The Pleasure of My Company (13 page)

It was
night by the time we left the drugstore. Teddy and I played motorboat and moved
into the darkness. The gaily lit Rite Aid receded behind us like a lakeshore
restaurant. We walked along the sidewalks and driveways, passing the apartments
and parked cars, hearing the occasional helicopter. I held Teddy in one arm and
the crackers in another. We came alongside a high hedge bearing waxy green
leaves and extending the full length of a corner lot. It was a dewy night but
not cold, and there was a silence that walked with us. Teddy held out one arm
so that his hand could graze the hedge. He let the leaves brush his palm. He
watched and listened, and would sometimes grab and hold a twig to feel it
tugged out of his hand as I moved him forward. Soon he established a sequence
of feeling, grabbing, and then losing the leaf. I reseated him on my arm so he
could lean out farther, and then slowed my walk to accommodate his game and
extend the rapture. I came to the end of the block and it was like coming out
of a dream.

Clarissa
arrived promptly at six to find Teddy and me at the kitchen table in front of
two dozen dismembered saltines. The box was torn and bent, and the wrappers
were strewn across table and floor. This would have been a mess of the highest
order except that nothing wet was involved. We made the transfer and she
offered to help me clean up, but I shooed her out, knowing she had better
things to do. At the door she said, “By the way, he’s back in Boston and calmed
down. He even sent me a support check.” This small comment made me think all
night about atonement, about what could be made up for, what could be forgiven,
about whether Mussolini’s obligatory check meant I should forget about the
clobbering I’d received. I decided that the answer would be known only when I
saw him again and would be able to witness my own reaction to an offer of
contrition.

Speech day at Freedom
College was drawing menacingly close and Philipa continued to rehearse me even
though I did everything I could to indicate to her that I was sick of the sound
of my own voice and weary of her relentless fine-tuning of me. I performed once
for Brian—the first outsider to hear me—and he complimented me so profusely
that I felt like a three-year-old who had just had his first drawing taped to
the refrigerator. Brian then offered to drive me to Anaheim on the day of the
award, and I accepted, happy to know I would have a familiar face in the
audience. Later I realized I had made no plans to get to the event and Brian
was my only real possibility. We would leave at 8:30 A.M., he said. It would
take an hour and a half to get to Anaheim. The Freedom Walk begins at eleven,
and the speeches start at noon, to be over by one. Brian had gotten all this
information off the Internet and printed it out for me, which he proudly cited
as a demonstration of his growing computer skills.

The
night before my speech, I carefully set my alarm for 7 A.M. I double-checked it
by advancing the time twelve hours just to be sure it went off. Then I puzzled for
a dozen minutes over whether I had reset the clock correctly, and had to redo
the entire operation to confirm an LED light was indicating P.M. and not A.M. I
carefully selected my wardrobe, choosing my brown shoes, khaki slacks, a blue
sports coat, and a freshly laundered white shirt that I was careful not to
remove from its protective glassine bag, lest a hair or dark thread should land
on it in the night. I put several inches between my choices and the rest of my
clothes for speedy access. I showered in the evening, even though I fully
intended to shower again in the morning. This was a precaution in the event
something went wrong with the alarm and I had to rush, but it was also part of
my need to be flawlessly clean for the reading. Two showers less than eight
hours apart would make me sparkle and squeak to the touch. My sports coat, a
fourteen-year-old polyester blue blazer, had never known a wrinkle and would
stand in stark contrast to my khaki pants. My outfit would be smooth, blue and
synthetic above, crinkly, brown and organic below. In a perfect fashion world,
I knew above and below should be the same, either all smooth blue and synthetic
or all crinkly brown and organic. I marvelled that, like soy and talc, these
two opposites would hang on the same body.

During
these hours, I was making a transition from my imperfect everyday world where
the unpredictable waited around every corner, into a single-minded existence
where all contingencies are anticipated and prepared for. I laid out my
hairbrush, toothpaste, socks, soap, and washcloth. I cleaned the mirror on the
medicine chest so that I wouldn’t see something on it that I would think was on
me. This was important, because I wanted absolutely nothing to intrude upon my
single and direct line to the podium, and nothing to distract me during the
four-and-one-half hours that there would be between waking and speaking.

Knowing
I would probably be too nervous to fall asleep on time, I went to bed at
eight-thirty instead of my usual ten-thirty, building in an extra two hours to
fidget and calm down. I lay centred in the bed, intending to sleep facing the
ceiling all night, without inelegant tossing and turning and scratching and
noise-making.

I
reached for my universal light switch, which was located just out of reach on
my bedside table now that I was in the centre of my bed. I had to hinge my body
over to snap off the lights. Then, there I was, in perfect symmetry. The white
sheets were crisp and freshly laundered. There were no body residues from the night
before to contaminate me after my shower. I went over my speech in my head,
and once I had done that, I allowed myself a moment for self-congratulations. I
was, I said to myself, the Most Average American. Most Average, Most Ordinary.
I had become this solely through my own efforts, and had succeeded not only
once, but twice, with two different essays. I couldn’t wait to tell Granny and
asked myself why I hadn’t already written her with the great news. Of course it
was because I wanted to wait until I had the award in hand before bragging
about it. It’s the Texas way.

In the
morning I was only slightly askew. The top sheet and blanket had barely moved.
I must have slept at a rigid, horizontal version of “ten-hut!” that would have
made Patton proud. There was an empty moment before I remembered what today
was, but when I did, my voltage cranked up and the ensuing adrenaline rush
cleared my sinuses.

The
first thing I did was to sit on the edge of the bed and go over my speech. Then
I stood and delivered it again, this time adding in a few planned gestures.
Satisfied, I stepped out of my pyjamas and folded them into a drawer, and put
on my robe for the seventy-two-inch walk to the bathroom. I took off the robe
and hung it on the back of the door. I turned on the shower and waited the
fifteen seconds for it to adjust. Stepping under the water, I let it engulf me
and was overcome with pleasure. When my delirium abated, I soaped and scrubbed
my already clean body.

Out of
the shower, my every action was as deliberate as a chess move. Towelling off,
folding, hanging, everything going smoothly until hair. I had determined not to
comb it but to brush it once, then shake it so it would dry into a flopover. I
had done this a thousand times, but today it resisted the casual look it had
achieved after virtually every other head shake of my life. However, I had
mentally prepared myself for this uncertainty. If I was to style my hair with a
head shake, I had to accept the outcome of the head shake. And though I could
have picked up my brush and teased it into perfection, I didn’t.

Brian
arrived on the nose at eight-thirty, and it was a good thing, too, since by
that time I had been standing motionlessly by the door for twenty-two minutes,
mostly as an anti-wrinkle manoeuvre. He and I were dressed almost identically
except he wore a tie. Blue up top, brown down below, the only difference in our
clothes being in designer eccentricities. My white shirt had stitching around
the collar; his didn’t. My coat was polyester, his was wool, though they both
had the same sheen.

“No
tie?” he asked.

“Should
I?” I answered.

“I
think so,” he said.

I went
to my closet and retrieved my one tie. A tie that was so hideous, so old, so
wide, so unmatchable, so thick, so stained, that Brian made me wear his. “Come
on, buddy,” he said, and we started off. “Got your essay?” he asked. “Yes, and
an extra set from Kinko’s, just in case.” I had folded my speech lengthwise and
put it in my breast pocket. This caused a tiny corner of the white paper to peek
out from my lapel, which I nervously tucked back in every three minutes for the
rest of the day.

Brian
had idled the car in the driveway, making it easy for me to enter as I didn’t
have to step over a curb. I hung my coat on a hanger and put it on a hook in
the backseat. He made me co-pilot, handing me the directions and saying, “We’ll
take the 10 to the 5 to the Disneyland turnoff then left on Orangewood. We’ll
save some time because then we’ll be headed away from Disneyland and out of
traffic.” He backed out of the driveway, telling me to put on my seat belt, but
I really couldn’t. It would have cut across my chest and left a wide imprint
across my starched white shirt. We turned the corner onto Seventh and I
stiffened my legs and pressed them against the floorboard, raising my rear end
into the air. This kept me in a prone position with my shoulders being the only
part of me touching the car seat. I wasn’t sure whether I did this to prevent
wrinkles or to prevent myself from slipping into a coma. The answer came later
when my legs fatigued and I slowly lowered myself down to a sitting position
and nothing happened: I did not blow up, faint, or die. But I remained
intensely aware that my khaki pants were soon going to be streaked with hard
creases across my fly front.

We were
now on the freeway and I had focused the air conditioning vent on my pants,
thinking it might serve as a steamer. Finally I said to Brian, “would you mind
if I lowered my pants a little?” “Huh?” he said. “If I could lower my pants a little,
I don’t think they’ll get so wrinkled.” “Sure,” he said, leaving me wondering
if nothing disturbed Brian, ever.

I
unbuckled my belt and lowered my trousers to my thighs. I skooched down in my
seat so my pant legs ballooned out to keep them from wrinkling, too. I aimed
the air vent at my shirt, which bellowed like a sail, preventing even more
wrinkling. Satisfied, I then turned to Brian and said, “I really appreciate you
taking me.

Considering
he was driving, Brian looked at me a dangerously long time, but absolutely
nothing registered on his face. Even when he was pummelling Mussolini, his face
had never changed from its Mount Rushmore glare.

We did
have a few laughs as we wheeled down the Santa Ana Freeway. Small industrial neighbourhoods
lined the access roads and Brian pointed out a factory sign that innocently
read, A SCREW FOR EVERY PURPOSE. He found this hilarious, and because he did, I
did. As we neared Disneyland, traffic thickened and Brian said don’t worry,
because right up here we go the other way. Every other car on the road was an
SUV, and Brian’s green Lincoln rode so low that we were like the
Merrimac
in
a sea of ocean liners.

Brian
was right. Everyone was turning west toward Disneyland when we were turning
east, which meant we avoided a horrendous wait at the freeway exit. We ended up
on a wide-open four-lane street that headed toward a few low hills, while
behind us soared the Matterhorn. I consulted the directions and soon we were
entering what I would describe as a wealthy parking lot. There were wide lanes
for access and every third space was separated from the next by grass-filled
islands. Trees lined the rows making it all look like an automotive
allée.
In
the distance on a hill, stood—or sat—Freedom College, announced by a gilt sign
tastefully engraved in a large plank of oak. The bottom line of the sign read, “PRIVATELY
FUNDED.”

At one
end of the parking lot was an open tent with a banner promoting Tepperton’s
Pies and something about Freedom Day. There were twenty or so people milling
around; there were tables where students were signing people in, and also
several official-looking ladies and gentlemen in blazers, including my contact
with Tepperton, Gunther Frisk. Gunther was decked out in a tartan suit, the
plaid just subtle enough to keep him from looking absurd. His body was so
incongruous with itself that it looked like he had been made by three separate
gods, each with a different blueprint for humanity. “That must be where we’re
supposed to go,” said Brian, and he turned off the engine. I laid my shirt over
my underwear as flatly as possible, and then gingerly pulled up my pants and
closed them over my shirttail. I raised to my prone position, opened the car
door, and angled my legs onto the asphalt with as little bend as possible. I
took my coat off the hanger and slipped it over my shoulders, tucking my
protruding notes back in my coat pocket. I surveyed myself and was deeply
pleased that very little wrinkle damage had been done to my fly front. In fact,
I looked nearly as crisp as I had when I exited my front door in Santa Monica.

Gunther
Frisk spotted us and shot out of the crowd as though he were launched. “Yoo-hoo…
here, here!” he shouted, as he flailed and waved. We made our way toward the
tent, but the parking lot had an uphill trend that made me worry about sweating
into my cotton shirt, so I slowed to a rhino pace, which forced Brian, who was
walking at a normal speed, to retard his tempo so I could catch up. After Brian
introduced himself as my manager, Gunther directed us into the tent, where we
were handed a packet of welcoming materials. We had our pictures snapped and
two minutes later were given laminated photo IDs threaded through cords that
were to hang from our necks like a referee’s whistle. In one corner of the tent
stood a clump of misfits, the other winners. Sue Dowd, with a body like the
Capitol dome—a small head with a rotunda underneath; Kevin Chen, an Asian with
an Afro; and Danny Pepelow, a kind of goon. And me. The only one missing was
the recently evaporated Lenny Burns.