Samuel Johnson's Eternal Return

by Martin Riker

  It begins four years after that first night with the newspaper box (years, for me, of loneliness and hopelessness, not to mention infuriating powerlessness, the sense of possibility I had gotten from the Fortune-Teller having quickly revealed itself to be a curse: somehow, somewhere, there was a way to return to my son, yet I had no idea how to find it, or even where to start!), in the same bar as that first night, around the same late hour, over the same french fries and booze, Elliot, the red booth seat, the music probably different by then—Bee Gees or Donny Osmond, something like that—Orson having just returned from another pointless trip. He’d been performing one of his favorite satirical routines, the one about David’s hairdo, when Elliot leaned back and nodded what could only be described as a patronizing nod, a nod that acknowledged without agreeing, a nod that I instantly recognized, and that Orson certainly recognized, as profoundly out of character.

  “I don’t know, Orson,” said Elliot, “certainly you have to admit that David works hard. I mean, he’s in the office longer hours than I am, and I’m practically never anywhere else!”

  To which Orson fell silent.

  I should explain that Orson’s relationship with Elliot had grown closer during the intervening years, as Elliot had taken on responsibility for ever larger portions of Orson’s daily life, and as his worldview had increasingly shaped itself to the claustrophobic contours of Orson’s personality. By now any sort of disagreement was simply inconceivable.

  “I mean,” Elliot went on, “don’t you think?”

  “So you think you and David work too hard?” said Orson at last.

  “Well, no, of course not . . . I’m only making the point, or rather merely pointing out, that it is possible, you know, that we sometimes underestimate the difficulty of the situation.”

  “The situation?” said Orson. “What situation is that?”

  I should also mention that Orson’s business had by now lost perhaps two-thirds of its staff, and though it had also lost at least half of its clients, Orson had managed to generate enough new projects that current staff was handling almost twice the work per person, which was not going well, and which I assumed was the “situation” to which Elliot was referring.

  “The situation. The overall situation. I mean . . . Well, after all,” Elliot pushed out, “nobody’s perfect!”

  “Nobody’s perfect?”

  “Of course not. And I—”

  “Not even David? Your good buddy David?”

  “What? No, Orson, I didn’t say—”

  “Not even you? You and your buddy David, even you two aren’t perfect?”

  “Ha ha, I see where this is—”

  “Perfection is certainly a hard thing to attain, no question about that,” Orson went on. “But if even you and your fraternal twin David . . .”

  “Orson, come on. I was just—”

  “No no, I agree with you. I’m agreeing. You know what I think my problem is?”

  “I certainly never said—”

  “It’s that I’ve been so fortunate with my employees’ incredibly high level of performance for so long that I’ve come to take it for granted. I’ve grown so accustomed to excellence that I no longer even recognize it sitting right in front of me, and I fail to appreciate all the painstaking hours of daily struggle that got this company to such a fucking high level of perfection in the first place. But as you’ve now pointed out—”

  “O.K., O.K.” Elliot hand-signaled surrender. “I’ve learned my lesson. Can we drop it?”

  “You’d like to drop it?”

  “I’ve learned my lesson.”

  “Shall we call David to see if he also wants to drop it?”

  “I’ve learned my lesson!”

  Unfortunately for Elliot, and inexplicably to me, he had not learned his lesson, but over the following days and weeks grew only more awkwardly self-assertive. He posed hypothetical questions. He called for “perspective.” He pointed out positive attributes of his fellow employees and pleaded on behalf of “reason,” as if all Orson had ever needed to become a more caring employer was Elliot’s guiding hand. I might have felt bad for him, had I cared at all. But while I did wonder what had caused Elliot’s sudden shift in personality (I assumed some sort of early midlife crisis, that he had woken one night in a panic, had realized he was not getting any younger, that all his old school friends were passing him by, that he needed to “step up to the plate,” and so on), mostly I was surprised that something different was happening.

  Of course to Orson, who’d once felt betrayed when the mailman accidentally delivered his mail to the wrong address and for months thereafter continued to refer to his “fucking mailman,” Elliot’s new confidence was an infuriating joke. That he tolerated this new version of Elliot for almost two weeks attests, as much as anything, to real sentiment on his part. Yet as soon as it became clear that the old Elliot was not going to resurface, Orson stopped responding with sarcasm, then stopped responding at all. In an instant, Elliot was out.

  When you consider just how many functions Elliot served in Orson’s life by this point—not just in business and friendship but also things like grocery shopping and dry cleaning—the speed and totality with which Orson extracted him was frankly impressive, and no doubt possible only because of Orson’s latest business strategy, which was simply not to deal with business at all. In the absence of Elliot, however, Orson found himself without an assistant, or for that matter any friends, and so this is where Blossom comes in.

  In fact she’d been in Orson’s life longer than I had. Short, sturdily built, with cropped black hair, dressing casually if unremarkably in jeans and t-shirts, she hardly ever talked, and what she did say tended to contain a lot of swearing. It was more a habitual than an angry swearing, I always thought, and since she never betrayed the slightest expression, I could never tell her mood or ascertain anything about her. I knew she’d met Orson years ago, under circumstances I assumed had to do with drinking and sex, for that was what they did together—drink and have sex—once every two or three months, when one called up the other for company. That was the extent of their relationship, and as for her life outside, I certainly had no sense of it, nor, I think, did Orson. She was another unexplained piece in the puzzle of his life.

  With the extrication of Elliot, however, a position had opened up, in his life if not in his business, for which there were not many viable candidates. And she must have needed the money, because within a matter of days, Orson had hired Blossom as his assistant, with a salary and benefits, after which she would show up most afternoons, doing things or pretending to do them. And with Blossom in place, Orson was able to move on with his usual routine, while Elliot, finding himself suddenly demoted, was left to flop around in a state of perpetual panic, bewildered by his own expendability.

  Now, the reader might be forgiven for failing to notice how any of the mundane events I’ve just rattled off could possibly constitute my story, the story of Samuel Johnson. The truth is, even I did not recognize them as such at the time. In fact, three more years would go by, years remarkably similar to the four before them, during which I continued to tune in absently to the Orson Fitz Show, with Blossom now in the role of Elliot, before my story at last announced itself. The celestial dots connected to reveal how strange and fickle Fate can be, how events lead to events, and how consequences reverberate across the ages. For if Elliot had not become unbearable, Orson would never have turned to Blossom. And if Orson had not turned to Blossom, there never would have been any question of Phil. And if it weren’t for Phil, if it weren’t for Phil . . . Well, I won’t get ahead of myself.

  Three more years, remarkably similar to the four before them . . . yet as time passed, life started to take a different toll on Orson. He continued to pursue his manic course, but with no enthusiasm whatsoever. Eventually, he began to slow down. He traveled less, spent less time with Blossom. He stayed in more at night. He went to movies in the afternoons. Indeed it was returning home from a Tue
sday matinee in the winter of 1973 (with Nixon still in the White House and Hawaii Five-O airing at eight thirty on CBS) that Orson found Elliot standing outside his door looking extremely agitated. We’d not seen Elliot for a while by then; whatever business Orson still conducted was either through Blossom or over the phone. He looked older, Elliot. He had a patchy beard now, and none of his youthful exuberance.

  “What is it?” said Orson.

  “Well, I have some . . . It’s actually good news. It’s actually great news.”

  I should mention that Orson’s company had been in the toilet for a while by this point. He had lost most of his employees, although Elliot and David had for some reason straggled on. Perhaps they could not find other jobs.

  “Let us try this again,” said Orson. “What . . . is . . . it.”

  “We received a phone call, is what! A very interesting one! It’s . . . Can I come in?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  Orson stared at the door. “I’m not feeling well,” he said finally. “Just tell me.”

  “Well, we’ve been invited to submit a proposal for a new project, and, Orson, it’s a great deal of money. David thinks it could bring about a new chapter in the company’s future.”

  “David thinks?”

  “Well . . . yes. Listen, Orson, I know things have been going badly for . . . it’s been a while now. I know. We all know. But this is a great opportunity.”

  “O.K.”

  “Orson, just hear me out—”

  “I said O.K.”

  “Please don’t play games. Not this time.”

  “Who’s playing games? Jesus—”

  “Peoples’ lives are in the balance!”

  “Are you even listening? Am I not talking out loud?”

  “Don’t you even—” Elliot stopped. “You really want to hear about it?”

  “Come by again tomorrow and you can tell me what you need.”

  “I . . . That’s great!” Elliot was confused. “Because—oh, that’s the other thing. It all needs to be finished and submitted in just one week. The proposal, that is. It seems we weren’t the first choice, but . . . well, that doesn’t matter, does it? They’re sending the specs tomorrow, so—”

  “Come by when you have what you need,” said Orson, and let himself into the house.

  From inside the door, I pictured Elliot outside asking himself if it was a trap or a joke or if, somehow, Orson had turned a corner. I imagined him weighing these possibilities before heading back downtown to the office, where David no doubt awaited his report. I imagined both Elliot and David caught between hope and suspicion, wondering what sort of horrible unforeseeable trick Orson would spring on them the following day. That is what I would have been wondering if I were them.

  What I did not imagine, and what Elliot definitely did not imagine, what even Orson could not have imagined, since it was in fact impossible to imagine, was that this new turn in Orson’s story would never play out to completion, and that Fate was about to take a far stranger turn.

  For although it seems odd to say so, given how fantastical everything I’ve told you up to now must seem (I assume that so far you’ve found the story of my journey through this world fantastical or ludicrous since I still feel that way about it myself), still, what I am about to describe is even more bizarre. It is so strange and inexplicable that all I can do is acknowledge its strangeness and assure you, before you accuse me of lying, that I agree you ought to think so. For at this point Orson’s fate was hijacked by the least likely of sources. I, Samuel Johnson, a do-nothing in life, and even more hopelessly ineffectual in death . . . I, Samuel Johnson, messed everything up.

  It happened that night, after Elliot left, when Orson called up Blossom to keep him company.

  Lately she’d seemed frazzled. She was short-tempered and was gaining weight, and it had occurred to me more than once, over the past weeks, that something with Blossom was off. She looked perpetually tired, her usually flat expression now flabbily slack, which at the time I attributed to the accumulated trauma of three years of near-constant exposure to Orson. Only later did I understand that Blossom had her own problems, the nature of which I could never have guessed.

  She arrived that night looking particularly exhausted, and when Orson announced there would be no talking this evening, that he wanted only to drink, she sighed thankfulness all the way to the sofa. He put on loud jazz and joined her there with various bottles, and the two of them proceeded with such resolve that before long the evening, still young, seemed soon to be over. Orson was on his back by then, with Blossom draped over him, her face partly mashed into his chest. They were drunker than they had been in a long time and had arrived at the very edge of consciousness, or at least the edge of willfulness, that twilight moment when a mind and its body are preparing to part ways, when suddenly Blossom’s face sprang forward, alarmingly awake. She sat up and said, very clearly yet in a voice only slightly like her own, with an accent I had come to know as a local Pittsburgh way of speaking but which sounded no less bizarre, despite being somewhat familiar, when spoken by Blossom’s mouth:

  “So how long yinz been in there?”

  Which of course made no sense to me at all.

  “Blossom here I been in just the past month or so, but I figure you’s in there longer n’at. Course I only sussed it aht the other day, whenever yer man there told his story about Antigua and so forth, and the herbs and bull’s head and so forth.”

  It was true that a few days earlier Orson had told Blossom that story.

  “I sussed it aht right then, though,” the voice coming from Blossom went on, “and ever since, I been rill anxious to speak. I never met another soul in this same perdicament. I always did figure it were possble, since what’s so special abaht me? That I’d be the one and only? And now, here y’are. Yuh are in there, yeah? Phil Williams.”

  And he held out Blossom’s hand as if he wanted me to shake it.

  I say “he” and “me” because despite how disorienting this moment obviously was, I did understand at least that I, and not Orson, was the person being addressed, and that the individual addressing me was not named Blossom, but Phil. Of course I could not fathom how this was possible, nor did I know how to respond—by what mechanism, I mean—but since it was the only logical thing to do, I tried speaking.

  “I’m Samuel Johnson,” I said in Orson’s voice. Or rather it was and it wasn’t Orson’s voice. It was his vocal cords, but through them flowed my own words, in my own manner of speaking, which sounded only distantly familiar, since I’d not heard it in so long. “How are we speaking?”

  “How we . . . You mean yuh never been aht before? Shit.” Blossom’s face fell to a pout. “Yer even more ignorant than me!”

  “How are we speaking?” I repeated with urgency—and without quite realizing it, I sat up.

  Phil sighed. “It’s irregaler for sure. Can’t say unnatural, since who can say what’s natural? Not Phil Williams, and it seems not Samuel Johnson neither. Seems not one of us can say what is or is not natural, and if not us, who? But one thing I can tell yuh is”—he looked hard at me, effecting an air of consequence—“there’s a moment. Or more it’s a range. Anyways, a gray area when a body’s not quite awake or asleep, but somewheres between. When the mind’s gahn in the house and turned aht the lights, but left the car keys in the ignition out the garage. And that’s when a soul might take a body for a spin . . .”

  Now, as Phil was speaking, I had been looking around Orson’s living room, trying to ground myself in physical reality against the sudden swirling volatility of my metaphysical state. Here was the sofa, the lamps, the coffee table, end tables, the chairs, the desk, the television. Here were the rugs, the filing cabinet, all the various stacks of boxed-up stuff. Everything looked the same, I thought—except that I was the one looking. And since I do not dream (unless it was all a dream, everything I’d gone through, which had occurred to me, of course, countless times, that all th
is must be a dream, except that it wasn’t, or couldn’t be, since how can you dream things you’ve never seen or imagined?)—since I do not dream, that is, this had to be happening. I’d spoken. I’d sat up. I’d leaned in and looked around. I thought: I can do things?

  I stood then, and wobbled.

  “Whoa there.” Phil put a hand to my shoulder.

  I sat back down.

  Had I been able to do things all along? For how long?

  Suddenly I was angry with myself.

  Every time Orson drank himself unconscious (which, to be fair, was not that often), could I have done things then? Had I been this way for years? Had I wasted whole years of opportunities? So busy resigning myself to my circumstances, thinking about how lost I was, wallowing in self-pity that I did not even bother to discover the actual possibilities before me? No, I assured myself, as great a failure as I had always been, I was not that great a failure . . . and yet, yes, I went on to myself, that was precisely the sort of failure I was. The sort who fails not only to act, but even to figure out what actions are possible . . .

  I stood again, and this time I wobbled my way across the room, Phil trailing at a close distance. When he tried to assist me, I shooed him away.

  I said, “I can feel my hands.”

  “Yeah, but it’s a balance.” Phil held up Blossom’s hands. “They sober up: yer aht. They pass aht: yer aht. It’s tricky, sure, but with some work you can keep them this way a good while.” He followed me back to the sofa, where I lowered myself slowly and (I thought) reasonably well. “I once kept hold a body five ahrs straight, and Blossom here I kept tree, tree an a half? Long as yuh feel those fingers, you know you’s the one driving.”

  “Wait,” I said, “you drive?”

  “That’s a figure of speech, but sure, pretty regaler.”

  “So you could—” But here the feeling left my fingers; they became again Orson’s fingers, and Orson’s eyes closed.