The Fable of Bing

by Tim Sandlin

  At first, she listens to Persephone’s past lives regression show on Centered Soul — Know who you are by knowing who you were. Persephone is guiding a housewife from West Covina back through the sixteenth century. That’s how the woman describes herself — housewife. An old-fashioned term to Rosemary. Homemaker is more politically proper. Or self-employed. The woman died in childbirth in India, Persia, and what is now South Dakota something like thirty incarnations in a row before being born into French royalty. Most of Persephone’s guests have been royalty in some era or another. Rosemary used to laugh with Sarah about that back when Sarah laughed.

  Sarah’s laugh sparkled like a club soda waterfall. “We can’t all have been Empress Josephine.”

  Rosemary said, “Just you and me and sometimes I wonder about you.” That had been a saying their mother used when she was being sarcastic, before she discovered love of mankind and lost love of immediate family.

  The thought of Sarah and their mother causes Rosemary anxiety and she changes the radio station to lite jazz, the sort of music you hear in the dressing room at Bon Marché. The purpose of all-night naked cleaning is to clear the mind — meditation for Americans who can’t sit still — not to dwell on troubles. Rosemary spends enough time obsessing on troubles. Tonight, she wants to lose herself in grout.

  Which is what she does. Rosemary digs out an old toothbrush from before she went electric and a tin of Ajax and attacks her shower. She pictures the germs as little animated blobs exploding into tiny fragments of chaos as her toothbrush scrubs them into eternity. Rosemary the Scourge.

  She Simple Green cleans the back and sides of the toilet. She shines the pipes under the sink. She organizes her hair products by expiration date, throwing out a hundred dollars of deep conditioner. She unscrews her energy efficient fluorescent light bulbs and carefully dusts between the spirals. She Brassos each charm on the charm bracelet she hasn’t worn in fifteen years. She dusts the books, not just the spines but the top and fore edges.

  The music plays. Her digital timepieces change numbers. The stars rotate clockwise across the sky. As Rosemary cleans a sheen of perspiration glistens on her bare skin. The folds where her breasts meet her rib cage are damp. A lock of hair clings to her temple. And she cleans on.

  At dawn, Rosemary checks the GPS to make certain Sarah is asleep, or at least not on the move. Sunrise is often a restless time when the pain crests and breaks. Finally, Rosemary steeps a pot of white tea. She sits at her kitchen table — still nude — cradling the teacup, and she weeps. Cleaning has not given her control. She is still overwhelmed.

  When the tea is no longer hot, Rosemary wipes the tears away with back of her hand, gets up, and showers in her shower stall that smells like bleach.

  17

  The Kupandi Falls Botanical Pavilion may well be the most restful spot in California, although for a spot to be restful it probably shouldn’t compete for the title. Long-needled trees, bubbling, babbling brook, rocks that appear soft to the eye. The very air is comforting. The pavilion itself has the romanticized Buddhist temple look. The only thing missing from Kupandi Falls is a waterfall. Kupandi Riffle might me a more apt name.

  When Bing approaches he finds Rosemary standing next to a concrete column, working the keyboard on her Droid. Her hair is limp, in the humidity. She has a blemish on her forehead. It looks as if she hasn’t slept properly.

  Rosemary stares at Bing and Bing stares at Rosemary’s feet. She’s wearing cloth flats.

  She says, “I waited for you all day yesterday.”

  He says, “I got stuck in decontamination, because of you.”

  “Do you have any concept how creepy that is?”

  Bing is dressed in white. Canvas pants. White shirt that, from the buttons on the left, is obviously to anyone other than Bing made for a woman. He’s barefoot. The only non-white article of clothing is his engineer’s cap.

  He nods toward her phone. “Are you calling someone else, or are you playing a game?”

  She glances down at the phone. The downward glance causes a curl to fall across her face. “I was checking my schedule. My time frame got scrambled when I shuffled appointments to wait for you to show up.”

  Bing removes his hat and brushes hair off his own forehead. Her locks hanging down make him aware of his own. “I don’t fathom schedule.”

  “It’s what I do when I do it.”

  “What do you do when you do it?”

  “I’m a producer for a talk radio network called Centered Soul. You know what radio is?”

  She lost Bing on producer and soul, but he doesn’t go there. He sticks with what he does know. “The box young people listen at, like a phone but not a phone. It makes a hideous sound.”

  “Our network makes beautiful sounds.” Rosemary is instinctively loyal. “We help searchers discover the essence of being from pre-birth to post-death. Our spirit guides connect to the inner soul that vibrates the cosmic web.”

  Bing has no clue. Post-death? Cosmic? “Are you searcher or spirit guide?”

  Rosemary’s neck is hot. She spreads a cloth-covered rubber loop between her fingers and works her hair into a ponytail. “I facilitate. I book the seers on the spirit guide shows, then they initiate the searchers into truth.”

  The words wash by Bing like so much foam. He’s more interested in Rosemary’s skin tone than he is in hearing her speak gobbledygook, which is a word he now knows. He wants to sniff the air under her nostrils.

  Rosemary says, “A wise and gifted teacher created our network. He has raised the universal awareness through syndication to twelve million listeners. If he puts you on the radio, those millions plus more will know your story of isolation and imprisonment. Your recognition factor will skyrocket. It has to. At this second, you may have the lowest profile of anyone in America.”

  A family of two adults and five juveniles are working their way up the paths, downstream a hundred yards. The children squeal and push each other into the water. The mother lectures on the importance of sharing. The father is wearing ear buds.

  Bing wants to move on. “Do you mind if we walk? Up there.” He nods toward the nativescapes where almost no one goes even on busy days.

  They walk, at first side-by-side, then as they leave the creek and the trail narrows, Bing in the lead. The lushness of Kupandi gives way to desert. They come to a sign: BEWARE OF SNAKES. STAY ON TRAIL.

  Rosemary laughs. “You think the snakes can read and they know hikers on the trail are off limits?”

  Bing enjoys her laugh. It’s even better than the sound made by running water. “I do not understand.”

  “The sign. It says the trail is safe and off the trail is dangerous. How can the snakes know the difference?”

  Bing studies the sign. It’s all symbols to him. “I can’t read. I don’t know what the snakes know.”

  Rosemary looks from the sign to Bing. His face is perplexed, as if he’s up against an insoluble mystery. She says, “I never met anyone who can’t read. You hear about it all the time, usually from the First Lady, but it just doesn’t come up in my circle.”

  “There never was need. Dr. Lori takes care of me. Is a recognition factor something to be desired?”

  “My mentor says fame is the only worthwhile temporal attainment in modern civilization. He says wealth is no longer relevant.”

  “I am not familiar with modern civilization.”

  He turns to walk up the trail. Rosemary speaks to his back. “That’s what I’m talking about here. You must see the amazing world outside this zoo. Zoos are artificial environments. Cages inside a cage. San Diego is real, but you’re trapped by terrible limits.”

  She reaches out to grasp his upper arm. He doesn’t flinch. “I do not enjoy limits,” he says.

  “Outside you can discover the amazing things civilization has accomplished. Ten-lane freeways. Malls. Starbucks coffee shops. Surfboards. Machines that spit out money. Have you ever seen a machine spit money?”

  “I’ve seen
money.”

  “You can meet human beings who will teach you and learn from you. You will achieve enlightenment.”

  She turns Bing around and zeros in on eye contact. “There is no enlightenment in staying here.”

  Bing doesn’t enjoy eye contact. He refuses to go there. “Will I get a phone with pictures?”

  Okay. He won’t buy enlightenment. Maybe a phone will pry him loose. “Of course, we’ll buy you a phone. And clothes. Where do you get these clothes?”

  Bing looked down at his ladies blouse and white pants. He’d worn them on purpose today, knowing he might see Rosemary. “Lost and found, mostly. When the cloth is soiled, I swap. Dr. Lori brings my under pants. I was found with this.” He takes off the engineer’s cap to show her. It’s worn gray in the sweatband “What is wrong with my clothing?”

  Where to start? He looks like a kid dressed by his grandmother. “You’ll never know until you see the possibilities, Bing, and this Dr. Lori woman has stolen your possibilities. She is selfish. You understand selfish?”

  Bing scrunches the bridge of his nose. Rosemary thinks it gives him a hint of cuteness.

  “Dr. Lori says that’s what I am when I cry for Cheetos.”

  “Wanting Cheetos isn’t selfish. Wanting to keep others from having Cheetos is. She wants to smother your potential. You must leave this place, with me. We must set your potential free.”

  Bing sneaks a peek into Rosemary’s eyes. Green. Flecked by bits of darker green. Very white whites. Lack of sleep hasn’t lessened her eye allure. Rosemary’s eyes have the depth of moss-covered diamonds under clean water populated by tropical fish. Anyone looking in them would think so.

  He looks down at his hands clutching each other. “I promised Dr. Lori I would never leave the park.”

  Gently, Rosemary takes both Bing’s hands in hers. She rubs his palms with her thumbs. “Dr. Lori doesn’t want what is best for you. You don’t owe her a life spent behind a wall.”

  Bing’s confusion is complete.

  18

  “The boy was raised in the wildlife park, by animals and an insane woman. He’s spent his whole life inside the fence.”

  “Never trust a Nature Boy. I’ve gone far with that policy and I’m not backing off now.”

  Rosemary can never tell for certain when Turk is joking, or when he’s being sarcastic which means he’s pretending to joke but isn’t, or when he really is serious. He always looks serious, behind his ebony desk the size of a Hummer, in his Jay Kos suit, open necked silk shirt, intense blue eyes made even more blue and intense by contacts. Turk has an elk ivory stud in his left ear that she knows he pierced with a cactus thorn. Big honker of a diamond on his right hand pinkie. Turk reminds Rosemary of an Easter Island statue.

  He twirls a Mont Blanc pen between his fingers. Rosemary knows the pen can hypnotize if the person on the far side of the desk isn’t careful. “I’ve seen hundreds of these John the Baptists. Ten years in the wilderness and they come out thinking their prophets.”

  “Bing doesn’t claim to be a prophet. And the zoo isn’t the wilderness. He’s around thousands of people every day. They can’t see him. He’s invisible, or something strange. I can’t understand it.”

  Rosemary isn’t at ease talking to Turk in his office. She’s more comfortable texting, or even in his bed. The office is as big as her Small Home house. It was professionally decorated by a designer who stressed intimidation. One entire wall is lined by photos of Turk standing beside or shaking hands with gurus, spiritualists, religious fanatics, and politicians. A second wall holds racks of CDs of every radio show Turk has ever hosted. The coffee machine in the corner is appropriate for commercial use. Rosemary knows which door leads to a full bathroom and a marble shower. The wall behind the desk is made of smoked glass. It looks out over the San Diego skyline.

  “There’s no artifice with this boy.” She sits forward on the edge of her chair, knees together and hands in lap. “He wouldn’t know what a lie is.”

  “We at Centered Soul thrive on artifice,” Turk says. “Artifice is the oil that keeps society’s engine from blowing a gasket.”

  “Society needs one innocent, so that it can tell the difference between what it is and what it could be.” Rosemary is making this up on the fly. She is desperate. Turk can smell desperation like a wolf on a hamstrung moose, so she’s desperate to hide her desperation. “We need to expose our listeners to extreme innocence. Prove it still exists.”

  Turk twirls his pen, staring at Rosemary, feeling for the hidden agenda. He knows that every person who wants something from him comes with a hidden agenda. “Can the monkey prove this staggering level of naiveté?”

  “He’s not interested in proving anything. Bing doesn’t want publicity.”

  “Everyone wants publicity. Shunning publicity is nothing but a dishonest way to get it.”

  “What makes Bing ideal for C.S. is that he can heal the afflicted. I saw him bring a man back from death.”

  Turk’s eyes flicker, then close down on himself. His is an evolved consciousness beyond emotional arousal. “Do you know how many bozos come in here claiming they can heal the sick? Even I can do it, if I choose to. Any fakir can use hypnosis and hysteria.”

  “But I saw him. The man was bitten by a coral snake. He was face down in the lake. He couldn’t have been saved by hypnosis. The guy was either in a coma or dead. I’m fairly certain he was dead.”

  Turk twirls the expensive pen between his fingers, in and out, walking it through the knuckles like Bing and the caterpillar. Then he eases it up and spins it around the manicured fingertips.

  “Making the lame walk and the blind see are revival circuit stunts. They don’t translate to radio. Nobody buys faith healing they can’t see these days.”

  “What if we had him perform a miracle? Live. We could line up witnesses.”

  Turk clicks his pen in and out. In and out. The tip appearing and disappearing like a phallic symbol. He stares. Rosemary knows they’ve come to the point where she can go flustered and blow it, or she can prove herself worthy. Proving herself worthy to Turk is important to her. The most important professional goal she aspires to. She meets his stare, head-on.

  Turk stops clicking. “This is about your sister. What’s her name?”

  “Sarah.”

  “You think monkey boy can save your sister Sarah.”

  Rosemary’s hand rises to her hair. She blinks quickly, three times. “No. No. It’s about the show. The network.”

  “Rosemary, we both know you took this job to put yourself in the position of finding a miracle cure.”

  “I took the job to learn from you.”

  Turk doesn’t speak. He doesn’t have to. There’s no call to hammer her with words when waiting will do. He can wait all day.

  “Okay.” Rosemary breaks. “I admit I’m interested to see what he can do for Sarah, but most primarily, I mean, primarily, my first thought is for you, Turk. You and the enlightenment of our listeners. I think this boy can raise the self-awareness of our audience. That’s the point.”

  Turk tosses the pen onto his desk. The meeting is over. “He can have six minutes with Sister Starshine.”

  “That’s not enough time for a miracle.”

  “Six minutes, Rosemary. Don’t push your luck.”

  19

  Dr. Lori washes Bing’s hair. Bing perches on a stool and leans forward over a square, galvanized tub originally meant for delousing. Dr. Lori holds a green hose with a nozzle that adjusts for spraying, spritzing, or hard streaming cold water, which, coming from an Escondido spigot, isn’t really cold. More luke cold. Bing enjoys the water, but he doesn’t like Dr. Lori’s fingers digging into his scalp, working up a lather that runs down his forehead and gets into his eyes.

  He cries out. “Owww!”

  “Be still.”

  “You’re stinging me.”

  “It wouldn’t sting if you’d close your eyes.”

  “You’re getting gobbledygook in
my ears.”

  “What?”

  Bing shuts up. When he was a small boy he used to like Dr. Lori washing his head. It was almost the only time he touched a human person. Dr. Lori wasn’t much of a toucher. She cut his finger and toenails, and hair. That was it. For Bing, touch meant losing a part of himself. Over the years, he developed a deep aversion to touch, especially his head. Even with Dr. Lori, the overwhelming urge when she touches his head is to bite her hand off.

  “Here.” Dr. Lori hands him the hose. “Rinse.” She goes to the canvas bag that she carries everywhere so she won’t have to choose between paper and plastic. “They had an underwear sale at Costco. I bought you a three-pack.”

  Bing speaks through running water so his voice sounds gurgly. “Do they have colors and stripes?”

  “Of course not. You wear white undergarments. You’ve always worn white. What makes you think it comes in colors?”

  Bing turns his head so the water is running over his right ear. He likes the sound. “I’ve seen it sticking up above boys’ trousers on field trips. I thought it was a belt, but it’s visible-colored undershorts.”

  She tosses the plastic wrapped three-pack at Bing. He misses the catch and it drops into the sink.

  Dr. Lori says, “I better not ever see you flaunting your underwear.”

  Bing fishes out the pack. Tight, white boxers. Crack riders. “I want colors.”

  “You’ll wear what I tell you to wear.”

  Bing doesn’t like this. “You’re stealing my possibilities.”

  Dr. Lori goes on high alert. She knows every phrase Bing is likely to use because she taught him all he knows.

  “Did that reprobate tramp tell you to say that?”

  The moment has come to lie to Dr. Lori. “No.”

  “You are lying to me.”

  He knew he wouldn’t get away with it. “She said it that first day, before decontamination,” which is also a lie, but not quite so direct as No when the answer should be Yes.