Et Tu, Babe

Chapter Three

Todd was fidgeting nervously with one of the strings of his green paper smock when Dr. William Carlos Williams entered the examination room.

“Hi, Todd,” Dr. Williams said.

“Hi, Dr. Williams.”

“How are your folks, Todd?”

“Well, my dad was just made chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee — but I guess you saw that on TV — and Mom is curating an exhibit of Viking jewelry at the Smithsonian.”

“And how are you doing — have you finished graduate school?”

“Yeah, I finished grad school last June.”

“Are you working?”

“No … I’m not really sure what I want to do yet, so I’ve just been hanging around, really … doing a lot of reading … and stuff.”

“What’s your degree in, Todd?”

“I’ve got two. I’ve got a master’s degree in Norse mythology and a master’s in chemical weapons. The trouble is that I’m not really interested in specializing in one or the other, so I’d like to try to find some kind of job that combines both fields … but I’m not really sure what that is … so I’ve just been kind of a couch potato lately … mostly reading, watching TV …”

“And to what do I owe the pleasure of your visit today? What seems to be bothering you?”

“Well, a couple of weeks ago I started noticing that my hands were numb every morning. And soon they began to really hurt — my hands and my wrists. It was really awful pain. It felt like someone was squeezing and twisting my nerves with a pliers.”

Dr. Williams took Todd’s hands in his. Todd winced.

“The pain’s really that bad, huh, Todd?” Dr. Williams asked gently.

“It’s really terrible.”

“Does it hurt when I do this?”

“No, not so much.”

“How about this?”

“A little, but not so bad.”

“How about this?”

Todd howled with pain, tears welling in his eyes.

“OK, son, why don’t you get dressed and come into my office. I’d like to talk to you.”

Dr. Williams washed his hands in the sink and exited, closing the door behind him. Todd put his clothes on and poked his head out the door.

“Nurse, should I go into the doctor’s office now or wait until he comes back?”

“No, Todd,” said the pretty nurse, “you can go right in now.”

Dr. Williams was seated behind a burnished mahogany desk, writing something with a Mont Blanc pen. On the wall, there was a large painting by LeRoy Neiman of a macrophage ingesting salmonella bacteria.

“Todd, have a seat,” he said, signing the document with a flourish and placing it on a stack of other documents.

“Todd, how do you occupy your time? What sorts of things do you do?”

“Well, I don’t do too much of anything, really … mainly reading and watching TV and stuff.”

“Do you do anything athletic, participate in any kind of sports?”

“Not really.”

“Is there anything you do with your hands, anything that you do over and over again that you think might be contributing to this pain?”

“Not really.”

“Todd, I want you to think very carefully. Is there anything — I don’t care how trivial or silly you might think it is — that you do with your hands or wrists repeatedly every day?”

“Well … there is … I’m kind of ashamed … I …”

Todd made a loose fist and gestured up and down.

“Masturbation, Todd?”

“Yes, Dr. Williams.”

“That’s what I thought, Todd. Todd, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with masturbation in and of itself. It’s perfectly normal behavior. About how often do you masturbate?”

“A lot.”

“What’s a lot?”

“Well, it’s hard to count — maybe thirty or forty times a day. I do it all day. I ejaculate and then I just keep stroking until I get an erection and then I stroke until I ejaculate and then I start all over again.”

“All day without stopping?”

“Well, I break for meals, but if it’s a food I can eat with one hand …”

“Todd, do you have a girlfriend?”

“No, Dr. Williams. It’s really been tough finding someone I can really talk to. I’ll meet a girl who’s really into chemical weapons but she won’t know anything about Norse mythology and then I’ll meet a girl who’s really up on the mythology — she’ll know everything about Odin and the Valkyries and Rodmar and Thor and Valhalla — but then she’ll think that mustard gas is something you get from eating too many hot dogs.”

Dr. Williams smiled.

“Todd, have you ever heard of something called carpal tunnel syndrome?”

“No, Dr. Williams.”

“Carpal tunnel syndrome is a repetitive motion injury. It’s also called a cumulative trauma disorder. I’ll be giving you some literature about this so you don’t have to remember all the jargon. In carpal tunnel syndrome, a fast repetitive motion, over time, damages the nerves and tendons in the hands and wrists. Come over here and let me show you on this model. The tendons over here, which pass through this narrow channel of wrist bones — the carpal tunnel — swell and press on this nerve here, which is called the median nerve. That’s what’s causing your pain and numbness. This disorder is found most frequently in people who work in meat-packing plants and poultry slaughterhouses — employees in chicken-processing plants, for instance, must make difficult cuts 60 or even 90 times a minute. And more and more, we’re finding carpal tunnel syndrome in word processors — people who are hitting keys tens of thousands of times an hour. Given the frequency and duration of your masturbation, you’re making the same forceful strokes 180 times a minute. That’s 10,800 forceful strokes an hour …”

He tapped the multiplication out on his calculator.

“… and that’s 86,400 forceful strokes a day, given an eight-hour day of masturbating, which may be conservative in your case, Todd.”

“Is there anything they can do about it? I mean, pills or an operation?”

“I’m going to schedule an appointment for you with my friend Herb Horowitz. He’s one of the best musculoskeletal men in the business. And if, having examined you, he agrees, I’d like to schedule you for surgery.”

“Surgery?” Todd said, looking frightened.

“With surgery we can take some of that pressure off the nerve — remember the median nerve I showed you? — and that can relieve the numbness and pain that you’re experiencing. But that’s not going to solve the problem entirely. We’ve got to eliminate or at least drastically cut down the forceful repetitive strokes you’re making.”

Todd looked glum.

“I don’t think that’s going to be easy, Dr. Williams.”

“Look, Todd — first of all, I’d like to get you into a group. Y’know, you’re not the only one going through this.”

Dr. Williams handed Todd a glossy brochure entitled “The Auto-Erotic Repetitive Motion Disorder Association of America.” It had a photo of a bunch of nerdy guys sitting around with various sorts of bandages and slings and splints on their hands, wrists, and arms.

“Dr. Williams, what if the therapy doesn’t work and I can’t stop? What then? What’s the worst-case scenario?”

“We’ll have to have you fixed.”

“Fixed?” Todd said, his voice cracking.

“Relax, Todd. You said it yourself — it’s a worst-case scenario. Now let’s take this one step at a time. I want you to see Herb Horowitz next week and let’s see what our next move is, OK?”

“OK, Dr. Williams. Thanks.”

Todd walked out of Dr. Williams’s office with the brochure under his arm.

William Carlos Williams, respected physician and distinguished poet, turned to the computer keyboard at the side of his desk and began to type, trying to compose a few lines — perhaps even a stanza — before his next patient arrived.

“That was great, Mr. Leyner! Really great!” Joe Casale said, tucking a flipper under his pillow and nestling into a fetal curl. “What book is that from?”

“That’s from a book called Lives of the Poets,” I said, showing Joe the cover before I turned off the lamp on his night table.

“Mr. Leyner, do you think I could borrow it sometime?”

“I’ll tell you what, babe — tomorrow I have to be at a store downtown to sign some books. I’ll pick you up a copy of your own.”

(The book I was scheduled to sign — which had just been published by Rizzoli — was a $75 oversized volume of nude photographs of myself taken by a spy satellite in geostationary orbit over New Jersey. Annie Leibowitz, famed Rolling Stone photo-journalist, upon learning that the satellite was capable of providing high-resolution images down to the brand name on a golf ball, contacted the Department of Defense and suggested that they collaborate with her on a book of photographs of me lolling about the headquarter’s rooftop patio, au naturel, basted with oil, and flexing.)

Joe started getting out of bed. “Mr. Leyner, let me give you some money.”

“Forget about it, babe. It’s on me. It’ll be a token of appreciation for the job you’re doing here at headquarters. Don’t think I haven’t noticed. You’re up every morning at five A.M. walking Carmella, helping Trezz train the bodyguards, making sure Baby Lago has everything she needs for the commissary. You’re taking care of business … and I’m proud of you.”

“Thanks, Mr. Leyner.”

“Bon soir, babe.”

Arleen was in bed listening to a Fordham lacrosse game on her Walkman. There were a couple of fan letters on my pillow. I receive a tremendous amount of fan mail every day. It’s one of Baby Lago’s responsibilities to screen the letters, respond to those that are simply requests for nude photos and swatches of unwashed T-shirts and Jockey briefs, turn any threats over to Joe or Trezz and the security team, and pass along to me those that require a personal response. I slid into bed and began perusing my mail. A fan from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, wrote:

I am a psychic Italian-American woman who recently had cosmetic breast-and-buttock-augmentation surgery. I became psychic as a teenager after suffering from accidental carbon monoxide poisoning when I was a guest on “American Bandstand.” For a period of time I was the Vatican. I am a zealot by nature and tend to become fanatically obsessive about my activities. These activities have included LSD research and Hummel collecting. During the period in which I was doing a lot of acid, I supported myself by ghost-writing poetry for some of the most acclaimed poets in the country including Randall Jarrell and Robert Lowell. When it was discovered that John Kennedy was obsessed with my body during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the CIA had my breasts and buttocks surgically reduced. Today I live on a quiet tree-lined suburban street. My husband is a kind man and a good provider, but I find him terribly insipid. His way of trying to be more romantic is to be more obsequious and I find that a real turnoff. While he’s away at work during the day, I’ve begun seeing a large black policeman with a shaved head. My question is this: The policeman (whom I’ll call “Nightstick” to protect his family) knows all about a sexual fantasy that a number of years ago I’d sent to Nancy Friday for her book

My Secret Garden

Friday had assured all contributors that their submissions would be kept absolutely confidential. How did “Nightstick” find out about this fantasy and what is my legal recourse vis-à-vis Nancy Friday and her publishing company?

Yours truly, Francine Masiello

I was scheduled to meet the manager of the Global Entertainment — Book, Record, & Video Annex at 11 A.M. the next morning. As I entered the store, I was pleased to see an elaborate window display of the book of photographs, which Rizzoli had entitled The Celestial Voyeur: Heavenly Views of an Earthly Body. The manager, a knowledgeable-looking, earnest young man in sweater and tie, was assisting a customer.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “There’s a new album out, I’m not sure what the name of it is … but it’s the sound of two men lifting tremendous weights. I wish I could remember the name of it … oh shit, I was just talking about it to someone and now I can’t think of it. Goddamn it!”

“Well, there are two new albums out — one is the sound of the weights themselves — the clanking of the iron plates on the barbells and the thud of dumbbells being dropped. And the other is the sounds, the vocalizations, of the men themselves.”

“Is the first one just the sounds of free weights — you said barbells and dumbbells — that made it sound like only free weights? Or does it have sounds from a Universal or Nautilus? Like I wonder if it’s got the sound of the metal pin going into the right weight slot on the rack?”

“I think it’s free weights, Universal, Nautilus, stationary bike, and Stairmaster all mixed together — sampled. But just the sounds of the equipment, not people.”

“No, I think it’s the other one — the men. I think it’s called something like Smell My Thick Leather Belt After I Power-Lift … or maybe Hymns to a Hernia, Huge Weights and Sweaty Straining Men … or something like Colossal Men Suckle Methyltestosterone from the Hairy Nipples of the Men Who Spot for Them or something like that.”

“Let me see here … OK, we have something called Getting Huge — The Incredible Sounds of Hairy Men in Thick Leather Belts Lifting Tremendous Weights: A Sonic Mosaic of Pain, Nipples, Armpit Hair, Sweat, and Protein Powder.”

“Is it a Nonesuch album?”

“Yes. Nonesuch.”

“That’s it! That I remember, Nonesuch is the label. You have the CD, right?”

“We sure do.”

“Good, because I think they said on the radio that the CD has two cuts that the cassette doesn’t have.”

“That’s right, the CD includes one cut with the sounds of the two men doing rear-delt cable laterals and another cut with them doing crossover flys with extremely heavy weights.”

“Is that the one where you hear one guy saying, ‘C’mon, let’s get big, let’s get big,’ and the other starts his reps and you hear him moan and then the other guy starts screaming at him, ‘Move the weight! You’re a fuckin’ strong man, you’re an animal! Burn it, burn it!’ and then the other guy growls as he completes his set and then at the end you hear them give each other high-fives?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I definitely think that’s the one I heard on Public Radio. Do you carry video equipment and computer equipment?”

“Yes, we do.”

“OK, there’s something, I’m not exactly sure what it is — some kind of interactive computerized laser video player or interactive digital video software or something — but it enables you to take any movie and insert Arnold Schwarzenegger as the actor in the lead role …”

“Yes, we have what you’re talking about, but you’re a little confused about it. We have the equipment here: the computer, the digital video image synthesizing unit, the software — all that — we have that in the store. You tell us what you want — which films you want Schwarzenegger inserted into and we do it right here for you.”

“So you do it — I don’t need to buy the equipment?”

“Oh no no no, we do it right here. As a matter of fact, you can even fax your order in and we’ll deliver the Schwarzeneggerized videos to your home.”

“Oh cool! Can I order some now?”

“Sure.”

“OK. I’d like My Fair Lady with Arnold Schwarzenegger as Professor Henry Higgins, Amadeus with Arnold Schwarzenegger as Salieri instead of F. Murray Abraham, The Diary of Anne Frank with Arnold Schwarzenegger as Anne Frank, West Side Story with Arnold Schwarzenegger as Tony, It’s a Wonderful Life with Arnold Schwarzenegger instead of Jimmy Stewart, Gandhi with Arnold Schwarzenegger instead of Ben Kingsley, Bird with Arnold Schwarzenegger as Charlie Parker instead of Forest Whitaker … can you do documentaries?”

“Sure.”

“There’s a documentary called Imagine about John Lennon. Could you fix it so that it’s Arnold Schwarzenegger instead of Lennon?”

“No problem.”

“So it’ll be Schwarzenegger playing with the Beatles on Ed Sullivan and Schwarzenegger doing those peace things in bed with Yoko Ono and everything?”

“Yes, ma’am. Our equipment is state of the art.”

“OK, and one last one … how about Rain Man?”

“Would you like Arnold Schwarzenegger as the autistic brother or the Tom Cruise character?”

“Could you do it so he’s both, sort of like Patty Duke did as Patty/Cathy in ‘The Patty Duke Show’?”

“We can, yes … that may be a little more expensive, though.”

“Well, I’ll take it. And I think that’s it, and thank you very much for all your help.”

“It’s been my pleasure,” said the earnest young man.

Occasionally, I’ll conduct a writing workshop. I’m accompanied by my phalanx of bionic elderly bodyguards, some of whom are heavily armed and stationed at predetermined strategic positions within the room and building, and some of whom work undercover, posing as workshop participants. I’m also armed. Since I don’t like to carry a firearm when I conduct a writing workshop — I’ve found that it tends to inhibit people who haven’t yet developed a confident style of their own — I’ll come with an icepick in my sock. I openly brandish a cargo hook, but I figure that in the event that somehow someone is able to wrest the cargo hook from me, I’ll have recourse to the hidden icepick.

I usually start the workshop by showing slides in response to questions. Thanks to the media attention that’s been focused on my car collection, someone inevitably asks about my most recent automotive acquisition. So, for instance, at the last workshop I taught, I showed slides of my newest car, which is made by Visigoth Motor Works (VMW), a survivalist automobile manufacturer located in northern Idaho. I’ve got their sports coupe, the Piranha 793 (commemorating the year that Viking raiders sacked the English monastery of Lindisfarne). It features state-of-the-art technology that not only protects its passengers in the event of a collision, but ensures the death of the passengers in the other car. The Piranha 793 is the perfect automotive statement for the “I’m OK, You’re Lunch” generation. It incorporates computerized infrared homing systems that guide the vehicle toward the heat generated by the engine of an oncoming car, ensuring head-on collisions with “optimized lethality.”

Climaxing my slide presentation, I showed a photograph that I thought perfectly captured the glamour and éclat of Visigoth Motor Works: it’s me arriving at the People’s Choice Awards in my Piranha 793 convertible, almost anonymous in my Kevlar driving mask, were it not for the bare-midriff football jersey revealing my inimitably rippled abdominals.

After the Q and A, I’ll pose a question to the workshop participants: Do any of you think you could ever be as good a writer as I am — or perhaps even a better writer — and would you explain why you feel the way you do? Yes — over there, the fellow in the green sweater.

“Well, I think it’s possible — although it would take just a tremendous, tremendous amount of work to reach your level of virtuosity — I think it’s possible that I could someday be as good a writer as you are, although a very different kind of writer. I’ve lived all over the world and I’ve had a very interesting life, full of passion and joy and a great deal of sadness and pain, and I think that if I could ever develop a style to accommodate all the material that I’ve stored in my head and in my heart, I could be a damn interesting novelist.”

“OK … anyone else? The lady in the back with the boots and the vest.”

“Well, yes, Mr. Leyner, although I have a great deal of respect and admiration for your accomplishments, I certainly think that my work has as much literary validity as yours does. I’ve studied with some very fine writers at various programs around the country and I’ve worked assiduously at my craft for a good number of years now and etc. etc. etc.”

A couple of other people will affirm themselves and proclaim their ambitions, and then I’ll ask if there’s anyone else and, if not, we’ll proceed with some writing exercises.

At the conclusion of the workshop, my bodyguards, who’ve been working undercover, will take into custody each of those participants who has stated that he or she could be as good a writer as I am. Quietly, so as not to alarm those who have remained to get my autograph, the detained participants are handcuffed, loaded into the security van, and taken to headquarters. The standard procedure begins with the placing of a bag over a detainee’s head; interrogation and reeducation can last from several hours to a few weeks. Sleep deprivation, exposure to cold, mock executions, and various psychological techniques are used to persuade the detainees never to write again. When the staff is certain that a detainee’s reeducation is complete, the detainee is branded on the buttocks with my insignia as a reminder of his matriculation at headquarters and then released. It’s the antithesis of a writer’s colony, an anti-Yaddo.

Bookstore shelf-space is limited, as are the column inches available in today’s book reviews, and we at headquarters are adamant in our belief that all competition — active or potential — must be neutralized.

My insignia is a guy surfing on an enormous wave of lava — it’s an avalanche of this lurid molten spume with this glowering chiseled commando in baggy polka-dotted trunks on an iridescent board careering across the precipice of this incredible fuming tsunami of lava — and there’s an erupting volcano in the distance in the upper right-hand corner. It’s excellent.

I have it tattooed on my heart. And I don’t mean on the skin of my chest over my heart. I mean tattooed on the organ itself. It’s illegal in the States — I had to go to Mexico. It’s called visceral tattooing. They have to open you up. They use an ink that contains a radioactive isotope so that the tattoo shows up on X-rays and CAT scans.

Do you want to get sick to your stomach — I’ll describe the fetid, vermin-infested office of the “physician” who did my first visceral tattoo: Dr. Jose Fleischman. I went to sit down on what I thought was a couch in his waiting room … it wasn’t a couch. It was thousands — tens of thousands — of cockroaches that had gathered in a mass that was the shape of a couch. The same thing happened with what I thought was a magazine. I reached for what I thought was the latest issue of Sports Illustrated and it moved. It wasn’t a magazine at all, but a rectangular swarm of centipedes with a cluster of silverfish lying near the upper edge, and I guess from a distance, and in the dim light, the silverfish against the dark background of centipedes looked as if they formed the words Sports Illustrated. There was no receptionist and there were no other clients.

Finally, Fleischman emerged from the back room. The lenses of his eyeglasses were the thickest I’d ever seen. They actually bulged several inches out from the frames. It was as if he were wearing two of those snow-filled glass paperweights on his face. His clothes were soaked through with sweat. I explained that I wanted a surfer on a wave of molten lava tattooed on my heart and I handed him a color Xerox of my insignia. He lit a cigarette and studied the rendering from various angles, holding his head askew and squinting through the smoke.

“My friend,” he said, speaking for the first time, “what chamber?”

“Chamber?” I asked.

He pointed with his cigarette to a yellowing diagram on the wall.

“The two atria are thin-walled. The ventricles are thick-walled. I recommend the ventricles. Either one — it’s your call, amigo.”

I scrutinized the diagram for a few seconds.

“The left ventricle,” I announced.

“Bueno,” said Fleischman. “Today, we gonna put you out, open you up, and I’m gonna just do the outlines, then I sew you up. Then in two weeks, we open again, we fill in the colors, and sew up, all finished.”

I was still looking over the diagram.

“Say, Fleischman, while you got me on the table, could you do ‘Mom’ on my pulmonary artery?”

“What kind of calligraphy you like? You like somethin’ like this?”

He showed me an X-ray of someone’s thyroid gland with the word Mother done in what he called “Florentine style”—a very serpentine, filigreed style of lettering.

“That’s very nice.” I nodded.

Those were my first visceral tattoos. I’ve had many since. A tip to the guys out there — visceral tattoos really turn on female medical technicians and nurses. I’ve had numerous hot relationships start because a med-tech or a nurse saw one of my X-rays and went nuts over all the tattoos. They know that any wimp can go out and get “Winona Forever” stenciled on his arm — but it takes real balls to have yourself put under general anesthesia, sliced open, have a vital organ etched with radioactive isotope ink, and then get sewn up again every time you want to commemorate that special lady.

Next, I want to have the words Desert Storm — Thunder and Lightning tattooed on my left frontal cortex. But I don’t know where I’m going to go for that one. Brain tattooing is illegal even in Mexico. Someone told me maybe Malaysia.

Rocco left today. Baby Lago and I found a mercenary magazine left open on his bed with a page torn out. I was surprised, but not surprised, if you know what I mean. Lately, he’d seemed uncharacteristically subdued. He’d been talking a lot about his father. That in itself struck me as peculiar. Trezz wasn’t typically given to retrospection or wistfulness. But every so often I’d find him smoking a cigar by one of the bay windows overlooking the carp ponds and I’d say, “Trezz, what’s up, man?” and he’d gaze into the distance for a minute or two and then he’d take the cigar out of his mouth and stare at the soggy masticated stub and he’d say in a hoarse whisper: “I was thinkin’ about my old man.”

Rocco’s father had been a medical cheese sculptor — he sculpted cheese centerpieces for medical conventions. It was a profession that required not only fine craftsmanship and an encyclopedic knowledge of cheeses, but a comprehensive understanding of human anatomy. One needed to know which cheeses by dint of their hues and textures would allow the sculptor to render an organ with maximum fidelity. Havarti with dill, for instance, is particularly suitable for sculpting uterine lining. Mozzarella has just the right slickness and convoluted folds for the brain. A long and difficult apprenticeship is necessary. Rocco’s father studied with a master medical cheese sculptor for over ten years before he was allowed to solo, debuting with a cheddar prostate gland for the American Society of Urologists 1937 convention in Lake Tahoe. Tragically, at the height of his career, there was a terrible accident. Rocco’s father and mother had won a sweepstakes contest and had gone to London, England. One night they went to a pub. And the poor man, not knowing the local customs, walked where he shouldn’t have and took a dart in the right temple. He survived, but his virtuosity with a cheese knife was irrevocably lost. A proud man, he stubbornly refused to capitulate, attempting to recover some vestige of dexterity through a daily regimen of physical therapy, until age and infirmity made even that impossible. Rocco was at his bedside when he died. He had something in his fist and before the body was removed from the hospital room, Rocco gently pried open his fingers to see what he’d been gripping with such poignant tenacity: it was a torn anterior cruciate ligament made out of Muenster and Swiss that he’d been laboring to complete for the Canadian Association of Sports Physicians’ 25th Annual Meeting in Ottawa. Trezz kept his father’s final sculpture with him always, and when he came to work at headquarters he stored it in a special place in the commissary freezer.

We checked the freezer this afternoon; the Muenster and Swiss ligament was gone, along with Rocco.

In the middle of the night, the phone rings.

Arleen answers.

I roll over and go back to sleep.

I’m in the middle of a dream. I’m leaning out the window of my car, kissing a tollbooth attendant. She’s savoring my mouth with her tongue and gently biting my lips and sighing and her kissing is so sweet and languorous that it’s breaking my heart. Traffic is at a complete standstill for over fifteen miles.

Arleen nudges me awake.

“It’s for you, babe,” she says.

“Who is it?” I ask.

Arleen inquires.

“It’s a woman named Desiree Buttcake.”

“I don’t know anyone named Desiree Buttcake. If it’s a fan calling about the solid-gold belt buckle custom-minted with the lava-surfer insignia and the words Team Leyner, tell her to call the 800 number.”

“C’mon, Mark, she say she knows you. Take the phone — I want to go back to sleep.”

I take the phone.

“Hello, this is Mark Leyner.”

“Hi, Mark, this is Desiree Buttcake.”

“Desiree, I’m sorry, but I don’t really know who you are.”

She laughs.

“Mark, of course you don’t know me … well, I mean you don’t know me as Desiree Buttcake … you know me as Francine Masiello. I wrote you a letter a couple of weeks ago. I’m the psychic who recently had cosmetic breast-and-buttock-augmentation surgery … remember?”

“Oh yeah … you’re the Hummel collector who got carbon monoxide poisoning on ‘American Bandstand.’

“That’s right, that’s me.”

“Well, what’s up, Francine … I mean, Desiree.”

“I want to work for you, Mark. And I want to start tonight. There are important things I can do for you and your organization, but they need to be discussed immediately.”

“Well, listen, Desiree, applicants for employment at headquarters usually have to undergo an extremely rigorous interview process and security check.”

“Interview me tonight. It’s critical that I start working for you as soon as possible, believe me.”

“OK, where are you?”

“Every Thursday night a cell of right-wing intellectuals, novelists, playwrights, poets, painters, architects, and psychics meet in the sauna of a different Jack LaLanne Health Spa. The location of the sauna is kept secret from members of the cabal until 9:40 P.M. on Thursday night at which time it’s announced in an encrypted fax. Let’s see here … OK, tonight we’re meeting in the sauna at the Jack LaLanne Health Spa in the Linwood Mall, Fort Lee, New Jersey.”

“I’ll be there,” I say.

When I arrive at the Jack LaLanne Health Spa, there is no sign that a clandestine meeting of ultra-right-wing intellectuals and psychics is taking place in its sauna. Yelping aerobics classes, the echo of racquetballs, sweaty florid-faced hausfraus in garish leotards slumped at juice machines, men with hairy jiggling breasts and gelatinous rolls of stretch-marked belly fat grimly tramping on treadmills and Stairmasters — nothing out of the ordinary. I undress in the locker room, walk down a short hallway, come to a door marked SAUNA and open it. Through the thick steam, the first face I recognize is that of Dr. Claude Lorphelin, a gynecologist, surrealist poet, and neo-fascist pamphleteer who lives in the posh 16th Arrondissement of the Paris, France, simulation at Epcot Center.

“Bonjour, Dr. Lorphelin,” I say, extending my hand into the fog.

A latex surgical glove emerges, gripping my hand.

“Bonjour, Monsieur Leyner. We are very happy to see you. Your article was magnificent.”

“Merci,” I say, acknowledging the concordant murmurs of approbation with a crisp bow of the head.

Lorphelin was referring to an article I’d written deploring the fecklessness, physical cowardice, and political disloyalty of the current literary community. Published on the Op-Ed page of the New York Times, the article exhorted artists to stop their incessant whining; to stop crawling on their knees with their hands out, begging for grant money and fellowships; to stop exalting self-marginalization; to emerge from their academic sanctuaries where they huddle like shivering, squinting, runty, sexless, nihilistic mice — to emerge into the intoxicating, palpitating, nutrient-rich sunlight of the marketplace, to intermix with the great people of a great nation, and to be emboldened by the truculent spirit of the populace.

“Mark, over here,” a woman’s voice emerges from the corner.

“Desiree, is that you, babe?”

“It’s me. Listen, why don’t we go somewhere where we can conduct our interview more privately.”

“OK. There’s a diner across the street. I’ll meet you there in ten minutes.”

I turn to say good-bye to Lorphelin.

“Au revoir, babe. If I’m ever in Orlando …”

Lorphelin stands and salutes me.

“Until Victory!” he says.

* * *

“Miss, I’ll just have a cup of black coffee. Desiree, do you want anything?”

“I’ll have a scoop of vanilla ice cream with cough suppressant whip and a cup of PMS tea.”

The waitress left and Desiree rummaged in her gym bag, extracting a resumé, which she handed me across the table.

“Hmmmmmm, very impressive,” I said, perusing her vita. “Captain of the Ossining High School track team, played ‘ancient instruments’ in the high school orchestra, Student Council President, President of Thespians and Yearbook, National Merit Scholar, combined SAT scores of 1590, attended Princeton University, spent junior year in Papua New Guinea, graduated summa cum laude, attended Yale Law, editor of Law Review, hired right out of law school by Swazy, Cummings and Bass, made full partner in six months, elected president of the American Bar Association at the age of twenty-six, appointed Attorney General of the United States by President Hallux Valgus — a post you left after a year to become a Supreme Court Justice — a position which you in turn resigned after eight months to race Formula One cars in international competition including the Monaco Grand Prix, which you won for three consecutive years … very, very impressive, Desiree.”

“Thank you, Mark.”

“There are a couple of questions I’d like to ask you. It says here that you played ‘ancient instruments’ in the high school orchestra … what exactly are ancient instruments?”

(Desiree seemed unflustered by the question and I made note of her poise in the margin of her resume.)

“When an orchestra performs a piece of music that was written in a certain era, it’s best to perform that piece using coeval, autochthonous instruments, as opposed to modern instruments — that is to say, instruments of that era and region, the instruments for which the music was presumably written. Most high school orchestras can’t afford ancient instruments, but I was quite fortunate in that Ossining High was a particularly well-endowed school, and to give you an example: in my senior year we performed an orchestral piece written in 3000 B.C. by a Mesopotamian composer; I played an instrument which consists of the inflated bladder of an emu, which is either scraped with a bone plectrum or bowed with stiffened flax fibers. It produces an extraordinary plaintive tone quite unlike anything else I’ve ever heard.”

(I found Desiree’s response to be forthright and thoughtful, and again jotted down my evaluation.)

“Desiree, you stepped down as Attorney General after only a year and then stepped down as a Supreme Court Justice after only eight months. Do you think that this exhibits an immature restlessness and inability to honor long-term commitments or do you think that it exhibits a wonderful kind of boundless, nomadic intelligence and creativity that can’t and shouldn’t be constrained by a single vocation?”

“The latter.”

(Very direct, succinct, confident.)

“Desiree, what sort of position are you looking for with us?”

“Something in security. As you can see, I’ve been in some dangerous situations and I think that my experience would be a great asset to you and your staff. As I alluded to on the phone, I definitely think you need to beef up your security, and now. There are rumors out there about missing fiction workshop participants … things could get rough.”

(There was now positively no doubt in my mind that Desiree would be an invaluable addition to the staff at headquarters, and I made a note of my decision.)

“Could you start tomorrow?”

“Absolutely!” she said, grinning.

“Good. We’ll see you at nine A.M. Report to Baby Lago and she’ll see that you get your W-2 forms and security pass and health insurance information and belt buckle. OK? Desiree, I’ve got to get going now, Arleen’s going to be worried about me. Welcome to Team Leyner.”

I stood up, kissed her on the cheek, and threw some money on the table.

“Mark, there’s one more thing I want to talk to you about. Do you do drugs? There’s something I think you might be interested in.”

I sat back down.

“Desiree, as you know, Mark Leyner is about total fitness and power — muscle mass, density, ripped definition, triceps, biceps, pecs, lats, glutes, intensity, stamina, endurance, mental focus … on the other hand, I do have a responsibility to my fans to forge ahead where most men fear to tread. I mean, we can’t leave the exploration of inner space to New Age Milquetoasts like Terence McKenna. What kind of drug and how much?”

“Well, it’s not really a ‘drug’ per se, although it’ll get you off, believe me. And I don’t exactly have it to sell you, but I know you’ll be interested and I know how you can get it. It’s Lincoln’s morning breath.”

“What’s ‘morning breath’?”

“Y’know, it’s the worst breath of the day — morning breath.”

“Lincoln’s morning breath? Abraham Lincoln’s morning breath?”

“There’s a vial of Lincoln’s morning breath in the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington, D.C. The museum used to be the Medical Museum of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology and it’s located on the grounds of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. They’ve got thousands of specimens, including tissue samples from presidents and military leaders. But when I heard about this, a sealed ampule of Lincoln’s morning breath — I mean a snort or two and who knows — I knew you’d be interested, Mark.”

“Desiree, I think this is going to be a very profitable association for both of us. See you in the A.M., babe.”

I stood up again, turned to leave, and then remembered something that had been on my mind.

“Desiree, in your letter you said something about being the Vatican. Did you mean the building?”

“Yeah, the building,” she said.

Joe Casale made the arrangements. We’ve got the first-class section of Continental Flight 213 to National Airport in Washington, D.C., all to ourselves. Arleen’s wearing a chartreuse skating skirt with an ornate jeweled bodice and boots with jeweled cuffs. I’m wearing Air Jordans, camouflage pants, no shirt, an onyx quarter-pound burger embedded with chunks of diamond on a gold rope around my neck, and a black baseball cap with the words Golden Nugget in gold stitching. When we reach cruising altitude, our stewardess rolls out a five-foot hero with mortadella, cappicola, prosciutto, sharp provolone, and sweet peppers, two bottles of Johnnie Walker Black, and a bucket of ice. We each take a bottle and start on either end of the sandwich. Arleen — by day, mender of shattered psyches; by night, voluptuous temptress and pleasure addict — is a woman of voracious appetites. By the time we make our final approach to D.C., she’s polished off two feet of hero and a fifth of scotch.

As we touch down and taxi toward our gate, I nudge Arleen and flash two White House press passes.

“You said you always wanted to go to a presidential news conference, right, babe?”

“Oh, Mark!! When? When?!”

“Tomorrow morning, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.”

Arleen is euphoric. Ever since that spring afternoon when she shot me out of a tree with a tranquilizer dart, there’ve been two things she’s always talked about wanting to do: see harness racing at the Meadowlands and attend a presidential news conference. I’ve now made good on both of my nuptial promises. And she’s loving it.

Q: Mr. President, I have a chunk of pork in my mouth—

A: I’m sorry, you say you have a pork chunk in your mouth?

Q: Yes. I have a chunk of pork in my mouth and I’m not planning on chewing it or swallowing it. Do you have any idea if it’s possible for my saliva to dissolve the chunk and, if it is possible, can you say how long it will take for my saliva to dissolve the piece of pork? And I have a follow-up question.

A: As I’ve stated previously, the enzyme in saliva, amylase, functions primarily to break down carbohydrates. It’s the gastric juice in the stomach that works on proteins … it’s the pepsin, which is the stomach’s main digestive enzyme, and the hydrochloric acid in the gastric juice that will really break down the pork chunk. But it may very well be that the saliva in your mouth over a long period of time could possibly erode the chunk away … We’ll have to get back to you with some more information on that.

Q: My follow-up question is this: There’s been a tremendous amount of controversy recently about the size of the First Lady. At a briefing last week, your press secretary — in response to a question about how you first met her — said that you were at an after-hours club, sitting next to a man who still had anti-shoplifting magnetic tags attached to his sports jacket and safari shorts. Now the FBI is baffled as to how this man managed to leave the Harvé Benard outlet in Takoma Park with anti-shoplifting magnetic tags affixed to his clothes without setting off the store’s alarm. But at any rate, your press secretary said that the man ordered a cocktail and then began playing Tetris on his Game Boy, when — and I think you, sir, repeated this in a speech you made last Friday before the AFL–CIO — you saw something crawling out of his ear and you reached over and took it between your thumb and index finger and, looking closer at it, discovered that it was a woman, a woman about the size of the letter “o” in a magazine or a newspaper. I think you even indicated a point size, but I don’t have the transcript handy here. Your press secretary then went on to say that within the next forty-eight hours, you and the First Lady were married. Could you fill in some of the details about what exactly transpired in the forty-eight hours between the time that you plucked the First Lady from the ear of the man at the after-hours club and the marriage ceremony?

A: First of all, let me say this — I think it’s very important that people not lose confidence in our retail industry’s anti-shoplifting magnetic tag program and I have urged the business community to continue utilizing the program in order to curtail pilferage and avoid the need to pass along revenue losses to customers in the form of higher prices. Now … when Barbara crawled out of this fellow’s ear — and I think I compared her size to that of an 8-point Times Roman lowercase “o”—I didn’t know what she was. I plucked her off this guy, who said absolutely nothing and just continued playing Tetris, held her in the light, and asked her what her name was. She said Barbara and she asked me what my name was. I introduced myself and then I said that it was difficult to talk here, would she like to come back to my place. Now I think it’s critical here for people to understand that this wasn’t the clichéd bar pickup line it may appear to be. Because she was so tiny, it was extremely difficult to hear her, and with the jukebox blaring it was impossible. When we got home, we talked and we talked and it became apparent I think to both of us that we were just in complete synch on every level — politically, philosophically, spiritually — and it was equally apparent that we were physically quite attracted to each other. Now here’s where some of the controversy’s been generated and I appreciate the opportunity to clear some of this up. Sex presented some very real difficulties. I had to use a jeweler’s loupe in order to find her vagina and her clitoris. Utilizing a bristle from the tiny applicator used to apply solution to micro-format audio cleaning cassettes, I jury-rigged an erotic toy which I could manipulate to give her an orgasm. She then insisted that I come, too. I told her that it didn’t really matter, that just experiencing her own pleasure and passion was satisfying to me, but she insisted. And she insisted that she bring about my orgasm. She tried running up and down my penis in an effort to somehow generate enough friction to cause an orgasm but it didn’t work and she was soon exhausted. After a rest, Barb came up with an ingenious suggestion. We cut a shoeshine cloth into a thin strip, glued the ends together to form a continuous loop, and rigged up an oblong treadmill. Barb ran in the center of the strip causing it to turn and I put my penis inside the end of the loop and the friction of the cloth buffing my erection soon did the trick.

Q: Mr. President, do you condone the colorization of Civil War daguerreotypes, and, if so, why?

A: I do indeed condone the colorization of Civil War daguerreotypes. I believe that if Mathew Brady had had access to color film he would have used it.

Q: Sir, you’ve recently urged Americans and, in particular, poor Americans to nutritionally supplement their food with their own hair and nail clippings. Could you expand on this?

A: Our nails and hair are made out of a protein called keratin. Keratin provides us with a wonderfully inexpensive way to supplement the protein content of our families’ diets. Our bodies are like farms — we’re growing this perfectly good source of protein right from our scalps and our fingers and our toes — and what do we do with it? We throw it away. I think that especially for parents having trouble providing their children with three square meals a day, this is an economical — and I’ve been assured by the Surgeon General, healthy — solution. Using an industrial grinder, you simply pulverize the clippings into a fine powder. Then you can add the powder to soups, cereals, shakes, chopped meat, whatever. By incorporating pulverized hair and nail clippings into your family’s recipes, you should be able to use 25 percent less beef and still exceed the U.S. Recommended Daily Allowance for protein.

When we got back to the hotel, Arleen was still quivering with excitement.

“Oh man, what a thrill that was for me! The drama, the sensation of history in the making … but I don’t know about grinding up my toenail clippings and mixing them into the meatloaf.”

“Look, babe, we’re not exactly poor,” I said.

I handed her a statement from our Japanese licensing company that my agent had faxed to the hotel. It showed bottom-line quarterly revenues for Team Leyner from the My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist Miniature Golf Course in Yokohama of over 68,000,000 yen.

Up in our suite, I splashed cold water on my face, slicked my hair back, slapped on some Versace Eau de Toilette, pocketed my gloves and lock picks, affixed my six-and-a-half-inch stainless steel Gerber survival knife in a Cordura sheath to a tie-down on my right leg, and holstered my SIG P-226 9-mm pistol loaded with 15 rounds of ARMCO 115-grain full-metal-jacketed military spec ammo to my left leg. Arleen had zapped the TV to life and was mimicking an aerobics instructor who was firming fanny on a beach on Maui.

“Arleen, I’m going to the National Museum of Health and Medicine. Do you want to come?”

“Nah. I think I’m going to take a nap for a while. Will you be long?”

“I hope not, babe.”

I managed a glancing kiss as she slithered back and forth across the carpet in response to the rhythmic exhortations of the television.

I was back with the vial of Lincoln’s morning breath in less than an hour. Security at the National Museum of Health and Medicine was a joke. The vial wasn’t under guard; it wasn’t monitored by surveillance cameras; it wasn’t even kept in a locked vitrine. It was propped up on a table in the middle of an empty room.

“What do you think of this?” I asked Arleen, handing her the vial.

Arleen shrugged.

“Arleen, what you’ve got in your hand happens to be a vial of fucking Abraham Lincoln’s morning breath. And it’s my pleasure and honor as your husband to invite you to join me in partaking of a snort or two.”

Arleen looked at the vial.

She looked at me.

She looked back at the vial.

And then back at me.

“Let’s get stoned,” she said.

It’s impossible to do justice to the smell in words. One may try to quicken the olfactory imagination with poetic evocations like “suppurating abscess … colonic effluvia … smegma.” But nothing comes close to capturing the overwhelming stench that wafted from the vial when I removed its rubber stopper. It’s suspected that Lincoln was afflicted with an inherited disease called Marfan syndrome. Perhaps this accounts for the unbelievable foulness of his morning breath. Unfortunately, the vial was not dated. We only know that it was prepared during the Lincoln presidency. Halitologists contend that anxiety and tension can affect the odor of one’s breath. Perhaps the sample was taken in 1863, the morning after the Battle of Chancellorsville, when Union forces commanded by Joseph Hooker were decimated by the Confederate troops of Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee. Or perhaps Lincoln had simply split a sopressata and smoked mozzarella sub with hot peppers and extra onions with Mary Todd the night before the sample was collected.

But did we get high? you ask.