Eyeheart Everything (6 page)

Dear Sirs: ever since I tried to feed your food to my cat Splotch, she has denied me affection, companionship, and even the smallest of courtesies. Normally carefree and energetic, she now paces absently from room to room, or merely gazes out the window, her eyes betraying not the slightest awareness of her surroundings. Sometimes in the night she cries out in long, baleful meows as if recoiling from a memory too terrible for her little kitty brain to encompass.

For how many weeks is this behavior considered normal?

I saw this movie where the plot was: everything catches on fire and starts to explode. Then it continues to explode, in a series of increasingly huge explosions, until eventually mountains are exploding, and then the earth explodes and then the sun explodes. It had George Clooney and Gwyneth Paltrow in it. I hear they’re already working on a sequel. Speaking of sequels, there’s this one I saw the trailer for called Twisterconda, where this gigantic computer-generated anaconda starts threatening the inhabitants of this 20-story condominium out on the prairie in North Dakota, and then this gigantic computer-generated twister tornado comes speeding towards the same building, and then the twister and the anaconda sort of duke it out in a big final fight scene. It’s got Leonardo DiCaprio and Pierce Brosnan and Gwyneth Paltrow, it ought to be pretty good. I also saw a trailer for this movie called The Odd Couple, and I guess it’s based on some old TV show where there’s this space station orbiting the earth that gets infiltrated by hideous space-anacondas and these two guys who live in the space station have to save the earth, and there’s a hull breach, and some laser gunfights, and also I guess there’s this subplot that they really hate each other. It’s got George Clooney and Bruce Willis in it, and one of the space anacondas is played by Gwyneth Paltrow. I’m looking forward to that one. I also read in Entertainment Preview that there’s some movie coming up that’s got Bruce Willis, Gwyneth Paltrow, Willie Smith, Tommy Lee Jones, Sissy Spacek, Jack Nicholson and Cher in it. That ought to be pretty good. It’s about some disease that makes people bleed out of their anuses and die really disgustingly. I think it’s called Fasciitis: Final Conflict but I’m not sure how that’s pronounced, “fasciitis.” And there’s this Arnold Schwartzenegger movie I heard is almost done, where Arnold Schwartzenegger plays the President of the United States, and these alien monsters who disguise themselves as Arabs sneak into the White House and take everybody hostage, and start running the country, and I guess they do a bad job or something because then the President, who’s trapped in the Oval Office, has to escape and sneak around in all the secret passageways that only the President knows about, and kill all of the Arab space aliens, only they attach this deadly energy bomb to the United States Constitution, and the President has to disarm the bomb before it blows up the Constitution and the whole country reverts to a loose affiliation of nation-states, and then gets annexed by this other planet of the Arab space aliens who are apparently all Communists. It seems kind of stupid but I’ll probably go see it.

I would like two eggs. I wold like the eggs to be identical in every way, genetically that is, I mean to say that I would like two eggs laid by the same hen, simultaneously if that is possible or else one right after the other. They ought also to be weighed and measured for any deformity, and a suitable stress-test should be devised in order to screen out weakness that might later affect the meal. Several two-egg candidate pairs should be assembled just in case something bad happens.

I would like the first egg scrambled, via ultrasound if possible. If there is no suitable ultrasonic egg scrambling apparatus, you may use twelve turns with a sterilized wooden spoon, heating the egg over a PH-neutral panlike cooking surface that is perfectly flat. Please take care to avoid excessive lumps.

The second of my eggs should be buried in a pot of earth, PH-neutral earth, for a period of three days and three nights, the third of those nights coinciding with the full moon. Then, at midnight on the third night, I would like you to stand nude in a cemetery with tar smeared across your bare torso, holding the potted egg aloft, and I would like you to chant “Imalla Assaka Loba Doba Egg Foontella!” and then unearth the egg and prepare it in the usual fashion, as outlined above.

Of course I would like sausages with my eggs. The Aeronautical Meat Sciences Board publishes a set of detailed specifications of various sizes and textures of sausage. The sausage I am hoping for is described in AMSB Document 01-3382-Sausage-J, and you can order that document for a small fee from the address printed on the back of this card. Once you have obtained the document, and attended an orientation and been certified in an official training session, you will be able to offer your other guests delicious AMSB 01-3382-Sausage-Js, and I think this will do a lot for your business. It may improve the clientele. The AMSB document specifies a list of acceptable meats, including pork shank, smoked carp, textured jerboa protein, Michigan Mock Steak, turkey-pork shoulder, and various others. I’ll let you surprise me. I would like two and one-half of these sausages, roasted over hot coals. I’m sure you know what I mean when I say “hot coals,” don’t you?

A breakfast such as I am specifying would be useless without home-fried potatoes. Because my own home is far away across the ocean, I think it will be acceptable if you fry the potatoes in the home of my Aunt. I have been staying with her this week. She lives only a mile from here, and her kitchen, though small, is quaint and PH-neutral. Her name is Edna. She will demand to know all about you, of course, especially your romantic life. Edna is a very lonely old woman. But you must tell her nothing. She will want to assist you in the home-frying of the potatoes, but don’t let her. She is not a professional, like you. I have laid aside four potatoes for home-frying, they are in a sealed cryogenic container in a briefcase wrapped in plastic in the cold-storage freezer in the sub-basement of Aunt Edna’s house. It’s very dark down there, and there are a lot of things to bump into. You can locate the cold-storage freezer by its telltale sickly buzz-hum. There’s no light inside the freezer either, but the briefcase is to the left, wrapped in plastic. I have no idea what those other things are in there, and I certainly don’t want them introduced into my potatoes. Simply boil the potatoes for fourteen minutes or until they become softer than a soft apple but not quite as soft as a hard pear, then chop them in whatever manner you prefer — I’m not picky — before home-frying them on a PH-neutral cooking surface oiled with walnut oil and heated to 260 degrees Celsius. When they are done home-frying, season them and rush them hither.

Toast is futile. It would take too long to describe what I really want, and I’m getting hungry, so let’s just forget about the toast. Just bring me 300 milliliters of boiling water, thirty grams of raw coffee beans, a Bunsen burner, a piece of silk, a machete and six inches of string while I’m waiting. And a cloth napkin, please. Thank you.

Our poor friend Ivan has fallen in most unfortunate and inadvisable love — with a girl, no less. We saw him today, beside the Bottle-Cap Factory that graces our industrial skyline. We wore the tweed coat and chambray trousers that are the unofficial uniform of our Group. But Ivan, he arrived draped in a long white clinical jacket, toying with a dilapidated stethoscope as if unsure of its function.

“She’s interested in Medicine,” he confessed, and blew his nose on a crumpled paper shoe of the hospital variety. “I’ve been reading on the subject myself, just browsing really, but it astounds me what can be accomplished in our age with ... you know, sick people.”

“Ivan,” we chided in our firm but affectionate tone, “we are meeting tomorrow at the Library to analyze One Hundred Years of Solitude. May one presume one’s attendance?”

Ivan weighed the brass and rubber stethoscope in his left hand, the tissue shoe in his right, perhaps deciding which would make the more impressive bouquet. Inside the factory, able and responsible bottle-capiers hammered and twisted at their work.

Poor Ivan!

Poor, foolish Ivan. We saw him again today, outside the gates that encircle the manicured grounds of the Advertising Building, button on the epaulet of out industrial skyline. We wore the deep blue necktie that is the secret identifier of the members of our Group. But Ivan, deluded boy (clever though he may be in the nobler disciplines), wore a paint-spattered T-shirt and comfortable jeans. He quite reeked of turpentine, and his hands and arms were streaked in orange and cobalt.

“She’s fond of art,” he apologized.

“Multifaceted, your Juliet.”

“I must apologize that I missed last night’s discussion. I’m afraid I was absorbed in my experiments with texture. At any rate, how did it go?”

“Go? Where would it have gone? Did you expect me to talk to myself for two hours? In the Library?”

He examined his shoe. “Sorry,” he sighed.

“And your intaglio,” we probed, “how did it ‘go’?”

“Quite smoothly, I’m afraid.” He paused, clearly dejected. “But concurrently, I’m finding the process itself, the experience of the failure to paint, it’s enticing. I’ve already failed several portraits, though when faced with certain beauty, the oil and brush simply ... reaffirm a certain ... exquisite ...” At this his eyes achieved an abstract-expressionistic quality. We took notice of a number, possibly a telephone number, smeared on the length on his left arm.

“Well,” we commented, “the visual arts certainly have their place in our industrial skyline, when executed by the visualists themselves. But please, Ivan, members of our Group are scheduled to meet tomorrow morning at the University to recruit new members. Without you we should be deluged.”

Ivan knelt and studied the texture of the sidewalk with semi-professional interest. Inside the great gray Advertising Building, persuasive new arguments bubbled in their flasks, awaiting mass release.

“I’ll be there, of course,” he said, and started away.

“And Ivan?”

“Hm?”

“Tomorrow evening at the Library, the membership will discuss Paradise Lost.”