The Full Catastrophe

by David Carkeet

  Cook dressed quickly. Earlier, when he had awakened, he had put off reading “Day Three” so that he could shower with a clear head and think about his silent but eventful Day Two. Now, eager for new orders, he opened The Pillow Manual, remembering with shame his violent deflowering of it the day before and taking care not to expose any pages other than “Day Three.”

  His experience with the daily instructions led him to expect a brief, forceful command. This one was brief to a fault:

  DAY THREE

  Pillow.

  “Pillow”? What about him? Was he going to drop by and handle things today? If that was the message, this was a hell of a way to express it. Or could it be the regular English word with a meaning Cook didn’t know about? It was possible. Words confused Cook more often than they should have, considering his field. He could never remember what “moue” meant. Or “a dog’s life”—were dogs seen as leading cushy lives or tragic ones? He had no idea.

  He tracked down a dictionary on the bookshelf and looked up “pillow,” but he found no surprise meanings there. So he sucked it up, as they said—whatever that meant—and called his evidently eponymous boss.

  “Roy?”

  “Jeremy? Again? Absurd!” Pillow hung up.

  Cook stared at the dead phone in his hand. He thought of that area of the human body, both male and female, defined by an arc sweeping down from the navel, around and up the backside to the tailbone. He ran through all the nouns for things found and produced there. He had such a good time that he misdialed Pillow’s number and had to redial. When he reached him, Pillow gave him the quick pick-up-and-hang-up treatment Cook had seen him perform in his office.

  Cook took the phone back to the landing and set it on the table. Dan had left the third floor, taking his tools with him. Cook wandered out onto his little balcony for some fresh air. What was he supposed to do all day? Stuff pillows with Dan and Beth? Have a pillow fight? Gather all the pillows in the house and have an orgy on them?

  Through the trees in the small park across the street he spotted a flash of bright orange—Hot Pants semaphoring to him as she bent over a lawn sprinkler. His hands formed two buttock cups and contracted rhythmically. It struck him that his sexual despair was greater than it had ever been, even though this dry spell was by no means the longest of his adult life. The reason, he guessed, was Beth. It wasn’t just the fact that he often imagined making love with her, but also that he was in her house with her, seeing her, brushing by her, moving in an orbit with her—in short, occupying the same physical space, outside the bedroom, occupied by the man who could make love with her, and did, once a week. (He believed Beth’s frequency report over Dan’s.) Although Cook’s relationship with Beth necessarily took place on the barren turf of asexuality, he had come to feel that he and Dan “shared” her. A bizarre feeling—he knew it—but he couldn’t help it.

  He looked to his right, and his eyes met those of an old man in the front yard of the house next door. “Hi, Dan,” the man called up to him in a liquid growl, and Cook waved. Dan had mentioned this neighbor to Cook the night before. He was eighty-five years old and had lived in the house since his birth, the only such resident of the neighborhood. “Friendly and foulmouthed,” Dan had said of him. Cook stood waiting for the man to yell, “Hey, you dick, you’re not Dan, you fuck!” But he just went back inside. Cook did the same.

  When he went downstairs he found that the obscurity of his instructions for the day would pose no immediate problem, for the house was empty. He walked from room to room, finally spotting a note on the table in the sun-room:

  To the cunning linguist—

  I’m at the hardware store—back in 45. Robbie’s at school. Beth ran off with a roofer.

  Yours in Christ,

  Dan

  In The Woof of Words, Cook treated English constructions likely to arise when a speaker was eager to deny intent, such as “happen to”: “I happened to get drunk and kick my wife down the stairs.” Another was “end up,” as in “I ended up torturing heretics for a living.” He thought about these when he found himself, in the course of a time-killing stroll after breakfast, at the library, where he ended up at a computer terminal and happened to type in the name of F. F. Sweet.

  Cook seriously doubted that F. F. Sweet had written a book in his carping career, but it was worth a try. His dim hope was to find F. F.’s soft underbelly, something to initiate a revenge strategy that wouldn’t require him to hunch over a Kickapoo grammar for six months. After typing the name, he punched “Return” and blinked with surprise to see that the computer for the library’s holdings recognized the bastard as a bona fide author. He punched another button, and one title came up on the screen.

  “No,” he said. It couldn’t be. He turned to a nearby reference librarian, asked her where he might find the book, and said “No” to her when she told him. He said “No” as he walked up the stairs and again when he entered the children’s section. A few mothers and fathers were there, browsing the shelves while their children roamed. Cook went to the wall where the picture books were shelved and worked his way down the alphabet to “S.” He recognized the spine right away and grabbed the book, glared at it, read the author’s brief biography with disbelief, and wedged it back on the shelf, out of order and backward—his first counterblow.

  Cook’s experience at the Wabash Institute had taught him to divide the world of young children’s books into two categories—those that were also fun for adults and those that were not. The worst ones could bring adults to their knees in weeping pleas for mercy. The worst of the worst was A Valentine for Val, text and illustrations by F. F. Sweet.

  Cook knew the plot well, though he had never paid attention to the author’s name until now. Val was a little Indian boy who couldn’t handle Valentine’s Day. Every year he bought big bunches of valentines, but he never sent them out and never received any. Then one Valentine’s Day he decided to send his accumulated hoard all at once to all his friends. He went to the post office and mailed them. When he got home, the mailbox outside his tepee was overflowing. It contained exactly as many valentines as he had sent out.

  Flaws: kids of picture-book age didn’t know what the hell Valentine’s Day was; Val was a stupid name; Val’s identity as an Indian never really came across; an inordinate amount of time was devoted to the trip to the post office; no motive was established for Val’s sudden decision to mail the valentines; there was no evidence that Val had any friends to whom he could send valentines or who might be expected to send him any; since he received more than one valentine, the title was wrong; a young auditor could easily be confused and think that Val mailed all the valentines to himself; the art was for shit.

  A Valentine for Val must have disappeared from the Wabash Institute a dozen times during Cook’s tenure. He was responsible for many of its disappearances, but not all of them—the other linguists despised the book as well. After every disappearance there would be a merciful respite from Val, until a well-meaning parent—most often some sappy father—would make a gift of a copy. Thanks, pal.

  Cook grabbed the book again and reread the biography. It described F. F. Sweet as “an Indian buff who lives in Washington, D.C., with his eight cats.” Indians, Washington, D.C.—it had to be the same guy, and the sum of his publications was apparently A Valentine for Val and “Why Jeremy Cook’s Theory of Kickapoo Adverbs Is Preposterous.” The biography said he was “hard at work on a sequel to this volume.” It had been ten years since A Valentine for Val was published. F. F. must have hit a block. But Cook had an idea for the sequel. The story would open where the previous tale left off. Val eagerly opens the envelopes, only to find they’re all filled with unspeakable horrors, sent by a deeply injured, justifiably angry, and incredibly relentless enemy; as a result, Val has a nervous breakdown and mopes around the tepee for the rest of his life. A Valium for Val.

  The question was this: what real mayhem could Cook create from his discovery of F. F.’s authorship of this book
? The answer came easily: none. Cook knew no editors of relevant journals, and even if he did, who would want to publish a hostile review of a popular ten-year-old picture book? Cook’s honesty would have killed such a plan anyway After all, the book worked. The kids at Wabash cried their fool heads off for it every day. In other words, in moments of leisure F. F. Sweet could take pride in his book—when he rocked on his Washington, D.C., porch, for example, or when he fed his eight stupid cats. And there was nothing Cook could do about it.

  “Jeremy! Hey! What are you doin’ here?”

  Cook was down so deep in his private world that he was slow to rise to social competence. Robbie stood there grinning at him, his knapsack slung over one shoulder in collegiate fashion. A cute blond girl—perhaps a classmate—passed by Robbie and gave him a lingering look. Through her eyes, as he searched for a way to explain his presence, Cook saw that Robbie was in fact a very handsome boy. He was also funny and even charming, in his way. He seemed entirely comfortable with himself. As for Cook, he felt stuck right where he was, in the picture-book section.

  “Those books are all for little kids,” Robbie said. “What are you doing?”

  “Oh, I’m just confused,” said Cook. “What are you up to?”

  Robbie looked over his shoulder, watchful of being overheard. “It’s a library day. My school’s just down the street, and we come here a couple times a week. We’re coming a lot this week, because school’s almost over and my teacher’s pooped and she’s run out of ideas.”

  Cook laughed.

  Robbie said, “I’m looking for a book on knots. For my summer camp. Last year they taught us all these great knots, I mean great ones, but I forgot all of them. Then I’m going to get a book on stars. Last year there was a guy in my bunk who knew all the constellations. I didn’t know a single one. I hated it that he knew all that and I didn’t. I’m going to nail those suckers down cold.” He set out down a row of stacks. He looked back at Cook as if wondering if he wanted to come along, but Cook just waved and headed for the stairs.

  • • •

  Neither Dan nor Beth had returned home. Cook went up to his room. He figured enough time had passed for him to call Pillow and maybe even get a few words in before Pillow hung up on him.

  When Pillow answered, Cook blurted out, “What does ‘Pillow’ mean?”

  “A pillow is a soft cushion for the head. It can also be merely decorative, as one might find on a settee, or a—”

  Cook burst out laughing. Pillow had answered as automatically as Mr. Memory in The Thirty-Nine Steps.

  “Did something amusing just occur where you are, Jeremy?”

  “No, Roy. Not at this end. Listen: ‘Day Three: Pillow.’ What the hell?”

  Pillow gasped. “You’re on Day Three already?”

  “Of course I am. It’s the third day.”

  “Oh my. You don’t understand. Oh … So fast. Day Three. Good Lord.”

  “I’m just following the unsealing schedule. It’s Day Three. What’s the big deal?”

  “But you’re taking the meaning all wrong. Don’t you see? ‘Day’ in The Pillow Manual has nothing to do with the ‘day’ you might use in casual conversation. It means something entirely different. It means a unit of time that lasts for as long as you want it to. I assumed you would stay with the ‘Day Two’ instructions for much longer than you have. Do you remember those instructions? ‘Watch. Say nothing.’”

  Cook laughed. “Yes, Roy. I remember. It was only yesterday, after all. Oops! Does ‘yesterday’ mean something different to you than it does to me?”

  “What a funny idea, Jeremy. Why do you say that?”

  “Listen, Roy. If you give me the word ‘day’ I’m going to think ‘twenty-four hours.’ So would anybody else. I can’t believe the rest of the staff understands it the way you mean it.”

  “Well, they usually don’t, at first. They show a peculiar tendency to make the same mistake you made. It’s a source of vexation to me.”

  Cook closed his eyes and shook his head slowly. It felt like an action he had never performed before. Pillow was driving him to new behavior.

  “So what’s the point, Roy?”

  “The point is you haven’t husbanded your time and resources. You’ve—” Pillow paused. “Where does that come from? ‘Husband’—the verb.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Does it come from the noun? But where does the noun come from?”

  “I don’t know. Look, are you saying I’ve gone too fast?” “Do you feel that you have?”

  Cook considered this. “I’ve got nothing to compare it with.”

  “Mmm. Do you feel that you’ve gotten all that one can get out of ‘Watch. Say nothing’?”

  “Who knows? I could do it again today, if you want.”

  Pillow made a scoffing noise. “It’s a bit late in the game for that, Jeremy. You’ve already read ‘Day Three.’ You can hardly go back to ‘Day Two’ when you’ve read ‘Day Three.’”

  Cook was beginning to think that the Pillow Agency ran a forty-week boot camp that he had somehow missed out on. He decided to match Pillow’s perpetual obscurity with some of his own: He would not tell Pillow about Dan and Beth’s upcoming trip, which he was now sure Pillow was ignorant of, considering how languorously he expected Cook to operate. Cook would drop a mention of the trip on him one day as if it were shared knowledge, and he would listen to Pillow bluster about how he had no idea, how he should have been told, and Cook would just say, “Oh come now.”

  Cook said, “I guess my only choice is ‘Day Three,’ then. ‘Pillow.’ What’s it mean?”

  “Ah,” Pillow said with frightening pleasure. “‘Pillow.’ It’s a crucial step in the process. It’s a verb: ‘to Pillow.’ ‘I Pillow. You Pillow. He Pillows.’”

  “In Black English, ‘He Pillow,’” said Cook.

  “Quite right. The past tense is ‘Pillowed.’ The past participle is ‘Pillowed.’ The—”

  “It’s a regular verb. I got it, Roy. What’s it mean?”

  “Well, basically it means to stop the action and demand meaning. You’ve been a quiet presence in the house so far, Jeremy. You’ve been lying low. Now it’s time to speak up. Suppose that the husband or wife says something that strikes you. Maybe it’s a little bit off. Maybe it’s a little askew, a little unexpected, a tad cryptic or disproportionate. You slam on the brakes. You stop everything and demand meaning—full meaning. You may also ask for an explanation of the timing of the utterance, the style, diction, accent, register, prosody, intonation, pitch, and tempo. That’s Pillowing. Do that, and you’re Pillowing.”

  Cook actually felt something like respectful interest. He said, “I just stop them, right in the middle of whatever they’re saying?”

  “When the fancy strikes you, yes. You may do it when they’re talking to you or when they’re together and you’re just observing—either way. When they’re together, listen for snaps.”

  “Snaps?”

  “Yes. When one marriage partner snaps at the other, Pillowing is indicated. It’s important to stay on them, Jeremy. Don’t let up. Demand meaning until you’re satisfied.”

  “It sounds like I’m going to be a pest.”

  “Mmm. Pest. I don’t like that word. I prefer gadfly, in the Socratic sense. Or noodge. Be a noodge. That’s a Yiddish word—”

  “I know it, Roy. I know the word.”

  “Good. To Pillow is to be a noodge.”

  “Okay. Any other guidelines?”

  After a short pause, Pillow said, “The Pillow Manual will be your guide.”

  Cook frowned. “All The Pillow Manual says is ‘Pillow.’”

  “That’s right. Don’t you get my meaning, Jeremy? I was trying to answer your question by saying no somewhat creatively.”

  “Oh. I see. Uh, Roy?”

  “Yes?”

  “You don’t have to do that, you know. Speak creatively. It’s coals to Newcastle.”

  “You think so? Why, th
ank you, Jeremy. I’m quite flattered. What a pleasant note to say goodbye on. What a pleasant note indeed. But before I go, I want to tell you that your date is ready.”

  Cook closed his eyes and shook his head slowly.

  “Shall we say … five-twentyish?”

  “You mean today?”

  “Today.”

  “Oh God.”

  “Courage, Jeremy.”

  “And if I refuse?”

  “We’ve been through this. It was most unpleasant. I’m still healing from that unpleasantness.”

  Cook sighed. “There’s only one reason I’m willing to agree to this, Roy. It’s the Wilsons. I like them. I want to help them. You probably calculated it that way, didn’t you? You deliberately didn’t tell me about this dating business until I became involved with them.”

  “That’s dangerously close to being an unpleasantness, Jeremy. Please, be careful. Now, she will pick you up there at the job site. Isn’t that nice?”

  “Tell me about this babe. Where’d you find her?”

  “No, no. Mum’s the word. Surprise is nine tenths of pleasure.”

  “I hate surprises.”

  “Oh? Well then, I’ll say this much: remember what they say about opposites.”

  “Opposites?”

  “Yes. What do they say about them?”

  “I don’t know. That they attract? Is that it?”

  Pillow laughed. “You’ve got it, Jeremy. You’re way ahead of me.”

  “Really? Why do I feel I’m always behind you, Roy? With my face stuck deeply up your ass. Why do I feel like that?”

  Pillow paused. “That’s not a very attractive image, Jeremy. It’s a rather unpleasant one, in fact. I hope you can say something pleasant now, so we’ll be able to say goodbye on a happy note. I hope you can do that.”

  Cook brought all of his previous day’s experience in taciturnity to bear on this moment. He was supremely, eloquently silent. Pillow hung on, waiting for speech. Cook kicked off his shoes and made himself comfortable. There was no telling how long this would last.