Eugene Lindsay, Ford dealer of the gods, was alone in bed making a list in a small notepad:
No. 63: You can get almost any food you want at any time of the year.
No. 64: Women do everything men do and it's not that big a deal.
No. 65: Anybody on the planet can have a crystal-clear conversation with anybody else on the planet pretty well any time they want to.
No. 66: You can comfortably and easily wake up in Sydney, Australia, and go to bed in New York.
No. 67: The universe is a trillion billion million times larger than you ever dreamed it would be.
No. 68: You pretty well never see or smell shit.
He was writing a list of things which would astound somebody living a hundred years before him. He was trying to persuade himself that he was living in a miraculous world in a miraculous time. Having taken early retirement from his job as a local TV weatherman, he'd subsequently retreated for a decade inside his mock-Tudor house in Bloomington, Indiana. He made art from household trash and watched TV. He jotted the occasional thought in his notebooks, such as the evening's list. And in his basement he used a Xerox 5380 console copier and a CD-ROM—based computer to execute far more elaborate mail scams than he had ever dreamed of in the eighties.
His wife, Renata, had years ago moved to New Mexico, where she paid the bills burning herbs for neurotic urban refugees. She abandoned decades of starvation dieting, and had grown as big as a pile of empties on the back stoop. She wore no makeup and made a point of letting people know it. When she divorced Eugene, she had asked for nothing, which confused and frightened him more than a nasty divorce fight would have done.
No. 69: We went to the moon and to Mars a few times, and there's really nothing there except rocks, so we quit dreaming about them.
No. 70: Thousands of diseases are quickly and easily cured with a few pills.
No. 71: Astoundingly detailed descriptions of sex acts appear on the front page of The New York Times, and nobody is ruffled by it.
No. 72: By pushing a single button, it's possible to kill 5 million people in just one second.
Eugene looked at number 72. Something was wrong — what? He figured it out:buttons didn't exist a hundred years ago. Or did they? What did people do back then — did they pull chains? Turn cranks? What did they have that they could turn on? Nothing. Electric lights? Eugene didn't think so. Not back then. He made a correction:
No. 72: By pushing a single lever, it's possible to kill five million people in just one second.
He looked at his clock — deepest night — 3:58A .M. He dropped his pen and marveled at his body, lying on the bed, still well proportioned and lean, still dumbly beautiful and betraying no evidence of inner weariness.
His bedsheets felt dry but moist, like the time he lay down on a putting green in North Carolina. Surrounding him was that month's art project — thousands of the past decade's emptied single-portion plastic tublets of no-fat yogurt, their insides washed squeaky clean, stuffed inside each other, forming long wavy filaments that reached to the ceiling like sea anemones. The finished piece was to go inside Renata's old gift-wrapping room, a concept she'd stolen from Candy Spelling, Aaron Spelling's wife — a whole room devoted to wrapping the nonstop stream of trinkets and doodads from her old gown business.
Eugene had to take his weekly bag of trash out to the curb. He looked at his clock — 3:59A .M. now. He procrastinated and added to his list:
No. 73: Bad moods have been eliminated.
No. 74: You almost never see horses.
No. 75: You can store pretty well all books ever published inside a box no larger than a coffin.
No. 76: We made the planet's weather a little bit warmer.
Trash time. Since the episode with the crazy pageant mother back in Saint Louis, giving any thing away to the trashman was cause for personal alarm. Trash night had never been the same since. To make his current bag of garbage seem fuller and hence more normal, he fluffed up its contents and carried the full bag, weighing no more than a cat, down to the front door. Eugene paused and tightened his robe, which bore the embroidered logo of the Milwaukee Radisson Plaza Hotel from which it was stolen during a meteorological conference. He darted out to the curb, lobbed the bag onto the concrete, then ran back to the door.
On the way back to his room he beamed with a creator's joy at his three pillars made of Brawny paper towel shipping boxes, a trio that filled the front hallway from floor to ceiling. Take that, Andy Warhol.
Cozily back in bed, Eugene heard an unmistakable thump from downstairs. He knew the noise couldn't be a tumbling mound of his art — he stacked his goods in stable piles, the way he'd seen them stacked in museums. Perhaps a raccoon had snuck in during his brief trash haul. Eugene reached for his gun in the bedside drawer and released the safety. Seated on the floor between the wall and his bed, he plotted his strategy.
Then came another bump from below. Confident and collected, he slipped through the Brawny towel box totems. Sliding on his buttocks, he lowered himself into the foyer, lit only by the candle power of a half moon in the clear sky. He crouched behind some of the totems and scanned the living room. Somebody or something was rooting behind a 1:4-scale Saber fighter jet made of Bumble Bee tuna and SpaghettiOs tins.
Eugene swept across the foyer like a cartoon detective. Stealthily he maneuvered to the base of the statue, its wheels resting atop a plinth built of stabilized Kraft Catalina saladdressing boxes. He was calm. He stood up and, with kickboxing speed, lunged over to the other side of the base shouting «Freeze!,» and pointed the handgun onto what appeared to be a drifter — a wino — who yipped like a squeak toy, and cowered against the boxes. Eugene flipped on the light switch, shocking the room and flaring his retinas. «Well fuck me, » he said. «If it isn't Miss Wyoming.»
«Put down the gun, Ken Doll.»
«Lordy! Miss Congeniality.»
«Yeah, like I always keep a speech about world peace prepared.»
«Hey — » The adrenaline was wearing off. He grew confused. «You're supposed to be — »
«Dead?» she laughed. «Well, technically yes. »
Eugene paused and crossed his arms while studying Susan, now hoisting herself up. «Boo,» she said. «I'm not a ghost. I'm real. I promise. Nice place you have here.»
Perplexed, Eugene asked how she got in.
«I scampered in while you were on the curb. I was sleeping outside your front door.»
«You were sleeping outside my front door?»
«No. I was waiting in the soundproof booth to answer a skill-testing question.» Eugene was still digesting the scene before him and was silent. Susan wanted a reaction and added, «Gonad.»
He lit a cigarette and relaxed just a smidge. «I can see you're a feisty one. Ten out of ten for deportment.»
«Oh, let it rest. I came here on purpose. What do you think. »
«You came here ? Why here ? And as I said, you're dead. I saw the crash on TV a hundred times.»
Susan stood up and removed the scarecrow's down jacket. «You've been doing weather for how many years now, Eugene — how many times are you ever right?»
«I was a good weatherman.»
«Was? I guess your station saw the inside of your house and decided to can you.» Susan was both pleased and surprised that she and Eugene so quickly fell into patter. More to the point, the sense of powerful first-crushiness initiated with «the wink» back in St. Louis was in no way diminished by the physical sight of an aged Eugene. He'd aged in the crinkly, weather-beaten manner of action heroes, sheepherders and five-star generals. His eyes remained as gemlike and clear as she'd remembered. He was also a kook and already kind of fun.
«Susan, what could you possibly have come to me here for? I've never even met you.»
«Where's Renata?»
«Renata's not here anymore.»
A good sign. Susan's insides thrummed. «You two split?»
«Years ago. You didn't answer my question. Why did you come here of all places? You've gotta know dozens of people within hours of the crash site.» He threw up his arms. «Shit. Look at me, trying to be logical with somebody who's supposed to be a ghost, fer Chrissake.»
Susan wondered herself why she had come there. All she'd known along the way was that she was in the Midwest and that Eugene's house seemed like the only safe place between the two coasts. She had no plan prepared for what came next. As this dawned on her, the lack of immediate response goaded Eugene.
«So let me get this straight — you thought Renata and I would give you a blanket, some Valiums and a phone line to 911? Your crash was a week ago, Miss Wyoming. Something's not right here. If you wanted blankets and cocoa, the time limit on that expired five days ago.»
Meanwhile, all Susan knew was that since her initial crush on Eugene she'd spent her life trying to find him in some form or another, mostly through Larry, and maybe now she wanted to see what the real goods were like. «Maybe I'm not sure myself why I'm here.»
«Oh, this is nuts!» He let out a breath. «Are you okay? After the crash? No broken bones? No bruises?»
«I'm fine.»
«You're going to tell me what happened?»
«Of course. Not now. Later.»
«You hungry?»
«Thirsty.»
«Come on. I'll get you some water.»
Susan brushed herself off and looked at Eugene's sculptures. «All this stuff made of trash. But it's so clean. How do you keep it all so clean?»
«It's my art. It's what I do. Come on. Kitchen's this way. How'd you get here from Ohio?»
The house was warm and dry. «It's pretty easy to get anywhere you want to in this country. All you have to do is find a truck stop, find some trucker who's flying on amphetamines, hop in the cab, drive a while, and then start foaming about religion — that way they dump you off at the next truck stop and you don't even have to put out.»
«I remember seeing you on that stage, you know.»
«You do ?» Susan was thrilled.
«Hell, yes. The night you won, you would have even if your mother hadn't done her little blackmail routine.»
Susan didn't want to dwell on Marilyn. «I'm thirsty, Eugene.»
Eugene gave her some water. The kitchen ceiling's lights wore milk carton shades, beacons of missing children, and cast a yellow light on the sink. She checked the expiry date on one of them. «April 4, 1991. That's when you started to become Picasso?»
«Sunshine, you're crazy as a fucking loon. And your voice. Your manner. You probably don't even know it, but you've become your mother. I only met her for maybe five minutes, but baby, you're her. »
Susan closed her eyes. She had a small puff of recognition. «Oh God — you know what, Eugene? You're right. I actually do feel like her right now, the way she moves. Funny — this has never happened to me before. It took me a plane crash to bring out my inner Marilyn. All it took her was fifteen years being the youngest daughter in a hillbilly shack full of alcoholics.» She put down her glass. «Now where am I going to go sleep?» They could hear a garbage truck outside, bleeping and throbbing.
Eugene was curious but exhausted. They inched back into the dining room. «My brain feels like Spam. Are you sure you're okay?»
«Yeah.»
Eugene became officious. «How'd you manage to survive that crash?»
Susan took a sip. She was beginning to feel level. The sense of having taken flight was gone. «You know, I've been thinking about that for seven days solid. I drew ticket number 58-A and won. I don't think there's anything more cosmic to it than that. There just isn't. I wish I could say there was, Eugene.»
«But where were you this past week?»
Susan yawned and smiled. «Save it for the morning. I've been up thirty-six hours.»
Eugene was too tired to probe further. «There's still a guestroom with furniture in it. Probably a bit dusty, but it ought to be fine.» Eugene led her there. Susan, meanwhile, was inwardly glowing: Eugene was single, retired and, like her, didn't have too much interest in the outer world. Once in the room, she lay her aviator glasses down on the bedside table and sat on the bed.
«You know, if it hadn't been for Mom pulling that stunt with you, then I never would have stolen your 8-X-10 and fallen in love with you.»
«Love!» Eugene seemed amused but then yawned. He said to Susan, «I phone in my grocery order tomorrow afternoon. Think of what you want to eat over the next week.»
«Why not go out and just buy them?»
«I don't like leaving the house.»
Susan hadn't heard such good news in years. It was all she could do to contain her sense of sleeping on Christmas Eve. «Good night, Eugene. Thanks.»
«Night, sunshine.»
Eugene sighed and walked down the hall. He loudly thumped the top of a totem. «And the winner is …» he said, «Miss Wyoming. What a fucking ride. »
At noon the next day Susan awoke to the sound of an electrical rhythmic thunking sound coming from the basement.Eugene's house. She rolled over and faintly purred.
A minivan drove by outside. The rumbling beneath her, precise and gentle, continued. She found an old housecoat on the guestroom door peg and walked down to a paneled oak door beneath the main staircase. Blazing green-white chinks of light escaped from around the door's edge, as though the door were shielding her from invading aliens. She opened it and discovered the basement. Eugene was dressed in slacks, socks and a polo shirt, orchestrating the Xerox 5380 console copier's collation of hundreds of mail-outs. There were shelves of blank paper, file folders and CD-ROM's containing thousands of U.S. and Canadian names and addresses Susan would soon learn were culled by a demographics research firm in Mechanicsville, Virginia, accompanied by information on incomes and spending patterns.
Eugene glanced up at Susan on the stairs. «Good morning, sunshine. Dressed for casual Friday, I see.»
On the walls surrounding Eugene's work area were dozens of wood and velvet plaques of clouds and sun and snow and temperatures ranging from 230 up to 120. She walked down the steps and picked up a velvet sun. «Whoo-ee! I'm all sunny today.» She noted Eugene's flash of disapproval and placed the sun back in its correct orbit.
«Thank you,» said Eugene, who continued with his clerical chores. Susan came up close to get a better peek at his documents, backing into Eugene.
He turned around. «Can you work a copier?»
«Back on the set of Meet the Blooms, whenever the writers got pissy and superior, I used to bring script production to a halt. You know how I did it? I wroteOUT OF ORDER on a sheet of scrap paper and taped it onto the copier's lid. All these people with IQs higher than Palm Springs temperatures, and not once did they consider challenging my paper signs.» She picked up a wooden plaque numbered 110º. «Did you ever use this one much?»
«Near the end. A few times. Once the weather got wrecked.»
«I guess you'd know.» She sat down on a stacking chair and watched Eugene. «When the show was canceled, Glenn, the head writer, loaded a commissary drinking straw with NutraSweet. Back on the set, he opened the copier's top and blew the NutraSweet into the machine, onto the drum. Killed the machine dead. They had to throw it out. It's like the worst thing on earth for copiers.»
«This house is a Nuclear Weapons Free Zone. We'll be having none of your white-collar sabotage during your stay here.» But he couldn't hold back a smile.
The copier created a relaxing rhythm. Susan's eyes glazed and her thoughts wandered. «Did your TV station can you because you were nuts?»
Eugene, sorting papers, spoke: «Nah. They didn't can me. I was injured on the job. I took early retirement.»
«You were injured doing the nightly weather?»
«As it happened, yes. You want to know what happened? I was crushed by a Coke machine.»
«On the job?»
«In the studio, so it was insured and unionized up the ying-yang. They installed a talking Coke machine which weighed, like, a ton more than a normal mute Coke machine. So this ugly little twerp with hockey hair shakes the machine back and forth, getting a rhythm going, until a can or two pops out, and the thing toppled down on top of him and it crushed him like a piñata. I happened to be passing by and my right foot got smashed. Look …»
Eugene removed his sock, and Susan bent down to look at Eugene's right foot, which, with its scars and stitches, resembled a map of Indiana divided into small, countylike chunks. «Ouch City, Arizona,» said Susan.
«You said it, baby. The kid was a goner, and I didn't walk for maybe seven months afterward. In the meantime they brought in a new guy with a fresher, perkier smile than me, who also focus-grouped like a royal wedding. I didn't have it in me to flog my butt around to the other stations. Too old. And if you're old in the weather biz, you either turn into a wacky eunuch real quick, or take a hike. So I hiked.»
«Let me see your foot more closely.» She sat down. «Put it in my lap.»
Eugene turned off the copier, and silence, like solidified Lucite, filled the air. He sat on a chair opposite Susan and hoisted his leg up and dropped it into Susan's lap.
Susan said, «Mom trained me never to say a word or a sentence without imagining that a pageant judge is out there secretly listening in. So my whole life I've been followed by this invisible flotilla of soap opera actresses, Chevy dealers, costume designers and TV weathermen who scan my every word. It's a habit I can't shake. It's like those people whose parents made them chew food twenty times before swallowing, and so the rest of their life becomes a hell of twenties.» She looked Eugene in the eyes: «Does it hurt when I do that ?» The atmosphere for Susan took on the it's-not-really-happening aura of life's better sex.
«No. Some of it I can't feel at all. And some of it feels like regular touching and …»
Susan looked him in the eye and applied more pressure but was also more thoughtful, kneading both the bottom leathery pads and tender spots between the toes.
«I saw you that night — at the pageant. You winked. Your wink almost bruised me,» Susan confessed. Her hands locked onto his ankles. She stared him down: «I've been through a lot this week. I need a shower, Eugene.»
He led her up out of the basement. They reached the bathroom. Susan turned on the water, clean and hot, and in an instant they were naked and wet and all over each other like scrapping dogs. Susan felt her skin shouting with relief, as though it had been long smothered, and her insides felt like she was riding in a fast elevator. They slammed into each other, releasing unknown volumes of anger and lust and loneliness until finally the water went cold and they left the tub. Eugene opened a cupboard which contained, to Susan's surprise, fresh towels.
A few minutes later, Susan was looking into Renata's old closet for something to wear. «I'm going to borrow one of these Bob Mackie gowns here. I see she left her stuff behind.» There were hundreds of dresses and outfits hanging from a dry cleaner's mechanized conveyor belt. The outfits did a dainty little jig as Susan turned the system on and off. «Boy, if Mom could see this. »
«Christ, turn that thing off. The noise is like the theme song to a show I don't watch anymore.»
«She can't have been that bad.»
«You used to be married, too.»
«Still am, technically. We never divorced.»
«Rock star guy. Rough stuff, I imagine.»
«Chris? Rough, yes, but stuff, no. He's gay as a goose. I married him so he could get a green card and so I could remain close to his Catholic and very married manager Larry Mortimer.» She stopped playing with the clothing rack.
Eugene was dialing on the cordless, ordering groceries. «Oh God.»
«What?»
«You're real,» he said.
«As opposed to … ?»
He lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling fan. «I've got a good thing going here. My time is all my own. I don't have to deal with …»
«With what?»
«With people, » Eugene spat out.
Susan looked at him. «I agree. You do have a good deal going here.»
Now they were both looking at the ceiling and holding hands. Eugene asked her, «What did the focus groups say about you?»
«What do you mean?»
«You know. The focus groups. The ones they brought in to pick you apart so the network could figure out what makes you you. »
Susan was intrigued. «Why?»
«I'll tell you what they said about me. Then you tell me what they said about you.»
«Okay, deal.»
«Women said, “What's with his hair? Is it real? Is that his real color?” They said, “Ooh, me so horny, me want humpy astronaut.” They said, “I'd go metric for you, baby.” Guys weren't as descriptive. They just called me nothing, but once they saw my face, they knew the sports segment was over and could switch off the set.» He lit a cigarette then lay back and chuckled. «TV.Ugh. »
Susan spooned into him. The sheets felt like cool pastry marble.
She said, «Near the end they knew they had enough episodes to syndicate, so they stopped focus-grouping. But at the start I got stuff like “I can see the zits underneath her makeup. Can't you guys find her a putty knife? That's one helluva thick paper bag she's trying to act her way out of. Her tits are like fried eggs gone all runny.” That kind of stuff.» Their eyes caught and they both laughed.
«I've gotta phone in this grocery order.» Eugene punched a phone number into the cordless, and the touch-tone beeps reminded Susan of a song she used to like back in the eighties.