mr. potato head

 

 

 

 

 

I had to stop there, because at 9 p.m. sharp I was to meet Miles in the parking lot of Dykes Lumber on Route 17. Actually, I was a little early. The asphalt shone darkly under a patina of oil, transmission fluid, and rain. Even at this hour, the passing of truck traffic beat the air like huge wings, and did some kind of synesthestic boogie in my head so that I swore I could hear the susurrus of tires on wet pavement even though I had my walkman playing Air Supply at Volume 8. I was doing this to drown out my fear and it wasn't working.

Miles loves to take charge of a situation: that's why he's a Dungeonmaster and not a player. On his precise instructions, I had brought a small flashlight, some blank cassettes and a steno notebook. Thank God I took shorthand in high school. I knew that Gloria hid the keys to the filing cabinet under the African violet on her desk, so I had no problem there.

A shadow moved in the corner of my eye and I startled like a cat. Miles was tapping on the window with one knuckle. I turned off the Walkman and rolled down the window, my ears ringing.

'Are we doing this or what?' he demanded, breathing minty toothpaste into the car. I nodded.

'I'm driving,' he said. 'You sure you can handle this?'

'No,' I said. 'But I'll try'

I locked the Rabbit and we got in Miles's car. An air of ordered serenity surrounded me; when it comes to his car, Miles is nothing if not tidy.

'Remember,' he said. 'If anyone catches you, refer them to me. Say, "You have to talk to Dr. Miles," and leave it at that.'

I looked out the window and rolled my eyes. Miles was going to pretend to be a Polish psychiatrist working with me on some new form of behavior-modification therapy, and I was supposed to just play potato and go along with him. I didn't trust this plan but I knew that Miles would only help me if he was allowed to do so on his own terms, and I didn't want to go it alone.

I fished for Tic Tacs and studied the highway. A grotesquerie of industrial buildings with their neon signs threw a stain of ambient light into the clouds. Red and white SALE banners flapped from gray concrete warehousely edifices. Blah blah blah. It's all the same, my world, and I can't see how any of it is justified.

Not far away from this place, immaculate Colonials with perfect gardens marched in decorous order down tree-lined streets, the smell of Rice-A-Roni and roast chicken drifting through doors and the muted studio-audience laughter of Cheers faintly penetrated the picture windows with the flicker of 21-inch TVs, and Golden Retrievers barked when you came within fifty yards of their five-hundred-dollar doghouses. Backyards with swingsets and jungle gyms, in-ground pools, two-car garages with the teenager's ageing Camero parked in the driveway. Everything so convenient. So easy. Who wouldn't want to be taken in by it?

But I just feel sure that it's all there to turn us into Pillsbury Dough Boys. I ought to know. I've eaten more than my fair share of cookies you bake from a tube.

We parked next to the nursery's fleet of white pickups with Kroemer's stenciled on the doors. So far it was all going to plan. The Supersweep Office Cleaner van was parked in the loading zone at the end of the building. Lights were on in the programming wing.

We waited. I wanted to put the music back on but Miles would object, so I sat staring at beads of rain on the windshield. Ever since I'd read Serge's account of being in the well, and then experiencing Gossamer's take on the same thing, I'd been noticing the elastic properties of time. Lately it was not unusual for me to fall into a reverie for several minutes without even realizing it.

'OK,' said Miles suddenly. 'This is it.'

The lights in the programming wing had gone down. I got out of the car and ran, bent over, across the parking lot and into the shadow of the building. I could hear the traffic on the Parkway nearly overhead. I could hear Def Leppard playing on a boom box in the lobby. I peeked through the plate-glass windows and saw that the lobby was clear. There was a floor-polishing machine parked near the reception desk. All the other activity had moved into the Marketing wing.

I dashed down the dark hall and into Gloria's work area. Got the keys out of her desk. Opened Gunther's door. Shut it quietly behind me. And opened the filing cabinet next to Gunther's desk.

There wasn't enough light filtering in from outside to read by, so I had to use my special flashlight. Under Orbach, Karen, there was a package full of cassettes from recent debriefings. I carefully copied out the notations on the labels onto my blank cassettes and substituted them for the sessions recorded immediately before Goss was shot down. I had to hope nobody would notice the difference between my handwriting and Gloria's and investigate further. It was a pretty safe gamble that nobody would actually listen to these in the next forty-eight hours, after which I could find some excuse to visit Gloria and replace them. I didn't dare take the paper files themselves, but I could make notes in shorthand, couldn't I?

I hadn't gotten past my initial medical reports and job application before I heard someone outside, near Gloria's desk.

There was nowhere to hide. I slid the packet of tapes into the back waistband of my sweatpants and closed the drawer. I clicked off the flashlight with my thumb and dropped it in the pocket of my sweatshirt just as the door swung open and a round industrial vaccuum cleaner came into Gunther's office, followed by a small blonde. She turned on the light, saw me, and gave a hoarse cry. My hand flew to my mouth. I was at least as surprised as she was, but not for the same reason.

I knew her.

It was Clarissa Delgado, one of several girls I'd known and hated in high school because her sole mission in life had been to insult and humiliate me at every opportunity. Clarissa was pretty but not too bright, and she wasn't above snickering at my tennis serve or making nasty remarks in the locker room during gym (the only class we shared because, like I said, she was not top bright).

What she was doing up here in Woodcliff Lake was anybody's guess. She looked six or seven months pregnant, and shoving the vacuum cleaner around probably wasn't a lot of fun. That ought to have given me some satisfaction, but I was freaked out to see her again. She sank against the wall, staring at me, and brushed her feathered hair away from her eyes, which were heavily lined in purple and shadowed with pale blue powder.

'Clarissa,' I said as neutrally as I could. I was conscious of the fact that my voice sounded like a bassoon. I can't see anything wrong with a woman having a deep voice, but people like Clarissa always make me feel like I have six legs.

Her eyes narrowed. 'I know you,’ she said. 'You went to East Rutherford, didn't you?'

Experience had softened my accent and exaggerated hers. I snorted softly, then checked myself because I could tell that I remembered her a lot better than she remembered me.

'You work here or you breaking in?' she said sharply.

'I work here.'

'Working late, huh?' That sneering voice. Hadn't changed. She could read from a driver's ed manual and make it sound sarcastic.

'I fell asleep on the couch, waiting for Gunther,’ I said. 'You just woke me up, now.'

She nodded. She tilted her head quizzically.

'So that's why the light was off.' She read the plate on the door. 'Gunther Stengel. He your boss?'

'Sort of. He's a colleague.' I wanted her to think I was on a par with Gunther, even though under the circumstances that would be pushing things in a stupid way.

'Where's your office?'

'I uh, don't have one.'

'You always come to work in a black jogging outfit? You jog, Cookie?'

She grinned. She had remembered my name.

'Fridays we dress down,’ I said, clinging to the shreds of my sense of dignity.

'Uh-huh.' She tossed the handle of the vaccuum into the corner and let the door close behind her.

'I guess your job pays pretty good, then, right?'

I shrugged. I wasn't sure how to play this. Clarisssa must be hard up if she was working as a night cleaner. I probably shouldn't rub her nose in it. 'Can't complain.'

'Because this is the kind of thing I got to tell my supervisor about.'

'Oh,’ I said, grokking. 'You don't have to bother him – or her – with that.'

'No?' She raised her eyebrows. I dug in my purse, thinking Thank God I didn't listen to Miles and leave it behind.

'Do you ever find spilled change when you're cleaning?' I said in a conversational tone.

'Yeah, but we got to report it.'

'Oh.' I held up a fifty.

'Two of those and I'll let you out the fire exit.'

We went down the dark corridor to the back of the building, she like a little pregnant elf and me like a big troll. My money had vanished into her bra. The envelope in my pants made me feel like I was wearing a diaper. It made shushing noises when I moved.

'See ya, walrus!' Claarissa called after me. 'Coo-coo ka-choo!'

Her laughter followed me across the parking lot and into the rhododendrons, where I crouched for several minutes before I worked up the nerve to make my way back to Miles's car.

'Any problems?' he said, looking up from a Thomas Wolfe paperback.

I shook my head.

'Where's the evidence?'

'I'm sitting on it.'

 

I kept sitting on it, too, for several days, much to Miles's frustration. At the dojo, everybody was getting psyched up for the big tournament. It was scheduled for a Sunday, and on Saturday there was going to be a big test for new color belts and black belts. The Okinawan masters of the Budokokutai, our new organization, were arriving on Thursday and the exams would be conducted by Master Hideki and his younger brother, Masunobu, and the other senior members of their group who were flying over. Shihan Norman had been collecting money from us all year to pay for their trip, and everyone was excited because Okinawa is the island where karate originated and the masters from there are the best in the world. Shihan Norman's teacher, Shihan Ingenito, was coming in from California and Sensei Price was coming down from Buffalo, so our dojo was going to be hosting a lot of important masters and their students.

This meant extra cleaning, extra training, lessons on karate history and etiquette, Japanese vocabulary – you name it. Shihan Norman fluttered around like a big chubby chicken, his chinless mouth endlessly wagging and the light flashing off his thick glasses as he constantly scanned the dojo, seeking imperfections to point out.

Miss Cooper didn't have as much time for me, but I didn't mind. I was going full-throttle on straight exercise: weight lifting, jogging, stuff like that. I watched from the weight room as the black belts had special classes and lectures. Miss Cooper was being brought out to demonstrate all kinds of stuff. Evidently the Okinawans didn't allow their women to train at all, and Shihan wanted to make sure that he wouldn't be criticized over Miss Cooper. So she had to get even stronger, even more proficient, and she had to learn to keep her eyes down, apparently. She practically moved into the dojo, there was so much for her to do.

Miles called me several times a day and after a while I started letting the machine get it. Miles wasn't very happy with me. After my little adventure with Clarissa Delgado, I insisted on keeping the files to myself so that I could listen to them privately. He didn't like that. Miles liked to be in control. And he liked it even less when I didn't immediately tear into the information.

But I didn't like being pushed.

I just wanted a little time to not think about it. I was feeling uneasy and there was some kind of battle going on in my head. I didn't want to deal with things. I didn't want to do the things I knew I had to do. I was feeling sorry for myself, and when I wasn't at the dojo I spent a lot of time wandering around supermarkets with an empty shopping cart, looking for something I dared buy and eat without being sick. I hung out in the cereal aisle, hoping to catch a glimpse of somebody buying Cookie Starfishes, as if this would give me some self-insight, or some reification. I never saw it happen. People tended to buy a lot of Cheerios, though, which told me nothing.

No matter what I did, I felt like I couldn't get a break. Quark was the closest thing I had to recreation, and it wasn't even Quark. It was Cookie's Hell Planet.

'Nobody is going to tell me that what I'm seeing is just some stupid marketing shit,' I told Nebbie. 'Nobody. I don't know what's going on around here, but this is important and it's real and I'm going to find out more.'

Still, I felt queasy when I put the first tape in my stereo. This was a cross between reading someone's diary, and seeing dirty magazines for the first time, and the folded test paper that comes back to you and you have to open it and see the F written in huge red letters at the top. I was all nervous and miserable and eager and guilty and thrilled.

But the first half-hour was just me droning on about what I'd seen. It was old stuff from several months ago. Once the novelty of hearing my voice on tape had worn off, I got bored and skipped ahead.

A man I didn't know was talking.

Unknown Man: 'Dr. Stengel, what do you make of the references on Session C?'

Gunther: 'Our lexical-analysis programs picked up Apocalypse Now, Snoopy, and Blade Runner. I have no idea what Cookie was looking at. You know this is a double-blind test.'

Unknown Man: 'Those are all correct. There was something from Mr. Rogers's neighborhood, but it was fairly subtle. And The Jeffersons, of course.'

Gunther: 'The Jeffersons we got weeks ago. It's been cropping up almost every time. I didn't bother to mention it, but you can check the records. What I want to know is, why was Serge wearing leg warmers?'

Unknown Man: 'Flashdance, of course.'

I stopped the tape. Since when was Gunther a doctor of anything? Nobody else called him doctor. And who was the other guy?

I kept listening, but the conversation turned into a technical discussion about the computer program that Gunther was using. Eventually Gunther said, 'Look at her history with music video. She nailed the theme song. Nailed it. Picked it off the tape with no hesitation, and without the sound. Rocket Squad were an unsigned band, we showed her a demo video, but 'Planetary Journey' charted for eighteen weeks. Everybody loves it. Kids love it. Adults love it. Black people, white people, everybody. I put a percentage of the success of that show down to Ms. Orbach's choice of music.'

Unknown Man: 'Maybe. But without Orbach's input, our predictors picked Faith Is Mine and we'll never know how that would have done if we'd only pushed it.'

Gunther: 'I know we're doing the right thing moving her out of video and on to TV. She's ready for the big markets.'

Unknown Man: 'Are your analysis programs ready, though? I'm still not convinced we can accurately assess Ms. Orbach's results. I read through the transcripts myself and I picked up things that I think your software missed. And let's face it, whatever your enthusiasm over your patients—'

Gunther: 'My staff, Bob.'

Bob: 'Your staff might be, it's the software that we ultimately stand or fall by. Cookie as a raw talent is fine, as far as that goes. But this is Dataplex, not the Woo-woo Institute. We need to turn what she does into code, and we need to do it accurately. That's the business we're in. Government grants might work fine for start-up money, but we're in this for the long haul. We need to automate. That was the whole point of the exercise. To troll the data and come up with a formula, or formulae, that tell us what's successful. Don't lose sight of that.'

Gunther: 'But they're my people. I'm proud of them.'

Bob: 'That's fine, for as far as it goes. Eventually we need to pull your guys out. If word gets out that Dataplex are using nutcases instead of science, we'll be ruined. You might as well advertise crystal-ball readings.'

Gunther: 'Hey, I hear Ronald Reagan has an astrologer.'

Laughter. The tape cut off.

 

I sat there for a while, listening to the clock tick. No stopping now. I put another tape in, skipping again to the analysis. This one was recent. In fact, it was the session that Gunther had reluctantly recorded after I'd spotted Gonzalez and got driven away by the storm and ended up with the orchid taste. My stomach clenched, remembering.

Bob: 'Did you get that part about Leroy Jones?'

Gunther: 'Yeah, I checked it out, there's no security leak.'

Bob: 'There has to be.'

Gunther: 'Not necessarily. Someone could have mentioned the name, she could have heard it on the radio, on an interview or something. Also, Jones worked as a minor illustrator on some network specials. She might have seen it when she used to watch TV, years ago.'

Bob: 'Or she could be watching TV now. Has anybody tried to check that?'

Gunther: 'She's not. Believe me, she wouldn't. She's too scared.'

'Hah!' I said. 'I'm not too scared now. This is really insulting. What games are you guys playing with my head?'

Bob: 'How did she get his social security number, then?'

Gunther: (whistles Twilight Zone theme)

Laughter.

 

When I stomped off to the dojo that night, I was fired up to fight; but it wasn't going to be that kind of class. The Okinawans had arrived and this session was all about them inspecting the dojo, checking us out, and probably talking to us about their plans for the American branch of their organization. It seemed like every student who'd ever trained showed up, some of them coming out of the woodwork after absences of weeks and months. Everybody's gi was ironed. Troy's hair was slick with gel and he flashed me a smile over Cori's head.

The Okinawans entered en masse and we all bowed formally to them. Speeches were made. Miss Cooper usually led the class, but tonight Sensei Hideki, the younger brother of Shihan Hideki, the head of the Budokokutai, led the warm-up personally.

Sensei Hideki turned out to be a sixth-dan, one rank below our Shihan but a lot more physically capable. He gave all the instructions in thickly accented Japanese that nobody could understand. We all struggled to imitate him as he dropped into a full box split, did one-armed push-ups on his fingertips, and then jumped up and swung his leg rapidly up over his head like he was going to kick the wall over his own shoulder. After a long series of push-ups and sit-ups and various basic drills, he indicated that we should 'stretch out, own time' and then started hitting the makiwara like he was chopping down a tree. The whole dojo shook. He didn't break a sweat.

'Wow,' I muttered to Gloria. 'So this is the real thing.'

'He makes Shihan look like Mr. Potato Head,' replied Gloria out of the corner of her mouth.

The Okinawans were hard disciplinarians. They drove us like cattle in repetitive performance of basic moves, and then when we got to kata practice they made us sit in low sumo stances for minutes on end. Sensei Hideki went around shoving everybody down so low that our butts were practically on the floor.

They ignored the color belts, luckily. The black belts got picked on bigtime, but I guess we weren't worthy of their notice. It was oppressively hot but they refused to open the doors or turn on the fan. Cori fainted during Sei-enchin and had to go sit on the side.

What was funny about the Okinawans was how small and trucklike their bodies were. The tallest couldn't have been as tall as the average American woman, but they were all wide-bodied and they had huge, deformed knuckles from makiwara practice. They moved stiffly but with perfect geometrical form. They looked like little robotic bulls. I'd never been able to achieve this kind of hardness, no matter how much I practiced trying to make my gi snap when I punched. It's something I've noticed about Troy, too. I think it's a black thing. We can't move like little Nazis – why would you want to? We have a more flexible sense of time. We just don't fit in well with this perfect-form, perfect-time drilling and it feels unnatural to try. Look how Miss Cooper messed up my side kick when she tried to teach me to do it 'right'. Because I also notice that when it comes to sparring, me and Troy can get the job done.

Having said all that, I was totally impressed with the little Okinawans but it seemed they didn't feel the same about me. During practice of Saifa, Sensei Hideki walked right by me and then stopped to watch me perform my stomp-kick.

'Queen Kong!' he said. 'You break floor, you pay for it!'

Then he laughed uproariously at his own humor.

I felt myself go hot and I forgot the next move of the kata. I had to apologize and go kneel in zazen in the corner. They ignored me after that.

I glanced sideways at Cori. She was blushing and bowing to one of the masters, her braid swinging and slapping her butt as she nodded enthusiastic agreement with a little Okinawan no taller than five feet two, as if she was a Playboy Bunny and he was Hugh Hefner.

We all wanted to brown-nose. I'd probably have been doing it myself if Masunobu Hideki hadn't called me Queen Kong. We were so eager to have the Great Masters among us. We were so eager to be a part of the legends.

I wondered how long Masunobu Hideki would last in the Grid.

 

At the end of the training session, the masters gave a rousing speech in translation and everybody clapped and cheered. We all staggered up the stairs and went to Tony's for pizza and to compare notes. Everybody's quadriceps were killing them from all the sumo stances, which seemed like a sign that we were finally being initiated to the inner mysteries of the martial arts. Miss Cooper's eyes were alight with excitement. The Okinawans had paid a lot of attention to her. Evidently she hadn't disgraced the dojo after all, and she said that Shihan Norman had even said 'Nice going' after she'd finished her naginata practice in the private black-belt session upstairs.

'Pocketbook-and-broom is going to be great,' she said.

'Yeah, tell that to my nuts,' said Mr. Vukovich, to general laughter. 'Cori keeps getting past my cup with the straps of her pocketbook, dude. I hope I can still have kids.'

By the time I got home, I had decided that I was being grumpy about the Okinawans because of the Dataplex thing, and that wasn't right. I wasn't going to let one bad experience corrupt me for everything else. Karate had done a lot for me. Dataplex hadn't. It was Dataplex I should be going after – not the karate masters who held the key to my growth as a person, my physical freedom from food addiction.

I fed the cats and picked up the phone.

'Miles,’ I said. 'Remember how you told me you could get into people's records and stuff using your computer? If I gave you a name and a social security number, could you find out whether that person exists?'

'Whether they exist? I can do better than that, I hope. What's it all about?'

I read the name and number off a piece of paper I'd copied from the tape.

'Who's Leroy Jones?'

'I was hoping you could tell me.'