by Adam Felber
This was fascinating, yes. But we made some small sounds anyway, in the hope that Dr. Schrödinger might offer us the rest of the sandwich. Messy though it was, there was still a fairly sizable piece of meat in there….
“Opportunities found or missed by a matter of seconds, random environmental factors, someone’s full bladder or empty stomach—these are often all things that make an event happen the way it does, when you look back on it. Let me give you …” said the doctor, reaching for his plate. Our eyes lit up, salivary glands pumping double-time.
“… an example,” finished the doctor. And he plucked the largest slice of pastrami from the sandwich, lifted it delicately, and with a flick of his wrist tossed it away.
We watched it as it flew, a red and tasty deli morsel, glistening in the afternoon sun. It described a high and slightly wobbly parabola because of questionable aerodynamics, its long, flat sides meeting minuscule bits of air resistance before flopping and folding back and flopping anew. It sailed over the railing of the little sidewalk café, still rising, reached its zenith somewhere over the sidewalk, and then descended precipitously, completing the arc, until it came to rest with a moist, audible thwack in the street just beyond the curb.
Part of us was sitting in breathless anticipation, rapt, wondering how the old sage was going to use this sudden missile of meat as an illustration of life’s vagaries.
And another part of us, the hungry part, was thinking: Fuck Dr. Schrödinger.
Night is falling again, they’ve been trapped like animals inside, but Grant thinks that things could certainly be worse. It’s Saturday, so nobody’s too concerned about work. Not that anybody is actually concerned about work anyway, thinks Grant. They all are doing very temporary things (Johnny and Arlene are actually temps, in fact), and their lives have nothing to do with their work. Except Grant, of course, who truly enjoys his job in web design and programming, can see how he might be embarking on an exciting and increasingly lucrative career, and feels unaccountably guilty about the whole thing, as though his peers might bust him at any moment for being Insufficiently Disaffected.
Several times now, Johnny has gone outside. Sometimes, as the pilgrims keep requesting, he plays his guitar, sings, and casts an otherworldly, emotionally cathartic spell upon his friends and the assembled crowd. And sometimes he just goes out there and bullshits with people, seeming not to distinguish between people he knows and strangers. His conversation is elliptical and weird (or, to Grant, who knows him, more elliptical and weirder) and often unintentionally insulting, and this seems to hold the number of campers down to a reasonable throng.
The sun is setting now, and Grant is hanging with Johnny. The ladies have gone upstairs with Johnny’s grandmother: It’s going to be their second night at Casa Decaté, and they’ve decided to shower and then accept the older woman’s invitation to raid her staggeringly large and diverse wardrobe. Girlish laughter tumbles down the stairs occasionally, making Johnny smile and Grant’s head fill maddeningly with rounded, pink shapes.
“Grant,” says Johnny suddenly, “what scares you?”
Johnny’s been asking Grant these vintage Breakfast Club questions all evening. At first Grant was answering glibly, but Johnny’s sense of humor isn’t what it was a few days ago, and Grant started to get the feeling he was only entertaining himself. So now he tries to answer as honestly as possible, reasoning that this is what Johnny wants and there’s nothing like free therapy anyway.
“Oh, I dunno, Johnny. Everything, I guess. I mean, I’m scared of more things than you are, that’s for sure. But you know that.”
“Tell me specifically. Pleeeeeaase …”
“Okay. Hmm. Anything that’s not logical, I guess. Relationships, loneliness, sex, attraction, gambling … I’m not being specific enough, am I?”
“Nuh-uh.”
“Sorry, John-man. Well, I’m scared of dying, of course. And even more, I’m scared of something bad happening to my brain and living, you know, without being able to think straight. So head injuries are a biggie with me. And I’m afraid of insects of all kinds except possibly bees, because for some reason I think they’re kinda cute. Um, let’s see…. Knives, subway platforms, terrorists, killer viruses, losing my teeth. Lots more. But …” Grant pauses, figuring, Why not? It’ll feel brave at least. “… mostly, lately, I’m afraid of Deb. You know … finally making the, um, move. I’m afraid she’ll sleep with me but that’ll be it, I’m afraid she won’t but that’ll make things weird between us, I’m afraid she’ll fall in love with me and I’ll be disappointed or insanely, psychotically jealous or something. I’m afraid of losing the same desperate, obsessive longing that’s making me miserable, if that makes any sense.”
“No, that doesn’t make any sense,” says Johnny benignly.
“The fuck it doesn’t!” yells Grant. “It makes perfect sense, ya dink!”
“Nope.”
“It does! That’s the way love works when you’re spineless and unsuccessful. You exist in a perpetual state of exquisite torture over the hell of your ‘just friends’ status, you complain to your buddies about it, you try to psych yourself up to make some kind of move and cut through the terror that paralyzes you, you look for something, anything, some event that will break the perfect equilibrium between the attraction of your love and the repulsion of your fear that holds you in stasis, and then …”
There’s a pause. Grant breathes deeply, consciously, and finally hears Johnny echo, “And then?”
“And I don’t know what comes after that,” says Grant, finally. “Hence the fear.”
Johnny’s opinion of this doesn’t need to be spoken; even before the current weirdness, he was always the kind of guy who did things, got the cards on the table, moved the ball downfield, etc. Grant sits there contemplatively, thinking that perhaps the events of the last day have changed the equilibrium a bit, put him on a footing where he’ll be able to see Deb and the situation a bit more objectively and finally move things ahead, a New Grant now in effect.
“Hello? Anyone for Scrabble?” says Johnny’s grandmother. Grant looks up and sees the three women on the stairway, catches sight of what Deborah has chosen to wear, and realizes that the “New Grant” exists in precisely the same way as “Grant the Home Run King” and “Grant the Galactic Hero.”
It’s late at night, and the President of Montana (Back When That Actually Meant Something) sits in the passenger seat of yet another big rig, sharing another companionable silence with yet another scraggly-looking trucker in a baseball cap, heading east, always east, on I-90 (sometimes I-80).
The PoM(BWTAMS) is feeling increasingly secure, too. He’s still a fugitive, of course, but as he gets farther and farther away from Montana, there’s less and less in the news about him and the continuing standoff. More important, there are fewer and fewer images of him on the news. Which is good for two reasons: He’s less likely to be arrested, yes, but he also doesn’t have to look at that picture anymore, which is not his best photograph and makes him look a little, well, goofy.
So things are good. In fact—they’re great. Ever since that gun went off, the sound that the President thought was meant for him, he’s been feeling terrific, as though he’s really escaped the web of angry paranoia he’d created around himself and his wife (whose presence here would make things perfect).
So the journey’s been one of discovery rather than heedless flight. He hasn’t behaved like a fugitive at all; he’s been taking in the sights, some official and some serendipitous, and they’ve all been worthwhile and seemed somehow connected:
In a truckstop diner in the Black Hills, he saw an old man nursing a baby while the child’s mother cried into a cellphone.
Fifty miles down the road from there, he visited a front-yard museum: dinosaurs sculpted from old automobile parts. One of the plaques read, “Ankylosaurus: Early Cretaceous Period. Its spiny plates and clublike tail kept this gentle herbivore safe from all comers. ’75 Honda Civic, ’82 Chevy, variou
s ACDelco accessories.”
Near St. Paul, a couple offered to sell him a videotape of the two of them having sex. “We’re Amateurs!” exclaimed the wife proudly. The President liked that so much he bought the tape, even though he had no intention of watching it. He then promised to visit their website.
In Wisconsin, he attended a funeral for an old woman. He never actually claimed to be a relative, but he held several people while they cried, holding them in his big, fleshy arms, saying things like “She loved you, too,” and “I can’t believe she’s gone, either.”
Chicago was the first major city he’d been in for quite a while. He spent most of his time inside a radio station’s offices on the touristy Navy Pier. The view of Lake Michigan was spectacular, and as long as he toted around a vacuum he’d found, he was welcomed by all. Friday morning was particularly great—“Bagels are here!” one of his new friends told him, heading toward the communal kitchen. There were indeed free bagels.
The trucker who took him through Indiana and Ohio and was in no hurry had an expanded back cab with a home theater, “complete with satellite speakers, Dolby 5.1 up to spec, and everything.” Nights, they watched Enter the Dragon, The Empire Strikes Back, Casablanca, The Matrix, Beverly Hills Cop, and, oddly enough, Sense and Sensibility, which made the trucker cry. The President loved them all, especially The Matrix, which seemed to validate both his paranoia and his newfound optimism.
Outside of Akron, there were signs advertising “The World’s Largest Sweater,” and he convinced the trucker to visit the site, which they did. It was.
Now, crossing Pennsylvania, the President of Montana looks ahead to the end of the road. Literally the end of this particular road. He misses his wife, can’t call her for security reasons, and hopes she remembers their plan.
You should realize that Deborah Johnstone did not choose her outfit to drive Grant insane, though she does enjoy the effect it has.
Deborah, who likes to dress up and adores Johnny’s grandmother, felt especially honored to be let, along with Arlene, into the old woman’s trove. Together, the three women spent a hilarious half-hour selecting their “looks,” Johnny’s grandmother insisting on full vintage evening wear. They devoted the most time to choosing and fitting Arlene’s outfit.
As they descend the stairs, despite the perfect fit of the strapless, spangly black gown, her not-bad-when-you-really-think-about-it figure, and good makeup, Arlene looks oppressed by her outfit. It’s not that Arlene’s unpretty, it’s just that she’s never been comfortable with the whole Woman thing; she’s pretty sure that, whatever Feminine Wiles are, she doesn’t have them. She doesn’t know how to Slink. Her eyes don’t Bat. She finds figure-conscious clothes and exotic lingerie attractive, but it would never occur to her that her own body might be a good place to put that stuff. Watching Arlene making her way down the stairs, Deborah smiles at her and thinks that her friend really is pretty—a photograph of Arlene taken now would look great, as long as you blurred the slightly pained and embarrassed expression on her face.
Leonora Decaté is a different story entirely. She comes down the stairs with a lifetime of exuberant confidence in tow. Her outfit, though riotously colored and more fit for grand opera than Scrabble, couldn’t possibly outshine her and doesn’t seem to be trying. Her ridiculously plumed headdress brushes the ceiling, and she uses the stairway expertly, as though it were a set from an MGM musical, her hips turned sideways so that one leg crosses over the other, showgirl-style, as she descends. If age has had any effect on Leonora, it’s made her more playful, which is why, thinks Deborah, she can date uniformed men twenty years her junior.
Deborah brings up the rear in a silky burgundy gown, seemingly ripped right from the pages of a 1940s crime novella—that part where the PI’s door flies open, a woman enters, and a host of tortured purple metaphors are loosed upon the world. Deb loves costume, and the costume seems to feel the same way about her. The low neck swoops in from the right shoulder, crosses over the swoop from the left, and gathers proprietarily at her right hip, clinging for dear life as Deborah’s body flings itself in various directions with each step.
Deborah Johnstone is just naturally good at wearing things, Grant knows. She doesn’t try to make her every move a symphony of elegant seduction, she doesn’t mean to dangle her torso luxuriously over the board as she selects her first tile, she doesn’t intend to stretch back languidly in a way that sets every nerve in Grant’s body on edge.
But she is aware that this is precisely what’s happening, she’s conscious of the effect she’s having (which is, Arlene suspects, what these elusive Wiles are all about). And for the first time, as Deb looks toward the end of the Scrabble game and the night beyond it and the awkward and beloved friend whom she’ll doubtless be rooming with for the second straight night, she thinks, offhandedly, Why not?
To her surprise, her mind actually has a couple of pretty good, if not completely coherent, answers to that question.
The sun had already set when we gave up and paid the bill, even though we hadn’t eaten anything. It was pretty clear that Dr. Schrödinger wasn’t going to do it, probably didn’t have any cash, and generally couldn’t be bothered. He was still talking, in fact, and he showed no sign of letting up.
“I’ve made some mistakes,” he said, “but none so large, I now realize, as my recent anger at people’s fascination with ‘my’ cat. What I hadn’t realized at the time is that there is a cat, and there is a box.”
We were flabbergasted. Why, after his endless and angry denials, was the doctor suddenly changing his tune?
“Well, not really,” said the doctor, not realizing how close this statement brought him to being punched in the mush. We controlled ourselves and waited. “But in some ways, yes. People name things. They name things constantly. They can’t help themselves—anything that lasts more than a few minutes, any phenomenon, real or imagined, even parts of pieces of sections of things, get names. Recurring things. Wind patterns. Things that sometimes aren’t even things unto themselves suddenly get promoted to proper nouns.
“And the act of naming really does change a thing. It’s impossible to say whether the things really change, in a Heisenbergian sense, or whether it’s our perception of things that changes. In fact, that distinction turns out not to matter all that much. Consider my sandwich,” he said, gesturing to his plate. We didn’t have to consider it—we knew the last piece of meat was currently residing in the street, about fifteen feet from its former, more desirable address.
“My sandwich,” continued the doctor, “was easy to order. I simply asked for a ‘Reuben.’ Note I did not ask for a ‘pastrami-and-sauerkraut sandwich on pumpernickel.’ I wouldn’t think to order such a thing. I couldn’t imagine that it would taste good. But when I ask for a ‘Reuben,’ I am ordering something with a name, something that implies New York delicatessens with tubs of pickles and clever Jewish television writers gathered around linoleum-topped tables. The name, you see, identifies the thing much more than its constituent ingredients. I am ordering a certain kind of historical experience, not a mere plate of sustenance.”
Dr. S.’s point seemed particularly obvious to us, for we’d been label-conscious for quite a few years and already knew that things like “blind taste tests” were utterly beside the point as far as being a professional consumer was concerned. But he seemed to be enjoying himself so much that we let him continue.
“So what I didn’t realize is that when I came up with the ‘cat’ metaphor for quantum theory, I didn’t just create a wonderful objection to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. I also, in a sense, created a cat. ‘Schrödinger’s Cat,’ to be precise. And if I’m willing to accept the indisputable importance of an observer when it comes to determining whether a subatomic particle has mass or wavelength, I suppose I need to accept the importance and effect of other human observations—even if they’re based on confusion or misunderstanding.”
As we got up, followed by the still-chatterin
g scientist, we wondered, Is Dr. Schrödinger saying that reality itself is a matter of consent, that we create the world through naming, like the gods of the Australian Aborigines?
“I’m saying,” said Dr. Schrödinger, “that reality itself is a matter of consent, that we create the world through naming, like the gods of the Australian Aborigines.”
So where’s the cat? we thought as we strolled away from the café. Is that “Werner”?
“The actual act of naming is only the beginning, though. Or, to be fair, the middle …”
Behind us, now glistening in the streetlamp’s light, lay a fairly robust-sized piece of pastrami. It was, we couldn’t help observing, no longer part of a Reuben. And it didn’t seem to be part of any larger Machine, either.
Dear Diary,
Back in Central Square, where I should be. A good day—food was plentiful and robots were scarce, for the most part. I found one of those new “Humdingers” on a table near Au Bon Paint), and I’ll be selling it tomorrow. Why would I want it—what’s a homeless old lady going to do with “the biggest molecule on earth”? Why would anyone want it? I’m pretty sure that slogan isn’t true anyway—aren’t crystals and other silicates technically huge molecules? I forget, they may just be strongly bonded … substances. Whatever, as the skate rats say.
Crazy Bernie’s been hovering around, drinking up the courage to come over here. Not that yrs truly’s necessarily going to open up the Gates of Heaven for him tonight. Ten years ago we might have—well, truth to tell, ten years ago we did. But that wasn’t anything for either of us to write home about, especially since we don’t have homes.
A warm body could do me some good, though, and Bernie’s pretty harmless as schizophrenics go. The fact that a loon like me calls him “Crazy Bernie” ought to tell you something. Has anyone else noticed that schizos always have crooked johnsons? That’s got to mean something—I’d look into it, but homeless ex-whores just don’t get the big research grants these days.