Doctor Syntax

by Michael Petracca

  Enjoy that calm and tranquil state

  That does on Independence wait,

  Nor spurns the low, nor courts the great.

  People were exiting steadily now. “This.” Sterne concluded, lowering the volume of his voice for rhetorical impact, “is our message. Encourage misfortune, sink to the depths of depravity, and be reborn into a state of all-acceptance, as did the child Genus.”

  The groom with manly dimples was the last to go. As his wife padded out before him, he turned and dispatched a glare of righteous disapproval in Sterne’s direction.

  Sterne didn’t notice. His gaze was fixed on me and the guy with allergies. He opened his fat arms wide and said, “Welcome, seekers.”

  I was in with Sterne.

  TWENTY-SIX

  The den was full of antique furniture that would have been costly if it had been original, only everything was fake, from the import-bazaar travesty of a Persian rug to the blue rayon Ming tapestries, to the wholesale-outlet sham Edwardian divan covered in a nubbly machine-stitched embroidery that depicted some faceless peacoated anthropoids mounting up happily for a hunt. In the whole room, the only authentic period piece was a blond cabinet of the aerodynamic Danish style popular in the late fifties, around the same time as tailfins on cars. This particular movable enclosed a pair of small stereo speakers, a turntable-receiver combo, and records. Given the pretentiously dated decor of the room, I expected nothing but cut-rate chamber standards in the record stack, but Sterne apparently preferred slick, overproduced trash-pop, like the Bee Gees and the Doobies. The radio was on, its dial set at a station whose program director shared Sterne’s pedestrian tastes, and in this strange, hostile house I was comforted by the familiar inanity of the tune coming through softly: “… the streeeets …”

  The rest of the furniture—a coffee table covered by a chunk of frosty beveled glass, a couple of pine end tables stained dark to simulate mahogany, an oak-veneer hutch—was cluttered with quaint knicknacks that any real antiquarian would reject as junk: a cast-iron jockey enameled carelessly, so that his eyeballs appeared to be melting down his cheeks, his jowls down his runny silks; a tin replica of a turn-of-the-century locomotive; a brass elephant with a truncated trunk; a blond cricket bat, chipped and splitting; a chaos of china vases, plates, cups, silver baby spoons. The fireplace was walled in solidly, with no flue. On both sides of its stone facade, plywood bookcases covered the wall from floor to ceiling. Old volumes, leatherbound, gilt-embossed and clearly for show, were lined up carefully on the shelves, so that no offending spine broke the plane formed by the books’ massed butts. His own big butt to the books, Sterne sank his plumpness into an overstuffed Chippendale copy and motioned to me and my allergic friend to sit also. We did, on straight-backed Louis XIV copies. Sterne’s large companion placed himself behind us, out of our field of vision.

  Under the bright reading lamp by his chair, Sterne’s flesh had a glossy, slightly bloated quality, like a buffed eggplant or a cat shaved and preserved in formaldehyde for science. Sterne’s hair was even shinier than his skin, and of too dark and uniform a color to match his eyebrows. An amateurish dye job: I wondered why a man of Sterne’s wealth would go the Clairol route when he could obviously afford a hairdresser. Pride or embarrassment, or both, I projected. Behind the smoky lenses Sterne’s eyes had a yellowish cast.

  Sterne turned to the allergic guy. He cleared his throat and announced, “I am Laurence Sterne.” although he had already introduced himself to the entire meeting an hour earlier, “and this is my associate, Mr. Bobby Swedenborg.” Impressive new alias for Sweeney, I thought.

  My allergic friend said, “I’m Rick Masters.”

  “Any relation?” Sterne asked, chuckling at his own ability to make witty associations in a snap.

  “Relation to who?” Rick Masters asked blankly.

  “I allude of course to the distaff member of the famous sex research team, to whose research I’ve added extensively on my own. At some future point in time I plan to come out with a report that will push into the background the famous team of Masters and …”

  “Bators.” I put in, adopting the style of facile sexual wordplay which, for Deputy Fumaroli and others of his kind, often passed as wit.

  “Please.” Sterne admonished me, “I’m conversing with Mr. Masters for the moment. I would prefer that you reserve your comments for the moment.” I was about to comment on his overuse of the phrase “for the moment.” but I could feel a slight stirring of cool air behind me, which meant that some part of the large person’s body was moving close to my neck. I held my peace … for the moment.

  Sterne turned back to Rick Masters, who was wheezing quietly. This Rick fellow seemed frail, shy—not at all the type to go in for Sterne-style terrorism. Under my Lippo Urmandorff masque the too-human Harmon Nails felt a twinge of … what? Pity? Protectiveness? Lippo shoved the feeling aside. Still addressing Masters, Sterne said, “And so, my friend with the illustrious surname, what brings you to Doctor Syntax?”

  Rick Masters spoke quietly. His respiratory condition gave his voice the uneven timbre of a teenage boy caught in that temporal limbo between Little League shrill and valedictory bass. He said, “I’ve been doing a lot of, kind of seeking around on my own, like you say, for answers.”

  “And you found none that made sense.”

  “When I was in jail back in the Midwest, you know, I done some serious reading.” He stopped talking, as though satisfied that he had explained his position clearly and exhaustively.

  Sterne prodded him, with a hint of impatience at Rick’s reticence. “And …?” he asked.

  “And they all seem sort of like bullshit, like you said.”

  “And so …?”

  “So I’m just seeking around.”

  “Mr. Masters, I gather that you are a man of few words.” Brilliant inference by the genial Dr. Sterne, a coup of rationality, a victory of the human mind’s classificatory powers over random stimuli in their usual tumultuous disarray. What a weenis, I thought. “I admire a quality of reserve in a fellow seeker.” he went on. “From your terse comments, it seems that you have been toying with different belief systems and finding none of them satisfactory.”

  “Not toying.” Rick said. “I take it serious.”

  “I’m sure you do, my friend.”

  During this fascinating interchange, I sat quietly, enervated from keeping my fear at bay and from low blood sugar. If I don’t eat a protein-containing snack, some space-age “cheese food” or a Soya-Krunch Bar at least every hour, I get bad hypoglycemia, in which I become shocky and even more resentful than usual. My head felt hollow, my eyes as though packed tight in their sockets with shredded cardboard. I hadn’t had a bite since the Pop-Tarts. Bright electric light was falling on my knee, and caught in the incandescent beam was a small spider, a leggy speck picking its way carefully along the wrinkled gray fabric of my trousers. In the dark twilight of my soul I resented the invasion of my personal space by this presumptuous creature, so much so that I considered crushing it between my fingers, slowly, to teach it and all life-forms in the room a lesson.

  I looked up at Sterne and Rick, who were talking about something. “At any rate, Mr. Rick Masters.” Sterne was saying, “I welcome you to our small but dedicated band of Combists. I hope you will not object to staying here overnight for a few days. We find that immersing oneself in Combe study is far and away the best method by which to assimilate his teachings. After the initial indoctrination period, our followers are free to lodge wherever they like, provided they attend regular bi-weekly training sessions. Does that arrangement sound acceptable to you, Mr. Masters?”

  Rick nodded his head. “OK.” he said slowly, as though under hypnosis. I watched my spider pick its way down the side of my leg and disappear from view. Sterne looked at me. He cleared his throat.

  “I am Laurence Sterne.” he said.

  As long as I was doing my Urmandorff number, I seemed to hav
e the shakes under control, and being on the edge of a hypoglycemic coma added an edge to my offensiveness. I said, “You told us your name already. Twice.” I pointed at the empty anteroom. “I guess no one was impressed the first time.”

  He nodded and smiled confidently. “We do not expect that our message will appeal to everyone, Mr …?”

  I said, “Urmandorff’s the name.” and then added, “but my friends call me Lips.” For some reason, hoods always have plural nicknames like Fats and Sticks, and for some reason, probably the same obscure reason, the etymology of the names is always Anglo-Saxon rather than Latinate. Otherwise, hoods would have names like “Hemiptera” Moran and “Tibiae” Diamond and “Errata” Braciuoli. I wondered how that particular convention got started, whether all the hoods called a summit meeting, a kind of nomenclatural Apalachin, to standardize the nicknaming rules, or whether the nicknaming occurred all at once, independently and by chance, like the discovery of radio-activity in the same year by researchers working independently on two different continents.

  Sterne broke into my linguistic musings, “And why do they call you Lips?”

  “That’s what she said last night, and I showed her.” Leering and flicking my tongue lewdly, I leaned over and punched Sterne hard in the thigh with my fist. Better Sterne’s fat leg than an innocent little spider. Sterne’s flesh caved in, like a yeasty bread dough.

  He winced. Sweeney moved into my field of vision. He didn’t look happy. Perhaps I had pushed the Urmandorff routine too far.

  Sterne regained his composure smoothly and halted the bodyguard’s advance with an offhand gesture. “I fully comprehend your sexual allusion. And as a Combist I approve wholeheartedly of your exploits.”

  I threw up a cloud of dated hipster and B-movie crook argot. “I reckoned you’d dig where I was coming from. That’s why I decided to hang out when the rest of the rats flew the ship after your lecture.” I pronounced it “lecher.” “What I dig the most is the part about fuck to get saved.”

  “That isn’t quite how I phrased it, but your interpretation of my message is entirely accurate, Mr. Urmandorff.”

  “You don’t hear so good, do you, Sternie? I said my friends call me Lips.”

  “Of course, Mr … Lips. And my followers call me Doctor Sterne, as I received the licensate in theology prior to my arrival in this country.”

  “Oh, excuse me, Doctor Sternie.” I exaggerated the “Doctor” for satiric effect. “You like giving the little girlies their physicals, eh, Sternie? Do you use the rubber pinkie cheater, or you like the barehand technique?” I leaned over to punch him again, but this time Sweeney, with surprising nimbleness for a man of his bulk, grabbed me tightly with one hand, like a plumber closing down a pipe-wrench. My wrist was the pipe.

  “Ow.” I whined.

  “I’m sorry, did Mr. Swedenborg hurt you?” Sterne said pleasantly. “I assure you, he meant no harm. If he had meant to inflict injury, you would be on the floor at this very moment, writhing in agony.” Poor Rick shifted uneasily in his Louis XIV copy. “How about a nice glass of chilled white wine to calm your nerves? I’m certain we could all do with some refreshment at the present moment.”

  As I may have mentioned previously, I don’t hold my alcohol well. Two thimblesful of beer and I’m ataxic, stupid, completely out of control. The acidity in a single glass of wine gives me a bleeding esophageal ulcer and a week of burning urination. I bluffed, “No, thanks, I only drink the hard stuff.”

  “An excellent idea. Bobby, a Pernod for each of the three of us. We’ll drink, to cement our fledgling association with one another.”

  “Nah, I’m still full from dinner.” I protested desperately.

  Sweeney didn’t seem to hear me, because he poured some liquor into three large snifters, and carried them over to us on a tarnished silver tray.

  “To William Combe.” Sterne said, raising his glass. “May he guide to us a life of self-realization, impeccable health, enduring fame, and wealth beyond our wildest dreams.” Not much to ask from a two-bit greeting-card versifier, long dead and turned to bandini. We raised our glasses. My excuses exhausted, I resigned myself to a sip.

  The brandy tasted just like the cherry cough syrup my mom used to give me whenever I came down with the croup. The memory was pleasant, familiar, relaxing, so much so that I took another swallow. “Good shit.” I commented, buoyed by an absence of the horrible distending gut-ache that usually visits me when I drink. I took a third big gulp confidently.

  Sterne started orating again. “Gentlemen, regard this snifter. It is made of Austrian lead crystal, the purest and strongest in the world. Items of this quality will belong to you as well, if you commit yourselves to the ambitious programs of the Combist League.” I observed Sterne clinically, from over the tops of my glasses, while tilting my head downward and taking birdlike nips at my drink. With nothing in my digestive tract to absorb the brandy, the alcohol was already starting to work on my nervous system. My limbs, previously frozen with apprehension, were thawing. My belly felt warm, my tongue absent. I nodded my head involuntarily, rhythmically, autistically, as I watched. Sterne announced, “I am told that as jarring an activity as hammering nails is entirely feasible with these snifters; they will not shatter upon impact as will crystal of lower quality.”

  I was momentarily taken aback by what sounded like my name coming from Sterne—the very same words my Nonno had uttered when asked his name by the clerk at Ellis Island—but in spite of the amber-hued alcoholic haze that was massing about me, I managed to recall where I was and who I was pretending to be, and thus to refrain from answering. Sterne tapped the rim of the glass with a fingernail. It chimed softly, with astonishing clarity, like a little silver egg falling through the clear ether and breaking on those little bones inside my ear.

  I tried to talk, but the liquor had already clouded my sensorium to the point that I could only manage to mumble, “Pow nail jew say?” Rick Masters’ eyes widened. Sterne remained outwardly placid. Sweeney took a step in my direction, expecting trouble.

  “Less giddit a try.” I chugged down the last of the drink and, grasping my snifter by its splayed base, brought it down hard against the arm of my chair. The glass shattered into an expanding universe of tiny glittering fragments which fell on the mantel, and the hearth, and the sham Persian rug, and all of us.

  “Rainen inna house.” I observed.

  “Perhaps we should retire now.” Sterne suggested with forced calmness. He lifted himself with some effort from the seat. There was a deep crater in the cushion, where his rump had been.

  “Doughn wan sleep havn gootime.” I objected strenuously.

  “I think we could all use a little rest now, Mr. Urmandorff. It’s been a most enlightening evening. Mr. Swedenborg will show you to your quarters.”

  Sweeney grabbed me under the armpits and hefted me up.

  “Nawww.” I complained, and struggled to free myself from his grip.

  He hauled me, flopping like a beached seaskate, in the direction of the staircase. As I was dragging across the floor, heels digging into the rug and bunching it up like ripple candy, my muzzy alcoholic awareness took in the elephant statue on the coffee table. In spite of its recently broken trunk, I recognized it, like an old acquaintance emerging from darkness into misty street light. It flashed me back, and in a moment of dreamy compressed time I relived the break-in at Ernst’s, the shotgun humiliation of Lissa, a frantic search by a faceless gunman, books into a bag, a brass elephant lifted also, intense pain from a sharp blow to my sweet soft nards.

  “Doughn doot! Not my bawwwlz.” I moaned, and I got sick all over the hardwood floor.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  I’ve always had to get up at least three times a night to pass water, and the older I get, the more water it seems I have to pass.

  The first time I slept over at Braddy’s I was shocked to discover, after fending off his gay sorties, that he had an unbroken sleep. Between my i
nsomnia at being in a strange bedroom and my hyperuria, I was awake most of the night, and I never saw Braddy get up once. That was the first inkling I had that I was different from other guys. I asked my dad about it, and he told me, “It’s simple, Harmie. When our bodies tell us to micturate, we micturate. Some people micturate more, some people micturate less. Bradford is one of those people who do it less, you are one of the people who do it more, and there is no point in getting angry about it.” To a child who had not yet seen the extent to which the universe metes out its blessings unevenly, the inequity suggested by my father’s advice—that I should put up with more aggravation than Braddy did—was unacceptable. After all, I got better grades than Braddy got in school; should that fact alone not entitle me to sleep as well as Braddy? Unfortunately not, was my father’s message, and piss-bitter experience was backing him up. Disappointments come fast and cheap when you’re a kid, and they only get more expensive with time. Eventually I learned acceptance, along with the invaluable skill of relieving myself in a TreeTop apple juice jar while simultaneously standing up and semi-sleeping. You might give this technique a try if you have the same problem, and if you do I offer the following advice: Rinse out the jar in the morning and use a new jar every week or so, because bacteria seem to like it in there.

  I woke before sunrise with that familiar urgency in my bladder, but I was in Sterne’s house, not Braddy’s, with a strange allergic roommate named Rick in the next bed and no TreeTop jar nearby. I stumbled out of bed to find a toilet or at least an empty vase I could use. My head throbbed from my recent drunkenness, and a wash of vertigo forced me to sit on the edge of the bed until it passed. My ears buzzing, I got up and groped my way toward the window, which, despite its being curtained, admitted some ambient city light dimly. Rick Masters was sleeping soundly, wheezing on each intake of breath and snoring as he exhaled. “Annhhh, zzooop.” he said. I found the bathroom, turned on the light, did my business, turned off the light, and groped my way back to bed.