Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas
Now, at six a.m., your eyelids as heavy as rubber bumpers but your transmission too jarred and jangled (and conditioned by the brokerage business) to let you rest, you bounce out of bed and patter to the window, through which you notice with mild surprise that the rains have returned.
SIX-FIFTEEN A.M.
The rains have returned. The runaway sky, as though connected by a bungee cord, has been yanked back to earth, where peaks are perforating its bladder and ridges are wringing out its glands. Your building is surrounded by the soft, the gray, and the moist, as if it is being digested by an oyster.
This is Seattle, the brief, bright spring has stalled, and the rains have returned. They have stolen down from the Sasquatch slopes. They have risen with the geese from the marshes. It rains a chattering of totem teeth. It rains a sweat lodge of ancient vapors. The city, with its office towers and electricity, has been somehow primitivized by the rain: every hue darkened, every wheel slowed, every view foreshortened, every modern, commercial mind-set turned in on itself, forced to rub shoulders with the old salamander who sleeps in the soul. Hour after hour, the rain will fall; apartments, decorated to be showplaces, will take on the character of burrows or nests; and espresso carts, the little pumping stations of Seattles lifeblood, will glow beneath their umbrellas like the huts of shamans. Drops spiral from every cornice, every antenna, every awning. Drops glisten on each plate-glass window, each tailgate, each inch of neon that sizzles in the mist. Dense, penetrating, and modifying, the rain narrows the gap between nature and civilization. Forgotten longings stir in the crack.
You read somewhere that in Botswana, the word pula means both money and hello. You like that arrangement. Whenever you meet somebody, you say money, and they say money back. What a happy greeting! How honest and to the point! You read, further, that pula also may be translated as rain. Thats nice, too. Pennies from heaven, so to speak. Old Botswanans knowing its going to rain because their wallets get stiff. And never a need to save for a rainy day. Staring into the sheet music of precipitation, you try to think of it as cascading cash, yet you remain at least partially aware that somewhere out there, not many blocks away, failed businessmen and their families are taking refuge from the weather beneath freeway ramps and in cardboard shacks. Maybe money would be better expressed by aloha than by pula. In each hello an implied good-bye.
As for the rain, it manifests all of alohas ambiguity and then some. Rain is protective in ways that the seemingly more affectionate sunshine can never match. It dims the monsters glare, dampens the dragons fire. But like the pockets of a drowned sailor, it can conceal disintegrating packets of forbidden opiates and any number of rusty knives.
You brew a latte, pull on a robe-with the wetness there has come a chill-and return to the window to stare some more. AndrEs aquaphobic, you think. Maybe the downpour will send that darn beast home. All that comes home to you, however, are those strange old longings. The ones you thought your financial goals had long ago replaced.
Sears, Philip Morris, Merck, General Electric, you commence to chant. But the magic words have little power against the rain.
NINE -TEN A.M.
Q-Jo Huffington loves the rain. She considers Seattles prevailing meteorological mode a refreshment, a benediction. It blesses the brows of those who brave it and makes the little mushrooms grow. She persists in her belief that the Northwest rains not only nurture and renew, but consecrate and sanctify, even though she is privy to reports of withering acids in the raindrops. You regard the contradiction as one more example of her proclivity for self-delusion, although you must admit that even the holy water sprinkled on christened infants is teeming with microbial life that, when magnified, is as fierce-looking as wolverines, yet does less harm than good.
A resumption of rainy weather after a dry spell is one of the few things that can pull Q-Jo out of bed before nine in the morning, and you are hoping that it has roused her today, that it has piped her from the sordid sheets in which she undoubtedly has been wallowing. So firmly do you expect her within the hour that moving to the computer, you are able to concentrate with reasonably pellucid focus on ammonias that might jolt the money gods from their swoon.
The rich, from whose scroll your name is inconceivably and infuriatingly missing, maintain that a nice, forceful slashing of the capital gains tax is the tonic the comatose economy requires, although Sol Finkelstein et al. contend that such a move would serve only to widen the moats around the palaces. There was a time when a cut in interest rates by the Federal Reserve could be counted on to stimulate borrowing and thus increase consumption, but like the flourishes of an aging arthritic magician, that sleight-of-hand has become so creakily obvious that only the myopic in the audience are fooled anymore.
There are those -largely the marginal and uninformed-who blame the budget deficit for everything, but insiders such as you know full well that the Treasury could simply print stacks of fresh new money-a vision of such loveliness that it wets your eyes-and wipe out the deficit overnight. The fly in that green ink is that the good old worn money would no longer be worth as much, and the palace moats would constrict, perhaps to a width that could be vaulted by the more spring-loaded in the middle class (among whom you, so taut of calf, would have to be counted), and since the Mint is in the julep of the wealthy, you will not hold your breath until it cranks up the presses.
A far bigger problem is Americas short end of the trade stick. Many are the steps that Congress and the President could take to restore the balance of trade, but every single one of them would rub turpentine into the rectum of some sector or another of the voting public, and by now, all but the terminally naive are aware that politicians, almost without exception, are more interested in reelection than in a daring rescue of the nation. Truly powerful Americans are multinational anyhow, and have been for decades, so what do they care? You cant blame them. You just wish you had a villa in Tuscany to which to repair. The Bahamas. Anywhere. Short of Timbuktu. What had taken a financial professional to that distant outpost? you wonder. For a second. Jesus, your mind must be a morbid thing to bring him up again. As if to exorcise Mr. Diamond, you shake your head until a single hair, decidedly gray, breaks loose and flutters to a landing on the computer keyboard, where it lies like a strand of Medusa vermicelli across the A, the S, the D, and the F.
Well, girl, you cannot afford a haven in a foreign paradise, and lots of luck convincing Belford Dunn to desert his native land in its hour of need. None of the aforementioned remedies are likely to be applied, and if they were, they probably would be too little, too late, the ladder to the moon having already toppled. So what is the solution? The solution, you think, is war.
Yes, why not? You type in war (knocking the errant hair aside as you strike the A), and watch the word shimmer like a line of phosphorescent battle dust on the PC screen. As you understand it, the United States has been operating under a wartime economy since 1941. With the end of World War II, there were those who feared a resumption of the Great Depression, and some who reasoned that an ongoing military state was an excellent way to control both the American populace and foreign competitors, so instead of beating our swords into plowshares, we invented a new enemy-the downtrodden, depleted, but godless Soviet Union-and devoted our capability to making bigger and better swords. This history lesson came to you, you must confess, by way of your dad and his radical pothead pals and thus should be totally discredited, except that this morning you are finding a hempseed of truth in it. Nobody can deny that in our national security society, with a defense industry smoking around the clock, we prospered. For a while. But a wartime economy, sucking up tax dollars like a thousand-foot teenager sucking up sugar and grease, can flourish for only so long in peacetime. Eventually, growth in productivity dropped, the competitiveness of industry declined, wages stagnated, the once-steady rise in living standards turned tail, and underfunded non-military priorities such as education, health care, and environmental protection went to hell. Meanwhile, the defeated n
ations of Germany and Japan, by ignoring the military and concentrating on the manufacturing of civilian goods, began kicking our butts from factory gate to bank door; and, despite a few financial setbacks of their own in the early nineties, are kicking them still. Nobody can deny that, either. Someday, perhaps, by shifting emphasis we can revitalize our peacetime industries to the point where we can skin cats with the best, but that is long-term. Short-term, the stock market is lying in a pool of blood, and your Porsche is hiding in the bushes from the repo man. Short-term, the only way to stimulate a pulse in this flatline victim is to crack another vial of war under its nostrils.
Is it so farfetched? Certainly, the President would have no moral qualms about it. Wartime presidents are more popular than Santa Claus, and this one is aching to be reelected. As for an enemy, there is hardly a shortage of attractive candidates. Now that the U.S.S.R. is gone, most of them are rather fish in a barrel, but they might hold out against us long enough to raise significantly the juice level in our pitcher; and, who knows, one of them could prove as worthy an opponent as North Vietnam. To do you much good, however, war, or the imminent threat of war, would have to materialize with giddy haste. By Monday morning, to be exact.
Okay, you realize that that prospect is about as likely as one of your clients phoning to thank you for the tireless effort you put into separating them from their life savings, but nevertheless, in a move characteristic of your girlish optimism, in a move that frankly is several kilometers south of rational, you sort of absentmindedly switch on the shortwave band of your radio-just to check, casually to be sure, hope against hope, if there are any ominous growlings on the international scene.
What you receive is a great deal of static, an indication that the solar flares-or whatever has been responsible for the cosmic interferences of the past few days-are still raging. At one point on the band, you momentarily intercept a clear transmission, but it turns out to be the scores from the East Indian Basketball Association. The Bengal Tigers have defeated the Singapore Slings, the Bombay Gin and the Black Holes of Calcutta are tied in overtime, and the Madras Shorts have moved out in front of the Kashmir Sweaters. The Poona Tang did not play.
TEN-FIFTEEN A.M.
Standing at the window again, still in your robe, you watch raindrops wriggle like daydreaming tadpoles down the pane. They seem perfectly healthy, perfectly formed to you. One round head. One tapered tail. Translucent as you please. Standard issue. Right out of the manual. If they are mutated by contamination, they wear it well. Besides, you would venture that acid rain is good for the environment. Isnt industry part of the environment?
In waves, orchestrated by the wind, drops dash themselves against the window, where they surrender their antic wildness, their whiplash abandon, their sea-bullet roulette, to join the zendo of daydreamers sliding in a slow, soft, wriggly meditation toward the puddle of being, the watery nimbus around the soul. The rain produces a sound that is somewhere between finger-drumming (your father at the lunch table, impatient for his adobo?) and the mumbly marriage bed conversation that every child in the house strains to catch. Is there meaning in its nuances, is it what remains of an Ur language once spoken by the common ancestor of humans and dolphins; or are the raindrops no more than extras mouthing rutabaga, rutabaga on the set of a movie whose script they havent been privileged to read? You are listening to the rain more carefully than you ever have, harder than someone in your position and with your goals ought, when the mood is shattered, thank goodness, by the loose-hubcap-on-a-UFO sound of the telephone.
Q-Jo at last! You feel it. You know it. No doubt about it. She may be calling from her unit down the hall, from the pay phone at the Dog House after a pork chop breakfast, or from the quarters of that broken-down ex-broker who quite likely has taken advantage of her Winnebago silhouette, her voluminous unappeal to the normal male, to visit his most disgusting urges upon her. The source of the call is inconsequential. What matters is that it is she, and that that portion of your mind given over to anger and concern about her can now be cleared for more productive activity. Moreover, once she has endured your tongue-lashing, she can satisfy that itsy-bitsy twinge of curiosity you have concerning the altered tarot card and the other oddities that have afflicted your orderly life of late. At the very least, Q-Jo will lend a sympathetic ear to an account of your humiliating attack downtown last night, and she may well lead you to accept it with a kind of fatalistic grace. Though she cares little about the tragic accidents disabling your career, cynical as she is regarding profit and profiteers, she will prove fiercely protective of your physical health and vindictive toward whatever or whomever has endangered it.
You are feeling almost sisterly as you lift the receiver, the embarrassment of your association with her displaced momentarily by a geyser of relief. But it isnt her. It isnt her! You can hardly believe it. You are beside yourself. It isnt Q-Jo, its Belford.
Hi, honeykins. Sorry I didnt phone earlier but Ive been trying to track down the French consul general. I found out hes gone to the Napa Valley for the weekend, to some winery or something, and I was getting ready to rent a car and drive up there, and then it occurred to me that my little rascal could possibly have come home. He pauses expectantly. The expectant pause is so large that were it a house, Christ and all twelve disciples could live there, although Judas Iscariot would probably have to sleep on the sun porch. The expectancy, though silent, is so tremendous and insistent that you refuse out of spite to respond to it, and when Belford finally speaks again, panic, like an opera of termites, has undermined his voice. He squeaks worse than you, his beloved, when he asks, There isnt bad news, is there?
Good grief, Belford! Are you kidding? There isnt anything but bad news. Are you living in a pumpkin or something? You fumble for the rheostat to dim your vexation. If youre talking about AndrE, and I assume you are since thats the only damn thing that makes any difference to you, no, theres no bad news. No good news, either. Everythings the same as when you left, at least it is where your apes concerned.
You sound upset.
Me? Upset? Where did you get that idea? Have you been puffing on one of those San Francisco dope sticks? I bet you have. I bet… .
Gwen! Honey. What is it?
Whats what? Everythings perfectly hunky-dory. Just another day in the life of a fool, to quote from the wisdom of the East. So. Why dont you go sober up, and if I run into AndrE, Ill have him call your hotel. Bye.
As you slam the receiver down, you mutter, Bozo! And for some inexplicable reason, it makes you laugh out loud.
TEN-THIRTY A.M.
Something has changed. You have changed. Your dad told you once that Dizzy Gillespie sat on his trumpet and bent it, accidentally creating an instrument that transformed his career. Change can occur that fast. Snap! Ouch! And the next thing one knows, one is blowing a whole new tune. Something about the telephone call, the disappointment of the call, the Bozo that slipped out at the end of the call, the last straw of it, as it were-something ordinary yet indefinite, mundane yet mysterious, silly yet profound, something tiny but very, very pure, has happened, and you may never be the same.
Nature, supposedly, rewards energy and aggression. Well, you have been energetic and aggressive enough for five, and where has it gotten you? Perhaps it was a matter of improper alignment. Your horn was always pointed dead ahead when it ought to have been crimped a little toward the ceiling. And now… . This is idle speculation, mind you, this is fancy. Should anyone doubt, however, that you are in an unusual mood, they need only to observe the manner in which you tear off your robe and pajamas and pull a tight black dress on over your unwashed body-not even any underwear!-the spontaneity with which you paint your lids and lips, and the steady gleeful arrogance with which you punch in Larry Diamonds number.
If youre calling to whine about the market, his recorded voice responds, rumblings and crashes in the background, youre not going to get any sympathy here. Did you really expect that a culture that believes the Second Co
ming is right around the corner, sucking on a breath mint and straightening its tie, could have the long-range vision or the long-term will to sustain a superpower economy? You guys are truly amusing. He cackles like a mechanical magpie laying a barbed-wire egg.
You gulp once and blink twice, surprised both by the content of the recording and that there is a fresh recording at all, but your nerve holds, and after the beep you say, Listen up. This is Gwendolyn Mati. I want to speak with Q-Jo Huffington, and I want to speak with her pronto. If shes not in touch with me in ten minutes, Im contacting the police. Your voice is sawtoothed with determination, although to be perfectly frank, you are still an octave or two away from sounding quite adult.
While you wait, you select a pair of black pumps and the handbag du jour. Into the latter, you pour the contents of yesterdays bag, minus the stupid Nommo card, of course, which is now back in Q-Jos deck where it belongs. You flick on CNN, and sure enough, the news pertains to the financial crisis. News is probably too strong a word for it. It is primarily conjecture about how the market might behave on Monday, assuming the SEC allows it to open on Monday. If it doesnt open Monday, then when will it open? one expert asks. If we wait until conditions significantly improve, it might not reopen in our lifetime. The tone is less than merry. But at least no one on CNN is blaming the crash on Christian dogma.