The Broom Of The System Part 54

"How do you know where Andy and Obstat are supposed to be?"

"I know what I know."

"Look, Rick, speaking of knowing, I think we maybe ought to just talk, right here, at some length."

"I implore you first to implore me for a story."

"What's with this story stuff?"

"Look, you might have forgotten I have to read the things now. They're work now. When I'm not working, I'd rather not do a work-related thing."

"You won't be called on to evaluate, merely to enjoy. To be caught up, engaged, and entertained. You should find this entertaining and engaging."

"Rick, the thing is we really need to talk. You're dealing with an upset person, here. We really need to have a long talk."

"I'm almost convinced the issues here can be treated and perhaps even resolved in the context of the story I have in mind."

"I really doubt it."

"Just keep your eyes peeled for things covertly elderly, and I'll take it from here."

"So you're deciding how the talk I want to have is going to be. That's just super."

"This story concerns a man who is presented as the most phenomenally successful theoretical dentist of the twentieth century."

"Theoretical dentist?"

"A scientist specializing in dental theory and in high-level abstract reasoning from empirical cases involving anything at all dental."

"Wonderful."

"Do you recall that sweetener that was positively omnipresent for a while? SupraSweet? The one that was abruptly yanked from the supermarket shelves when they discovered that it made certain women give birth to children with antennae, and fangs like vampires?"

"Do I ever."

"Here the theoretical dentist in question is presented as the man who cracked the antennae-and-fang problem, working as it were from the dental end and tracing matters back to the ubiquitous and malignant sweetener."

"Jesus, Rick, look at this crowd. How are we supposed to get through all this?"

"They're just waiting for the shuttle to the interior wastes. It'll be here soon-see the dust cloud? Perhaps we might just wait over here, under this statue, in this bit of shade ..."

"I remember this statue all right. I can't stand this statue. It's like Zusatz was trying to set himself up as G.o.d of the Desert or something. Sheesh."

"So the man in question is a theoretical dentist of consummate skill."

"Uh-huh."

"And in his spare time he is also a thoroughly competent and experienced Scoutmaster.

"For the Boy Scouts of America."

"Got it."

"Having been himself in his youth a phenomenal Scout: a Ten derfoot at nine, a First Cla.s.s Scout at eleven, a Star, Life, then finally an Eagle Scout at the amazing age of fourteen. Amazing for his era, anyhow. We may note for example that before my son, Vance, quit the Scouts he had been a Life Scout, the penultimate kind of Scout, at the age of twelve."

"How nice for him."

"But the point is that the theoretical dentist had been an exemplary Scout, and one so committed to Scouting in general that when he exited the Scouts because of his age he turned right around and became a Scoutmaster, while still training in theoretical dentistry. This was twenty years ago, fixing the dentist's present age somewhere in his forties."

"And one summer day the dentist is leading his troop of Scouts through some orientation and compa.s.s exercises in the dense and desolate interior regions of the coniferous forests that as you may or may not know cover vast portions of the state of Indiana. The whole story takes place in Indiana."

"And the dentist is effortlessly leading the Scouts through the forest, preparing them for woodsman merit-badge tests, and now in the densest and most desolate interior section the dentist and his Scouts come on an exhausted and haggard-looking man, dressed exclusively in flannel, with many days' growth of beard, and bright-red eyes, and white pine-pitch residue smeared around his mouth, who right away moans and faints in the arms of a Star Scout; and with him is an also haggard-looking but still achingly lovely woman, with her dress in a noticeable state of disarray, who immediately falls weeping on the neck of the theoretical dentist, crying that she has been saved. The woman tells the dentist that she and her unconscious companion, who is also it turns out her psychologist, had been lost in the desolate interior coniferous region for days, that the psychologist's magnetic clipboard-and-pen set had ruined their compa.s.s, and that they had been wandering for days, losing hope steadily, sustaining themselves only by eating the truly nauseating white remains of the pine pitch that crusted the bark of the trees all around. The woman tells the dentist all this as they stare deeply into each other's eyes, and as all around them the badge-happy Scouts are running here and there, positively radiating Competence In The Wild, raising and striking tents, building elaborate multi-tiered fires, detoxifying water with Halazone pellets, and administering to the still swooned psychologist every form of first aid you could possibly imagine. And now, if I may import a bit of context to save time, it is made clear that the woman and the psychologist have been out in the Indiana forests for ostensibly therapeutic reasons, that the woman suffers from a nearly debilitating neurosis under the rules of which she needs constant and prodigious s.e.xual attention and activity, in order to stave off feelings of raving paranoia and loss of three-dimensionality."

"Let's go. Here's the bus. The crowd's mostly getting on. Let's get out of this shadow."

"Did you get all that?"

"Dentist, Scoutmaster, merit badge, rescue, woman with dimension problems. Check. But I'd really rather be talking, Rick."

"Listen, Lenore, shall we get on the bus? Just on a lark? What do you say?"

"Are you kidding? Do you know what the crowds'll be like in the interior? It's Sat.u.r.day, you might have forgotten. Let's just stay along the good old lake, here."

"Why this fixation on the proximity of the lake?"

"At any rate, we are informed that the now still unconscious psychologist had in therapy sessions professed to see the achingly lovely woman's psychological troubles as stemming from the con- , tinual s.e.xual advances and erotic situations that necessarily confront the woman as she goes about her life in the collective societal environment of Indianapolis, where she lives, so that the problem is conceived of as, a, due to the constant erotic battering at the woman's s.e.xual ident.i.ty from without by other members of Indianapolis's society, which societal unit the psychologist clearly loathes, but and b, due to the woman's own failure to develop a sufficiently strong sense of self and interior worth to allow her to be discriminating about which of the constant stream of advances to respond to and allow to have any bearing whatsoever on said interior self and sense of worth."

"My nose is going to get sunburned. I can feel the sunburn starting."

"I suppose you want me to ask about the gymnastics. I read a rather cutting review in the Dealer."

"Look, if you want to talk, like as in have a conversation, good, because we really need to. Let's just hunker right down here in the sand and-"

"No, no, wait. Not yet. We're still dangling."

"Beg pardon?"

"To return, the context gives us to understand that the psychologist is actually at best warped and at worst simply evil, and that though he had lured the achingly lovely but troubled woman out deep into the coniferous interior Indiana wastes ostensibly to rap, one on one, about her sense of self and the strength thereof, ostensibly away from all the disturbing exterior erotic a.s.saults the woman suffers in collective society, actually the psychologist really just wanted to seduce the poor woman, which seduction is immediately attempted, in a positively oafish way, the minute the two have hiked out of earshot of civilization, and but which seduction, however oafish, the poor insecure ambiguously dimensional woman is in no shape to resist, and thus the better part of two days were spent by the psychologist and the woman rutting like crazed weasels on the bed of soft pine needles that covers the coniferous wastes, and actually it was in the throes of one such rutting-session that the psychologist's magnetic clipboard came into contact with and potentially disastrously damaged the woman's compa.s.s, which was the hikers' only means of orientation."

"The disaster being only potential, of course, because of the timely intervention, after a tense, pine-pitch-eating week or so, of the theoretical dentist and his troop of Scouts, which intervention and rescue prompts a gush of narrative and explanation and context from the woman, who clearly flips for the dentist at first sight, even though he has a slight hair-loss problem, but anyway the gus.h.i.+ng and flipping, not to mention the initial aching loveliness, prompts a reciprocal rush of emotion in the dentist, who is a widower; and so in a dubious but not entirely inappropriate pa.s.sage we are informed that a certain nascent love-plant sends up a fragile and vulnerable green shoot or two through the desolate coniferous soil between the woman and the dentist, while, all about them and the love-shoot, Scouts mill, and accomplish difficult merit-badge-related tasks, and chart elaborate retum-courses that involve steering by the lights of esoteric nebulae, and propose to drag the very worse-for-wear psychologist back to civilization on a gumey sled of branches and pitch and woven pine needles."

"Rick, is this supposed to be a sign?"

"Just wait for the climax."

"No, Rick, here. See? Footprints, but around every print four holes, like from an old person's walker sinking in the sand. Is this supposed to be somebody walking, with a walker?"

"I think not. I think this person here was simply steering a course through a field of sun umbrellas. This place is after all positively littered with sun umbrellas. These holes don't work for me as walker tracks. Besides, we're duneless, here, you might have noticed."

"I guess you're right...."

"Anyway, to make something long attractively shorter, the theoretical dentist and the achingly lovely woman get married. They fall madly, uncontrollably in love, and decide to unite forever, and the woman tells the dentist about her whole neurosis-set, and the dentist is incredibly compa.s.sionate, and says he doesn't care, and he goes and has a long talk with the eventually physically recovered psychologist, and forgives him for taking advantage of a completely helpless patient, and purely out of compa.s.sion and goodness asks him to be the best man at the impending wedding, the wedding is impending, and the psychologist is understandably relieved at the dentist's discretion, but he's also still wildly infatuated with the achingly lovely woman, and so even during the wedding-which is attended by, among others, the dentist's brother, the woman's whole huge Indianapolis clan, and by everyone who's anyone in the field of theoretical dentistry-the psychologist is covertly smirking and chuckling and checking out the woman's body under her wedding dress."

"I'm tired."

"Which checking out is at this point futile, though, because although the woman still has the pathological need for s.e.xual attention and activity in order to stave off violent neurotic upheavals, said need is let's just say being more than adequately fulfilled by the theoretical dentist, in whom the lovely woman has reawakened a surge of pa.s.sion and an urge for intimacy the dentist has not felt since his youth, when he was fresh out of the Scouts. And here a long section is devoted to graphic descriptions of the implications of all these reawakened surges and fulfilled needs, some of the most vivid of which involve certain dental apparati being put to uses which-although emotionally innocent, and so of course ultimately OK-are far in excess of the average dentist's wildest fantasies. If you get my drift."

"Maybe the drift should be sped up. I really want to talk to you."

"I sense that, Lenore, believe me. Let's do it within the context provided."

"So at least get on with it, then."

"And so the theoretical dentist and the achingly lovely woman are married, and truly staggering levels of intimacy are being attained, and neither partner rejects anything the other wants to do as undesirable or sick, and the woman is unbelievably happy, because she is wildly in love with this admittedly older but still very impressive theoretical dentist, and because her pathological needs are being satisfied within an emotionally and socially acceptable framework. And the theoretical dentist is unbelievably happy, too, because of his fierce and complete love for the achingly lovely woman, and because satisfying her prodigious needs is not exactly torture for him, either. So things are simply wonderful."

"Until, that is, the theoretical dentist is the victim of a hideous auto accident, in which he was not at fault, and is catastrophically injured, being as a result of the accident now deaf, dumb, blind, and nearly completely paralyzed and insensate, again through absolutely no fault of his own."

"Another one of these real happy stories, I see."

"And now the theoretical dentist lies in the hospital bed that will be his home for the rest of his life, and the lovely woman is of course frantic with grief and love for her husband, and the dentist is lying there, in complete blackness, numb blackness, paralyzed, almost wholly insensate. But not, and now I repeat not, entirely incommunicado."

"You can tell my socks are going to be all black and nasty from this rotten sand, Rick. This is that cheap kind of sand. s.h.i.+t on fire."

"Yes, not incommunicado, as I'm sure you see would be a very significant and precious thing for someone otherwise plunged completely into numb silent blackness. Not incommunicado because exactly one area of the dentist's devastated body actually retains some feeling and power of movement, namely the central portion of his upper lip. And also because the dentist, having been as we know a consummate Scout, knew and knows Morse code, inside and out."

"Morse code? Lips?"

"Communications to the dentist are effected simply by tapping the relevant message out in Morse code on the dentist's upper lip. Messages from from the dentist are possible provided that one is willing patiently to tap each letter of the Morse code alphabet onto the lip and wait for a signal from the dentist-a heart-tweakingly feeble and tiny movement of the upper lip-when the right letter has been reached. Needless to say, communications from the shattered dentist are incredibly slow and difficult to receive." the dentist are possible provided that one is willing patiently to tap each letter of the Morse code alphabet onto the lip and wait for a signal from the dentist-a heart-tweakingly feeble and tiny movement of the upper lip-when the right letter has been reached. Needless to say, communications from the shattered dentist are incredibly slow and difficult to receive."

"But see that communications to the dentist are comparatively easy. And now the Midwestern theoretical dentistry community, out of sheer respect for the broken and insensate dentist, and a desire to get his input, however understandably slight, on certain vexing high-level dental problems, seeks to engage someone in the Indianapolis area with a working knowledge of Morse code, to tap some of the current and pertinent developments in the dentist's professional world onto his lip. Meanwhile the achingly lovely woman has undergone an intensive course in Morse code, so that she can communicate on a personal level with the broken dentist, and she visits him every day, relating items of interest, comforting the dentist in his numb black silence, tapping onto his upper lip how very much she loves him, et cetera, and also reading fiction to him, via Morse code, because the dentist has been a fanatical fiction reader, when sighted and whole. Specifically she begins tapping onto the theoretical dentist's lip Frank Norris's stunning novel McTeague, which the dentist had been reading just before his hideous mishap, and which she had picked up and seen on the very first page concerned the adventures of a dentist, and which indeed, you can tell from her husband's lip movements, he enjoys having Morse-coded onto him. "

"But and meanwhile the psychologist, having seen the news of the hideous auto accident, and having begun to scan the journals of theoretical dentistry for further news of the brilliant dentist's physical and professional condition, sees in said journals the appeal for an Indianapolis Morse code tapper with some dental savvy, and he immediately comes forward to volunteer his services, although in reality we're informed that his sole exposure to Morse code had been when he sent away for a Lone Ranger decoder ring as a boy, which ring turned out to be simply a Morse code key, which the boy was to use to decode disappointingly dull ads for Ralston that were transmitted in a supposedly mysterious code at the end of every episode of 'The Lone Ranger,' in Indianapolis."

"Lone Ranger rings? Ralston?"

"He also pa.s.ses himself off as having a keen amateur interest in the whole theoretical dentistry scene, et cetera. Of course the psychologist's true motive is to insinuate himself back into the arms and lap of the achingly lovely, but also as he and we can antic.i.p.ate given the situation and context increasingly troubled, woman. So the psychologist appears in the dentist's hospital room with armloads of cutting-edge-theoretical-dentistry literature, and he and the woman reestablish an acquaintance, because the woman is almost always in the room tapping McTeague McTeague onto the dentist's lip when the psychologist arrives." onto the dentist's lip when the psychologist arrives."

"Here's the curve of the lake. We're getting near the end of the trail."

"And the psychologist begins ostensibly tapping important cutting-edge dental theory onto the dentist's lip, while the woman stands there at the door, her eyes s.h.i.+ning with grat.i.tude at the psychologist. But in reality the psychologist is simply tapping random and meaningless taps onto the lip, he doesn't give a d.a.m.n what he's tapping, and the paralyzed, deaf-dumb-and-blind dentist gets enormously confused, there in the numb black, and he begins trying to move his upper lip, to communicate his confusion to his wife, to ask what the problem is, what's this gobbledygook being tapped onto his lip, but the psychologist is meanwhile engaging the woman in clever conversation, and mild flirtation, and the woman has been without the erotic attention and activity she involuntarily craves so desperately for an ominously long time, now, and so she's distracted, and beginning to be tom, but at any rate she's distracted, and since the relevant signal-movement of the theoretical dentist's lip is such a truly pathetically tiny movement, she doesn't ever see it, and so the wildly disoriented and frightened paralyzed dentist continues to have gibberish tapped onto his lip for hours each day, until one day the psychologist taps and repeats one particular Morse code message that he went to the trouble especially to learn, the message being to the effect that he was going to ball the paralyzed dentist's achingly lovely wife until she bled, that he was going to take her away from the dentist and leave the dentist all alone in his numb lonely blackness, and that there was nothing the pathetic, paralyzed, helpless dentist could do about it; he was as inefficacious as he was inadequate."

"Jesus, Rick, what is this?"

"I promise we'll be able to relate to it. Let's just bear with. On receipt of this Morse code message, the dentist in his hospital bed is flung into a state of such depression and despair that he stops moving his lip, however pathetically tinily, to signal his wife, even when she taps 'I love you' onto the lip. And the lovely wife perceives this sudden absence of lip movement as a sign of further physical deterioration in the dentist, and so she too is thrown into despair, which despair further aggravates her emotional condition vis a vis the s.e.x-and-dimensionality neurosis, and she begins to offer less and less resistance to the malevolent blond psychologist's frequent and oafish s.e.xual advances, many of them made right there in the dentist's hospital room, while the dentist lies right there, helpless and insensate."

"Blond? A blond psychologist?"

"Affirmative."

"Why is this story beginning to give me the creeps?"

"It means you're beginning really to relate. You're being intuitive about it."

"What does being intuitive have to do with it?"

"Here's the end of the trail. Shall we strike off into the interior? I sense that whatever it is we're looking for is best looked for in the interior. In the heart of the Desert, Lenore. What do you say?"

"Let's just go back the way we came. My nose hurts. This is clearly a waste of time. At least this way I get to look at the lake."

"Christ, the lake, again. The lake is just a bunch of people fis.h.i.+ng for black fish. Who cares about the lake?"

"Rick, why are you sweating like this? It's hot, but it's not that hot. Are you OK?"

"Rick, are you all right I said."

"Maybe just the effects of trying to relate a difficult and emotionally intricate story in the face of your complete insensitivity you b.i.t.c.h!"

"What?"

"I'm sorry."

"What did you say to me?"

"Please, forget I said anything. Let's just walk back along the lake."

"We really need to talk, buster, and I mean now."

"Just trust me."

"What the h.e.l.l are we even doing out here? Andy was right."