Allbright was shouting: ‘The Mormons, they got a big goddamn computer out in Salt Lake City, counting up the souls — they got it made, see? Because you know who’s gonna get into Heaven? I’ll tell you who, the big insurance companies, the government, the credit card companies, the Pentagon, all going to Heaven! Everybody that gets control of the magic numbers, that’s who!’
Dr Tarr began filling his pipe. ‘Yes there could be something in that, the psionic effect of complex machines, pure complexity…’
‘I know.’ Mr Vitanuova winked. ‘Like they say, garbage in, garbage out. And I know garbage.’
Ben Franklin thrust his face between them. ‘Listen, has anybody seen the white-haired woman? She was here a minute ago holding this little robot mascot thing, anybody…?’
Next he tried the two critics, who shrugged and went on reading:
The paintings of EDD MCFEE, though superficially identical (each being a 1 cm square of Bohème 0085 Violet centred on a 74 cm square white ground) draw their individuality from the time and locus (solely determined by random numbers) in which they were painted. No. 1, Juryroom Trout, was painted at 3 a.m. GMT on May 2, 1979, at an exact location in the Sahara, for example (2°W, 29°N). Yet McFee’s work, while rigorously Conceptualist in performance, manages at the same time to defy the canons of that limited and uncongenial mode. A bold form, an unexpected colour — these interact to both direct and keep pace with his concept, welding precision of thought to plasticity of expression in a carefully orchestrated equation of space/time. It is, moreover, a transcendental equation. Form is embedded in time, space in colour, design becomes discovery. The result, a reified Conceptual-ism, displaces the traditional stylized ‘thought-experiment’ with a new, holistic approach. Performance is redeemed by object. His aim, then, is to…
‘His aim,’ said the taller critic, ‘is to produce some hard goods collectors can buy, without feeling they’ve been ripped off even when they have.’
‘You playing this one down, then?’
‘Hell no, Mr K. shoots a grand an inch for a good review…’
Edd McFee, looking dapper even in his Army fatigues, was talking to the woman in the Abbott & Costello t-shirt when Ben approached.
‘What old lady? Naw, I never seen her, ask, ask somebody else… now like I was saying, Carrie, religion is fine, like it’s a deep one-to-one interpersonal relationship with Somebody, sure that’s what everybody wants. Only as an artist I got this problem: I can create but I can’t really love, see? So what I’m looking for is a woman to have a deep interpersonal relations with, I mean relationship with…’
Ben Franklin tried to ask the fraternity boys, but they had begun to sing. There was no one else to ask but the waiters and that guy with the birthmark. But the waiters were busy packing up, and the guy with the birthmark was sitting on the floor playing with pieces of mirror. Ben took a last glass of champagne and, standing alone, tried to arrange his face in a nonchalant expression. He pretended to look at the nearest painting, though in fact he failed even to notice that someone had defaced it (adding to the small purple square a large black moustache). ‘…garbage out,’ said Allbright. That’s profound, you know?’ Dr Tarr giggled. ‘In vino, veri true.’ ‘Right. The C-charged brain, the C-charged…’ Lyle Tate picked up two pieces of mirror and held them so that he could see himself perfected, the dark blaze gone, his face become a bright symmetrical mask. The smile was slightly V-shaped, but so much the better, he thought, murmuring, ‘…animal lamina… burn, rub… th’ gin forests, er, of night…’ and finally, ‘Eye sees tiger dreg, it sees eye…’ as the howling chorus crashed about him.
XII
Miss Borden unreeled a gold chain with a tiny ballpoint pen at the end. ‘Okay Bill, spit it out.’
‘Shouldn’t you see the boy yourself first?’
‘He’s off today. Mr Wood’s taking him to the city I guess for some eye tests, anyway you have observed him?’
‘Yes, well no not in a direct observational, more in a peripherally informalized situ—’
‘You’ve seen him in the hall, I know. Go on.’
‘Yes, contacted him a few times in the hall and elicited a response or two, nothing def—’
‘How’s his reading?’
‘Reading skills, yes he did say he was having trouble with this new reader Mrs Dorano assigned.’
She marked on the yellow form. ‘Reading problem. I was afraid of that, now how does he get along with other kids?’
‘Socially he’s, there seems to be a nomenclatural mixup there, some difficulty with meaningful involvement in the cultural mainstream… maybe an identity crisis even; other kids keep calling him a robot you know? And when I asked him why, he said, “Because I am a robot.”’
She shook her head. ‘All too familiar these days, schizoid pattern: usually parents both work, kid’s alone too much—’
‘Divisive destructuring of the ego conceptualiza—’
‘That’s right. I ought to send him to George for a battery, I mean a battery of reassessment tests, only right now George has a pretty full case-load over at the junior high, you know what with that Russian roulette club—’
‘I imagine. How is the Vulich boy by the way?’
‘As well as can be expected, understand his parents are seeking a court order to have the machine turned off — where were we?’
‘Think we ought to do something, this Wood boy told me he dreams of skulls and scissor trees…’
‘Well sure, I’ll try to get George to fit him in, otherwise we’ll just have to let him go on thinking he’s a Martian — yes, at least we can send him to Ms Beek for some remedial, hand me one of those green forms will you, Bill? No, the leaf green ones…’
The new eye cost Pa and Ma a lot of money, but at least he could go right back to school. The other kids seemed glad to see him, even Chauncey.
Roderick couldn’t figure Chauncey out at all. Whenever they were alone, the bigger boy called him ‘Rick’, treated him like a pal, and even shared stuff with him, as now:
‘Hey Rick, wanna see some real dirty pitchers?’
‘Dirty?’
‘Yeah I found ’em in old Festy’s desk. And these really neat binoculars too, only Billy keeps ’em at home, me and him take turns with ’em. Here, take a look.’
He pulled up his sweater and fished out a dog-eared magazine, Stud Ranch. Hiding behind Ogilvy’s security hut in the corner of the playground (Ogilvy was never in it) they turned the pages and stared at pictures of people without clothes.
‘Hey looka that, wow!’
‘Yeah wow, but how come—’
‘Look, looka that! Boy they sure do weird stuff out West.’
A pair of people were wrestling like Bax and Indica. ‘Hey is it dirty because like this they wrestle on the ground or—?’
‘Naw, dirty is dirty, you know like sexy. Dincha never play doctors or nothing?’
Roderick said, ‘Sure, plenty of times. Once.’
‘Okay then. See this is how they get babies.’
‘This? With all this, these whips and spurs, this barb wire—?’
Chauncey hesitated. ‘Well sure. Must be, look it probably tells all about it here—’
‘Lemme see.’
Whoa there! While Calamity Jayne shucks her buckskins to saddle up for some bunkhouse fun, Miss Kitti is ‘bound’ to please some lonesome cowpoke. But what’s Brazos gonna do with thet there branding iron?