The Broom Of The System Part 45

"Come closer. I can't see you in this light."

"Look, I'm sorry I said that that Fieldbinder story you obviously liked sucked ca.n.a.l-water. It was one an eminent friend sent you, right? It all became clear to me this afternoon. Let's consider it one of the things that keened my pitch. I took it off the rejection pile. I asterisked it."

"Not a problem at all."

"So should I wait for you, for dinner?"

"Do whatever you feel valid and three-dimensional doing, Lenore."

"Pardon me?"

"In answer to your question, the Physicians' Desk Reference Physicians' Desk Reference is very real. It has transcended its context, one might say." is very real. It has transcended its context, one might say."

"Are you sure you're OK? Was Jay a total s.h.i.+t to you too?"

"Just feel a bit ... tired and small tonight. A little coyote-ish."

"Coyote-ish?"

Nearly six, the sun low and the shadow full and the watery lights lit high overhead in the lobby ceiling, Judith Prietht was closing up shop and getting ready to shut down the console for the night, the Bombardini Company getting more than enough legitimate calls during business hours. Into her shopping bag went the limp-necked sweater she had almost finished knitting; off went her slippers and on went her street shoes; now off when her console (Position Release and Position Busy pushed together shut down a Centrex 28 equipped with a special Shutdown feature, which the Frequent and Vigorous console wasn't, and could only be put to rest by removing the console cable itself from its jack in the back with a ratchet wrench, an option exercised on more than one occasion by Vern Raring in the really empty, quiet part of the night); off went her lamp, leaving the Frequent and Vigorous half of the switchboard cubicle in a softer kind of light; on went her hair net; in went a Certs. Out she went, blowing a not-returned kiss to Candy Mandible, home to feed her cat.

Candy sat smoking again, waiting for Vem Raring to come in at six, trying not to look at the little clock over the console while she told the latest Lang story to Walinda Peahen, who sat completing time sheets for submission to Payroll the next morning, Friday. Walinda was not in a good mood, having been kept overtime in her other job at Frequent Leisure Suit today, but Candy Mandible was the kind of woman who tended to ignore moods not caused directly by her; and since Walinda Peahen was the kind of woman whose bad moods tended to be made worse by people around her behaving as if she were in a bad mood, she and Candy actually got on fairly well, and it was Candy who had originally gotten Lenore her job, this fact now being the only really sore point in Candy-Walinda relations.

"Be needin' to hire somebody else now that the girl finally got promoted by her squeeze," Walinda had said.

"Only a temporary person, though," Candy said. "Because she's only going to be helping Mr. Vigorous temporarily, while he's incredibly busy with the Stonecipheco account."

"Huh," said Walinda. She turned eyes thick with shadow on Candy. "Girl what you mean Stonecipheco? Vigorous told me it was a big new Norslan account they got."

"Andy Lang told me that's what Mr. Vigorous is supposed to tell people," Candy said, turning slightly to avoid blowing smoke in Walinda's face. "But it's really not. It's really Stonecipheco baby food."

"And that c.r.a.p be nasty?" nasty?" said Walinda. "On sale once, and I give it to my child, and he like to die. Lenore be makin' some foul-a.s.s food, for all her money." said Walinda. "On sale once, and I give it to my child, and he like to die. Lenore be makin' some foul-a.s.s food, for all her money."

"Lenore doesn't make the food, Walinda, you know that." Candy sighed. "And you know she doesn't get any money from it. And just please remember to only hire somebody temporary, is all."

Walinda didn't say anything, and Candy launched into the Lang story.

"It was a scream," she said. "I died. I laughed so hard that I died."

Walinda worked the adding machine and didn't say anything.

"I know you couldn't come," Candy continued, "but you know today Mr. Bombardini was having a meeting for everybody in both firms in the Building? You got the memo about that, right?"

"I got it. And I heard y'all just had to hear the fat man talk about his Building."

"Well it was just really bizarre, is all I can say. He was on this platform, with these like eight incredible hunks in loincloths holding him up in the air, and he was going on and on about how we all needed to begin to reconcile ourselves to having less s.p.a.ce in the Building, because there was going to be a steadily decreasing amount of s.p.a.ce for us, and then he stopped even mentioning the Building at all and. started talking about there like being less s.p.a.ce for us in general, like the world was getting small or something, and he had this weird fiendish light in his eyes, and plus it looked like he'd gained about a thousand pounds or so, and he kept looking at Lenore like he wanted to eat her, and kept dropping all these hints about how there could be some s.p.a.ce for some of us if we came around and played our cards right. Bombardini's totally infatuated with Lenore, ever since his wife left him for a yogurt salesman. He sends her flowers almost every day."

"Maybe she can get us a bigger cubicle in here, then," Walinda said thoughtfully, adding up hours.

"But anyway the point is that it was supposed to be an incredibly serious meeting, and it was really a tense scene, and deadly quiet, 'cause everybody's scared to death of Mr. Bombardini," Candy said, blowing a ring and putting a red-nailed finger through it. "So it was deadly quiet, and Bombardini was going on and on, and this Andy Lang guy was sitting right in front of Lenore and me, and he all of a sudden starts turning around in his chair, really slowly, and looks all intensely at us, like he's got something really important to say, and we lean forward, and he leans back to us, and he whispers to us, real loud, 'I have an erection.' " Candy began to laugh, with big breaths, making Walinda laugh too. "And I died, and started laughing, and it was even worse because it was such a deadly quiet and serious situation, and Lenore started laughing too, and we couldn't stop. And then but Lang turned back around innocent as can be and started listening to Mr. Bombardini again, and there we were dying, laughing like h.e.l.l. It was ... awful." Candy was laughing so hard that smoking became impossible. She dropped her cigarette in an old can of Tab, where it hissed and fizzed and died.

Walinda chuckled. "Ooh child. What'd Lenore's little man think of that, I wonder. Was he sittin' in her lap at the time?"

"Mr. Vigorous wasn't there," said Candy. "He apparently had some kind of appointment. I think you two were the only ones not there, of the day people."

Walinda wet her finger and turned a time sheet. Candy started to get her things together in preparation for Vem's arrival. Into her purse went her pack of Djarum; on went her shoes ...

"Excuse me," said a voice in front of the switchboard counter. "I'm looking for Mr. Lang."

Walinda looked up briefly and narrowed her eyes and went back to her adding machine. Candy straightened up from putting on her shoes and looked into the eyes of Mindy Metalman Lang.

"I'm Mrs. Lang," the woman said coolly. "I'm here looking for Mr. Lang. My husband. I was told by someone on the phone that he works here, even though the number they said was his when they put me through to him didn't answer after thirty rings."

Candy didn't answer right away. She was busy staring at what she, Candice Eunice Mandible, would very probably be, had she not had the ever so slightest bit of an overbite, and had she had perhaps ten more judiciously distributed pounds, and eyes more like wings, and had she been rich per se. She saw perfection; she smelled White Shoulders; she a.s.sumed the fur jacket was sable. This was an enormously beautiful woman, here, and Candy stared, and also unconsciously began smoothing the tight old violet cotton dress she had on.

Mindy was staring back, but not really at Candy so much as at Candy's dress. Her eyes faded a bit, as if she were trying to latch onto an elusive memory. Her eyes were different from Candy's, too. Very. Where Candy's were light brown and almost perfectly round, giving her face almost too much symmetry, making it an almost triangular face when it would have been nicer and more comforting as a rounder, more vague-at-the-edges face, Mindy's eyes were so dark they were almost black, and they seemed to spread out far more across the upper ridges of her cheeks, and back at the sides, like the wings of a dark sort of fluttery bird: large, delicate, full of a kind of motion even when still. Really nice eyes. A face very much like Candy's, but vaguer at the edges, and so really better. Candy smoothed at her dress some more.

"Girl what you doin', employee addresses in the directory," Walinda said to Candy, and she pushed the directory across the white counter until it hit Candy's hand. "Wrote his address down at the back myself," Walinda said.

Candy didn't have to look at the directory. "Mr. Lang's temporarily staying in a building in East Corinth, which is a suburb south of here." She smiled at Mindy. "Actually the same building, or house is more like it, as mine, which is how come I know, although it's a rooming house, so still like a building; it's not like he's living in my house." She laughed breathily.

"I see," Mindy said with a bit of a smile, nodding. "Perhaps then you could just jot down the address for me."

Candy reached for a pad and pen and jotted.

"There was, too, the office number, which the operator tried before," said Mindy. "Perhaps you could try him again for me. What ... department is he in?" She looked around her at the marble lobby and the soft red chairs for lobby-dwellers and the tiny veins of the last bit of sunset moving together in the blackness of the walls.

"Translation," Candy told her, not looking up.

"Translation?"

"Baby food," Walinda Peahen said, flas.h.i.+ng hostile green-shadowed eyes at Mindy's fur jacket and then returning to tax forms.

"Baby food?"

"Nix," Candy murmured into Walinda's ear. She stood up and pushed the Tissaws' address across the counter to Mindy.

"And I'd ring his office for you, but I happen to know he's not there, Candy smiled. "He left the office after a Building-wide meeting, about three this afternoon. I know more or less where he'll be tonight, though."

"Do you." it "He's going to be in a bar called Gilligan's Isle with an old friend of his, watching religious television."

Mindy was putting Lang's address into a really nice etienne Aig ner purse. She snapped it closed and looked up. "Religious television ? Andy?"

"One of the ... The show features a bird who belongs to a friend of mine, and of Mr. Lang's," said Candy. "We're all going to try to watch the bird tonight."

"A bird? Andy's going to watch a bird on religious television?"

"Gilligan's Isle is just right across Erieview Plaza from here," Candy said, pointing in the correct direction out through the revolving door of the lobby. "It's pretty easy to find. Has big colored statues in it."

Mindy was staring at the violet dress again. She looked up into Candy's round eyes. "Have we met before?" she said.

"No we haven't, I don't think." Candy shook her head and then c.o.c.ked it. "Why?"

"I'm not sure. I don't mean to be impolite, but I know I've seen that dress before."

"This dress?" Candy looked down at herself. "This is an incredibly ancient dress. It used to belong to a friend of mine, the person who also owns the bird I just mentioned. Do you know Lenore Beadsman?"

The console began to beep. "Wait a minute," Candy was saying to Mindy. "You mentioned Lenore on the phone when I talked to you." Mindy just looked at her. Walinda was making no move toward the console. Candy bent to the call. A rapid, in-house flash. "Operator," she said.

Mindy had suddenly bent over the top of the cubicle counter and was looking down at the equipment. "That's a Centrex," she said to Walinda. "Is that a Centrex?"

Walinda looked up and narrowed her eyes again. "Yeah, it is."

"In school, in Ma.s.sachusetts, my roommate worked as a student operator, for the college, and sometimes I'd read at the switchboard at night to keep her company. They had a Centrex."

"Twenty-eight?"

"I really have no idea."

"Mmmm."

Candy released and straightened up. "Well that was just Mr. Lang's supervisor, on the phone, Mrs. Lang. He's coming down for his newspaper, the supervisor." Candy gestured over at a well-perused issue of that day's Plain Dealer Plain Dealer that lay on top of the cubicle typewriter's gray plastic dustcover. "If you'll wait here a second, he could probably answer your questions a lot better than I could." that lay on top of the cubicle typewriter's gray plastic dustcover. "If you'll wait here a second, he could probably answer your questions a lot better than I could."

Mindy continued to look down at the console. Then she smiled up at Candy. "I was freshman roommates at Holyoke with Lenore Beadsman's sister," she said in a low voice.

Candy's jaw dropped. "G.o.d, is this Clarice's dress?" she said. "Lenore sure didn't tell me. And well I had no idea you knew Lenore's family." family." Through the doors came Vem Raring, at 6:05. "Listen, here's my relief, so to speak," Candy said. "Let's just go have a seat out in the lobby, here, and we can-" Through the doors came Vem Raring, at 6:05. "Listen, here's my relief, so to speak," Candy said. "Let's just go have a seat out in the lobby, here, and we can-"

"But Lenore and I have met too," said Mindy, as if she had decided something, smiling for Candy a truly beautiful smile.

"No kidding. kidding. Well I had no idea Lenore knew Andy's wife." Candy clapped her hands once and smiled back into the wings of Mindy Metalman's eyes. "Listen," Candy said. "I really just love your jacket. Can I maybe touch it?" Well I had no idea Lenore knew Andy's wife." Candy clapped her hands once and smiled back into the wings of Mindy Metalman's eyes. "Listen," Candy said. "I really just love your jacket. Can I maybe touch it?"

"I suppose so."

Candy was stroking Mindy's sleeve when she looked past Mindy at the elevators in the northeast comer and saw Rick Vigorous and Lenore emerge.

"Well here's Lenore and Mr. Vigorous both, now," she said. Vem Raring entered the cubicle and gave Walinda Peahen a big kiss on the cheek, and she pretended to swat him, both of them laughing.

Mindy turned way around, so that her sleeve was all of a sudden out of Candy's reach. Candy's hand hit the counter. Mindy looked into the orange and black.

"Mr. Vigorous?"

17.

1990.

10 September "You hurt me, Andy," says Lenore. "You hurt me inside. ""Well sugar that's love," says W.D.L.

So look, very closely. If one looks, very closely, into the bowl of the toilet, one sees the water inside is in fact not still, but pulses in its thick porcelain cup; rises and falls, ever so slightly, influenced by the ponderous suck and slap of subterranean tides unimagined by any but the devoutest morning pilgrim.

" 'Down the Laughing Brook came Billy Mink. He was feeling very good that morning, was Billy Mink, pleased with the world in general and with himself in particular.' "

"Roughage," said Concamadine Beadsman.

" 'When he reached the Smiling Pool he swam out to the Big Rock. Little Joe Otter was already there, and not far away, lazily floating, with his head and back out of the water, was Jerry Muskrat.

" ' "h.e.l.lo, Billy Mink!" cried Little Joe Otter.

" ' "h.e.l.lo yourself," replied Billy Mink with a grin.' "

"And this one is called what again?" asked Mr. Bloemker from across Concamadine's bed, doing something to his eye with a finger under his gla.s.ses.

"It's called 'Billy Mink Goes Dinnerless,' " Lenore said without looking up from the book. "Can we please just do it, here? I sense Concamadine really liking this one."

"By all means."

"Roughage."

" ' "Where are you going?" asked Little Joe Otter.

" ' "Nowhere in particular," replied Billy Mink.

" ' "Let's go fis.h.i.+ng down to the Big River," said Little Joe Otter.

" ' "Let's!" cried Billy Mink, diving from the highest point on the Big Rock.' "

"Her face is healing well in the moisture, don't you think?" said Mr. Bloemker.

Concamadine actually didn't look all that good. There were sores, and there were bandages. A translucent white bandage stretched tight from just above Concamadine's left eye up into her forehead; one of her tiny pale eyebrows was lost in the bandage that seemed to be growing into the skin.

"I think it was a splendid idea, having the humidifier brought in," Mr. Bloemker said, looking at his thumb. "We're just beginning to lose the heat and moisture that was in such generous attendance all season, as I'm sure you're aware. Concamadine had such trouble last year, and if I recall correctly it was at just this time. As do so many of the J-ward residents. In any event, a splendid idea, Ms. Beadsman."

"Roughage."

" 'So off they started across the Green Meadows towards the Big River. Halfway there, they met Reddy Fox.' "