The Electrical Experience (10 page)

 

The meeting.

 

Yes, I'm all right.

 

Yes, I'll be along.

 

Yes.

 

He hung up the telephone. Oh well, he was going on, he was keeping on. War was imminent, and they had to take some local initiative. The motor unit of civilian lorries and cars was his idea. Back Churchill. Sack Chamberlain.

 

His life was a walk between meetings.

 

This was the first time he had forgotten a meeting in his life. He had never left a door unlocked or forgotten a meeting.

 

It was a stumble, not a fall.

 

He was on his feet.

 

You can tell Churchill that T. George McDowell is on his feet.

 

He washed his face. As he did, a speech began to form in his mind …

While no one can deny the success of the milk-shake, it did have its problems.

 

—more women than men drank milk-shakes, because men considered it unmasculine to drink milk.

—some people couldn't drink whole milk (George overcame this for a while at the kiosks by offering a soda milk-shake consisting of soda-water and milk, but it was not overly popular).

—unrefrigerated milk often made people sick and gave the drink a bad name. Unrefrigerated milk also would not whip properly.

—some cafés did not think the electric mixer justified expense.

Put the milk, syrup, malt and a third of a tumbler of crushed ice into a shaker. Shake vigorously for a few minutes and then strain into a Parfait or Knickerbocker Glory glass.

Becker Meets the Kook

Becker was thinking this: how rarely in this foul country did the milk-carton spout open as the printed directions promised, ‘To open, push up here'—push up where, for goddamn. It had to do with the spread of talent across the land. For a country with a population so small they should, in terms of technology, still be peasants. That was his feeling, harsh as it may be. The way he figured it, the high-performance five-percenters were spread over too diversified an economy. By accident of history. The accident of history being that they were English-speakers. They attempted the higher technology of the main English nations. That was it. Result: milk cartons which wouldn't spout.

Some theory, Becker, you could go back to the Alma Mater in Atlanta and package that into a Ph.D.

Of course, it explained his presence in the foul country. ‘To the foul country,' he toasted with the milk carton, drinking through a jagged spout torn with his envelope-opening dagger. He was there to reinforce the top echelon of the country's paltry beverage technology—‘to advise and counsel the franchise men in marketing'.

‘Here's to you, technological missionary, evangelist, old dog.' He was, and he often thought it, he was an evangelist of sorts. The Peace Corps sort: he really sometimes feared that he had the Peace Corps mentality. But the corps never seemed to him to be the classic bourbon-drinking type of organisation. And, he was the classic bourbon-drinking type.

The felt-penned drawing on a large sheet of paste-board came down before him on the desk from behind, covering his hands and milk—as though he'd lost his hands to mid-forearm in some disappearing act.

The relief secretary from the agency was standing there. He was unnerved. She herself had an uncertainty in her smile, her stance. She was waiting for him to put
her
at ease. Who would ease him?

‘That me?' he asked, referring to the drawing.

‘Yes, do you like it?'

Becker often felt that not a day went past when someone didn't inflict some extraordinary demand upon him way beyond what he felt should be expected of him in his job at Coca-Cola or of his guarded, programmed, elementary motel life. More, in fact, than he thought life itself had any right to throw up. He had not begun life visualising, encompassing such things. Nor was he equipped or adequately trained. They are tests, Becker, tests. Yes, but tests for what? Where was the diploma, where was the payout?

‘Well, do you like it?'

He'd been staring at the drawing—the caricature, obviously, of him.

‘What am I doing with my hand shading my eyes?'

‘You're searching.'

‘Searching?'

‘New horizons.'

O.K., he would pursue her meaning. He wanted in life to reduce enigmas. Back to the drawing. What he feared was that she was going to ‘reveal' him for what he was.

‘New horizons?'

‘New horizons for Coca-Cola. Or yourself?'

Well, that was damned true. ‘What's the Coke bottle doing on my head like some William Tell apple?'

‘You have it on the brain—you're a Coke head.' She giggled. ‘What's your star? Let me tell you … you're …' She hummed and ha'd, staring into his eyes until not blinking strained him. ‘You're Pisces—sensitive, unlucky, and melancholy.'

‘You're damned right—about the star, that is.' Further unnerved. ‘Say, how did you know that?'

‘I knew.' She gave off noises of self-congratulation.

‘You looked up my personnel card?' he said. ‘And anyhow—changing the subject swiftly—is Coca-Cola subsidising art now—or don't we give you enough to do?' Becker, wielder of the corporate inflation axe, pruner of man-power wastage.

‘I did it in my lunch hour. Don't be mean.'

‘It's kookie—but I like it.'

Becker worried that Sam would come out and see the drawing. Sam would show it to the others and they'd all have a great hee-haw. He didn't care for that.

Her name? ‘You're …?' He snapped his fingers. But she left him hanging there, pinned there, endeavouring to remember, just too long for politeness, for social facility, just too long, and he sensed she liked, he bet, she liked to see men sweat. A Western Union thought arrived also: the drawing was a pass. There was a rule, he recalled, about fraternising with female office staff. Perhaps that applied in Atlanta and not here.

‘I'm Terri.'

‘Becker.'

‘I know—we've met before.'

Sunburst Symbols, High signs, Hashbag

Her flat asked too much for Becker's liking. Not that he objected to art. Or fad art. But he found that he was most at ease in an electronic, twenty-four-hour, functional motel. Nothing talking back at you. In Terri's place everything was talking at you. Everything she'd done to the place was a message. From the time he stepped in, he was warding them off. The pottery, the artefacts, the prints, the posters, the sketches, the photographs, the pinned-up clippings, the dyed drapes, the books, were all like yelping dogs or crying children. Sunburst symbols, assorted carved statuettes from the East, high signs, and a hashbag hung from a small hookah.

‘What's that burning?'

‘Ethiopian sandalwood—incense.'

‘Uh, uh.'

She went about doing things in another room.
Motels. Now a motel was five-star living. Bourbon, a jar of hot mix, of which he was inordinately fond, a prewar movie or perhaps a Dashiell Hammett. Cleanliness, air-conditioning, refrigeration, comfort, nothing working away at your brain. Motels kept him a today-man because there was no yesterday around in a motel. Yesterday held you back.

‘Say, you must be an artist,' he said, catching her signature on some of the paintings.

‘I did a course,' she said. ‘I'm really only a passable sketcher, that's all—nothing more.'

‘Impresses a cowboy like me.'

‘Are you really a cowboy … I mean from Texas or some where?' she said, her words muffled by the sweater she was pulling over her head. He could see her bare back through in the bedroom.

‘I sometimes see myself as a motel cowboy—making camp, riding on,' he said, ‘but, no, I'm strictly city.'

‘How disappointing that you're not a real cowboy, not that I mean to be rude and not, of course, that they exist,' she said with a rushed laugh. ‘I suppose I mean I haven't met anyone who comes from a backwoods way of life or some thing.'

‘No offence taken.'

‘You're going to my home town next week,' she said, back in the living-room, handing him a drink, apologising because she had no pot.

‘Is that a prediction of the stars?'

‘No.' She laughed. ‘I was typing your itinerary.'

Sam, please, not the rural parts. Becker, the motel
cowboy, painfully rides his itinerary into the setting sun.

‘Oh, where's your home town?'

She rattled on about it. How she hated it. How her father was a big shot.

King of Jasmine, Speed Freak

As he was taking off his trousers, he said, ‘I shouldn't be doing this—I think it's against company rules.'

‘You don't really allow them to tell you who you go to bed with?'

‘I try to keep the contract.' Of which Becker had his own private interpretations.

‘You're a victim.'

‘I keep the contract—I contracted in.'

‘But it's a matter of personal freedom … and control of your own work scene. I only work when I want to.'

Becker didn't know precisely what she was on about. He didn't do anything else but work.

He kissed her. ‘I'm here, aren't I?'

In the bedroom she had King of Jasmine burning.

‘I've never seen a man, a young man, wearing suspenders with his socks. Only my dad.'

They lay on the bed.

‘Some socks need suspenders.'

‘Aren't you going to take off your underpants, and your socks?'

‘I thought we'd lie here for a while, kind of talk, finish our drinks. Can't rush a rabbit.'

He held his drink to his lips with both hands. He
studied the black and white print of the Archfiend in Goat Form with the Satanic curse, ‘Palas aron Azinomas'.

A voice, which he took to be Godly, called to him, Becker what are you doing. He shook his head.

‘Why are you shaking your head?'

‘I was shaking my head?'

‘You clown.' She kissed him, and sat back, cross-legged, on the bed, naked, staring at him. ‘I like you.'

He attempted a lying-down shrug. ‘I'm grey-flannel com merce. You're the radical, free spirit.'

‘I know … that's why I shouldn't like you … and American … I don't like Americans theoretically … but I do, you're my sort of person.'

Jesus!

‘I want an opinion,' she said impulsively, rolling sideways off the bed, saying, ‘What do you think of a father who writes this sort of letter?' She went to the dresser.

Why me? Why Becker?

He put a hand to his face, two comforting fingers on his heavy eyelids making him see warm-pink.

Why?

‘It's supposed to be personal, but he dictates to his secretary and it has a file number. I'll read the best parts.'

She read: ‘Our dear Terri, Your mother and I were dreadfully disturbed to learn of your “illness” (“he's put illness in quotation marks, Fowler says that's disowning the word, doesn't he?”) but are relieved to know that
it is now behind you and you have sought medical assistance. Many of these sorts of troubles are purely physical or a matter of resolve, of will. I have enclosed an article on the subject from a recent issue of the
Reader's Digest
…'

Why me?

‘In my own life I have always placed the greatest value on fellowship, on ethics, and on making one's own life secure (“he means making money”, she interpolated). I hope this upbringing will eventually pay dividends (“for whom”, Terri asked).'

Why?

‘The incident you so painfully bring up had all but been forgotten by me, and I see no reason or purpose in you raising it again or telling it to the psychiatrist. I feel these childish acts are best kept within the family. Our thoughts are with you.'

She threw the letter back onto the dressing-table. ‘Keep it within the family,' she screamed, laughing. ‘Isn't that too much? He wants me to conceal things from the psychiatrist.'

‘You go to an analyst?' Becker asked.

‘I did. I stopped.'

Why me?

‘Can you guess what the “illness” was?'

Becker didn't want to try. People always asked you to guess the unguessable. He had a personal policy of not trying to guess. To guess anything. Why did people always want him to guess? No, he wasn't going to guess.

‘You tell me.'

‘No. Guess.'

‘I couldn't guess. I don't want to guess.'

The guessing challenge side-stepped, Terri was all too damned eager to tell.

‘I had a crack-up … really freaked out on speed … an incredibly bad scene … raving, and they put me in security with bars on the windows … where they put the real maddies and the “bad” patients … they didn't treat me … just locked me away … and I looked out on a courtyard where all the maddies and morons walked about tearing off their clothes and eating their own shit … and when they undressed me, I bit two male nurses on the legs … is that significant …? then they gave me a canvas nightshirt and put me in this cell … it was a real cell and I pulled the bed apart to make a key … I don't know why I thought I could make a key from the bed … and they took the bed away and made me sleep on the cement floor on strips of canvas …'

‘Hey now, wait on, you don't expect me to believe this happened in these times. Why that's positively mediaeval.'

Before his very eyes the kookie but swinging girl from work had become a neurotic problem. Sexually he began packing up. After keeping himself afloat in life, he didn't have enough left over.

‘I'm not,' she said, begging belief, ‘and my parents knew what was happening to me … and they let them do it … as punishment for me being sick.'

‘How long did they keep you in this … hospital?'

‘Fifteen days.'

‘No!' Becker was truly shocked, wondering whether to believe it all.

‘I was locked in this cell for fifteen days. Afterwards. I was put in an ordinary ward, where I got off with a fifty-year-old alcoholic under the hospital on some old bags, in the foundations. You could hear the people walking on the floor above …'

‘Spare me the details,' Becker said.

‘… we took librium to get high … 10 mg. tablets. I took a bottle one day and they put me in the cell again for punishment—for another two days—and this time they shaved my head.'

‘No, they didn't shave your head. Terri that's not credible.'

Becker found he'd sat up and was staring at the girl. She was speaking in a torrent.

She gulped her drink.

‘Well, not shaved … but cropped … They said there was a lice infestation.'

Lice was one of the things Becker had not had to face in life. He was not going to face lice now.

‘They discharged me to my parents, and as soon as I arrived home I took a bottle of chloral hydrate and a packet of those tranquillisers you get from the chemists without prescription … and they put me back in hospital.'

Becker wondered how to get out without hurting her and whether there was anything Coca-Cola could
do to help. Whether there was the remotest possibility she had lice. Now.

‘The reason people are down on drugs is they resent people escaping and having an easily gotten good time. I'm no addict. I was just having a bad scene with a guy and wanted to be out of the world for a while. Do you know what the “painful incident” was? The one my father would rather I didn't mention.'