“Excellent stuff, Desiree.”
“Mark, based on the notes that you made before you left for D.C., we’ve worked up a draft of the press release you want put out, and I just want to make sure that we’re all in synch here. You basically want to inform book critics that, in the event of a bad review, Team Leyner will not be held responsible for the wrath of fans who see you as the articulator of their vision and who see your detractors as a threat to their way of life. Consequently, Team Leyner cannot be held responsible for the physical safety of the reviewer and his or her family, in the event of an unfavorable notice. Is that about the gist of it?”
“That’s it exactly.”
“And you want this put out in general release?”
“I want this sent directly to our friends themselves — to the Lehmann-Haupts and the Kakutanis, to the Yardleys, to the Wolcotts and the Atlases and the Raffertys … understood?”
“Understood.”
“I wane everyone here to remember something. Team Leyner plays hardball. If anyone — and I don’t care who it is, I don’t care if it’s my own grandmother — if anyone attempts to impede the fulfillment of our destiny, we fuck with them big time.”
“We fuck with them big time,” everyone chorused.
“Anything else, Dez?”
“This is somewhat of a corollary to what we’ve just been discussing. Joe and I have been analyzing a trend we see developing in media coverage of Team Leyner, and we’ve come up with a means of countering what we perceive as an incipient problem that could become dangerous unless we act decisively now. There are, increasingly, those in the media who would twist the work we’re doing in our writers’ vocational counseling intensives into something sinister. Scurrilous rumors abound about your supposed steroid use, your messianic fantasies, your weakness for Hispanic women … Joe and I propose a public relations program designed to resuscitate your image in the media. We propose that you engage in a well-publicized personal campaign to help agoraphobic housewives with their poetry. We see two options here: video teleconferencing, which enables you to counsel agoraphobic poetesses wherever they live without having to leave headquarters — signals are relayed through a satellite over the Yukon to a ground station in northern Michigan, to a satellite over the West Indies and finally to a fiber-optic link in Atlanta. Or you can simply visit the women at their homes. What do you think?”
“I think I’ll make housecalls.”
“You like the proposal?”
“Desiree, Joe — it’s top-notch work. I’m proud of you both.”
“Thanks, Mark.”
“Thanks, Mr. Leyner.”
“Baby Lago, why don’t we finish up with your concert report.”
“OK. Well, we have Libidinal Hegemony at Maxwell’s tonight. And tomorrow night at CBGB’s, there’s Fried Wind and Dick Cheez. And all three bands are comping you and anyone from Team Leyner who wants to go.”
“Thanks, sweetie. Folks, it’s getting late. I’m sure you’re all tired. So I’d like to just say good night, thanks again for all the hard work you’re doing, and … it’s great to be back.”
“Mr. Leyner …”
“Yes, Joe?”
“Mr. Leyner, do you have a few minutes? There’s something kinda private I’d like to talk to you about.”
“Sure, babe. Why don’t you meet me at The Triggerman in about ten minutes. We’ll have a few drinks and talk.”
The Triggerman is a bar/pistol range that we opened for Team Leyner staffers so that, at the end of a long day, there’d be a place “on-campus” where they could have a few drinks and shoot firearms — a place for them to blow off steam. I like to come down to The Triggerman after a late night meeting to unwind and maybe chat with some of the lower-echelon employees with whom I don’t normally interact.
I’d just emptied a magazine of 125-grain jacketed hollow-points from my six-and-a-half-inch.44 Auto Mag, when I noticed Joe on the bar stool next to mine.
“Mr. Leyner, I’m in love.”
“Hold on a second, Joe,” I said, removing my ear protectors. “You’re what?”
“I’m in love.”
I ordered two triple Chivases and another fifteen rounds of hollowpoints.
“In love with whom, babe?”
“Mr. Leyner, I’m in love with Desiree. Y’know, we’ve been working really closely together on that press release for the book critics and on the PR program and … I just fell totally in love with her. And the trouble is that I know she doesn’t feel the same way about me. I mean she’s such an incredibly beautiful woman, and I … well, I’m not trying to be self-deprecating, but I’m not like traditionally handsome. And this unrequited stuff makes me feel like a bit of an A-hole.”
Joe will not say the word asshole. He says, instead, “A-hole.” Similarly, he will not utter the epithet douche-bag, preferring the more delicate “D-bag.” “Go develop E of the S, you FS-munching MG-head” is “Go develop elephantiasis of the scrotum, you foreskin-munching Merv Griffin — head”—invective overheard when a careless tailor accidentally pinned one of Joe’s flippers to his inseam while fitting him for a Team Leyner soft ball uniform.
“Look, Joe, there are all kinds of women, and I truly believe that there’s someone out there for everyone. Just take a look at some of these personal ads here.” I reached across the bar for the newspaper. “For example, look at this one: ‘Do you wear peasant blouses and billowy gypsy skirts? I’m a drooling, catheterized, cataract-eyed white supremacist from Baton Rouge who has three to four lucid hours a day. Let’s go underground where Zionist water-fluoridators and Russian space debris can’t find us.’ What do you want to bet that this guy gets a couple of hundred responses?”
“Well, I’m not interested in other women. I’m interested in Desiree.”
“Joe, check this out,” I said, handing him my first target, which had just arrived at the bar. I’d managed to achieve, at a range of 50 yards, a four-inch seven-round group on the black of the target, with most of the shots less than two inches apart. “Not bad, huh?”
“Really great, Mr. Leyner,” Joe said morosely.
“C’mon, Joe, lighten up, would ya? Maybe there’s a way for you to somehow provoke Dez into feeling romantic about you.”
“Provoke her how?”
“Well, I can only tell you what works for me, babe. I take my clothes off. Women go nuts. I know that sounds stupid, but it’s how I do it that’s important — it’s the style, it’s the head trip I get into. Each item of clothing — leather blazer, T-shirt, snake-skin boots, jeans, socks, and finally underpants — is removed as if I were stripping for an audience at a maximum security prison for criminally insane women. With that masturbatory simultaneity of languor and urgency, I whip the floor with my silk bikini briefs that have been stretched grotesquely out of shape after a day of restraining my restless genitals, and I hear — in my head — the horrific cacophony of gasps, moans, ululations, stomping feet, shrieks, sobs, pleas … y’know what I’m saying?”
“I guess so, Mr. Leyner, but I don’t know if I could—”
“Listen, the thing you’ve got to be careful about is the effect something like that can have on a woman. I was with this notary public Felice Ruiz once, and I’m doing the whole bit and I get to the part where I’m whipping the floor with my silk undies, and I guess my body’s just too much for the poor girl — she goes apoplectic on me. She’s hyperventilating, taking in giant gulps of air, foaming at the mouth. Then she’s purple in the face, clutching at her throat, clutching at her chest, like she’s having some kind of seizure. She falls to the ground and, writhing, manages to point to a cabinet in the armoire. I rush to the cabinet, open it, and there are two bottles, gin and vodka. I make a split-second decision — vodka. I bring the bottle to Felice, who’s rolling on the ground, tearing at her hair. I show her the vodka bottle. She shakes her head violently back and forth, kicking her feet. I rush back to the armoire and retrieve the bottle of gin. Felice is trying to say something, and I put my ear to her lips, but her mumbling and grunting are completely unintelligible. I quickly produce a pad and a pen. Can you write? I ask. She nods, and I hand her the writing implements. Her body jerking spasmodically, she manages to scrawclass="underline" Singapore Sling. Now, a Singapore Sling is a fairly elaborate cocktail; it involves shaking together gin, cherry brandy, lemon juice, and powdered sugar, pouring it into a tall glass filled with ice and topping it with soda water. But I concoct the drink as rapidly as I can, bring it to the convulsant Felice, tilt the highball glass to her lips, and let her drink. After a few sips, her paroxysms begin to subside, and she’s eventually able to return to the sofa. So what I’m trying to say is that you have to exercise some degree of caution here … are you following me, babe?”