The Plant

3/25/81

After what seems like ten weeks of unadulterated excitement—all of it the unhealthiest variety—things at Zenith House seem to have finally settled back into their accustomed drone. Porter sneaks into Jackson's office and sniffs the seat of her office chair during the five-minute period which comes every morning between ten and ten-thirty when the seat is vacant (it is during this half-hour each morning that Ms. Jackson removes herself and a copy of either Vogue or Better Homes and Gardens to the ladies' bog, where she has her daily dump); Gelb has resumed his surreptitious visits to the Riddley Walker Casino and after a rash double-or-nothing proposal earlier this week now owes me $192. 50; Herb Porter, after his brief fugue, has once again mounted into the seat of the great political locomotive which he imagines only himself, of all the earth's billions, really capable of driving; and I have resumed these pages after a three-week hiatus in which I have peacefully swept dirt by day and spread narrative by night—and if that is not pomposity masquerading as eloquence, then nothing is.

But the accustomed drone is not quite the same as before, is it? There are two principal reasons for this. One is down the hall and one is right here in my little janitorial cubby... or perhaps it's only in my head. I would give a great deal to know which, and please believe me that my tongue is nowhere near my cheek when I say so. The change down the hall is, of course, John Kenton. The change in here (or in my head) is Zenith the Common Ivy.

Herb Porter doesn't realize that anything at all is wrong with Kenton. Bill Gelb has noticed but doesn't care. It was Sandra Jackson who asked me yesterday if I had any idea why John had suddenly decided to go through every old manuscript in that corner of the mailroom I think of as The Isle of Forgotten Novels.

“No ma'am!” I said. “I sho don't!”

“Well, I wish he'd stop,” she said. She popped open her compact, peered into it, and began to poke at her hair with an afro comb. “I can't even go in there anymore without sneezing until I'm just about blue. Everything's covered with dust and all that dry creepy stuff that comes out when those cheap padded mailers tear open. You must hate it in there.”

“It sh