Maybe tipi is the preferred word.
What are you talking about?
Twister refers to his flat as his tipi. This could be irony, or it could be corn. Hard to tell with an Indian. Thunder House consists of two flats. His and mine.
Adjoining? Does he have access to yours?
Affirmative on both counts. Diamond is smiling like the Ma in Look, Ma, no hands: pleased but apprehensive. You know, Gwendolyn, you have a natural talent for interrogation. With a couple of bad breaks, you could end up a Republican lawyer.
You shrug. That would certainly be preferable to nursing. How well do you know this Native American?
Diamond signals the waiter, orders you a drink. In the process, he attracts the attention of one of the men at the bar-a broker from PaineWebber if youre not mistaken-who trundles toward your table with a question, about the ability of oil companies to unload industry-specific assets if the credit crisis worsens, forming like a petroleum bubble on his lips. Diamond waves him away. Oil! he snorts. How quaintly old-fashioned.
Since you personally own a hundred shares of Exxon, worth approximately a third what you paid for them, you are anxious to pursue the subject. Obviously, if the dollar continues to decline as the worlds reserve currency, therell be even greater reductions in U.S. oil imports, but—
Let me tell you about Twister, Diamond interrupts. Speaking of oil. His Comanche name is Tornado Warning. For business purposes, he went by the name of Tory Warren, but one of his associates, it mightve been me, nicknamed him Twister. In the eighties, he sold drilling rights in Oklahoma to some paleface outfit and moved to Seattle with a half a mil in his jeans. His fathers a famous Comanche medicine man, and this change of venue didnt sit too well with papa. But the young buck did okay in the big city. Quite fortuitously, I became his investment adviser, and I made him a ton of wampum in the market. A ton of wampum. He was homesick, though, he missed Oklahoma, and one of the things he missed most was the thunderstorms. Driving back from the Ballard Locks one day, where hed gone to watch the annual salmon migration, he noticed the sign for the Thunderbird Bowl and stopped in on a whim. Turns out the bowling noises actually did remind him of thunder, and he took to hanging out there, although he never bowled a frame. And one day, he up and bought the place.
Twister owns the bowling alley?
He owns the bowling alley and one other thing. Thats what Im getting at. He converted the basement into living quarters so he could lie in bed and listen to thunder in the sky, the way he used to do on the Plains. At the price, I didnt think it was much of an investment, but joys always more important than juice. Or do you disagree? There was space in Thunder House for two large apartments, and when he offered to rent one of them to me, I felt like that guy in the movies, you know, the only white man the natives trust. I was residing in a motel room on Aurora Avenue at the time, so any way you sliced it, Thunder House was a step up. When they introduced all-night bowling, however, my Zs turned into Xs. Lost a fair amount of beauty sleep before I adapted. I used to be considered dashingly good-looking.
By whom, you think, biker chicks whose boyfriends were all in prison? But your drink arrives, and with it a fresh saucer of peanuts, so you make no response beyond rolling your eyes.
Couple of years after Thunder House became my primary domicile, Twister got seduced by the art market. Fell in with the wrong crowd and started attending parties where guests stripped naked and watched Sotheby auctions via satellite. To be fair, the art scene was generating jumbo juice in those days, prices were doubling literally overnight; every paint-spattered cockroach in SoHo was riding around in a stretch limo, and if you were a dead European artist, every time the auctioneers gavel came down, youd twirl again in your coffin. So, I was only half-shocked when Twister shelled out three million clams for a drawing by Van Gogh.
Wow! Three million for a Van Gogh drawing?
Yeah, but it was by Vincent Van Gogh, Gwendolyn, not his brother, Elmer. The price wasnt out of line at the time. The problem was, three mil was the sum total of Twisters assets, aside from the bowling alley. And a few years later, while he was waiting for his smeary little drawing to quadruple in value, the Japanese collectors came to their senses, and the bottom fell out of the art market. A Dutch industrialist offered him eight hundred grand for the piece, but I guess Twisters got a genetic memory of the Manhattan Island deal. He wouldnt sell. Eventually, Twisters daddy got wind of his boys art folly, and he flew into a shamanic tizzy. He showed up at Thunder House one night in his buffalo robes and demanded to see the drawing. Well, the Van Gogh had been stored in a bank vault ever since its purchase, and that drove the old man nuts. You waste big fortune on picture you not even look at? He forced Twister to bring the Van Gogh home and hang it on his wall. Now we look at picture, he said, and the two of them sat on the sofa and stared at it-were talking about a murky, dark sketch of some peasants peeling turnips-for about a week. Then the old man went back to Oklahoma. Meanwhile, though, Twister had gotten hooked on the drawing. He couldnt stop looking at it. He didnt want to stop looking at it. It became a meditation for him. It brought him peace and understanding. He still stares at it-all day every day. The Dutchman raises his offer every few months, but Twister wont listen.
What was the latest bid?
Oh, fuck, Gwendolyn, I dont know! Thats not the point. The point is, Twister sits on his duff all day lost in contemplation of the compositional and spatial flatness with which the expressive, anti-naturalist Van Gogh turned ordinary daily experience into a vehicle for a new set of meanings that defied the history of Renaissance perspective. The point is, Twisters blissed out over his fucking turnip peelers, and theres not a chance in hell he wouldve harmed Q-Jo, even if he was the type to abduct grossly overweight white women, which hes not.
All right, you say. I was only asking.
EIGHT FORTY-FIVE P.M.
Waiter, you call as your server passes by. You are aware his name is Brian, but you are reluctant to get on a first-name basis with the help. Waiter, this spritzer tastes different from the last one. In fact, the second one didnt taste like the first.
You noticed! Oh, good! The bartenders trying out the new line of Walt Disney wines tonight. He made your first spritzer, if Im not terribly mistaken, with the Donald Duck chardonnay. The next one was with the Minnie Mouse liebfraumilch, and this ones got the Goofy pinot blanc. Arent they fun?
The fun is just beginning, you grumble, pushing the spritzer aside. It is all you can do to keep from burying your head in your arms.
EIGHT FORTY-SIX P.M.
Gwendolyn, Ive been automatically assuming that youve long since telephoned Q-Jos friends, lovers, relatives, et cetera, to inquire if she might be with one of them. Now Im forced to ask: is this a false assumption?
I wouldve called if Id known where to call. I mean, her family lives in Ohio somewhere, I couldve gotten their number out of her book, but I didnt want to worry them. Anyway, she wouldnt have just run out of your place and gone to Ohio. Q-Jo hates Ohio.
Shes not alone in that, Id venture. How about friends?
Therere a couple of astrologers shes chummy with, but she certainly wouldnt stay overnight with them. I cant remember their names.
Lovers?
Nobody steady. She free-lances. When she can. Her size, you know.
Yeah. And yet you thought I might have found her irresistible… .
Well, youre -sort of unusual.
Not when you know me better. Diamond lays his hand, the one with the mystical tattoo, on top of your own. You freeze. Then, ever so slowly, casually, fraudulently, you slip free, on the pretext of requiring a sip of your spritzer, for which youve actually lost all taste now that youve learned it was concocted with vin de Goofy. The freed hand vibrates for a full forty seconds.
Any suggestions? you ask.
Absolutely. He reaches again for your hand. You pull it just out of reach.
I meant about …
Q-Jo?
Yes, her, naturally.
But also about my situation at-work. Ever so slowly, casually, fraudulently, you slide your hand back within his range.
He shakes his head from side to side and looks at you with pity and dismay, exactly as your father used to look at you after your singing lessons. When you were about fourteen, Freddy Mati was struck by the notion that you could turn the tables on your funny little voice, make it work to your advantage. Freddy entertained a vision of your becoming a jazz singer in the mold of Blossom Dearie. Twice a week for a month, he made you bus after school to the Central District, where you were coached by a black woman only nominally slimmer than Q-Jo. Toward the end of each lesson, your dad would show up and listen with his eyes closed as your voice jumped from key to key like a tonality squirrel at harvest time. Ah, Squeak, he would sigh when it was over, and hed shake his head the way Larry Diamond is shaking his now.
Smarten up, Diamond says.
Sorry?
Smarten up. He resumes his W. C. Fields cadence. Just because youve got the cutest ass west of Chicago and north of L.A. doesnt mean you have to go around with your head up it. Leaves no room for me. Before you can do more than sputter, he says, Rise above this job fixation, Gwendolyn, rise above it or resign yourself to life with the toads.
Life with what toads?
Most toads can swim if theyre forced to, but unlike frogs, they rarely enter the water. Since the planet is two-thirds water, where would you say the limitations lie: with the frogs or the toads? Frogs are smooth and sleek and moist; toads are rough and dry and warty. He scratches his jaw. Theres one other problem with toads.
Oh, do tell me quickly, I beg of you.
They cant mate with frogs.
You drain the remainder of your stupid spritzer and fake pushing your chair from the table. Rise above this mating fixation, Diamond, rise above it or resign yourself to an evening without my company.
Touch E. Touch E. And forgive me the resumption of my amphibian fancies. Ill try in the future to keep a lid on them. Acknowledging with his eyes that you are half out of your chair, he says, If I help you with your job, will you stay?
EIGHT-FIFTY P.M.
Naturally, it is too good to be true. Diamonds idea of helping you with your job is to lecture you on the obsolete and retrograde nature of salaried employment. He goes on at length, in his constricted nasal manner, about how, in our social history, jobs are an aberration, a flash in the pan. Human beings have been on earth for a million years, he claims (you think hes mistaken about that), but have only had jobs for the past five hundred years (that doesnt sound right, either), an inconsequential period, relatively speaking. People have always worked, he explains, but they have only held jobs-with wages and employers and vacations and pink slips-for a very short time. And now, with the proliferation of cybernetics and robotics and automation of all types and degrees, jobs are on the way out again. In the context of history, jobs have been but a passing fancy.
Nowadays, he would have you believe, the state uses jobs, or rather the illusion of jobs, as a mechanism for control. When there is a public outcry about some particularly vile instance of deforestation, wreckage, or pollution, the pufftoads hasten to justify the environmental assault by trumpeting the jobs it allegedly will save or create-and then the protests fade like the rustle of a worn dollar bill. Foreign policy decisions, including illegal and immoral acts of armed intervention, likewise are made acceptable, even popular, on the grounds that such actions are necessary to protect American jobs. Virtually every candidate for public office in the past seventy years has campaigned with the rubber worm of more jobs dangling from his or her rusty hook, and the angler with the most lifelike worm snags the votes, even though all voters except the cerebrally paralyzed must recognize that there are going to be fewer and fewer jobs as time-and technology-progresses.
Would you say then, Larry, that those of us whore concerned with jobs are reading the wrong libretto?
He beams at you so magnificently that the infrared sensor in your groin is involuntarily activated, and you have to gaze off in the direction of Ann Louise in order to curtail the annoying warm tide that is negotiating the locks of your perineal Panama. Theres hope for you yet, he declares.
I wouldnt count on it.
The waiter, who had assumed your look was meant for him, minces up to take your order. Ill have a martini, you say recklessly, and if theres a cartoon character on the gin bottle, Im going to remove a can of Mace from this handbag and bring both you and the bartender to your knees.
Diamond beams even brighter, and you cant help but grin yourself. You have to bite your lip, in fact, to regain a sober demeanor. Interesting how the bent trumpet summons levity.
We already had double-digit unemployment before Black Thursday, Diamond resumes. In the weeks to come, if theres not a magical turnaround, it could exceed twenty percent. But even thats a union-made paradise. In two or three decades, eighty percent of the able-bodied may well be out of jobs. You notice I said out of jobs, not out of work. The problem is, weve forgotten how to work unless were on the job. Were job junkies, and not one of our institutions is prepared or qualified to help us kick the habit.
Because the toads are too busy grinding out irrelevant librettos.
Factitious and profoundly accurate in the same breath, my dear. Not bad for an amateur. Heres your cocktail. I hope for Brians sake its a martini and not a martooni.
Oh, its made with Tanqueray, Mr. D., I promise. Can I bring you another tequila sour?
Just a club soda, Brian. Twist of the ol citrus peel. Now, Gwendolyn, wipe that unattractive smirk off your face and tell me whos better equipped to escape obsolescence, the toads of industrial fundamentalism-lost and hysterical in a world without jobs-or the transformative frogs who—
If they cant pay their grocery bills, ones just as dead as the other.
No jobee, no eatee, eh? They mustve used a harsh detergent when they washed your brain. On the roof of Thunder House, we could grow enough food to feed everybody in a six-block radius, year-round. You could do almost that well on top of your apartment building. You wouldnt need to haul a lot of heavy soil up there, either. Tomatoesll grow like weeds in shredded wet newspaper.
I cant make Porsche payments with tomatoes.
True, and you cant drive a Porsche underwater.
What is this underwater stuff? My accounts are underwater, thats all I care about. His club soda arrives. You expecting a great flood or something? If Im not mistaken, the Bible says itll be fire next time. The martini is tasty, but this conversation seems to be constantly veering off track.
So it does. And so it shall. But fire is the flip side of water-and a big back has a …
Big front. Yeah, I know. Still, it beguiles you in ways that most of the conversations you have had in the Bull&Bear have not.
Listen, my little hoptoad, Im about to make you a proposition.
I thought you already had.
Im going to the mens room …
Not with me youre not.
Im going to the restroom …
You just got back.
… and in my absence, Id like you to do two things. First, order us some dinner. The kitchenll be closing soon, and we cant live on love alone. Then, I want you to make a decision. When I come back, Ill talk with you about your ill-chosen and illfated career, Ill pass along any and every tedious tidbit at my disposal that might be of use to a desperate soul whos screwed up royally in a profession thats screwed up royally. Or-or-Ill expend the same amount of time and energy to tell you a few things that are really interesting. And really important. Knowledge that may turn out to be considerably more empowering to you than an MBA. Or maybe not. In any case, its your choice. One or the other. Its up to you.
With that, he rises and long hair swinging, hobbles, lurches, and weaves away, like an animal whos been stung in the hams with a tranquilizer dart.
NINE OH-FOUR P.M.
Ill have the vegetable stir-fry. But without asparagus. Repeat: no asparagus.
I get the picture, says Brian, a bit too snippishly for an underling. And what will Mr. D. be having this evening?
Uh, Mr. D. will have … I think Mr. D. would like… . This is wicked but you cant help yourself. Bring Mr. D. the frog legs.
NINE OH-FIVE P.M.
There is an exaltation about the Bull&Bear that is due not only to its decor-darkly warm, weighty, polished, aged-and its clientele-well-groomed, smartly tailored, educated, savvy-but also to its function as a refuge from chaos: the controlled chaos of the financial markets and, increasingly, the far less predictable chaos of the streets. In the outside world, civilization is frequently and perhaps accurately perceived as a thin veneer over the rant and scrabble of an essentially savage species. In the Bull& Bear, conversely, the slosh and bluster seems a thin veneer of atavism over a bedrock of refinement and order. That part of America that remains affluent, that is neither on fire nor on sale, neither shot full of holes nor rusting away, that affluent part appears many places to be tricky and dazed. Here in this citadel, however, no matter how noisy, smoky, or unruly it may at certain hours of the day become, the stability and calm traditionally bestowed by Buddha the Banker somehow has prevailed. Ever since you discovered the establishment while on lunch break from the ski department at Nordstrom a half-dozen years ago, the Bull&Bears mystique has had a powerful hold on you.
Tonight, you feel it slipping away.
You sense an odd, almost poignant, alienation from the knot of brokers across the lounge. They are unusually restrained this evening, their concentration focused on their anesthetic beakers of booze and on the screen of the bar TV. There is a silent communion among them, however, in which you suspect you would not share, even were you to press your taut little belly to the bar. They are watching the financial channel, no doubt, and you wonder if you might be missing something of import. All you can see from your table is a dancing miasma of red and green, like an atomized Christmas wreath. You simply must get your eyes examined. Stock quotations, like the Scriptures, are a common source of optic erosion. Those tiny names and numbers: So difficult to read, so fraught with secret salvations, if only the eye muscles could pry them loose!