The Good Humor Man

by Andrew Fox

  Oy.Vey.”Uh, yes.”

  Another pause, icier than the first. “Is this some kind of apology call? After, what, fifteen years? Fifteen years without a peep from you? You’ve got a shit-load of nerve.”

  Huh. The anger I expected. What’s behind it — well, that’s unexpected. “Harri… I thought you’d never want to hear from me again. It’s not that I’ve never thought of you —”

  “So why are you calling now? Just find your long-lost little black book?”

  “You’re an expert on human metabolism. There are things I need to ask you —”

  “Let’s keep this conversation short. Yes, I’m still single, goddamn it. No, I won’t go out with you again. All your questions answered? Good. Have a nice life, Louis.”

  “Harri, that’s not what I’m calling about. Look, please listen. I never meant to hurt you. I never had the chance to explain what you saw. To really explain. But please believe that if you and I had gotten… closer… I never would’ve tried anything with you that you would’ve been uncomfortable with. I mean that.”

  I hear a hint of a sigh. “All right, Louis. That’s probably as close to an apology as I should expect to get from a man. Aside from that one night of… weirdness… you were a pretty nice guy. A gentleman. And God knows, there sure as hell aren’t that many of those around. Go ahead. Say whatever you called to say.”

  I tell her about my father. About the thousands of starving deer. I begin telling her about my own surprising weight loss when she cuts me off.

  “Louis. Stop.” Her voice is abrupt, but not from disinterest. “Don’t tell me anymore. Not right now.”

  “Is anything wrong?”

  “I need to get off the line. I’m not trying to blow you off. I promise. I’m heading to lunch off-campus. Let me give you a call back in a half-hour. Okay?”

  “Do you have my number?”

  “I’ve got it recorded.”

  “I’ll, uh, I’ll be waiting by the phone,” I say.

  “Good. Take care, Louis.”

  She sounded almost afraid. As if hearing me out could get her in trouble. Did she think someone was listening in on our conversation?

  Normalcy is slipping away from me, breaking up like an iceberg that’s meandered into the Gulf Stream. Maybe normalcy is a chimera. Maybe nothing in my life has been truly normal since Emily died. Or maybe my life has been too normal — too scripted, too predictable? Could this turmoil be a blessing?

  But I’m afraid. What will be left of me when my life becomes unrecognizable? I head into my study and unlock the cabinet where I keep the vacuum jars. I lift them from their resting place, as gently and quietly as if I were waking her from a long sleep.

  These gently mottled swirlings held in stasis — I can stare at them for hours. The patterns are as pleasingly lovely as the thick whorls of paint with which van Gogh formed his starry nightscapes.

  Beautiful. But how could they be anything less than beautiful? Every cell within each globule of fat contains its own perfect map of Emily. Linked together, those supple lipids formed the substrata of the soft, gentle surfaces through which she experienced the world and the world experienced her… her face, arms, belly, breasts. Lips.

  I’m not at all surprised that the cannula, primary instrument of the liposuctionist, was invented by a Frenchman, long before the absorption of La Belle France into the realms of Islam. A long, slender cylinder, inserted by male hands into fresh apertures created within the most tender portions of a woman’s body — the cannula was the creation, not of a corporation, but of an artist. My mother always detested my father’s work. As soon as I took up that work myself, I quickly understood why. I timidly sensed the sexual electricity underlying each procedure I performed. Yet I forced myself to think of the living, female flesh I was shaping as inert clay. Until the day I first wielded my cannula within the flesh of my own wife.

  I had always been aware, from the time I first began to adore Emily, of a fierce desire to consume her, to completely possess her. Merely embracing her, merely kissing her, inserting myself inside her… how sadly inadequate such actions seemed. But by extracting the physical substrata of my wife’s femininity with my cannula, by suctioning that physical essence into a glass enclosure where I could directly experience it, even touch it, if I wished — this moved Emily’s infinitely precious physicality from the stark category of “hers” into the shared category of “ours.”

  I never asked her to replenish her curves. Her increased eating regimen, she undertook that of her own sly, sexy volition. The first session was the only one we ever performed in my clinic’s operating room. After that, Emily would only allow my cannula to touch her when she was nesting in our silk-covered bed.

  A much less pleasant memory surfaces. I put the two containers of Emily back on the shelf. Silk sheets and darkness… While my father was out of town, as he so frequently was, my mother would lie in her bed for days at a time, in total darkness. Maria, our housekeeper, would feed me my meals. I spent the rest of my time at school or reading. How old was I — seven? Eight? When Maria was busy elsewhere, I’d take a book and a flashlight and sit outside my mother’s door, so I could try to protect her from whatever was making her so sad.

  How quiet that room was. My mother never turned on the television or radio. I never saw the light of a reading lamp beneath her door. My young imagination was consumed with thoughts of what she could be doing during all those daytime hours spent in complete darkness. But there were times… times when, if I listened as hard as I could, I could hear my mother crying.

  It was the most frightening sound. It meant that nothing was safe. Only the most powerful magic could make the world right again. So I would sneak into my father’s study and take the Elvis down from its place of honor behind my father’s desk. And then I’d carry the Elvis into my mother’s bedroom. And I’d crawl into her bed and put it near her feet. I’d hold my breath until her crying stopped, waiting for the Elvis to work its magic. And her crying would stop, for a while.

  The phone on my desk rings. “Okay, Louis, I’m back,” Harri says when I pick up. “I just gobbled down lunch. We can continue our conversation.”

  I force myself to focus on Harri. “How was lunch?”

  “Vaguely disgusting. I’m calling from a little burger shack at the edge of the desert.”

  That’s surprising. Harri was always a strict vegetarian. “How are the veggie burgers there?”

  “They don’t have any. And I wouldn’t eat one if they did. My diet’s about eighty percent animal proteins nowadays. Not that it’ll do me much good in the long run.”

  “Harri? What’s going on? Why the secrecy?”

  “Louis, I’m going to tell you things that could have very bad consequences for me. Things that could get me fired, end my career, or… or worse. I’m telling them to you because I may need a whistle-blower down the road, somebody not under the company’s thumb. And weird as you are, I’m pretty sure I can trust you.”

  The sound of her breathing mingles with other sounds, cars or trucks speeding by on a nearby road. I don’t suppose she’s using her portable phone; transmission over airwaves would probably seem too insecure. I try to picture her standing at one of those retro pay phones, exercises in nostalgia planted by maverick telecoms in places outside cell range, next to a run-down burger shack alongside a Nevada desert highway. I wonder what she looks like now.

  “One of our products has gotten out of the box.”

  “Products?” I picture an ear of corn with tiny legs crawling out of a cardboard shipping box.

  “The Metaboloft corn strain. Our newest and most profitable line. It’s a drifter. A big-time, high-plains drifter.”

  “I don’t get you.”

  “How much do you know about agri-engineering?”

  “Not much. Just what I read in MannaSantos press releases when I was one of their salesmen.”

  “Then you know the basics. The companies that merged to form MannaSantos were
among the pioneers in recombinant DNA manipulation. The corporation’s strategy has always been to field the widest variety of weight-loss products, so that nearly all consumers can find at least one variety that works for them. Metaboloft corn was simply the latest step. Do you have any idea what proportion of items sold in the typical grocery store contains some form of corn derivative?”

  “I imagine it must be pretty high.”

  “Extremely high. The corporation saw an opportunity to sell proprietary, metabolically active corn to every food processing company in America. Companies would pay a huge premium to MannaSantos for the privilege of labeling their items ‘Metaboloft’ Consumption of three standardized servings of product per day will raise a customer’s metabolic rate by an average of two-point-three Kelvinic units. Like the Lep-Tone line of fruits and vegetables, Metaboloft’s effect isn’t permanent. But unlike Lep-Tone, it has an atypical cumulative aspect over time. The body tends to become more sensitive to the Metaboloft effect with continued exposure, in contradiction to most drug effects, which attenuate with increased exposure. And Metaboloft is effective with a much wider range of the population than Lep-Tone is.”

  Jesus. I’d thought Harri would give me a little advice for my father. I wasn’t expecting to hear this. “How was Metaboloft ever approved as a general-use product? Sticking it into toaster pastries and corn flakes… it’s as irresponsible as spiking tap-water with antibiotics in order to wipe out sinus infections.”

  “Money talks, Louis. You know that.”

  “But this still doesn’t explain what’s happening to my father. Or the deer. I haven’t read reports of deer breaking into grocery stores and chugging down Metaboloft diet sodas.”

  “They don’t have to. Metaboloft has come to them.”

  “This ‘drift’ you mentioned before… the engineered strain has migrated to wider fields of corn? That still wouldn’t explain the deer —”

  “Shit. Louis, I’ve gotta go.”

  “But we’re just getting to the meat of all this —”

  “It’ll have to wait, okay? A pair of security guards from MannaSantos just pulled up. I’ll call you back. Either tonight or tomorrow.”

  “Are you in trouble? Do you need —?”

  She hangs up before I can finish. How much trouble is she in? Did the guards follow her? Maybe they were just stopping off for lunch, and she’s just being paranoid?

  I don’t need more tumult in my life. I called Harri hoping to begin clearing up an existing crisis, not to expose myself to a whole new can of worms. Now there’s nothing I can do, except wait for her next call. Damn it.

  Shit. I’m late for Cindy’s dinner party in La Jolla. Apart from my father, she’s the only family I have left. Worse, I forgot to get out to the store to buy a gift. I search the kitchen for something to bring. The best I can find is a bottle of California table wine. I wrap it in tin foil and hope Cindy won’t notice that the top fifth of the bottle is empty.

  I squint in the harsh daylight and lock my front door. Useless ritual. The Ottoman has proven he can come and go whenever he damn well pleases. He could be watching me right now, as I climb into my car. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to ask Mitch or Brad to spend the next several nights at my house. For that matter, as a Good Humor Man, I’ve amassed a bucket-load of chits from the Rancho Bernardino police. It’s time to start calling in some favors.

  At least I don’t have to contend with traffic on the way south. As little as twenty years ago, a rush-hour drive through Orange County to La Jolla would’ve been an ordeal. Today, I’m free to push my diminutive Nash as fast as its skinny tires will go. The luxurious suburbs between the highway and the Pacific never emptied out. But Los Angeles and San Diego are mere shadows of the megalopolises they were at the turn of the century. The nation’s center of gravity has been shifting eastward for decades.

  The sign for Cindy’s exit looms suddenly. Her home, a handsome Reagan-period split-level ranch, sits on a hillside above the boarded-up remnants of a middle school. Her son and daughter-in-law are planning a child. I’ll have to remember to congratulate them.

  Buddy answers the door. I’ve never much cared for him. According to Cindy, he’s been an emotionally removed husband and father, burying himself in his engineering business. It’s probably the resemblance to my own father that irks me. But he’s certainly provided my cousin and their son with a comfortable home.

  “Hello, Lou. Cindy was just wondering whether you’d make it.”

  “Hi, Buddy. How are you?” We awkwardly shake hands. I catch him looking curiously at my black eye. “You haven’t fed the last crumbs of the latkes to the dogs yet?”

  “Not yet. Cindy’s just taking them out of the oil now.”

  “The latkes or the dogs?”

  No smile. “The latkes.”

  “Good. I understand Will is scheming to make you a grandfather?”

  “Yeah. Isn’t that a kick in the head?” He almost smiles. “He and Blair are out in the solarium, if you want to go congratulate them.”

  “I’ll do that. Here’s a little something for the party.”

  He takes my wine and mumbles his thanks. The rich aroma of frying latkes greets me. I exchange nods of familiarity with several of the other guests. Many of them must have heard I’m a Good Humor Man. I wonder how they feel about that, sipping their fat-laden matzoh ball soup at Passover and eating their latkes at Hanukkah next to a man with the power to revoke their health care privileges.

  I find Will and his young, painfully slender wife sitting on a cushioned bench near the edge of the solarium. I put my hand on his shoulder. He turns around and grins. “Louis! I’m so glad you made it! Mom’ll be thrilled!”

  The three of us hug. They notice my bruises. “Say,” Will says with obvious concern, “what’d you do to your face? You aren’t taking up kick boxing at your age?”

  “It’s nothing,” I lie; “just a stupid accident. I’m much more interested in hearing about your big news.”

  Will looks expectantly at his wife. “Go ahead, honey. Tell him.”

  “Well,” Blair says, clutching her bony knees with pent-up excitement, “just this week I started my hormone therapy. I’m terrified of the weight gain, of course, but the doctor says if I tough it out, I should be ovulating within four or five months. Which means that, God willing, they’ll be able to extract a viable egg by summertime.”

  I hug her again. “That’s fabulous! I’m so glad you two decided to go through with it.”

  Will scoots closer to Blair and puts his arm around her. “The costs would swamp us if it weren’t for Mom and Dad pitching in. The government grants help, but because we’ve decided to go full designer, they’re only covering about thirty-five percent. It’s a shame you’re not an embryologist, Louis. It’d sure be terrific to get a family discount.”

  I’m so proud of them. Their announcement is the only good news I’ve heard in what seems like a century. “You know your mother and I have always been close. You’re about as near to a son as I’ll ever have, Will. So let me put something on the table. Whatever the government and your parents aren’t paying for, how about you let me make up the difference?”

  Blair shrieks with excitement and throws her arms around my neck.

  “That’s awfully generous,” Will says. “But it could end up being a lot of money. Are you sure —?”

  “You let me worry about that,” I say, feeling wonderfully benevolent. “I haven’t had anyone to spend money on for years. Make me happy. Let me do this for you.”

  “He wants to help us, Will,” Blair says, pulling his arm and smiling. “Don’t you want your cousin to be happy?”

  “Well…” The wavering disappears from Will’s face, and he vigorously shakes my hand. “Okay, then! This’ll really help us get started on a good footing. Hey — maybe we’ll have a second one!”

  Blair takes both my hands in hers and stares into my face. I can’t help but think how beautiful she would be with another thirty p
ounds softening her bony frame. “Louis, we’d like you to be the baby’s godfather. As godfather and a doctor, would you help us pick out its features and personality traits? Our embryologist is down in San Diego. We’ll be working with her this spring.”

  “I’d be absolutely delighted,” I say. Even though the notion of preselecting a baby’s sex, height, and skin tone, along with attributes such as musical aptitude and mathematical skills, gives me an old-fashioned case of the willies.

  I leave the two of them alone with their excitement, then find Cindy in the kitchen, wrapping her latkes in paper towels to absorb the excess oil. I sneak up behind her and put my hands on her shoulders. “Miss, tell me the name of the black marketeer you bought that oil from,” I say, “and it’ll go easier on you.”

  She turns around. “Lou! You made it!” Her bright-eyed smile immediately turns to shock, however. “Jesus Christ! What happened to your face, honey?”

  Cindy’s nine years younger than me. Despite the age difference, we were close growing up. She was a lifeline for me after Emily died. I’ve never been able to lie to her. “A bad day in the food confiscation business,” I admit.

  “Shit,” she scowls, pulling off her cooking mitts and lightly touching the bruises around my eyes. “They beat you up? Where were those macho pals of yours? Aren’t they supposed to protect you? You’re too old for all that crap, Lou. How long have I been begging you to give it up? It’s not as if you believe in it anymore.”

  She’ll certainly be happy to hear my next bit of news. “I resigned. Just last night.”

  Her eyes go wide. “Really?”

  “Really. I’ve confiscated my last chocolate bar.”

  She hugs me tightly. “That’s great, Lou. That’s really great. That’s the best news I’ve heard since — well, the second-best news, after Will and Blair deciding to have a kid.”

  “I told them I’d pitch in for the embryologist’s fees.”

  “That’s awfully sweet of you. But can you afford that?”

  “I’ll do whatever I can. I figure it’s my patriotic duty to help grow the population. Although it sure would be wonderful, not to mention enormously cheaper, if they were willing and able to get pregnant the old-fashioned way.”