book?”
“He still hasn’t read it. He’s an editor. I take the first pass and then write up a summary. He decides from my summary whether he’ll read it, too.”
“You’re joking, right?”
“That’s the practice.”
“I’m stunned,” I say.
“Another question: The Second Dictum?”
“Yes?”
“It’s a lot like the Sixth. I don’t think you need the Sixth.”
“Tell Dwight I’ll be in Phoenix mid-day tomorrow and that I have some major concerns to share with him. Have you found that hotel name?”
“I had it, I put it down . . .”
“Does Advanta make a profit?”
“It’s publishing. Profits are secondary.”
“That’s what’s scaring me.”
I decide that my last call, to Linda, can wait awhile. What do you owe them once you’ve screwed them? Everything. You’ve been inside their skins. You’ve touched their wombs. The only question is whether they’ll make you pay, whether they’ll call in the note. Most don’t, thank goodness. But Linda, I’ve always feared, will want full value. This doesn’t mean I’ll have to pay, of course, just that I’ll have to live with having defaulted. And I can. I’ve done it with the others. It’s a matter of rolling over one personal debt into the pooled, collective, social debt that’s the business of governments and churches. Or I could refinance, amortize over centuries.
I lay down with my boots on for a nap. My sleep was not sleep but a paralytic trance. Asif was wrong: I
Now I’m awake, in the bathroom, gargling Listerine. The membranes inside my cheeks feel ragged, scorched. I touch my forehead. Its neither chilled nor feverish; it’s the disturbing no-temperature of paper. I need vitamins. I need certain enzymes. The lack of them is visible on my skin. I tan with the slightest sun, but in the mirror now my face can barely muster a reflection.
The only good news: my credit card is back. They slipped it under the door while I was napping. The identity thief has been cut off, presumably. I’m whole again, with nothing hanging out. My first purchase will be a pair of shoes, and I have a whole hour to buy them—a rarity. According to Pinter’s autobiography, he sleeps in two four- hour shifts from 10 to 2, A.M. and P.M., and takes his meals at three. He writes in the book that all humans lived this way before the dawn of agriculture, but he gives no evidence. That’s typical. In management, it’s the stimulating assertion, not the tested hypothesis, that grabs folks.
I call Pinter’s house to confirm and get directions. Margaret answers, his so-called co-domestic. Pinter’s contempt for matrimony springs from his belief in male polygamy, which he refrains from practicing himself only because it’s currently illegal, but which he doesn’t rule out for the future. Maybe when he’s a hundred they’ll loosen standards.
“He’d like to come pick you up,” says Mrs. Pinter. “He bought a new car he’s eager to show off.”
“That’s fine. I can’t wait to see your lovely home.”
“It’s under renovation, I’m afraid. We’re down to two inhabitable rooms.”
“Maybe you’d like to eat out tonight.”
“Of course not. Sandy needs his food prepared just so. He doesn’t trust these restaurants. They overheat things and screw up the protein chains.”
“When should I expect him?”
“Five, ten minutes.”
“I thought he ate at three?”
“This year it’s two. Sandy corrected for daylight saving time.”
The genius act is beginning to annoy me, and I have a high tolerance for quirkiness, even when it’s a calculated put-on. One of the speakers I saw at last year’s GoalQuest, a world-renowned alpinist who died on Everest (just for seven minutes; they revived him, but only after he’d received a vision of abiding interest to the business world), wore shearling slippers with an Italian suit and insisted on chewing gum while speaking. His painful, frostbitten feet explained the slippers, but the bubbles he blew were the purest affectation, intended to show that he plays by his own Hoyles. He knows, as all the cleverest ones do, that no human being is so interesting that he can’t make himself more interesting still by acting retarded at random intervals.
I put away clothes to prepare for Pinter’s visit. How do hotel rooms fall apart so quickly, and even when I’ve hardly packed a thing? Their surfaces seem to cry out for abuse the way new haircuts cry out for a mussing. Perhaps it’s the urge to make the space your own by displacing the aura of the previous occupant. When someone vacates a plane seat or a room, they leave behind a molecular disturbance. This room, I’d guess, was last inhabited by a bickering family on vacation.
Pinter knocks just once. Efficiency. I greet him wearing khakis and a blue shirt and holding a legal pad with writing on it, trying to look like a man who’s always occupied.
“We finally meet. A privilege. Excuse the room,” I say.
“I need your toilet.”
“Of course. It’s right in there.”
