In Persuasion Nation (5 page)

I'm
going today, Carolyn said. As soon as possible.

And
Mr. Dove looked at me and said, Jon, Randy, whoever, are you prepared
to go today?

And I
said no. Because what is her rush, I was feeling, why is she looking
so frantic with furrowed anxious brow like that Claymation chicken at
LI 98473, who says the sky is falling the sky is falling and turns
out it is only a Dodge Ramcharger, which crushes her from on high and
one arm of hers or wing sticks out with a sign that says March
Madness Daze?

And
Slippen said, Guys, guys, I find this a great pity. You are terrific
together. A real love match.

Carolyn
was crying now and said, I am so sorry, but if I wait I might change
my mind, which I know in my heart would be wrong.

And
she thrust her Exit Paperwork across at Mr. Slippen.

Then
Dove and Andrews and Delacourt began moving with great speed, as if
working directly from some sort of corporate manual, which actually
they were, Mr. Dove had some photocopied sheets, and, reading from
the sheets, he asked was there anyone with whom she wished to have a
fond last private conversation, and she said, Well, duh, and we were
both left briefly alone.

She
took a deep breath while looking at me all tender and said, Oh
Gadzooks. Which that broke my heart, Gadzooks being what we sometimes
said at nice privacy moments in our Privacy Tarp when overwhelmed by
our good luck in terms of our respective bodies looking so hot and
appropriate, Gadzooks being from LI 38492 for Zookers Gum, where the
guy blows a bubble so Zookified that it ingests a whole city and the
city goes floating up to Mars.

At
this point her tears were streaming down and mine also, because up
until then I thought we had been so happy.

Jon,
please, she said.

I just
can't, I said.

And
that was true.

So we
sat there quiet with her hands against my hands like Colonel Sanders
and wife at LI 87345, where he is in jail for refusing to give up the
recipe for KFC Haitian MiniBreasts, and then Carolyn said, I didn't
mean that thing about the rabbit, and I scrinkled up my nose
rabbitlike to make her laugh.

But
apparently in the corporate manual there is a time limit on fond last
private conversations, because in came Kyle and Blake from Security,
and Carolyn kissed me hard, like trying to memorize my mouth, and
whispered, Someday come find us.

Then
they took her away, or she took them away rather, because she was so
far in front they had to like run to keep up as she clomped loudly
away in her Kenneth Cole boots, which by the way they did not let her
keep those, because that night, selecting my pajamas, I found them
back in the Group Closet.

Night
after night after that I would lay or lie alone in our Privacy Tarp,
which now held only her nail clippers and her former stuffed dog
Lefty, and during the days Slippen let me spend many unbillable hours
in the much coveted window seat, just scanning some images or
multiscanning some images, and around me would be the other facility
Boys and Girls, all Assessing, all smiling, because we were still on
the twice-a-day Aurabon
^®
, and thinking of Carolyn in
those blue scrubs, alone in the Lerner Center, I would apply for some
additional Aurabon
^®
via filling out a Work-Affecting
Mood-Problem Notification, which Slippen would always approve,
because he felt so bad for me.

And
the Aurabon
^®
would make things better, as Aurabon
^®
always makes things better, although soon what I found was, when you
are hooking in like eight or nine times a day, you are always so
happy, and yet it is a kind of happy like chewing on tinfoil, and
once you are living for that sort of happy, you soon cannot be happy
enough, even when you are very very happy and are even near tears due
to the beauty of the round metal hooks used to hang your facility
curtains, you feel this intense wish to be even happier, so you tear
yourself away from the beautiful curtain hooks, and with shaking
happy hands fill out another Work-Affecting Mood-Problem
Notification, and then, because nothing in your facility is beautiful
enough to look at with your new level of happiness, you sit in the
much coveted window seat and start lendelling in this crazy
uncontrolled way, calling up, say, the Nike one with the Hanging
Gardens of Babylon (LI 89736), and though it is beautiful, it is not
beautiful enough, so you scatter around some Delicate Secrets
lingerie models from LI 22314, and hang fat Dole oranges and bananas
in the trees (LI 76765), and add like a sky full of bright stars from
LI 74638 for Crest, and from the Smell Palate supplied by the
anti-allergen Capaviv
^®
you fill the air with jasmine
and myrrh, but still that is not beautiful enough, so you blink on
End and fill out another Work-Affecting Mood-Problem Notification,
until finally one day Mr. Dove comes over and says, Randy, Jon,
whatever you are calling yourself these days—a couple of items.
First, it seems to us that you are in some private space not helpful
to you, and so we are cutting back your Aurabon
^®
to
twice a day like the other folks, and please do not sit in that
window seat anymore, it is hereby forbidden to you, and plus we are
going to put you on some additional Project Teams, since it is our
view that idle hands are the devil's work area. Also, since you are
only one person, it is not fair, we feel, for you to have a whole
double Privacy Tarp to yourself, you must, it seems to us, rejoin
your fellow Boys in Boys.

So
that night I went back with Rudy and Lance and Jason and the others,
and they were nice, as they are always nice, and via No. 10 cable
Jason shared with me some Still Photos from last year's Christmas
party, of Carolyn hugging me from behind with her cute face appearing
beneath my armpit, which made me remember how after the party in our
Privacy Tarp we played a certain game, which it is none of your
beeswax who I was in that game and who she was, only, believe me,
that was a memorable night, with us watching the snow fall from the
much coveted window seat, in which we sat snuggling around midnight,
when we had left our Tarp to take a break for air, and also we were
both sort of sore.

Which
made it all that much more messed up and sad to be sleeping once
again alone in Boys.

When
the sliding wall came out to make our Gender Areas, I noticed that
they had fixed it so nobody could slide through anymore, via five
metal rods. All we could do was, by putting our mouths to the former
gap, say good night to the Girls, who all said good night back from
their respective Privacy Tarps in this sort of muffled way.

But I
did not do that, as I had nobody over there I wished to say good
night to, they all being like merely sisters to me, and that was all.

So
that was the saddest time of my life thus far for sure.

Then
one day we were all laying or lying on our stomachs playing Hungarian
Headchopper for GameBoy, a new proposed one where

you
are this dude with a scythe in your mother's garden, only what your
mother grows is heads, when suddenly a shadow was cast over my game
by Mr. Slippen, which freaked up my display, and I harvested three
unripe heads, but the reason Mr. Slippen was casting his shadow was,
he had got a letter for me from Carolyn!

And
I was so nervous opening it, and even more nervous after opening it,
because inside were these weird like marks I could not read, like
someone had hooked a pen to the back leg of a bird and said, Run,
little bird, run around this page and I will mail it for you. And the
parts I could read were bumming me out even worse, such as she had
wrote all sloppenly,
Jon a abbot is a cove, a glen, it is
something with prayerful guys all the livelong day in silence as they
move around they are sure of one thing which is the long-term
stability of a product we not only stand behind we run behind since
what is wrong with taking a chance even if that chance has horns and
hoofs and it is just you and your worst fear in front of ten thousand
screaming supporters of your last chance to be the very best you can
be?

And
then thank God it started again looking like the pen on the foot of
the running bird.

I
thought of how hot and smart she had looked when doing a crossword
with sunglasses on her head in Hilfiger cutoffs, I thought of her
that first night in her Privacy Tarp, naked except for her La Perla
panties in the light that came from the Exit sign through the thin
blue Privacy Tarp, so her flat tummy and not-flat breasts and flirty
smile were all blue, and then all of the sudden I felt like the
biggest jerk in the world, because why had I let her go? It was like
I was all of the sudden waking up! She was mine and I was hers, she
was so thin and cute, and now she was at the Lerner Center all alone?
Shaking and scared with a bloody hole in her neck and our baby in her
belly, hanging out with all those other scared shaking people with
bloody holes in their necks, only none of them knew her and loved her
like I did? I had done such a dumb-shit thing to her, all the time
thinking it was sound reasoning, because isn't that how it is with
our heads, when we are in them it always makes sense, but then later,
when you look back, we sometimes are like, I am acting like a total
dumb- ass!

Then
Brad came up and was like, Dude, time to hook in.

And I
was like, Please, Brad, do not bother me with that shit at this time.

And I
went to get Slippen, only he was at lunch, so I went to get Dove and
said, Sir, I hereby Request my appropriate Exit Paperwork.

And he
said, Randy, please, you're scaring me, don't act rash, have a look
out the window.

I had
a look, and tell the truth it did not look that good, such as the
Rustic Village Apartments, out of which every morning these
bummed-out-looking guys in the plainest non-designer clothes ever
would trudge out and get in their junky cars. And was someone
joyfully kissing them goodbye, like saying when you come home tonight
you will get a big treat, which is me? No, the person who should have
been kissing them with joy was yelling, or smoking, or yelling while
smoking, and when the dudes came home they would sit on their stoops
with heads in hand, as if all day long at work someone had been
pounding them with clubs on their heads, saying they were jerks.

Then
Dove said, Randy, Randy, why would a talented young person like
yourself wish to surrender his influence in the world and become just
another lowing cattle in the crowd, don't you know how much people
out there look up to you and depend on you?

And
that was true. Because sometimes kids from Rustic Village would come
over and stand in our lava rocks with our Tastemakers &
Trendsetters gum cards upheld, pressing them to our window, and when
we would wave to them or strike the pose we were posing on our gum
cards, they would race back all happy to their crappy apartments,
probably to tell their moms that they had seen the real actual us,
which was probably like the high point of their weeks.

But
still, when I thought of those birdlike markings of Carolyn's letter,
I don't know, something just popped, I felt I was at a distinct tilt,
and I blurted out, No, no, just please bring me the freaking
Paperwork, I am Requesting, and I thought when I Requested you had to
do it!

And
Dove said sadly, We do, Randy, when you Request, we have to do it.

Dove
called the other Coordinators over and said, Larry, your little pal
has just Requested his Paperwork.

And
Slippen said, I'll be damned.

What a
waste, Delacourt said. This is one super kid.

One of
our best, Andrews said.

Which
was true, with me five times winning the Cooperative Spirit Award and
once even the Denny O'Malley Prize, Denny O'Malley being this
Assessor in Chicago, IL, struck down at age ten, who died with a
smile on his face of leukemia.

Say
what you will, it takes courage, Slippen said. Going after one's wife
and all.

Yes
and no, Delacourt said. If you, Larry, fall off a roof, does it help
me to go tumbling after you?

But I
am not your wife, Slippen said. Your pregnant wife.

Wife
or no, pregnant or no, Delacourt said. What we then have are two
folks not feeling so good in terms of that pavement rushing up. No
one is helped. Two are crushed. In effect three are crushed.

Baby
makes three, Andrews said.

Although
anything is possible, Slippen said. You know, the two of them
together, the three of them, maybe they could make a go of it—

Larry,
whose side are you on? Dove said.

I am
on all sides, Slippen said.

You
see this thing from various perspectives, Andrews said.

Anyway,
this is academic, Delacourt said. He has Requested his Paperwork and
we must provide it.

His
poor mother, Dove said. The sacrifices she made, and now this.

Oh,
please, Slippen said. His mother.

Larry,
sorry, did you say something? Dove said.

Which
mother did he get? Slippen said.

Larry,
please go to that Taste-and-Rate in Conference Room 6, Delacourt
said. See how they are doing with those CheezWands.

Which
mother did we give him? Slippen said. The redhead baking the pie? The
blonde in the garden?

Larry,
honestly, Dove said. Are you freaking out?

The
brunette at prayer? Slippen said. Who, putting down her prayer book,
says, Stay where you are, do not get distracted, have a content and
productive life, and I will be happy too?

Larry
has been working too hard, Andrews said.

Plus
taking prescription pills not prescribed to him, Delacourt said.