Good King Sauerkraut

by Barbara Paul

  “Did they ever get it?” Johnson or Thompson asked.

  “Yeah, they got it.” King told him the name of the software company in Massachusetts that had solved the problem.

  The designer thanked him effusively and King said quite honestly that he was happy to oblige. That was one of the purposes of these exhibitions, after all; you gave a little, you got a little back. Johnson or Thompson would remember him and return the favor as soon as he could. King was feeling rather pleased with himself until he saw Gregory Dillard staring at him in cold fury.

  Only then did it hit him. He’d undercut Gregory; he’d taken a possible contract away from SmartSoft and given it to a rival company. And he’d done it not only before a small group of onlookers but in front of the man’s wife as well.

  Karen Dillard was tugging at her husband’s sleeve and saying something quietly to him. Gregory allowed her to lead him away, but not before he’d moved over to King and hissed, “I won’t forget this, you sonuvabitch.”

  Just remembering it made his skin itch. Dennis Cox would have handled it differently, and he’d even have enjoyed the chance to show off his moxie. Dennis would have waited until Gregory was out of earshot before passing on the information. Or, possibly, he would have said nothing at all to Johnson or Thompson and then let Gregory know he’d kept quiet, thus putting SmartSoft in his debt. Yes, that was more like Dennis. King of the manipulators, damn him.

  “Well?” Dennis asked. “Have you been listening?”

  “Of course I’ve been listening,” King said hastily, wondering what he’d missed. If Dennis knew Gregory Dillard was gunning for him too, his partner would never give in. King’s stomach growled again; he took a hardboiled egg out of his pocket and started peeling it. “I just don’t agree with you, Dennis.”

  Dennis pointed his finger at him, annoying King even further; every time Dennis pointed his finger, his thumb stuck straight up in the air, making his hand look like a gun. “Remember one thing. United they win, divided we lose.”

  “Sure, no question there, we have to decide who’s to run the project before we go to New York. What I’m not agreeing to is that it should be you.”

  “Jesus, King, you’re just not plugged in at all, are you? Don’t you understand? Mimi and Gregory aren’t going to let you head the project.”

  King dropped a piece of eggshell on the floor, not noticing. “The last I heard, Warren Osterman was still in charge,” he said tightly, wishing like hell that Dennis would drop the subject.

  “But he’ll base his decision on what he’s told. And if those two tell him you’re not qualified—and they will—he’ll listen. They might, however, accept me as a viable compromise. But they sure as hell won’t if you won’t.”

  “The primary designer has got to be in charge,” King insisted stubbornly. “It’s my right.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Sauerkraut, grow up!” Dennis snarled. “Here we are on the brink of losing control of the project and you’re blathering on about your rights. For once in your life, do something practical!”

  King turned rigid; that disparaging nickname Sauerkraut … it had a way of doing that to him, every time. “There’s no point in going on with this,” he said as coldly as he could. “Under no circumstances will I agree to work on a project that’s run by the secondary designer.”

  It was Dennis’s turn to stiffen. King’s emergence as the more inventive designer of the two was not exactly a sore point between them—so long as King didn’t rub it in. “Sleep on it,” Dennis said, his face turning ugly with anger. “We’ll talk again Monday.” He got up and left, kicking a disembodied robot arm out of his way as he went.

  King ate his hardboiled egg without tasting it and peeled another. He’d never asked Dennis where he’d picked up on that label “Sauerkraut”—it had been with King most of his life, and it looked as if he never was going to shake it. Goddammit. The nickname had first come into being when King was still a youngster, back when Walt Kelly’s original Pogo was the most talked-about comic strip in the country. One of the ways Kelly had amused himself was by making up new words to familiar Christmas carols and having his denizens of the Okefenokee sing them once a year. One that Pogo and Churchy La Femme had warbled was Good King Wenceslas, which in Kelly’s whimsical version had started out: “Good King Sauerkraut went out, on his feets uneven …”

  On his feets uneven. What a dead perfect description of the young King Sarcowicz—stumbling, bumping into things, tripping over his own feet. The other kids had delighted in taunting him, calling him Good King Sauerkraut until he was sick to death of the sound of it. But after a time the first two words had disappeared, and it was just plain Sauerkraut from then on. The name dogged him everywhere; it had followed him to college and even on to work. Dennis Cox had never gone to school with King—they’d met when they were both doing some work for the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University—and yet Dennis had somehow learned of the loathsome soubriquet. That same thing had happened time and time again; it was a mystery King had never been able to solve.

  Dennis never called him Sauerkraut out of mean-spiritedness, though; he saved it for those times when he was thoroughly angry. So now his partner was mad at him too, in company with Mimi Hargrove and Gregory Dillard. Oh, this was going to be one beaut of a project, it was. Shit.

  But it was Dennis’s own fault, King rationalized; he should have known King would never agree to pass the design responsibility over to him. They’d been in business only a couple of years when it became clear that Dennis Cox would never be anything more than a good journeyman designer. He was totally reliable in what he did, but the imagination and ingenuity that had made Keystone Robotics successful were all King’s. Dennis had begun assuming the responsibilities of management as Keystone grew larger instead of hiring someone for the position, and he did a good job; he was needed in the office more than in the laboratory.

  For the very first time, King contemplated the possibility that Dennis might resent that turn of affairs. His partner seemed quite happy making their money decisions for them, and god only knew King needed him to do it. Dennis did not go unappreciated by his partner. All in all, it was a symbiosis that King had pretty much assumed was as satisfactory to Dennis as it was to himself; but now he had to wonder if Dennis was indeed as comfortable in the role of secondary designer as he’d thought. If he weren’t … King began to sweat. He didn’t know what he’d do without Dennis.

  But as worried as he was about getting the cooperation of the other three on the MechoTech project, he never once considered yielding control to one of them. It was unthinkable. Without King’s designs, there was no project.

  King put the problem out of his mind and worked steadily for four straight hours. When he finally shut down for the day, his neck and shoulders were stiff from sitting in the same position for so long. He reached high over his head and stretched his six feet ten inches until something popped; then he rotated his head and his arms. But the stiffness persisted, even during the drive home. Mrs. Rowe, he was happy to see, was not peeking out through her curtains.

  He took a scalding hot shower, and that plus a beer eased the stiffness considerably. King didn’t have much appetite, so dinner was two fried-egg sandwiches. Then he went into his study to perform his regular Saturday night chore of going through the week’s mail.

  But before he could get started, the doorbell rang. King groaned to himself when he saw the handsomely mustached, almost prissily dressed man on the other side of the now-opened door (too late!). Russ Panuccio, his closest friend. Whom he didn’t like much. “Russ! What’s up?”

  Russ walked in uninvited. “Ginnie broke her leg. I just took her to Shadyside Hospital.” Three blocks away. “You got any beer?”

  “Yeah, sure. Is it a bad break?”

  “Doctor says not. God, I hate hospitals.”

  King followed him into the kitchen, where Russ took a bottle of Heineken from the refrigerator. “How did it happen?�
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  “She fell down her front steps. I’ve been telling her for years those steps weren’t safe. But you know Ginnie—lets things drift.” He uncapped the bottle and lifted it halfway to his mouth. “It’s your last one.”

  King shrugged. “Go ahead.” Russ drank. Ginnie was the woman with whom Russ had been having an off-and-on affair—they preferred the word relationship—for the past three or four years. King knew Russ liked it that way, sex and companionship when he wanted it without having to share his home or his life to get it. Ginnie, a natural-born follower, generally did things Russ’s way. She wasn’t a stupid woman; there had to be some other reason.

  Russ embarked on a long, detailed account of exactly how the accident had taken place; but, as usual, the story was more about himself than Ginnie. What he thought, what he said, what he did. He even put down the bottle of beer so his hands would be free to gesture. King didn’t know anybody who needed an audience as much as Russ Panuccio did.

  “Anyway, I told her I’d take her home tomorrow,” Russ finished up. “But I can’t stay with her then. There’s some stupid-ass function at Pitt I’ve got to go to. I don’t know who thinks these things up. But I have a theory that the administration is secretly convinced the faculty doesn’t have enough to do, so they sit around and amuse themselves by inventing useless functions that they then declare mandatory. They—”

  “Ginnie’s staying in the hospital just the one night?” King interrupted, only half listening.

  “I thought they’d put a cast on her leg and let her go, but they don’t do it that way anymore. She had to stay overnight so they could check for fever or whatever. I’d forgotten how noisy hospitals can be. I’d hate to spend the night there.” Russ tossed the empty bottle into the trash can. “I want another drink. How about coming out to Benny’s with me? You don’t have anything planned, do you?”

  “Well, I’ve got a stack of journals I—”

  “Read them tomorrow. Come on, King, I need company tonight. I also need your bathroom.” He strode out of the kitchen.

  King sighed. Benny’s Bar was a meet-market; it was possible that some people really did go there on Saturday nights just to drink, but somehow King didn’t think that was what Russ had in mind. So much for fidelity to poor broken Ginnie. King didn’t like Benny’s, but he knew he’d end up going.

  The truth was, King was worried about turning into a stereotype, the man so in love with his machines that he shut himself away from all human contact. The mad-genius inventor, absorbed in his work, celibate, friendless, a bit of a geek. The cliché image of a near-sociopath, manufactured in Hollywood and never seriously questioned by the easy-answer crowd—which was to say, most of homo sap. Living for one’s work struck King as a pretty good way to live, after all. But he couldn’t stand the idea of being glibly categorized as an eccentric workaholic. He objected to being categorized at all; categorization was dismissal. As a result he was willing to play straight man to Russ Panuccio on occasion; Russ was not only his closest friend, he was his only friend.

  And what did Russ get out of it? Russ got his audience. At one time or another Russ Panuccio had worked as an on-the-air news reporter for every television station in town; but wherever he’d worked, things had a way of not panning out. He’d tried leaving Pittsburgh, anchoring the newscast at some station in Arizona or New Mexico; that didn’t last long. Then he was back in Pittsburgh, announcing to the world that his true calling was education. Russ had gone back to school long enough to get an advanced degree and was now teaching journalism at Pitt, a university notoriously indifferent to that subject as a field of proper academic endeavor. But there was just enough interest to keep the ex-newscaster on the payroll, and the captive audiences he met several times a week went a long way toward alleviating Russ Panuccio’s obsessive need to be listened to.

  But the kids sitting in the classrooms didn’t have much choice, and Russ must have been aware of that whether he admitted it or not. So the compulsive talking never did stop, and Russ was always on the lookout for someone’s ear to bend; he didn’t have many more friends than King did. The two men didn’t see each other all that often; but when they did, Russ talked and King listened, or pretended to.

  Russ came back into the kitchen talking, complaining about some dean who, according to Russ, had the attention span of a three-year-old. Somehow it was settled without further discussion that King was going to Benny’s with him. They got into Russ’s car, a Japanese toy that forced King to fold up like an accordion in the passenger seat, and Russ talked them to Benny’s Bar in no time flat.

  The place was crowded, even though it was still relatively early in the evening. King felt himself cringing at the sight of all those beautified people who’d come to Benny’s to see and be seen. At the same time he was fascinated by all the expensive dental work on display; he’d never seen so many sparkling smiles in the same room before in his life. Still, he was planning to slip away after a couple of drinks, if Russ could find what he was looking for fairly fast. A quick survey indicated the women outnumbered the men by a comfortable margin.

  “Look for secretaries,” Russ instructed. “They’re the friendliest.”

  Curious in spite of himself, King asked, “How do you know which ones are secretaries?”

  “They’re always the best dressed.” The two men made their way to the bar and got their drinks. After his first swallow, Russ cast a practiced eye over the rest of the clientele. “Look over there—two redheads at the same table. And they’re alone. Couldn’t be better! Come on.”

  King followed and listened as Russ smoothly complained about the lack of space in Benny’s and asked if they would share their table. The women accepted the ploy and the two men sat down.

  One of the women watched King fold his long frame into the chair and said, “You have to be a basketball player.”

  “No.”

  Awkward pause. Russ shifted his weight and said, “I’m Russ,” smiling at both young women.

  “And I’m Tiffany.”

  “I’m Jill.”

  “King.” Even he knew the no-last-name rule.

  Tiffany was a secretary, all right, at a big downtown insurance agency. Jill was a doctor’s receptionist; close enough. Tiffany was the one who’d asked him if he was a basketball player, but King seemed to be paired off with Jill. She was a pretty girl, a good twenty years younger than he, with carefully mussed salon-red hair and a make-up job that would have had Estee Lauder crowing in triumph. It was only after they’d talked a bit that King realized Jill was shy. But she put a good face on it (literally) and kept up the appearance of a woman of the eighties out having a good time.

  He said he was in robotics. She said she’d always been interested in robots. He lied and said he was a Pirates fan. She said she was interested in sports. He said he liked this time of year the best of all. She said she was interested in weather.

  That one made him pause. “Do you like your job?” he asked, a bit desperately.

  “Oh, yes,” Jill beamed, projecting a positive image. “It’s very interesting.”

  “… and so when you come down to it, it wasn’t a difficult decision at all,” Russ was saying to a glazed-eyed Tiffany. “I began to get tired of being recognized everywhere I went. When you’re on television, your viewers begin to think they own you, you know? Besides, the glitz and the glamor and the big paycheck can get in the way of the truly important things in life. There comes a time when you have to do something for your soul—you understand?”

  King was embarrassed.

  “Interacting with young people—that’s much more satisfying than reading news to an audience you can’t see.” Russ was talking louder now, making sure he could be heard over the rising noise level in the bar. “There’s something exciting about watching a young mind awake. Just getting through to the adolescent mind is a challenge … I can’t live without challenges, can you? God, is it noisy in here! I can barely hear myself think. What say we go someplace
quieter where we can talk? I know a nice little spot on the South Side I think you’d like.”

  The two redheads consulted. “We’ll follow you in our car,” Tiffany said. Both were smiling bravely.

  On the way out, King stopped Jill. “We don’t have to go on to another bar if you don’t want,” he said. “We could, well, we could go to a movie.”

  “A movie?” Jill echoed dubiously.

  “Or dinner. Have you had dinner?”

  “Oh, yes. I’ve had dinner.”

  “I just meant we didn’t have to go bar-hopping if there was something else you’d rather do. We don’t have to stick with Russ and, uh, Tiffany.”

  Her smile had a little hesitation in it. “Well, we both came in Tiffany’s car, and …”

  And you don’t know me well enough to go off with me alone. “In that case, we’d all better stay together,” he smiled, hoping she noticed how understanding he was being.

  The South Side bar, unfortunately, turned out to be even more crowded and noisier than Benny’s; so they abandoned it and ended up at the Atrium Lounge of the Sheraton, looking out over the Monongahela River. It was just quiet enough for Russ to continue his monologue.

  King labored mightily to carry on a conversation with the shy young receptionist who agreed with everything he said, but it was hard to escape the sound of Russ’s voice. Tiffany was struggling to maintain an interested expression. King made what was meant to be a silencing gesture toward Russ but only succeeded in knocking over his drink. A waiter appeared out of nowhere, cleaned up the mess, and silently disappeared. King excused himself and went to the men’s room. He needed a breather.

  When he came out, he was surprised to see a familiar figure seated at a small table—alone. “Gale? Are you here by yourself? Where’s Bill?”