A man and a woman rush up. The woman raises her own cell phone and takes a picture with it. Pauline Enslin observes this without much surprise. She supposes the woman will show it to friends later. Then they will have drinks and a meal and talk about the grace of God and how everything happens for a reason. God's grace is a pretty cool concept. It stays intact every time it's not you.
"What happened?" the man shouts into her face. "What in hell happened?"
Down below them a skinny old poet is happening. He has taken off his shirt to cover one of the other bodies. His ribs are a stack outlined against white skin. He kneels and spreads the shirt. He raises his arms into the sky, then lowers them and wraps them around his head.
Pauline is also a poet, and as such feels capable of answering the man in the language God speaks.
"What the fuck does it look like?" she says.
For Owen King and Herman Wouk
Where do you get your ideas and Where did this idea come from are different questions. The first is unanswerable, so I make a joke of it and say I get them from a little Used Idea Shop in Utica. The second is sometimes answerable, but in a surprising number of cases, it's not, because stories are like dreams. Everything is deliciously clear while the process is ongoing, but all that remains when the story's finished are a few fading traces. I sometimes think a book of short stories is actually a kind of oneiric diary, a way of catching subconscious images before they can fade away. Here is a case in point. I don't remember how I got the idea for "Under the Weather," or how long it took, or even where I wrote it.
What I do remember is that it's one of the very few stories I've written where the end was clear, which meant the story had to be built carefully to get there. I know that some writers prefer working with the end in sight (John Irving once told me he begins a novel by writing the last line), but I don't care for it. As a rule I like the ending to take care of itself, feeling that if I don't know how things come out, the reader won't either. Fortunately for me, this is one of those tales where it's okay for the reader to be one step ahead of the narrator.
Under the Weather
I've been having this bad dream for a week now, but it must be one of the lucid ones, because I'm always able to back out before it turns into a nightmare. Only this time it seems to have followed me, because Ellen and I aren't alone. There's something under the bed. I can hear it chewing.
You know how it is when you're really scared? Sure you do. I mean, it's pretty universal. Your heart seems to stop, your mouth dries up, your skin goes cold and goosebumps rise all over your body. Instead of meshing, the cogs in your head just spin. I almost scream, I really do. I think, It's the thing I don't want to look at. It's the thing in the window seat.
Then I see the fan overhead, the blades turning at their slowest speed. I see a crack of early-morning light running down the middle of the pulled drapes. I see the graying milkweed fluff of Ellen's hair on the other side of the bed. I'm here on the Upper East Side, fifth floor, and everything's okay. The dream was just a dream. As for what's under the bed--
I toss back the covers and slide down to my knees, like a man who means to pray. But instead of that, I lift the flounce and peer under the bed. I only see a dark shape at first. Then the shape's head turns and two eyes gleam at me. It's Lady. She's not supposed to be under there, and I guess she knows it (hard to tell what a dog knows and what it doesn't), but I must have left the door open when I came to bed. Or maybe it didn't quite latch and she pushed it open with her snout. She must have brought one of her toys with her from the basket in the hall. At least it wasn't the blue bone or the red rat. Those have squeakers in them, and would have wakened Ellen for sure. And Ellen needs her rest. She's been under the weather.
"Lady," I whisper. "Come out of there."
She only looks at me. She's getting on in years and not so steady on her pins as she used to be, but she's not stupid. She's under Ellen's side, where I can't reach her. If I raise my voice she'll have to come, but she knows (I'm pretty sure she knows) that I won't do that, because if I raise my voice, it will wake Ellen for sure.
As if to prove this, Lady turns away from me and the chewing recommences.
Well, I can handle that. I've been living with Lady for thirteen years, nearly half my married life. There are three things that get her on her feet. One is the rattle of her leash and a call of "Elevator!" Another is the thump of her food dish on the floor. The third--
I get up and walk down the short hall to the kitchen. From the cupboard I take the bag of Snackin' Slices, making sure to rattle it. I don't have to wait long for the muted clitter of cocker claws. Five seconds and she's right there. She doesn't even bother to bring her toy.
I offer her one of the little carrot-shapes, then toss it into the living room. A little mean, maybe, but the fat old thing can use the exercise. She chases her treat. I linger long enough to start the coffeemaker, then go back into the bedroom. I'm careful to pull the door all the way shut.
Ellen's still sleeping, and waking up before she does has one benefit: no need for the alarm. I turn it off. Let her sleep a little later. It's a bronchial infection. I was scared for awhile there, but now she's on the mend.
I go into the bathroom and officially christen the day by brushing my teeth (I've read that in the morning a person's mouth is as germicidally dead as it ever gets, but the habits we learn as children are hard to break). I turn on the shower, get it good and hot, and step in.
The shower's where I do my best thinking, and this morning I think about the dream. Five nights in a row I've had it. (But who's counting, right?) Nothing really awful happens in this dream, but in a way that's the worst part. Because I know--absolutely, positively--that something awful will happen. If I let it.
I'm in an airplane, in business class. I'm in an aisle seat, which is where I prefer to be, so I don't have to squeeze past anybody if I have to go to the toilet. My tray-table is down. On it are a bag of peanuts and an orange drink that looks like a Vodka Sunrise, a drink I've never ordered in real life. The ride is smooth. If there are clouds, we're above them. The cabin is filled with sunlight. Someone is sitting in the window seat, and I know if I look at him (or her, or possibly it), I'll see something that will turn my bad dream into a nightmare. If I look into the face of my seatmate, I may lose my mind. It could crack open like an egg and a tide of bloody darkness might pour out.
I give my soapy hair a quick rinse, step out, dry off. My clothes are folded on a chair in the bedroom. I take them and my shoes into the kitchen, which is now filling with the smell of coffee. Nice. Lady's curled up by the stove, looking at me reproachfully.
"Don't go giving me the stink-eye," I tell her, and nod toward the closed bedroom door. "You know the rules."
She puts her snout down between her paws and pretends to sleep, but I know she's still looking at me.
*
I choose cranberry juice while I wait for the coffee. There's OJ, which is my usual morning drink, but I don't want it. Too much like the drink in the dream, I suppose. I have my coffee in the living room with CNN on mute, just reading the crawl at the bottom, which is all a person really needs. Then I turn it off and have a bowl of All-Bran. Quarter to eight. I decide that if the day is nice when I take Lady out, I'll skip the cab and walk to work.
It's nice, all right, spring edging into summer and a shine on everything. Carlo, the doorman, is under the awning, talking on his cell phone. "Yuh," he says. "Yuh, I finally got hold of her. She says go ahead, no problem as long as I'm there. She don't trust nobody, for which I don't blame her. She got a lot of nice things up there. You come when? Three? You can't make it earlier?" He tips me a wave with one white-gloved hand as I walk Lady down to the corner.
We've got this down to a science, Lady and I. She does it at pretty much the same place every day, and I'm fast with the poop bag. When I come back, Carlo stoops to give her a pat. Lady waves her tail back and forth most fetchingly, but no treat is forthcoming from Carlo. He
knows she's on a diet. Or supposed to be.
"I finally got hold of Mrs. Warshawski," Carlo tells me. Mrs. Warshawski is in Five-C, but only technically. She's been gone for a couple of months now. "She was in Vienna."
"Vienna, is that so," I say.
"She told me to go ahead with the exterminators. She was horrified when I told her. You're the only one on Four, Five, or Six who hasn't complained. The rest of them . . ." He shakes his head and makes a whoo sound.
"I grew up in a Connecticut mill town. It pretty well wrecked my sinuses. I can smell coffee, and Ellie's perfume if she puts it on thick, but that's about all."
"In this case, that's probably a blessing. How is Mrs. Franklin? Still under the weather?"
"It'll be a few more days before she's ready to go back to work, but she's a hell of a lot better. She gave me a scare for awhile."
"Me too. She was going out one day--in the rain, naturally--"
"That's El," I say. "Nothing stops her. If she feels like she has to go somewhere, she goes."
"--and I thought to myself, 'That's a real graveyard cough.' " He raises one gloved hand in a stop gesture. "Not that I really thought--"
"I get it," I said. "It was on the way to being a stay-in-the-hospital cough, for sure. But I finally got her to see the doctor, and now . . . road to recovery."
"Good. Good." Then, returning to what's really on his mind: "Mrs. Warshawski was pretty grossed out when I told her. I said we'd probably just find some spoiled food in the fridge, but I know it's worse than that. So does anybody else on those floors with an intact smeller." He gives a grim little nod. "They're going to find a dead rat in there, you mark my words. Food stinks, but not like that. Only dead things stink like that. It's a rat, all right, maybe a couple of them. Mrs. W. probably put down poison and don't want to admit it." He bends down to give Lady another pat. "You smell it, don't you, girl? You bet you do."
*
There's a litter of purple notes around the coffeemaker. I take the purple pad they came from to the kitchen table and write another.
Ellen: Lady all walked. Coffee ready. If you feel well enough to go out to the park, go! Just not too far. Don't want you to overdo now that you're finally on the mend. Carlo told me again that he "smells a rat." I guess so does everyone else in the neighborhood of 5-C. Lucky for us that you're plugged up and I'm "nasally challenged." Haha! If you hear people down the hall, it's the exterminators. Carlo will be with them, so don't worry. I'm going to walk to work. Need to think some more about the latest male wonder drug. Wish they'd consulted us before they hung that name on it. Remember, DON'T OVERDO. Love you-love you.
I jot half a dozen xs just to underline the point, and sign it with a B in a heart. Then I add it to the other notes around the coffeemaker. I refill Lady's water dish before I leave.
It's twenty blocks or so, and I don't think about the latest male wonder drug. I think about the exterminators, who will be coming at three. Earlier, if they can make it.
*
The dreams have interrupted my sleep cycle, I guess, because I almost fall asleep during the morning meeting in the conference room. But I come around in a hurry when Pete Wendell shows a mock-up poster for the new Petrov Excellent campaign. I've seen it already, on his office computer while he was fooling with it last week, and looking at it again I know where at least one element of my dream came from.
"Petrov Excellent Vodka," Aura McLean says. Her wonderful breasts rise and fall in a theatrical sigh. "If that name's an example of the new Russian capitalism, it's dead on arrival." The heartiest laughter at this comes from the younger men, who'd like to see Aura's long blond hair spread on a pillow next to them. "No offense to you intended, Pete. Petrov Excellent aside, it's a great leader."
"None taken," Pete says with a game smile. "We do what we can."
The poster shows a couple toasting each other on a balcony while the sun sinks over a harbor filled with expensive pleasure boats. The cutline beneath reads SUNSET. THE PERFECT TIME FOR A VODKA SUNRISE.
There's some discussion about the placement of the Petrov bottle--right? left? center? below?--and Frank Bernstein suggests that actually adding the recipe might prolong the page-view, especially for webvertising and in mags like Playboy and Esquire. I tune out, thinking about the drink sitting on the tray in my airplane dream, until I realize George Slattery is calling on me. I'm able to replay the question, and that's a good thing. You don't ask George to chew his cabbage twice.
"I'm actually in the same boat as Pete," I say. "The client picked the name, I'm just doing what I can."
There's some good-natured laughter. There have been many jokes about Vonnell Pharmaceutical's newest drug product.
"I may have something to show you by Monday," I tell them. I'm not exactly looking at George, but he knows where I'm aiming. "By the middle of next week for sure. I want to give Billy a chance to see what he can do." Billy Ederle is our newest hire, and doing his break-in time as my assistant. He doesn't get an invite to the morning meetings yet, but I like him. Everybody at Andrews-Slattery likes him. He's bright, he's eager, and I bet he'll start shaving in a year or two.
George considers this. "I was really hoping to see a treatment today. Even rough copy."
Silence. People study their nails. It's as close to a public rebuke as George ever gets, and maybe I deserve it. This hasn't been my best week, and laying it off on the kid doesn't look so good. It doesn't feel so good, either.
"Okay," George says at last, and you can feel the relief in the room. It's like a light cool breath of breeze, there and then gone. No one wants to witness a conference-room caning on a sunny Friday morning, and I sure don't want to get one. Too much other stuff on my mind.
George smells a rat, I think.
"How's Ellen doing?" he asks.
"Better," I tell him. "Thanks for asking."
There are a few more presentations. Then it's over. Thank God.
*
I'm almost dozing when Billy comes into my office twenty minutes later. Check that: I am dozing. I sit up fast, hoping the kid thinks he caught me deep in thought. He's probably too excited to have noticed either way. In one hand he's holding a piece of poster board. I think he'd look right at home in Podunk High School, putting up a big notice about the Friday-night dance.
"How was the meeting?" he asks.
"It was okay."
"Did they bring us up?"
"You know they did. What have you got for me, Billy?"
He takes a deep breath and turns his poster board around so I can see it. On the left is a prescription bottle of Viagra, either actual size or close enough not to matter. On the right--the power side of the ad, as anyone in advertising will tell you--is a prescription bottle of our stuff, but much bigger. Beneath is the cutline: PO-TENS, TEN TIMES MORE EFFECTIVE THAN VIAGRA!
As Billy looks at me looking at it, his hopeful smile starts to fade. "You don't like it."
"It's not a question of like or don't like. In this business it never is. It's a question of what works and what doesn't. This doesn't."
Now he's looking sulky. If George Slattery saw that look, he'd unload. I won't, although it might feel that way to him because it's my job to teach him. In spite of everything else on my mind, I'll try to do that. Because I love this business. It gets very little respect, but I love it anyway. Also, I can hear Ellen say, You don't let go, babe. Once you get your teeth in something, they stay there. Determination like that can be a little scary.
"Sit down, Billy."
He sits.
"And wipe that pout off your puss. You look like a kid who just dropped his binky in the toilet."
He does his best. Which I like about him. Kid's a trier, and if he's going to work in the Andrews-Slattery shop, he'd better be. Of course, he also has to be a doer.
"Good news is I'm not taking it away from you, mostly because it's not your fault Vonnell Pharmaceutical saddled us with a name that sounds like a multivitamin. But we're going to make
a silk purse out of this sow's ear. In advertising, that's the main job seven times out of every ten. Maybe eight. So pay attention."
He gets a little grin. "Should I take notes?"
"Don't be a smartikins. First, when you're shouting a drug, you never show a prescription bottle. The logo, sure. The pill itself, sometimes. It depends. You know why Pfizer shows the Viagra pill? Because it's blue. Consumers like blue. The shape helps, too. Consumers have a very positive response to the shape of the Viagra tab. But people never like to see the prescription bottle their stuff comes in. Prescription bottles make them think of sickness. Got that?"
"So maybe a little Viagra pill and a big Po-TENS pill? Instead of the bottles?" He raises his hands, framing an invisible cutline. " 'Po-TENS, ten times bigger, ten times better.' Get it?"
"Yes, Billy, I get it. The FDA will get it, too, and they won't like it. In fact, they could make us take ads with a cutline like that out of circulation, which would cost a bundle. Not to mention a very good client."
"Why?" It's almost a bleat.
"Because it isn't ten times bigger, and it isn't ten times better. Viagra, Cialis, Levitra, Po-TENS, they all have about the same effectiveness when it comes to penis elevation. Do your research, kiddo. And a little refresher course in advertising law wouldn't hurt. Want to say Blowhard's Bran Muffins are ten times tastier than Bigmouth's Bran Muffins? Have at it, taste is a subjective judgment. What gets your prick hard, though, and for how long . . ."
"Okay," he says in a small voice.
"Here's the other half. 'Ten times more' anything is--speaking in erectile dysfunction terms--pretty limp. It went out of vogue around the same time as Two Cs in a K."
He looks blank.
"It's how advertising guys used to refer to their TV ads on the soaps back in the fifties. Stands for two cunts in a kitchen."
"You're joking!"
"Nope. Now here's something I've been playing with." I jot on a pad, and for a moment I think of all those notes scattered around the coffeemaker back in good old 5-B--why are they still there?