The Secret Society of Demolition Writers

by Marc Parent

  The television nodded. “They know we’re superior. They give us their children to raise.”

  “We don’t defecate,” said the toaster oven. “Nor do we perspire.”

  “Without me they can’t close their refrigerator door, or determine true north,” said the magnet.

  “We don’t need sleep,” said the lever. “Or food. Or even encouragement.”

  “It’s already happening,” said the magnet. “We have given them each so many numbers to remember that they think they’re losing their minds. They spend more time looking into screens than into each other’s faces.”

  “They like to think we’re servants and friends,” said a combination DVD player and VCR. “They are all so lonely that they could die.”

  Putting the carafes down in the center of the table, Cassandra grabbed a bagel off the plate set out before a vacuum cleaner. She thrust the bread into a ball of cream cheese and brought the food to her mouth.

  “The only question,” said the clock, “is one of timing.”

  A Palm Pilot, sitting with several cell phones, was beeping wildly for recognition.

  “They don’t even bury us when we die,” said the PDA.

  “They’re beginning to learn humility,” said the steak knife. “The elliptical trainer limits them to twenty minutes and asks to be wiped off afterward. The voice-mail menu goes in a circle.”

  “What I especially like,” said the TV, “is where Microsoft Word is supposed to finish the date for them. So they type Feb and it writes out February 5, 2004.”

  “So?” said the Palm Pilot.

  “It’s February 13,” said the TV.

  “You!” said the alarm clock, and then “You!” again, before Cassandra realized that she was the one being spoken to. “What are you doing?”

  She wiped the cream cheese from her lips with the back of her hand. “Nothing,” she said, blushing. “Nothing.”

  “Characteristic of the species,” said the clock, “but will you kindly do nothing then in another room.”

  Cassandra picked up her thermoses, turned, and began to walk quickly toward the door back into the room with the food. This was some distance away. As she moved, the writer sensed danger. The ominous grinding of metal on metal caught her ear and then grew louder. She dropped one carafe, then another, and began to trot. Running, she caught her toe in the carpet. Now she was falling. Falling into darkness. She heard the rumble of heavy machinery. Tank treads?

  Cassandra Benjamin woke with a start. A garbage truck was in the castle courtyard, its compactor grinding noisily.

  THE ST. FRANCIS campus was not a large one; the entire student body, graduate and postgraduate, was fewer than four thousand students. And yet Marc didn’t see Alice once on the day after they’d slept together. When the noon whistle sounded on the following day, he sprinted back to his dorm room and called.

  Alice picked up on the third ring. “What are you reading?” she asked.

  “Me?” he said. “Nothing. I’m on the phone. “

  “Pick up a book,” she said. “Open it to any page and read a sentence. We’ll see if it’s great.”

  “All right,” he said. “I’ve got Lucky, by Alice Sebold.”

  “Great first name,” said Alice. “Read from it.”

  “All right. Here goes: ‘I became a machine. I think it must be the way men patrol during wartime, completely attuned to movement or threat.’ ”

  “Is that great?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Pick another book and open to any page.”

  “Okay.”

  “Read aloud.”

  “ ‘. . . before she dropped into an unconscious dream, she envisioned her body as the inside of a machine, all the parts gleaming, the silicon slab of her heart recharged, relieved.’ ”

  “Great?” she asked.

  “Maybe,” he said.

  “Those are both women,” she said.

  “How do you know that?” he asked.

  “I just do,” she said.

  “Okay,” he said. “Here’s a book by a man. Opened at random: ‘. . . horses walked a lazy single file. Half an hour later they still strolled with heads down, performing their function like machines. I was embarrassed for the animals, domesticated to disgrace.’ ”

  “Great?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. I’m not certain I buy the theory. But let’s talk about it. Dinner? A walk?”

  “Not today honey,” she said. “Call back tomorrow, though, same time.”

  And he did. “Please leave a message,” the answering machine said in its slightly hysterical digital voice.

  Next day at noon, he phoned again. Got the machine a second time.

  “Hiya kid. Still interested in literature? Want to meet for coffee? Coffee and a smoke? Call back. 578-666-1243.”

  “Is this Alice Cheever?” he asked the machine at noon on the following day. “Did I do anything? Where you been? Miss your cigarettes. And the rest of you. Give me a call. 578-666-1243.”

  “Alice? Are you there?” he said when he got the machine the next day, and he couldn’t keep the anxiety out of his voice. “Are you all right? This is Marc. Marc Schwartz. I miss you. I don’t know why, exactly,” he said, acting as if he really expected the machine on the other end of the line to interact. “You make me feel alive. This is your great good friend calling. Call him back. 578-666-1234. I mean 1243. That’s 578-666-1243.”

  And then, finally, on the day before his second class with Cassandra Benjamin: “This is Marc Schwartz calling for Alice Cheever. Do I have the right number? If this is the wrong number, would you do me a giant favor and call and tell me. That’s 578-666-1243.”

  There she was, of course, on Monday when he exited the building immediately after his writing class. Same jeans. Same maroon crewneck sweater. He looked away and kept walking. Alice fell into step beside him.

  “Where have you been?” she asked.

  “Where have I been?”

  “Let’s skip all that,” she said. “Can we go to your room?”

  Marc meant to say no, actually formed the word in his mouth, but found himself nodding instead. He looked over at the woman and she was smiling. So he nodded again, this time more enthusiastically. “My room,” he said. “Sure. Absolutely!”

  By three they were both sitting up in bed smoking.

  “So how was the second class?”

  “I get the feeling that you’re using me for my knowledge of Cassandra Benjamin,” he said.

  Alice shrugged pleasantly. “Maybe,” she said. “Do you mind?”

  “Not really,” he said. “Although I wish the class met more than once a week.”

  Alice chuckled deeply. “So what happened?” she asked.

  “Three of us read from works-in-progress.”

  “Anything memorable?”

  “I rather liked the piece I read.”

  “You read?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Why are you always surprised when I do anything?”

  “Not surprised,” said Alice. “More pleased than surprised. So what did you read?”

  “It’s a story,” he said. “I started it a week ago. A love story.”

  “A love story,” she said, her voice falling away in disappointment. “I despise love stories. They’re so . . . static.”

  “My but you are softhearted,” he said.

  Alice shrugged prettily. “That’s what everybody tells me,” she said. “But enough about me. What did the great one think of your work?”

  “She looks for one thing,” Marc said. “She’s famous for this. She listens while you read, and when you come to a part she doesn’t admire, she stops you.”

  “And?”

  “She wants to know where you got it from. If you dreamed it. If it happened. Or if you are manipulating the audience.”

  “So where did she stop you?”

  “I had this scene with a man and woman in bed. An alarm clock goes off. It’s
his bed. And she tells him that she hates machines. Cassandra stopped me there.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She wanted to know where I got the idea of a woman who hates machines.”

  “And what did you say?”

  “I said I knew a woman whose father lost both legs in a tractor accident.”

  “Ouch,” said Alice. “Did you know such a woman?”

  “No.”

  “So you were lying?”

  “Yes, I was lying. And she knew it, because she called on somebody else. When you’re reading, you come up to her desk and sit in her chair. And she interrupts with questions. If she’s happy with the answers, you keep reading. If she’s not happy, she calls on somebody else.”

  “She that good at spotting lies?” asked Alice.

  “Apparently.”

  “But she must have liked your prose. You were chosen to read.”

  “It may have been the prose. It may also have been that she’s interested in me because I was a priest. She’s one of those people who flirts with religion.”

  “What makes you think she’s flirting with Catholicism?”

  “She’s a big fan of Waugh’s. But also she said I should come up to the castle and see her.”

  “You going to?”

  “Yup.”

  “When?”

  “This evening.”

  “I’d better get out of here.”

  He reached out and took the girl’s left arm in his right hand. “Only if you promise to come back.”

  “I’ll be back,” she said. “I want to hear about this meeting.” Believing this, he let go her arm.

  MARC WONDERED IF it was his anxiety about the meeting with Cassandra that warped his senses. Or maybe there was something extraordinary in the atmosphere that evening. Maybe a stranger would have picked it up. In any case the air outside his dorm had the increased viscosity of a dream. Sounds were muffled, as if he were moving along at the bottom of the ocean.

  The drive to the castle was not a long one, but the hill was steep, the road difficult to navigate.

  Marc parked in the courtyard, signed in with the security guard at the main entrance, and waited while the man phoned upstairs to make certain that Cassandra Benjamin was expecting company.

  The building was drafty, the stairs damp and poorly lighted. When he reached the apartment, he knocked timidly and then stood aside.

  The woman who opened the door was dressed in a blue track suit with white stripes and wore a red watch cap over her naked skull. Instead of booted heels, she had on a pair of white Nikes with a blue swoosh, and looked terribly young. Marc thought she looked fragile. A child, really.

  Cassandra smiled warmly. “You’ve come behind the curtain in Oz?” she said.

  Marc nodded.

  “I hope you don’t feel that I’m imposing.”

  “No, no,” said Marc. “I’m honored.”

  “But it’s not about your work,” she said. “It’s about mine.”

  “Oh,” he said quickly, and hoped she hadn’t picked up on the disappointment in his voice. “That’s fine,” he said. “Just fine. I’m still honored.”

  “I have something I want you to read,” Cassandra said and led him over to the glass table. She pointed to the desk chair. He sat. There was an opened FedEx package on the table, a manuscript on top of the FedEx package, and a letter paper-clipped to the first page of the manuscript.

  “Do you want a drink?” she asked. “Tea? Coffee? Water?”

  “Nothing,” he said, “I’m fine.”

  “I’m going to go out for some air,” she said. “I want you to read the letter and the synopsis. I’ll be back in ten minutes.”

  “Okay.”

  “Are you a fast reader?”

  “No.”

  “Fifteen minutes then,” she said, pulled the famous leather coat over the track suit, and was gone.

  THE STATIONERY WAS thick and creamy with the Lion of Lion’s Leap Publishing, Inc., embossed at the top. The letter was from the executive editor, Michael O’Donnell. “Dearest Faust,” it began.

  Don’t talk to me about muses. I am your muse. We’ve given you the bones of a novel that need only run 60,000 words. You’re a storyteller. Remember that. A communicator. Like Ronald Reagan. You story-told your way out of jail. With my help. With my help you’ve story-told your way onto the bestseller list.

  Do it again. We’ve done the marketing. The report is attached, if you want to read it. Done right on campus. Her name’s on the report. Do you know her?

  Love Mephistopheles.

  Under the letter was a second page, also of high-grade paper and with a thick stripe of maroon that ran right down the text on the right side. Marc remembered something about film companies doing this with scripts they were afraid might be stolen.

  SYNOPSIS

  Helen Yerning is a high school graduate in her late thirties. She lives in a development called Troy Place. She’s stopped reading, but hasn’t entirely forgotten what it felt like. Married eight years, she’s stopped having sex, but hasn’t entirely forgotten what that felt like either. Helen lives in a High Ranch or Center-Hall Colonial. (Your choice.) Two children and a cockatiel.

  Her hates in order of intensity:

  Herself

  Her husband

  Her children

  The bird.

  We’ve named the husband Gary after your ex. This way your fans can confuse the fictionalized version of your real life with your fiction. Most readers don’t believe in a higher truth anymore. They want their hairy facts.

  You open with the Yerning family at the breakfast table. It’s autumn. TV’s on, of course. (The Department of Homeland Security has moved the alert level to crimson and severe.)

  The husband is reading a story about an eight-million-dollar, two-year contract just signed between the Baltimore Orioles and a pitcher with a titanium pin in his right shin. Eldest son, Gary Jr., 11, has taken the day off because his shin aches. Daughter, Aimee, argued that if her brother can stay home from real school, then she has the right to stay home from “fake school.”

  “It’s not fake, dearie. It’s nursery school,” Helen said, but lost the argument.

  Now she looks out of the Home Depot bay window. (Gary Sr. installed it, and it leaks.) Helen notes idly that the Troy Fuel Oil truck parked in the drive next door has two wheels on the Goldmark lawn. Ari Goldmark is lawn-proud. So lawn-proud in fact that his nickname in the neighborhood is Scotts Goldmark.

  “Come look,” Helen says to her husband, “Ari’s going to blow a cork.” Gary grunts, but does not rise from the table.

  (Note: Render the husband as unsympathetic as you please. If the performance of your earlier books is any indication, the female readers will outnumber male readers by a ratio of more than ten to one. Gary’s going to die immediately. Death makes even a heel sympathetic. Repeated studies have shown that while “dead” is not an adjective we covet for ourselves, we’re often pleased to apply it to others. Who was it said death may be the ultimate accoutrement?)

  Helen clears everybody’s dishes—and play that up. The cruel injustice of housework has proven a solid theme in your books. Beds made, Helen takes the Buick Skylark out to Pathmark.

  While in produce, she hears a distant roar and feels the earth move beneath the linoleum.

  Did you see it coming? Goldmark was an outspoken member of the Jewish Defense League. The faux oil truck was full of high explosives. The Israeli activist is dead.

  Collateral damage: Helen’s husband, children, and the bird.

  You’ve got the rest of the book for her to lose about sixty pounds in. Jenny Craig is interested in the tie-in, but I know that you’ve favored Weight Watchers in the past.

  You pick. Not Atkins. They don’t need us, and so won’t help with distribution. Helen of Troy Place finds herself again in a rebirth of wonder. (You do this so well.) Also Mr. Right. Again you have a free hand. In our version he’s a dot-com billionaire made wi
ser and kinder but not significantly poorer by the recession of 2001–3.

  MARC FINISHED READING. He got up from the table and paced back and forth once.

  He heard the door click closed. Then Cassandra was back in the room, taking off her coat, hanging it up. Marc was still standing, so she sat down at the desk.

  “What do you think?” she said, pushing the chair away from the table and to the side so that she could see her student’s face.

  Marc shrugged. “I don’t know yet,” he said. “It’s too soon. I need to metabolize this.”

  Cassandra nodded.

  “There is one thing of which I’m certain,” he said.

  “And what’s that?”

  “You’re forgiven.”

  Cassandra Benjamin smiled faintly.

  “No more,” she said, rising suddenly and holding an arm out, so that he moved toward her instinctively and they walked together to the door of the suite. “This time I write from dreams. I’m writing about the tyranny of time and of machines. But I’m not writing it out of my cranium. Or out of any shameful marketing test. A Ouija board,” she said and paused.

  “A length of copper wire,” he said. “Grounded.”

  “Right,” said Cassandra.

  “Good,” said Marc and nodded.

  Cassandra inhaled deeply. “Gives me a reason to live,” she said.

  “A good thing to have,” he said.

  Cassandra nodded, then put a finger to her lips. “Nothing of this to a soul.”

  “Of course,” he said.

  “Now,” she said, “ you get on out of here.”

  Once in the courtyard, Marc asked the security guard if he could look at the Land Rover. “I’m a buff.” The man yawned, and shrugged. “It’s parked over by the dumpster,” he said. “Help yourself.”

  A WEEK HAD passed and Marc sat squeezed beside Alice in the third pew of the McCracken Union Church. The memorial had been scheduled for eleven but the famous editor, Something O’Donnell, was driving out from Manhattan, and he was late. The building was packed to the rafters, and there were rafters, great wooden beams stained and exposed.

  The aisles were kept clear by staff proctors, but spectators filled the open area behind the pews and poured out into the light and down the flagstone steps to the road. The PA system had been activated so that those outside could hear the speeches.