Bear v. Shark (2 page)

On the Television, on a Television, a lady lawyer in a low-cut silk blouse is cross-examining a chocolate cake.

The lady lawyer, pacing like TV lawyers will, has great calves, a nice thin waist, full-bodied hair, no panty lines. All of the lady lawyer’s unwanted hair is offscreen somewhere, removed and hidden in bloody wastepaper baskets, unwanted. She looks fantastic, but a little crazy in the eyes, a little sharp in the nose and chin, a little too aggressive, a little too skeptical of modern dessert technology.

The chocolate cake — seated up at the witness stand in front of a microphone and next to a stern, fair-minded, balding, middle-aged white male TV commercial judge (the other two types of TV commercial judges being [1] a stern, fair-minded, middle-aged, gray-haired white woman and [2] a stern, fair-minded black woman, any age) — the cake, I say, looks every bit as hot as the lady lawyer, and innocent to boot. This chocolate cake appears utterly incapable of the smallest misdemeanor.

The cake is rich, luscious, moist, exotically frosted. From the courtroom scene cut to a close-up of the nude cake being sliced open, its moistness revealed in pornographic slow motion. This cake is begging to be frosted. She (this cake) is both vixen and virgin. She is perfect: women want to identify with her, create her and thus re-create themselves, mix her and bake her at 375°, fill the kitchen with her sweet perfume.

Men want to devour her.

Cut back to the courtroom scene.

The lady lawyer says, “If it is indeed true that you are from a mix, would you mind telling the jury just how you got to be so creamy?”

There’s a little boy in the Normans’ front yard. The front yards around here are paved and painted green. The grass doesn’t do so well.

Facedown in the Vibra-Dream Plus, Mr. Norman does not know: Was Grizzly Adams the name of the bearded guy or the bear?

The old Televisions had an off switch.

Man on a couch, beached and chatty.

He (Mr. Norman) says, “That’s probably not going to be enough for a first down.”

He says, “Plantigrade gait, liquidation sale, murder-suicide.”

An expert says, “We believe that it is generally most severe in the mornings.”

Four out of five experts say, “We recommend Babble Blocker, a prescription drug.”

Nobody says, “Isn’t the pharmaceutical company part of the same conglomerate as the Television networks?”

The Babble Blocker pamphlet, “Ten Myths about Babbling,” says:

Myth No. 3: People who babble are “nutbags.” (Fact: Logorrhea has nothing to do with sanity or intelligence. The institutionalization of babblers is generally no longer accepted as the best method of treatment. Most babblers can lead productive lives, and some even achieve greatness.)

Mr. Norman says, “Liquor? I hardly know her.”

Myth No. 5: I must be the only person in the world who babbles. (Fact: You are not alone. Over 10 million Americans have been diagnosed with logorrhea.)

The evil sexy lady lawyer badgers the cake. She’s a real bitch. She says, “You sit there all sweet and scrumptious, and you expect us to believe that you are
fat free
?”

Mr. Norman says not all antifungal ointments are the same.

Myth No. 8: Babble Blocker turns you into a “zombie” and also slowly erodes your kidneys. (Fact: Although BB tends to induce lethargy, glassy-eyed compliance, and kidney erosion in laboratory rats and monkeys, recent longitudinal studies suggest that humans do not suffer these same side effects to nearly the same extent. Side effects include: dry mouth, headaches, ennui, vomiting, ejaculatory failure, sweating, irritability, color blindness, and memory loss.)

Someone, maybe in the kitchen or the small Television room, says now take a look at the stain on the right.

Myth No. 10: There’s no cure for babbling.

The cross-examined cake, of course, is polite, demure, sheepish, nonconfrontational, sexy as all
get-out
. She (the chocolate cake) says, “Yes, ma’am.”

Yes, ma’am:
The phrase has caught on with the kids. Hipsters in Chicago, Wheeling (West Virginia), and Beijing go around imitating that cake:
Yes, ma’am. Yes, ma’am
. It means the same thing as, say, “cool” or “right on” or “you’re shittin’ me.” There is a Web site devoted to Lady v. Cake, fifteen thousand hits per day. There are Internet chat rooms, where people from all nations meet to discuss the finer points of law and food porn.

The cake is on a book-signing tour.

All this silence is getting to Mr. Norman.

His neck hurts, he feels restless. He lifts his face out of the warm lap of the Vibra-Dream Plus, despite her protestations, her seductive offers and money-back guarantees.

On TV a man in a tuxedo is sprinting through a sunny neighborhood with an ice cream cone.

Mr. Norman works in an office, but not today. He works on a team that designs fake electronic equipment for model apartments and town homes, but not today. Today is a vacation day.

Mr. Norman feels like running a ten-kilometer race. That is how far? Ten kilometers is roughly 10,000 meters, a meter is roughly a yard, a yard is roughly three feet, a mile is . . . What the hell is a country mile? What about a nautical mile? How would a crow fly under water?

League, stadium, fathom.

No, a marathon, or an
ultramarathon,
one of those 100-mile races through the desert. Mr. Norman saw that once on the Outrageous Accomplishments Network, these people running 100 miles, running from something or toward something, who knows, just running for days and drinking literally pints and pints of fluids. These gaunt fellows: what have they figured out?

The design team doesn’t do fake plants. That’s another office. They just do fake electronic equipment. For model apartments and town homes. Well, it started out for model apartments and town homes, but lately regular folks have been buying the fake equipment because it looks better than the real equipment and it is competitively priced.

Mr. Norman imagines himself in the white-hot sands, covered with the crusty white residue of his sweat, the vultures circling in the high white heat above. His eyes are fixed, his face is placid, serene. He has found something, he has reached some sort of enlightenment, out there in the desert at Mile Marker No. 68. He has passed through pain and he has found something sublime, the IT, the NOW, it’s like buying a Lexus or getting drunk, only better, more Eastern. It’s Extreme Zen. In this moment of transcendence, Mr. Norman’s shorts and singlet and shoes would be sporty, yet durable and functional. They would
breathe.
The logo would be recognized internationally.

The design team knows nothing about electronic equipment except the way it looks. Team members scour gadget catalogs like porno mags. They have to keep up with technology. They have to keep up with the way technology looks. Team members e-mail each other when they have new ideas about how to make a fake piece of equipment look more real than a real piece of equipment.

Oh, and then the choice that every Ultra Athlete faces at one time or another: Should I break my rhythm and my concentration for a short bathroom break or just piss on myself? Mr. Norman wonders if pissing on himself would impress his sponsors or just turn them off. You could really see it both ways. He supposes it could be edited out if they didn’t like it. Fake Televisions, fake VCRs, fake CD players, fake laptops. Mr. Norman wants to suck down a tube of Dr. Endurance Energy Goo and throw it in the sand.

Mr. Norman can’t remember the last time he ran, even a few steps.

He says, “Ninety days, same as cash.”

He says, “How many meters in an odometer?”

A TV Personality in the spare Television room says, “Did you know, Gloria, that the origin of the teddy bear comes more or less from Franklin Delanor Roosevelt?”

With great effort, Mr. Norman turns himself over on the couch. He lies on his back now, the pillow-lover picking up where she left off, the electric birds going at it in the imitation dogwoods. He folds his arms over his chest. He sees the cacti (asparagi, octopi, walri), he feels the brutal sun a million miles away. Ten million, whatever, it’s a star like other stars, gaseous, bigger than Jupiter, involved in photosynthesis. He thinks the hot urine might feel good streaming down his sinewy enlightened legs. Or maybe it would feel bad. Either way.

As he does every morning, he vomits sentences, phrases, jingles, until there are just words, then syllables, a long, dry, incomprehensible heave.

That little kid in the front yard walks tight figure eights with his head down. He stops occasionally, stares up at the Normans’ dark house.

She (Gloria) says, “Trent, my kids love their teddy sharks. They just love them.”

Mr. Norman becomes aware of his heartbeat. With his hands on his chest he can feel his own four-chambered heart pumping blood and riboflavin throughout his body.

Turns out it isn’t shaped like a heart.

Capillaries, aorta, ventricle, plate tectonics, Valentine’s Day.

Somewhere a gun says, “Flesh is weak, motherfucker.”

Somewhere a siren says, “You just wouldn’t believe what they can do with artificial limbs these days.”

Somewhere a diamond pendant says, “I love you.”

A bald guy on the Pundit Network says it’s not a matter of whether we distribute guns in the schools, but when.

Seven chapters and the guy hasn’t gotten off the couch yet.

In the palms of his folded hands, Mr. Norman feels the beating, the beating, the creepy beating of heart under bone.

Here at News 8 we know you live a busy, hectic life. We know that you juggle work and entertainment and family, and that your time is your most precious natural resource.

Most other stations give you the day’s news in six minutes, but in our crazy and hectic world, who has time for six minutes of news? That’s why we at News 8 give you our Four-Minute Guarantee. You give us four minutes and we’ll give you the planet. Weather, sports, news, and in-depth analysis of current events — all in four minutes or our name isn’t News 8.

And tonight after News 8 join us for our ongoing series,
Bear v. Shark: The Tale of the Tape.
Tonight we focus on the tongue factor. Do sharks have one? Tune in at 10:04.

Not even light yet, Mr. Norman roaming his house, socks on carpet, the soft rustle like artificial sweetener in decaf. Room to room to room, I mean, a bear, yes, of course, would and can, but a shark does and just might, also.

Rows of triangular teeth.

On TV, well, a man and a woman.
Together
. Vigorously and imaginatively. Is that her
leg
? And what’s
that
? Is she having the time of her life or is he hurting her? Are they in love, these people on the greasy counter of the fast food restaurant? Not the characters, who after all just met (“Can I take your order?” “OK, bend over”), but the
actors,
are the actors in love? Do they live together in a ranch-style house on the edge of town, a give-and-take marital situation, all about compromise and communication — communication is
key
— with knickknacks on shelves, photos in albums, this eerie deal where each finishes the other’s sentences? Is their lovemaking gentle, traditional? Face-to-face and with no animals or power tools?

In the hallway Mr. Norman pauses, sees the televised sex act reflected on the sad gray face of the family’s old broken TV. I’m afraid it’s gone, a guy in a jumpsuit had said six months ago. The use of condiments in that way, it requires love, does it not? Love and trust? Or hatred and vengeance? Or massive indifference? It requires something. Man, look out, here comes the manager and he’s not wearing pants.

Mr. Norman. Up the stairs to his sons’ room. A poster on the door, a collage of tooth and claw,
Do Not Enter
. Mr. Norman enters.

Curtis in his fake bearskin sleeping bag giggles and says, “Ruptured Achilles tendon.”

Matthew looks sullen even in sleep. Like he thinks sleeping is stupid.

Both children are breathing in and out. They’re alive. Something in the room is beeping not rhythmically. Electronic football beeps like that. Basketball, too. Electronic war also beeps like that, and so does laser archery. Sleeping kids: the blank, naked faces, unstimulated. Mr. Norman feels he should feel something. He
does
feel a little something, yes, there it is, and he wonders if it is a flood of love. There it is again. That would seem to be the logical thing, looking at one’s sleeping children, a flood of love, but what does a love flood feel like? Would he know one? Is it often mistaken for indigestion? Are there tests? Is there a
battery
of tests? Can we rule anything out? Does a love flood leave behind soggy scraps of sentiment, glistening on the banks of your heart?

Beep beep. Beep.

Mr. Norman goes to his bedroom, his handsome wife. Through the blinds are those the first rays of a glorious new day? Is that the Life Giver rising yonder in the East? No. It’s just a streetlight. The metallic frames of bedside photographs gleam, but the pictures remain black, inscrutable. Mr. Norman can’t remember the images inside those frames. Probably him, Mrs. Norman, the boys, squinting in sunshine, mouths turned up to resemble smiles.

Mr. Norman sits on the edge of the mattress, which is really a patented comfort system with microcoils that overlap and interlock like chapters in a novel.

Mrs. Norman turns in her sleep. She says, “What?”

Mr. Norman says, “I mean, just think about it.”

Mrs. Norman says, “You’re here.”

Mr. Norman says, “Be as honest as you can.”

Mrs. Norman says, “Right now. Let’s.”

Mr. Norman says, “Promise?”

Mrs. Norman used to be such a great water skier. It’s not like she could do fancy tricks, it’s just that she was so graceful and easy on the water. Smiling in the spray.

She says nothing but sort of moans from the back of her throat. Her head rests on the merest suggestion of a pillow, just the
idea
of a pillow, really, the UnPillow, lost in a standard-size case, wafer thin and neck friendly, eighty-five dollars plus s&h. Mrs. Norman is a disciple of Posture.

Mr. Norman looks up at the dark ceiling. He says, “I just need to know.”

Mrs. Norman says, “I’m right over here.”

Mr. Norman crawls under the comforter, but he’s on top of the lightweight, wrinkle-free sheet and his wife is underneath it and he can’t find her and they toss and wrestle and grunt, while the mattress subtly conforms and adjusts to their marriage. That’s not her breast, it’s her shoulder, and soon she’s mumbling and sleep-breathing again, her patented spinal corset creaking slightly with each breath.

Mr. Norman in the dark. It’s going to be a big day, a big weekend. If something is wrong, and I’m not saying something is wrong, but if something is wrong, it will be set right this weekend. Won’t it?

Mr. Norman says, “Honey.”

The bedside photographs like small broken Televisions.

Mr. Norman says, “Honey, am I
fun
?”