The Broken Teaglass (16 page)

Grace twisted a finger into one of her graying blonde curls.

“After the Simpsons?” she asked, her blue eyes drifting up toward my forehead, then quickly darting back to my gaze.

“That or the Greek poet,” I admitted. “I was never sure which.”

A few days later, I felt
a hard slap on the back. When I turned around, there was Mr. Phillips, hanging over my cubicle with a cake doughnut in each hand.

“Hello, Homer,” he said. “Brought you a little treat. Do you know about this Krispy Kreme racket? Do you think I should switch to Krispy Kreme?”

“I don’t know.” I took one of the doughnuts. “I’ve never had a Krispy Kreme, but I hear good things. The ones you bring are pretty good, though.”

“Heard you were asking about me,” Mr. Phillips said, flashing me a disarmingly toothy grin.

“Uh … oh?” I quickly bit into the doughnut so I wouldn’t have to say more.

“Howdya know my nickname?” he growled, rather abruptly. Maybe he was trying to catch me off guard.

“Howdya know
mine?”
I shot back. But I knew very well how.

“Ah,” said Mr. Phillips. “But you’ve been here, what, three months? You should know by now. Grace’s the teat of information on which we
all
suck. Not just you young pups.”

My face burned, either for myself or the old man. I heard Clifford snickering in the neighboring cubicle.

“Listen,” I whispered.

Mr. Phillips leaned forward intently and handed me the second doughnut.

“What?” he said.

“I’ve been thinking,” I said. “You always treat us here at the office. But does anyone ever treat you?”

“It’s my pleasure, Homer.”

“Please don’t call me that.”

“All right, champ.”

“I’d like to buy you a cup of Jamaica Blue Mountain,” I said. “
Real
Jamaica Blue Mountain.”

“That’s really not necessary, champ.”

“But I want to. There’s a place just outside Claxton, on the edge of East Claxton, where they’re sure to have it. It looks like a real classy place.”

“Naw. It’s not necessary.”

I needed to take a different tack. “I don’t have anyone to go with me. I’ve been wanting to try it.”

Mr. Phillips faked a look of dejection. “You’re a terrible liar, Homer. I’m sure little Mona’d go with you. Is it on the bus route?”

“Uhh … I don’t know. It’s on that long street with all the restaurants.”

“That’s a little ways from the bus route,” Mr. Phillips remarked mournfully.

“If I gave you a ride, would you go? Don’t you live right near here? I could pick you up right after work.”

“Now, that’d be nice,” he said.

“Yeah,” I agreed.

“When?” he said.

“How about tomorrow? Right after work?”

“Now you’re talkin’. You know where Collins Hill Village
is? The big old folks’ halfway house off Collins Road? I’m in number forty-seven.”

“I’ll find it,” I promised him.

Mr. Phillips’s hands were sticky with
honey.

“God,” he said, sucking his middle finger. “I’d heard of this stuff. I think I may have even seen some cits for it once. But I had no idea how good it is.”

“This one’s not as good as my father’s, though,” I said. “He makes some excellent baklava. The trick is just a little bit of citrus rind in with the honey sauce.”

“Your father’s a domestic type?”

“Pastry chef, actually,” I explained.

“Well, that’s lucky. So were you a fat little kid growing up?”

“No. He wasn’t a pastry chef until a few years ago. And I guess ‘baker’ is a more accurate term for what he does, since the place he works for isn’t very fancy. It’s his second career.”

“Ah. What was his first one, then?”

“Oral surgeon.”

“That’s a good one, Billy.”

“I’m serious.”

Mr. Phillips picked up a couple of scattered walnuts from the tabletop with his sticky finger.

“It’s still a good one,” he said. “It just goes to show you. You have to find what you like to do. You like Samuelson so far?”

“Sure,” I said.

“What do you like about it?”

“It’s real. It’s … basic.”

“Basic?” Mr. Phillips looked at me skeptically.

“Yeah. I mean, at least there’s nothing morally questionable about it, like, say, marketing pharmaceuticals. It’s the
dictionary
. There’s something old-fashioned about it. Everybody I tell about this job
gets
it. Or at least, people are interested in getting it.”

I watched Mr. Phillips gulp the last of his Jamaica Blue Mountain. Now that I had him to myself, I wasn’t certain what I needed to ask him, and how. Casual mentions of the “morally questionable” weren’t likely to get the guy chatting about fifteen-year-old corpses.

“But, Billy. You’re not falling into
that
trap, are you? This job is so much more than
telling
people about it.”

“I didn’t mean it like—”

“It’s a privilege, being a Samuelson man.” In the coffee bar behind us, a guy with dreadlocks was steaming milk with the usual
squeeee
sound, which seemed to distract Mr. Phillips. The left side of his face twitched slightly whenever the noise intensified. “So much history there. And the idea that your work ends up in so many households, so many schools. The Samuelson dictionary is like a Bible to some people. And they rely on it without ever once thinking about who actually wrote it. But that’s the
beauty
of it.”

Mr. Phillips and Mr. Needham certainly seemed to be cut from the same cloth. Could it really be true, as Grace had implied, that the two men disliked each other?

“Do you want another cup of coffee?”

“Better not. So, do you like words?”

I thought about this question warily. It was something people seemed to ask me a lot now that I worked at Samuelson. At the bank, for example, when I was depositing my Samuelson paycheck. Sometimes it came in the form of a statement.
Oh, you’re working
there
? You must love words!
But I don’t like or dislike words. I use words, yes. I am indeed
grateful for the vast variety of words available to me in the English language, even if I haven’t mastered all of the Latinate constructions that show up on the GRE. And it’s mildly interesting to me that
embarrass
comes from a combination of words that used to mean “in a noose.” But the progression from “in a noose” to “in a difficult situation” to “in a state of self-consciousness” seems a fairly natural one.
Fascinating. Words are fascinating!
some might respond. But is it really so fascinating? After hearing a few of these little word histories, don’t you kind of feel like you’ve heard them all?

“I’m not exactly an etymology buff,” I admitted. “Not like some of the other folks—”

“I didn’t ask if you loved etymology,” Mr. Phillips interrupted. “Obviously you’re not an etymologist. You don’t have a great deal of formal linguistic training, like Needham or George. You’re a
definer
. Definers concern themselves primarily with usage. Current usage. The living words. You know, I’ve always been pretty interested in etymology myself. But it’s capturing the
current
use of words, right as they’re continuing to change—that’s the real dynamic work. That’s the work that keeps you young.”

“Hmm.”

“And it’s more entertaining too. Listening to how people stretch the language. You know, I’ve always thought we should be a little more open-minded about our regular sources for the cit file. The only thing we all read regularly is reputable magazines and newspapers.
The Economist. The Atlantic.”
Mr. Phillips wrinkled his nose.
“Newsweek
. But with those you get a pretty narrow picture of how the language is being used, don’t you think?”

“I think the idea is that published writers know what they’re doing. They’re the ones who stretch the language intelligently.”

“Bullshit.” His left lip twitched as the barista started the steamer again. “Published writers are self-conscious as hell. They don’t stretch the language in a
practical
way. Only to be arty and impressive. Now, I’m not suggesting we fill up the files with cits from high school newspapers, but I’d just like to see a more balanced evidence base. If we really want to call ourselves descriptivists here, and not prescriptivists—you know the difference, right?”

“Yeah.”

Dan had described the difference on my second day of training. A prescriptivist prescribes the rules of grammar, the rules of language. Tells you what’s correct and what’s not. Samuelson did not identify its books as prescriptivist. Instead, it liked to think itself an objective observer of the language. Changes in language were to be described accurately; the users of the books could make their own decisions about how to use the language based on that objective information.
We like to think of ourselves essentially as descriptivists
, Dan had told me.
Even if some of us around here have a prescriptivist axe or two to grind
. He followed that statement with a cryptic little chuckle.

“Yes. See, we’re not truly descriptivists yet,” Mr. Phillips grumbled. He’d worked himself into a bit of a temper. “We’re far too snobbish to call ourselves descriptivists. And you know what? It’s primarily the
spoken
word that interests me. All those hours spent each day research-reading? I know it’s useful. It really is. But what about
research-listening?
There’s really not enough of that going on. Cits quoted from the radio and TV, and from everyday conversation.”

“But there are. I’ve seen a few.”

“Exactly. You’ve seen a
few
. Probably mostly mine. I always tried to balance my research between written and spoken uses.”

“How’d you do that? Did you listen to the radio at work?”

“Eventually. Once technology allowed me to do so. By the time I had a Walkman, I’d been working at Samuelson for years. At one time I suggested to Ed Needham that
all
the editors spend some time researching with audio media. Supply editors with radios, I told Ed. Allow others to watch TV. Spend a couple hours out eavesdropping at restaurants or bowling alleys. Just during the slow times at the office, you see?”

“That’d be awesome. I’d be game for an assignment like that.”

“A little too awesome, I’m afraid.” Mr. Phillips shook his head. “The idea that a lexicographer could
leave
the office for an hour or two, or have a little fun on the job—it’s all a little too unconventional for Ed. Actually, ‘absurd’ was the word he used when I suggested it.”

“Maybe he was just worried about how it would look if people found out,” I suggested. “Lexicographers as spies, or something like that.”

“Ridiculous.”

“Well,
I
think it’s a good idea,” I said.

“Yes. Well, I’ve always made a pretty good habit of it myself. Outside the office, on the weekends, I was always putting an ear out for more evidence. And now all the time. Now that I have a great deal of free time. You know, Billy, the young people living in this city don’t really use the same language that we read in those books and magazines at Samuelson. Isn’t their language just as relevant to us? The young generally outgrow a great deal of their slang. But they’re still the ones who will evolve—or devolve—the language into its next phase.”

“Sure. I guess you’re right.”

“Of course I am. That’s why I listen. And take note. But
I’m talking too much, huh? I didn’t let you answer my question. You enjoying it?”

I sipped the cold dregs of my coffee and tried to think of an honest response.

“I’m … still trying to decide if I belong there, I think,” I said, after a while.

“Well, there’s no place like it.” Mr. Phillips didn’t seem to notice my pregnant pause. “Don’t you for one moment think, if you decide to leave, you’ll find someplace like it in New York or something. What other companies possess our kind of history? And how many people in this world do you think get to spend their whole day with words?”

“My mother,” I said slowly, “is a perfusionist. She spends her whole day with transplanted organs and bodily fluids. Not many people get to spend their day that way, either.”

Mr. Phillips screwed up his face. “Well, good for her. That sounds like an admirable job.”

“I’m just saying that just because not many people get to do it doesn’t necessarily make it good.”

“It sounds like you have two very talented parents.”

I pounced on this clear, if somewhat awkward, opening for a new conversational direction.

“You know, it was kind of weird growing up. Coming to the dinner table each night knowing that both of your parents had to change out of bloody clothes before coming home to you.”

“Bloody clothes?”

“And wash blood off their hands every day.”

Mr. Phillips rolled his eyes. “I’m sure your parents wore rubber gloves,” he said.

“Still. It’s macabre. I’m not sure how I feel about it.”

He let out a wet, snorting laugh. “It paid for your college
education, I’m sure. What does it matter how you feel about it?”

I felt myself turning red. He still had total control of this conversation. I was getting nowhere.

“That’s one of my favorites from your generation, Billy. ‘I’m not sure how I feel about that.’ I hear that all the time. As if how one
feels
needs to be determined with great exactitude. Even better, as if your progress on the feelings front needs to be
announced.”

“Okay, okay,” I said. “Never mind. I was just thinking about, you know, the implications of our career choices—”

“All right,” Mr. Phillips said, shaking his head. “I’ll quit hassling you about the job. What are you reading these days?”

“Reading? Like books?”

“Exactly. Like books.”

“To be honest, I haven’t been able to concentrate on books much since I started at Samuelson. I get lazy after work. I’ve probably read only two or three books.”

“What were they?”

“Let me see,” I stalled. Once you discounted the joke books, I’d actually read only one book. “I read this book by Paul Theroux.
The Mosquito Coast
. I got it for a dollar at a used-book store.”