Serendipity Green (19 page)

“I guess that's right.”

“And this is why he is growing on you, Katherine?”

“I suppose.” She tells him now about the strange man from Parma who showed up for breakfast, a strange man with a small dog who thought the ungodly green paint on Howie Dornick's house was both fabulous and serendipitous.

Dr. Aram's lips freeze between a frown and a grin. “It sounds like this man from Parma should see a psychiatrist.”

“We're all a little crazy, I suppose.”

“Not a little crazy, Katherine,” Dr. Pirooz Aram says, leap-frogging disciplines, psychiatry to philosophy. “A lot crazy. Our specie is genetically insane.”

“That's a bit rough, isn't it?”

“Rough but true,” he says “When trouble comes, mules kick and rabbits run. Turtles grow shells. And they think they are surviving! But our human ancestors with their big monkey brains could see from Day One that all the kicking and running and shell-growing in the world would not spare them from the predator called death, from rotting like a forgotten pistachio nut. Unlike the mule or the rabbit or the turtle, our ancestors knew they were doomed. Knew that like the pistachio they were prone to rotting. Knew they were mortal, Katherine, mortal! And knowing this terrible secret, they understandably went insane, en masse, and passed along their collective insanity from generation to generation, eventually inventing the rewards of heaven and the punishments of hell, inventing countries and nationalities and politics and professional sports franchises, filling silos full of corn and wheat and canning beans and peaches, inventing lifejackets and fire alarms and lucky rabbit's feet, as if somehow all these things are going to save us. Rotting pistachios, that's what we are.” Dr. Aram has enjoyed listening to himself, but now that he has run out of breath, he is quite embarrassed. “Of course, I don't talk to my other patients like this. But you, Katherine, you are so perceptive, and such a poet. So I make a fool out of myself.”

But apparently she does not think he has made a fool of himself. She picks up where he leaves off. “And so we demand that the illegitimate sons of war heroes keep their houses painted. For the sake of our own false immortality.”

Dr. Pirooz Aram walks across the room on his knees, taking Katherine Hardihood's librarian's hands in his huge Persian hands, as if he were holding a pair of fragile espresso cups. “Whether you can admit it or not, you are in love with this Howie Dornick. He has awakened and transformed you. And you have awakened and transformed him. This serendipity green you tell me about is the color of your love for each other. It is a powerful color, Katherine, a powerful color.”

Katherine feels the heat from his hands moving up her forearms like mercury up a thermometer. She withdraws her hands and pats his cool balding head. “Now who is the poet?”

Still on his knees, Dr. Pirooz Aram begins to dance. “Yes, I am a poet. In fact, sometimes I think I am the reincarnated soul of Jalaluddin Rumi, the great Persian poet. Do you know of him, Katherine?”

“His poems are very popular today.”

“Very popular
today
? You are such an American! Yes, Rumi is very popular in America today. In the same way that Russian Matruska dolls are popular in America today. We Persians knew of Rumi's greatness when
America
was nothing but the name olive-picking Italians gave their third sons.” As he continues to dance, he recalls one of the Rumi poems he read as a youth in Tehran: “I remember this one poem about a chickpea who tries and tries to leap over the rim of a boiling pot of water. ‘Why are you doing this to me?' the chickpea asks the cook. And the cook just knocks the chickpea back with his ladle. ‘Do not try to jump out,' says the cook. ‘You think I'm torturing you. But I'm giving you a favor. So you can mix with spices and rice and be the loving vitality of a human being.'” Dr. Pirooz Aram pulls his patient from her chair and wraps his arms around her bony back. “Neither you nor Howie must be afraid of this serendipity green. It is giving you a favor. Allowing you to mix with spices and rice. Mix, Katherine! Mix and mix and mix!”

Katherine Hardihood is not taken aback by any of Dr. Pirooz Aram's peculiarities, not the dancing, not the poem about the leaping chickpea, not even his rant about rotting pistachios and the genetic insanity of monkey-brained humans. These peculiarities are exactly why she continues to visit him several times a year; these and the prescription for antidepressants, which, since Reagan's first term, have kept her from ripping the last chapters out of the library's mystery novels. Her session ends and on the way out she writes the secretary a check and makes a appointment for February. She drives home to Tuttwyler.

Howie arrives at her two-bedroom ranch at exactly 6:30. He is not alone. With him is Hugh Harbinger's Jack Russell. “He asked me to watch Matisse while he was in New York,” Howie says.

As he preheats her oven to accommodate a supermarket pizza, Howie tells Katherine about finding Hugh Harbinger in his yard the previous afternoon, painting little circles of green in a tablet. He tells her how he ripped a piece of clapboard from his house and gave it to the strange man from Parma, so he could take it to New York and make it one of the hottest colors in years. “He's going to give me half of everything he makes.”

Matisse likes Katherine Hardihood's little two-bedroom ranch. Likes it fine. Likes the broad-backed chairs. Likes the rubber cat toys lying about. Likes the catty smells. Likes the cat.

The cat, however, does not like the dog. The dog's sudden and unexpected appearance has thrown Rhubarb off balance, like a bad case of ear mites. After a long back-bending hiss, he has fled to a shoe box in his mistress' closet.

Howie and Katherine eat the pizza while they watch
Jeopardy
. As soon as a winner is declared they copulate on the sofa, as is their custom. Later, after watching a PBS show on Australian railroad journeys and eating a bag of Fritos, they retire to the bedroom, not to copulate, but to snuggle and listen to Cleveland's only big band radio station. And to talk.

“I shouldn't have ripped that clapboard off my house,” Howie Dornick says, one hand scratching his woman's bare shoulder, the other scratching Matisse's belly. “I shouldn't have painted my house that color either.”

“Sure you should have,” she tells him. “Both things.”

Now Howie, fed and bed and ready for confession, tells her about D. William Aitchbone's visit while he was hosing the tobacco spit and blueberry pie off the parking lot. He tells her about his fresh threats, how D. William Aitchbone is going to rub his illegitimate nose in the dirty bones of his ancestors. “Bill Aitchbone has not yet begun to fight,” he says.

“And neither have we,” Katherine hears herself saying.

Howie Dornick buries his illegitimate nose into the hollow space just above her collar bone. “No, Katherine, we have yet begun to lose.”

Katherine Hardihood is not the least bothered by his fatalism. Dr. Pirooz Aram's words are still burning in her brain, as vigorously as the pepperoni burning in her throat. According to the wise old Persian, she has been awakened, transformed and is in love. And whether her man knows it, the two of them are as genetically insane as D. William Aitchbone, and therefore, if they put their minds to it, they can be just as ruthless. “Jiminy Cricket, Howie, where's your vinegar?”

Howie Dornick allows himself an evil chuckle. “Know what I did? Sprayed him with the hose. Made him jump back and get blueberry on his suit pants.”

Katherine hugs him and fills her lungs with his Frito breath.

They fall asleep.

Matisse goes into the living room, where he finds Rhubarb licking Frito crumbs off the sofa cushions. There is the obligatory growling and hissing, and the mutual suspicious sniffing of both ends, but with so many crumbs to lick, the two kept-beasts quickly make peace and share the bounty.

16

The Lakeshore Limited leaves Cleveland's humble Amtrak station at 1:36 in the morning. North of the tracks Lake Erie's black waves are crashing. South of the tracks the city's skyscrapers are having their wastebaskets emptied. Hugh Harbinger has nothing with him but a chunk of green clapboard, a duffel bag stuffed with wrinkled clothes, and a half-bottle of butter-yellow Solhzac.

Erie 3:07. Buffalo 4:42. Rochester 6:00. Syracuse 7:25. Utica 8:12. Schenectady 9:30. Albany 10:05. Three-plus hours of not toppling into the pewter-blue Hudson River. Penn Station 1:24. Six minutes on a subway platform. Six minutes on a subway train. Buzzy's garden apartment 2:04. Buzzy's refrigerator 2:08. Buzzy's slippery leather couch 2:18. Hugh Harbinger is back in New York, back in The Village, sleeping like a New York baby.

Buzzy shows up at six with a portfolio full of sketches. Charcoals of manly men in Cary Grant suits. Manly men in Gary Cooper suits. Manly men in Ray Milland suits and Jimmy Stewart Suits. “Perfect,” says Hugh Harbinger.

“Do you like the big-ass overcoats?” Buzzy asks. “You said you wanted big-ass overcoats.”

“Fabulous,” says Hugh.

“I am soooo relived,” says Buzzy. “Now show me that Greeeen of yours.”

Hugh Harbinger retrieves his precious chunk of clapboard from the closet.

Buzzy hooks his fingers over his teeth. Then he splays his bespittled fingers across his pounding heart. “Fabulous.”

They rush out to meet Jean Jacques Bistrot at the Peacock. After a round of espressos as rich and thick as river silt, they maneuver the sidewalks to Zulu Lulu. Over baba ghanoush they plot the campaign which they're certain will, as Hugh Harbinger now says, falling into his color-talk as if he'd never spent those colorless months in exile with Bob and Eleanor Hbracek in Parma, Ohio, “Enrage and engage” marketing vice presidents worldwide.

Jean Jacques Bistrot, the gifted leftist who since fleeing the death squads in his native Haiti has become New York's most important fashion writer, promises in advance to go gaga over their line of serendipity green business wear. Hugh and Buzzy smile at each other without moving their lips. They knows this is quite a coup. They know Jean Jacques Bistrot sells his soul to very few devils.

Jean Jacques Bistrot confesses that he is “sick to death” of brown and black and gray. He tells them that he's “sick to death of having nothing new to say
fabulous
to.” He tells them sight-unseen that he's certain serendipity green will be “
simply
fabulous.”

By eleven Hugh Harbinger is copulating with Zee Levant. It has indeed been a fabulous day.

At nine the next morning, Hugh Harbinger is in the office of patent attorney Carl Jablonsky. He knows he can't protect Howie Dornick's concoction—you can no more claim ownership of a color than you can claim the oceans—but he can protect the name he gave it. And so serendipity green becomes Serendipity Green®. Carl Jablonsky also drafts a contract giving Howard Allen Dornick half of everything.

At 11:30 Hugh Harbinger takes his chunk of clapboard to his old friend Karl Bice at McDougall & Kline. They small talk until everyone else in the tech department goes to lunch, then run the clapboard through the scanner, letting the firm's Macintosh do what Hugh Harbinger could not do with his little circles of gouache: decipher Howie's serendipitous concoction. At 2:15 Hugh Harbinger is on the New Jersey side of the Hudson, at Zildenheim & Pavli, formula in hand, blank check from Zee Levant in his pocket, ordering the proper dye. It takes four days for Zildenheim & Pavli to mix and deliver the dye to Westerman & Klup in Chelsea, where bolts of wool and cotton and hemp are waiting.

Even as the Serendipity Green® dye is soaking into these natural fabrics, Jean Jacques Bistrot is heralding the Second Coming of Hugh Harbinger. His articles praise the new color. His articles praise the suits, the big-ass overcoats. and hats. He uses words like
bodacious
and
unrepentant, apoplectic
and
scandalous, whoomp
and
duggy, cool beans and jiggy
, and of course he uses
fabulous
. His articles not only promise a new fashion
paradigm
, but a new cultural
Zeitgeist
as well. His articles brazenly recount Hugh Harbinger's slow descent into clinical depression during the years he was designing his 300-plus shades of black; they recount his miserable, Solhzac-controlled exile at Bob and Eleanor Hbracek's house in Parma, Ohio; they recount his journey to Tuttwyler for Squaw Days; they recount his serendipitous discovery of the two-story frame on South Mill and his immediate epiphany; and with all the spiritual drama of the King of Kings riding his donkey into Jerusalem for his final showdown with the powers that be, he recounts Hugh Harbinger's all-night Amtrak ride to New York with his chunk of precious green clapboard.

One of Jean Jacques Bistrot's nuggets is even selected by
Newsweek
for its page of pithy and ironic quotations:

“Hugh Harbinger's 300 shades of black gave individual expression to our generation's collective narcissism. Now Double H is back from the Ohio hinterlands with a dazzling and disturbing new hue that will force us to shed the snake skins of our angst and admit that we are about as goddamn happy as a person can be.”
Fashion writer
Jean Jacques Bistrot
on colormeister Hugh Harbinger's latest creation, Serendipity Green®
.

By the time Buzzy's designs are cut and the invitations sent, Serendipity Green® has already piqued the interest of anybody who is anybody in the color world, not only in New York, but in Paris and London and Milan and LA. Even automotive executives in Detroit and Tokyo are intrigued.

September flies by. The trees in Washington Square start dropping their leaves on the chess players. October blows in from Pennsylvania. One month after Hugh Harbinger's return, two hundred of the world's most influential marketing, manufacturing and media gurus are trekking into a sweaty old warehouse house in the trendy Meat Packing District. As they enter they are handed tiny flashlights. The warehouse is cold and damp and dark. With the help of their tiny beams, the privileged 200 find the rows of metal folding chairs. Somewhere in the blackness a klezmer band is playing Jewish funeral tunes. Slowly, as the clarinet wails, a wintergreen wind mixes with the faint stench of beef. Green laser beams begin to slice. Then a great square of flood lights, everyone of them green, explodes into the eyes of the privileged 200. The klezmer band, now joined by a shirtless steel drum band from Trinidad and Tobago, breaks into a throbbing rendition of Kermit the Frog's “It's Not Easy Being Green.” Three men in black business suits appear on the catwalk. Three women in green spider suits—a green no one has ever seen—bungee jump from the high ceiling and squeeze the three men in black until the catwalk is dripping with what for all the world looks like green blood. The wintergreen wind reaches gale force. Fluorescent ceiling lights pop on. For the first time the privileged 200 realizes they are sitting on green chairs in a warehouse with a green floor and green walls and a green ceiling—the green a green none of them has ever imagined. Now three meat hooks descend from the ceiling and the spider women run them through the backs of the three bloodless men in black. As they are hauled into the rafters, a choir of green-robed Gregorian monks wind through the aisles, chanting “Serendipity Green®” over and over while the Klezmers and steel drummers maintain a blistering tempo. Suddenly, New York's currently most famous transvestite, Pippy Monroe, flutters down the catwalk in a shimmering Serendipity Green® gown scooping handfuls of green M&Ms into the crowd from a Serendipity Green® basket. “Yo-yo-yo, everybody,” she sings out. “Y'all ready for Serendipity Green®? Serendipity Greeeen®? Serendipity Greeeeeeeen®? Ahhhh can't heeeeaaaar y'all!” The privileged 200—the most jaded gaggle of fashion and manufacturing elites ever assembled—screams “Yes!” Begs “Yes!” Demands “Yes!” And so in this painful cacophony of sound and light and heat and orgasmic anticipation, amidst the dueling scent of wintergreen and beef, the first Wall Street type marches manfully down the catwalk in a three-piece Cary Grant suit of Serendipity Green®.