“Sometimes I just get tired of thinking of all the things that I don't wanna do. All the things that I don't wanna be. Places I don't wanna go, like India, like getting my teeth cleaned. Save the whale, all that, I don't understand that.”
Henry, in Barfly (1987)
*****
With Albert serving out his sentence in a prison just outside of DC I was left
again to the daily disconnection of events which seemed, on the surface, to
have meaning and connection yet substantively accumulated as nothing more
than a series of motions.
From the outside I was simply alone. Of course that manifest difference
between being alone and being lonely cannot be determined from the outside,
only by that silent judge on the inside, determining perhaps on pain scale
measurements that indecipherable spot where alone meets lonely and breeds
little animals of paralysing depression. But I never allowed this magical
union.
Instead, as had been the case when Miranda left on the tail of my father
disappearing, I rather welcomed the solitude that Albert's stint in prison
afforded. Not that I had anything particularly profound to accomplish in this
solitude. The simple countermanding of the predominant culture was a
definition I comforted myself with in reading that no definition of reality can
substitute reality itself.
I realised in hindsight that Albert's appearance had lent a background to my
reality, gave a depth to my own consciousness which I hadn't experienced in
years and in his absence, rather than struggle to find a replacement I simply
reverted back to the solitude which begat me.
For several months after Albert was forced off I continued working the same job as a corporate copyist simply out of habit, I suppose. Although the job had
initially given me a vague sense of belonging to something, a sense of
belonging I’d imagined I cold have learned to crave, eventually whatever misguided satisfaction I thought I was deriving from it dissipated, the milk soured, the stomach turned. Instead I began to feel more and more out of place, swimming back and forth in this sea of humanity I found no
connection with.
Albert’s departure and my subsequent resubmergence into the cult of the
solitary replaced satisfaction with restlessness. Once those several months
gave way I began to crave something more stimulating than a mindless dead
end copy boy job, something with even a vague promise of explosive
upwardly movement. Something not even apathy or abnegation could hide behind.
My existence as corporate copy boy might have gone on indefinitely
were it not for these subtle internal abstractions.
At first there were small nuances in my appearance. The shirts were no
longer pressed and instead were flung on to my body with a wrinkled
indifference. The tie I’d choked around my neck now loosened as far from
the collar as possible without actually taking it off.
In this dishevelled state I took to wearing the same pair of pants every day –
the same pair I spent nights out drinking in, slept in, and took off only to shower. Unbeknownst to me, I began to smell somewhat like a vagrant and
although most of my working hours were spent in a room alone, those brief
moments when people came in to drop off documents to be copied were
sufficient to render a series of unusual complaints.
I'd spoken to my "boss", Mr Claymore, less than a half dozen times since
I'd started. There was that first day of work wherein he described to
me to me in excruciating detail, the duties of the job itself, the
functioning and maintenance of the machine, how to order more
supplies, the lunch hour and a few other human resource details such
as holidays and pay days. Other than that, he had little to say to
me and more often than not, I'd simply forgotten he'd existed at all
until one morning when he summoned me to his office for a
discussion.
I didn't have to know much about Mr Claymore that couldn't be sussed
by spending a few moments with him in his office. He was every bit
the corporate sycophant, from his hairstyle to his tie to his facial
expressions and manner of speaking. On his walls were the prototypes
of slogans I'd often glance at hung from the walls of the hallways
of the office; slogans about productivity, team work, common goals,
etc. He spoke in the language of the robot, the brainwashed, the
self-important cog in an unimportant machine. I neither loathed nor
disrespected him in any fashion. He existed, perhaps in the mind of
some, to some utility, but as far as I could tell without knowing
the details of his personal life or his facility with spreadsheets,
he was in short, a man without a soul, a parasitic vulture with
sagging facial features, the jowls and paunch of middle age
self-satisfaction entombed in an existence consumed by numbers which
meant nothing outside of their walls, a marriage that had produced
the requisite number of offspring to no specific conclusion, a man
who took his holidays with his family to the same places every year
at precisely the same time. A man who lived by the book whose pages
he read without ever comprehending.
In short, after a rather embarrassed and hesitant beginning prefaced
with the obligatory niceties and sterile questions about how I was
finding it, he revealed to me after the antipasto of pleasantries that there
had been several complaints about my hygiene of late and that whilst he
would have been willing to ignore these complaints as minor indiscretions
had they been sporadic, whilst capable of turning a blind eye to the stray
complaint since there had never been a complaint about the quality
of my work, the fact was it had become such a problem that
colleagues sent subordinates to deliver the documents to me because
they couldn't stand the smell that had accumulated in my little copy
room over the last weeks.
And then as if on cue the officiousness disappeared, melted away in
a sudden reflux of employee manual compassion and he compelled
himself to enquire of me, this unhygienic little cog occupying a
stale and smelly room within the office he presided over, if there
were any personal problems that needed addressing, if I'd had a
recently traumatic experience, if I were suffering from trouble at
home, etc. As if wanting to found this line of questioning on a new
reality, he couched it carefully with the observation that it wasn't merely
hygiene but complaints that I stunk of booze most days more often
than not. I could tell he was reaching out this olive branch with
great discomfort knowing that he had no casual interest in my
personal life and this unsavoury matter of discussing hygiene and
personal problems with a lowly copy machinist as though we were
discussing philosophy or politics over dinner and an appropriate
wine in the comfortable confines of his family home in suburbia. I
could tell that this was even for him and his vast experience an
unusual set of circumstances he'd been confronted with and whilst
his concern about my personal plight was not genuine he was in fact,
vaguely perplexed with how to go about resolving it short of handing
me a bar of soap, a dry cleaners business card and the date and time
of the nearest AA meeting.
I was equally confused by these sudden turn of events. Those people who
had entered the room I occupied solely to copy their documents, those people
who had smiled passively at me, who had acted civil if not occasionally
friendly, dropping casual lines about the weather or sports, had in fact been
whispering behind my back not only speculating about my character but
openly complaining about my sense of hygiene and that I reeked of the drink
from the night before.
In a sense, it was an unwitting but absurd contradiction to be dressed in
corporate clothing, the very symbols of enslavement and conformity
yet stink as though I were homeless, like those who came in off the
street to bath in the bathrooms of the public library or sleep in
peace in reading rooms and cubby holes. Where was my sheen of
invulnerability? Was it not sufficient to come in on time, do the
job and do it well and leave when expected I wondered with a
self-satisfied smirk.
This was not like the openings discussed in the 150-page book on chess
called Libro del Ajedrez written in 1561 by a Spanish priest called Ruy
López de Segura. This was more akin to his unsporting suggestion that the
pieces be arranged on the board so that the sun would shine in the opponent's
face. And before I would answer Mr Claymore I'd have to determine who
was more uncomfortable with this sudden dissection, myself or him.
I considered a variety of defences; the time-consuming Norwegian
defence wherein my goal would be to eliminate the white bishop or in
this case engage in a long and protracted discourse on the nature of
the fallibility of human kind generally, the Steinitz Defence which
would have surrendered, although not fatally, the all-important
middle of the board such as admitting it was all true and without
proper reason pleading for the moment another chance at hygiene and
sober living or, as I finally decided in the end, the Bird Defence,
the uncommon variation with which I could hope to surprise Mr
Claymore into making uncharacteristic moves, or making a mistake
that would leave him in a vulnerable position.
What I didn’t bother trying to consider was the true motivation for
transforming myself into this unsavoury adaptation, this stinking paen to
impurity, even if I’d been certain of it, was never an option to consider.
Forget the insult burning me like a fraternity brand, that his suburban
sterilised mind could have possibly fathomed the inexplicable vortex that
had swallowed me. I simply didn’t know the true reason. And had I
known, had I regurgitated this knowledge faithfully back into Mr Claymore’s
face, I’d have only made things more confusing. As I was now, a simple
employee with an unusual problem. I sensed we would both prefer a simple
Redaction of previous behaviour with a promise to correct it immediately.
But I wasn't even certain that I cared about the outcome either tactic would
have on my future employment. I became more interested in the kind of
reaction I could extract from this man before me feigning paternal concern, how I might turn the tables, switch sides as the moment suited.
Do you mind if I'm absolutely candid with you Mr Claymore, I began,
inhaling profoundly and wishing I'd had a cigarette prop with which
to aid my performance.
He fell all over himself with platitudes of course, eager to assist
if he could, prepared to refer me to human resources for counselling
if necessary. He was a father after all and I perhaps young enough
to be his wayward son. Whatever ailed me it could certainly be
ironed out, this difficulty will have passed and I, with my
unsavoury smells would be out of his office leaving him to dance
again alone with his spreadsheets, statistics and motivational
slogans.
The truth is Mr Claymore, that my offending smells are a form of
protest.
His eyebrows rose, as the eyebrows are wont to do when the ears are
confronted with a perplexing reality they don‘t want to hear. I'm not entirely sure what you mean, Witold, he began with an uncertainty revealed both in
the sudden nervous gestures of moving papers from one side of his desk
blotter to another and making sure to avoid eye contact whilst
sensing like an animal instinct that what he'd hoped to be a simple
conversation with a simple resolution was suddenly going to go off
the rails into unexplored territory. Protest against what exactly, he asked
carefully.
Here I hesitated, uncertain myself of the direction I planned to
take with this. But rather than giving away the fact I would be
making this up as I went along, my hesitation seemed to reveal my
own apprehension at discussing the matter in detail.
Mr Claymore, for months I have been an anonymous person employed here.
I'm separated from all the other employees in a little window-less room,
I'm never invited to office functions or happy hour festivities with
the other employees, and don't think not only that I don't notice
this slight but that I'm unaffected by it – on the contrary, it has
had a devastating effect on my moral and on my daily living. I feel
utterly worthless and unnoticed in this office, Mr Claymore and I
assure you, there is nothing worse than being left out when all the
others, from the lowliest, fattest, ugliest secretary to the most acne-scarred
post room staff, are included.
This social exclusion has ruined my confidence in myself and the work I do
and although I’ve tried to carry on with my work, I find myself doing so with
increasing difficulty. It is almost too much some days to drag myself here
knowing, day after day, the humiliation of being ignored. I’m nothing here and every day I’m reminded of that. So, I've come to reason, if no one cares about me, why should I care about them? Why should my personal hygiene
matter when I am so insignificant?
I haven't done this maliciously. I’ve done it simply to make myself noticed
because it is unbearably demoralising to spend 8 hours a day in a place where
nobody bothers to notice I even exist.
Oh, these words carried a weight of some kind, I could tell by the
whitening of Mr Claymore's face as he digested them. Now we are
getting somewhere, I thought to myself, something humane, some
degree of revelation that hasn't been prescribed in simple textbook
management formulas.
Or perhaps they were. He played absently with a pen as he nodded his
head in paternal recognition of this ongoing yet unconscious slight.
I'm surprised by what you've told me, Witold. Of course there is no
policy in place to exclude you. Just the opposite, we try to foster
an environment here where everyone feels included and where everyone
feels as though they are part of the team which is working together
to achieve the goals we have set out. I feel terrible that you might
have somehow slipped through the cracks, so to speak, of this
concept of teamwork and inclusion but first of all let me say this
with the caveat that the more appropriate method of addressing your
concerns would have been addressing them to me as they arose rather
than choosing your own, how shall we say it, unorthodox methods.
That is why we have a system in place for addressing grievances so
that such grievances are not allowed to escalate unfettered. On the
one hand I empathise with your feelings of exclusion yet certainly
do not condone the method you've chosen to address those feelings
with. However, that said, I'm glad that we've been able to discover
the root of the problem, so to speak and on behalf of the company
and its staff, allow me first to apologise for any inadvertent sense
of exclusion that was placed upon you.
He exhaled with the exhaustion of a man who thought he'd encountered
every potential problem in the course of his career and knew the
appropriate means of dissecting and resolving it only to discover on
this day a different nuance – one which he would carry home with him
on the commute home, one which he would still mull over even after
he had swallowed his dinner, left his kids to their homework and his
wife to her sitcoms.
Fortunately for all of us, Witold, tomorrow is another day. For my
part, I will have a word with the staff generally, not revealing of
course that the purpose of a refresher speech on employee inclusion
is based solely upon the case of yourself, and then meet with you in
two week's time to discuss the progress of this matter.
For your part Witold, you have to end this protest, by whatever method.
You have to resume acceptable hygienic practices and that if any problems,
similar or otherwise, arise in the interim between tomorrow and our
next meeting, you bring them to my attention before they grow to
unmanageable proportions not only so we can work to resolve the
matter before it worsens but also because frankly, that is the
philosophy by which I'd like to think I manage.
He stood from behind his desk. For today, I would suggest you take
the rest of the afternoon off as personal time and tomorrow morning,
let's say that you will arrive refreshed, so to speak, in all
possible ways. Is that fair, Witold?
I nodded, smiling with the appreciative employee smile as depicted
in the employee manual, and held out my hand for shaking as to test
the limits of his endurance considering, as he must have when
regarding that outstretched hand of mine, where a person who smelled
as badly as I did, might have allowed that hand to roam.
In the end, he pushed his hand forward allowing it to brush briefly against
mine in some effete gesture of completing the deal and I left, free for
the afternoon, which I took as an unscheduled opportunity to drink,
hour after hour, giggling to myself over the absurdity of the entire
experience, imagining the regurgitation of another faux-enthusiastic
speech from Mr Claymore the employees would have to suffer, on the
need for employee inclusion in all social events.
*****
Thereafter, I tried a different tact. Considering that it was no
great mystery why those assistants arriving with their bundles of
documents for me to copy suddenly effused cheerleader-like
enthusiasm for the day, taking care to greet me and ask how my day
was going, the changing weather patterns and minor complaints about
their work loads which was meant to be inclusionary, I made the
added effort myself at not smelling badly albeit moving only one extreme
to the other.
The day after our discussion I brought with me a 4.2 ounce bottle of
cologne, the cheapest I could find in the drugstore and liberally
doused myself and my clothes with it to the point where even I had
trouble breathing comfortably in the copy room. I wanted Mr Claymore
to hear from others the overcompensation with which I had treated
the complaints, much in the same way the other employees
overcompensated for their earlier disregard by plying me with boring
tales of their daily lives.
I patently refused all invitations to go out with others that were
offered, making a face when they offered as though the mere idea of
socialising with them revolted me. I already have plans, I would say
to each and every offer without apology or explanation.
This path of course, was only leading to another meeting in Mr
Claymore's office, which is precisely the next step in this social
experiment that I wanted to take. By now I so loathed the officious
compliance of textbook manual to human behaviour that it was all
I could do to quit on my own, prematurely. What I wanted was nothing
less than to be sacked. I didn't want to resign meekly as
anonymously as I had been taken on to begin with. I wanted stories
to be told about me long after I was gone. I wanted my memory to
linger in theirs as an appropriate epitaph to my career on Park
Avenue because there would be other jobs somewhere down the road, I
knew it, jobs which would bear equal hallmarks of mindlessness and
futility and to endure them, I too wanted a memory to leave with.
*****
So when the appointed meeting with Mr Claymore was scheduled to take
place I was rather disappointed that he was accompanied by the human
resources representative to bear witness to my sacking thereby
eliminating all prospects of yet another shocking yet engaging
conversation with the man himself, to delve into the inner recesses
of his thought process, shock it from regularity into confusion.
Instead, it was a brief and cordial meeting wherein I was informed,
not even by Mr Claymore himself, that we had come to an unfortunate
breach in my career with the company and with two weeks severance
pay in my pocket, I was advised to seek employment elsewhere.
*****
Although true, it had only been on Albert’s suggestion that I sought work in
the belly of the corporate beast to begin with and Albert was of course, in jail,
in the course of the two weeks that followed my dismissal I found myself
inexplicably drawn to taking another stab at the nine to five farce.
You might wonder why, given my adiaphoristic departure from the last
experience, yet I found myself, even in the two week haze that followed
belching out my severance allotment, vaguely viewing want ads in an effort
to stabilise myself.
I rationalised that my desultory efforts under Mr Claymore had never been a
true test of my mettle. After all, despite no tangible experience, I did possess,
thanks to my bilingual parents, a capacity in Spanish and in Polish, something
I became aware in the perusing the want ads, that almost amounted to
marketable skill.
So when I saw an ad for a bilingual paralegal for the Law Offices of Richard
Pennymaker I decided to give it a swing even if my qualifications were solely
the linguistic skills. I knew nothing about law of course and as luck would
have it, I didn’t need to.
Personal injury law was possibly the least demanding of any other area of law.
It required, from the standpoint of a paralegal, a facility for greed, for seeing
the financial possibilities in accidents and the injuries that resulted from them.
Handling such a case was a simple step-by-step process, clearly outlined, that
even a chimp could perform, particularly given that the process itself was
already laid out in simple steps; accident, injury, insurance, treatment and
money. All that was required in between was hand-holding clients and making
sure they sought the treatment their settlements were based upon.
It was ingenious, really. Capitalising on misfortune and compounding it with
exaggeration. All you really required were the accidents themselves.
Thereafter it was only a matter of maintaining the illusion until fruition; the
payout.
Compared to the insipidity of my last place of employment, my interview with
Richard Pennymaker was from the onset, nothing short of a three-ring circus.
You’d have thought even in my fragile state of uncertainty and inexperience
I’d have seen through it all straight away for what it was; a turbid burlesque of
employment but I was desperate to ignore the truth, fascinated instead by the
sheer delirium of it all.
The interview began innocently enough. Yes, it was apparent from the onset
that Pennymaker was deranged in a not-so-subtle yet still socially acceptable
fashion. It was apparent in his vanity – a pathetic state of denial; the comb-
over of greasy, dandruff-ridden greying hair, the belt around the pants so tight
that the fat would seem to explode in all directions if he dared inhale deeply,
the generally vagrant look to his appearance – pleated corduroy pants,
oversized NYU sweatshirt, psychotically shifting eyes, all warning signals
that I chose to ignore.
Instead, we toyed with normalcy, discussing my background, or lack of
background as it were, in matters of personal injury before quickly moving
on to a wide range of topics which had nothing to do with the job or law at
all but more with his manic desire to impress upon me the goodliness of his
nature, the selfless, fading 60s hippy ideologies and the somewhat
incredible admission that he fancied himself some sort of modern day
Robin Hood, taking from the big, bad corporate insurance companies
who were, as he described them, the worst kind of thieves imaginable, and
giving back to the indigenous, the poor, the needy, a tiny pocket of wealth to
help them back on their feet; his beatific destiny.
The interview went on for hours as he told me the history of his crusade, the
indignities he'd suffered at the hands of corporate buffoons and political
tyrants, the dreams which had been snuffed out by the callous indifference
of a controlling society of greedy, lecherous types, all of whom flew the
same sort of corporate flags again and again of indifference for the plight of
the less fortunate. That he profited more than his clients was no roadblock to
this portrayal of selflessness, a token detail which had nothing to do with the
bigger picture.
We were interrupted frequently – the receptionist for important
calls from insurance adjusters, witnesses, new potential clients,
existing clients, doctor's offices, reconstruction experts and
plastic surgeons. A pattern of clients, all of whom had been
scheduled more or less around the same time, brought in, cases
dissected, medical treatments diagnosed, advises dispensed like a
neighbourhood guru to the parasitic.
It didn’t seem to bother him or his clients that they were brought in for these
meetings in the middle of my interview as I was introduced over and over
as a prospective employee, invited to ask questions on cases, all without the
benefit of knowing anything about the legal system whatsoever, save for
what I was trying to digest in between clients.
When one particularly important client arrived unannounced, he
excused himself and brought the receptionist in to replace him.
Alicia was my competency exam, a political refugee from El Salvador
who had been in his employ for a few months. Pennymaker merely
introduced us in his own broken and brackish version of Spanish and
invited the two of us to sit alone in the conference room for a chat
to flesh out my abilities in Spanish.
It wasn't difficult. Frankly, Alicia was one of those barely
literate immigrants of Central Indian descent who had somehow
managed to escape the village she was from and land on her feet in
America. She was terrified of Pennymaker, that much was clear and
had no tangible idea of how or what was expected of her in the
conversation so I took it over myself, pigeon holing her about her
past, the village she was from, her musical tastes, her favourite
foods, what she thought of New York City and America in general,
whether she had a boyfriend (no) or any children (two already),
where she lived, how long she had been working for Pennymaker.
I told her about my mother, romanticised the days excluding the
drinking and the disappearances, the affairs and general neglect with a
zealotry that one might have deemed Pennymakeresque. I was clearly cut
out for this job.
In the end, I befriended her because I thought it would be the
easiest way to win her approval. I flattered her unnecessarily and
ruthlessly, pouring it on thick, relying heavily on a combination of
lyrics from Julio Iglesias to Mercedes Sosa, which were the
backbones of my vocabulary in post-Miranda Spanish, the lovesick
months over women I had never met. In fact, I was quite adept at
spouting beautiful, philosophical phrases about love gone wrong and
heartsickness in general and although it had nothing to do with law
or personal injury, by the time Pennymaker had finally returned some
thirty minutes later, Alicia was like putty in my hands. She gave a
glowing review of my incredible Spanish to Pennymaker as I sat there
admiring my handiwork, not the slightest bit embarrassed or disgusted by
what I had just done. Desperate times after all.
And so this was how I embarked on my odyssey of personal injury law
paralegal slash translator.
*****
Many months later I was content to assess that it was all going quite well, all
things considered. I had steady, disposable income. I had some vague sense of
self-esteem that bordered on self-importance when asked what I did for a
living, no longer mumbling none of your business or what the fuck do you
think I do. I had yet another skin to cover that of the alcoholic, that of
the struggling and hopelessly untalented musician, enough money to
set up the flat in the Lower East Side, go out and try and impress
unimpressionable women, find a group of people to start a band with
and wow the unwowable city with whatever it was I imagined I
possessed.
That is, until Albert showed up again.
*****
Although I'd often sent him odd packages with collections of
non-sequential, unrelated miscellanea discovered in nocturnal walks
through city streets, we hadn't seen one another in nearly two years
since he'd left to pay his debt to society before an early release for what
he called not only good, but exemplary behaviour, teaching the inmates
to read, teaching the guards to appreciate jazz and classical, making his
mark with the best and most efficient laundry press work of anybody
on the block, so he said anyway, in his sporadic yet voluminous
letters to me.
So I was rather surprised as I strode home in my monkey suit
swinging my briefcase which contained nothing but old newspapers, a
flask of vodka, and several emergency packs of Drum, at passers-by
in menacing fashion drawing occasionally hostile stares, when I
spotted Albert sat on the stoop in front of my apartment building, a
Winston dangling from his lip, a pork pie hat perched on his head, a
yellowing neck brace and a cast on his right arm.
What the fuck, I managed to blurt out loudly, stopping in my tracks,
the briefcase hitting me in the back of the knee.
Long story, he muttered, standing up from the stoop and snubbing the
Winston into the side of the sculpted three foot high lion beside
the steps. The lion's head had long since taken on a Dadaesque
melting quality by virtue of years and acid rain and god knows
whatever other kind of abuse it withstood over the years.
I got into a car wreck, riding in a cab in DC, ironically enough. Hit by a
drunk driver, he laughed, half-snorted, looking up at an old woman who was
shaking a rug from a window several stories above the sidewalk.
As it happened, the story spun out over a night of the kind of
debaucheries perfected only by long-lost, beer-swilling mates in a
time of utter black-out.
He had, sure enough, been involved in a car accident not long before
and had suffered a series of minor albeit financially lucrative
injuries as a result.
It's the cash cow – I could almost hear Pennymaker's horrific Jersey
accent grinding into my ears – the cash cow is the knee, he liked to
Pontificate, sitting back in one of his grandiose moments of self-delusion
in his office, hands behind his head and unbearably philosophical -
once you get the knee injury, the torn cartilage, or better, the meniscal tear,
oh, then we've got them.
It was convenient to ignore that because his law firm of two lawyers and a
half dozen paralegals was built upon the worst nickel and dime sorts of
claims; the overblown cervical and lumbar strain, the whiplash, the
headaches, the inability to work, etc., he could only dream about a cash
cow like the knee. He could aspire to the accidental deaths on job sites or
horrific car accidents resulting in permanent disabilities because that kind
of lottery ticket was never going to drop in his lap no matter how many
ambulances we chased, no matter how many ads were done on Spanish
language television stations, how many pink business cards that were
handed out, the big break was not going to happen to a man whose law firm
was a constant threat to collapse entirely from the burden of stupidity and
mismanagement that evolved out of it.
So you've got to take the knee if you can, I explained to Albert
later that night. You've got crap knees already, don't you? Aren't
you always complaining about them aching? Well, here's your chance –
perhaps they'll find some previously undiagnosed tear, some
arthritic change brought on by the vicious impact of the collision.
In any event, you're looking at thousands, maybe tens of thousands.
Albert squinted up at the ceiling, exhaling a draft of smoke from
the back of his mouth and watching it be shot in frenzied directions
by the overhead fan. How long is all of this going to take, he
wondered sceptically, schooled in the no something for nothing
academy. Still, you could see his brain working out the variety of
implications a sudden thrust of income would have on his liver.
Regardless of how long it takes, so long as you play the role
properly and to the hilt, you will get rewarded. And If you need income
before then, well, they're certain to be able to work out some kind
of loan based on your potential settlement as collateral.
Well, my flat is still being sublet so I’ve got no place to stay and yes, my
income has dried out a bit after prison but yes, this sounds like an interesting
development indeed, he mused, rubbing his beard distractedly.
So just like that, it was sealed.
The following morning, I brought Albert with me into the office.
Pennymaker's eyes lit up to see Albert coming in behind me with a limp, a
cast and a neck brace. You couldn't actually see the dollar signs ringing up
in his eyes, but perhaps a fleck of saliva watering his lips appeared like a
miracle vision of jesus on a wall in some third world pueblo.
This is my friend Albert, I began. Hit in a taxi by a drunk driver. No liability
issues, I droned in my now well-practiced facility with the personal injury
world. The only real issue I can see for us to speculate on Richard, are policy
limits. The magic words: policy limits. Otherwise, the sky's the limit.
We went to work immediately, ringing the insurance company with the
policy number, gradually filtered to the claim number. And yes
indeed, broken wrist, cervical and lumbar strain, possible knee
injury. Music to Pennymaker's ears who listened greedily as I spoke
to the adjuster.
The three of us talked numbers in Pennymaker's office as my colleagues filtered in gradually, curious about this new casualty.
Let's say, conservatively, $2,000 for the whiplash, another few
grand for the wrist and the knee…he shouted out to the paralegals
gathered on the edges of the office: Somebody get Dr. Shoenshoin on
the phone, get Albert an appointment, right away.
Dr Shoenshoin was the orthopaedic surgeon we often used for
potential knee injuries.
My god, we could be looking at anywhere between 5-10 grand for the
knee, at least. Policy limits Witold! We've got to get the policy
limits somehow. See how much we can soak these bastids for. He
rubbed his hands over the top of the desk as though caressing a
woman's breasts whilst leaning over her supine, writing body
beneath. Oh, it's the cash cow, he muttered to himself before
snapping out of his reverie and looking up, his eyes glistening with
giddiness, shimmering.
Well boys, Witold's got it from here now. The rest of you, standing
there? What the hell is this? C'mon, c'mon. He clapped his hands
together. Every one out and working! What the hell is this? He
turned to me, shrugging his shoulders. Albert looked at me, grinning
evilly, shrugging his shoulders. I shrugged my shoulders as well.
Now I was the goose that laid the golden egg.
Albert, man – this is the ticket, I murmur as we went outside to the
parking lot for a cigarette before he was off to his appointment
with the orthopaedic surgeon. Not only are you going to make some
good money but you've elevated me in the eyes of that pederast, I
exclaimed.
And sure enough, within a few days, once the initial prognosis of
Albert's knee by Dr Shoenshoin was spectacularly successful –
possible torn meniscus. Possible surgery, months of paid therapy,
ching, ching, ching.
Pennymaker was effusive in his mothering of me thereafter. I was
moved into my own office. A few weeks later, complaining of the
conditions bitterly, having it out in a tirade of ranting bile for
every one to hear. Spoiled and pampered and demanding attention like
an open wound. Admittedly, I was hung over, skittish and anxious to
jump over the edge.
But Pennymaker, grateful for this unexpected windfall that held his
focus day in and out ever since Albert's arrival, silenced me
quickly and conspiratorially with his rodent voice – We're just
going to have to get you a secretary…
Pennymaker had a knack for creating turnover. Employees came and
went in cameo employment appearances. Half of his days were spent
just interviewing new perspective employees. He fired people at
the drop of a hat, humiliated anyone showing the vaguest sign of
weakness, habitually hired people after hours and hours of interviews that
interloped with client meetings, telephone calls, newspaper reading,
speechmaking, autobiographying.
Rumours had long gone around the office that Pennymaker preferred younger
men to women, despite the number of women he hired and fired, who he
barely noticed other than to berate them. It was his interviews with the young
male graduates beecame embarrassing at times, little more than extended
dates. The air was thick with a fetid sort of sexual harassment as Pennymaker
hired certain younglings, barely out of college and those of us still around the
next day were left to watch a stumblingly untalented neophyte delicately fend
off the advances of Pennymaker who would spend days with the new boy,
"training" him closely, until inevitably, by the end of the day, he'd raise his
arms in frustration and say ah hell, you're too goddamned stupid to work
here. Get out! Get the fuck out!
And then Pennymaker would sulk for a few days in his office, refuse
to see clients, showing up for only half days, sometimes looking as
though he'd just rolled out of bed into the office, slipping on the
same mangy corduroys tightly belted so the rolls of fat pinched out
underneath some grease stained sweatshirt or a dress shirt that was
two sizes too small and clung to him like a baby – all the fat
oozing out from every direction.
You had to wonder about a guy like him. Something sinister and dark.
*****
Pomifer autumnus fruges effuderit, et mox Bruma recurrit iners." –
Horace Odes, Book IV: Autumn, bringer of fruit, has poured out her
riches, and soon sluggish winter returns…
From the Diaries of Witold Kazmersky, cahier one, p 100
The excitement of Albert's arrival, the elevation of my status in
the Law Offices of Richard Pennymaker and even night after night
going out to see jazz bands and hone our visions, hear poets give
open readings and rehearsals with my saxophone and Albert's newly
acquired bass were all conspiring to dull my nerves.
The first issue of course, was Albert himself, who did nothing for
months but attend physiotherapy sessions, limp back to the apartment
and drink the cases of beer I lugged back on his suggestion most
nights after sweaty subway rides with the armpits of humanity stuffed in my
nose and a full day of work under my belt. From the onset I’d offered to
share my flat with his since he was subletting, if only to keep an eye on his
and my investment, to keep him from doing anything to fuck up our payday.
It didn't bother me that he brought little or no money in precisely because
this was an investment – splitting the proceeds of what was bound to be in
the neighbourhood of 25 grand, even after Pennymaker took his cut, once
the case was settled. It didn't bother me that his knee was still too prone to
go out and lug a case or two of beer back on his own or drop a bag of
garbage out the window on to the street curb with steady aim at three in the
morning when there were few passers-by along the sidewalk. It didn't bother
me that he didn't cook or clean – I wasn't much in the habit of myself quite
frankly.
Nor did it bother me that every evening upon my return there was a heavy
pall of smoke in the living room, CDs lying around in a disc jockey chaos,
newspapers and magazines strewn over every available empty space
between seat cushions, overflowing in the bathroom, on top the television
and the stereo – because that's how Albert spent his free time, reading,
plucking at the bass as he leaned, using it like a crutch for his gimpy knee,
chain smoking, inventing new expressions like “Hey Witold, we’re out of
beer”, or “Hey Witold, maybe you might go out and grab me a few packs of
smokes? Put it on my tab….“ that, and of course, drinking beer.
The elevated status at Pennymakers grew dull once the excitement of
Albert's case wore off and it was back to the every day soap operas
unfolding with Pennymaker's ever-fluctuating and evolving obsession
with young male graduates flowed in and out of the office and his
knowledge that secretaries and receptionists were equally
replaceable, all birdbrains in his repertoire, flushing them out of
existence almost as soon as we'd become accustomed or even sometimes
enamoured with.
And while it had been little more than a year squired away under the
constant scrutiny and back-stabbing, I no longer felt that itch of
working to scratch, especially knowing that once Albert's pay day
spilled forth, so did mine and that it was unlikely in any event
that I could withstand the daily uncertainties and chaos for much
longer without seeing it ooze like untreated sewage through the
streets of my subconscious, invading my nightly rituals and sullying
everything else being constructed around it.
I knew instinctively that once that payday had been cashed in there
was little else left to keep me there under such primitive
circumstances although what I planned on doing in lieu of it –
returning to hit and miss jobs with contractors, dead end temporary
assignments or bartending in pockets of hovel humanity – was left
unassigned for later duty where I was busy imagining any number of
possible scenarios that inevitably involved kicking up a great storm
and leaving.
What bothered me in the end was simply the lack of space.
Although the flat had once been sufficient for the likes of my
parents and myself despite my having to sleep on the pull-out sofa
in the living room growing up and study at the kitchen table with
the distraction of my mother preparing dinner around me, both Albert
and his double bass were too big a presence in the room once he had
taken it over.
In The Odd Couple, one guy is a slob and the other has a cleaning
fetish. In The Even Couple, the sitcom Albert and I were playing out
every night, I would arrive home flush with the spoils of the liquor
store, pick up the empty tins of takeaway and deliveries stuffing
them all into a bin heaving with empty beer bottles and crushed
empty packets of former cigarettes, knock off the ridiculous shirt
and tie act and the two of us would head out for the evening with
the laugh track roaring in our ears.
It doesn't matter who you're with whether it's a long time mate, partner,
girlfriend, lover, relative, Wall Street financial advisor, whatever, if you
spend every waking hour in their presence and half of those waking hours
are further spent nailed away in some dodgy dive bar peeling away beer
after beer to find intoxication waiting underneath, eventually you tire of the
presence. Eventually you begin to notice the habits and the quirks
of the other and while you were once intrigued by the novelty of
discovery, once they'd been discovered, they seemed to play over and
over relentlessly repetitive, repeated annoyances growing to
grievances to too much truth talking in too many loud bars in
between laying bad lines on princesses sipping cocktails who
couldn't hear you over the music if they wanted to anyway.
Once the annoyances begin piling on they become like an inner city
grime you can never fully wash from the windows that cloud your
vision of the view as though you were suddenly suffering a mild form
of cataracts and knowing you were gradually going blind.
Gradually, the hints were dropped like carpet-bombing silences
afterwards. Instead of coming home I'd stop off directly after work
still caked in my suit and tie loosened then pissed then stumbling
home with a takeaway, the lights and smoke blinding once in the
flat, stumbling further into bed with the takeaway perched on my
chest, snoring fitfully into the morning. Other times I'd come home
and he'd already be out, sometimes a note of where he might be
headed, sometimes a nothing which was meant as a message of
something.
Either way, we began to avoid one another as many days as possible,
endeavouring to create space between us before eventually filling it
back up again with consecutive nights rehearsing in the flat, the
banging on the walls from neighbours until gradually relenting, back
to sitting in the living room, drinking more beer, eating more
takeaway, reading passages from magazines and library books which
were never returned.
We were waiting out the end of a prison sentence. We both knew that
the settlement which was to come would liberate us and it was all we
could do to mark off the days on the calendar in black circles
filled in with sinister dollar signs, waiting, purgatory.
Gradually we got around to talking about the spoils as though it
were some dirty, unspoken truth between us that had to be gotten off
our chests.
The rehearsing going on hadn't been entirely in vain or delirious. I
felt like I owed to my father and this particular flat and all those
nights he and my mother had listened to records or my mother sat
quietly sipping rum whilst my father played private concertos for
the two of us.
I dreamt often of being in clubs – perhaps because Albert and I were
in so many of them night after night showing up in cheap jazz clubs,
Playing the jazz of students and unknowns, up and comers, fading
downers and never would be's. I dreamt of playing alongside my father
on stages all over the city, polkas and jazz blending in with calypsos and
salsas, spinning into bottles and spinning back out again into the faces of
my mother over the years, hair up, hair down, with and without mascara,
in happiness and in health, sadness and poverty, emptiness and sullen and
later like the fat peasant woman in Diego Rivera's La Molendera, before
finally disappearing altogether and my father no longer beside me on stage,
playing to the fishes in the East River or swept out into the
Atlantic and then Albert with his stand up base, pork pie hat, head
down in concentration, unlit Winston perched on his lip, loud
Hawaiian shirt with camouflage pants and jack boots and there I was
beside him back in the flat going line over line again, stopping and
starting, snorting and laughing through rehearsals as though living
out a piece of what this flat and my father never lived long enough.
No matter where or in what state we played in over those months, one thing
we could tell ourselves is that we weren't very good in particular although in
the abstract we were almost plausible.
And because the last month had been one long cold spell and we were
cooped up in my little flat breathing in each other's chain smoking and viruses, it was Albert's idea, once he sensed he was wearing out his welcome,
that the two of us should take out musical act on the road,
somewhere in the distant spectacle of Europe.
Why not indeed, he liked to stammer. We don’t need some cross country
porno film cabinet masturbation of the great American dream bustling
through the urban sprawl and dull poetic landscapes of Midwestern
nothingness.
What we need, Witold, is a completely different venue, a new dream, a
makeshift reality of ever-fluctuating backgrounds we can never be trapped in,
a series of random places where no one will know us, however good or bad
we become. What we need is Europe, Witold. A place we can run and hide,
a place we can discover our roots, some of them anyway. A place enthusiastic and curious about our strange musical compositions.
And I’ll tell you, the timing couldn’t be better. The Euro 2000, the championship of European football, is being co-hosted this summer by Holland and Belgium, home of my own ancestors. We’ll absorb the mania of a football tournament for a few weeks as a background study and then,
conquer Europe with our mesmorising tribut to the audacity of musical
visionaries.
I had to admit, it seemed like an appealing plan at the time. We often roused ourselves early on Saturday mornings just to go to a pub that showed English football league matches, we knew how football went hand in hand with
drinking beer, a lovely subliminal excuse, and we could use the tournament as
a whirlwind to toss ourselves from before embarking on a great European
musical tour. Sponsored of course, by the settlement of a personal injury
claim.
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