Layman's Report

by Eugene Marten

  “Just a drain hose,” I say, and cover them up again. I remind him of the reason they’ve come. The rabbit.

  “Of course,” but he lingers there. “Did I tell you I have a degree in chemistry?”

  “Mr. Dembo,” I say.

  “If I could hazard a wild guess, I’d say…centrifuge?”

  “Gentlemen,” I say. “The wireless.”

  “Ah,” he says. “The wireless. The bunny, yes. But no. I’m afraid we will have to postpone the demonstration.” An urgent phone call from his government. A situation has developed and they are being recalled to Harare at once. Of course he cannot go into further detail.

  “You understand,” he says, and gives me his hand. His secretary gives me an empty glass. I hope to continue where we left off in the near future, and Mr. Dembo says they have every intention. Of course he can’t say exactly when.

  “You know where to reach me,” I say, the music still in my head, and what he mourns for in the music.

  “Yes,” he says.

  I made rounds. The Alumni House, the Academy of Medicine, the dental school, the west quad. Ate my lunch in the School of Engineering. This was tolerated as long as you didn’t attempt interaction with the students. Especially the girls. There is a lounge in the School of Engineering: sofas, vending machines, two microwaves, television, video games. There is air hockey.

  There is a TRIGA Mark II nuclear reactor.

  Small, two hundred and fifty kilowatt, not commercial. For experiments in physics and radiology. Back when I made my rounds, security was not what it is today—it was me. I had access. It came in little flat cans like shoe polish. I used my lunchbox, my thermos, just a little at a time. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it, then I knew what but not how. Still, they had more than they needed. It isn’t stealing if they’re going to throw it away.

  She tore my ticket and I sat in the dark after work, my Igloo heavy on my lap, looking up. Novae and nebulae, the whirlpool of stars…I looked down, looked back up again, saw galaxies spinning in both places. Then the towers fell and they fired everybody like it was our fault. By then I had over a hundred pounds.

  Talking to female students was grounds for dismissal.

  It looks like instant coffee. It’s better than the yellow stuff but still a long way away from making any music. There are steps. It has to be pure. You’re going to need hydrofluoric acid (better store it in plastic milk jugs because it can eat through glass) and fluorine, which makes mustard gas look like bug spray. You have to change solid to liquid to gas, and then back to liquid again; you have to change tetra- to hexa-, and that’s the easy part.

  This is where Maytag comes in. Kenmore and Whirlpool. They’re not just washing machines anymore—I’ve souped them up a little, patent pending. Spin cycle: One feeds into Two feeds into Three, and so on into Six, and then back into One where it starts all over again, a circle of greater and greater refinement and purity, of less and less of more…

  I know I’m onto something. But it’s going to take a while to get ten pounds of what I’m onto.

  Dear Mom (and Fred?),

  There is a line of guys behind me like you wouldn’t believe, so Happy Easter from Red 2 Alpha. Well everything pretty much sameo. Not much happens around here till it happens, like before. This morning the mess hall was laid out, bunnies & colored eggs & a full feast of ham, turkey and cake, etc. To be honest I forgot what day it was. To answer your Q, yes i heard. I’m sure she’s better off, she sure could draw though. Say hey to my younger half from R2A (not the dog, just kidding.) And tell him yes, we have to burn it but all you smell is the diesel. What else? There was even a big screen tv playing music videos till someone changed the channel to religious. Thanks to Fred for keeping after my bike. Say it’s not like when they’re strapped in a chair, no disrespect. All the Christians in our sector all week wished us Happy Easter. They kept giving us glasses of cold water. I wouldn’t know what to say to her if you see her. I don’t know what the Muslims wish us but I nevr turned one down. To answer your Q, no I’m not sorry. I didn’t know he was a kid but he was driving right at us off the road. Maybe he was just testing our ROE like they do sometimes. What else. Sorry to hear about the graffitti. Hope at least he spelled it right (kidding.) I’ll write him a real one after the push. There’s a line of guys behind me waiting to use this. (You wouldn’t believe all the strays here.) If he wants, give me his email and I’ll send F a word or few. Or you can just forward this, you probably do anyway. Sorry to keep it so short. So Happy Easter and everything else. I’ll write again, or see you when I see you (next month?)

  Your Son

  P.S. Tell Fred no wheelies! You should sell it if you have to. How’s Krypto anyway?

  I believe in the common good. I try to do my part. If you’re at a party or a bar and in no condition to get behind the wheel, you can call me and I’ll charge you a flat fee no matter where it is and where you call home. A service I would gladly provide free of charge if I didn’t need the money. As it is: twelve dollars, no matter where. Within reason of course.

  This time it’s downtown. Tonight is a weeknight, just a few cars in the lot. The word EXECUTIVE is on the sign but the guy standing under it is not wearing a suit. He fills up most of the doorway.

  “Eight dollars,” he says. I tell him I’m driving and I give him my name. He tells me to go see the bartender.

  The bar is across the room. There’s a stage on the way, a little bigger than a pool table, its floor a grid of frosted glass that changes colors. A silver pole connects it to the ceiling but the stage is empty and the colors change slowly. A man sits at the edge with a drink, watching them change. He isn’t wearing a suit either. There are only a few girls. They’re sitting at the bar with the other executives, talking and laughing, doing another kind of dance.

  I have been in these places before, and places where there are no women, and where there are no men. In the interest of public safety, it makes no difference to me. This one looks a little slow. The music makes it look empty.

  “He’s in the back,” the bartender says and tilts his head like I should know what he means. “He’ll be done in a minute.”

  “He’s never done,” one of the girls says. The seat next to her is empty.

  I ask the bartender to tell him I’m here.

  “He’s almost done,” he says, louder than he has to. “Care for a Coke? Juice? It’s on me.”

  Sometimes I wait in the Buick, but they tend to hurry up if you come inside. I look in the back. It’s all one space but the darkness there makes it another room. I can make out a pale seated figure, then another, a shadow, standing. Then there’s just one.

  I ask for a ginger ale but stay on my feet. The girl who spoke gets up, comes over and sets up shop next to me.

  “Take a load off,” she says. “That’s what the stools are for.”

  “I’m working,” I say.

  “Me too,” she says. Then she says, “What are we working on?”

  I think about it. “The greater good.”

  “Well I know I do my part,” she says. “Let’s drink to a better good. Mine’s rum and Coke.”

  The bartender looks at me. I can’t drink but I can spend money. The song fades out and now there are sounds from the place in the back.

  The girl next to me looks young. I ask her how young and she makes a face.

  “I have a father,” she says. “What I need is a daddy.”

  A voice I haven’t heard in a long time says, “It’s no use sweetheart, you’re wearing me down to a nub…I’ll take it from here.”

  It’s twenty years hoarser, that much thicker, but I don’t have to hear it twice. I turn my back on the dancer and the bartender and look into the back room of the past. I wait. She is saying something behind me, something they say about little guys. He comes into the light but not out of the dark. A girl leads him by the arm. He is wearing a pale suit that keeps changing color—used to dress in black. Twenty years, give or take,
but time is not to blame; he hasn’t been kind to himself. Still big but thinner, his skin another baggy suit, his face still red but jowly and gaunt at the same time.

  His nose looks like something you’d pull out of the ground.

  I misunderstood over the phone. Thought it was a figure of speech.

  “Ride’s here, Mr. D,” the bartender says.

  “It’s not a cabbie, is it?” he says. “Guy like me’s a cabbie’s best friend. I got enough friends.”

  “You want to be my best friend, don’t you?” the dancer says, and he says, “Then quit charging me,” and someone else says something else and everyone laughs but me and him.

  “Not a cab, sir,” I say. “I’m in business for myself.”

  “Gypsy,” he says.

  “I’ll get you there,” I say. “Flat fee. Anywhere you say as long as it’s home.”

  He waits. “Or what passes for it,” he says and I can tell my voice didn’t ring any bells. Maybe it’s the state he’s in, but I don’t think he’d see me even if he could.

  His white hair gone yellow, like the pages of a book no one reads anymore.

  “You’ll never get rich,” he says, “but it works for me. Be right back. Got a little unfinished business to finish.” He takes something out of his pocket and unfolds it, taps his way with it down the other end of the club where the restrooms are. Makes a joke about not needing a cane. The music starts again.

  “If you want to wait in your car we’ll bring him out,” the bartender says.

  I want to finish my ginger ale. The girl who was sitting next to me climbs onto the stage, starts showing the guy with no suit a better place: the one he came from. She lets the colors up inside her. Everything changing but his expression.

  When they bring him out I tell him I need it up front. He’s folded his money a certain way so he can tell the bills apart. At first he refuses the seatbelt. I tell him we’re not going anywhere until, ask him if he needs help. He grumbles and gropes. When I hear a click I head for Ninth, make a left away from the lake. Ninth Street leads to every other road. He lives in a subdivision just two exits south of me.

  Ahead of us nothing but taillights, like everyone’s leaving and no one’s coming back.

  “Nice out there, I’m told.” I’m not told one thing or the other.

  “Me too,” he says. Then he says, “We got niggers like anywhere else.”

  I get on 90, west. I have rules. They’re taped to the back of the front seat—for all the good that does him—but I let him break the one about language. This is an occasion, though I’m not sure what kind.

  “I guess everybody’s got to live somewhere,” I say.

  “Not by me they don’t—and right next door,” he says. “Might not sound like it but they sure smell like it. Know what a nigger smells like?”

  I tell him my other four senses probably aren’t as sharp as his.

  “That’s a lot of horseshit,” he says. “You use what you have. She says I’m crazy.” His voice climbs an octave. “‘They’re as white as you and me, James.’ Tells me to watch my language.”

  “Your wife?”

  He makes a sound. “Sister. Her husband fixed up the basement for me. Tells her kids to leave me alone—guess I’m the dirty uncle.”

  “How many?” Kids, I mean.

  “Three, four of em, sounds like,” he says. “Hey you’re a nosy sonofabitch, aren’t you?”

  I say I don’t mean to pry. “They sound like nice people,” I say.

  “She’s a cunt,” he says. “I pay my way. No revenge like charity, know what I mean? Wasn’t for disability I’d be,” and he stops. He doesn’t know where he’d be.

  “Told me to watch my mouth,” he says. “I told her I would if I could.”

  The numbers change and we head south. What’s left of the skyline curving away behind us, the zoo asleep on the right.

  “Rides nice,” he says.

  “Suspension,” I say.

  “Smooth as milk,” he says. “Linc or Caddy?”

  Lincoln, I lie. “You know your cars.”

  “If it ain’t in the wheel, it ain’t in the deal.”

  I tell him he sounds like a salesman.

  “I sound like what I am,” he says. “I’m a people person.”

  I say I had a feeling. “I always admired people who could pull that off.”

  “I pulled it off,” he says. “New and used,” he says. “Back in the day…not just cars either.”

  “What else?”

  “Everything,” he says. “You name it. Shit you wouldn’t believe if I told you.”

  “I believe you.”

  “When they say no is when the sale starts.”

  “You either have it or you don’t.”

  “The hell do you know?”

  “Just what they tell me,” I say. But what else?

  Electronics is what else. Sporting goods too, back in his day. Copiers, insurance, bonds, cemetery plots. “Housewares, hardware, bathware, software, toys, office supplies, fucking toilet brushes…what else?” he says.

  What else is everything, everything but one thing.

  Maybe he’s too drunk to remember.

  He remembers stain remover.

  “You sold stain remover,” I say.

  “Didn’t sell itself,” he says. “Miracle solvent, door to door. Toughest gig there is, but I ain’t proud—not by then I wasn’t. A job’s a job.”

  “Tell me about it,” I say.

  “I’m telling you,” he says. “Knocked on doors to the end of the road. Eye contact’s the thing. Make em believe you give a shit. I’d come in and truck mud on the carpet, ketchup on the sofa…you should’ve seen the looks. Shit worked too, you just couldn’t overdo it. I’d even take a swig now and then to show them how harmless—non-toxic, right?” I hear liquid and look in the mirror, let him break another rule. A flask. He’s taking another swig but it isn’t stain remover. It doesn’t get rid of anything.

  “Don’t believe what it says on the label,” he says. “I woke up one morning and now look at me—still waiting for the sun to come up.”

  “Who needs a fucking miracle now?” he says.

  I don’t look at him. I ask him if he sued, but he doesn’t hear.

  “Gave me a dog and a stick instead,” he says.

  I ask him where the dog is.

  He mumbles. “Stick won.”

  I don’t ask how. I think of the inmates training guide dogs at the new facility; maybe they’re turning out defective product. I don’t say anything for a while, and neither does he. Then he says, “The hell are we listening to?”

  “Talk radio.” I turn it up. It’s talking about the afterlife as a dimension whose existence can be proven scientifically.

  “You believe this shit?” he says.

  “I don’t believe everything I hear.”

  “Trust your nose,” he says. “Got something against music?”

  Not if it’s from Zimbabwe.

  “The hell.”

  I ask him if he has a preference.

  “Anything but that rap shit.”

  I find something we can both live with and leave it there. Read the signs, swing over into the right-hand lane. His address is in my head. I don’t bother with GPS; the eye in the sky works both ways.

  He asks me if we’ve met somewhere before.

  “Not that I know of,” I say.

  “I guess you’d’ve said something, right?”

  “I guess so,” I say.

  “You sound like a little guy,” he says.

  “Not as big as some, I guess.” If he tells me what they say about little guys I’ll drop him off in a field.

  “No offense,” he says, “we’re just two guys talking,” and I hear the flask again. “Want a taste?”

  “I’m driving,” I say. “You want to get home in one piece, don’t you?”

  “I’m already in pieces,” he says, “and I don’t have a home. I have a sister.” Something about
putting him out of his misery, but he’s talking into the flask like a microphone. “You do this shit for a living?”

  No living in livery, I like to say. “I take whatever comes my way. Guess you could say I’m sort of freelance.”

  “Freelance. Exit’s coming up.”

  I say I have a background in engineering, though I probably shouldn’t.

  “No shit,” he says, and he’s right about the exit. A long curve with a yield sign at the end of it. When we straighten out he says, “So why don’t you engineer something?”

  “I’ve got a few things on the burner.” Patents pending.

  “No shit.”

  “I try to keep busy,” I say.

  The American way, he says. Homegrown. Thomas Elvis Edison. Fucking DIY.

  “I used to know a guy,” he says. He says, “So tell me what’s on the board, Orville. Just dumb it down a little—my phone’s smarter than me.”

  I tell him maybe another time. I tell him we’re almost there, and ask him the name of the street. He makes himself say it, and I see it on a big stone at a corner and turn. Night lights, tract homes, but they’ve gotten better at making them look different. One of them’s different with empty windows and a sign the bank put out front.

  “Nice,” I say.

  “So I hear,” he says.

  “Right next door,” he says. “Smell em?”

  I see an address on a mailbox and pull into the driveway. A light in the living room. “You’re here.” Notice I don’t say home.

  “Guess I gotta be somewhere,” he says, but he doesn’t move. He asks for my number. Next time he can call me himself; he has a cell phone that talks to him.

  “Aren’t there places around here?” I ask.

  “Just the strip mall,” he says, and he asks me if I get it.

  I got it. He makes the sound that used to be a laugh. Slaps the top of the seat next to me, feels around and grabs my shoulder.

  “They got laws against fun here,” he says. “Hey, you are a little fucker, aren’t you?”

  He feels my face, my glasses. “And I thought I was blind.”

  I lean out of reach, ask him if I should honk the horn.

  “Don’t do me any favors,” he says. “Just do me a favor: give me a hand to the door.” Almost pleading.