The Complete Roderick

through its dark windows, they might have supposed that Mr Kratt and Ben Franklin were embracing. They were in fact looking over a typewritten list.

‘Now what the hell’s this, twenty grand for a diode loser?’

‘Laser it’s supposed to be, they use it for etching the—’

‘Sure, sure, just so you checked all this stuff out. This could turn out to be the best damn thing ever happened to us, Benny, where we gonna find, look at these kilns, ten grand under wholesale, and this, where is it?’ Kratt erected a stubby finger and ran it down the list. ‘All this test stuff half price, Christ if I knew they owned all this and were tight for cash, ‘I’d have set fire to their place myself, Ha!’

‘Yes sir, now—’

‘So what do you think, bub? Make an offer on the whole shebang or what?’

Ben Franklin sat back, felt Mr Kratt’s tweed-covered arm against his neck, sat forward again. ‘Well if you ask me—’

‘Jesus Christ, I don’t see anybody else here to ask but the chauffeur, wouldn’t ask that little greasy spic for the time of — told me when you came over you wanted responsibility bub, so here it is, do we buy?’

‘Well, yes if you really, if it’s really what you want—’

‘Hell yes, you think I want to go on all my life paying through the nose for hardware we could make ourselves? Now you buy this crap and get the plant working, by the way how’s that peanut brittle idea going?’

‘Well Hare I mean Dr Hare is just working out a few last-minute bugs I guess, something about the batteries, the—’

‘Fine, fine. Because I don’t want nobody getting there first, we got to drive a spearhead see into this fun food market, then broaden our base, first maybe the gingerbread talkbacks and then see what we can do with chocolate chips, you tell Hare to get the lead out of his ass and put this stuff forward, hear me?’

‘Yes sir, but you see he thinks—’

‘Thinks, that loony thought his last employers right out of business, you tell him to stop thinking and start producing. Jesus, leave it up to him we’d still be farting around with some piddling little so-called improvement twenty years from now, I know these science yak-heads. Christ Benny, why do you think I put you in charge here? It’s because you’re not a science yak-head, you got your feet on the ground.’

‘Science, well I was trained—’

‘Sure, sure, but look, just look at these yak-heads, the way they go around blinding everybody with science, blind themselves too. Jesus they take an idea and play with it and play with it — until they go blind!’

‘Ha ha, yes I guess there is a sort of masturbational side to research, even dreams — you know the answers sometimes come up in dreams, Kekule—’

‘Yeah well I say screw that! Screw that! I want to see that damn gingerbread boy on the market in months not years, months. Hell save the damn improvements, later we put out the new improved model, miracle ingredient, only way anything ever gets done. Tell that to Hare and his dreaming coolies, make him listen! Tell him if I don’t see talking gingerbread boys in the supermarkets by Easter, I’ll hand him his dick in a test- tube, let him have a wet dream about that!’

‘Uh, yes sir.’ Ben folded the inventory and put it in an inside pocket. ‘Now if that’s all I think I’ll just get out here and—’

‘We’re both getting out here, bub, only reason I had this little greaser drive us here was so I could show you my gallery.’

‘Gallery? Shooting—?’ Ben peered out but could see no neon through the dark glass.

‘The Kay Tee Art Gallery, right there, bub. We got an opening tonight, Edd McFee, ever heard of him?’ Kratt opened the door.

‘No I don’t th—’

‘You will. Come on.’

And Ben Franklin, hurried from the car into a mirror-fronted place, caught sight of his own nice face, poised for some suitable expression. He had already shaken hands with two or three persons inside before he could stop thinking about that face: maybe he should grow his moustache again, and to hell with Mr Kratt?

XI

The artist and the beautiful Mrs McBabbitt swept past the two critics who’d been standing in the same spot since their arrival.

‘…but I still don’t see why they all look the same, aren’t they all just…’

‘Well I call it Paradigmatics, it’s…’

‘…just purple squares?’

The two critics stood with their backs to as many of the pictures as possible, twiddled their champagne glasses, and studied the crowd.

‘Plenty of loot here… who’s the big boy in the J. Press suit?’

The taller critic looked where the shorter was looking. ‘Oh, Everett. Everett Moxon, he’s nobody. Now. Probably just here to ask Mr K. for a job. He used to be into reactors, light-cooled reactors or something boring like that. Lost everything in the panic.’

‘Just as well, before he started polluting light or something. Ever know a businessman with a conscience?’

‘Not unless they’ve started buying them as investments, who’s that stunning woman in black talking to McFee?’

The shorter looked where the taller was looking. ‘Mrs McBabbitt. If you think she’s beautiful now, wait till you see the finished product.’

‘You don’t mean—?’

‘Yep. Going through one of those whole-body cosmetic surgery jobs, bones and all.’

‘But they take years! And loot…’

‘Absolutely. Everybody here is loaded practically, except Allbright.’

‘Allbright! God I wish he’d hurry up and o.d. or whatever he’s going to do, I really get sick of seeing him everywhere. All he does is steal books to support his nasty habit.’

‘Poetry? Well I’ve got a dozen signed copies of his book put away, just in case. Posthumous glory might — hey, who’s that old woman?’

The taller critic, looking, said, ‘I didn’t know you read Allbright’s poetry — The one in the shawl?’

‘I don t. Looks more like a lace table-cloth, but who is she? Haven’t [ seen her before? Some kind of writer or—?’

‘No, last year. She entered this giant toilet in the Des Moines Bienniale, name’s Rose Wood, something like that.’

The shorter critic shook his head. ‘No, before that, way back, a writer my parents knew in Chicago — now was she the writer or was it her husband?’

‘Maybe the toilet was rattling off its memoirs — Christ, why don’t you just ask her?’

‘I will. I might.’ But neither critic made a move, except to put down an empty glass when a waiter came by and seize a full one. They remained anchored to the spot even after the crash.

Mr Vitanuova spread his wide face in a smile and his wide hands in a benediction. ‘Me, I don’t understand nothing. It’s the wife, see? She knows Art like I know garbage. No wait, don’t get sore, hey I don’t mean this is garbage, I mean real garbage, it’s my business.’

But already the woman in the Abbott & Costello t-shirt had turned away to listen to Ben Franklin:

‘Well purple, yes, it’s kind of ecclesiastical, isn’t all art? I mean isn’t that why we take it seriously, because it has its own liturgy?’

Allbright moved a book-shaped bulge under his sweater. ‘You’re gonna give me canons of taste for this? The fact is the guy painted the same damn purple square twenty times, the same purple the same square — and you