by Smiley, Jane
“Wait a—” said Dean. Could it be that Samuels, of all people, a guy who loved Magic Johnson as much as he himself did, would do him harm? He looked around the doorframe again, to see if two other big guys were bringing him an even better computer.
Samuels, meanwhile, had drawn forth a piece of paper and his glasses, which he put on. He read, “ ‘In seizing the aforesaid equipment, the company recognizes that some of Dr. Jellinek’s own intellectual property, that is, work not pertaining to the calf-free lactation project, may be stored in the computer’s memory bank. This work will be copied from that memory bank onto floppy disks and returned to Dr. Jellinek by our very best computer technicians, and then deleted from the computer. Dr. Jellinek will not be charged for computer disks so employed, but they will be provided, gratis, by Western Egg and Milk.’ ” Here, Samuels gave him a beneficent smile, then continued, “ ‘All work pertaining to the calf-free lactation project is the property of Western Egg and Milk, its parent companies, and its subsidiaries, and may be utilized by any or all of these companies, may be sold, patented, published, or utilized in any other way that the company sees fit, in accordance with contracts between Western Egg and Milk and Dr. Jellinek. The seizure of the above equipment hereby terminates any and all agreements made between Dr. Dean Jellinek and Western Egg and Milk and any of its representatives.’ ”
“Samuels!” said Dean.
“That’s me,” replied the little man.
“What’s going on?”
“Restructuring, is all. It might not be that bad. Getting rid of the fat, you see. Personally, I’m pretty safe. For one thing, I don’t believe all that stuff about the pension plan. You can’t be panicked by wild rumors, that’s what I told my wife. And I’ve got feelers out to some other companies. Personally, I’m in pretty good shape. I could get sent down to the minors, but only to, say, Omaha, not to, say, Chillicothe. And my wife has a good job with—”
“You can’t take my computer!”
“I have to.”
“Why?”
“Now, Dean, you’re being a little naive.” He handed Dean the sheet of paper.
“You can’t take my computer!”
“We took it.”
“Bring it back!”
“Dean.” Samuels stepped up close to Dean and looked him right in the eye. His voice was soft and friendly. “Sue me.” He said. “I mean that.”
EVEN THOUGH Dr. John Cates had discovered the cancellation of the conference long after everyone else (they had gotten out to breakfast and the Magic Kingdom by eight and hadn’t returned until almost nine), he was able to reflect with some complacence that he had already delivered his paper. In addition to this, he happened to have the letter with him, the one that stated that all his conference charges (and they were itemized, as per his request) were guaranteed by conference officials (whose names were also on the letter) and corporate sponsors (ditto). When the little girl at the desk demanded his credit card, Dr. Cates had drawn himself up to his full height and shaken his head. He had, however, allowed them to Xerox his letter before giving it back to him. All this business had been conducted behind bright shielding smiles, and was now concluded, like most of his business, to Dr. Cates’ advantage.
But the conference was over, no two ways about that, and so they were packing to move to another hotel—only three days to go and no reason to change their first-class airline reservations (Dr. Cates had checked to be sure that nothing could or would happen to those). His wife had found them a pleasant hotel even closer to Sea World (he had those tickets right in his wallet), and they were almost ready to load the rental car and leave (in the end, the resort had been happy to accommodate his wish to leave after normal checkout time and not be charged for that day, in exchange for his agreement not to enter into protracted negotiations right there in the lobby—he could tell they thought that a tall black man with a wife in African garb was capable of anything).
All things considered, Cates had handled the whole thing superbly, and if his son, Daniel, would stop screaming that he didn’t WANT to go to another hotel, he liked THIS hotel, Dr. Cates thought that the boy would agree. In general, Dr. Cates tried to show Daniel by example how it was possible to maintain dignity, keep your voice down, and still get what you wanted. This lesson he expected to seep into Daniel’s consciousness eventually, according to the principle of tedious repetition. Until that time, however, Daniel seemed to persist in a nasty habit of angry tantrums that tried even Dr. Cates’ patience and were probably the reason that he and his wife had never had another child.
His wife came in from the bedroom of the suite, carrying her makeup case, and set it beside the door. That was it for the luggage, so he said to her, “You looked under the bed?”
“What?”
He raised his voice so she could hear him over the screaming. “I SAID, ‘DID YOU LOOK UNDER THE BED?’ ”
She nodded.
“I CHECKED UNDER THE COUCHES AND IN ALL THE DRAWERS. THAT SHOULD BE IT, THEN. READY?”
She nodded again.
He picked up the phone to call for the rental car, but then put it down again. He knew that the bellman would hear the shouting in the background, “Listen to me! I want to stay here! I like it here! Listen to me!” He sat quietly for a moment, waiting, but nothing happened, so he went into the bedroom of the suite and closed the door. The diminution of noise was a welcome relief. He called for the car, and went into the bathroom, closed that door, and unzipped his pants. He didn’t really have to urinate, but he didn’t want to take advantage of his wife by purely and simply hiding out. After expelling the last possible drop, then taking enormous care over washing his hands, he sighed and went out.
Over the years, Daniel had trained himself to sustain a tantrum beyond any normal human limits, thus he was still going full steam when the bellman, exactly the one bellman, an older black man, that Dr. Cates had hoped was off duty, appeared with the luggage cart, and to the accompaniment of Daniel’s shouting, the luggage was loaded on the cart. The three adults moved off, and Dr. Cates knew that the man was actively restraining himself from knocking the kid’s head against the wall or, at the very least, making some remark, giving some advice on the order of “Say no and mean it.” Daniel followed them, shrieking. At the car, Dr. John Cates did do what he had sworn he would not do and known, in the end, he would do: He gave the bellman a very large tip and a single, uncontrollably sheepish, desperate smile.
ONCE UPON a time, Elaine Dobbs-Jellinek had lit a cigarette whenever she picked up the phone. Now, instead, she ran her fingers meditatively over the lump above her left eye. She pressed. It hurt and felt good at the same time. Her interest in touching it did not flag as the days went by.
“This is Dr. Bo Jones.”
“Dr. Bo! How are you? Well, I’m sorry to say that I have some bad news for you, Dr. Bo. It looks like the museum is out of the picture. Yes. No chickens. No nothing. The chicken expert’s report was very favorable, oh yes. No problem with that, but the granting institution seems to have run into some fiscal difficulties. I’m so sorry.”
Elaine knew that she had this habit, when delivering bad news, of sounding like she was having a conversation—replying to questions and remarks—even though her interlocutor hadn’t actually spoken. It was just that they were always so silent; they were no help at all if you wanted to get all the information across as quickly as possible.
“It’s not as though the chicken museum was undeserving of support. That’s not it at all. It is entirely a failure on the other side, and so”—Dr. Bo had been silent for a very long time, and Elaine found herself making a promise that she hadn’t by any means intended to make—“this office has decided to find another granting organization that might take over the chicken idea, because it is still an excellent idea. Dr. Bo?”—wasn’t he just the type—big and florid—for a heart attack?—“Dr. Bo?”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Are you all right?”
“Why, y
es, I am. I never wanted a chicken museum and I couldn’t abide that so-called chicken expert. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some packing to do, because I am leaving on a very long trip to central Asia.”
“Then you don’t support continued efforts to find a funding organization—”
“Do what you want, young lady.”
After she hung up, Elaine found that she was pressing so hard on her lump that it was giving her a throbbing headache. When she took her fingers away, the headache subsided with an almost liquid, flowing feeling. It was a wonderful sensation, and she decided to try it just once more before beginning on the rest of the afternoon’s work.
“MARTIN’S FLAVORBUST?”
“BY TEXAS BILLIONAIRE STANDARDS, the ranch near Spur where Arlen Martin has retreated isn’t much, a hundred thousand acres more or less. Unlike some other west Texas ranches, it isn’t depicted in any atlas. Under state law, whatever happens to Martin and his tangle of corporations, the ranch, his homestead, will continue to be inalienably his, along with his Lear jet. ‘My mule,’ says Martin. ‘That Lear jet is just like a mule, and in Texas you can’t ever be so poor that they can take your mule.’
“There are a few cattle roaming the landscape, but Martin considers them of little more interest than the scrub cactus and the mesquite. ‘Look over there!’ he exclaims, slamming the Land Rover to a halt. ‘Ah, you missed it.’
“ ‘What?’
“ ‘One of the boars! The place is teeming with wild boars we brought in from Asia. Best hunting there is. If I retire, and I’m not saying I will and I’m not saying I won’t, I could do worse than hunt boar everyday. I bet you didn’t know that wild chickens are pretty vicious, too. When most folks think of the chicken, they think hen, they think egg. Not me. I think about that beady rooster gaze, that focus—’ ”
Dr. Lionel Gift set down the Texas Monthly article he was reading, noting the author (Lawrence Wright), and allowed himself a little smile at Arlen Martin’s expense. It was clear that Martin had learned little from the collapse of Seven Stones Mining and the subsequent, probably fatal, weakening of the whole TransNational empire. He showed none of the philosophical perspicacity that he, Lionel Gift, showed. But Dr. Gift was certain that Arlen Martin, who, according to the Wall Street Journal, was undergoing “reorganization,” too, would eventually feel the same thrill of appreciation Dr. Gift felt at the operation of hidden truths in the lives of men. The market, after all, had acted to correct TransNational’s overextension—that was one thing—and Dr. Gift had long ago cashed all checks and invested all monies accruing to him through his contract with the company—that was another. He had invested the money in high-tech ceramics, a wave of the future.
But it did not matter, really, who he was or who Martin was, where, in particular, the money came from or where it went. Individuals and individual companies were but flickering pauses in the eternal exchange of fiscal energy. Restlessly it flowed here and it flowed there. No one man could stop it or direct it; all were equally doomed to watch the golden streams flow through their clutching fingers. Finally, you had to take solace and even inspiration from that very evanescence. As he told his packed house of fifteen hundred customers, we spend our whole lives thinking that value is an object, and collecting gold, or diamonds, or stocks and bonds, but even while you are piling it up, even while you are watching it, value is flowing ceaselessly into and out of it.
The customers left the auditorium hushed and chastened, and back in his office, Dr. Gift jotted down a bon mot about teaching, “As old as I am, and I’ve seen two generations of ‘students,’ as it were, by now, even I am still evolving. Experiences teach teachers, too, you know.” After jotting it down, he admired it a little, then filed it under “Interviews: Teaching.”
Memo
From: Provost
To: Faculty Senate
Subject: Projected further cutbacks
It now appears that certain programs that we thought we had saved from the budgetary axe must be cut. As you know, the governor has ordered another $2 million in reversions from the university budget, over and above the $10 million ordered in the fall. This reversion, which must be completed by June 30, is to be made permanent, and may be followed by others. The board of governors has denied rumors that the reversion is intended to punish the university for last month’s unfortunate episode of campus unrest. The faculty should be aware that other grant monies that we thought we could count on to compensate for earlier cutbacks have also dried up, so the picture is bleak. I now feel that it is in the best interests of the whole university community that these cutback decisions take place as soon as possible, so that affected parties have a number of months to make alternative career plans.
62
Stormy Weather
LOREN STROOP WASN’T fooled by this little inner blossom of energy and well-being. Nor was he surprised that it coincided with the snowstorm he had been listening to them talk about on the weather radio. It was full day when he finally sat up and put his feet on the floor, but the old house was creaking in the gale and the fireplace damper was rattling, too—he could hear it two rooms away. That damper didn’t start to rattle until the wind speed hit about forty-five from the northwest, so, Loren reflected, it was blowing pretty good out there.
Loren reached for his cane and pushed himself up out of the bed, then turned his head carefully, all the way to the left, to see with his right eye if he’d left anything lying in his path. It turned out that if he watched himself, he could get around the house well enough, because, unlike in that rehab place, long familiarity supplied information that his senses did not. Even outside, where he’d been only a few times since his return, he felt much less disoriented than he did up at that place.
Lots of days, Loren waited to rise until the visiting nurse or one of the Millers came over, but one look out the window was enough to tell him that no one was going to get here today. On the kitchen calendar, he ran his finger over the laboriously x-ed-out days until he came to the first blank one—March 2. That would be today. Well, people would be saying that this was a late storm, but it wasn’t. Just ask him. With his right eye, he gave the clock a gander, too. It was after nine. After nine, March 2, 1990. He pushed the button of the weather radio with his right forefinger and a soothing voice filled the room: “… has blanketed the region. At eight o’clock at Red Stick International Airport, snow accumulations measured four inches, with three to five more inches expected. High winds, gusting to fifty-five miles per hour—” The thing was, he no longer looked at the TV at all, not even CNN. Every day, all day, he listened to the round of voices from the weather bureau giving nature’s news. Highs, lows, precipitation, weather advisories, road conditions, sunshine, wind, temperature ranges. If he wanted something visual, then he looked out the window. It was the exact combination of the ephemeral and the eternal that a dying man needed to know about.
The Millers and the visiting nurse had prepared him for the possibility of no one being able to get through to him for a day or two. Joe Miller had bought him one of those phones that you could keep with you, and if you wanted to dial, you just had to push one number, not seven or eleven. “Mem 1” was the Millers, “Mem 2” was the cops, and “Mem 3” was the visiting nurse. Plus, there was food in the freezer that he just had to defrost in the microwave, instant coffee, you name it. They had even paid up his heat through the end of April, so that couldn’t go out. The electric, too. And Joe Miller had rigged up a deal that turned all the lights on, in the house and in the yard, at sundown, then turned them off about midnight, all except the pole lights by the barn, which stayed on all night as a deterrent to the FBI, the CIA, and the big ag companies. Oh, he was well taken care of.
Loren opened the kitchen closet and found what he was looking for, his bulletproof vest. He put it on over his pajama shirt and zipped it up. It fit kind of loose, which told him how much weight he had lost—it had fit kind of snug before. Then he pulled his chair over to the closet and
sat down on it and put on his boots. They were plenty stiff, and he didn’t have any socks on, but that was okay. Everything was okay.
After the boots and the vest, he was kind of winded, so he rested by looking at the clock (almost ten-thirty) and the calendar (still March 2) again. Then he stood up and took his insulated coat off the hanger. He hadn’t had to button for himself since the brain attack, but he managed by watching his left hand rest right by the button, and then pushing the buttonhole against it with his right. Three. That was enough.
What this blossom of energy was for was getting out to the barn and having a look at the machine. Then, he knew, nature would take its course.
The boots were surprisingly heavy—that was the measure of how weak he was now, weak as a cat, and it wasn’t so easy to open the door, either, until the wind took it and slammed it back against the house. You didn’t want to leave it like that, letting all the heat out, but he didn’t have much choice. He stood with his cane in the doorway. Behind him, the one girl who worked for the weather bureau was saying, “There was heavy snowfall reported south-southeast of a line extending from St. Paul, Minnesota, to Tulsa, Oklahoma, and this storm system was moving east at approximately thirty-five miles per hour.”
He stepped into the wind, his eyes on the barn. That was how you got there—not by looking at your feet, but by looking at your goal—wasn’t that what his father had told him long ago at the beginning of the century, and wasn’t that how he had lived his life? Keep your eyes up and your feet moving.
The wind pressed him hard from the left, so that he had to put both hands on his cane. And he had forgotten his gloves, hadn’t he. He stepped farther into the yard. It was plenty hard to see the barn in this wind, too. His eyes were all tearing up. Still, he made some steps, three or four, then two more. When the cane went out from under him and he fell forward into the snow, it was almost a relief. Yes, really, he thought with a touch of surprise, almost a relief that he didn’t have to keep his eyes up and his feet moving anymore. He could give up and relax and just listen to the voice on the weather radio threading through the howl of the storm, “Interstate 100 is one hundred percent snow- and ice-covered. Interstate 99 North is seventy-five percent snow- and ice-covered, while Interstate 99 South is one hundred percent snow- and ice-covered. Due to high winds and drifting conditions, the state highway patrol has closed Interstate 92 west of—” The voice faded, then, as Loren concentrated every last iota of his attention upon it, it surged again—“If you must travel, a severe weather travel kit should include extra blankets, a powerful flashlight with extra batteries, a twenty-five-pound bag of sand, a small shovel, and roadside flares. Be sure to leave plenty of time to reach your destination.”