Starting from Happy

by Patricia Marx

  Wally turned on the television, with the hope that he might see Imogene. The chances of that happening were slim—Wally realized that. He was no fool. But Wally was big on slim chances. “One hundred percent of big lottery winners had infinitesimally small odds of becoming lottery winners” was one of the truisms Wally lived his life by.

  Today, however, Wally was not a lottery winner. Imo-gene was not to be seen on the shopping channel, hawking Featherware; she was not on the cooking channel, whipping up soufflés (or was it éclairs?); she was not on the local news, being interviewed about the polite neighbor who kept to himself except when he was chopping up the family next door; she was not on The Sit on the Sofa with Penny Jackson Show, chit-chatting with Penny; she was not on the reality show Hey, You: Wanna Land a Plane?

  Oh, the places Imogene was not! They could fill a book.

  Not this book. An atlas.

  63.

  Wally picked up the phone and called Imogene, whose number he had, by then, unfortunately memorized.

  64.

  When Wally called Imogene, a recorded message coldly informed him that she was unavailable. This caused Wally to miss Gwen more than a little on account of her availability. Wally tried Imogene’s number again.

  And reached her.

  65.

  Regarding chaplette 62: Patty would like it known that she was highly impressed with herself for spelling the word infinitesimally correctly on the second try.

  66.

  Wally’s neck did not need shaving, but it was Friday night and he really had nothing else to do. “What did you two talk about until three in the morning?” said Elsie.

  Elsie also had nothing to do. Apparently, lots of people did have things to do, because Wally was the only customer in the salon that night. Again, Elsie ran the clippers over a fallow patch on Wally’s neck because she wanted to give Wally his money’s worth and, as has been stated, she and Wally really had nothing else to do.

  “Until three-twenty,” said Wally. “I guess we talked mostly about how perfect she thought her life was and how overrated she thought relationships were and how I disagreed. We talked a little about curved ferrite rods, too.”

  67.

  Imogene’s calendar was booked for the next decade. What Imogene wanted more than anything was time.

  68.

  Correction: what Imogene wanted more than anything was for Donald Charm, the Saks buyer, to say yes tomorrow at lunch.

  69.

  Pockets of drizzle in Iowa led to airport delays in Chicago, which led to lost luggage up and down the Eastern Seaboard, which led to Donald Charm’s canceling the lunch with Imogene. Imogene and Wally sat in the park that day eating hot dogs from the hot dog man.

  “Can I ask you something?” said Imogene. “Why do you have all those condiments?”

  “I’ve been disappointed a lot in my life,” said Wally. He paused. “You’re not condimephobic, are you?”

  70.

  Though he knew full well that nobody desires the desirous, Wally e-mailed Imogene the moment he returned home from the park. He wanted, needed, to tell Imogene that, according to his numbers, the two of them had so far accrued only 107/120 of a proper date together, calculated thus:

  1. Sepkowitzes’ party (223 words exchanged; approximately 7 seconds of physical contact between them) = 1/6 of a date.

  2. Accumulated phone calls (4 hours, 10 minutes’ duration; both parties talking from bed, under covers) = 1/8 of a date.

  3. Lunch (outdoors; no alcohol; plastic utensils) = 3/5 of a date.

  Total Amount of Date = 107/120

  This news came plangently to Imogene, as plangently as any news had ever come plangently to her. Imogene, you see, had been under the impression, to the extent Imogene had any impression at all, that she and Wally had racked up two official dates.

  71.

  Two out of a possible two.

  72.

  What Wally wanted more than anything was love.

  73.

  Ahhh.

  74.

  On a whim or worse, Imogene handwrote a note to Wally. As soon as she dropped it in the mailbox, she wished she had not. What kind of a person sends a thank-you for a hot dog? Would Wally even remember the hot dog? Wasn’t it braggy of her to mention Saks in the second paragraph? That reference to the Rise and Fall of Roman Polanski? What was that about? Why did she write whom instead of who in that sentence? Why had she written that sentence, anyway? What about the cute postscript? Oh God, the stupid post-postscript! Why had she included her other telephone number? Did she really invite him to … she couldn’t even think about that. How about the stationery? It was the same stationery she used for condolences. Nobody uses stationery anymore. Not even for dead people. Why oh why oh why oh why had she signed off, “Hugs and kisses”?

  75.

  That’s not who she was.

  76.

  Was it?

  77.

  Imogene clenched her hands and closed her eyes. “I don’t even like him,” she thought. “He’s too enthusiastic about things I don’t care about and his sweater was inside-out.” She remembered the moons on his thumbnails. She didn’t like those either.

  78.

  When Wally’s friend Derek phoned, Wally was idly watching a bar of soap pucker and bubble and then expand monstrously in the microwave.

  “Hey,” said Derek, “want to meet this gal who’s, like, twenty-three and drop-dead cute?”

  “I’m in the middle of something crucial,” said Wally, replacing the glop on the carousel cooking tray with a hundred-watt lightbulb. “Twenty seconds should do it,” he thought.

  “Aw, come on,” said Derek. “Normally, you’d have to be a runty billionaire to get near someone with those credentials.”

  “What’s the catch?” said Wally. The lightbulb pulsated with emanations of color, and then popped, shattering into smithereens. “You’re single last time I checked.”

  “Me? With her?” said Derek. “My mother would murder me.” Beenish Asif, explained Derek, was his second cousin. She’d just arrived in New York from Saskatchewan, having exhausted the natural male resources of Canada. Derek had promised his aunt and stepuncle he’d take care of their daughter in the city, where she was getting her masters in Applied Sex Education. “Besides,” said Derek. “Don’t you need someone to take your mind off what’s-her-name?”

  “Imogene,” said Wally. The steel wool pad being zapped at the highest frequency emitted a shower of sparkle.

  Now you know how Wally came to spend the night with Beenish Asif.

  79.

  Wally met Beenish Asif downtown at a bar of her choosing—a hole in the wall called Fire Hazard even though smoking was prohibited. “How will I recognize you?” Wally had asked on the phone. Beenish could have said she had an overbite, a China doll haircut, and a tiny scar under her left eyebrow from an EZ-Bake Oven accident (it was all true), but she didn’t. Instead, she said, “My contact lenses are tinted green.”

  “Anything else?” said Wally.

  “I’m kind of dyslexic, I love teriyaki, and I had my adenoids removed last year,” she said.

  Was Beenish being alluringly goofy or was she not so bright? Patty has thought about this, and wants to keep her hands clean. Wally, beguiled by the fizziness of Beenish’s voice as well as her availability, is not a reliable judge, ever. He was pathologically generous.

  “One more thing,” said Beenish before she and Wally hung up. “When I go to a movie, I like to sit in the front row.”

  80.

  What Beenish Asif wanted more than anything was a good time, especially if it involved taking her clothes off and / or food.

  81.

  Because Fire Hazard was so crowded that only a pickpocket could be happy there, Wally and Beenish retired down the block to her sublet. Besides, Beenish had to feed her cat. Beenish did not, in fact, care for cats, and the feeling was mutual. Why did she have a cat? Because: Who has time to walk a dog?

&
nbsp; As anyone who has read chaplette 24 knows, Wally’s job was more or less to kill cats in the name of Science. When Wally met Beenish’s cat, he knelt down and stroked the patch of fur under its chin.

  82.

  Let’s give Wally credit.

  83.

  He appears to know the difference between work and play.

  84.

  “I think I figured it out,” Derek said to Wally, who was loosening an obstreperous screw. They were in Derek’s basement, trying to modify a radio scanner so they could decrypt digital cellular phone conversations. Derek continued. “You’d be my third cousin, or is it my second cousin once removed?”

  “For the millionth time,” said Wally, “I’m not marrying Beenish.” He took something off of something.

  “Is it because you don’t want to sit next to me at family gatherings, cuz?” said Derek with pseudo-concern as he patted Wally’s shoulder in a mock-avuncular way. (The shoulder, however, was real.)

  “Cut it out,” said Wally. “You know I’m in love with Imogene.” He held out his palm in expectation. “Long-nose pliers.”

  Derek handed Wally the tool kit. “How do you know Imogene’s in love with you?”

  “Didn’t she invite me to see an exhibit about textiles from ancient Egypt?” said Wally, who scrunched up his face as he tightened the tricky connector that stuck out from the back of the scanner.

  “And didn’t she disinvite you in that P.P.S.?” Derek said.

  “She sent me a thank-you note for a hot dog,” said Wally. “Who sends someone a thank-you note for a hot dog?”

  “Maybe a hot dog nut,” said Derek.

  “No, I feel unique,” Wally and Derek heard a scratchy voice on the radio say. They breathed not a breath to make sure that what they heard wasn’t merely a scratch. “Everyone here is a Mormon,” the scratchy voice said, “but I am the only dormant Mormon.”

  85.

  Wally e-mailed Imogene, thanking her for thanking him for the hot dog. “Did you know that this year Americans will eat enough hot dogs at major league ballparks to stretch from RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C., to AT&T Park in San Francisco?” was the last sentence in his brief e-mail. On the next line there was a W (no period after it).

  Imogene replied that she had not even known that there was an AT&T Park in San Francisco. She signed her e-mail “I” (no period at the end). It looked a lot like the number 1, she thought, but such was the story of her life. She put a period at the end, then took it away, then put it back. She went back and forth, adding and deleting a dot, which was probably of concern to only Imogene. (Not even Patty cares a fig.) This, as well, was the story of her life. Finally, she went with the period, deciding that otherwise the poor I looked stranded. But this, she felt certain, was not the story of her life.

  86.

  Thus began the e-mail correspondence of Wally Yez and Imogene Gilfeather.

  87.

  At first, they e-mailed in moderation, usually at night and mostly recounting the whatever and whatnot of the day.

  88.

  “Watched a documentary about how they make Pyrex measuring cups.”

  89.

  “Got a scratch on my new eyeglasses.”

  90.

  “Did you get caught in that downpour?”

  91.

  “The thing was so rusty it took two hours to take off seven screws.”

  92.

  “Still recovering from that expedition to the post office.”

  93.

  “I must tell you about my new bathroom mat.”

  94.

  “Only if I can tell you about my refrigerator condenser.”

  95.

  “Guess how much my shoe guy charges to put rubber taps on a pair of boots?”

  96.

  Four and a half more shopping days until chaplette 100.

  97.

  The e-mails became longer. Wally told Imogene about his outing to Brooklyn, where he toured a mechanical room containing the oldest running steam-powered direct current generator still in operation. He did not tell her about the dynamos and boilers he saw in action, because he wanted to surprise her with those stories the next time they were together. Imogene told Wally about the dinner party she’d gone to where an audio loop of a party that sounded more rollicking was playing in the background. Imogene omitted the detail that she was the hostess of the party. Nor did she include the fact that among the guests was Ron de Jean.

  98.

  “I can promise you neither time nor devotion,” Imogene wrote in an e-mail.

  “I’ll settle for one or the other,” Wally e-mailed back. “You pick.”

  99.

  Imogene did not answer.

  99½.

  Despite that lapse, their e-mailing picked up its pace. Once a day became two times a day became on the hour became continual became unbearable. Fifty-two pages of pillow talk. Same as a deck of cards, observed Wally, who, as a master of close-up magic, did not take the coincidence lightly.

  100.

  Merry Centasection! To recap: 53 pages, 991/2 chaplettes, 371 paragraphs, 53,056 characters (with no spaces), 53,017 characters (with spaces). Patty thinks she is strongest in chaplettes and paragraphs. And character.

  So many characters. Yes, it’s hard to keep them straight, especially the S’s. Ha ha.

  101.

  Business (or, as Patty prefers to call it, art) as usual hereby resumes.

  102.

  “How would you like to take part in a bold experiment?” Wally e-mailed Imogene a few weeks into their cyberfest.

  103.

  Imogene, while no fan of the scientific method, agreed, despite some qualms, to go along with the bold experiment. Rather than exchange e-mails, she and Wally would venture into actual conversation—not in person, for that would be too bold, but phonewise. Yes, they’d spoken before, but they barely knew each other. It was easier to fabricate data then.

  104.

  That night, Wally called Imogene at eleven o’clock on the dot.

  105.

  Science is precise.

  106.

  “Mr. Watson—come here—I want to see you,” began Wally. He told Imogene that those words were the first that Alexander Graham Bell uttered over the telephone. Then he gave Imogene a lecture about how a telephone works.

  107.

  Science can explain so much.

  108.

  And what a number 108 is. Brings back memories.

  109.

  Plus, it’s the atomic number of hassium, you jerk.

  110.

  Soon Wally and Imogene were talking on the phone every eleven o’clock on the dot until every three or four in the morning. After a few weeks, however, Imogene informed Wally that at this point in her career it was now or never and she happened to prefer now, which meant, romantically speaking, that she did not have the time to be, as she put it, “embroiled.”

  Earlier that day—it was not a coincidence—Imogene had learned that a competitor of Featherware, a company called Blatant Exploitation, had just sold its First Amendment Briefs (“Endorsed by the ACLU!”) to Saks Fifth Avenue.

  “I’m not saying your career’s not important,” Wally told her. “But I think it’s also now or never for you to build a history with someone.” Wally adjusted his pillows and turned off the light on his night table. “Have you, I’m wondering, ever factored in the cumulative effect of checking in with a person, the same person, every night in bed?”

  111.

  First science, now history.

  112.

  “What is this,” thought Imogene, “school?”

  113.

  Being a diligent student, Imogene tried her best to picture a union such as the one Wally extolled. What would it feel like, she mused, to share a scrapbook of memories with somebody? To have an index of proper nouns in common with this somebody so that nobody had to explain, for instance, who Bruce Strober was? To know someone’s memories so deeply she would sometim
es wonder, hey, did that happen to him or to me? To talk in a secret shorthand nobody else understood—and even, when they felt like it, not to talk at all? To have cutesy pet names? What would it be like to be so assured about another that she went around the house in sweatpants, wearing no makeup—well, maybe a touch of blush—and, then, as Wally said, to check in with each other that night no matter what?