Lightning Rods

by Helen Dewitt

  “Yeah, OK,” said Mitch. “Do you want me to do this now?”

  “That’s exactly what I want,” said Joe. “Why don’t you take the rest of the afternoon off, and we’ll talk tomorrow.”

  The main reason Joe had suggested it was he thought it would do Mitch good to spend the afternoon reading a couple of recreational magazines and getting paid for it. Mitch tended to take things too seriously. The entertainment business is just that—a business—and it’s easy for people at the business end to forget that it’s meant to be fun. If you lose sight of that, before you know it you’ll have lost touch with the very people who are your bread and butter.

  The way Joe saw it was a little recreational reading would help Mitch to loosen up and stop stressing about something that was really not that big of a deal.

  SOMEONE TO TALK TO

  While Joe was obviously not stressed by the new development, he found as the day wore on that he would have liked to have someone to talk to who also saw that it was no cause for concern.

  Now, having sent Mitch home, he suddenly got the idea of inviting Lucille out to dinner. He called her up and Lucille said Sure in the cool way that still unnerved him after all these years. All these years he’d known her, and he’d never invited her back to his pad.

  As soon as money was not so much of a problem Joe had bought a loft apartment. He had furnished it in black leather and chrome, which looked pretty snazzy, and he had bought an expensive sound system in case he brought anyone back and wanted to play some music. He had not had much chance to spend a lot of time there, but it was a good investment. Besides, every once in a while he would come back into town and go to this prestigious address and take the elevator to the penthouse. And he’d walk through the door and think This is mine, and remember the days when he’d lived in a disgusting trailer. The apartment never got the chance to be disgusting, because he had a cleaning lady twice a week.

  He took Lucille to dinner at a restaurant, and at the end of the meal he suddenly thought Well, here goes nothing, and he asked if she would like to come back to his place and listen to some music.

  “That sounds very nice,” said Lucille.

  So they went back to the penthouse together. So far, Joe had only bought two CDs: a Miles Davis CD that the sleeve said was a classic, and a CD featuring the Brazilian jazz artist Carlos Jobim. Jobim was the guy who had written “The Girl from Ipanema,” as well as some other songs Joe hadn’t come across before. Most of them were in Portuguese which was probably why he didn’t recognize them. If you’re using music to create an atmosphere the thing you have to avoid is buying the type of music that is labeled easy listening; what you have to do is seek out music that sounds like easy listening while being real music. That was what made the Miles Davis CD ideal, especially if you turned the sound right down.

  Lucille seated herself on the black leather sofa.

  “Now what can I get you to drink?” asked Joe.

  “I’ll have a Diet Coke,” said Lucille.

  Joe’s heart sank. He thought he had thought of everything. The first thing he’d done on moving in had been to stock the bar with every drink known to man, expense no object. And he thought he’d covered the mixers. He had six kinds of mineral water of both the still and sparkling varieties; he had tonic water and soda water and bitter lemon; he had fruit juices up the gazoo. He had Coke, Pepsi, Canada Dry Ginger Ale, and 7 Up. He even had Mountain Dew. Most people’s idea of a swinger is probably not someone who drinks Mountain Dew, but hey. If you’re a self-made millionaire you’re entitled to do as you please in your own home. Anyway, whatever, for some reason it just hadn’t occurred to him to buy diet drinks. “Lucille,” he said. “I’m really sorry about this, but it just so happens that I’m all out of Diet Coke. I’ve got Perrier? Plain, lemon, and lime? Maybe a lime Perrier on crushed ice? How does that grab you?”

  “I’ll have a Scotch on the rocks,” said Lucille, crossing her legs. Lucille was wearing a sleeveless white dress. While not built like Dolly Parton, Lucille definitely had assets that were wasted in her present line of work. Joe found his eyes drifting down. He hastily forced them to keep going as if he had just accidentally happened to take in her breasts on the way to looking at her hemline on the way to, um, her face.

  “Coming right up,” said Joe, heading for the bar.

  He returned with two glasses of Scotch and a plate of cheese and Triscuits and a bowl of peanuts.

  Joe was beginning to see that he now faced a social dilemma which had never been faced in the whole history of the human race. What do you say to someone if there is a one in five chance that you have had a close encounter of a ventro-dorsal nature through the wall of a disabled toilet? It’s one thing if you’re just having a casual conversation, the way they did when they met for lunch or dinner. But what if you’re sitting on a sofa back at your place, with mood music playing in the background? Almost anything you do will look like you’re taking things for granted because there is a one in five chance that you have already effected an entry through the rear of the premises and because whether you actually did or not the person gave her consent to such entry.

  If it had been anyone other than Lucille it might have been that it would have been fair enough to take certain things for granted, especially taking into consideration the fact that she had agreed to come back with him. But Lucille was a real dark horse. You never knew where you stood with her.

  Joe took a sip of Scotch and ate a peanut.

  Prostitution is degrading to all parties concerned, but one thing you can say about it, a man who has spent a certain amount of time dealing with hookers probably develops his social skills. Whereas the whole point of lightning rods was that it was a purely physical transaction, with no social interaction of any kind; that was what enabled it to keep the atmosphere of the office from being poisoned. That meant that however often you found physical release for your needs, you were never going to be any further along in terms of talking to members of the opposite sex.

  Joe was still mulling this over, while making polite chit-chat with Lucille, when Lucille said, “What’s that noise?”

  There was a kind of high-pitched whining noise coming from the back of the apartment.

  “Oh, that’s Elroy,” said Joe. “It can get kind of lonely, living all on your own, so I thought I’d get me a dog. There’s a dogwalking service to walk him when I’m out of town. Means I don’t have to come home to an empty apartment. I thought I’d better keep him back in the study in case you didn’t like dogs.”

  “I don’t mind dogs,” said Lucille. “Maybe you’d better let him out. He sounds kind of upset.”

  Joe went back to the study and opened the door and Elroy did five or six leaps up to shoulder height to say hi before tearing out to the living room to bark frantically at Lucille.

  “Will you cut that out?” said Joe.

  Arf! Arf! Arf!

  “Now Elroy, I’m warning you,” said Joe. “You keep this up and you’re going straight back to the study, so don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  Arf! Arf! Arf!

  Elroy suddenly spotted the corner of the rug. He hurled himself at it and started gnawing on it, growling.

  “Hey!” said Joe. “That’s a three-thousand-dollar rug, Elroy.”

  Grrrrrrr.

  “I’ll get his ball,” said Joe. He rummaged in the telephone table and got out a greying tennis ball. “Elroy! Elroy! Looka here!”

  Grrrrrr. Grrrrr. Grrrrrr.

  Joe bounced the ball in the direction of Elroy. Elroy leaped up and grabbed the ball and started tearing around the room.

  “Elroy! Hey! Over here, boy!”

  Elroy rushed up with the ball. Joe grabbed it and started to wrestle him for it.

  Grrrrr. Grrrrr.

  Elroy’s tail was spinning like a propeller. If a dog had the aerodynamic properties of a helicopter he’d have taken off.

  “You doggone son of a gun,” said Joe. “What kind of a no-good hound
do you think you are, anyway?”

  He managed to regain possession.

  Arf! Arf! Arf! Arf!

  “What kind of dog is he?” asked Lucille.

  Joe flicked the ball into a corner with a quick snap of the wrist. Elroy went after it.

  “I couldn’t tell you,” he said. “Some kind of mutt. I think there’s some beagle in him somewhere. The way I see it is, what use is a pedigree that you’ve got to pay hundreds of dollars for? It’s personality that counts.”

  Elroy was back with the ball, jumping up and down. A dog is not able to use language; it’s not able to say “Nyaa, nyaa, nya nya nya, bet you wish you had a disgusting spit-covered old tennis ball”—at least not in so many words. It has to jump up and down and wag its tail to get the message across.

  Grrr. Grrr. Grrr.

  “What I did was, I got him out of a pound,” said Joe, retrieving the ball and throwing it. “The way I looked at it was, even if I’m not around that much and somebody else has to look after him, at least he isn’t dead. And he has a pretty good life.”

  Elroy got the ball and disappeared behind the sofa with it.

  Grrrrrrrrrrrrr.

  Joe rolled his eyes. “Elroy, just how do you expect us to carry on a conversation with you making that kind of a racket?”

  Grrrrrrrr.

  “Did you pick ‘Elroy,’ or was that the pound?” asked Lucille.

  “It was my idea,” said Joe. “It’s kind of a tribute to Elvis, in the first place because it starts with ‘El,’ and also Elvis was The King and ‘Elroy’ means ‘the king’ in Spanish. I thought it was kind of appropriate because the minute I laid eyes on him I thought of that song ‘You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dawg.’ I don’t think he actually has any hound blood in him, it was just something about his character made me think of it.”

  “I see,” said Lucille. “Well, it does seem to suit him.”

  Grrrrrrarf! Grrrrrrrarf!

  “No, the pound had a totally different system,” said Joe. He was feeling more at ease for some reason, there’s nothing like a cute animal for breaking the ice. Now that he was more relaxed his eyes were just sort of aware of the Partonesque aspects of Lucille instead of zeroing in on them like targets painted with invisible bull’s eyes. He put his hands in his pockets and walked over to the table and picked up his drink. “The pound had these ten names that it used in rotation, they used the names of the seven dwarfs plus Snoopy plus those two Dalmatians in 101 Dalmatians, and when they’d gone through the list they’d start over again, so you’d get Sneezy II unless Sneezy I had been adopted or put to sleep, in which case the name would be available again.”

  “Huh,” said Lucille. “Sounds kind of depressing.”

  “You’re telling me,” said Joe.

  “Isn’t it kind of inconvenient? I mean, if you start with seven dwarf names plus Snoopy plus Pongo, that’s nine boy’s names and only one girl’s name.”

  “I wondered that,” said Joe. “I got into a conversation with the receptionist while they were drawing up the paperwork. She said it just depended on who was admitting them, sometimes you get someone who thinks Snoopy is unisex so they just hand out all the names on a first-come first-serve basis, and sometimes you get somebody who gets really fixated on it and names all the female dogs after the female Dalmatian.”

  “Perdita,” said Lucille.

  “That’s right. Perdita I, Perdita II, Perdita III, sometimes they’d have twenty-five Perditas all at the same time.”

  “I never heard of such a thing,” said Lucille. “You know, it really makes you wonder sometimes.”

  Joe picked up his drink and took a sip of Scotch. The conversation didn’t really seem to be going anywhere. He thought suddenly If it hadn’t been for me, guys all over the country would still have to be having this kind of conversation every time they needed a release for their physical urges, we’d be right back where we were four years ago!

  Because it wasn’t exactly that he wasn’t enjoying himself, but imagine what it would have been like if there was no alternative. He didn’t have to imagine it, because he’d been there. He knew what it was like. Everyone knew what it was like.

  If I die tomorrow, I’ve made my contribution, he thought.

  He started telling Lucille about the guy who was offering the cut-price service. He made his comment about BMWs and Datsuns, and he made a joke about getting an honorary degree from Harvard.

  “I don’t think you have anything to worry about,” Lucille said calmly.

  Joe thought that anyway, but it was good to hear someone else say it, especially after watching the three stooges quietly panicking.

  “In fact, I don’t think this guy has thought things through. If you ask me, there are a lot of ramifications that he hasn’t even considered. As long as you have the full-service lightning rod installation, you have a way of removing any possibility of inappropriate contact. If a particular lightning rod happens to be related to a member of staff, you can ensure that the computer never generates that pairing. How’s he going to achieve that? As I understand it he’s offering supply on demand, it isn’t going to be computer-generated because a guy can just walk in any time day or night provided he’s prepared to pay. It’s just asking for trouble. Sooner or later you’re going to end up with someone accidentally paying for contact with his own flesh and blood. Well I’m sorry Joe, but that’s just plain wrong. No reputable company is going to want to be associated with something like that. I’m not saying he won’t find a market—there probably are people who’ll rush into something like that to cut costs, without thinking about the consequences. But there are plenty of companies that wouldn’t touch it with a bargepole.”

  Wow, thought Joe. He remembered all over again what it was that had attracted him to Lucille in the first place. She was one smart cookie. This was an absolutely brilliant point. It was bound to come in handy when his customers started asking how this other guy could offer the prices he was offering. The way he looked at it, it was practically unanswerable.

  The really great thing about it was that it just helped to position Lightning Rods, Inc. as the defender of family values. I’ll take the high road and you take the low road, buddy, and I’ll be in Scotland afore ye.

  Lucille looked imperiously around the room as if to say How dare someone do something that disgusting on the same planet. Joe had to hand it to her. The gal had style.

  Partly because Joe was not spending much time there, there were not that many books in the room. There were some glass and chrome shelves on the same wall as the built-in sound system, and on them there were just the two CDs and a few paperback books. If you want to succeed in business it’s up to you to make the best possible use of your time; the thing you have to remember is, you’ll have plenty of time to catch up when you’ve made your pile. Think of all those hours you’ll have to kill in the nursing home—one day you’ll be glad you saved up something to do. But there are times when business is so stressful you have to get a grip on yourself, if you don’t make yourself unwind you’ll find yourself making bad decisions. Better to spend a couple of hours quietly reading—at least it doesn’t do any actual harm—than to rush around trying to plug holes in dikes that don’t exist.

  This was the way Joe looked at it, and since he had been spending a lot of time on planes in the past year or so he had ended up doing quite a lot of reading. If he finished a book on the outward journey he usually just left it at the hotel, but if he brought it back with him he would put it on one of the shelves to give the living room a lived-in look.

  Lucille was looking at the shelves without comment. Now her eyes swept away.

  “Oh, you have the Encyclopaedia Britannica!” exclaimed Lucille.

  As a former rep Joe had been able to get himself a good deal. It was a lot of money, but then you never know when you’re going to need to look something up—if you have a crazy schedule, you could do worse than just have a Britannica in the home. The Internet is a wonder
ful thing, but it multiplies a millionfold the dual hazards of creative reportage and fantasy enhancement; if you need the straight poop on some area of research which you have over-hastily sketched in for a client, the Britannica, with its team of accredited experts, will give you a wealth of bibliographical citations not easily refuted by casual recourse to the wackos at Wikipedia. In this type of eventuality focus is all-important; the apparent saving represented by an online subscription or CD, with the attendant opportunities for XXXX-rated distraction, may too easily prove a false economy.

  Lucille stood up and walked over to the two-shelf unit provided for the work. She took out a volume of the Micropaedia and flipped it open to a page.

  “I just love this old thing,” said Lucille. “When I was a kid I used to think it would be just wonderful to have one of my own. It just smells so good. It’s got that nice clean leather smell on the outside, and then on the inside that smell of clean new pages, it always smells as though you’re the first person to ever open to that particular page.”

  Considering how rarely Joe had call to consult it, Lucille almost certainly was the first person to open to that particular page. “I know what you mean,” said Joe. “Sometimes I just open it to any old page just to see what’s on it.”

  Lucille was reading her page with a smile. “You learn something new every day,” she said. “If you don’t mind my asking, how much does it actually cost?”

  Old habits die hard. Britannica salesmen treat the price of the encyclopedia as classified information, to be released only to customers who have shown they can be trusted. “Oh, I got a special deal,” said Joe. “I don’t know what they’re asking these days.”

  Lucille sat down on the unit. She crossed one leg over the other in the kind of movement that attracts a mental whistle. She opened the volume to another page. “All these people you never heard of,” she said. “All these facts. It makes you want to just curl up and read it for hours.”