by Tom De Haven
A manager is a manager, Ceil knows, and it really shouldn’t matter what she manages, but a nursing home just doesn’t have quite the zest of a cathouse.
When the elevator operator announces, “Forty-seventh floor,” Ceil is surprised to discover that it is also the destination of the four men sharing the car with her. An attractive slender woman with piled white hair and dressed in a royal blue dress stands waiting in the corridor. She holds a clipboard. Behind her on the wall, to the right of the entrance to a reception area, Ceil can see where the name of a former tenant—company name and logo limned ghostly by adhesive—once was fastened. There is no signage for a current occupant.
The woman presents a formal smile and pulls open the glass door by its tubular handle. “Gentlemen,” she says, “go right in, please.” Is that a brogue Ceil hears? The woman halts her with an expression both mild and despotic. Ceil takes a breath and holds it. “Mrs. Stickowski? Would you mind coming with me?” Leading Ceil down the corridor, she adds over a shoulder, “I’m Helen O’Shea, Mr. Luthor’s personal assistant.”
Ceil Stickowski nods, having already noted two things: first, Helen O’Shea hesitated ever so slightly before saying “personal assistant,” as if not entirely sure that’s what she is; and second, Mrs. O’Shea has a flat fanny. And no hips to speak of. And her ankles are thick. All right, that makes four things. Ceil doesn’t like the woman at all.
At the end of the corridor Mrs. O’Shea turns left and brings Ceil to an unmarked door. She knocks once and without waiting opens it and ushers Ceil inside.
Besides Lex Luthor, there are several other men in the office—at a table, on a sofa—but Ceil registers only their presence, nothing else. Her attention is drawn to and monopolized by her generous benefactor. Ceil expected to detect some physical evidence of the strain he must have suffered over the last month, was afraid his mood and demeanor would in some way reflect the bitterness he has to be feeling about it all now. But no. Mr. Luthor seems relaxed and cheerful. And if Ceil is not mistaken, he’s spent some time recently under a sunlamp: his face—his entire head—is tanned to an agreeable tawny bronze.
Hands clasped behind his back, Lex is standing at a picture window that looks into the conference room next door. The men Ceil came up with in the elevator are seated in there now at a long mahogany table with another half dozen men of identical mien. Each is reading through his own legal-looking document or signing it with a pen that must’ve cost a hundred dollars. The window, Ceil assumes, is a mirror on the conference-room side. Thanks to Herman she knows about such things.
“Mr. Luthor,” says the awful Mrs. O’Shea, “I’ve brought—”
“Ceil!” he exclaims. “Wonderful to see you again!”
He makes her feel as alive as a young animal. Give her a gun, a club, a pair of scissors, and gladly she will pick off whomever he says. Herman was so lucky!
“It’s good to see you again, sir.”
Beaming, he walks across the office with a rhythmic stride. She thinks he might greet her with a hug but he does not. He waits for her to put out a hand—because that’s what a gentleman does—and then he grips it in both of his. “Thank you for coming.”
“I’m only too glad.” She hesitates, not certain whether she ought to make any reference to his recent troubles. But finally she decides it would be rude not to. “Congratulations on how everything has … worked out.” Was that the wrong thing to say—congratulations?
“Thank you, Ceil. But it’s all in the past—as though it happened years ago.”
She can’t help being surprised. He’s so resilient! “Well, I’m not voting for La Guardia on Tuesday, I can promise you that.”
He laughs. “That’s very loyal of you.” Then he says, “Excuse me for a moment,” already turning to Mrs. O’Shea stationed alongside of the door. “Mrs. O, would you go and collect those confidentiality statements? And make sure they’re all properly initialed throughout and signed.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And Mrs. O? After you’ve done that, we’ll be ready to serve cocktails.”
She nods curtly and exits.
Taking Ceil by the hand, Lex conducts her across the office, a huge space carpeted in dark green spongy broadloom. In the carpeting are the impressions where a long desk and several bookcases once stood. On the walls are the outlines of missing paintings or framed photographs. “I want to introduce you to some associates,” says Lex.
Three men who seem all of an age—late twenties, early thirties—are huddled around a solid heavy table littered with pads of paper, squares of oak tag, pencils, black crayons, alphabet stencils, brushes, and bottles of India ink. There are half-eaten hamburger sandwiches, too, and cardboard coffee containers. Mounted on the ledge of an easel standing catercorner to the table is a large poster that reads: INTRODUCING … THE MARVEL OF 1937! An area below the press type is ridged and smeared with rubber cement and flecked with bits of paper where a picture was pasted on and then removed.
The men look exhausted, ashen, near collapse, and their good clothing is disheveled and wrinkled, speckled with coffee and ketchup and mustard and ink stains. Shirtsleeves rolled up, collars open, neckties unknotted or missing. Their suit coats are draped over the backs of their chairs. What strikes Ceil is the absence of smoke in the air and filled ashtrays, cigarette packets and books of matches. The picture—Men Working Under A Deadline—seems incomplete without those things.
Lex introduces her to the men, but Ceil is so engrossed in registering their haggard faces (and also in trying to read, upside down, some of the stenciled lettering on the oak-tag boards) that she doesn’t catch their names. She does, however, hear Lex explain to her that the “fellows” were employed formerly by the Young and Rubicam advertising agency as, respectively, chief copywriter, chief copy tester, and the executive in charge of market research. “But I convinced them,” he says, “to come work for me.”
The men, Ceil thinks, don’t seem at all pleased by their new situation.
“And of course you know Paulie Scaffa,” says Lex.
He is sitting with another man, a small olive-skinned man, on the sofa off in a far corner and partly concealed behind a stack of doorstep milk boxes—well, Ceil guesses they’re not really milk boxes, but that’s what they look like.
“Paulie,” she says, hearing the coolness in her voice. “How are you?” She will never forgive him for not visiting poor Herman when he was so ill. Simple human kindness, is that so hard to muster? The big baboon. He certainly hasn’t learned anything from Mr. Luthor’s example, has he?
“Nice seeing you again, Ceil.”
She could swat Paulie when he doesn’t so much as get up from his seat.
But at least his companion shows some manners. When Lex says, “And this is Caesar Colluzo, my chief engineer and bottle washer,” the little man promptly stands and bows his head. Then he sits back down and refolds his arms across his chest.
“Ceil, won’t you take a seat?”
“Thank you, Mr. Luthor,” she says as he steers a roller chair around behind her.
“Now, Ceil, I asked you here because I need your help.”
“Mine?” She lays a hand flat on her chest above the hivelike swellings of her bosom. “Certainly I’ll do my best, but …” She feels lightheaded. She will fail. Disappoint him. Oh dear God.
“I’m going to show you something, and you have to promise you won’t say a word about it to anyone.”
“Of course. You can trust me, Mr. Luthor.”
“I know that.” He pats her on the shoulder like Daddy used to do whenever she’d bring home a good report card. “Paulie?”
Immediately Paulie Scaffa gets up from the couch. Lifting one of those milk-box-things by a leather handle on its lid, he conveys it across the office. The box doesn’t appear to be heavy. The trio of advertising men, responding to a scowl from Lex Luthor, clears a space for it on the table.
“And may I have a remote control, Caesar? If you don’t
mind.”
From the inside pocket of his ill-fitting sport coat the little Italian removes a flat piece of black plastic, about the same dimensions as a Hershey bar, and passes it to Lex. “Now, Ceil, what I am about to show you is—well, I think of it as the next essential thing.” (Because of the way he says it, Ceil imagines capital letters: Next Essential Thing.) Lex pauses for dramatic effect. “There are some who believe that the next essential thing, the product that every human being simply must possess, will be a thing called television. But they’re wrong. Dead wrong.”
He aims the piece of black plastic in the direction of the milk box. Then he carefully presses the buttons on it in a prescribed sequence.
A moment later Ceil gasps.
After the lid opens, a post of gleaming nested metal shoots two, two-and-a-half feet straight up from the box. Immediately the post begins to reconfigure itself. Narrow rods unfold from a dozen grooves. From the rods come other, slimmer, more articulated rods, which in turn are grooved with channels, and from which …
Ceil covers her mouth with both hands. It’s like a gigantic Swiss army knife! But instead of a couple of blades and a nail file, a screwdriver, a toothpick, an orange peeler, a tweezers, and a key ring, it contains, neatly and miraculously within itself—
“A mechanical man!” she exclaims.
When completely unfolded and self-assembled, it is twenty-seven inches tall.
It steps from the box onto the table. With its red eyes blinking, its arms moving forcefully up and down, its fingers clicking as they clench, its knees bending, legs pumping—thunka-thunka-thunka-thunka—it does a kind of martial parade-in-place.
“Mr. Luthor, you’ve built a mechanical man! How wonderful!”
He presses another sequence of buttons and it stops marching. Then: another sequence and suddenly it is broadcasting Tristan and Isolde over the CBS radio network. Another sequence and then it’s WNEW, Martin Block on Make Believe Ballroom introducing the Andrews Sisters’ recording of “Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen.”
“What a marvelous—”
“It’s not a toy, Ceil.”
“Oh, I wasn’t going to say that, sir.”
But yes, yes she was: that’s exactly what she intended to call it.
“It’s the next essential thing.”
“I can see why.”
No, she really can’t, but—well, if Mr. Luthor says so, then surely it will be.
“This is our very basic model,” he tells her. “In addition to being equipped with both commercial and shortwave radio it contains a library of classic novels—”
Another sequence of buttons and a mellifluous, albeit clearly artificial voice intones, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
“—and of course it can …” Lex reaches over, picking up a pad of foolscap from the table. He flips the top sheet over, finds what he’s searching for and then squinting to decipher handwriting not his own, he continues, “it can do—let’s make that perform, shall we? It can perform a multitude of household chores—run the Bissell, fire the furnace, feed the dog, clean the cat box.” He grabs a pencil, strikes out the word “do” and writes “perform” directly above it.
The three advertising men look blankly back at him.
He consults the pad again. “Our luxury models are not only taller, but smarter—they can prepare meals, from plain fare to a five-course banquet.” Luthor frowns. “Five-course banquet? How about we say fine dining instead? From plain fare to fine dining.”
One of the admen leans forward and puts his elbows on the table and his face between his hands.
Ceil meanwhile notices that the little Italian man is doing a slow burn but trying to contain it: his lips keep moving in and out as he fixes Lex Luthor with a baleful stare.
What is going on? And why, Ceil asks herself, is she here?
Now Lex points behind her with the pad of paper and says, “Those are the luxury models.”
Ceil turns and what she sees jolts her again.
In the conference room a pair of six-foot-tall mechanical men is gliding around the table with pitchers and cocktail shakers, ambidextrously filling glasses with martinis, Manhattans, Rob Roys, and whiskey sours.
The gentlemen assembled there, whose demeanor hitherto seemed so worldly and rigid, look as wonder-struck now as little boys at their first circus.
“Ceil … ?”
She’s been staring, open-mouthed. “Excuse me, Mr. Luthor. I’m just … flabbergasted.”
“Excellent,” he says, “very excellent. It’s the reaction I was hoping for. And the one I expect from everyone in due time.” As he says that, Lex pointedly looks at one of the advertising men, the one introduced to Ceil earlier as the director of market research.
“Mr. Luthor,” says Ceil, “you said something about needing my help, but I don’t see …” Her stomach is tied in knots. “Perhaps …”
“It’s quite simple, dear lady. I need your expertise.”
“Sir?”
“These gentlemen,” says Lex, indicating the admen, “have been working on a campaign to launch this marvelous creation of mine, to introduce it to the world. Well, first to New York and then to the world.” He picks up a different pad of paper. “But they’re still not quite … on target.” He reads: “ ‘It’s a pet … it’s a pal … it’s a plant waterer?’ No, still not quite. But they’re making progress. In the meantime …”
Ceil lifts her eyes to Lex, now resting his left palm on top of the mechanical man’s square head.
“In the meantime one crucial question remains: what do we call this marvel of 1937?”
“Call it?”
“You referred to it as a mechanical man. But that’s hardly catchy, is it? Our friends here in the ad biz keep urging me to call it simply the Luthor—as if it’s an automobile. The Chrysler. The Studebaker. The Luthor. But it’s not an automobile, Ceil.”
“No,” she says. “It’s the next … essential thing.”
He beams at her. “And our friend Mr. Scaffa, taking his cue from Mr. Walt Disney, wants me to name it Rudy—as if it were a cartoon character. Mickey Mouse. Donald Duck. Rudy Robot.”
“Or Robby,” says Paulie, back on the sofa. “Robby Robot could work just as well.”
Luthor quirks up one side of his mouth in dismissal.
“But it’s not a cartoon character, Ceil.”
“No,” she agrees.
“And Mr. Colluzo over there,” says Lex, “wants me to call it the Caesar!”
Because Lex laughs, Ceil does too. Although her tension turns it into something of a bray.
Sneaking another glance at Caesar Colluzo, also back on the sofa, Ceil can see high color rising in his throat, his cheeks. Both hands are clamped between his knees. He looks capable of homicide.
“All ridiculous names,” says Luthor. “Completely inappropriate. But the problem has become suddenly grave, Ceil.”
“Grave, sir?”
“Extremely. Because I have a roomful of investors next door with millions of dollars at their disposal, millions that I intend to use for the manufacture of millions of robots. But what do we call them?” He taps the basic robot’s head. “What do we call it?”
Ceil’s stomach folds in half. Why is he telling her this? Surely he doesn’t think—
“Quite a problem. But then it dawned on me. Who is better at this very thing than Ceil Stickowski?”
“Mr. Luthor, I don’t—”
“You, dear lady, are going to christen the next human necessity. Come up with the next household name. Right here. Right now. You.”
“Me?” Her hands are clamped around the armrests. “But Mr. Luthor, I don’t know anything about—”
“Don’t be so modest—Mrs. Smokin’ Dynamite Fall Arsenal of Values!”
“But, sir, I didn’t—”
“Who could ever forget your Crown Prince, your Medley, your Hoopla, your Salvo, your Trinitro-Delux! Wonderful names, all of them—na
mes so good, so perfect they emptied out an entire warehouse, Ceil.”
“But that was Herman, Mr. Luthor, Herman came up with all of those names. I just pasted up the catalogs.” Oh dear God dear God dear God …
“Please.” Luthor holds up a hand, palm toward Ceil. “Stop. I don’t appreciate false modesty.” And his abrupt change of expression underscores that: his eyes turn stony and terrifying.
In front of Ceil’s face appear red and black threads that drift and sizzle. She feels as if she might faint.
Luthor bends down and speaks softly into her ear. “So what do we call it? I’m expected next door in two minutes, Ceil. I need a product name. Give it to me.”
“Sir, please …”
“A name. The perfect name.”
“Mr. Luthor, I swear to you, Herman made up those names for the catalogs. He enjoyed it! He had nothing else to do!”
“Ceil. I think I know what Herman was and was not capable of.”
“He did the word scramble every day in the paper. Herman was very good with words. It was a hobby!”
“Oh Ceil, he was a common thug. He couldn’t even spell medley.”
It’s as if Lex Luthor just struck her in the stomach. She can’t catch her breath.
“Ceil, the perfect name, please. We have less than two minutes. You have less than two minutes.”
Ceil turns her head and looks at him dead-on.
And she knows—instantly she knows that her husband did not pass from his cancer.
Oh my God.
“Ceil? I’m waiting.”
She shakes her head.
“Still waiting. The name that tens of millions of people will utter day after day for the next hundred years. I’m waiting.”
His hand touches her elbow, creeps slowly up to her shoulder toward her throat.