Side Effects

by Harvey Jacobs

  “Nice?” Polly said.

  “Nice.”

  “Listen, Fritzel was right. I do know who you remind me of. Not that it matters. But it happens to be a person I grew up with. The ultimate nerd.”

  “Ultimate is the best.”

  “He loved me. I treated him like a wart. But he hung in there with his tongue hanging out.”

  “Sad story. Old story. Star-crossed lovers.”

  “It all happened once upon a time. The damndest thing is, I think about him. You want to hear the best part? There was a rumor that he wrote the music for The Windchime Concerto.”

  “Your very own Song of Songs, Simon said.

  “I checked it out. All lies. Simon Apple—that was his name—had no talent whatsoever.”

  “Who did write it?”

  “Jerry Warren. A bassoon player from Celadon College. The idiot signed all rights over to the school. They bought themselves a new stadium with the royalties.”

  “What happened to your nerd?”

  “No idea. A very sickly type. He’s probably dead. You know what it was about you that made me think of him? The blue hands. He had a blue hue to him, some kind of breathing thing. He couldn’t take an aspirin without complications. Ancient history. The thing is, here we are.”

  “Where?” Simon said. “This green tea is really powerful.”

  “Follow me inside, Mr. Westinghouse. Let’s get naked and jump into my hot tub.”

  “I’m not supposed to commune with clients.”

  “Please shut up and follow me, ice man.”

  “Last night I saw you on TV, under glass like a pie in a diner and look at us now.”

  “One thing about New York,” Polly said. “Whatever happens here never happened. Not that I personally care if you tell The National Enquirer you got a peek at my Mound of Venus but I do have a reputation to protect.”

  “So do I,” Simon said. “Don’t worry about me, Ms. Moon. I’m very discreet. Besides, you’re not the first Pan winner to share her hot tub with me. It happens all the time.”

  “And I hope you don’t mind that while what might happen happens, I’ll be thinking about somebody else. It’s no skin off your ass because you’ll be getting yours no matter whose ghost is in the hot tub with us. It’s just that I owe a certain person about a thousand bitch credits and I’d like to get him over with. Am I making any sense?”

  “The nerd?” Simon said. He followed Polly Moon into a bathroom larger than the Apple’s house in Glenda. She dropped her kimono and climbed into a steaming circle of jade-green water. Simon stripped off his drenched clothes while she made waves with her arms. Polly looked up at him. “You’re not anything like my nerd,” Polly said. “Compared to you, he was hung like a peanut. You’re hung like a gift horse. And that set of basketballs is bluer than your hands. How long has it been since you emptied that reservoir?”

  Simon got a glimpse of his reflection in a wall mirror. He saw why he was feeling pain on the way up Fifth Avenue. His genitals were five times their former size. “I have something to tell you. A confession,” Simon said.

  “Say a Hail Mary. I’m the one atoning here. Don’t try to steal my thunder.”

  “My name is—”

  “No passport required,” Polly said. “Just climb aboard.”

  Simon left Polly Moon asleep in a bed the size of a runway. He kissed her forehead, then, on his way out, stopped to check the ice machine and got two well-formed cubes. In the hall, he scooped up Benny’s rain gear and headed down Fifth Avenue pulling the company dolly behind him.

  The storm had passed, the air was clear, the sky opalescent as the inside of a shell. Simon heard sheep bleat from the Central Park children’s zoo. A disoriented rooster crowed at the rising moon. Taxis showered fountains in the flooded gutter. Droplets flew from city trees, reflecting the day’s last light like shimmering pearls. Simon tongued a few of those drops. They tasted like Placebo’s honey.

  He made way for a jogger and began to run himself, moving toward new horizons. At 57th Street, Simon nodded to the stoical Steinways grazing in their abandoned showroom. One or two of the complacent pianos acknowledged his greeting by raising their lids.

  He floated up toward Wallace Waldo Enterprises breathing Placebo’s perfume, riding the high from her magical leaves. In the hallway, Simon headed for the office door, lying belly down on the dolly, using his hands for oars. When he got there and managed to assume a vertical posture, he saw a hand-lettered sign that read:

  THE STANISLAVSKY ALLIANCE

  Emile Valaris, Dramaturge

  Simon found his key and entered as quietly as possible. He heard murmurs from the conference room where Emile the Dramaturge was presumably auditioning some pubescent child of The Method on the long walnut table where Wallace Waldo often sat reveling in a blizzard of vanished rating points.

  Simon hung up Benny’s porous slicker, stashed away his hat, put the dolly back where it belonged, and was about to tiptoe back out the door when he realized that if he postponed announcing his decision to quit he might never again muster the guts to give up the solace of a weekly paycheck. It wasn’t just the money. In New York, you are where you work and who you eat. Besides, the thought of barging in on Benny’s latest tryst had a certain perverse appeal.

  Hadn’t Simon Apple, aka Sinbad Green, spent the shank of a long afternoon, his limbs entwined with the luminous object of his desire? Even though, in Placebo’s peculiar mind, he’d served as a surrogate for himself. Empowered by all that delectation, Simon, usually shy, exuded confidence; he was a walking aphrodisiac, the embodiment of the little horned Pan Award, his Steuben crystal legs locked around a verdant world.

  Simon was certain his very presence was orgasmic. Even the Steinways downstairs had opened to him. The sudden appearance of such a lubricious incarnation of sensuality could only be welcomed by a clod like the ersatz Emile and certainly by his latest cohort recently freed from her training bra.

  Simon took a deep breath and burst into the conference room ready to proclaim his resignation from the company “due to unexpected developments, prior commitments, new aspirations and utter disgust.” He couldn’t say anything. There, on Wallace Waldo’s totemic table, a young man lay prone while Benny Valaris fumbled with a tube of KY Jelly. When Simon appeared, Benny yelled, “He left a message saying his name was Francis. How the hell was I supposed to know?”

  Simon shrugged and began backing out of the auditioning room. “Besides, you’re fired, you bastard,” Benny screamed. “A certain woman who works for a certain woman called to tell me how you dared fraternize with a certain celebrity. You hurt me, Sinbad. You hurt us all. I was proud of you. Rosy had high hopes for you. Waldo told me you were like the son he always wanted. And here you spit in our faces. You broke our heart. So get the fuck out of here and don’t expect a reference. You’re dead in this business.”

  “Good luck with the Beowulf project,” Simon said. “It’ll make a great musical.”

  “Is that your next production?” the young man said. “I’d be so right for Beowulf.”

  Simon arrived at the Flatiron holding a few personal possessions salvaged from the office and a box of paper clips he’d pilfered in lieu of severance pay. His spirit was buoyed by the same updraft of optimism he’d experienced when he first shucked off his old skin and became Sinbad Green, Professional Voyager.

  Placebo’s delicious aura, sweet as the crust of a toasted muffin, still circled his soul like a hula-hoop protecting him from negative ions. But he felt the pot high ebbing away, dissipating like the smoke from that elfish uptown weed. He sensed that his motor was sputtering; he was losing altitude fast.

  The events of his afternoon in Eden began to seem less real, as if lying with Polly Moon was only a mirage, a quick trip through the parallel universe he and Chirp used to talk about during teasing teenage sunsets. Who’d believe that the brat in a pink carriage, expert at precision projectile vomiting, now an American idol, in the money and on th
e charts, had invited a nobody like himself to enter her innermost sanctum?

  Simon doubted his own memory, much like Wallace Waldo who’d once surfed a curl of radio waves with the grace of an angel. At least Waldo had proof of glory—a book of clippings to console him in his time of static.

  Ms. Polly Moon had an endless supply of ice cubes. Simon Apple had no momento of bliss beyond a scratch across his belly, a throbbing dick, an aching set of ink-stained balls and no job, not even a letter of reference. He had no certifiable identity; it was back to square one.

  In the Flatiron Hotel’s molding lobby, the clutch of gravity dragged Simon from the stratosphere and crushed him like a pigeon under the wheels of a sightseeing bus. Crashing, he heard his own splat and let out a desperate moan. “What’s wrong?” Wallace Waldo said from behind the obituary page of the New York Times.

  “Mr. Waldo? I didn’t see you there. Nothing’s wrong,” Simon said. “Long day’s journey. Hard day’s work.”

  “Ah.”

  “I want you to know, I’m leaving the company.”

  “Which company is that?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “You shouldn’t be discouraged, Sinbad. Regard rejection as a valuable lesson. Not every contestant on The Wallace Waldo Show can be a first-time winner. Many of my boys and girls have gone on to illustrious careers. I’m talking about the losers. And several of our winners have experienced nothing but future failure. It’s the way of the world.”

  “I feel better already,” Simon said.

  “Consider the case of a small shelled creature tossed up on a beach. Suddenly a gull swoops down and grabs it. The gull flies high into clouds then drops the shell onto rock. When the creature splits open, the gull’s beak rips at its exposed salty flesh. Now tell me, Sinbad, would you rather be the creature lifted from a lugubrious existence nearly to heaven if only for a moment? Or the gull for whom the experience was nothing, all in a day’s work and not a meal worthy of boasting about?”

  “I’ll have to think it over.”

  “What was it you did on my stage? Sing? Tap dance? Were you the ventriloquist? My point is, thousands of people out there heard your name tonight. It flew through the air.

  Priceless exposure. Some will remember you.”

  “You’re right,” Simon said. “Good luck to both of us.”

  “Luck is another name for God,” Waldo said, beaming. Simon nodded and aimed for the elevator.

  Before the door closed, Simon saw Wallace Waldo lift half out of his chair and heard him stage whisper to the lobby rubber plant, “Wait. Script change. Delete God. Insert bitch.” Then he went back to reading about the departed illustrious.

  62

  “We located him,” Bryan Beem said.

  “Where?” Regis Van Clay said, trying to steady the receiver. He was hanging upside down, his ankles manacled together, swinging like a pendulum over a simmering kettle filled with some foul brew Belladonna had imported from San Francisco. He’d just been flailed with cactus fronds and felt invigorated.

  “He’s been in New York City using an alias. Sinbad Green.”

  “Under our noses,” Regis said. “Why an alias? He couldn’t possibly know about Operation RX. Or could he?”

  “I can’t answer that,” Beem said. “He hasn’t been in touch with anyone until this morning. He placed a call to that Doctor Henry Fikel in Glenda and got hold of his wife, Honey. Simon said he wanted to talk about some symptom but she told him her husband was on the sick list himself, recuperating in a rest home. The good doctor flaked out—you’re going to get a kick out of this, Regis—one of his patients saw a television ad for AK-48 —that’s one of your brands, isn’t it? Soothe Those Painful Hemorrhoids. It’s Better Than Having a Shrink in the Family. AK-48. The Dream Cream for Rapid-Fire Relief. Nice copy.”

  “I know what the ad says. Please get to the point.”

  “At the end of the ad when it shows the guy with the shrunken piles kissing his wife, after you hear about possible side effects, the announcer says: Wouldn’t you’d rather be sitting pretty? Ask your doctor if AK-48 is right for you.”

  “I know what the announcer says.”

  “How do you guys come up with that stuff? Well, one of Fikel’s patients called him to ask if the Dream Cream was right for her. It was the fifth call he got that evening because of your ad. He’d spent the whole day seeing patients, then yelling at Honey for screwing up Medicare, Medicaid and insurance forms. When that woman called to say she saw the commercial and wanted to know if she was a candidate for AK-48 Rapid-Fire Relief, Fikel lost it. He totally lost it, practically wrecked his office and ran outside yelling for his sainted mother. A complete nervous collapse. They carted him away. That ‘ask your doctor’ message is an inspiration, marketing-wise. Unless you happen to be a doctor.

  “Anyhow, Honey Fikel told the Apple kid her husband wasn’t available to answer questions at the moment but he’d want to know how Simon was doing, that he was interested in the state of his health, etcetera, etcetera and, sure enough, Apple described his problem.”

  “What problem?” Regis said.

  “We had some trouble with interference on the line but the way it sounded was that his tool had swelled up about three times its normal size and his scrotum looks like a pair of party balloons. And getting bigger. Apple said he couldn’t ambulate without the help of a special walker they’d rigged up for him at Bellevue Hospital Emergency with these sling and bag attachments. The medics suspected the cause of enlargement might be a previously unknown sexually transmitted disease but one Indian intern said it might have something to do with Apple’s medication. Which, as you must know, is Solacitrex.”

  “Solacitrex? How the hell could Simon Apple get on Solacitrex? It’s impossible. . . . Every pharmacist in the country knows that anything manufactured by Regis Pharmaceuticals is absolutely off limits for Simon Apple. He couldn’t buy a tube of our toothpaste if he was dying of gingivitis, not a deodorant if he smelled like Love Canal, not Nick-O-Time, the smoking patch that looks like a tattoo, not a vitamin pill, nothing, no exceptions. Who the fuck would dare sell him Solacitrex?”

  “I told you, he changed his name to Sinbad Green. He got his hands on blank prescription pad. That young man is certainly enterprising.”

  “Solacitrex aka Silentush is the centerfold of our annual report. It’s the industry success story. Fight Flatulence the Modern Way! We eliminated chronic farting and there’s never been a single documented side effect. A few sudden deaths in Uganda, during the early beta phase but no direct link. You have got to sit down with that Indian intern. Say we’ll build him a clinic across from the Taj Mahal . . . whatever it takes to keep his mouth shut.”

  “He already sent a report to the Centers for Disease Control.”

  “Condition red. Get in touch with Congressman Eff.”

  “I’m a step ahead. I spoke with Congressman Eff. You know he’s running for the Senate. He said he already did enough for you, got you what you asked for, set the wheels in motion, put himself on-the-line, said any further action on his part could jeopardize—”

  “All right, all right. Fuck Eff. It’s your move, Beem. Pick up the Apple kid. Make him disappear before we have to plaster warning labels on our golden goose.”

  “Not so easy. Simon told Fikel’s wife he’d lost his job but didn’t say where he worked or where he lived. He made that phone call from a pay booth in Grand Central Station. He gave Bellevue that phony Sinbad Green name and an ersatz address. But he is due back at the hospital in a week.”

  “You can’t find a man pushing his testicles through Grand Central on a cart? New York isn’t that big.”

  “Be calm, Regis. I’m on the case, as they say in the movies.”

  “I was hanging loose and very calm until you called. I was blissful.” Regis dropped the phone into Belladonna’s cauldron and watched it dissolve.

  “Why are you giving out my number?” Belladonna said when she came back in
to the room holding a vice. “You’re not here to take business calls. You’re here to slow down so you won’t get a coronary.”

  While she tightened the vise around a big toe, Regis’s agile mind did a turnabout. He was thinking that, worst case scenario, even if Solacitrex had a tragic flaw, how tragic would it be to list a side effect like Simon Apple’s? With a little molecular modification, some creative rethinking of the formula and dosage, he might have a King Kong product on his hands, bigger than the Washington Monument.

  While Belladonna used forceps to tug at a nail, Regis realized his instructions to Brian Beem were way off base. This wasn’t the moment to pounce on Apple. That could wait. This was the time to pray that the Bellevue intern was exactly right, that Solacitrex was directly responsible for enlarging a set of crown jewels.

  But it would be a definite minus if Simon Apple expired from excessive edema. The full resources of Regis Pharmaceuticals had to be turned away from distractions like cancer and AIDS to make sure Simon Apple survived his latest affliction. Then news of Simon’s symptoms, along with a public admission of liability, could be published in the New England Journal of Medicine along with a warning that Solacitrex might cause serious erectotesticular phalusial goliathism. “Ask your doctor if you experience . . .” That warning would be black boxed on the front label of every Solacitrex dispenser. The rest would take care of itself.

  “I have to terminate this session,” Regis said.”

  “You’re getting tired of me,” Belladonna said. “Go home to your wife. Eat sunflower seeds from her pernicious pudenda.”

  “Pernicious pudenda?”

  “I signed up for a vocabulary course, Verbal Flagellation: Erotic Expression for a New Age, Belladonna said. “On six cassettes. They teach you power words. More of my clients are asking for phone sex. The telephone certainly offers convenient conjugation.”