Not Exactly What I Had in Mind (3 page)

In a restaurant, the dog will take care of everything. It will silently clamp its jaws on the maître d’s ankle. The maître d’ will hop around and wear an expression of outrage, but if he says anything at all it will probably be no more than “M’sieu! Your dog!”

“Ah yes, Shiva,” you say. “I don’t know what I would do without her.”

Shiva will then lead the headwaiter and you to whatever table she chooses. If people are dining there already — as may well be the case, since a dog prefers a table with food on it — Shiva will seize each diner in turn by the ankle until they all leave. Then she will clean their plates, and both of you will be sitting pretty.

Just be sure not to cry out “WHAT!?” until someone
tells
you the size of the check.

It will be noted that this essay has dealt primarily with fancy restaurants’
first
line of defense. That is because, once you have fought your way past the greeter, it is a simple matter to dispel regular waitpersons’ antagonism. You just raise your voice every so often to say “national talent search,” “some lucky unknown,” “we’ve
got
Meryl and Warren already, that’s not the problem,” and “a new face for the second lead.” Unless this is such a deluxe place that it doesn’t hire show people but only dyspeptic foreign men. In that case you bring along one of those surf-casting reels, a good treble hook, and plenty of line. Eighty-pound test is plenty strong enough, since dyspeptic foreign men seldom jump high enough to bring their entire weight into play.

But how do you get them close enough to hook them? Well, my friend Jim Seay, the poet, says, “One of the things that separate class from trash is what kind of bait you use.” I like to cast one of Emma’s blueberry muffins. See, the reason waiters in high-dollar places are dyspeptic is that they are never around any good, solid, family-style food that fairly nice people can afford.

That’s what I meant earlier when I said something about restaurant service personnel eating yesterday’s bait. I meant things on the order of Emma’s blueberry muffins. What did you think I meant? Spring lizards? Hey, restaurant service personnel are human beings. The only reason some of them turn mean is that they have to work in places where everybody just played racquetball with Cap Weinberger.

I
GOT MYSELF ONE
of these talking wrenches. Even though I see it as a bad trend, things taking on the power of speech. Cars talk, cameras talk, even airports talk:

“This — miracle — electronic — passenger — shuttle — will — be — delayed. Some — person — has — interfered — with — the — proper — closing — of — the — perfectly — calibrated — doors. Unless — that — person — removes — all — portions — of— him — or — herself from — the — doorway — we — will — sit — here — until — every — flight — has — departed. It — is — all — the — same — to — me. This — miracle …”

Why doesn’t anybody come up with cars, cameras, airports that
listen?

It used to be, you heard from insentient objects only in writing. Sign on a Laundromat washing machine: “I Am Out of Order. Please Use One of My Buddies.” Once I was served a baked potato with a little triangular cardboard notice stuck in it that said, “I Have Been Rubbed, Tubbed, and Scrubbed. You May Eat My Jacket.”

But we’ve moved on beyond that, today. I understand the National Tuber Council is developing a baked potato, for fern bars, that addresses the diner aloud:

“Hello. My — name — is — Tatum — and — I — am — your — choice — of— potato — for — the — evening. May — I — suggest — that — the — best — part — of — me — is — my — …”

Jacket! In a baked potato’s mealy little mouth, at least butter would melt. What kind of person, the potato may sense, would go ahead and eat an entity that says, “You may eat my jacket”? Jimmy Carter on TV was a talking baked potato. Ronald Reagan is a talking siphon (of juices into coffers), ageless, impermeable; and he thrives.

Machines are calm; they don’t raise their voices; they have no shame. What are you going to do? Yell, “Don’t take that tone with me”? The machine is programmed to reply, “This tone — is — based — upon — thorough — testing. It — is — designed — to — be — ingratiating. If — you — are not — ingratiated — you — are — not — statistically — relevant.”

And yet I bought a talking wrench.

I’ll tell you why.

I can use a little guidance when I’m handling a wrench. Especially when I’m reaching up underneath something at an awkward angle. I get turned around. Straining away at an intractable nut, I stop and think: “Am I just making this tighter?” And once I stop and think, I am lost. Left, right, clockwise, counterclockwise run together like worms in a bucket. And I lie there thinking, in an ever-widening swirl, of all the different ways in which my life needs direction. My heart wrenches. I don’t know which way to turn.

Then too, I like the word
wrench.
Good straightforward Anglo-Saxon, sounds like what it means. (In a deep structural, hard-to-hear way, I register the
w.)
Compare
semiconductor.
Which is it, then: does it conduct or doesn’t it conduct?

There is something not just handy but also hand-in-hand about a wrench. How do we stop a mechanical scheme that staggers human scale? We throw a monkey wrench into it. A spanner in the works. Might it be feasible to “turn” (in the counterintelligence sense) a talking wrench?

At first I just kept the new wrench on top of the refrigerator, and acted naturally around it. When kitchen conversation came round to high technology, I would speak my mind. Then I’d take the wrench down, show it to people. “I respect a good wrench,” I’d say. “Nice heft to it. What kind of heft you think there is to a semiconductor?” I didn’t address the wrench. I was waiting until we had something to talk about.

Then one day, taking apart the bottom of the dishwasher to find out what was clogging it up, I got into a wheels-within-wheels situation: one thing that loosened in one direction; inside another thing that seemed to loosen in the other direction or at least shouldn’t be loosened until the other thing was loosened, and beneath both things was some other fixture that was threaded into a socket even more profound, and beneath that was probably something that if I ever got down to it (not that I wanted to) would turn the whole kitchen. And all of these things were under viscid water. I groped around in there with the wrench, and got a purchase, and tugged, and nothing happened. And I stopped to think. And here came that old vertigo.

“
Am I going in the wrong direction?”
I said out loud.

“Mfrlg,” said the wrench.

I disengaged it and brought it up.

“Flplfph,” it said. “Yeah.”

“I am? Going in the wrong direction?”

“If you ask me. Course if you want to go on ahead and start breaking and stripping and binding up things within things within things …”

“No!” I said. “This is exactly the reason I got … you. I’m always — ”

“So go the other direction,” the wrench said. “Ain’t but two.”

“Right,” I said. I stuck the wrench back down in there and felt its jaws catch hold. And I turned the other direction,
hard,
with
faith.

“Nnnng,” I said.

“Nnnn-nnng,” said the wrench.

“Nnnn-
nnnng
,” I said.

“Mfrlgph,” said the wrench.

I extricated it.

“You realize,” the wrench went on after a moment; “there’s such a thing as a talking dishwasher. With talking components. As it is, I got nobody to check anything out with down there.”

“I’d be afraid a talking dishwasher would sing,” I said. “‘Swish, swash, wushy wishes, / Swish, swash, do the dishes.’ I don’t want that.”

“Uh-huh. Well, that’s up to you. All I know is, we are going the right way.”

“Hey, that’s a big help,” I said. “Shall we try it again?”

And we did.

“Nnnnng,” I went. “Nnnnn-
ng
.”

“Nnnnn-nn-nnnnn-
nng
,” went the wrench, and then the dishwasher, for all that it was nonspeaking, said:

“Flllllpppplplpl … pllp.”

And all the viscid water ran out.

“Fwew,” said the wrench.

“Hey,” I exclaimed. “That went fine. Yes sir. Now I can feel around and clear out whatever was the obstruction. Fish head or something.”

What I found was two pieces of glass, a swatch of peach skin, half a raw green bean, and something I couldn’t identify at first.

“Oh. You know what I think this is?” I said. “A chicken tendon.”

“You get ready to tighten back up,” the wrench said, “let me know.”

“All right,” I said. “Let’s do it.” And we did.

“Well!” I said. “Listen, I’ve enjoyed working with you. You, uh, want to take a break?”

No response.

So I sat there on the kitchen floor with the wrench.

And then I just came on out with it:

“I’ve … always had problems with machines.”

“Uh-huh,” said the wrench after a moment.

“And, uh, with … tools.”

“Uh-
huh
,” said the wrench.

“With any kind of—I don’t know what the collective term would be. I don’t want to say ‘gadget.’ Some people would say … ‘gizmo,’ quote-unquote.”

If the wrench took offense, it gave no sign.

“But I’m not out to pigeonhole. Is there any
insight
you could offer me?”

“I don’t get into that,” said the wrench.

“Oh. Uh-huh. But I was just thinking. Let me tell you a story. I used to work on a newspaper with a guy named Dick Link. And he used to write these great short editorials. We called them Linklets.”

Wrench didn’t say anything.

“Give you an example. In the first paragraph, Link takes note that a special state commission on education has just weighed in with a report. The commission declares that it has pinpointed a major problem: there are too many teachers in the state who aren’t up to par. Right? Here is Link’s second and final paragraph:

“‘Okay, all you bad teachers! Come on!’”

Not a peep from the wrench.

“So,” I said. “The only reason I bring all this up is — one day Link and I walked by the composing room Coke machine. And someone had stuck a note on it. You know how people will do.”

“Not really,” said the wrench.

“Well, they will. Stick notes on machines. Or at least they used to, before machines talked. Anyway, here’s what the note on the Coke machine said:

“‘This machine owes me thirty-five cents.’”

“See. And … the point I’m coming to: Link, who
thought
in Linklets — Link took out a pencil and … People will do that. See something written on a wall or somewhere, they’ll add a comment.

“So,” I went on, “here’s what Link wrote:

“‘As if a machine could owe.’”

Silence from the wrench.

“Was what he wrote,” I said. “‘As if… a machine could owe.’ And … I just wondered —”

“Hey,” said the wrench.

And there was something so dismissive in the tone.

“Tell me about it,” said the wrench.

I just sat there. I looked at the wrench.

“Great!” I said. “Thanks a lot! I need irony from a wrench!”

I glared at the wrench.

“Listen. You think I
enjoy
sitting here opening up to a damn
wrench?
Huh? But
you
can’t unbend a bit, can you?
You
aren’t interested in chicken tendons.
You
don’t want to hear any Linklets. You’re no different from any other hunk of gimmickry! Contraption! Doohickey!
Thingamajig!”

A moment passed. Then:

“My — head — has — been — immersed — in — viscid — water. Please — blow — hot — dry — air — into — my wiring — cavity — now. Failure — to — do — so — will — result — in — corrosion — of— my — communications — circuitry. The — choice — is — yours.”

Mine. Mine! Why is it always
mine?

W
HEN PACKING FOR A
trip, bear this principle in mind: it is better, in a public place like an airport, to be bedraggled than naked. If you squeeze all your clothes into a carry-on bag — I don’t care if it
is
so cannily constructed, according to the airline-magazine ads, that you can live out of it for the rest of your life — your clothes are going to get wadded up. And you will look as if you have been raiding the Goodwill collection box.

But if you take several pieces of proper luggage that have to be checked, the airline will lose them, and your one set of clothes will become so vile in a few days that in all decency you will be forced to travel nude.

I don’t know why airlines always lose checked baggage. You would think they might at least warn you, as they are briskly slapping on tags, that “it is the policy of this airline that we have no earthly idea where we are checking these bags through to.” But they don’t. They behave for all the world as if they were flying your luggage to your destination.

But when you reach that place, you will stand sweatily, anxiously, among the teeming, shouldering masses at the conveyor belt for an hour or so while skis, pineapples, caged weimaraners, duffel bags marked WARNING, kayaks, bass viols, and mysterious large trapezoidal crates belonging to
someone
click-clack past, but your own bags will not appear. So you will go to the baggage-service desk, where a semi-functionary considerably less apologetic than Richard Nixon will give you a long form to fill out. Or you may elect to save the form and wear it the following day. The baggage-service person does not find it remarkable, does not see it as any business of his, or of yours, that his airline has lost your property. “These things happen,” he may say, if you insist on his saying something. If you rave and fume, the upshot will be that your only shirt gets sweatier sooner.

So you must pack everything in a carry-on bag. Now, I see some people walking through airports with trim, flat carry-on bags. These are presumably the same people who carry wafer-thin wallets. My own wallet — perhaps because it holds my entire fortune, and also “What to Do in Case of Sunstroke,” and also the card of a police detective I met one night in Indianapolis (if I ever throw these out, I will get sunstroke
and
be arrested in Indianapolis within twenty-four hours) — looks like a camel’s snout. My carry-on bag looks like a greatly enlarged bacon cheeseburger on a sesame roll with extra onions.