Magnificent Vibration

by Rick Springfield

  One morning, we’re all ordered to crowd into the lunchroom for a “bulletin.” The Right Whale waddles in and grandly announces to everyone that we are moving offices. To a bigger and better facility. In Valencia. Everyone moans, because our cool new digs are now a three-hour car ride in peak traffic. The Right Whale goes apeshit in response to our mild discontent, and when he’s done yelling he tells us that because of his gifted and brilliant stewardship, this firm has landed another huge account and we should all be goddamn grateful that he’s keeping us out of the poorhouse. And we had better stop our whining and bitching.

  “Please, please let it be a real movie studio with real watchable movies,” I whisper a prayer to the Hollywood film gods.

  “We will be working on films supplied by a firm called “La Société de Cinema,” he announces proudly.

  “Hey, that’s French,” I think to myself. “The French make some great movies. Fairly uninspired name, but it is in a language other than Khmer. This is promising.”

  What I don’t know is that French is spoken by a significant minority in a certain Eastern country that’s about to surprise me. And not in a good way.

  “La Société de Cinema is in Laos. Right next-door to Cambodia. We’ll now be dubbing a crapload of Laotian movies as well,” he finishes.

  “Fuckit!” I accidentally say out loud.

  “You have a problem with this, Cotton?” the Right Whale shouts across the room at me.

  “No, sorry, I . . . ah . . . got my finger caught in the chair,” I fib.

  “You sure it wasn’t your dick?” he cracks and then guffaws at his own joke. Others laugh to humor and/or suck up to him, but most of them give me the pathetic sideways “You poor dude” look.

  So everything is humming along superbly both at work and at home. I have my dream job and my dream boss, my dream wife and my dream home and the only one I would truly take a bullet for at this point is Murray. I think Charlotte and I need to have a child to glue us back together. A little girl like her or a little dude like me (okay, not completely like me: a better version of me—with normal-sized ears) that we can worship, idolize, and fawn over and who will unite us through our mutual love of this perfect baby trinket. Of course this is possibly the worst reason in the world to procreate: to save a marriage. Shouldn’t there be a book or a video or some type of tutorial that helps ignorant doofuses like us, with young, highly fertile wombs and testicles, to steer clear of making appalling choices like this?

  Luckily for everyone involved and the as-yet-unconceived baby, my wife is just as adamant now as she was when we first got hitched that she is not going to screw up her life, her body, and her wonderfully healthy narcissism by having a “fucking kid.”

  As it turns out, thank God. But right now, I am heartbroken about it. Good-bye, little girl in pink that will never be. Who will never call me “Daddy” or look at me like I am perfect. Good-bye, little Horatio Jr., son of mine. We will not be flying kites on the beach together in this life or playing catch on the front lawn after school. I’m kidding about the name, of course. I would never have done that to the little guy. But my biological clock’s alarm must have rung loud and clear at some point, because I actually get misty-eyed when I think of the kids we will never have. I guess I really wanted kids. Who knew? I get depressed about it.

  That is, until I come home really late one evening from work, having had a terrible day trying to get the American voice-over guy to say “I’m diabetic” so that it fits the Cambodian actor on screen as he mouths “K’nyom mee-un chum ngoo dteuk nom pha-em.” The “actor” on screen also has a gun to his head and he’s supposed to be scared (which he is faking badly), so he’s saying this phrase really slowly and nervously. We try and drag the English version out to make it match, you know, “Iiiiiiiii’mmmmm diiiiiiaaaabeeeetiiiiic”—but it just looks and sounds stupid, and for all my misgivings and shame about it, I do have some pride in my work. Obviously it’s an impossible task, but we do our best. I arrive home wondering at what point I will, by osmosis, be able to speak fluent Khmer. Tonight I certainly know how to say “I’m diabetic,” should I ever find myself in need of insulin while vacationing in Phnom Penh.

  Charlotte is already in bed and there is an empty bottle of Grey Goose vodka in the trash. Murray, of course, greets me like I’ve just come back from five years in Afghanistan.

  “Holy shit, it’s YOU!!! Oh man, I’ve missed you so much. I thought you weren’t coming back! Have you been gone for days or weeks or years? I can’t tell! Will you magically produce some food for me like you always do? I want to lick! Can I lick? Let me claw your face nearer so I can swipe my stinky tongue across it. Wow, you had CLAMS for lunch? I LOVE clams!!! Can you create clams for me right now? Oh, okay, kibble will be great! Yep, just pour it into my bowl that no one has bothered to wash in the three years I’ve lived here. Twenty-one years in dog time! But who’s counting? I LOVE kibble in a dirty bowl!! I want us to spend more time together. How come you always smell like food? I found an old French fry with dust stuck to it, under the kitchen counter today, and I was saving it for you but then I remembered that you usually throw food out when it lands on the floor so I ate it. Boy this kibble tastes GREAT! Can we cuddle? I love you, sir.” He goes on and on like this for about ten minutes, and when he’s done I feel valued once again. What an outstanding piece of work is the family dog.

  On the kitchen counter I see, by the small green power light, that Charlotte has left her computer up and running, so I go to close it down. I touch the keyboard to “wake it up,” and what I see as the screen lights up, wakes me up. She’s left her Twitter account open. She has a Twitter account?! I didn’t even know she “twitted” or whatever the hell it’s called. It’s a “direct message.” Again this lingo is completely alien to me. But what I’m seeing is very much of this earth! The image on the monitor leaps to life in full color and as bright as a thousand suns. It takes a while for what I’m seeing to register, so out-and-out weird, unexpected, seriously fucked-up, and shocking is this thing I see on my wife’s computer.

  Bobby

  (Beep, blippity, beep, beep, blippity, beep, blip, beep, blippity, beep, beep!)

  “Glad you kids found each other!”

  “God?”

  “Please. Don’t start that again. You’re not still wondering, are you?”

  “No, not really. No.”

  “Anyway, the word ‘God’ has so much baggage attached to it with you people. I’d prefer if you called me ‘the Omnipotent Supreme Being,’ OSB for short. Or you can call me ‘Arthur.’ ”

  “What?”

  “There you go with your famous ‘What’ again.”

  Alice has unexpectedly run for the bathroom and locked the door. Lexington Vargas is sitting up on the couch, hugging his blanket, looking for all the world like an enormous kid at a sleep-over. But he is listening intently to my side of the conversation.

  “Sorry. Did you just say I should call you ‘Arthur’?”

  “Yep.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s a nice name. And hearing ‘God Almighty’ and ‘My Lord’ and ‘Holy Father’ with the attendant scraping and bowing all the time just gets annoying.”

  “You’re doing this on purpose. I have some real questions now and you’re trying to throw me.”

  “Throw you. I couldn’t even lift you. Hahaha.”

  “Please, God . . . Arthur, can you stop acting like a freak? It’s just . . . I don’t know . . . kind of unseemly.”

  “What, I’m not supposed to have fun or a sense of humor? Do you want me to repeat the flaming-sink thing? I will if it’ll make you feel better.”

  “No! No, I’m . . . no, please.”

  “ ’kay.”

  “See, that. Just saying ‘ ’kay’ . . . it makes you sound kind of immature, like some dopey teenager.”

  “Thanks for the pat on the back.”

  “I don’t mean to offend you, I just want to . . .”

  “
It’s okay. I took it as a compliment. Love kids.”

  Momentarily lost thanks to another bizarre dialog with the maker of Heaven and Earth, and possibly aided and abetted by my ADD, I look down at the phone number in L.V.’s open book on my lap. I’m trying to get my bearings. It’s not an easy task, considering. The silence is getting uncomfortable. I blurt out . . .

  “So why is the area code for the phone number in Lexington’s book West Virginia? Do you live in West Virginia?”

  “Ah, no, I don’t live in West Virginia. That’s a joke.”

  “How is it a joke?”

  “On the cars. The license plates. They say ‘West Virginia, Almost Heaven.’ So do they think when they die they go to a place that’s just a little bit better than West Virginia?”

  “That’s funny?”

  “I thought so. Actually, I stole it from a guy named Jim Gaffigan. He’s a comedian.”

  “Yeah, I know who he is.”

  “Your comedians are some of your smartest people.”

  “You steal jokes from guys who do stand-up?”

  “It’s okay. I’m responsible for their having a universe to do stand-up in, so I think it’s a fair exchange, don’t you? Anyway, I didn’t expect you to bother looking up the area code. Must be something to do with your OCD.”

  “That was my sister who had the OCD.”

  “I know, but you have a little of it, too.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Yeah, you do.”

  “I do?”

  “What do you think has you so hooked on this sexual/religious obsession thing?”

  “Shit . . . sorry, didn’t mean to swear. You know about that, too?”

  “One LAST time: I’m—”

  “Omniscient, right. I remember you said that before.”

  “I did, yes.”

  A sudden lump appears in my throat and a shiver runs down my back.

  “So how is my sister? Is she up there?”

  “Up where?”

  “In Heaven.”

  “(A), Why do you believe there’s a heaven? (B), If there is, what makes you think it’s ‘up’? and (C), Why would I tell you what happens when you die and leave the rest of the universe to figure it out for themselves?”

  “I thought since you gave us your phone number you were open to answering some questions.”

  “Look, Horatio, I do not get involved in the universe’s path. I may move a few chess pieces now and then, but the outcome is always up to personal choice.”

  “So there’s no great overall plan? No grand design? For mankind, womankind, whatever?”

  “If you’re asking if there’s an ‘end game,’ well, of course there is, but it’s probably not what you imagine. There will be an ‘outcome,’ if you’ll allow me a degree of nebulousness. Seriously, what would be the point of life if I controlled things? Y’know? It’s your choices, your decisions, and even your momentary lapses of reason that make your lives what they are.”

  “That’s not what a lot of us believe.”

  “I know what a lot of you believe. But why would I hand a young musician or athlete fame, wealth, and success and then turn around and give an eight-year-old kid terminal cancer? Would that make any sense to anyone?”

  “No, I guess not.”

  “So why do all those celebs keep publicly thanking me every time they make a million dollars or win some stupid award? And why does the broken-hearted mother of the eight-year-old cancer patient have moments where she curses me for not protecting her child? How is there any logic—and you people pride yourself on your logic—in that?”

  “So we’re on our own?”

  “Like I said, I move chess pieces occasionally but it’s up to all of you which path you take. What do you think is the most profound saying that you’ve come up with, you human beings?”

  “ ‘You human beings?’ That’s. . . . really . . . odd. I think we all think you’re one of us. But a perfect version. And that you’re on our side.”

  “I know.”

  “Okay. Profound saying? The only one I can think of right now is ‘The love you take is equal to the love you make.’ ”

  “That’s good, I’ll grant you, but mainly because it rhymes. The truest and most profound saying you have is ‘Shit happens.’ ”

  “You just said ‘shit.’ ”

  “Come on, Horatio, put on your big-boy pants.”

  “Okay, why ‘shit happens’?”

  “Because it’s a universal truth. Good, bad, wonderful, and terrible random events occur, and those events, and how you react to them as individuals, define and shape who you are.”

  “I think there are people here who believe that, too.”

  “Yep.”

  “What about Magnificent Vibration?”

  “Okay, I may have overstepped my own rules of non-involvement with the books. I haven’t done anything that blatant in a few thousand years. It was kind of old-school. But, if you are to be involved in . . . this whole thing . . .”

  “What whole thing?”

  “That’s still up in the air. As I was saying before you rudely interrupted . . .”

  “Sorry.”

  “. . . I thought you should all have an honest look at your past lives. A reckoning of sorts. But then it was still your choice what you did with the books and whether you found each other or not and where it goes from this point. All I really did was move a chess piece.”

  “That’s a pretty big chess piece. It’s closer to a miracle than a chess move, I’d say.”

  “Maybe so. Maybe so.”

  “But there are no miracles, right?”

  “I could turn you all into eight-legged transvestite goats if I wanted to, so don’t mouth off, Sonny.”

  “I wasn’t. I’m just trying to get some kind of handle on what’s going on, is all.”

  “Well, you won’t be able to do that. It’s too big. Your Earth is at a tipping point. Like the Vee-Nung were.”

  “What’s a Vee-Nung?”

  “Look, I’ve already said too much. Let’s change the subject.”

  “What’s a Vee-Nung?”

  “Hey, how about those Dodgers?”

  “What?”

  “Hello, it’s the ‘What’ guy again?”

  “Well then, what’s your plan for the three of us?”

  “Who said I had a plan?”

  “But you’re guiding us in some direction.”

  “No, I’m not. I’m presenting you with options. Which way you move will always be your choice. You humans think you’re the only intelligent beings on your planet?”

  “Who else is here?”

  “Here endeth the lesson.”

  “Okay . . . well if there is a Heaven and you see Josie, tell her I love her and I’ll never forget her.”

  There are tears in my eyes as I finish this last sentence, and sweet, giant Lexington Vargas gets up from the couch and puts an understanding and quite weighty hand on my shoulder. An idea pops into my mind that L.V. is actually more like I thought God would be than God is.

  “Yes, he is a good man.”

  “Who?”

  “You had a thought that your friend Lexington is kind of how you imagined I should be. And I agree with you that he is a good human. He has been through his fair share of self-induced, self-created shit, though.”

  “You read my mind!”

  “And once more . . . I’m omniscient.”

  “Right.”

  “Right.”

  “So why are you helping us?”

  “Trust me, when this is all done, whatever direction it goes, you won’t think I was ‘helping’ you.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Nothing I’m willing to tell you at this point.”

  “Well, it sounds pretty ominous.”

  “There are some hard choices ahead to be made.”

  “By you?”

  “By you.”

  “What’s going to happen?”

  �
��I’d like to talk to Sister Alice.”

  “You’re not telling me any more?”

  “Already said waaaaaay more than I meant to. Can you get her to come out of the bathroom and take the call?”

  “You know she’s hiding in the bathroom, huh?”

  “You’re not going to make me say the ‘O’ word again, are you?”

  “What? . . . Oh, yeah, ‘omniscient,’ right. Will I ever get to talk to you again?”

  “You sound very needy right now, Horatio.”

  “I’ve got a million questions.”

  “I’ll bet you do.”

  “Okay, I’ll get Alice.”

  I walk to the bathroom door and knock. Then I say the strangest and most unbelievable thing I have ever said and ever expect to say to another human being in my lifetime.

  “Alice. God’s on the phone.”

  I hear her dry-retching, and the toilet flushes. There is movement inside and then very slowly the bathroom door opens and a wan face peers out. I almost don’t recognize her at first, so ghostly white and wide-eyed is she. She walks out like a guilty schoolgirl entering the principal’s office. I hand her the cell phone. She hesitates, and then takes it as though it were a hand grenade. I watch as Alice drops to her knees and bows her head (oh my God, that is so frickin’ hot! Woody—Don’t!), then raises the phone to her ear. Her voice is tremulous, faint, and filled with a life I know nothing about.

  “Holy Father, my Lord God. I am your most unworthy serv . . .”

  She stops talking as though she’s been interrupted and looks up with a quizzical expression on her pale face. Then . . .

  “Arthur?!”

  I would give anything to be listening in to the other end of this conversation. But she rises, walks back into the bathroom, and closes the door. I do hear her parting words, though.