by Mark Harris
In her pink robe Mrs. Harold Ferne crossed the street to Mr. Maxim’s garage to vote, standing in the short line behind Luella, who turned to greet her, saying “How do you do, I haven’t seen you for some time.” Lala in her polite turn said “How do you do, how is Mr. Brown these days, and how is your son?” To which Luella replied in a firm voice which invited no further conversation, “He’s over in Asia at the moment,” and signed her name upon the designated line and enclosed herself in the booth and voted. Lala, too, signed her name and voted. She voted against McGinley. She hated his face. She crossed the street again to her own side and entered her house, unfolding her newspaper:
CITY VOTES FOR CONGRESS SEAT
MOON MEN MYSTERY PROBLEM
Oh fuck, who cared about moon men? Earth men for her. She’d divorce Harold. She’d get the girls. Harold wouldn’t want them anyway. She had simply switched from her mother to Harold, doing whatever Harold said — buckled up her seatbelt, locked up all doors at all times, admitted no man to the house unless she knew who he was, washed out Louisa’s mouth with soap when she said bad words within the hearing of neighbors and kept a careful track of every penny spent for whatever purpose like the goddam fool she was — first her mother’s slave, now Harold’s slave. When would she have a slave of her own, or at least be her own slave, or else let everyone be free?
She really shouldn’t be reading the newspaper. She had so much to do. She should pick up Harold’s bowling shoes from the floor. Was that an all-day job? She read only the headlines and a few lines down; you needn’t read the whole article to get its drift. The headlines were all you needed to know, and the rest was the same thing over again anyhow, large (medium, small) election turnout expected, Republicans predict strong showing, Democrats attack Republicans, two killed in fiery crash, three die in spectacular fire, nation overrun, famine in India, executive retires, although Lala did rather enjoy certain features such as the letters to Dear Abby and the classified advertisements. People had problems.
MORT, for the Lord’s sake come home. LEAH.
She dialed Lost Dog. I’m stuck with Christopher, she thought. She could embarrass his mother and father with a little ad in the Personals:
CHRISTOPHER’S PARENTS, take care of your son. A FRIEND
but in her mind’s eye she saw them now as constantly crying, and she supposed them to be victims rather than oppressors. Besides, the presence of Christopher was agreeable. The recorded voice reported finding no dog even remotely resembling Paprika. The recorded voice caused rippling here and there upon her skin. The voice added, however, that the listing was in a constant state of change, the lost were found, the newly lost entered the lists, and Lala listened to the announcement several times to see if the rippling upon her skin developed, but it faded. What of lost cats? Even this moment Lala saw from the window a cat walking the ledge above Paprika’s runway. The cat wouldn’t do that if Paprika were there. No sir, when a cat came near, Paprika set up a howl or revived and renewed a howl already in progress — cat, squirrel, man, mouse, no matter what, Paprika howled. In a way, she thought, it was rather nice to have a little quiet around the house this morning, hardly a sound in the kitchen above the humming of the fluorescent lights. She turned them off, sitting still beside the telephone watching the cat walk the ledge. Dogs barked at a distance — other people’s dogs, not hers, let somebody else receive anonymous barking telephone calls in the night, letters, clippings, let somebody else wash out the dog’s pans and hose his runway, not she. Dumb Paprika kept even himself awake, scrambling up from sleep, feeling that he should be barking, and the reason for that was that from the beginning Harold praised Paprika (he praised no one else) for barking, regardless of what he barked at, upon the right principle enunciated by Harold in a wrong instance that if you praise a dog he will repeat the act he was praised for, which was also true, Lala believed, of human beings, of whom she was one.
But Harold’s best voice was saved for the dog. He talked “pudding and pie” to the dog. “What do you need praise for?” Harold asked Lala. “You’ve got everything except some flesh on your bones you could use. You’re a skinny marink. Look up and down the street. What has anybody got that you haven’t got? How many women own a foreign BMW made by German Huns?” He said the same, in effect, to his daughters: “Count your things. What haven’t you got, if anything? Don’t tell me how I talk to the dog, he’s an animal and he don’t understand, whereas you’re supposed to be human beings.” True, if he did not love them he lavished them, except when he was scolding them, or warning them, or depriving them.
He telephoned. “Did he come back?” he asked.
“No he didn’t,” said Lala. “Not yet. I telephoned Lost Dog.”
“You what?”
Had she done something wrong? She amended herself. “Christopher telephoned Lost Dog.”
“Is that kid there again? Throw him out.”
“He’s gone to school,” said Lala.
“Throw him out when he comes back,” said Harold.
“I can’t throw him out,” said Lala.
“I could throw him out if I was there,” said Harold. “Put an ad in the paper.”
“You’re never here,” said Lala.
“Find out how much an ad costs and I’ll call you back,” said Harold.
Oh yes, he’d call her, wouldn’t he? She might wait all day for him to call her, tied to the telephone, locked in the house, not daring to step outdoors because any moment Harold might call and she didn’t dare to be gone when he did. Or if it wasn’t Harold it was her mother. Lala was obliged to guard the hot line all day long. “I’ll call you,” she dared to say.
“No, I’ll call you,” he calmly said, and hung up in her ear.
Instantly she called him back. That is to say, she telephoned his office and asked for his secretary, who told her that Harold had “just stepped out for a moment.” Of course. Always. He stepped out in elevated shoes. Did you know that? Very few people knew that Harold wore elevated shoes, and Lala was yearning to tell someone, too. Now, at last, it’s out: Harold wears elevated shoes, he isn’t as big as he seems. Lala didn’t know it until after they were married, and even then she found out only by accident. Where was he right now, the lying bastard? She telephoned the newspaper and found out the rates for classified advertisements seeking lost dogs, jotting down all this information, and hanging up the telephone. It rang. Could it be Harold? Yes, to inquire about the dog he’d phone back. For a sick or broken-hearted daughter he might call back late in the afternoon, or forget altogether, but for the dog he’d call back pronto; unless, thought Lala, it’s mother, and she answered the telephone, and it was Harold.
She reported the rates to him, and he deliberated. He wished her to know that all this expense was going to cost somebody something (probably her, she reasoned), although it was he, not she, who considered the dog a necessity, and it was she, now, who could very well get along entirely without that dog or any other, as she plainly said. “Harold, I don’t have to advertise in the newspaper if you’re going to take all this out on me. I don’t care a fig for the dog.”
“Care a what?” he asked.
“Care a fig,” she said.
“That stuff,” he said.
“Where are you?” Lala asked. “I feel reasonably sure you’re not in your office.”
“Where would I be?” he asked in reply. “Of course I’m at the office. Maybe not this moment. I’m around town. I’m in and out all day.”
“I can hear the lie in your voice,” she said.
“That’s a hell of a way to talk when I’m so busy,” Harold said. Then his tone changed. Lala guessed that someone had entered his presence, wherever he was, whom Harold wished to impress. Could it be a woman? His voice assumed command — notice that Harold’s the boss around here. He wasn’t talking for Lala’s ear but for someone else’s ear. “Do everything,” he
said, “turn every stone. Advertise. Never mind the rates. I don’t give a damn what they say. I’ll take it all the way up the line. Get him back.”
“What kind of a life is this we lead?” she blurted.
“What?” he asked.
“Then you want me to go ahead,” she said.
“Move on it full steam,” he commanded. “Ignore all costs, saturate the media.”
Yes, wouldn’t that sound good to somebody listening, somebody who had just walked in on Harold wherever he was? Wow, powerful Harold, what a man, ignoring costs, barking commands, turning every stone, saturating the media, and as Lala hung up the telephone her eye fell upon a statement in the newspaper by the wife of one of the astronauts, who said, “This space business is the most exciting thing going on in the world.”
Lala could scratch that girl’s eyes out! Undoubtedly “this space business” was “the most exciting thing going on” in the house of that particular astronaut (the interview occurred before the mechanical crisis), but in the world? — no, never, Lala would never consent to such a slovenly, selfish, egocentric idea. “Egocentric bitch,” she muttered to the photograph of the astronaut’s wife, dialing the Chronicle. “The most exciting thing in the world is me and my girls,” she announced to a large group of newspapermen (and newspaperwomen) and radio men and women holding microphones before her face, and television men and women grinding out film showing Mrs. Harold Ferne, the former Louisa McCoy, commenting on the sensational event which Fate had devised for her — the loss of one German Shepherd dog christened Paprika, and all that was yet to follow this day, beginning with Lala on the microphone (i.e., telephone). Who was that egocentric bitch, wife of that astronaut, who dared to think that her life was “the most exciting thing going on?” Lala deeply resented her. Was that bitch sitting home waiting for a phone call from her mother? Did that bitch wonder where her husband was? No, she knew (not knowing, however, if he were alive or dead), he was landing in the ocean if his radio tuned in again. Why should all the world watch him? She’d scratch out that bitch’s eyes — here scratching the newspaper photograph with her fingernails while waiting for the Chronicle to answer the telephone, which it did, the lady saying at the other end, “Chronicle, good morning,” whereupon Lala screamed, cried, shrieked into the telephone: “Chronicle, you bitch, you bitch, I’ll scratch out your eyes. I’ll bomb your ass, you bitch,” but before Lala could add to those remarks the Chronicle operator disconnected herself.
Of all things, she thought. Consider what you’ve done at the expense of your darling daughters, for you cannot now call the newspaper and place the advertisement seeking Paprika; indulging some sudden impulse of your own, you have sacrificed the happiness of your beloved daughters. If you’ve done it once you’ll do it again. You are a wicked woman. These things she told herself.
And yet, having done what she had done, she didn’t feel wicked. In the past she had contemplated such an act, and she had read about such things, and she had even been on the point of doing such a thing, but she had never done it. And now she had done it impulsively — “impulse buying,” Harold called it. Sometimes Harold rented a fleet of cars to a man who had only stopped by to check prices. Where was Harold now? He wasn’t at the office — he practically admitted that. She’d call the Chronicle right back. That would be clever. The Chronicle operator would never suspect her, for surely she’d never think a person with such an obscene tongue would be so brazen as to call right back to place an advertisement. Therefore Lala called back, and the lady said at the other end, “Chronicle, good morning,” quite as if nothing had happened. Of course it might not even be the same operator. Harold’s bowling shoes were lying there.
“Classified ads,” said Lala.
“Classified,” said the operator. “Thank you,” and presumably the operator was transferring the call to the classified advertising department, although Lala, as she waited, became slightly uneasy. Why were they taking so long? Were they tracking her down? And what would they do if they discovered that the perpetrator of the previous obscene impulsive call was none other than the formerly respected Mrs. Harold Ferne, and made an example of her, as the Chronicle “made an example” of anyone caught stealing coins from the street-corner Chronicle cashboxes — a crime the Chronicle appeared to consider more heinous than any other kind or type of crime committed anywhere in the world by anyone. Might the Chronicle not therefore consider a crime against its lady at the switchboard equally serious, and pursue and prosecute the criminal, and spread the criminal’s name and photograph across their newspaper time after time, day after day, for the information and delight of all the former friends of the formerly respected former Miss Louisa (Lala) McCoy of St. Rose Academy? Wouldn’t that just kill her mother? And what if she were sent to jail, “made an example” of, given a stiff term in a maximum security penitentiary where every sort of unpleasant behavior occurred among criminal women? Who would care for her daughters?
Were the guards male or female? Who fixed things? Lady plumbers? Not likely. Therefore gentlemen plumbers would be coming around to her cell now and then to fix her toilet, which perhaps she would have deliberately (knowing Lala) sabotaged to gain the attention of the gentleman plumber. Perhaps by the time she was sentenced and remanded a law would be passed permitting conjugal visits by spouses. Such a thing was rather too scheduled for Lala’s taste, although in some ways it would be a better way of having Harold than having him here at home on his schedule, at his convenience, at his damn whim, which meant in the main not having Harold at all: he was depleted most of the time. He talked a great fuck down at Harold’s Fleet Rental, no doubt. Listen, all she wanted was a kind of service, never mind love; she had a gardener, a plumber, an electrician, a mechanic for her BMW, they didn’t expect her to love them and she didn’t expect them to love her, and she wouldn’t ask anything in the way of love, either, from her regular neighborhood fucking service, just come around promptly when the order was placed and do the job and send the bill.
Harold’s Penis Rental
No. - 1
Terms - cash
Remarks
Salesman - Jim
“Classified,” said a voice, but this was the voice of a man.
“Classified?” asked Lala.
“Yes I am,” said the man’s voice with humor.
“I was expecting a woman’s voice,” said Lala.
“Most people do,” said the man. “May I help you?”
Was he a detective? Was this a plot to trap the voice of the lady who telephoned obscenely to the switchboard? “I want to place an advertisement for a lost dog,” Lala said.
“Did you lose it or find it?” the man asked, whose name was James Berberick. His name is already familiar to us. You don’t remember? Oh yes, we espied him last night at the hour of the bomb scare — “Oh yes, by the way, notice there, among the shuffling crowd, another James — James Berberick — known in one way to Luella, known in another to Brown, unknown to Officer James Phelps, whose first name he shares. . . .”
“Lost,” said Lala.
“Let me ask you a second question,” said James Berberick. “How long has it been missing?”
“We noticed him gone this morning.”
“Then let me make still an additional suggestion,” James Berberick said. “If it’s only since this morning that it’s been gone just wait awhile before you put an ad in the paper. It might come back. It might be on the way back right this minute, trotting up the street without a care in the world.”
“Might,” said Lala, “but I want to put an ad in right now.”
“As you wish,” Berberick said. “Don’t think I don’t love having your ad. But if the ad appears you must be charged for it even though.”
“Even though what?” Lala inquired.
“Even though your cat comes back,” Berberick said.
“Dog,” she said.
&nb
sp; “Try not to be in a super-hurry,” he said, “because you might wish to cancel.”
“I don’t wish to cancel,” she said. “I want to put an ad in right now” — trying to sound a little bit like Harold, for when Harold said right now people knew he meant right now. “Right now,” she said, “today’s paper.”
“Tomorrow’s paper,” Berberick said. “Today’s paper is already out.”
Of course, yes, she had today’s paper right there on her lap with the eyes of the astronaut’s wife scratched out. “That’s what I meant.”
“I am James Berberick,” he said. Knowing himself definitely to be about to do business he formally announced himself.
“Can you take down the wording of the ad now?” she asked.
“To whom shall we bill this?” he asked.
“I am Mrs. Harold Ferne,” she said, matching his formality.
“Spelling it how?” he inquired “F-e-r-n like the plant?”
“Pronounced like the plant,” she said, “but with an e on the end.”
“You are Mrs. Harold Ferne with an e on the end,” he amusingly said, “you live at Number Five Eagle Street, your telephone number is 431-9949, and your accurate weight is four hundred and seventeen pounds.”
“Marvelous, all but the weight,” she said. “How did you do it?”
“We have our little undercover agents down here,” he said. “It’s a trade secret.”
“Maybe you can find my husband,” she softly said.
He heard her, but he did not respond. He stored this information for possible subsequent retrieval. “Now about the wording of the ad,” he said, “if you give me the information I’ll compose the ad. Tell me the name of the beast. Dog, wasn’t it? Lady or gentleman dog? Answers to the name of what?”