Come Dance With Me

33 Elias Newman

30 January 2003. You never know where you’re going to be attacked by a metaphor or run over by a paradigm. In the Tom Bradley International Terminal in Los Angeles there’s a sort of pinball machine stood up on legs like a lecturer’s blackboard. It’s a ball-dropping machine. A conveyor on one side picks up balls that have rolled on to it from the channels they’ve dropped into. It carries the balls up to the top and drops them on to a Heath Robinson arrangement of such channels. There are various other parts that do things but the main action is ball-dropping. Not always the same because of random elements that vary the effects and causes. The machine is worn and doesn’t always pick the balls up. There are no plungers to work, you have no way of controlling what it does. The machine is just what it is and it does its own thing imperfectly in a variety of ways while making noises that satirise pinball machines. A man joined me while I was pondering this. He slapped the glass hard a couple of times, cursed and moved on while the machine made derisory noises. I stood there for a long time as other hopeful punters failed in their efforts. There was a signature on the thing: Rhoads ‘96. A deep one, Mr Rhoads.

Before I left St Eustace I looked in on Abraham Selby. I have never forgotten Professor Ernst’s words about the doctor-patient relationship (I notice that I don’t say patient-doctor. There are traditional orders of words: men and women; Adam and Eve; steak and kidney; plus and minus; willy-nilly. Nobody says nillywilly.) I have never been a verticalist. Abraham Selby, although horizontal in his bed, was in himself as vertical as I was. Perhaps even a little more so sometimes.

On this morning there he was with his lachrymose leg propped up as always and his copy of The Times in hand. ‘Sometimes there’s good news when you least expect it,’ he said.

‘So tell me,’ I said.

‘Have a look.’ He folded the paper as necessary and passed it to me. I’d been too busy booking my flight to read my copy at home. There was a one-column item with a colour photograph of an upside-down bottle of Heinz tomato ketchup sporting a right-side-up label. SAUCE FLIPS TO GO WITH THE FLOW was the headline.

[Heinz] has spent millions of pounds and three years on research to come up with an upside-down bottle with a cap and valve in its bottom. It is a solution that customers hit upon years ago — seven out of ten say they balance their sauce bottles on their tops.

‘How’s that grab you?’ said Selby.

‘It’s definitely good news,’ I said.

‘Things go on the same year after year,’ said Selby, ‘then all at once they get turned around. Pay attention,’ he said to his leg. To me he said, ‘Think about it.’

I did.