The Portable Veblen (16 page)

•   •   •

V
EBLEN HAD RISEN UP
the ranks of the temp agency, and nowadays made eighteen dollars an hour, just enough for rent and food and a few small items of need. Keeping a low overhead was part of her mind-set. It made for an existence that was lean and challenging, like life on the frontier. She believed it was important to be fairly compensated for your time and work, but that it was also important not to earn a bunch of money just to play a predetermined role in the marketplace. When unforeseen expenses came up, such as when her 1982 Volvo 244 blew its head gasket, she discovered how vulnerable she was—and had to take a second job for a while, packing candles into boxes in a factory in Milpitas on the night shift. But for the most part, her life worked. She was getting better at Norwegian, and her translations came more easily. She’d accomplished things, hadn’t she? All kinds of things you couldn’t put on a résumé, such as deciphering the cryptic actions of family members, and taking care of them until the day they died.

•   •   •

C
OMING HOME TO
the old typewriter these days was inspiring. She’d go to it to record new ideas and make lists and take in that ancient smell.

The smell was the London of Dickens, the catacombs on the Appia Antica, the Gobi Desert in winter, a dark monastery in Tibet. It was Nevada City in the gold rush. It was a telegraph office near the Mexican border. It was a captain’s trunk coming around the Horn. It was a dressing room on the Great White Way in New York. Sometimes, it was a breezy little tree house in Wobb.

I love Thorstein Veblen because even after an exhaustive survey of his life, he has never let me down; because he bucked the establishment not only when he was youthful and idealistic, but all his life; because he was so free, he lost jobs that others would have made every compromise to keep; because he was a thorn in the side of the powers that be; because he posted office hours on his door, 12:30-12:35; because although he was defeated in academia, he never stopped contributing to the intellectual life of the nation; because he lived true to his beliefs, and committed not a hypocritical act in his life; because he cobbled together his clothes and furniture with dignity; because he had to brew his own coffee the exact same way every morning and would not let anyone else do it for him; because he had a horse named Beauty and allowed animals to wander around his yard free, even skunks; because he was proud of his Norwegian heritage but deeply curious about the lives of everyone else; because he never kissed an ass except those of the women he loved; because he built Viking ships for his stepdaughters out of logs and taught them the names of the constellations and every flower and tree and mushroom in the forest; because he traveled all over the continent and knew and feared its natural resources would soon be commodified and pillaged; because he coined wonderful phrases to describe the follies of the postindustrial world, including conspicuous consumption, pecuniary canons of taste, and decadent aestheticism; because he had his stepdaughters dress like boys so they could run free in summer and so that their talents and habits would not be formed by convention; because he spoke at least fourteen languages and astonished haughty intellectuals without even trying; because even now his reputation is skewed by misinformation he did not bother to correct; because in photos he appears foreboding but in a hundred recorded instances he was gentle and kind to those he loved. Thorstein Veblen was a large gangly man with a soft voice who mumbled, and he didn’t have to prove anything to anybody, and he doesn’t still.

      7

R
ELEASING
THE
T
OOL

P
aul’s day started badly, and only got worse.

After a pretty much sleepless night thanks to squirrels, after taking a second shower to rinse out the dust, husks, and rodent shit that had rained on him when he benevolently went to check the goddamned
humane
and ineffective trap, Paul arrived at work and found a package on his desk, a white box with a label depicting a tea bag the size of a purse.

Corpsaire
^TM
Sachet—Helps Eliminate Unpleasant Corpse Odors

Labs, morgues, autopsy rooms and funeral homes

are vulnerable to highly unpleasant odors

from decaying corpses and fluids

used for embalming.

Putrid decomposition vapors

can result in loss of morale

and create negative publicity

if they escape the building.

Veblen’s scorn for medical marketing had poisoned him. He called in Susan Hinks.

“What is this thing?”

“There they are! These have great reviews on Allegro. I thought we could give them a try.”

“On what?”

“The medical supply site. Lots of great stuff there.”

“A little bleach usually works fine.”

Hinks said, “Also thought you should know we’re a little behind in our cadaver count. I’m waiting for a call from the Anatomical Board and we should be able to scrape up a few more, but I took it upon myself to apply for MUPs.”

Susan Hinks was tone-deaf, missing some piece of humanity. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it. He conjured a childhood for her in which a martinet dad lined up the kids and inspected the shine on their shoes and the parts in their hair. As a sex partner, she’d probably play roles without any self-consciousness, which was kind of hot. But who needed it.

“And MUPs are—?”

“Multiple use privileges.”

“Oh. That’s quite a privilege.”

“We have thirty-four cadavers in stock. So if we get MUPs and use both sides of the skull, that will put us at sixty-eight procedures, and hopefully by that time we should have full inventory.”

Paul said, “Anything else I should know?”

“It’s a busy day but the families usually expect face time with the lead physician—maybe you could poke your head in and give them a pep talk?”

“A pep talk about what?”

“You can remind them how patriotic they are, thank them for their sacrifices. You could lead an informal prayer if you’d like. That type of thing goes over well.”

“I don’t want to sugarcoat anything about this trial.”

She sighed. “Dr. Vreeland. Morale is so important. Positive spin makes the world go round. Can I tell them you’ll stop in at ten?”

“All right,” Paul said sullenly.

“Wonderful. Let’s see, Jonathan Finger called to say the control panel has been installed, so the simulator should be up and running soon. And the simulator operator has been in touch, Robbie Frazier. Did you know he’s a sound technician from THX? And the medics are here today, Chen, Sadiq, and Vasquez. I’ve given them a general orientation. Can you meet with them at noon?”

He nodded, handed her the Corpsaire sachets, and watched her go.

Coffee came from the cart in front, prepared by a large woman in a white uniform with a large mole on her cheek, who behaved shyly with him. He beheld bright light at the edge of a headache. Back in his office, ibuprofen, three tabs. Heal thyself.

Paul was unexpectedly slammed by a traumatic memory from science class in middle school, where Mr. Poplick, a bearded young gun from the Bronx, began to scatter the word
orgasm
through his first lecture in the sex-ed division. Paul thought he was a douche for mispronouncing
organism,
and after determining that no one else was brave enough to correct him, he raised his hand. “It’s
organism,
not
orgasm,
” he said, his voice huffy with ridicule.

The room was a carbuncle ready to burst. Poplick sneered. “Um, class? What’s an organism?”

Hans Borg raised his hand, while others snickered. “Any kind of living thing.”

“Okay. Just curious, were we talking about organisms?”

“No!” everybody shouted.

“How many of you know what an orgasm is? Spare the details, please.”

Hoots and howls accompanied the raising of all hands, to Paul’s distress.

“Okay, Paul. Stay after class and we’ll have a man-to-man,” said Poplick, and the memory still had the power to make him burn with shame.

How he’d love to rub Poplick’s face in his career now,
douche bag
! Poplick the middle school teacher, the hick, the bumpkin!

He left a message for Jonathan Finger, the bright spot so far in his time at the VA. Shortly after being awarded the trial, during the planning stages in the fall, Paul had received a call from Finger, his project support representative from WOO. WOO was one of those things you’ve never heard of until you hear about it all the time—the Warfighter Outreach Office (a branch of the Program Executive Office for Simulation, Training, and Instrumentation [PEO STRI], a division of the United States Army, a division of the DOD). WOO was an organization that reached out across the army, the Department of Defense, and other U.S. departments and agencies to provide modeling and simulation, training and testing support. WOO provided interagency acquisitions support. WOO provided access to the full spectrum of instruments available. WOO was a really big deal.

Finger was someone Paul liked immediately. Short, balding, slightly paunchy, Finger nevertheless exuded the kind of charm
that couldn’t be learned. Maybe because he seemed to struggle with his current incarnation as a company man against the backdrop of a wild and crazy past. A man who’d lived the extremes, who’d dodged bullets and lived to dish the dirt.

At their first meeting in the fall, at a steak house in Burlingame, they discussed the parameters of Paul’s trial over one of the most decadent meals of Paul’s life, during which he imbibed four vodka tonics, followed by a massive cross-section of prime rib, dollops of horseradish, a pie-sized Yorkshire pudding, and a mound of creamed spinach. Finger told him stories about his former job as an undercover courier in countries such as Venezuela, Estonia, and Thailand. After whetting Paul’s appetite with his stories, Finger dropped in the business at hand.

“First, Paul, I recommend you do a little PR training with, let’s see, is Hartman your CRO?”

Paul confirmed.

“You need it. You need to
own
this. They’ll bring you up to speed on your public persona, how to talk the talk.”

“A corporate makeover.”

“Then I’m going to recommend a state-of-the-art simulation system,” Jon said, three hours into the meal. “These are the ones we like.” He gave Paul the list, with its string of endorsements from decorated veterans such as Clarence Obadiah Thompson, who exhibited bravery in the Dinh Tuong Province of the Republic of Vietnam in 1968, saving the lives of five men in his battalion despite rocket fragments in the shoulder and wounds that immobilized his legs, causing him to drag himself with two men on his back through the mud, keeping them alive, once out of range, with tourniquets and jokes until they were evacuated seven hours later.
Said Thompson:
Simulation systems are the only way for the men and women of the armed forces to prepare for the difficult and dangerous work ahead.

Paul still couldn’t believe that he was now involved with the U.S. military and the Department of Defense. The affiliation made him feel heroic and serious, after growing up cosseted by peaceniks.

“Clarence Obadiah Thompson talks the talk,” Paul said.

“That’s no accident,” Jon said.

Paul was plastered, and found the WOO products list dizzying:

• Additional Black Hawk Flight Simulator (ABHFS)
  
• Advanced Gunnery Training System (AGTS)
  
• Aerial Weapons Scoring System Integration with Longbow Apache Tactical Engagement Simulation System (AWSS-LBA TESS)
  
• Air Defense Artillery (ADA) Targets
  
• Armored Security Vehicle Multiple Integrated Laser Engagement System (ASV MILES)
  
• Aviation Combined Arms Tactical Trainer—Aviation Reconfigurable Manned Simulator (AVCATT)
  
• Ballistic Aerial Target System (BATS)
  
• Battle Command Training Capability—Equipment Support (BCTC-ES)
  
• Battlefield Effects Simulator (BES)
  
• Camouflage, Concealment, Deception, and Obscurants (CCD&O)
  

. . . and so on, all the way through the alphabet.

“What the hell is this stuff?” Paul belched, reaching capacity.

“Here’s the fun part,” said Finger, jiggling the ice in his glass. “Take your pick.”

“But all I need are some bangs and smoke,” Paul protested.

“You don’t finesse this kind of study with homemade campfires and popguns, Paul. This ain’t Boy Scouts! No, Paul, I’m outfitting bases and training sites all over the globe, I’m managing over two hundred contracts in twenty-eight countries,” said Finger, who twirled his Patek Philippe watch in a widening swath in his arm hair. Congealed with fat, their plates disappeared with the waitress, while Finger ordered them both Brandy Alexanders, and removed two cigars from the inner pocket of his jacket and offered one to Paul. “Close your eyes and take a poke anywhere on the page. You can’t go wrong.”

“You serious? This is crazy.”

But he did it. He closed his eyes and started laughing. He played government-sanctioned pin the tail on the donkey. Finger said, “Congratulations! You’re the proud new operator of a CURS!”

“What the hell is it?” Paul said.

“Confined Urban Rescue Simulator. Perfect.”

Finger looked at the part number and opened his satchel and removed his tablet, bringing up photos and blueprints of the CURS from every angle. The CURS was a set of prefabricated buildings simulating the urban landscape of modern warfare, complete with an elaborate sound and lighting system, real doors and locks, and mazelike passageways decked with sniper windows, smoke, explosions. The whole thing could be staged within the warehouse at the VA, the control panels mounted on a platform with a viewing window above. “Listen to this, Paul, customer choice of color!”