Agnes holds up the stun gun as an object of contemplation. “Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer a blackjack.”
“As much as I respect you and your unique mix of talents, Agnes, it is an unavoidable fact that your strength is waning as you grow older.”
“Oh posh. Strength? It’s all technique. One should not blame the brush for the shortcomings of the artist.”
“Mnnnnngah,” says Lemahi as he struggles to regain a handle on the moment. He drags himself to a knee.
“You see? You see?” cries Agnes. “It is a shoddy product that does not work as advertised!” She zaps him again with the Taser. Lemahi rag-dolls to the floor. Edwin find neither comedy nor tragedy in this. He watches the entire spectacle without emotion.
Now a normal person, say a man on his way to buy a hotdog for lunch, would have been rendered unconscious by two blasts in the neck from a stun gun. But Lemahi is fueled by truly righteous and exceptional anger. And he is not to be denied. One hand claws at the side of the chair as he struggles to get his badly jangled nervous system to fire in some kind of coherent order. As he rises, red-faced and sputtering, Agnes says, “Oh good Lord!” and bustles out of the room.
Edwin is left alone with a crippled and angry man. “Windsssssssssir!,” Lemahi slurs, hacking at his words like a stroke victim. “Urrrrrn ann idiot. An an an an an an”
THOCK!
It is, Edwin thinks, an odd sort of sound. He looks up from his desk to see how it has been produced. There is Agnes, standing over the now definitively unconscious Lemahi. In her hand is a piece of lead wrapped in leather.
“There,” says Agnes as if she has just set a quaint sea-side cottage to rights, “I feel better, don’t you?”
Edwin does not feel better. He stares off into a point where the wall meets the ceiling.
“Edwin dearie, what is it?” Agnes asks. The battle axe of moments before has melted away into an angel of compassion. A blackjack toting angel, but an angel all the same.
“He is right,” says Edwin.
“He is no such thing. He is rude and ignorant.”
“But Agnes, don’t you see? I know— I should have known better. To expect an irrational creature to act rationally…” Edwin trails off and Agnes lets the silence be. She pours Edwin a cup of the Darjeeling and quietly sets it on the desk beside him.
Edwin doesn’t even look at it. Agnes says, “You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself.”
Edwin does not respond. After a while, Agnes leaves the room to arrange for the removal of Mr. Lemahi. As the cup of tea cools, Edwin sinks deeper and deeper into depression. And this funk is a malaise of why. Why had Edwin chosen to put himself in this position? It would have required little enough imagination to figure out what might go wrong — and this most recent setback notwithstanding — was his entire conception flawed?
Could he truly expect the unrestrained and foolish to act rationally? Could he correct the flaws of a villainous world? Or was it destined to be that reason and logic would have little place under the sun? Edwin knows his logic is sound, that his ideas are good. But is the weakness and fallibility of men such that he can never succeed?
Days come and go. Edwin comes to work. Edwin goes home. He takes no calls and he holds no meetings. He sits in his office, staring into space, as the sun moves across the sky. Seeking his answer in the movement of shadows.
After long years of service, Agnes is highly attuned to Edwin’s moods. At times she has felt his great brain churning on some problem as one might feel the thundering of a diesel engine buried beneath the deck plates of a ship. But now she can sense nothing. When she tries to talk with him, he dismisses her with an all-too-familiar wave of his hand. He has gone where she cannot follow. But she does not give up. She does the only thing she can think to do. She calls Topper.
Chapter Thirty
Topper Gives a Pep Talk
Topper is not the kind of person who broods. Sure, he’ll cry at the drop of a hat. Sure he’ll rage and throw a fit for no reason at all. He will whipsaw back and forth across of a range of emotions so extreme that it could give an ordinary person the bends. But Topper never broods. The finer shades of a long, protracted ennui are unknown to him. As is the word ennui.
So when Topper hangs up the phone after talking with Agnes, his reaction is swift. “Bullshit,” says Topper, “It’s just nothing but bullshit.”
The way Topper sees it, there is no reason to get stuck in a mood. The seasons change, the temperature changes, everything in the world changes. And if you fight it too much, you just screw yourself up. A man has to follow his urges. They come in on a radio from God. And you might not always understand them, but maybe you weren’t supposed to.
All Topper knows for sure is, every time he tries to think about his emotions, it gets him into trouble. But if he gets laid when he feels like getting laid and throws a tantrum when he feels like throwing a tantrum, somehow, everything works out. He calls it advanced Zen. Eat when you’re hungry. Sleep when you’re tired. And when you feel like doing something, just do it already. Why resist?
“Guy just needs to get laid,” Topper sums up as he exits the elevator at the top of Windsor Tower. He barges into Edwin’s office. Without breaking a stride, he says, “All right Beanpole. Time to snap out of it. We’ve already got one Lincoln memorial, we don’t need another.”
Edwin sits low in his chair, the tips of his index fingers touching in front of his nose. He does not turn to look at Topper.
“What, now you’re gonna give me the silent treatment? That’s gonna get you nowhere. Because, let me tell you something. I’m louder than any silence.”
Edwin looks up and to the right. As if he is recalling a piece of valuable information.
“Yeah, yeah. You just keep thinking. THINKING! THINKING! THINKING! That’s the problem. You’re unhappy because your all the time thinking and none of the time living!”
Edwin’s gaze wanders to the ceiling.
“And just because I found that in a fortune cookie doesn’t mean it’s not true. What is it? Is it that you made a mistake? C’mon! I make mistakes all the time, you don’t see it getting me down, do you? You can’t give up!”
Edwin looks at Topper. He realizes that looking at Topper is a mistake. It only serves to encourage him.
“Yeah, yeah, look at me. See how short I am? You know, when they told me I was gonna be a midget, I said no way. I said un-hunh. I said screw you. And then they held out the book and showed me where it said, 4’5” and under is the classification for dwarf. And I said, there is no way I’m going to be a midget. You just watch me. And you know what I did? Do you?”
Edwin closes his eyes.
“I started hanging out with tall people. I started doing the things they did. I went out for the basketball team. I even thought lofty thoughts. Yeah, me. And I did this for a whole year. So I get back to the doctor and they measure me again. Still 4’4” and half. They called me a midget. I called them assholes. Then I went out and bought shoes with a half inch lift. And forgot all about it.
“Which is what you need to do. Forget about it. It’s a mistake, sure. Ya screwed it up. Everybody screws up. Who cares? Just roll on to the next thing. You just roll on. Get me. Roll on.” Topper turns dramatically and heads towards the door. Any other man would be enjoying a false hope that Topper is done with his sermon, but Edwin knows better.
Sure enough, as soon as he reaches the office door, Topper spins on his heel and says, “And you know what happened? Three years later, I grew that extra inch. Hunh? Hunh? What does that tell you?” Topper pauses. Edwin does not react. Topper leaves the room with a “harumph.”
