Running the Bulls (19 page)

“So how've you been, kid?” Howard asked.

Eliot drank some of his Coke before he responded.

“I've been busy, Grandpa,” he said. “David and I are building a BattleBot.”

“A what?” asked Howard. He tried again to get the waitress's attention. She was telling some kind of wild story to another of the waitresses. Now and then she looked Howard's way but went back to her tale. He could only hope she hadn't been at the Holiday Inn lounge the night before.

“BattleBot,” said Eliot. “They're robots that you build to fight other robots. We're gonna kick butt with ours.”

Howard smiled. Seeing the waitress again look his way, he waved the check in the air. She then went back to her story.

“BattleBots, huh?” Howard said. “You need any help, you just ask.” Eliot considered this.

“David's dad is helping us,” he said. “He's an engineer.”

Howard nodded. Of course. What would a retired English professor know about artificial intelligence?

“So what else have you been up to?” Howard asked. He didn't want to pump the child—to use another meaning of that verb—but he was hoping to find out just how close the nuclear families were to blowing up, his and Eliot's.

“I been spending lots of time with Grandma now that she lives alone,” said Eliot.

“That so?” said Howard, and felt instant jealousy. Before he moved into the Holiday Inn, he, too, had spent lots of time with his grandson. Now he knew why. Patty and John were too damn busy in their own lives, which were spinning in opposite directions.

While Eliot trudged off to the bathroom, Howard took the check and walked over to his waitress. She seemed surprised that he needed her.

“I was on my way to your table,” she said to him, defiant.

Howard couldn't help but remember the words he had just read.
The
girl
brought
in
a
big
bowl
of
hot
vegetable
soup
and
the
wine. We had fried trout afterward, and some sort of stew, and a big bowl full of wild strawberries.
What had happened to the good ole days? To waitresses who came and went with bowls of soup and strawberries, nothing more on their minds than to please the guests? What was wrong with people?

“You were talking to your friend,” Howard told her.

“Don't get rude with me,” the young woman said loudly. Howard looked around, embarrassed. He was only trying to pay his damn bill. Was that a crime?

“What's going on here?” a voice declared from behind. Howard swung around and looked directly up at a giant mouse. It was the Chuck E. Cheese's mascot, supposed to be Chuck E. himself, just as that clown with the orange hair was supposed to be Ronald McDonald. Were Americans now doomed to discuss company policy with the mascots? Howard could see the two of them, sitting down at some conference table, he with his usual rum, the mouse with a chunk of mozzarella.

“I'm just trying to pay my bill,” said Howard.

“This guy is being an asshole,” the waitress told the mouse.

“I am not,” Howard insisted. He gave the mouse a stern look. He had no intentions of backing down on this issue because, damn it, he was right. He could hear the guys in the bar now, Wally and Larry and Pete.
First
he
went
to
bed
with
Eva
Braun, and then he wrestled a giant mouse.

“Listen, pal,” said the mouse. Howard could smell pepperoni and onions on the breath coming from behind the plastic snout. “We don't need the customers giving our waitresses shit.”

“Are you people all insane?” Howard asked. He was sincere about this question. “All I want is to pay you the money I owe and then leave
her
a tip for being rude and ineffective.”

“See what I mean?” the waitress asked.

The mouse moved in close and peered down at Howard, the kind of threatening stance animals take in the wild. Howard realized that it must be very hot inside that furry getup. After all, that wasn't Chuck E. Cheese's himself in there, but some pimply young man full of testosterone. He handed the waitress his credit card. But, damn it, he was only leaving a fifteen percent tip, whether she liked it or not.

***

Howard pulled into his usual Holiday Inn parking space, next to the big rental truck. He would have to call the rental company and lease the monster for a month, a kind of storage house on wheels. It would be expensive, but he had no choice. Until the marital dust settled, or until he found himself a new home, where could he go with all those boxes? He had just opened the padlock on the truck so that he could crawl inside and dig around for the blue denim shirt he'd been missing in his life at the Holiday Inn, when he heard laughter. He looked up to see that Pete Morton was just coming out of the lounge. Behind him was Larry Ferguson and Freddy “The Mattress Mogul” Wilson.

“We been looking all over the place for you,” said Pete.

“Howard's been a busy man,” said Larry, and winked.

Howard said nothing as he relocked the rental truck.

“Hey,” said Freddy, his face brown as dirt. “How you been?” He put a hand out to Howard's and they shook, the two gold bracelets on Freddy's wrist jingling.

“If I need to buy a good mattress and box spring,” asked Howard, “can you fix me up?” Freddy grinned, white teeth appearing in the brown field of his face.

“Can I fix you up?” asked Freddy, as if this were the silliest thing he'd heard since his wife had told him to give up the girls he hired to sell mattresses or she'd take half his empire. “I just got a new shipment in,” he added, looking over his shoulder, as if maybe his wife's lawyer were spying on him. But Howard had to hand it to Freddy. He had not stopped bedding his mattress salesgirls, and he seemed to be doing very well with only half an empire.

“Get in your car and follow us over to Freddy's warehouse,” said Pete. It wasn't a request; it was an order.

“Why?” asked Howard.

“Just trust me,” said Pete. He looked at Freddy and they smiled, tossing a guy's look back and forth as though it were a football.

“It's a new kind of entertainment,” said Freddy. He reached in his shirt pocket for his own cigar. “A little game to entertain you boys.”

They rode one behind the other to Freddy's Mattress Warehouse, with Pete in the lead in his Jeep, Freddy behind in his big cream Caddy, Larry in his older model Volvo, and then Howard pulling up the rear, top down on the little Aston Martin. As he watched them drive down the interstate, Howard felt a sudden sympathy for them all, himself included. They weren't aficionados, after all, the kind of boys Hemingway hung out with. Instead, they had become a kind of geriatric Rat Pack, Bixley's own answer to Frank, Dean, Sammy, and Joey.

Freddy's warehouse was an immense building piled high with mattresses of all kinds, cheap mattresses, expensive mattresses, white mattresses, blue mattresses. They were what made Freddy a mogul in the first place. Freddy waved the boys into his office at the back of the building. Once inside, he closed and locked the door. He pointed to what looked like a large video game. It came with wires attached to a helmet, a headset of some kind with thick lenses across the front, like goggles.

“There it is,” said Freddy. “You're the only one who hasn't tried it, Howie. Even Wally took a break from the bar and drove out.”

Howard accepted the headset from Pete.

“You ever hear of virtual reality?” asked Pete. “Well, here it is, baby.”

“Virtual what?” asked Howard. The truth was that he was computer illiterate and intended to stay that way. Ellen was learning to email, but mostly, they had been old-fashioned when it came to cyberspace and the information highway. Good books had always seemed three-dimensional enough to Howard.

“Virtual sex,” said Freddy, again looking over his shoulder, even though he himself had locked the office door. “If this were in a bar in Boston, it'd cost you fifteen bucks a pop.”

“Hurry up,” said Pete. “I want to go again.”

He reminded Howard of a kid waiting to ride the Ferris wheel. Well, why the hell not? He'd just come from Ellen's rejection of him, not to mention arguing with a giant mouse. Why not something to make him laugh? He fitted the helmet on his head and suddenly everything was dark. Pete put a rod of some kind in his hands.

“This is the joystick,” he heard Pete say, from somewhere out in
real
reality. “You'll see what it is once Freddy turns the thing on.”

“Here goes,” said Freddy's voice. Howard heard a click. And in that instant he saw before him a naked woman sitting on the edge of a bed. She wasn't a
real
woman, of course. Still, it was amazing since she looked so human. She wasn't moving, just staring toward the face of whoever might be wearing the helmet and goggles.

“Now lift your joystick.” It was Pete's voice, from that other place, that world of everyday problems. Howard did so and was stunned to see an enormous penis bob up in front of him.

“Whoa!” he said, and jumped back. He heard laughter from the boys, and wondered if the appearance of this monster had scared them at first too. Now the woman was moving in the virtual scene. Once Howard had operated the joystick, she had lain back on the bed and opened her legs to him. A look of longing on her face, she was now reaching out to him with open arms, asking him to come to her.

“Hell of a game, ain't it?” Larry said. “Just put the airplane in the hangar and she'll put on quite a show for you. You'll also get five extra minutes playing time.”

“Learn to control the penis,” Howard heard Freddy say. “It's all in the wrist.”

And then, Pete's voice again.

“We're gonna leave you alone now, buddy, you know, in case you end up with a free hand.”

There was more laughter, and then Howard heard the door to the office close. He imagined them all still standing there, watching, waiting. But he knew they were gone. Freddy had an asthma problem that could be heard from several feet away. Howard could hear him now, wheezing from the other side of the door. And Pete's voice was out there, too. And Larry's. He moved the joystick to the left and the huge penis went with it, slowly. It must have been fifteen inches long if it was one. And it was real-looking, the true color of flesh. He wondered if a male model had supplied the graphics for it, the kind of guys who end up donating body parts to the Smithsonian. He didn't know enough about virtual reality. The girl, for instance, was she once a real model? She looked to be in her twenties, enormous breasts, full red lips. Her hair was dark and long and spread beneath her on the bed. Howard steadied the joystick right in front of him and she again opened her arms to him. So that was it. Learn to balance and steady. He pushed forward on the stick and the large penis moved toward the young woman. This made her smile. She spread her legs wider, and he could now see between them the redness of her, almost too red to be real. But then, she
wasn't
real. Howard pulled the joystick back, and this action caused the penis to loom up so quickly before his face that he jumped again. Then, he felt foolish. After all, to a spectator watching from the
real
world, he was a sixty-three-year-old man standing there with a goofy-looking helmet on his head. He slowly guided the penis back down in the direction of the woman by pushing forward on the joystick.
Is
this
a
dagger
that
I
see
before
me, the handle toward my hand?
Howard wondered what Macbeth would do at a time like this. With
this
in his possession, the poor sot could've defeated Macduff, beat him over the head out there on the heath until he expired.

This time when the young woman, luscious and fleshy, reached out for him, Howard suddenly remembered the prostitute, the one his Uncle George had taken him to when he was seventeen years old, a high school graduation present. “We're gonna make you a man, son.” It had been his first encounter with sex, with a female who was also not real, at least not to Howard at the time. And yet, he had been afraid to touch her, afraid to enter her, as if a part of him might never come back out of her if he did. The prostitute, too, had seemed a fabrication, something planned as a joke by his uncle. She was like one of Macbeth's witches, created only to entertain the passersby. Now, here was another woman lying on a bed before him, eager to have him take her, eager to offer up to him the millions of bytes it took for some godlike computer nerd, his own penis the length of a paper clip, to create her. Like the prostitute, this young woman was not a personality, not a woman with a past, a future, a woman with geraniums on her kitchen window sill, nylon stockings hanging to dry from the curtain rod in her shower, a woman with a dog, a cat, a penchant for old movies. She was simply arms, and legs, and vagina, created for his purposes, for his pleasure.

“I can't do this,” Howard heard a voice say and realized it was his own voice coming back to him from that
real
world, the planet earth, better known as The Big Landfill, back where all his problems were boiling and simmering on the surface of his life. He took the helmet off and tossed it down on the chair near Freddy's desk. He hoped he hadn't hurt the young woman who lived inside, who waited until someone else came looking for her, the way Macbeth's witches waited on that cold and barren landscape. Howard opened the door to Freddy's office and stepped out in the bright sunlight. Pete and Freddy were standing there, waiting, smiles on their faces.