by Daniel Klein
“I am Mildred Herker, wife of Miles Herker, and first lady of Louden College,” she reads. “It is unfortunate that lies have been spoken and spread about my husband. None of it is true.” Muffy now looks earnestly into the camera. “My husband is distraught. He wants everyone to know that he feels nothing but love and compassion for people of outré sexual orientations.”
“Outré?” June roars.
Ada howls with laughter.
“Excuse me if I did not use le mot juste, Miss MacLane,” Muffy says, her tone somewhere between high society-speak and pure seethe. It appears that she is going to add an explanation, perhaps pointing out that outré is French, her favorite lingua franca, but June jumps in before Muffy can go on.
“Oh, you used the right word all right,” June says. “You said exactly what you meant.”
“Words!” Muffy groans, grimacing.
“This is a university, Mrs. Herker. Words are our stock in trade.”
Muffy is now clearly at a loss for words, so she begins marching back to her front door.
Cut back to Van Stoot. “We will have more as this story develops,” he says. “Back to you, Jack, in Burlington.”
It would appear that Greg van Stoot thinks he has just positioned himself for a Pulitzer. Hell, Digby would vote for him if he were on the jury. From Burlington, they are now airing a commercial for Walmart where they are running a special on snack foods. Ada clicks off the TV, then quickly scoops up the twenty, a signal that it is time for Digby to go.
“Do you still think June is a bitch?” Digby asks on his way out.
“Just to me maybe,” Ada sighs. It is the unmistakable sigh of a jilted lover.
CHAPTER 20
It is only nine-thirty in the morning, but Digby is already abuzz after only five hours sleep, editing Binx Berger’s just-arrived piece (like most TV writers, Binx cannot discern the difference between sketch humor and on-the-page comedic prose) in between snappy sprints up to the Louden campus to behold the aftermath of last night’s high-stakes drama that is now playing out in, well, sketch humor. In less than half a day, all that appears to have sifted down from yesterday’s clash of ideologies is the message that someone has called a general student strike. Indeed, what must be close to the entire Louden College student population is outside and gushing with glee. Truancy with a justification! Party time with a purpose! Never mind that none of them appears to know or care what, precisely, that purpose is. Dress is casual, high-spirited shouting mandatory, beer the fuel.
Both the college security team and the Louden police are out in force, a number of the latter decked out in helmets and ersatz acrylic face masks that make them look more like scuba divers than a SWAT team. So far, there seems to be little for them to do except to occasionally clear a pathway so that a faculty member can slip through the campus rumpus. In fact, the only sign that some kind of substantive issue has occasioned this al fresco wingding is Associate Professor of Gender Studies and Philosophy, June MacLane, holding forth under a willow tree with a Radio Shack PA system that amplifies the rustle of the willow branches as much as it does her voice. Digby observes that she is still wearing her “Baby on Board” T-shirt; indeed, this touch lends her more star power and gravitas than any words she is uttering—that is, if her words were audible. At the edges of it all, a few journalists, a photographer, and the lone remaining videographer peer on, like Digby, searching warily for a flying spark that could ignite this party into a firestorm.
Back in Digby’s office, Berger’s piece for Cogito presents a more focused problem. It is written as a dialogue between St. Peter at the Pearly Gates and a TV reality show producer, Max, who is in possession of a way high concept: he wants to film contestants trying to get into heaven. In the producer’s words, “It’s the ultimate survival show!”
The section Digby is currently working on goes like this:
St. Peter: We’d need to have full control over sponsors, Max.
Max: No beer commercials, if that’s what you’re worried about.
St. Peter: No, beer’s not a problem—but life insurance companies, that’s a definite no-no.
With, say, Bill Murray and Andy Samberg trading the lines on a fanciful set—perhaps fashioned from items borrowed from the prop room of the folks who brought us What Dreams May Come—and in front of a live audience with an average age of twenty-one, this is definitely boffo material. A yuk a minute. The problem, however, is that in print it reads like the repartee of two college sophomores who’ve had one toke too many. Actually, the only significant problem confronting Digby is whether or not he dares risk offending Binx Berger by altering his little opus. Berger is, after all, a media hotshot and with that station in life, as Digby well remembers, comes unbridled arrogance. If Digby changes a few lines of dialogue, Berger might pull his piece in a huff and that would have repercussions with Cogito’s sponsors—that is, if Felicia Hastings is still on board. So after hours of monkeying with Binx’s prose, Digby decides instead to leave it just as it is and tweak it indirectly by composing an intro that readjusts the reader’s mind-set: he writes an editor’s note to the effect that the following shtick was considered too sophisticated for broadcast on national TV, but not too sophisticated for Cogito. No sirree, we are hipper than hip up here in philosophy-land, so hang on to your seat, lucky reader. Framing a piece is everything. And Digby is pretty sure Binx will not object to this; being deemed too sophisticated for TV is what TV writers dream about.
Digby uploads the complete interior package to the printer in Boston, cover art and ads to follow, then strolls up to the campus again where he finds Winny hanging out with the Addison County Independent reporter, a fifty-something Yankee with a sparkle in his eye. Winny is working her gamic magic on him and Digby mentally blesses them both.
“The muckamucks have started to arrive,” Winny informs Digby.
“Who’s that?”
“The Louden Board of Overseers,” she replies. “Emergency session. Herker is going to explain himself.”
“Is Mrs. Herker coming too? She has a way with words.”
“Muffy?” Winny croons.
“Muff-ee, elle-même,” Digby says in heavily American-accented French, and both Winny and the Yankee chuckle with generous, insincere appreciation.
“The press is not invited to the meeting,” the journalist says. “But word has it that the chairman of the board has a son who had a coming-out-of-the-closet party at the family country club. Should make things interesting.”
Digby returns to his office to find Madeleine giving Rosti a neck rub as he sits in her desk chair. He looks either blissful or catatonic, it is hard to tell with the logician.
“He gets knots,” Madeleine says, not missing a knead. “Listen, we received our fourteenth personal ad this morning.”
“Personal as in, looking for companionship?”
“They’re really pathetic,” Madeleine sneers. “Shameless, actually.”
Considering Madeleine’s M.O. in calf-roping Rosti, Digby finds her condescension more than a little confounding, but he lets it pass. “I didn’t know we carried personal ads,” he says.
“We don’t,” Madeleine replies. “We don’t even have a rate schedule for them. But that doesn’t keep them from coming in.”
So Cogito’s buzz just keeps buzzing.
“Hey, why not?” Digby says. “The New York Review of Books has a whole page of them. At two hundred and eighty-five bucks a hit, if memory serves. Send our companion-seekers the same rates and see who’s still in. Then lay those ads out for me, will you? And ASAP—we’re putting the issue to bed in three days.”
“I think it’s tacky,” Madeleine says.
“I’ve always had a soft spot for the lonely,” Digby says, but before Madeleine can reply the phone rings. It is Bob Baskerton. Digby takes the call in his office.
“Just had a fruitful breakfast with Mrs. Hastings,” Baskerton says.
“Cantaloupe? Strawberries?” Digby feels it is
in his best interest not to appear too eager.
“I hope your magazine is funnier than you are,” Baskerton retorts.
“Me too,” Digby says. “Did you fill Felicia in on LeFevre’s background?”
“I did.”
“And?”
“She took it like a soldier. No tears, no bitter remarks. Cool as a daisy in October. She didn’t even ask to see my evidence.”
“She trusts you.”
“Yes, she does,” Baskerton says, with more savor in his voice than Digby would have expected. “She even thanked me. Said it was better to hear it from me now than from someone else later.”
“Well, I guess it is for the best, then. For her, I mean.”
“I’m sure it is. Only part that disappoints me is the way Felicia underestimated herself—a fine woman like that.”
“Could have been her marriage that did that to her. Sapped her feminine self-assurance. It’s been known to happen,” Digby says. As much as he would like to pursue the surprisingly personal turn their conversation has taken, he does have a more pressing question for Attorney Baskerton. “So is she okay with my new advertisers now?”
“Do you really think I would bring that up at a time like this?” he snaps.
“I guess I wasn’t thinking.”
“I guess not,” Baskerton says, and with that he unceremoniously hangs up.
Nonetheless, Digby feels optimistic, and along with this rare sensation comes an inspiration for the cover: a gloopy still shot from What Dreams May Come featuring Robin Williams looking gooey-eyed at a flying dachshund in polychromatic heaven. Caption: “Paradise if you can stand it!”
Digby spends the next three hours laying out the cover, setting off the garishness of Hollywood heaven with a staid, academic-looking border—in fact, he mostly uses Bonner Hastings’ old, Reader’s Digest-like cover art, complete with a faux Benedict Uncial font that all but chants, “Holy, Holy, Holy.” Yup, a double dose of irony before you even open the book. At the top: “Cogito / a Journal of Philosophy and Contemporary Culture” and under that, “Heaven Issue.” In the upper right hand corner he features Binx Berger’s name, followed by “Head Writer, Saturday Night Live,” in über-conservative Baskerville Old Face font; but Digby colors it fuchsia, matching the wildflowers in Robin’s Shangri-la. Veritable back flips of irony. Digby considers posting Chuck Jones’s and Tommy Gasparini’s names there too, but desists in favor of less is more. Finally, in an explosion of indefensible hubris, Digby changes the newsstand price from $7.50 to $8.95.
In wrench-throwing mode, I am a wild man.
Digby uploads the cover art to the printer’s FTP site and hot steps it back to the Louden campus.
The crowd is denser now, the voices shriller, the general tenor more base. Students are herding in the direction of the Administration Building in what Digby quickly detects are two distinct groups, the same two that started it all: the gays and their earnest supporters on one side, their detractors, the all-American tea and beer partiers on the other. But this time the remainder of the student body—which is by far the great majority of the kids out here—has to vote their allegiances with their feet. With which group do they foot? This is what the pedagogues typically call a ‘unique teaching moment.’ And this time the pedagogues are absolutely right: this is undoubtedly the defining moment of each student’s four years at Louden College, one that may very well inform the rest of his or her life: when forced to decide, on what principle do they ultimately stand? Whether or not this teaching moment is worth two hundred thousand dollars of their parents’ money is an altogether different question.
“It’s show time!” Winny calls to Digby from the back of the gay rights group.
Digby saunters up alongside her, noting that she and the Yankee journalist are now holding hands. God love them, they seem perched between ‘We shall overcome’ camaraderie and gladsome carnality.
“Wassup?” Digby asks.
“Press conference. Out on the Administration Building terrace,” Winny replies.
“Where it all began,” Digby says. “Site of the blind-flying beer bottle. Who are the featured speakers?”
“The chairman of the board and Herker himself for starters. But there’s some scuttlebutt that June MacLane will have her turn too. Somebody saw her run back to her room to change her clothes.”
“I hope she doesn’t dispense with her “Baby on Board” T-shirt. I think it has serious cross-over appeal,” Digby says.
“Her ace in the hole, so to speak,” says the Yankee with Yankee drollery. Yup, Digby fully endorses the wry gent’s candidacy as Winny’s bedmate.
The two packs of students are nearly equal in number, and as they crowd abreast one another at the perimeter of the terrace—where the police have erected a barrier constructed out of what must be the only materials available to them: yellow plastic ribbon inscribed with the words, CRIME SCENE—some jostling erupts. Also some ugly utterances, like “pansy lover!” and “shit for brains!” A teaching moment this may be, but it would be absurd to believe it would instantly instill these kids with wit.
Digby now sees Kim and Muffy Herker through the long windows of the Administration Building parlor, an unusually handsome, blond-haired, six-and-a-half-footer between them. All three appear dressed for some kind of blue blood gala, at once sporty and stylish. Digby is particularly struck by the pink silk handkerchief sprouting from Kim’s blazer breast pocket; it looks a bit poofy—an excellent touch. Digby wonders if Herker consulted a public relations expert. Kim’s brow is furrowed as he studies a piece of paper in his hands, undoubtedly his press conference script. For his sake, Digby hopes Kim’s wife did not pen it for him. And, yes indeed, a few feet to one side of them, is June. She is wearing a shiny maternity dress of the same pink hue as Herker’s hanky.
“Hi there.”
Digby turns around. It is Mary. She smiles and comes up beside him. He feels his heart do back flips far more poignant than back flips of irony could ever be.
“I’m praying for a happy ending,” he says to her over the din.
“Scratch a cynic,” she replies. From the gleam in her eyes, Digby senses that she approves of his sentiment and he senses a fleeting stab of self-reproach—at the very least, his wrench-throwing was responsible for hastening this grand denouement.
But hold on, there is more to this denouement than Digby, once the supreme spotter of the very next thing, foresaw—indeed, more than he could have foreseen in his wildest forecasts: Mary kisses his cheek. No routine peck, this—it is a genuine smacker.
Digby smiles blissfully at her just as the devilishly good-looking six-and-a-half-footer he spotted through the window steps out onto the terrace. The man nods formally to the assembly, then brushes back a lock of his blondness that has flopped onto his forehead. Digby gathers that he is the father of the allegedly gay young country clubber; if his son has even a fraction of his father’s good looks, he must be a much sought after gay blade.
“I am Daryl Aylesworth, Chairman of the Board of Overseers of Louden College,” he begins. “And what we all have been presented with today is a unique teaching moment.”
Digby grimaces, as they say, inwardly. Mary has taken his hand and now squeezes it.
What exactly is going on here with this digital intimacy? Is it merely Unitarian fellowship? Is she qualifying her foot vote for gay rights with a hand vote for her own heterosexuality? But what about that squeeze, huh?
Does Mary—please, God!—actually like me? Like me a whole lot after all?
After a series of sleep-inducing platitudes about the virtue of reaching for a consensus, Chairman Aylesworth abruptly executes an unexpected change of field and starts talking about his days at Louden as captain of its football team, president of his fraternity, and secretary of the Young Republicans. These were happy days, he says. He fit right in, he felt good about himself. He met his wife while here at Louden. He made lifelong friends here too. Then, without any modulation of his voice,
Aylesworth says, “In fact, it wasn’t until many years later that I realized what an asshole I had been.”
A frozen moment while the word ‘asshole’ hovers, hummingbird-like, on the edges of the assembled crania, then a roll of gasps and giggles as it penetrates one cerebral lobe after another. These gasps and giggles appear to be distributed equally among the warring packs. Winny, the Yankee, Mary, and Digby are among the gaspers.
“I had an easygoing contempt for Jews, blacks, liberals, anybody who took their courses seriously, ugly people and, of course, homosexuals. Especially homosexuals,” Aylesworth goes on.
Digby admires his tone as much as his message. No saccharine sincerity, no mea culpa histrionics, not even a hint that he is conscious of the fact that he is venturing outside the bounds of common Louden discourse. No, Aylesworth’s tone is as matter-of-fact as a sports announcer reporting a play-by-play.
“I never gave a thought to it—my contempt,” he continues. “I knew every joke and snide remark about these so-called contemptible types as well as I knew my scrimmage playbook. Knew them by heart. Recited them automatically. I learned this contempt without thinking about it for a minute, but that’s not the important part. Because I’ll tell you what I did know—I did know my jokes and quips hurt these people. Hurt them even if they didn’t hear my saying them. Hurt them because of the climate it set here at Louden. And I didn’t give a rat’s ass about that.”
Aylesworth pauses here, a cloud of funk unexpectedly settling on his fine brow as if he has just tuned in to his own words, but it passes as quickly as it arrived.
“I want to apologize for that, all of it,” the chairman says quietly. “I am very sorry. Sorry for who I was then and what it meant to many others here at Louden. I hope we can start doing something different here today. Thank you.”