The Bewildering Effect Of Cabbages - Chapter 2
The bitch. The bitch. Oh, that bitch… What is she doing to me?
I saw her again today, returning from lunch. The crowded elevator took nearly two minutes to arrive on the twentieth, and throughout that time her ass was squished against mine. She was wearing a black leather mini – she had plans, that girl… I got off last and had to scuttle half-sideways, like a crippled crab, to hide my erection from red-haired Daphne, the X-ray eyed receptionist. I dived into the old cubicle, sat down, pushed my chair right up to the desk, and hastily spread some papers over the desktop. My groin throbbed. The bitch. What is she doing to me?
I’ve been here for a month now, working at Grumble, Crinkle, & Paloma Advertising as a junior media person, or media nonperson. She has been here for two years, or so I heard. She treats me – we’ve never actually spoken, apart from the one time I said hi passing by in the corridor, and turned red like a fucking tomato – she views me like a grizzled veteran would a diapered recruit. I thought of going up and introducing myself: Hi, my name is Joachim and I’m new here, you look like someone who knows a lot about this place and I wondered if perhaps you could tell me a thing or two – you know, I mean it’s easy. But it’s not easy with a name like Joachim, let alone Joachim Kroeg. I’m commonly known as Joe Craig, and it irritates the shit out of me. I hate the name Joe, it makes me think of slobbering old drunks blacked out on top of trash heaps. That’s all I need, her looking down on me and calling me a Joe.
I wanted to be a copywriter, like that Alec Pingle whom I’d spied lunching with her last week. I have no hope of scoring with her against a competitor like Pingle. I mean, I’m an ill-paid nobody, while here’s this artist with long blond curls and wistful good looks – his face says, I’m so full of soul – what do you call that? At least a demigod. My only hope is that he is queer.
I wanted to be a copywriter. Creative director Brian Paloma, well known for his riveting work on ketchup (‘Taste the tomatoes’ – you know that shit. Legend goes it made some grandmothers start putting ketchup on salads) – the great Brian Paloma sniffled over my portfolio like a tired old dog catching an agreeable scent, and even said ‘nice’, twice. Then he told me to talk to the personnel manager next Monday. The manager – a stern old hag in a Chanel dress – told me there were no creative openings at present, maybe some time down the road, but that there was one in media. Would I want to start there? I didn’t have a job. I had been to interviews with creative dicks all over town, and none of them had sniffled promisingly like Paloma did. So I said, sure.
And now I’m stuck. Boy, am I stuck. There are two media guys here who joined Grumble, Crinkle and Paloma in the hope of becoming copywriters, and one of them has a flowing white beard – well, a good three inches at least. The other guy is about my age. He joined two years ago, after one year in college. We don’t talk much; we keep away, we look away when passing. I caught him sneaking calculating looks at the back of my head. When there is an opening – which one of us will it be? Not the white beard – he has wanted to be a copywriter for thirty years now, and when you’ve wanted to be something for thirty years with no success, it’s over. But that other guy, that… His name is Jonathan. Joachim, Jessica, Jonathan; when I tell you my girlfriend’s name is Jenny, you’ll agree with me there has to be a conspiracy in it somewhere.
When I first saw Jessica, I wasn’t overwhelmed. A week later, I NOTICED her. The evening of my seventh day at Grinkle, Crumble and Paloma found me sitting on the can, wanking savagely to the image of Jessica’s bulging boobs. A week later, I stopped sleeping with Jenny. Poor Jenny, she had been so devoted throughout the last two years, she’d even read Linda Lovelace’s autobiography to improve her fellatio (it didn’t work; she went off sex for two weeks). She’s getting alarmed, Jenny. My new abstinence is not the kind she wanted. She’s asked me what’s wrong a few times, and I’m running out of excuses. The last one was that it’s probably simple lack of food, with my being constantly broke. When Jenny heard that, she fell strangely silent. She had just seen me tip a pretty waitress five bucks on top of the twenty that I drank away, and my excuse didn’t quite work.
I look up and around my cubicle. I inhale its stale-coffee smell. There’s an old post-it note clinging to the cloth wall:
Tim,
for visiting.
Did you see Walter lick the floor last night?
L.
I wonder about Walter. Then about Tim, and L.
* * *
Today, as I was leaving work, I got another prod from Fate or Destiny or whatever that old bitch is called – an expert three-knuckler driven deep into my soft, defenseless stomach. There, by the elevators (I think I’ll start taking the stairs from now on) stood that pig Pingle talking to Jessica. I tried not to listen to his self-congratulatory jabber all the way down. They left the elevator together and I followed them, clinging to walls and scurrying between potted plants across the entire main floor lobby. Then Pingle waved a cab and they rode away, hopefully driven by a drunken retard. I was sure she had put that mini on for Pingle, and it drove me nuts. Jesus, that Jessica. What is she –
I went to the liquor store and used some notes of the legal tender to acquire a big bottle of wine. Then I went to the room I’m presently renting in a house inhabited, or rather haunted by artists. I thought it was a great deal, when I found that room. I’ll tell you this: don’t live with artists. Artists, they’re funny guys.
The house was mercifully empty. I holed up in my room, took off my jacket, took off my tie, took off my shoes, and opened the wine. I drank half the bottle looking at the tree in the backyard. Its limp, sparsely leafed branches hung helplessly over the yellowed grass; it was hunched like the guys that hang around the liquor store, that tree. Its sap has been poisoned; no one seems to care. The other night I stood at my window looking at the tree, and listened to the stoned beery voices downstairs discussing the sanctity of the natural environment. I saw a pissed, vegetarian Green stumble out into the back yard, put a hand against the tree’s trunk, and relieve himself. Then he was back inside with another bottle, fighting for the Amazon.
So: I was standing there staring at the tree, swigging from the bottle, when Jenny came in. I had left the front door unlocked and she’d crept upstairs like a trained terrorist. I heard my door open and turned round and there she was in the doorway, with her paw on the doorknob and her eyes wide. She looked like an exploring cat that has been surprised. She recovered quickly.
“I bought a bottle of wine, but I see you’ve got one already,” she said. “Are you depressed again?”
I instantly felt depressed.
“No,” I said.
“That’s good to hear.” She put on a smile and marched into the room and I saw she was carrying a bulging supermarket bag. “I’ve also brought groceries and I’ll make dinner,” she announced. “I’ve decided that I’m going to have you eat properly.”
“Why, that’s… that’s terrific,” I said. “What are we going to have?”
“Sausages,” Jenny said firmly. “Hot Italian sausages. And salad. And rice.”
We went downstairs to the kitchen and Jenny insisted on doing the food: she weaved and bobbed at the sideboard like a bantamweight. Then we ate. There seemed to be more food on my plate with every forkful I took, and it grew in my mouth too – I had never eaten such ricey rice before. I was determined to be nice to Jenny, so I ate everything and then offered to do the dishes, which earned me a smile.
I nearly broke a glass when Jenny crept up on me from behind and put her arms around my waist.
“It’s been such a long time since we last relaxed,” she whispered meaningfully. She touched my ear with her lips and slipped out of the kitchen.
I washed everything, including the grimy sideboard which really needed paint solvent or sulphuric acid to get it reasonably clean. I loitered by the table for another couple of minutes, smoking a cigarette and trying to formulate a plan of action for the rest of the evening. A movie! Yes, that was a good idea; we wouldn’t have to talk.
“Joachim!” called Jenny. She made my name sound like a brand of detergent.
“Coming!” I shouted, ground out my cigarette with a furious twist, and trudged off upstairs.
The stairs creaked highly ominously as I made my way up, but then they always creak fairly ominously and I took no notice. I paused on the landing; the door to the bathroom stood invitingly open. I had the crazy notion to dive in there and stay securely locked in until well after Jenny had left. Instead, I took a deep breath and walked into my bedroom, the brave little Joachim that I am.
“Ta da!” exclaimed Jenny. I looked at her and stopped so abruptly I almost fell over on my face.
Now, a quick word of explanation. Jenny, my girl, has a solid middle class mentality coated with the politically correct pinkish varnish. Her idea of being really wicked is letting me come in her mouth. Her lingerie consists of 100% cotton items in white, delicate peach, or creamy beige (she does have one tarty black outfit. I gave it to her for Valentine’s, of course). When Jenny undresses, she likes me to have my back turned – got it? Good.
So: I stood there with my mouth open, staring at a Jenny outfitted with a white body stocking featuring an open crotch – I remember the short golden hairs invitingly curled out over the transparent nylon. I stood like that for as long as it took Jenny’s smile to shrink and mutate into an angrily twisted lip; then, with an apologetic mumble, I looked down at the floor, shuffled my feet, and exited rapidly to take refuge in the bathroom. I locked myself in and it was then that we had our fight, Jenny and I, with her speaking through the keyhole in a tiny voice and myself proclaiming innocence from the toilet seat, on which I had prophylactically perched with my pants down (I was told, through the keyhole, I was full of it). I didn’t emerge until a good five minutes after she’d left.
What can I do now – what shall I do, with Jenny?
* * *
What shall I do with Jenny? I woke up today huddled into a ball in my humid bed; I have a hazy recollection I’d had a nightmare. I can’t remember the nightmare: all I have is this persistent echo somewhere in the dark abyss of the unconscious, a yellow schizoid smear on the periphery of my vision; it has given this Saturday’s events a lunatic tinge.
To begin with: around noon, I decided I’d go for a walk. On my way out, I was accosted by Rodney. Rodney is a drumbeating artist in a punk rock band evenings and weekends, and a carpenter on weekdays: he likes hitting things, and looks that way too. Rodney is proud to be from London, England; more precisely, Hackney.
“Oi!” Rodney said, suddenly emerging from the kitchen just as I was about to step outside. He had made me jump, and emitted a satisfied cackle before informing me that he had been at home the previous evening, and had listened to the exchange between me and Jenny with considerable interest. He shook his shaven head in false commiseration; the silver swastika hanging from his ear twinkled. He had always been out on all Friday evenings; what the hell had he been doing, lurking in his dusty room?
I pounded the pavement furiously until I came to a neighborhood bar, where I drank two drafts in quick succession. Then, somewhat mellowed, I strolled around for a while. I quickly got tired and bored; my neighborhood is a patchwork of grimy crippled houses and former factories – empty red brick shells with padlocked, peeling doors and dusty jagged glass in their windows. Most of the color in this sooty monotony is provided by litter: pop cans, cigarette packs, and candy bar wrappers. There is also the occasional dark animal turd. After half an hour of this breathtaking scenery I felt like going home, Rodney or not. I turned home; and then, the unexpected happened. We all live constantly yearning for and dreading the unexpected. The unexpected, when it happens, happens so, so… unexpectedly. We spend most of our time here preparing ourselves for the unexpected… It’s useless; the new is new; we all try, anyway.
So: I was walking home, treading deftly between assorted pop cans, cigarette packs, cat and dog excrement, my inner radar on minimum alert. I came to a corner almost exactly like the preceding street corner. I turned into a street almost exactly like the street I left. I remember focusing on the front door of a house – the door was opening – and then It happened: Jessica stepped out.
She gave the street a furtive go-around, her gaze sweeping by me without recognition (of course). She was dressed in highly elegant togs: white jacket and skirt, a ceremonially ruffled blouse, tall-heeled white pumps. She put black sunglasses on, and cantered off down the street. I took a long look at the house she’d just left and followed her, cutting closer to the thin trunks of the pavement trees.
What was she doing here, in this ratty neighborhood? In my dreams, I had always seen her engaging in such off-work activities as stretching out in a gold-tapped Jacuzzi in a posh pad, listening to her answering machine handle calls from assorted guys. What could her high heels be doing here, among the dogshit and litter? I was so taken up with these speculations that I failed to hear the throaty hiss of an approaching taxi until its yellow snout slid, shark-like, from a hidden side street. Jessica waved; a moment later, she was opening the rear door. I stopped by a tree and watched the cab take off, engine thumping, grit crackling under its wheels. My first feeling was one of envy, that she rode around in cabs while proletarian media scum like me were forced onto the streetcar. Maybe my dreamed image, Jessica of the Jacuzzi, was right, and she did live in a Capuan condo among exotic plants, whirlpools, and sensual furniture. But then – what was she doing here, in ghostly Labortown’s sooty reality? What had she been doing in that house –
I regarded the House with speculatively narrowed eyes. Then I moved into action that would have done credit in a thriller movie. I may have not mentioned it earlier – Joachim Kroeg is a man of action. To dive and lock myself into the bathroom when confronted by Jenny in her body stocking, for example, had been a matter of mere seconds. Joachim Kroeg may retreat prudently when faced with a situation out of control; when confronted with a mystery, he investigates.
It took me no more than a couple of minutes to locate the back of the House from the back lane. The backyard was enclosed by a rotting wooden fence with a crippled gate which nearly fell off its remaining hinge when I pushed it open. A moment later, I was slithering nimbly through the tall dry weeds of the back lawn. I crept up to the main ground floor window, and pressed my cheek against the scaling paint of the window frame. For a moment, I saw a miniature reflection of my face, moving closer; then I was looking into what seemed to be the living room. I say ‘what seemed to be’ advisedly, because it looked like a dying room: it featured trash-heap furniture, two dying plants, and a dirty white cat that looked as if it might be dead. It also featured the copywriting Alex Pingle – alive, although his naked pose suggested he was feeling like death: his thin, sallow shoulders were pulled together in an embryonic hunch; his bony fingers were splayed over his face; he appeared to be crying into his hands. Pingle! Now what the fuck was this – where did he come from? Jessica had been visiting him!
I reeled away from the window, took several deep breaths, then reglued my forehead to the dusty glass. Pingle had gotten up from his bean bag and was staggering towards the door, and I took quiet satisfaction in noticing the pallid sag of his buttocks, his spaghetti thighs, knobby knees. Yes, he looked far better dolled up as a Creative God, the cuffs of his silk jacket nonchalantly pulled up to accentuate the sensitive thin wrists.
When Pingle left the room I slid away, suddenly panicky because of all I had seen in the past few minutes. When I reached the back lane, I started running.
* * *
I am watching her.
Through the narrow slit between the folding cloth walls of my cubicle, I can see her talking to a bespectacled secretary. The secretary is a good foot shorter, in a white blouse with a flouncy collar and inky dark blue pants that make her arse resemble a rhino’s rump. Jessica, of course, is all tits and legs in a skimpy yellow dress. She smiles, flashes brilliant white teeth at the ink-legged minion; the secretary’s lips split into a silvery gash. Braces. What good will the braces do her, with an arse like that? Maybe there’s cosmetic surgery already being planned…
How do I handle this? Do I walk up to Jessica and throw a breezy remark about having noticed her passing through my neighborhood? Or do I knock on Pingle’s door (it has been closed all day. Is this indicative of anything?) and announce, with breathless wonder, that he is practically a neighbor? Or maybe I should simply get a secondhand pair of binoculars from a pawnshop, and conduct a series of vigils in Pingle’s back lane?
After an hour of this, I went to refresh myself with a refill of the corrosive, late-afternoon coffee. Two corridor corners down: there she walks, her sex photographically defined in the hard fluorescent light. I try to look away, bury my eyes in a beer poster on the wall featuring a lone hunk sitting in a sea of glorious chicks. I can feel her bow wave as she approaches; my cheeks start to burn; she is next to me. Then, I hear her soft voice:
“Good-looking, isn’t he?”
And she’s gone.
* * *
I spent ten minutes in the kitchen drinking coffee. Then I made my way back, hugging the walls in case I should see a flash of yellow on the horizon. Once safely back in my cubicle, I drank more coffee. By the time five o’clock came round, I felt like a transformer must feel when fed too much current.
I sat, fizzing silently, in my cubicle until everyone had left. Then I shimmied down the corridor, ears prickling, and like a good pupil of Pavlov’s knocked on Pingle’s door before sliding into his room.
It was evident at once that he hadn’t been in at all that day. His desk still sported the wipe-marks left by the cleaners; there wasn’t a single piece of trash in his freshly-lined dustbin. Now, as a creative guru Pingle might have spent his time in the office hovering above the furniture without touching it, but it’s impossible to spend any time in an office without trashing something. I looked around. The blind-slotted light striped the room with seductive shadows. He had a leather couch, and a coffee table – I wanted this place, I wanted his place.
Where was Pingle? I stared at the aluminum of the elevator’s cabin as I went down; my face was a watery smudge on the burnished metal. I just had to look into this; I had to find out.
On the way home, I stopped at a pawnshop and bought a telescope.
* * *
I’ve spent two evenings skulking in Pingle’s back lane with my telescope.
In case you think Kroeg is crazy: I got the telescope because the pawnshop binoculars were $40. The telescope cost five bucks. A narrow black plastic tube bearing a stamped Batman logo and the legend ‘Batscope’, it has awesome magnifying power combined with a very narrow field of vision. When I got home from the pawnshop, I instantly slid it out to its full length, pointed it at my window and saw, in agonizing detail, one of the dried household pet turds decorating my backyard (I forgot to tell you my artistic co-lodgers democratically own a dog and a cat).
My spying has brought results. I know this: Pingle works at home (I heard the faraway clacking of a keyboard, eerie in the night). Most importantly, from the moment he steps inside he has a beer in his hand. He has the bottle handy when he’s watching TV. He takes long swigs when talking on the telephone. He has the bottle in his hand when he goes for a fucking leak (the barfroom, as Rodney would put it, window faces the backyard from the first floor). Maybe that’s why he lives in this dump of his: the beer costs him a fortune.
A drop of summer night moisture coldly flicks my nose, and I start, draw my head back as if I had a nosebleed, and stare. Above the black branches, the green and red lights of a silently passing jet blink faintly, helplessly. I take expert aim with my telescope: I can see the windows, a row of bright pinheads stitched onto the fat fuselage; I can see ghostly twirls of vapor streaming from the wings. I want to be up there, silently winging my way across the night sky; instead, here I am in the musty back lane with my plastic Batscope.
I had just made up my mind to go home, and trail Jessica the next day when I became aware of the soft snuffle of a big, idling engine. Gravel crackled; I saw a dark shape detach itself from shadows down the lane and glide towards me. I flipped the Batscope into a clump of weeds, put my hands into my pockets, and started walking. The engine uttered a brief, deep snarl; I glanced over my shoulder. The car sailed into a pool of light, its chrome teeth grinning savagely. Something glistened on its roof – glass and steel – cops.
“Excuse me, sir. Could you come here for a moment.”
I sauntered up to the car.
“Can you take your hands out of your pockets, sir.” I laughed self-consciously and took them out, flashed my palms at them. See – I’m innocent.
“Do you live around here, sir?”
“Half a block away.”
A short silence.
“There was a report of a prowler. Have you seen anyone?”
“Good God, no.”
Another short silence.
“Well good night, sir. And – watch your step.” They drove away, switching their lights on. What the fuck did he mean, ‘watch your step’? What an asshole.
I returned home, shaking.
* * *
I’ve found out about Pingle, about Jessica, about – everything.
The day didn’t start that promising. On my way to work, I still quivered sporadically – specifically, whenever I thought about getting nabbed by the cops and then getting fired after Grumble, Crinkle, and Paloma had received notification they were harboring a voyeur. Never. Never again! I wasn’t even too sorry I’d lost the Batscope.
I was so engrossed in my various speculations that I didn’t become aware of the special atmosphere in the office until mid-morning. The place sounded different: there were more voices talking, voiced raised above their habitual drone, and less clacking of the keyboard keys; the phones trilled unanswered; from time to time, someone laughed as if they really meant it. I left my cubicle and right away I ran into Jessica and Pingle – yes, Jessica and Pingle. They were passing each other in the corridor and I caught Jessica give Pingle a haughty look complete with a curled lip: Pingle’s shoulders shrank inside his famous silk jacket. He made this helpless little gesture, as if he was trying to toss an imaginary Frisbee and then changed his mind; then he slunk away.
I went to the can to contemplate this development undisturbed – could this be a reaction to the dump he lived in? Or maybe she had found out he was a drunk, or maybe… he couldn’t get it up? I was safely ensconced in a cabin, savoring that last possibility, when two account guys came in. They started talking almost simultaneously with the tinkling in the urinals. From their conversation, conducted in loud, self-congratulatory tones, I learned that Grumble, Crinkle, and Paloma had won the Bruddekker account. The Bruddekker account consisted of a large chain of heavy duty hardware stores; their latest slogan, ‘The Chain and Saw People’, didn’t go too well due to a badly timed spate of chainsaw murders. Committed somewhere in the forests of Redneck Mountains, the murders had made headlines around the entertainment-hungry world. It was too bad about the slogan; it was quite catchy, and fitted the jingle well.
I went back to my cubicle and caught the mail boy fingering my coffee mug. It has a scripted, embellished J painted on it in a tasty red and I knew the mail boy was a Jim, so I questioned him aggressively and he told me everything he knew. The Bruddekker account had been pitched in secret the previous Sunday by the great Paloma; last night, they called and said they were going with it; they were worth ten million.
I let Jim go. I sat down at my desk and tried to shut out Jessica, Pingle, the Bruddekker people, and do some work.
My phone rang.
“Brian here,” said the Bruddekker-winning Paloma. “Can you come up to my office for a minute? Yeah, right now. Good.”
* * *
So this is what It is like.
I am sitting in a comfortable armchair, my desk lamp shedding warm light on the elegant business card holder on my nice big desk. The cards read Joachim Kroeg, Copywriter. In addition to the above, I also have another armchair, a spacious bookshelf, and two plants in a graceful decline. This ensemble is unfortunately not lit by slotted light coming through the blinds, because I don’t have a window. I have plenty of advertising posters though, and a door that I can lock. However –
“We have two openings for copywriters,” Paloma had told me. “One of them on Bruddekker. You applied for a writing job, so let’s see how good you are.” He had scratched his neck there, looking rather doubtful.
And so, I’m working on Bruddekker. The other opening was created by Pingle’s getting fired. He was supposed to be in on that Sunday presentation; when he was running late, the assembled luminaries dispatched Jessica, who was present as a highly trained flunky to the media head. The trained Jessica found a toxic Pingle opening the door naked, and bouncing off walls; she called the agency with a Pingle update, and reportedly was instructed to tell him he was fired there and then.
The job opening created under those dramatic circumstances went to… go on, take a guess… yeah, Jonathan. He works with Jessica on some jobs; I’ve seen her emerge giggling from the striped ambience of his office. He’ll be taking her to lunch, soon… Yesterday, I noticed a pair of powerful binoculars in a pawnshop’s display.
I reach for my fat Pentel marker. I have a headline to write; I have an important job; I am a busy man. There are 3,655 Bruddekker employees alone, not counting the chainsaw maker’s, and they all depend on my choice of words. I want to flash with genius; I want to write something that will sum up the human experience, solve the riddle of being, distill life’s essence into a single drop of wisdom. Why, isn’t that what it’s all about?
I frown. Then I write:
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