Marty Jr., on a roll, gurgled and dialed 911.
The next day Marty placed all the telephones in high places, where the baby couldn't reach them. Then he went out and got himself a dog. A puppy might have been nice for the baby but Marty brought home a full-grown Doberman, a used dog given to him by a guy he works with. Jamboree has a bullet head and a stumpy tail, like a big black thumb smeared with shit. I think perhaps the previous owner trained him to be unpleasant. I've seen that in a magazine before, men with thick pads around their arms, provoking dogs to attack so they can qualify for high- paying jobs patrolling department stores and car lots. Jamboree was here only two days before he took down Playboy, the neighbor's old basset hound. Poor Playboy didn't know what hit him. Marty took the body and set it in the street, hoping his owners would believe Playboy had been hit by a car.
Right, Marty, a car with teeth.
Jamboree shouldn't be allowed on the street, even on a leash. Everyone but Marty is afraid of this dog. Even cars speed up when they see him on the sidewalk. During the night jamboree sleeps on a pad beside his master's bed. Vicki told me that she no longer drinks fluids after 9:00P.M. as she is afraid to leave the bed and risk going to the bathroom. Jamboree has already bitten her once, nipped her when she tried to remove an ashtray from the mattress. Marty tells her that jamboree can smell her fear and that she has no one but herself to blame for being a coward. Vicki asked him what her fear smells like and he said it stinks like a carton of milk left out in the sun for five days to a week.
'Where's my champ? Where is he? Where's my boy?' Marty will ask, and jamboree will come kneeling before him, the stump of a tail moving back and forth, hitching for a ride.
After he leaves for work in the morning, Vicki and I coax the dog into the spare room and shut the door. Then I take the baby out of his crib and carry on about my business. We can all hear jamboree passing time in the spare room, whining and scratch-ing at the door. At first I was afraid Marty Jr., curious, would open the door but he's smart; he knows what's in there.
My fear smells like damp wood, so I built Marty Jr. a playpen. I made it myself with my own two hands. When Marty returns from work he lets the dog loose and I set Marty Jr. in his pen, where I hope he might be safe. Jamboree circles around, trying to get at him but Marty Jr. is smart and knows to keep back from the bars. He stands in the center of his pen, watching. Once in a while he'll throw something over the top. Last night jamboree ate E.T. The dining room floor was littered with tufts of plush fur and Styrofoam BBs.
This morning I set Marty Jr.'s crib atop a platform a dining room table I found in the neighbor's trash pile. I stood on a chair and settled him in, thinking he might marvel at this new perspective. 'Look at you,' I said. 'On top of the world.' He cried then and when I went to comfort him he grabbed my hair and didn't let go until I popped him across the face. I tell myself that it's not his fault, that things will be different when it's just the two of us on our own. And it will be different. I found the place where Marty hides his money. There's close to three hundred dollars here, enough to take the baby and me to Florida, where it's warm. We can camp out there, live in the woods until I get a job. Marty would have the national guard on my ass if I were to poison his dog, but I don't think he'll care one way or another if I take off with his son. And Vicki she might think about it for a week or so, and then she'd let it go, saving it up for a year or two down the road, when she'll turn to the person sitting beside her at the tavern and say, 'Did I ever tell you about the time my very own brother ran off with my fucking baby? Did I?'
After Malison
7:45. I ARRIVE at Malison's hotel an hour and fifteen minutes before his lecture is due to begin at the Pavilion of Thought. The desk clerk shoots me a look that suggests he might be interested in throwing his weight around. Rather than pass him, I take a seat in the lobby, pull out my journal, and light a cigarette. He gives me another look.
'My husband hates for me to smoke in the room,' I say.
He says, 'What?'
I say, 'My husband, he hates the smoke, so I'm just going to sit here for a moment before going up to our room.'
The clerk says, 'Fine, whatever,' and turns his attention back to a little TV set, one of those Watchmans.
I can't believe that Malison is staying here at The Chesterton. It's so ironic, so unlike Malison. It's perfect. I'd called every hotel in town asking if they had a Malison registered, but of course they didn't. We're not talking about Mr. Small Press Nobody here. Malison is MALISON, and he's got to protect his privacy. I can understand that. I can respect that. I called around again asking if anyone had a guest by the name of Smithy Smithy, the name of all the characters in Malison's second novel. All the hotel clerks said no. They said, 'What the hell kind of name is that?' Really, I think Smithy Smithy would have been too obvious, so I tried again and again, thinking he might have registered under the name of one of the minor characters in Rotunda Surf. I finally found him here at The Chesterton registered under the name A. Davenport, the character who under-goes a needless colostomy inMagnetic Plugs. Malison is here in room 822.
How like Malison to use an assumed name, and especially here at The Chesterton, where he'll be rubbing elbows with every shallow middle-class clichZ you'd never want to meet, the exact type of people he exposes in his novels. How like Malison, how perfectly ironic.
8:04. I had really hoped to catch Malison before he left for the reading, but since nobody answers his door I can only assume that the department heads have him hogtied at The Crow's Nest or Andrea's Butcher Block, one of the upscale slaughter-houses this town calls a restaurant. I can see it now: the dean and his spaniels are shoveling forkfuls of red meat while poor Malison just sits there, tuning out their petty conversation and gagging at the sight of the carnage on his plate. Even the vegetables in this town are cooked in blood. I think it's pretty obvious that the English Department knows nothing about Malison. They just see him as another feather in their cap, a name they can use to attract new students. It makes me sick. They fly him in for a few days, race him around campus like a greyhound, and then bore him to death with their talk of funding cutbacks and Who's Who on campus. I've been standing outside this door for the last twenty minutes, so I think it's also very obvious that they're herding Malison straight from the restaurant to the Pavilion of Thought.
At first I was excited about tonight's reading, but now I say forget it if Malison has been rushed around by these university types all day, then I know he'll be too exhausted to express himself. I had a feeling this might happen, so I arranged for a few people to tape tonight's reading at the Pavilion. Bethany, if left to her own devices, can tend to get a little too artsy for her own good, so I got Daryll as a backup. Deep down in his middle-class heart Daryll would just love to be a cameraman for some big TV studio. He'd love to wear a jumpsuit and boss people around. While I really hate his politics, I trust his overall skill much more than I trust Bethany's. She taped last month's John Cage lecture and kept the camera aimed at his feet the entire time, and he wasn't dancing or anything!
Another reason for boycotting tonight's lecture is that I don't think I can sit back and watch while Malison wastes his time reading to an audience of a thousand kids who can't even begin to understand his work. The students began lining up outside the Pavilion hours ago. They're holding Malison's book in one hand and some bullshit economics text in the other, economics or political science or whatever it is they're really interested in. Most of them had never even heard of Malison before Rotunda Surf, but they act as though they've been reading Malison forever. I want to confront them. I want to ask them where they were when Malison was physically attacked after the release of Magnetic Plugs. Where were they when Malison needed support after the media trashed Smithy Smithy? These kids all act like they understand Malison and it makes me sick to hear their lame opinions on his work. This afternoon I overheard a girl telling her boyfriend that Malison's work mirrored the oppression inherent in Western capitalist society. She read that off the dust jacket. She doesn't know shit about Malison. She was wearing clothes that Malison would really hate. Here at the university I am surrounded by jokes like her.
My head is still spinning from the reading Malison gave in my master's writing seminar this afternoon. I'd looked forward to some one-on-one contact, but the room was packed with people who aren't even enrolled in the seminar. These kids weren't writers, they were fakes. But did the teacher ask them to leave? Did Professor Nobody tell them that this was a class for serious writers? Of course not. He masks his cowardice with this 'we're all here to learn' cheeriness that really makes me sick. It was perfect then when Malison walked into the classroom. He
