“What’s the difference? Twenty flights are twenty flights, naked or clothed. What’s wrong with you?”
We climbed to the top floor of the asylum. There was a utility room across from the stairway. We walked in and I strode directly to the refrigerator and opened it.
“Look, Patricia,” I said, pointing to a harmonica in the freezer.
She took it in her hands. And she put her full lips on the ice-cold harmonica and she blew. A plaintive arpeggio echoed throughout the building and thousands of rats began making their way toward the top floor.
“You knew exactly where that refrigerator was … how did you know that?” Patricia asked me, trembling.
I put my arm around her shoulder and led her to the warden’s quarters.
“Patricia, look.”
I pointed to a crudely lettered sign above the door.
It said, “Green Isle.”
She began screaming.
And so did I.
“Oh wow, Mark, that was great! And it was so spooky the way you read it!”
“I’m really glad you liked it, Baby Lago. It’s called ‘The Warden of Green Isle’ by Imelda Kabakow, one of the premier genre-restricted authors in North America. I hope it doesn’t give you nightmares.”
“Oh, I love nightmares!”
“Listen, it’s late, and I have to be up pretty early in the morning.”
“Oh yeah, they’re filming that commercial tomorrow, right?”
“Yeah. Baby Lago, I wanted to thank you for all the work you did in Tokyo negotiating the lease on that 500-story supersky-scraper headquarters for Team Leyner Nippon. You did a great job.”
“It was fun!”
I bowed.
“Good night, Baby Lago-san.”
“I guess you could say that I like things ‘natural.’ By ‘natural’ I mean ‘naturally selected’ as in Darwin, i.e., organisms with advantageous mutations are likely to outcompete the original forms, gradually outnumbering and replacing them in the population … that sort of thing. Sure I have my tender moments — I like the silent white dawn after a night’s heavy snowfall, sometimes I like to say something sarcastic to the person making my submarine sandwich or to the person slicing meat for my gyro just to see them smile — maybe it’s their first smile of the day — but basically I’m pretty contemptuous of people, because most people are weak and I find weakness pretty sickening. I like my men, my women, my coffee, my cocktails — I guess everything in my life — STRONG. That’s why I can offer my unequivocal endorsement of Armor-Guard High Security Barbed Wire Fences. The choice of maximum security institutions across the country, Armor-Guard fences feature substantially longer barbs with additional barb points for superior intimidation and entanglement capabilities—”
“Cut! Cut! Hold it, Mr. Leyner.”
“What’s the problem?”
“We’re getting a weird glare off that section of barbed wire over there … why don’t we take a break and we’ll adjust the lighting over there.”
“OK, babe.”
“Hi, I’m Mark Leyner. With my reputation as a tough guy and best-selling author, I’m asked to do commercials — well, as you just saw — for all kinds of ‘tough’ products like penal fencing, cattle prods, bulletproof vests, etc. But when it comes to my family and my friends and my fans — those I cherish most dearly — I can be a real ‘softie.’ That’s why when Becker Surgical Devices asked me to tell people about their balloon angioplasty equipment, I said I’d love to. There’s nothing good about ‘tough’ stenosed arteries. When plaque accumulates, inhibiting the flow of blood to vital organs, the life of someone you love, perhaps even your own life, may be threatened. And I don’t know about you, but I love life.
“Some people are preoccupied with the symbolism of their dreams and with who they might have been in past incarnations and with where their souls are going after they die, but I never think about any of that shit. I just love this earth. I love the morning. When the first morning light hits my eye, I feel like a new appliance that’s been unpacked and plugged in for the first time. But my life is beautiful. Perhaps that’s why I love the morning light. I have money. I have a voluptuous wife. And I have fans. People who have ugly lives often hate the morning; it means the beginning of all the pain and the toil and the flashbacks all over again, and they try to bear the unbearable until twilight, which comes on slowly with the physical sensation of a warm barbiturate liquid, and of course the black silent night — phone off the hook, doors bolted — is the full-blown anodyne. That’s the circadian saga of the ugly life, in brief. When I awaken, I go outside naked. The sun — the perpetual hydrogen bomb — is my shower, and it galvanizes me, it freaks me out. A pirouetting monster emitting guttural expressions of ecstasy in the radiance of the sun …
“What’s a typical day like for me?
“It’s the late afternoon, a married woman in her forties pours the heavy syrup from a can of peaches over her breasts and looks at me. I’m sitting on a chair across the room, critiquing her masochistic poetry. When I say good-bye to her later, it’s night. Under her hot halogen lamp, oil oozes from the pores of her ‘T-zone.’
“ ‘Why wouldn’t you fuck me?’ she asks.
“ ‘I’m married. And I don’t fuck the women I counsel. You asked me to take my clothes off so that you could see my body and I did that. Why don’t you fuck your husband when he gets home?’
“ ‘He’s not coming home tonight and if he was I wouldn’t fuck him. I’m too angry to fuck him.’
“ ‘What are you angry at him about?’
“ ‘He’s cheating on me. It’s in the poems. Couldn’t you figure that out?’
“I shrugged and started putting my clothes back on.
“ ‘How’d you get that scar over your right nipple?’
“ ‘I had an Uncle Jack. He was my mentor; he taught me to be a writer and to be a man. He said that when you write you march through the reader’s mind like Sherman marching to the sea and you burn every neuron and synapse as you go. He taught me a secret style of Kung Fu that’s based on ballroom dancing steps — the Foxtrot, Lindy, Waltz, etc. — but that’s lethal and terrifying. He had a girlfriend, a cocktail waitress at a nightclub. Her name was Adele. One night Jack had to go meet some business associates and he left Adele and me at his place. We were drinking heavily. At some point Adele said that she’d recently read something of mine in a magazine and that she really found the style exhilarating and she asked me if I’d take off my clothes so she could see my body. I said OK. Just then Jack came home. He was drunk. He went for me with his knife. I swiveled around and did a modified mambo step and kicked the knife out of his hand and then did a polka backfist and knocked him cold. Adele screamed, pointing to my chest. Jack had slashed me over my right nipple on his first lunge. That’s the scar story.’
“She walked me out to the carport.
“Her glazed breasts shimmered in the moonlight.
“Someone had spray-painted ‘Death to America!’ on my car.
“Not a pretty sight — especially considering the fact that it was a brand-new 1997 Ferrari Testarossa Spider with less than 100 miles on the odometer — not a pretty sight at all … but then, coronary arteries clogged with atherosclerotic plaque aren’t a very pretty sight either. And that’s where Becker Surgical Devices comes in. Becker Surgical Devices, makers of fine percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty catheter tubes and balloons, is the overwhelming choice of cardiologists across the country. And remember, Becker Surgical Devices is the official balloon angioplasty instrument supplier for Team Leyner.”
“Cut! That was perfect, Mr. Leyner! Absolutely perfect!”