“That you, Billy?” Rick said.
The other person who’d entered the tavern was Catrina Hogg. She’d set up her wares atop the pinball machine and was showing a pair of bonded cures to a middle-aged couple who Biggie and Wiz, an hour or so earlier, had discussed at some length, and very little depth (first date or not?—that had been the thrust).
I handed my father all my cash, said I’d pay him back later if it wasn’t enough, then left out the back, through the door near the bathrooms.
* * *
Next morning, first thing, I gave Herb a call. He told me he’d be happy to try to find Lisette for me, but advised me to keep my expectations in check as he had so little information to go on—just her first name, and that she’d been in the Friends Study—and furthermore advised I be prepared to wait awhile for any results he might produce since he wouldn’t be able to really start on my case for at least a couple weeks; already on his plate were “a likely cuckold, a missing college kid (probably one of these fucken Hare Krishna situations), and a corporate thing [he] better keep mum about.” As for cost, Herb said he’d take the case on for the “unprecedentedly discounted rate of zero dollars per hour, plus expenses, which is thirty dollars less per hour than I usually charge the likable and known, and one hundred fifty less per hour than the standard rate.” I asked him what he thought the expenses would be. He said he’d ring me up before doing anything that would create expenses.
I thanked him a lot, and was about to ask him how long he figured I’d have to wait for results, but I stopped myself for fear of seeming pushy, and asked him instead what the rate would be to find another person—one whose last name I knew—and I somehow wound up seeming pushy, anyway.
“Instead of this Lisette?” he said.
“In addition to,” I said.
“Okay,” he said. “Right. Sure. Know what? Same rate. Fucken Magnets. A pair of masters in this economy of favors, hustling. Me? I prefer an economy of gifts, or a barter economy convincingly disguised as an economy of gifts. Might be the same thing. I’m no anthropologist. What I know’s I prefer a world in which we do our best to help each other out, don’t set terms, but find we’re rewarded with exactly that which we desire but are nonetheless unwilling to give to ourselves.”
“Like what?” I said.
“To say what outright would expose the bartering nature we labor here to hide. I’m not into that, kid, so I’ll put it like this: At Exeter, when we were underage, it would amount to a sixer of whatever anyone could get his hands on. At University of Chicago, the sixer became a handle of something—brown or clear, no matter. These are items within let’s call it the continuum of the what about which you are inquiring, items well to the left side of that continuum, which, like so many other continua, vectors rightward toward greater value. Today, as an older man, one whose time as a matriculant at the hallowed institutions aforementioned has long since ended, that what which I desire yet am nonetheless unwilling to give to myself always seems to begin with a syllable such as Glen or Mac and to end with a number no lower than fifteen, and the higher the number the better.”
“I understand,” I said, then told him the few things I knew about Stevie, wished him good luck on his date with Jill, hung up the phone, and watched A Fistful of Fists.
SEVEN WEEKS
THE TRANSCRIPT TOOK ME only seven weeks to write. I say “only seven weeks” because I finished four months ahead of the deadline; those seven weeks, however, didn’t feel like only anything. More often than not, the video disgusted me. More often than that, I disgusted myself.
Though I’d wanted to be finished as soon as possible, I’d wanted, just as much, to do a good job—not out of any kind of pride in my work, but from fear that if the transcript didn’t meet his expectations, Trip would have Burroughs demand I rewrite it or return the $100k—yet my attacks of self-disgust were at their most potent in precisely those moments when I’d done a good job, for to have done a good job meant, above all, to have transformed that which I found repellent into something the average transcript reader, whoever that would be (you, I suppose), would find adorable or comical or both; into something Triple-J would find inspiringly adorable or comical or both. And I couldn’t fake it. I’d try to and fail. Success required that I learn to take pleasure in that which disgusted me: to see as attractive what I knew to be repellent; to acquire, in other words, new sensibilities, or, perhaps, to develop latent ones, and, in either case, to betray my old ones.
One hundred thousand dollars to betray old sensibilities—oh, boo hoo.
I know, I know. No one likes a complainer.
I’m not seeking pity, just explaining how it was.
I had a hard time.
The work disturbed me.
* * *
—
I’d work for five or six hours a day, from nine or so til two or three, then spend the afternoon trying to get undisturbed. For the first couple weeks, I accomplished undisturbedness by hanging out with Blank. We’d watch the eyebrow-flexing compilation, practice gags, and play our games: Flick the Peppercorn, Kick the Frozen Pea, Toothpickup Sticks, Tug but Don’t Tear the Tissue. Throughout these two weeks, Blank, as it had on the morning I left for the compound, periodically performed consecutive Allen-throat-clears (occasionally punctuated by pratfalls and brow-wipes), which led me to believe that it wanted to revisit Woody’s old comedies, so we also did that: watched one or two a night.
By day ten, however, the throat-clears had started to annoy me a little, Blank’s eyebrow-flex timing had ceased improving, and its pleasure in our games appeared to be waning: it would, for example, tear the tissue in seconds, rather than minutes (sometimes, I could have sworn, deliberately), or send the peppercorn flying off the table in the direction opposite the peppermill goalposts. It seemed to desire more time in-sleeve: was quick to get in, sluggish emerging. On top of all that—maybe partly because of it—the aforementioned betrayal of my old sensibilities began not only to disgust and depress me, but scare me a little.
I’d catch myself thinking that maybe Blank had been deprived (i.e. by me) of some of the fundamental joys of Curiohood, and that maybe I should make some efforts to repair that. Buy us a cuddlefarmed cure, perhaps, then PerFormulize Blank with BullyKing or Punchy and let it (and, vicariously, me) have some fun with the (temporary) guest. Or maybe I could purchase a cuddlefarmed hobunk, debilitate the hobunk with a double dose of TooMuchItch or SloMo or DizzyFizz or QuIctuses, and let Blank experience the ostensible thrill of witnessing a hate-filled, murder-hungry being struggling—helplessly—to end its life.
And then one day, I was having trouble describing the light in the Woof clip, and I rose from my desk, and started to pace, and pick things up and put them down, and one of these things turned out to be a pencil, and I found myself wondering whether a Curio’s exit could ever recover from having been popsicled. If so, I wondered, how long would it take? If not, how bad would the damage actually be? I.e. very bad or worth-it bad? And I thought: “ ‘Worth-it bad’? What the hell does that mean? What are you becoming? What’s happening to you?” and suddenly it seemed to me extremely unwise to keep Blank within reach while I worked on the transcript.