr. Jay. Andy Lang worked on a hangnail.

  Peter Abbott was grinning and shaking his head at Candy and Walinda. “The upshot here is that your particular line tunnel looks like it’s kind of decided it’s a real freakin’ human being or some. thing,” he said. “You want my opinion, this whole thing could get on television real easily.” He looked around at everyone. They stared at him blankly. “You don’t get it, do you?” Peter said. “Look. Your tunnel’s like I said supposed to be around like sixty-some degrees. And instead our test cable shows it’s a perfect ninety-eight point six. You believe that?”

  “Boy what you talkin’ about?” Walinda folded her arms.

 
Lenore opened her eyes.

  “I’m talking about your subpar service is due to your lines are bleeding calls into each other because somehow your tunnel’s ninety-eight point six goddamn degrees,” Peter said. “That’s what I’m talking about.”

  Mr. Beadsman looked at Lenore. Dr. Jay’s head popped up. The lobby positively shook. Lenore was looking up at Wang-Dang Lang:

  “Hey.”

  21

  1990

  /a/

  PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT OF ‘THE PARTNERS WITH GOD CLUB,’ SATURDAY, 11 SEPTEMBER 1990, 8:00 P.M. EASTERN DAYLIGHT TIME. HOSTS: THE REVEREND HART LEE SYKES, AND HIS VERY WELL KNOWN COCKATIEL UGOLINO THE SIGNIFICANT, THROUGH WHOM THE LORD HAS BEEN HEARD PERSONALLY TO SPEAK ON SEVERAL TELEVISED OCCASIONS.

  THE REVEREND HART LEE SYKES: Friends.

  THE PARTNERSHIP SINGERS:. (Personalty directed and accompanied on the xytophone by Mrs. Fanny May Sykes) Friends ...

  REVEREND SYKES: Dear, dear friends.

  UGOLINO THE SIGNIFICANT: God bless everything and everybody! THE PARTNERSHIP SINGERS : Friends ...

  REVEREND SYKES: Friends, what is a partner?

  UGOLINO THE SIGNIFICANT : Friends.

  REVEREND SYKES: Friends, I stand before you tonight to say that a partner is a worker. That a partner is an individual who recognizes that individuals working together are stronger in the service of the Lord than individuals going their own separate, individual ways.

  THE PARTNERSHIP SINGERS: Oh yes, a partner is a worker ... REVEREND SYKES: Friends, a partner takes what is in his hand, and casts it down into the soil, to grow. A partner sows, friends. A partner sows. And friends, who reaps?

  THE PARTNERSHIP SINGERS : Oh yes, a partner is a worker who sows ...

  REVEREND SYKES: We the partners take the seed of faith which is in our hand and sow it in the soil of partnership, and now who reaps?

  THE PARTNERSHIP SINGERS : Who reaps, oh, who reaps ... ? UGOLINO THE SIGNIFICANT : Jesus reaped!

  REVEREND SYKES: That’s right friends we can see together tonight that the one who reaps is none other than Jesus.

  UGOLINO THE SIGNIFICANT: That’s right friends.

  REVEREND SYKES: That’s right: Jesus. And now friends we have this question, to introduce tonight’s food-for-thought segment of our time together tonight. Friends, who is Jesus?

  UGOLINO THE SIGNIFICANT: Who?

  REVEREND SYKES: That’s right friends who is Jesus?

  UGOLINO THE SIGNIFICANT: Who?

  REVEREND SYKES: Who is he?

  UGOLINO THE SIGNIFICANT: I have to do what’s right for me. REVEREND SYKES: Who?

  UGOLINO THE SIGNIFICANT: He is we! We are He!

  THE PARTNERSHIP SINGERS : Oh, we are He and He is we ... REVEREND SYKES: That’s right friends we are Jesus! In a theologically important sense we are Jesus!

  UGOLINO THE SIGNIFICANT: How can this be?

  REVEREND SYKES: Shall I tell you how this can be?

  THE PARTNERSHIP SINGERS : Tell, oh tell us, how all this can be ... REVEREND SYKES: Friends I stand before you tonight to say that it is for no other reason than that we, like Jesus, are partners with God.

  The Partnership Singers begin to hum a pleasing harmony.

  UGOLINO THE SIGNIFICANT : Hart Lee, we are He.

  REVEREND SYKES: You’re so right, little miracle. We are Jesus. We are Jesus because Jesus is a worker. Like us. And a partner. Like us. Can we not see friends that in partnership, and now friends I mean here true partnership, everything comes together?

  UGOLINO THE SIGNIFICANT: God bless everything! Make me come together! Like this!

  REVEREND SYKES: So friends we come to see together once again tonight that the answer ... is partnership.

  UGOLINO THE SIGNIFICANT : I don’t know what you mean by that word. Tell me what you mean by that word.

  REVEREND SYKES: Friends what I mean is nothing less than a miracle.

  THE PARTNERSHIP SINGERS: A miracle ...

  REVEREND SYKES: Friends, whether you choose to become a partner with God by just picking up your telephone and dialing us here at the Partnership Pledge Center at 1-800-PARTNER, and becoming a Lifetime And Beyond Partner with your contributing subscription of five hundred dollars or more, or whether you choose to dial us here at 1- 800-PARTNER and become a Lifetime Partner With God for two hundred and fifty dollars, or a Star Partner for one hundred, or a Personal Friend Of Ugolino Partner for fifty, or yes friends even an equally important Prayer Partner for just twenty dollars, whatever you choose, something will happen. Friends, what will happen?

  UGOLINO THE SIGNIFICANT : Friends, as subscribing members of the Reverend Hart Lee Sykes’s Partners With God Club you can expect the entry of the Almighty Lord Jesus into your own personal life in twenty-four hours or less.

  REVEREND SYKES: That’s exactly right the entry of Jesus into your life. The habitation by Jesus of your own heart. The existence of the Lord Himself inside each of you, as He is inside all of us here at the Partnership Pledge Center studio. What a glorious and miraculous thing! Partnership!

  THE PARTNERSHIP SINGERS: Miracle, glory, partnership ...

  UGOLINO THE SIGNIFICANT: Inside out!

  REVEREND SYKES: What was that, now?

  UGOLINO THE SIGNIFICANT: Let us not forget, friends, that all subscriptions are deductible from love.

  REVEREND SYKES: Were you trying to say just now that the entry of Jesus into an individual’s life will in some theological sense turn that individual inside out?

  UGOLINO THE SIGNIFICANT: Pardon me?

  THE PARTNERSHIP SINGERS : What, oh what, was he trying to say ... ? REVEREND SYKES: Friends, did the acknowledged tweeter of the Lord’s own sound system mean that when Jesus dwells in us, we dwell in Jesus? Can this be what he meant?

  UGOLINO THE SIGNIFICANT: I’m a pretty boy.

  THE PARTNERSHIP SINGERS : Oh, is he not a pretty pretty boy ... ? REVEREND SYKES: But friends this would have the spiritual consequence that all our dreams and wishes and needs and goals and desires of our own lives also become Jesus’s desires. And thus that in true partnership with God, the desires of each individual man, woman and child become the desires of Jesus, in Jesus’s name.

  UGOLINO THE SIGNIFICANT: Women have desires, buster. Don’t think they don’t have desires.

  REVEREND SYKES: Of course women have desires, friends, everyone has desires in their lives, that’s part of the experience of what it is to be human in God’s world. We all have desires, friends. And now we can see that if all us partners work together, in the Lord’s soil, our desires are automatically spiritually transformed into Jesus’s desires, too. UGOLINO THE SIGNIFICANT: Holy cow!

  REVEREND SYKES: A need in us is a need in Jesus. And friends can’t we see together that a need in Jesus is a need automatically, by theological definition, fulfilled and satisfied?

  THE PARTNERSHIP SINGERS: We need to know, why this is so ... REVEREND SYKES: So that a need in a partner with God, a need that exists simultaneously in our Lord Jesus Christ, is a need instantly, completely, satisfied and met?

  UGOLINO THE SIGNIFICANT: You fill me up. You satisfy me like no man did before. I can’t deny it. God.

  THE PARTNERSHIP SINGERS: Can’t deny, that you satisfy ... REVEREND SYKES: Yes friends I stand before you on national prime-time television talking about the satisfaction of your every need. The fulfillment of your every wish. Friends hear me! What I tell you tonight is that if you are a partner with God you are automatically in Jesus, we know that now. You are inside out! Your needs are now Jesus’s needs, and thus you will not go wanting. You will not go wanting. Why is this so? THE PARTNERSHIP SINGERS: Why ... ?

  REVEREND SYKES: Why is this, I say why is this so?

  UGOLINO THE SIGNIFICANT: Because Jesus shall not want!

  REVEREND SYKES: Oh say it again!

  UGOLINO THE SIGNIFICANT: Who’s got the special-wecial book? REVEREND SYKES: Oh say it again!

  UGOLINO THE SIGNIFICANT: Jesus shall not want.

  THE PARTNERSHIP
SINGERS: Amen, Aman, Amen, Aman ... REVEREND SYKES: Amen, and Aman. For here friends is tonight’s “Partners With God Club” food-for-thought spiritual message. It is that Jesus shall not want. Jesus shall not want! There it is.

  UGOLINO THE SIGNIFICANT: Has the little turd learned his lines yet?

  REVEREND SYKES: Friends let us all pause here and listen together and reflect on the implications of such a revelation. That’s right ... THE PARTNERSHIP SINGERS : Hmmmmm ...

  REVEREND SYKES: ... a revelation.

  UGOLINO THE SIGNIFICANT: (Accompanied by the pleasing harmonies of the Partnership Singers)

  Oh, when I’m feelin’ down, down as I can be;

  When there’s a giant shadow, a-fallin’ over me;

  My spirit’s still as strong as steel, my hope you cannot daunt;

  For I stand firm in my belief ... that Jesus shall not want!

  /b/

  “Do you want to hear what I think?” says Mindy Metalman Lang.

  “I am one enormous ear,” says Rick Vigorous.

  “I think you’re just tired, and tense, and understandably upset, and that’s why you’re not being fair, and making up these lies.”

  “And who may I ask has the temerity to allege that I am making up lies,” says Rick Vigorous softly, looking up and away. His face is running with light.

  What is going on is that tonight it is raining, between the moon and the window. It is raining awfully hard. Lines of rainwater run down the window, and the moon shines through the rain and the window and makes the rear wall of the dark bedroom run with reflections. Back against the wall leans Rick Vigorous as he sits up in bed, in his underpants. He looks like he’s running with moonlit rain. So does the bed. The whole room, running with clear white. The colored chalk sketch of Rick and Veronica Vigorous in their Scarsdale yard, the one that’s framed in dark wood and hanging above the bed, seems almost to glow. The television is on, over by the window, but its cold flicker is lost in the moon’s million white trickles.

  “Rick,” Mindy says from the window.