Joe's Liver

by Di Filippo, Paul

  In the best Digest tradition, the story would begin with an ominous hint of foreboding:

  The main quadrangle of Brown University was suspiciously quiet that bright January day. A hand-lettered sign read: how many little buddhas did you kill today, gte?

  Ardy finds the incendiary nature of the slogan disturbing, but refrains from comment.

  Students on an elevated terrace are busy hammering together a platform that brings to Ardy’s mind an involuntary picture of a gallows. Roy inspects their work, gives his approval, and rejoins Ardy and Dawn. They enter the building through French doors leading from the veranda.

  They are inside the legendary Blue Room of Faunce House. Chairs and tables are filled with student diners. The smell of cafeteria fare makes Ardy realize how hungry he is.

  “Roy, do you think we might enjoy a brief collation before embarking on this crusade?”

  “No time for that now,” says Roy impatiently.

  “Unless I get something to eat, I fear I might faint from the excitement.”

  “Christ Almighty … Okay. Dawn, run and buy Ardy a couple of weiners.”

  “Please.”

  “Jesus Christ, please!”

  “I’d be glad to.”

  “Okay, Ardy, in through here …”

  Ardy finds himself in a student lounge, a tall-ceilinged white-walled room with chairs scattered on dirty carpeting. The room is crowded with students. Roy leads Ardy up to the largest group, which is centered on Professor Anger.

  “Mister Dorjam, you’re here! I can’t tell you how much your presence means to us all. Finally we have a speaker who can really report first-hand on conditions in Tibet, and perhaps stir the students and faculty on this torpid campus to some realization of their responsibility.”

  Ardy allows his hand to be pumped by the Professor. The man’s fervid blue eyes, bracketed by crows-feet, and his wagging grey ponytail engender in Ardy a strange nostalgia for an activist past he never knew, and he discovers that the truth he was about to blurt out is now submerged by the desire to please.

  “I believe, Professor Anger, that as a guest of your nation I have certain duties.…”

  “Call me Tom.”

  “Certainly, Tom. As I was saying, I have certain duties to inform the gracious citizens of this fine land about foreign customs and mores that might otherwise escape their notice. I assume that this is the group of people I am to address.…”

  Professor Anger laughs. “Oh, no, Mister Dorjam, we couldn’t possibly fit everyone who wants to hear you in this room. These people are just the core members of our organization. This is to be an outdoor rally. You’ll be speaking from the platform — you must have passed it on the way in? I expert the whole quad will be filled. We’ve been promoting this event heavily, on all the various media. Luckily, we have unusually splendid weather for this time of year, and that should contribute to the size of the turnout. I would have liked to hold this rally in the spring, but I understand that your travel plans are uncertain.…”

  “You understate their nebulosity, Tom.”

  “Ha-ha!”

  “Ha-ha,” echoes Ardy rather flatly. The news that he is expected to speak on an unfamiliar subject to several thousand people who have come to view him under false pretenses has somewhat dampened his spirits.

  At this point Roy claps his hands loudly and calls for attention.

  “Okay, people, its time to get rolling! Steve, send the first team into the assigned buildings to drape the banners out the windows. Alice, start passing out the hardhats and armbands. Mike, get the high-school kids who volunteered to hand out leaflets out on the grounds. Kip, Kip, come here, I want you to take care of Mister Dorjam while I’m busy.”

  An eager-looking boy with curly brown hair joins Roy and Ardy. He is dressed entirely in camouflage clothing, as if he has just been choppered in from Parris Island. Unfortunately, his ungainly skinny limbs and puppy-like demeanor detract somewhat from the image of hardened competence Ardy assumes he wishes to project.

  “Wow, okay, Roy, anything you say, glad to help, just tell me what to do, have a seat, Mister Toejam, can I get you anything, Roy, can I leave him alone long enough to take a leak?”

  “Ardy, here’s your weiners. I didn’t mean to take so long, but I got busy talking with someone wearing the nicest skirt, and I had to find out where she got it.…”

  “Yeah, sure, Kip, if you have to. Just make sure Mister Dorjam has everything he needs and doesn’t wander off. I gotta go deal with some crucial stuff now. Thongstrap — while I’m gone, you study this speech.”

  Roy thrusts a wad of papers on Ardy and rushes off, before Ardy can give voice to his growing unease. Stuffing the manuscript in his jacket, Ardy next accepts a soggy paper plate from Dawn.

  “Thank you, Dawn. So much has been occupying my thoughts that in truth I did not notice anything untoward about your absence. Mister Kip, will you share these franks with me ?”

  “Oh, wow, thanks a lot, Mister Toejam but you have ’em, I’ll just eat these chips if you don’t mind, you don’t mind, do you?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Wow, excellent, thanks again.”

  Ardy consumes the weiners almost without tasting them, and they lie afterwards in his stomach like indigestible stones. He realizes then why the locals refer to them as “gaggers.”

  Ardy’s mind, like his stomach, is troubled. It is filled with terrible pictures related to the upcoming event. He envisions the Agents Johnson popping up in the vast crowd of faces with pistols drawn and demanding that he surrender. Perhaps Mister “Scuzzy” Scozzafava will resent the anti-establishment nature of the rally — since he apparently owns this town, save for the resistance from Roy’s father — and will send minions equipped with sub-machine guns to lay waste to all those on the speakers’ platform. Perhaps Doctor Spencer — whom Ardy has no cause whatsoever to believe is anywhere within a hundred miles of the campus — will choose this moment to surface and ignite more of his trademark explosive devices. Anything, Ardy realizes, could happen. And probably will.

  “Ardy, you look awful! What is it ?”

  “Just my stomach.…”

  “Look, here’s a soda machine. Let me get you a Coke. That’ll settle your queasiness,”

  “I sincerely doubt it, Dawn, but it couldn’t hurt.…”

  Dawn walks across the room to the vending machine.

  “What kind, Ardy?” she shouts back. Everyone looks at him. So as not to attract further attention, Ardy rises and goes to Dawn’s side, Kip tagging along faithfully.

  The machine displays the following choices:

  new coke, classic coke, diet coke, cherry coke, nutmeg coke, caffeine-free new coke, caffeine-free classic coke, caffeine-free diet coke, caffeine-free cherry coke, caffeine-free nutmeg coke.

  “That last one,” says Ardy.

  Dawn deposits some change and gets a can of soda in return. She hands it to Ardy. Then, opening her purse and scrabbling within, she comes up with a vial, from which she shakes a couple of pills,

  “Here, take these with it. They’ll calm you right down.”

  “Dawn, I don’t know.… What are they?”

  “Just Valium. I use ’em all the time. Come on.”

  “I understand it is commonly ill-advised to take another individual’s prescription medicine.”

  “Who said anything about having a prescription for these?”

  “Oh … Well, I don’t suppose they could make things any worse.”

  Ardy swallows the pills with some Nutmeg Coke and returns to his seat. After a small interval he begins to feel remarkably relaxed. He is reminded of Doctor Spencer’s “horse vitamins.” What was it that was making him so tense …? Oh, yes, giving a speech. No problem. Ardy takes out the sheets of scribbled paper Roy handed him and tries to peruse them, but the words refuse to cohere into a sensible semblance. Individual words and phrases float in and out of his vision. “Monks,” “Potala,” “Uma Thurman,” “Nepal,�
� “My karma just ran over your dogma.”

  It all seems overly caustic and bombastic. Perhaps he should improvise, steer clear of any inflammatory rhetoric.…But Roy has obviously labored hard in the composition of this speech.… Best not to disappoint him.… Stick to the text as written.… Everything looks mellow and copasetic.…

  “Mister Kip, are you deeply committed to this cause?”

  “Wow, you bet, ever since I learned about it.”

  “And when was that?”

  “Wow, let me think … this past September.”

  “I see. And do you agree with Professor Anger’s estimate of the size of the crowd? How would you rate their volatility?”

  “Wow, those are tough questions, I guess I do, agree, I mean, and who knows, it depends on what you tell ’em, I guess. I’m sure you’ll give a truly excellent speech.”

  “Thank you for your opinion, Mister Kip.”

  “Wow, glad to help.”

  Professor Anger approaches. Ardy stands to meet him.

  “Time to get out there, Mister Dorjam. Roy is already warming them up for you.”

  “I have the utmost confidence in Roy’s ability to do so, Tom.

  “Good, good. I’m glad to hear that. You know, if I can be frank, we were a little leery of Roy when he first showed up, him not being a registered student and all. But when he told us about his travels in Tibet, and how he had smuggled you out of the country when the authorities were after you, why, we realized his contacts and expertise would be invaluable.”

  “I see.”

  Ardy, Professor Anger, Dawn and Kip leave the lounge and re-enter the Blue Room, which has now emptied of diners. The glass doors onto the veranda are whited-out with winter sunlight, and Ardy cannot see what lies beyond. Noises penetrate however, and they remind Ardy of the uproar that accompanied the American invasion of the Spice Island.

  The next second they are outside.

  Roy stands on the platform — which is draped in saffron-colored bunting — microphone in hand, exhorting the people massed on the snowy lawn. Ardy has just enough time to see cloth banners hung from surrounding façades and flapping in the wind:

  boycott szechuan restaurants!

  free your mind— meditate once a week!

  make my mandala!

  hello, dalai!

  shangri-la is right here now !

  Then he finds himself standing beside Roy on the hollow-sounding stage.

  Roy wraps up his peroration. Ardy does not quite catch the substance of it, since his attention is focused on the enormous crowd that fills the building-bounded square like milk in a coconut. Numbly he searches the clot of visages for anyone who might bear him a grudge, however unreasonable. It is impossible, though, to make out any faces beyond a few yards from the platform. For all Ardy can tell, the courtyard might contain an army of Mafia soldiers, one of Immigration Service agents, and a crack cadre of UMDPAFLL guerillas. He hears a tiny squeaking voice urging him to flee, buried deep beneath his chemical calm. It is easily suppressed. Is he not surrounded by comrades? What could go wrong? Give this short speech and then back to Dawn’s apartment for a nice hot meal and wintry night by the hearthside.

  A surf of applause and radical exhortations breaks over Ardy as Roy welcomes him to the stage with extravagant gestures. The flattering response to his arrival makes Ardy feel even better.

  Roy’s mouth is working next to Ardy’s ear, but the actual words directed at Ardy are drowned out. Ardy finally distinguishes something like “The speech, read the speech!”

  Moving to the podium that Roy has recently occupied as warm-up act, Ardy searches his pockets for the mass of wrinkled papers. Coming up with them, he waits for the noise to subside. Then he launches into his delivery of the prepared material.

  Like the last few lines of Roy s speech, Ardy’s spoken words go unheard by his own ears. Switches have been thrown in his brain which establish a circuit between eyes and mouth that totally bypasses the intellect. He is able to read and deliver the ghostwritten philippic, complete, he believes, with proper emotional cues and gestures, despite not registering a word of it. Someone high above him seems to be pulling his strings.

  Ardy is utterly mesmerized — and apparently mesmerizing. The massed eyes of the crowd seem to draw out his very soul in exchange for their own. The speech subjectively lasts for hours. Ardy grows unsure of how it is all going down with his listeners. His chemical confidence begins to fray at the edges, and he falters. This show of exhaustion seems to inspire the crowd to new reverence, as if they are watching a marathon runner stumble home. Involuntarily, Ardy starts to feel more like himself — a not entirely comfortable situation. On the last smeary page of text, during the last few sentences, in fact, he is actually able to understand what he is saying. And much to his dismay, he is unable to stop saying it.

  “… has failed! Our course of action is clear. Words have no effect on the deaf. We must act! If we are ever to open up a crack in the monolith, we must exert our strength! That is why we, the members of the Brown University Action Committee for Himalayan Freedom, have resolved to occupy Faunce House until our demands are met!”

  Pandemonium follows Ardy’s words with all the alacrity chaos usually exhibits. From out of nowhere appear a horde of University security guards. They attempt to storm the stage. The crowd roars at their effrontery. Apparently Ardy has succeeded all too well in stirring their primal emotions. Those auditors nearest to the stage abandon their passive role and hurl themselves on the guards. Punches and curses are thrown. Nightsticks come into play, as do snowballs which, judging by the ease with which they render their victims hors de combat, must have rocks embedded at their centers.

  Ardy is immediately flanked by hard-hatted members of the Action Committee. With trained precision they execute a retreat back into the building. A gush of sympathizers flows in with them. The building appears to be filling with Students galvanized into protest by Ardy’s words.

  Recovering somewhat, Ardy spots Roy issuing orders.

  “Get those doors chained! C’mon, c’mon, c’mon! Heads up, they’re tryin’ the windows! Who’s got the fucking planks and nails! All right, board ’em up! C’mon, c’mon, c’mon! Don’t forget the basement tunnels either!”

  Soon the most defensible portion of the structure has been transformed into a veritable fortress, the sunlight shut out and the glare of fluorescents sheening the sweaty faces of the protesters, who now look slightly dazed at the magnitude of their accomplishments, and baffled about their next move. Outside, the noises of a titanic struggle continue unabated.

  “Okay, people, let’s settle down for the siege. There’s no telling when they’ll get around to sending someone to negotiate, so we might have a long wait. So don’t scarf up all the food right away!”

  Having issued this warning, Roy leaves his followers to their own devices and joins Ardy. His face is flushed with excitement.

  “Hey, man, that was fantastic! Great speech, just wonderful. The way you pounded your fist, hammed it up, fantastic! I wasn’t quite sure you had it in you, but I should’ve known, after the stunts you pulled off in Vermont and Cambridge.”

  “Please do not remind me of those incidents, which, prior to this instant, I considered the lowest moments in my short life. Roy, you set me up!”

  Roy assumes a defensive posture. “Hey, now, wait a fucking minute. You gave that speech of your own free will.”

  “I was drugged by your moll! Additionally, I was lulled by your seeming reasonableness. I never thought violence was part of your schemes.”

  “Hey, Ardy, man, calm down. You don’t want everyone to think we’re having a fight, do you? It’d be bad for morale, especially this early in the game.”

  “We are having a fight, Roy. I was tricked! I resent it with all my heart!”

  “Hey, Ardy, keep your voice down, okay? Look, let’s discuss this like friends. I say I never twisted your arm to get you to help, I thought you were doing it out of fr
iendship. You claim I coerced you. Okay, let’s agree to disagree on that one point. What I think you will agree on is this: it doesn’t fucking make any difference now! We’re in here, the siege is on, and we gotta fucking cooperate! So just let it ride until this is all over, okay?”

  “Roy, I can’t —”

  “Great, fantastic, okay, I knew you’d see it my way. Now settle down, and don’t go anywhere, ’cause I’m gonna need you when the media show up.”

  “The media?”

  “Yeah, of course, what do you think ? How else are we gonna get our message across?”

  “I thought it was fairly clear at this point.…”

  “Yeah, but we need the weight of public opinion on our side, and there’s only one way to get it. Just sit back and wait ’til I call you.”

  Reluctantly, Ardy takes a seat. He spends the next several minutes receiving oblations. People approach him singly and in groups, as if to receive his numinous blessings. Some just stand and look at him, smile, then leave. Others offer congratulations, or ask if there is anything they can get him. Ardy imagines he could shanghai the Tibetan religion right now, no questions asked. Dawn materializes from the crowd, and Ardy gets gratefully to his feet.

  “Dawn,” implores Ardy, “let me walk around with you a little.”

  “Sure, Ardy. I’m just trying to find someone who’s got a needle and some blue thread. I ripped my shirt during that crazy rush, and I have to fix it before the cameras show up.”

  “Not you, too, Dawn!”

  “What do you mean, Ardy?”

  “Forget it.”

  A television is playing loudly in one corner of the lounge. So far, it shows nothing but soap operas and game shows, but a crowd is gathered around it attentively, waiting for news of their deeds to appear.

  Dawn miraculously finds someone equipped with needle and thread of the desired hue. She slips off to the toilet to repair her appearance. While Ardy is waiting for her, Roy arrives with a student in tow.

  “Mister Dorjam, our first media representative.”