The Last Bender, Chapter 19

CHAPTER NINETEEN

          Finding an address in Spartan County is like trying to pick fleas off a schnauzer. Just when you think you’ve found your white ranch on Dylan Court you discover it’s a grey shingled two-story on Dylan Place you want, which is three miles that way taking a different battery of one-ways to the ten blocks of hideous stupidity crammed into nihilistic architecture built for drones who can’t tell Mr. Rogers from a dictator.

          At Monozone guys like Padraic Stanislau don’t just hang around the office, they have their own lunchroom and their own security force. Protocol is invariably strict. But once, during a time of upheaval, I actually met him. The MBAs had gone bottom to some top they were chasing over in HR. All of Monozone was seized by a revolutionary zeal. riGHtsiziNG was what they called it. Stanislau was the boring bald guy they trotted out to present the R&D Perspectives on Excellence lectures at various Continuous Learning Centers, or, as we called it, Reeducation Camp. This is where associates went to see their colleagues sucked into a pile of shit through the tight asshole on the wall called company mind.

          I parked in front of his house and went up the three cement steps to the slate walkway. There were no sidewalks, cars, or kids on bikes, no signs of life coming from any of the homes. I brushed past some evergreen shrubs with red berries, opened the screen door and banged the knocker. There was no answer. So I rang the bell and pounded and ahemmed loudly. Still no one answered. It was impossible to see inside through the blinds. So to avoid any business with pests I broke out one of the window lights, reached in and opened the door. The place was shut down. A layer of dust covered the antique furniture in the living room. The clocks were stopped at different times. But it didn’t smell like garbage or cooking. The quiet was absolute.

          Padraic and Peter lived in low-key affluence. The hall closet smelled like cedar. In it hung two winter coats on hangers, tweed and cashmere. Neatly stowed on the floor were a couple of tennis rackets, two bags of golf clubs and four muddy hiking boots. There was a box of gardening tools. On a peg behind the coats was a hedge clipper made of surgical steel. I had never seen one like it. The blade was slightly stained with green, but it had a nice snap to it. I was tempted to take it home till I realized it was no good on tomatoes.

          Aside from the dust and silence, the living room looked ready for two men to share an evening in, listening to music and reading journals by the warm shaded light of the Nussbaum original. Thousands of books arranged by subject and author covered the walls. The only knick knacks were a fly caught in an amber paper weight and a giant framed printout of what looked like the same kind of a fly, created out of the letters C G T and A in different sequences. Across the bottom, in Gothic letters also formed of tiny Cs, Gs, Ts, and As, was the word Drosophila melanogaster.

          The den was also abandoned in mid gesture. At one end was a cluttered mahogany desk. Student papers on the formation of mental images in Bernie Taupin’s lyrics with special reference to peptide surges in the cerebral cortex and thalamus regions of the human brain were piled next to a text on dreams. Behind the desk were file cabinets and again, thousands of books on shelves. I scanned the titles; they all seemed to be philosophical and scientific works.

          On the other side of the room was a black easy chair and ottoman upholstered in real leather, under a standing lamp with a burgundy shade and gold tassels. The wooden blinds were drawn making the floor and paneling dark and somber. It smelled faintly of sandalwood incense, which came from a small shrine to Siva on a bookshelf I might otherwise have missed. I love that color blue.

          The kitchen was large and bright. It looked out onto a concrete yard, a little lawn and a high boundary hedge. Pots of wilted flowers stood and hung from chains and macramé, petunias and spider plants and impatiens. There were two cedar lawn chairs and a kettle grill with shiny, stainless steel implements at the ready. The sink was clean, dishes piled up in the drainer. Floor, table and counters swept and wiped clean. The garbage was empty. I looked at everything, at spices above the stove, at pots and pans, at bags and boxes of rice and macaroni. The fridge was about a quarter full of old food–sandwich meat, lettuce (which looked like it had spit up in the bag), bread and cheese. There was an open bottle of Moselle wine and a malt liquor tall boy. Low fat mayo and grain mustard. Nothing in the least bit unusual. Nothing out of place. The refrigerator didn’t hum. The faucet didn’t drip. Everything was normal.

          Upstairs there were two rooms. One large and bright, with high cathedral ceilings, skylights and a small deck. It was something I could adjust to anyway. The floor was glazed white tile. It smelled like the country. There were two huge plants with trunks like elephants and green, feather duster tops. In a far corner was one of those hexagonal fish tanks. The bubbles struggled up through rank algae. A bunch of those giant hydras swam around in it. The pale white heads pulsed through the green murk rhythmically, propelling them up and down in a constant motion. It was kind of what I imagined a brain to be like, if you looked really close, and didn’t sweeten it up at all. Like war and sex.

          The other room was a bedroom, bare except for a painting of a black blob on top of a white blob. Beneath it were two prayer mats. On the opposite side of the room was a futon about as thick as a dime on top of a tatami. The closets contained suits and shirts and shoes, all good designer brands. There was a small dresser full of casual clothes, silk boxer shorts and socks. On top of that was a jewelry box of cufflinks, earrings and necklaces. Nothing missing, nothing strange. And no one home.

          The silence absorbed me and my thoughts were no longer bounded by my skull but by the house itself. I could feel it touching this world of sinister uniformity. And holding within its doors men who lived a sane, comfortable life. I got still. Till the poise was gone. My joy catapulted into jealousy. How dare they! rang through my brain. Now the vandal spirit seized me. I would upturn the silence and loose the roar and spew of steel and pillage.