Dreams of a Robot Dancing Bee (17 page)

“I think that's wonderful, Franklin. But you will wait until you graduate?”

“Oh yes, Mother, never fear. I'm not about to do anything rash. Mr. Trowbridge said he can get me into Yale.”

And that's all that was said on the subject. Later that day, driving home, Mrs. Denton realized that she hadn't even heard the young girl's name, and she thought that was a bit odd, just that
Franklin was thinking about “hooking-up” with her. But what did she know? It really was a man's world, say what you like. And Franklin, she guessed, was almost a man, insisting on his Boodles Gin already. Well, she had raised him and what did she know? She supposed Mr. Denton knew what he was doing, and he seemed pleased with this Trowbridge connection. He could put to rest any fears he might have harbored about family slippage. There would almost certainly be a little Franklin Quigly Denton IV, and this one with a line into the Trowbridge clan. She wished she knew the girl's name, though.

W
hen Mr. Parker returned from lunch, his secretary, Miss Fleming, informed him that there was a man waiting to see him; she winked several times as she conveyed this information; her winks and grimaces were obviously meant to warn Mr. Parker of some aberration in the visitor, or else her face had contracted a degenerative disease overnight, Mr. Parker thought to himself. He glanced around the reception room and quickly located the problem.

“You can have ten minutes of my time,” he said to the red-bearded man clutching a tartan cap of some kind.

Taking up their positions in his office, Mr. Parker rested his elbows on his enormous and spotless desk and leaned forward, betraying no emotion. The visitor was busying himself unhitching his backpack and finding a place for it on the floor. He had various colored scarves tied loosely around his neck and in general looked like some tacky Scottish nomad fanatic. Before he had even introduced himself, Mr. Parker felt like he had heard it all before. The man was preoccupied with “settling-in” and oblivious to the ire he had already inspired.

“What is it you would like?” Mr. Parker blurted.

The man stopped fidgeting at last and looked Parker in the eye. “I was wondering if you could help me.”

“In what way?”

“Well, let me first tell you something about myself. My name is Brian Delaney and I think I have some ideas, some special gifts, that would help your company.”

“In other words, you're looking for a job?”

“Yes, but first let me tell you about myself. I've started seven of my own companies, all of which are still operating today. When my father died several years ago, I divested a considerable fortune he had built on South African gold mines and with that money I started grass roots businesses in depressed communities. And after I did that, I went to live in the woods for a year, like Saint Francis. I meditate, you know. I spent a year in Thailand before that and studied with a Yogi there.”

Mr. Parker wanted to strangle this maniac. He also considered firing Miss Fleming for allowing this nut-case to wait for him.

“Would you get to the point,” Parker said, barely stifling his urge to scream at the man.

The visitor looked puzzled; he had barely begun his life story.

“Well, yes, where was I? Well, I lived in the woods for a year and felt very close to the birds and squirrels. This was probably due to my deep reading in the early Christian mystics . . .”

“I have very little time for this,” Mr. Parker injected rudely. “What is it you want from me?”

The visitor shifted his weight back and forth in the chair and ran his fingers through his carrot-colored beard. “But I haven't told you why I am uniquely qualified to be the resident minister of your company.”

“Resident minister?” Parker repeated. “We do not have a resident minister . . .”

“That's exactly my point. And I think I . . .”

“You want a piece of the pie, is that it?”

“Yes, I would like a piece of the pie,” the visitor confessed, somewhat embarrassed to hear himself use such a phrase.

Parker was steaming now. “You sit there in the forest talking to the squirrels for a year, you lie around in Tibet worshipping some bug-infested swami, and now you want to heal the souls of top corporate executives, have I got this right, Mr. . . . Mr. . . . Mr. . . .?”

“Delaney. Well, essentially . . .”

“Well, there is no pie for you, Mr. Delaney. None, do you understand? Now please be so kind as to leave my office. I really do not have time for this.”

The visitor began to gather all his baggage and loop it over his arms. He comes begging for a job dressed as if he were about to embark on a long safari, Parker thought. But finally he was gone.

Mr. Parker tried to calm himself. He walked over to the window and stared at the traffic below. Everyone rushing, rushing, rushing to get somewhere. He was tired. He had a right to be tired. He had been rushing all morning. In three more hours he would rush home. He would eat too quickly. Something almost wistful about these thoughts.

Beside his desk a globe of the world sat inert in its oak stand, a gift from his wife, how many years ago? He rarely paid it any attention. He had never twirled it as, he now supposed, she intended. Perhaps now would be a good time.

H
ow can you think of nothing but yourself at a time like this? The Prime Minister is coming on Tuesday. The Deputy Assistant is being held at gunpoint by terrorists demanding the release of a dozen other terrorists, and you want to know if you can go skiing. My God, how have I raised you?”

“I'm sorry father. I know you have a lot on your mind, but I can't do anything about Richard Thayer. Unless you want to exchange me for Mr. Thayer . . .”

“Don't get smart with me, young man. I haven't got time for this. I'm supposed to be at the embassy in twenty minutes and give a statement to the press. Do you have any idea how many reporters will be there from how many countries? And you want to know if you can go skiing. You realize, don't you, that you will have to have security with you? Taxpayers' money. Do you know what the press will have to say about
that
?”

“Father, you don't have to tell anyone. I'm certainly not going to tell anyone. The only people who have to know are Mimi, Rashid and Giselle. I'll use the false I.D. you gave me for my birthday.”

“And what about Mimi's mother, you don't think she'll tell all
three-hundred women at her club? You're pretty naive for a son of mine. Really, Thomas. I don't know where you've been these past eighteen years, you don't seem to have learned anything. Whether you like it or not, the whole world is watching your every step.”

“I'm sure you exaggerate, father. It's true that you are an important man with grave responsibilities, but I on the other hand am merely an average eighteen year old trying to lead a normal life with my girlfriend and a few other friends. I seriously doubt if there is a terrorist in the world who knows my name.”

Mr. Crushank's mind was elsewhere by now, and he was busy surveying the contents of his briefcase.

“You tell your mother exactly where you will be at every moment, do you understand? I want it written down, room number, telephone, what name you are registered under. Do you understand? I want to be able to reach you at all times. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, I understand.”

“All right, I'm late. Is the driver here? And don't speak loosely with strangers. Do you understand me?”

“I understand. Good luck with the Prime Minister. I hope that goes well.”

Mr. Crushank took one last look around the room as though some essential evidence might have escaped his concentration, and then, to his son's relief, he was gone.

It was never a good time to talk with his father about his own ideas or problems. Everything that was his own withered in the shade of his father's world-scale responsibilities. And Thomas
knew that his father's pre-occupation with his job was necessary. The world might very well fall apart were it not for a few thousand men like his father, tinkering with codes and messages eighteen hours a day, three-hundred and sixty-five days a year. But then, why do these men have wives and children. Shouldn't they be eunuchs and live in sterilized cells? Why this pretense of pomp and correctness and dinner parties and private schools for children they barely know? When Thomas revealed to his father that he had begun to write poetry, all his father had to say was, “What could you possibly have to say?” And then he paused and thought about it for a moment and added, “When I retire I will write a book. That will be something, I tell you.” Thomas was hurt by his father's failure to take him seriously or to allow him one thing that was his own. And Mr. Crushank never thought about it again.

And that was the very first evening that Thomas conceived the idea of running away, of disappearing. He loved his mother, but she was hopelessly tied to this life. She was the perfect mechanical hostess and, increasingly, as the years wore on, she was becoming mechanical in her dealings with her own son. When he was a child she could still let go and roll around with him in the courtyard and call him silly pet names. Now she mostly just repeated her husband's orders and treated Thomas as if he were a negative force on his father's career, a liability on his advancement for which Mr. Crushank had worked with a singlemindedness for more than twenty years.

But just as Thomas was about to accept the indictment of his father and mother, he met Mimi. She could touch that part in him that had never been touched since childhood. She was fresh and
alive and he wanted to spend every hour of every day with her. But of course his father disapproved because her father was a lowly speechwriter, and she knew little of the protocol that went with position. His mother did come to his aid, if a bit meekly. “She seems like a very nice girl,” was all she had to offer. She did tell a few white lies to cover for Thomas when he was with Mimi.

Thomas dreamed of sneaking back into the States with Mimi and living a quiet life of poverty, a simple life in some state like Vermont, though he barely knew what life was like in the States. He had read
Walden
in school, and this appealed to him, with one major difference: he would share it, everything, with Mimi. “Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts,” Thoreau had counseled. But what would his father do, how would his actions be interpreted by the C.I.A., the F.B.I., or, for that matter, the President of the United States himself? He felt twisted and hung on a rack. What would be the advantageous moment to inform his father that he wanted none of it, that he could not go on being a model son, that he was not even vaguely interested in going to college, much less Princeton. Mimi. He wanted Mimi. He wanted to carry water to a chicken, to watch the sun come up. He wanted to work with animals and to eventually have lots of children with Mimi, not just one or two, but five or ten.

As he sat there in his father's study entertaining these delicious thoughts, saying the words
Vermont
and
Mimi
to himself in alternate fashion, his mother was searching for him from room to room in the huge house. When she found him, she was breathless and shaking. “Oh, Thomas, come quick! Your father's been shot. He's at the hospital now. They're operating.”

O
ne of the children had suggested that the new dog be named Manson. On the first day home from the pound, where they had rescued it from death row, the dog's inclination toward random violence was displayed sufficiently for the name to stick. After dinner Mr. Nelson excused himself and went upstairs with the intention of visiting the lavatory. A terrible ruckus ensued, angry growling followed by cringing cries for help. The children and Mrs. Nelson were laughing so hard at the white terror in his face when he finally made it down the stairs that they neglected to notice that Mr. Nelson's shoes were badly spotted with blood and that his suit trousers were in shreds around his ankles.

“Will one of you kids please go up there and get that dog away from the bathroom door?”

“Daddy,” Cindy said, “he won't hurt you. He's just getting used to his new home.”

“Look at my cuffs, look at what he did to my trousers. What do you mean he won't bite me? He already has!”

“Oh my,” said Mrs. Nelson, “And he broke your skin. I hope he doesn't have rabies.” At this the children tittered. A cocker spaniel with such teeth.

“I think I should call the pound and find out if he has had recent rabies shots.”

“I just want to go to the lavatory. Will somebody please get that dog away from the door?”

“I'll get him,” Timmy volunteered.

“Be careful, Timmy,” his mother cautioned.

The Nelsons kept Manson, and grew to love him, although he never really changed. Mrs. Nelson walked him each evening, or rather she lurched and stumbled behind him, herself on a leash, and Manson with the strength of an elephant pulled her through the back streets of the suburban village snarling and growling at any living thing. Neighbors and passers-by soon learned to cross the street at least a half-a-block before passing this loathsome, hateful dog. Mrs. Nelson rarely had the opportunity to explain or apologize as it took all of her energy and concentration to simply avoid being smashed into a tree or a parked car. And yet, she loved him, incorrigible beast that he was.