Little Casino (20 page)

“Writers who have little or no respect for their characters, or who actively dislike or disdain them to such a degree that even the most sympathetic reader finds herself unable to care for them, would be well advised to study and make critical notes on every story appearing in
The Atlantic Monthly
since 1970.”

—Crafting the Short Story,
5th Edition.

How about
The New Yorker?

“Too … hip?”

One wonders how the author of this exercise in barely disguised misogyny would like it if the nightmare seeds of post-dramatic stress were planted in
his
mind.

Speaking of “the author” of the above, it should be remarked that upon a first reading of the text, it seems glaringly apparent that the said text is imaginative, i.e., fictional. However, recent events make it clear that this is an accurate transcription of an actual deposition, the deposed being one Charlotte Ryan. Further investigation has revealed that Anthanna Air Conditioning and Motorcycle is part of a business consortium that also includes Aquatic Ship Scaling, Inc.

A scherzarade

T
HE SCENE IS SO BANAL AS TO MAKE ONE
weep in desperation, and yet, what an overwhelming sense of life!

“Nice of you to give your weekend, Ms. Paluka.”

“Oh, that’s all right, Mr. Pepp, I’m very interested in this account, it’s a real learning experience working on it. I’m grateful, really, for the opportunity.”

Surely, Mr. Pepp meant “give up.”

How careful she’d been about the clothes she’d packed for this working weekend—including her nightclothes! Sensual, she thought, yes, but not frilly. Expensive.

(Earlier, assuming that these two savvy and aggressive reps of a savvy and aggressive microchip firm did not just
appear
on the page without rambling through a lot of actual life, a bartender in the hotel lounge might well have been permitted a regular-guy cliché.)

In the hotel room, Mr. Pepp’s, since he is the senior junior assistant sales and marketing representative, while Ms. Paluka is his junior senior assistant, they get down to work. They prepare carefully, even exhaustively, for the meeting the next day with the big client. After a break for a room-service omelet with a crisp and somewhat reckless Chardonnay, she takes off her trim jacket, and suddenly feels wonderfully vulnerable, yet powerful and womanly in her white silk blouse.

Out with the laptop computers and the other stuff!

Time passes remarkably quickly when one is exhausting one’s self with demanding tasks in the unforgiving yet electrically charged world of microchips!

Mr. Pepp glances at Ms. Paluka’s breasts, breasts that slowly, and despite her M.B.A. from Stanford, heave, beneath the lustrous and creamy silk of her blouse. She pretends not to notice, and yet, a faint flush starts at her neck and rises swiftly toward her ears. How she wished she had a cigarette! Yet she had heeded the Surgeon General’s warnings and given them up several years ago. That Techmaxcon did not permit smoking, even in the immaculate parking lot, had had something to do with it. Thanks a million, Techmaxcon!, she often breathed. She could actually smell the
gas!

“Looks as if we’ve more or less got this baby
locked
up, Ms. Paluka. Now if we can start out on the same page with old Tromboner tomorrow, and convince him that our new hard-drive soft-disc microparticle floppy byte-generator is what his expanding business needs, I think that we should both be headed back to home base with smiles on our faces, and the guys’ applause awaiting us! (At Techmaxcon, all the employees were called “guys,” by common consent. There had been some grumbling about this at first, but a few motivational weekends of drumming and “jungle combat” had put everyone, at the end of the day, on the same page.)

She looks down at the traffic far below the hotel room window, the lights reflected in a dozen gleaming colors on the rain-slick streets.
This
is what it was all about! What an odd name Tromboner is, she muses. Perhaps he’s an ethnic person, an Eyetalian, they tend to have very strange foreign names, and so hard to
pronounce!
Russo. Zito. Gallo. Lupo. She couldn’t even think how to say them. Whew!

Earlier, in a nicely familiar flashback, it has been revealed that Ms. Paluka’s ex-husband, Brad, had tried every trick in the book to keep her from getting her M.B.A., even going so far as to insult Palo Alto. And how she wanted a child! Yet Brad, soft, pouting, selfish Brad, would not hear of sharing household tasks, and as for taking care of a baby while she attended her demanding classes, ha!

Certainly it wouldn’t hurt to have a bottle of Cognac sent up to the room! “A few snifters before bed won’t spoil us.” He was quite the rogue, Mr. Pepp was, and Ms. Paluka was beginning to understand why he had called the office volleyball team, “the Tex-Maxies.” He was just so fun!

“You’re not trying to get me tipsy, are you, Mishter Russho?”

“What?”

Oh dear, she’d forgotten his name for a moment, and knew that the Five Star V.S.O.P. Cognac, Hennesshy’s, had gone to her head. And yet, the boiling turmoil in her heaving breasts also had something to do with the emotion that filled her womanly being. But she was a junior senior assistant, for God’s sake!

“Quite all right, Ms. Paluka, even I’d forget my name if it weren’t attached to my shoulders, ha ha.” This Mr. Pepp is one heck of a good sport. Ms. Paluka feels a certain tingle as he becomes serious and notes, hesitantly, that he couldn’t help but notice her looking down at the traffic far below on the rain-slicked streets, and he’d been in enough lonely hotel rooms to know what
that
means.

Oh, oh, what
did
it mean!? Did she dare ask?

“By the way, Ms. Paluka, I—”

“You may call me Aspen … if … you l-l-like.”

“Aspen. Well, then, Aspen. I have been meaning to tell you that my infant son, Brett—I find this difficult to speak of, even now— that Brett died in infancy of an undiagnosed mystery disease.”

“Oh, Mister Zito, I mean, Peppo, no! No!”

Of course, his marriage has never been the same, his wife blames him for the child’s death, since the death occurred while he was entertaining a client, a big client, at the Grand Opera. And it turned out, oh, how strange fate can be, despite exercise and a sensible diet, that he didn’t like opera and the account was lost. The irony almost overwhelmed Mister Jerry Pepp, a man whom irony rarely troubled.

“Don’t … don’t cry, Mr. Pepp, Mr.—darling,” Aspen whispers, as she slips out of her clothes, blouse first, her eager breasts heaving sensually. “Come, come to my arms.”

And then the singing of the larks and nightingales burst forth over the shrouded dreamed-of moors as their voices soared into the cerulean blue that covered the ocean pounding again and again and again …

Is Mr. Pepp lying, and does Aspen Paluka care whether he is or not? Doesn’t Ms. Paluka, intelligent and attractive at thirty-five or so, deserve to eat the pâté, drink the cocktails, earn the big salary, make the bonus money, get the nookie? Doesn’t she deserve to read the latest books by the writers who wish to share their demanding thoughts on modern life in a clear and simple yet colorful style? Of course! Life, Ms. Paluka knows, is not just silk blouses and bras that fit right.

Note: Feel of bedspread. Lights from traffic far below on walls of room. Distant foghorns from the dark sea beyond the sleepless metropolis. Brief description of Mr. Pepp’s sadness as he muses on his little cabin in Vermont, a cabin that Mrs. Pepp has always hated, hated the fish and the beavers and the coots and the firewood, no, she preferred to stay at home in the comfort of their luxury co-op overlooking the Golden Gate. He was, then, always alone in the woods, with the deerflies and the wasps and the smell of skunk in the air and the splash of trout in the clear cold water, alone with his sad thoughts of Brett and his fading dreams …

“I LOVE Vermont!,” Aspen laughs. And it turns out that her Dad was a Forest Ranger in the Smokies and that she was, dammit!, almost weaned on jerky and hogjowl and boiled beans. Her Dad had a dream of the World Wide Web once, and had met Jack Kerouac.

They fall asleep in each other’s arms, and Aspen thanks her lucky stars that she thought hard about her important nightclothes selection so carefully. As the women liked to joke over that first cup of decaf, you never can tell when your boss will want to interact on a warm, personal level with you.

The author, at a loss to come up with anything new to say about the world of business (with which he is obviously unacquainted, and, grievously, unwilling to research), has apparently dumped the contents of some notebook scribblings onto the page and is hoping to pass it off as “innovative” literature. Not surprisingly, he is probably wholly unfamiliar with Gertrude Stein’s comment on
Finnigan’s Wake,
“The quarks are not literature.” Cryptic, so to say, yes, but true.

“She might be right about the notebook, Jerry.”

Prudence Rydstrom, battling her way into an Ooh-La-La French-lace-trimmed semitransparent peekaboo long-line torsolette with detachable brassiere, dayglo faux-bustier, six patent-leather semi-detachable garters with neon insets, and a battery-powered combination dildo/cocktail shaker, says that all the girls—even, believe it or not, her sister, Maxine—agree with her that Mr. Pepp and Ms. Paluka make a loving and romantic couple and that they deserve a little fucking happiness.

“So long as the gentleman employs a rubber on himself so as not to communicate an unwanted clap to the lady’s shameful parts,” Mary Connors, R.N., says. “It’s only right. Not that I make an implication that the gentleman has got himself a nice little dose, but you can’t be too careful nowadays, what with people copulating here, there, and everywhere, and with perfect strangers who could be festering with dread carnal diseases. We see a lot of it in our business.”

“Oh, these lovely ladies! Altogether,” Mr. Joyce says, “a scherzarade of one’s thousand one nightinesses. And perhaps you might check to be sure you’ve transcribed
this
correctly?”

[The decision to include this chapter in the work that became
Little Casino
was not easily arrived at. It was initially felt that the author[’s] “style” and approach were not commensurate with that of the rest of the work. Ultimately, if reluctantly, that view was modified, on the ground that “the content outweighs the … deficiencies of execution.”]

This indifferent earth

S
HE WORRIED ABOUT CIGARETTE SMOKING
, cigarette smokers, and, most especially, secondhand cigarette smoke that might well be everywhere, virtually invisible, some of it lurking in corners and near baseboards for decades, and about the fact that those exposed to this smoke, either directly or indirectly, had little or no idea of what to do about nuclear waste. She fretted about all the wonderful, intelligent dolphins that were killed along with all the marvelous, beautiful tuna, and that the callous and unenlightened fishermen who slaughtered them would, if they stopped slaughtering them, stay home on welfare collecting their fat checks and drinking beer all day. She was concerned that a well-spoken legal secretary, who had been complimented on her attractiveness by her boss, a man with absolute power over her career, had been plunged into near-psychosis by this occurrence, and that the boss had compounded his offense by persistently suggesting to the hapless woman that it was perfectly all right for persons in good health to eat as many as five eggs a week. She was upset that a CEO who had always seemed like a wonderful man with his big white smile and deep voice and his concern for hungry children in Somantia or Rguanda or someplace hot and dirty had left his wife of thirty-two years, a wonderful woman who played tennis and was always tan, for a twenty-three-year-old California woman described as a “Palo Alto yogurt therapist and relationship coach,” and that neither of them seemed to be alarmed in the least that suggestive dancing in public seemed to be on the rise. She often lay awake at night thinking of the bothersome homoerotic behavior displayed by athletes of both sexes while engaged in their various sporting pursuits, and that not a single one of them had ever spoken out about the impossibility of convicting a black millionaire of anything, since they not only get all the breaks, they also get everything handed to them on a silver platter. She stewed silently when she came to realize that not one single president in her lifetime had possessed the courage to speak out against really short skirts in places of business, since fashion designers are all homosexuals, who not only get all the breaks, but they also get everything handed to them on a silver platter. She was disgruntled because of the possibility that chicken offered for sale in seemingly clean markets might be contaminated with salmonella, some kind of Arab disease invented by Saddam Hussein, yet careless butchers, even after all these years, show no interest in really excellent books that tell good stories, but prefer to look at dirty pictures back in the refrigerator. She was considerably troubled by the fact that no amount of washing could ever rid fruit of deadly insecticides imported from Iran or someplace like that by the liberals in Congress, and she knew in her heart that the badly paid Mexicans who sprayed the fruit were also shooting wolves and coyotes, when they could spare a moment from their enchiladas and tequila and urinating in the streets, or
calles.
She hated the loggers who spent much of their days ravaging the forests of this once-beautiful land, and was certainly not at all surprised to learn that they were wholly unconcerned about the high levels of caffeine in the soft drinks that their children seem to like so much. She became very nervous about secondhand cigar smoke, and was appalled to learn, from her daily newspaper’s Health and You section, that most cigar smoke has a carcinogenic half-life of 40,000 years, the same as refined sugar. She was enraged that none of those exposed to this smoke, although possibly rendered sterile, bothered to discover for themselves that the Jews, who owned the entertainment business, the banks, the beer companies and spirits distilleries and newspapers, the television stations, the Empire State Building, the Golden Gate Bridge, 51% of Alabama, Harvard, and the NAACP, also owned all the cigar factories in Communist Cuba, whence all these fashionable cancer-rolls come from, despite the lies of the Jewish-owned, liberal-socialist-neoconservative press and its kept columnists, all of whom have changed their “kosher” names. She was filled with anxiety when she discovered that the Boards of Directors of dozens, not to say scores, of this once-proud nation’s most powerful companies were made up of Satanists, Muslim fundamentalists, or both, and that the stockholders of these corporations had no idea that demonically possessed-and-directed great white sharks kill just as many dolphins and tuna as do drunken New England fishermen, although many of these aquatic wonders of nature are also destroyed by chewing-tobacco sputum carelessly deposited in streams and rivers by Jewish farmers and baseball players. She was discouraged to find that ranchers love to shoot weasels, which they callously call “barn coyotes,” but somewhat soothed when informed that these same weasels lust to kill, and kill savagely, newborn lambs and bunnies. She could barely countenance the revelation that those charged with controlling the predations of the demonic great white sharks were discovered to be more interested in establishing the rights of homosexuals to perform disgusting sex acts with and on each other anywhere they please, but especially in public schools. When it came to homosexuals, or “homos,” as, she learned, they prefer to call themselves, she was really astonished when informed that almost every single Hollywood star, even the big strong men, is a “homo,” and yet no one who was aware of this was concerned in the least as to why country music is no longer really
country
music, but an invention of African American ghetto persons, believe it or not! And although she had no idea why jazz, even by African American persons who really know how to play it, like that Winston Margolis, is supposed to be so good, she felt a little ashamed of herself for sometimes wishing that they’d play some nice, familiar, good old comfortable rock and roll. She sobbed with anger at the news of the .229 lifetime hitter who had signed a three-year contract for twenty-eight million dollars, with an incentive clause promising an additional one hundred thousand dollars for every point over .229 in each of the three seasons, especially when he boasted that he’d celebrate with “a big, thick steak, a cigar, and my friend, the journalist Candace Herbert-Mills.” She was doubtful that the United States Army is a violent organization, but shocked to learn that a survey of noncommissioned officers named one of television news’s most vivacious, wholesome, and courageously hard-hitting personalities “a piece of ass.” She was beside herself with frustration when she read that some of her taxes would possibly be used to care for the skin cancers of those who insisted on their tans each summer, and who, bronze-gold glowing, were utterly passive in the face of malt-liquor consumption in the inner city, especially in the doorways of welfare offices. Still, she was somewhat surprised to be apprised of the probability that poor and powerless people, especially of dark skin, are sometimes treated with rudeness, force, and even brutality by police officers, not one of whom cares about the very high levels of LDL cholesterol in crisp chicken skin. Did that really likeable actor, the sunny, slightly chubby one with the lopsided grin, know how upset she was when he left his wife because of the orgies that the poor woman was forced to take part in by a famous producer, who just happens to be an adept at Jewish black magic? She had, too, been sobered by the article in a national news magazine that detailed the high rates of venality, boredom, envy, cruelty, greed, and just plain dumbness among gay persons, or “homos,” virtually all of whom were on record as adoring disco dancing, washed-up divas, pastel colors, really bad musicals, and blondes. And the cowboy who left his businesswoman wife of fifty-three for a surfer girl shocked her, especially when he confessed that he ate a double cheeseburger every day. And although she resisted the notion as best she could, it seemed to her that there was something to the accusation that girls in short skirts were, well, “asking for it,” despite their Buddhist beliefs, whole grains, and yoga exercises. She was just livid at the lack of respect, shown by swarthy welfare cheats and their shyster Jewish lawyers, for good Christian beliefs, like charity and Jesus Christ. And speaking of disrespect, certain ethnic and religious types were perfectly happy to criticize evangelical preachers and those who had been reborn, yet had no suggestions for frustrating or delaying the revival of restricting and constraining foundation garments. She was made uncomfortable by teenage boys, and was not in the least surprised to find that they had never heard of Custer’s Last Stand, the Monkees, Brian Wilson, or Peter Fonda, let alone Barry Manilow and Anne Tyler.