Merlin was still distracted by ideas of the pedagogy of botanical management when the door of the locker room surprised him by opening just as he reached for the knob. This shock sent Merlin reeling backward, teetering and waving arms to steady himself. Tite Dûche, clad in one of his signature spring outfits, looked Merlin over with unmasked contempt. As Merlin caught his balance, Tite’s trademark pinched-face look returned, and he marched toward the exit. Merlin had doffed his ball cap on entering the clubhouse, so Dûche couldn’t cite him for a wardrobe misdemeanor. Nevertheless, he sensed no goodwill emanating his direction from the fastidious little flea of a man. What sort of geomagnetic imbalance had caused him to reach for the door just as the misbegotten incoming club president pushed his way through it? Were the wheels of his world beginning to spin away from each other into their own chaotic and unrelated orbits?
Merlin entered the cavernous man cave with ball cap in hand and eyes wide as he approached his corner spot where Shep Pasteur, like a kind of animate and bemused drugstore Indian, awaited his arrival. And it was definitely the approach of an air-displacing presence, as in his depressed state, Merlin had put on more weight. Shep thought for a second that he should have a couple of those orange plastic-coned flashlights like the tarmac crew use at the airport when guiding jumbo jets to their gates. He released that notion like gafftop catfish and took the human wide-body’s hat as he pulled out a high bar chair and offered Merlin his usual spot at the counter.
Perhaps the chair had sustained some previous hairline fracture because on arranging himself into it and placing the small, if one could still really call it that, of his back into the place where the chair’s seat met its back support, the unfortunate piece of furniture let out a cracking sound and gave way, first assuming the form of an angular, elongated trapezoid, then flattening onto the floor with Merlin sprawling atop the wooden and leather ruin. Shep went into lightning-quick action, asking another employee to bring in the shoeshine guy’s chair—a large, high office chair that belonged to Chappy, the resident bootblack. Shep then summoned a clean-up crew by phone, all the while checking on his charge’s well-being.
“I … I’m … so sorry, Shep! I—”
“Hey now!” Shep interrupted. “Don’t you worry a minute about it. I saw a little crack running down that ole chair yesterday afternoon an’ thought to myself, it’s time for a replacement.”
Shep and Chappy helped Merlin to his feet and then into the big black rolling chair that was, fortunately, the same height as the other barstools. Merlin sat in stunned, embarrassed silence as some of the few members who were there at that hour stared in the direction of the mayhem—the superannuated members glaring like mute, miffed snapping turtles, while a trio of younger members snickered under a large-screen television at the far side of the room. Merlin regained his spot at the bar, but he hunched over it with hands clasped atop a bowed head and elbows planted on the countertop, trying to fade into the woodwork.
Shep continued, “No now don’t you worry there at all Magic Man! You got nothin’ to be ashamed of! That chair was fixin’ to go an’ it was just a matter of who was gonna sit in it next. I seen it happen before! You just got the unlucky draw!”
Forlorn, Merlin looked at Shep as the wise Cajun spoke and repeated his final words. “Unlucky draw?”
“Dat’s right. Sometimes, that’s just how the cards fa—, uh, get dealt to you. True for everybody, not just you or me, Magic Man.”
Merlin’s facial muscles began to relax slightly, and his stiff posture began to ease into its usual slump.
Shep looked across the locker room toward another attendant and mouthed the words “Magic Mountain” while pointing at Merlin out of the broken man’s field of vision as he continued to console his rotund charge.
“Shep?”
“What you say, Magic Man?”
“Shep, I gotta find work. More than just working with the St. James’ kids on their homework.”
“I thought your granddaddy left you well fixed!”
“Pretty well, but there have been some twists and turns lately, and I need something more than part-time. I think I can do it. I could do school pretty well. Maybe I can do a real job, too?”
“You can do more than you think you can right now, but you gotta believe that’s true before you try.”
“Believe it’s true?”
“Yeah, it’s just like going fishin’. Don’t nobody go fishin’ thinking they’re gonna get skunked! An’ even if they don’t catch even one, they gotta keep believin’ for the next time!”
Merlin gave Shep a blank face, but Shep was determined to continue until he saw a spark of the slightest kindling of hope where there was only ashen firelessness. Merlin thought of some of the more productive fishing trips from his youth, and his mind wheels began to move. Shep detected this slight change and kept Merlin interested at the other end of the line as the wily Cajun continued to reel in the lure. The spark of another idea animated Shep. “Hey now, do you know Mr. Mondeaux?”
This question caught Merlin off guard and caused him to recoil a bit. “You mean the billionaire T. Rex Mondeaux?”
“That’s him!”
“He probably wouldn’t remember me, but I know that he and my grandfather were friends.”
Shep hesitated as he thought no one after having encountered the hulking obtuse egghead of Bayou Boughs would have an easy time forgetting him and kept angling to raise Merlin’s spirits.
“He was in here just yesterday afternoon at the cocktail hour.”
“Oh … okay?”
“Yeah, and you know I don’t make it a habit to listen in too much on conversation between members, but I heard Mr. Mondeaux playing his violin about how much trouble one of his company’s been having with what he said was ‘its main advertising vehicle.’”
“Is that like an investment vehicle?”
“No, no! Mr. Mondeaux’s company owns Fandango Utilities.”
“You mean the company with the blimp?”
“Exactly! In this case the advertising vehicle is really a vehicle!”
Merlin brightened. “An airship!”
“Dat’s right! It’s the Fandango Utilities Blimp!”
“One time it flew right over my observatory!”
“Dat’s the one!”
“I wonder what they need.”
“I don’t know, but if it’s anything that don’t require a pilot’s license, I’m onna be your recommender for the job.”
“How can you find out?”
“That’s not your worry, Magic Man. You let Shep do his magic an’ then you can do yours.”
Merlin’s Magic Mountain arrived, and he dove into it with renewed gusto. Between bites, he picked up a golf scorecard pencil and notepad and began to doodle images of blimps from various points of view. To Shep, Merlin’s sudden excitement seemed so palpable the whipped cream gyre topping his pancakes might begin to rotate, but Merlin quashed this notion as he attacked the carbohydrate-rich discs with the ardor of a grizzly devouring its first kill after awakening from hibernation.
Shep began to wonder how he might broach the subject and suggest the unconventional candidate to the eccentric mogul Rex Mondeaux. Regardless of how tough a businessman Mondeaux was reputed to be, he knew that Mr. Rex liked him. It would all be a matter of reading the captain of industry’s mood and timing his query and pitch with finesse. Mood radar and timing were skills at which Shep was beyond expert.
He resolved to risk crossing the usual club employee boundaries. He had known Merlin’s grandfather. And he knew Merlin. And he deduced that since Arthur McNaughton’s passing, there wasn’t a soul in this world to look out for this well-meaning but clueless young man. At this moment, however, Shep relished his success in turning Merlin into a hopeful mass of blimp-dreaming, breakfast-gobbling anticipation.
• Six
With his acutely tuned human radar, beat-perfect timing, and rarely erring intuition, Shep Pasteur took full advantage of the
opportunity to ask a post-business-deal-sealing, post-golfing, post-second-cocktail-quaffing Rex Mondeaux, chief executive officer of Mondoco, Incorporated, of which Fandango Utilities was a subsidiary, to take a chance on Merlin, who, Shep assured Mondeaux, might be just the right fit for the gap in Fandango’s pesky blimp operations. After a quizzical moment of reflection, Mr. Mondeaux—never one to mince words or overthink a deal—said okay. Shep considered this one of the major victories in his storied history of clubhouse diplomacy. Now, it was imperative that Merlin not let him down.
Merlin was duly impressed when the Alles driver was flagged into the blimp base after giving his passenger’s name. The large white hangar loomed before them with a diminutive office attached to its side like the entryway to an elongated oversized igloo. The entry sign read “Fandango Utilities Blimp/Airship Resource (FUBAR)—Home of the Airmadillo.” Reading this official-sounding name and looking at the looming hangar as the car approached the office induced reverential awe in Merlin. He mustered all the presence of mind he could to steel himself for the interview.
In a few minutes, Merlin was sitting in a rolling office chair across the desk from Lyudmila Sukhova, sales and marketing director for Fandango Utilities. Above and behind Ms. Sukhova, the entire wall was covered in what Merlin considered a very bold and striking graphic of the Airmadillo in all its garish orange, blue, and silver glory, its nose pointed bravely toward the heavens. In bold type framing the airship on the background of a cloud-specked blue firmament toward which it soldiered were the words “Fandango Utilities” and “A Dang Good Idea!”
The auburn-haired Ms. Sukhova eyed the unconventional job applicant with a raised eyebrow reminiscent of Natasha of Boris and Natasha fame from the Bullwinkle cartoon show. The lowering of the eyebrow was accompanied by fixing Merlin with a piercing, unsmiling gaze. “Bleemp eez problem,” Ms. Sukhova intoned flatly. She even sounded like Natasha as far as Merlin could remember from the reruns. He would have liked to hear her say, “Moose and squirrel must die.” But that thought vanished as the no-nonsense marketing director continued.
“Well. Not exactly. Bleemp eez fine. In good functioning order. Management of bleemp eez real problem.”
Merlin nodded silently.
“A lot of turnover here at office. No consistency. This is bad for corporate image; bad for client relations.”
Merlin nodded again as the svelte Slavic executive scrutinized the single hard-copy page of his resumé.
“Nontraditional resumé, but at this point we will try anything. Also, very strong suggestion from upper management that you be hired.”
“I have good skills at organizing data,” Merlin offered with a quavering voice.
The eyebrow went up again as Sukhova glanced quickly at the hulking, disheveled blob across the table.
“Bleemp Operations needs two things as soon as possible: We must have program to organize scheduling of passengers and program to remind mechanic when to service vehicle and what service to perform. We need better communications with parts suppliers and manufacturer, so bleemp stays operational as many days as possible.”
Merlin listened and responded tentatively, “I have written a lot of software programs.”
“What kind of programs?” Sukhova said with an unveiled tone of challenge.
“Many kinds. I like solving problems,” Merlin responded flatly.
Lyudmila Sukhova’s eyebrow remained raised in its unconvinced arch as she froze Merlin in her gaze for a moment and looked again at the resumé. To Merlin’s surprise, she relaxed into the chair, turned, and sailed the lone sheet nonchalantly toward the bare surface of an empty credenza behind her beneath the blimp graphic.
“Here eez description of benefits and salary.”
She sailed another sheet vaguely in Merlin’s direction, and he reached awkwardly to catch it as it slid off the desk.
“You start Monday?” Merlin glanced at the data on the official-looking glossy printed page and nodded in compliance.
“Okay,” exhaled Sukhova as she pushed back from the desk. “Time to meet staff.”
• Seven
Tite Dûche left the club through a service entrance after conferring with an employee at its doorway. In a couple of minutes, he was ripping his yowling little roadster through its gears as he careened down Kirby Drive and onto Allen Parkway. Vitalized by what he considered to be a productive board meeting, Tite crinkled his rat nose in the breeze as he made each gear whine at high RPMs before jerking the stick into the next one. Now he was on his way. Now he, he believed with the certainty of a new proselyte, could remake the club to suit his fancy. Board resistance was a nonissue as his cronies would back him on all his proposals.
Neither charity cocktail reception nor gala-planning party were on Tite’s itinerary today. He pointed his cheeky two-seater northward from the Allen Parkway entrance ramp onto I-45 and quickly exited toward a neighborhood where the rich-man’s car would stand out like a zoot suit at an Amish funeral. What business could a Bayou Boughs stalwart have on the near North Side? It was a land where the signs were written mostly in a language on which he did not have the loosest of grasps, although, on entering the barrio, it surrounded him like water surrounds a fish.
Despite his bafflement and subsequent glee on getting the job at the Fandango Utilities Blimp/Airship Resource base and meeting some of the staff members, Merlin’s sense of isolation increased over the ensuing days and so did his appetite. Driven by a hunger nothing short of global in its span and proportions, he hit all of his local go-to spots, covering a broad spectrum of ethnic and regional cuisines.
He led off with a culinary flight of whimsy to old Indochina, alighting at a favorite haunt in Houston’s Midtown, where he was known in Vietnamese to the restaurant staff as the Water Buffalo. Merlin was, as usual, single-mindedly unaware of past instances of waiters’ snickering as he lumbered down the sidewalk to the restaurant entry and angled himself to slip through the glass doorway to the basic but comfortably appointed restaurant. The staff shot each other looks of instant alarm, then turned on their perfunctory greeting smiles to welcome him. Having had too many experiences with his rupturing support slats undergirding booths alongside the far wall of the restaurant, an employee ran to retrieve a large, wide rolling chair as another motioned him toward a four-top table. On Merlin’s arrival tableside, the big sturdy chair rolled into place to allow him to slide into it with comfort and confidence.
He did not seat himself before producing a black portfolio he had clutched under his left arm. He opened it and removed its sole contents—a translucent smock of the sort that a child’s art class might distribute. It started at the neck with a rigid collar of metal entwined in some kind of bright red fabric and descended into the vast tarp-like amorphousness of the gargantuan smock. This version was modified to have some basic sleeves, sort of like a poncho, allowing both greater freedom of movement and more protection from flying morsels and liquids.
Unfazed, the waiter was a bodhisattva of patience.
“Usual starters?” he inquired.
“Yes! Of course!” returned Merlin with the exuberant security of the recently gainfully employed, his smock flapping in a show of unrestrained glee. And the onslaught began: First with soft spring rolls and spicy sweet peanut sauce, followed by fried summer rolls with fresh mint, cilantro, bean sprouts, and sliced jalapeño peppers all swaddled in crisp, fresh leaves of romaine lettuce ready for the dipping into the sticky-sweet, unctuous fish sauce ubiquitous in Vietnam and in Vietnamese cultural outposts around the world.
Merlin rolled through the summer rolls with great relish, his eyes rolling back in his head as he chomped down on the cold of the lettuce and vegetables before hitting the hot fried density and intensity of the roll itself, the coral-colored fish sauce dribbling down his chin and coursing through the thick tendrils of his beard with his smock and plate serving as catch basins for the overflowing condiment. As Merlin finished his last bite, the waiter once again appe
ared.
“Pho?”
“Absolutely!”
This is when the smock’s efficacy rose to a particularly high level. As much as Merlin loved the iconic Vietnamese soup, he had learned over and over that he could not make it through even a small bowl without depositing a significant part of its contents on the frontispiece of his shirt, with a fair residuum making its way onto his lap. Time and again Merlin had stained himself to the point of great embarrassment, even for a soul as unselfconscious as he.
Determining never to leave a Vietnamese restaurant again looking like Jackson Pollack had painted his torso with seasoned broth and sauced, fried, and sautéed tidbits, Merlin initiated a search for a suitable barrier between himself and the objects of his gustatory pleasure. After careful consideration, he decided that the art smock was an ideal choice. It covered the threatened corporeal areas thoroughly while allowing for unencumbered freedom of movement to reach for platters, condiments, and other items as he orchestrated each bite of his mealtime symphonies.
After a server refilled his teacup, while yet another brought a fresh pot of tea, the piping hot tureen of pho tai with all its attendant trimmings and condiments arrived. A big plate of the same vegetables that accompanied the summer rolls also appeared, with a few additions, including tiny leaved rao ôm, which Merlin thought particularly beguiling, as no Western cuisine of which he was aware used an herb with a similar flavor. Merlin used all of the vegetables and healthy glops of each of the sweet and spicy condiments, creating a dark brew—the thinly sliced pieces of beef and wilting vegetables swimming in a hot turbid broth reminiscent of flotsam, jetsam, discarded household items, and perhaps even body parts bobbing in the chocolate milk–colored, post-hurricane churned waters of Galveston Bay. Remnants of pho descended in glistening tearlike rivulets down the creases of the smock as Merlin finished his soup and awaited the main event.
Merlin of the Magnolias Page 5