Harold Wyneset was himself a retail salesman of cheap female undergarments—the kind which, he boasted knowingly, “fall apart at the first opportunity.” His manager was a much younger man who didn’t trust nor like Harold much at all, but couldn’t very well fire him. There seemed to be an uncrossable gulf between Harold and his manager. For one thing, the manager didn’t understand that the female undergarments he sold for a living were cheap undergarments, as the market went, with an interesting if doubtful tendency to “fall apart at the first opportunity.” No; Harold’s manager did not acknowledge the essential shoddiness of his wares. Rather, he chose to think of them as ‘affordable’ or ‘down-market’ items, because this allowed him to maintain good relations with his self-respect, and consequent manful relations with his wife of seven years.
Needless to say, his wife was not a customer.
When, in the Fall of 2007, the United States Government began its landmark construction of the very first bicycle-rocket, the engineers and planners involved did not at first know where the rude diagram originated. They fancied that it came from the quavering hand and mind of some youthful Cal-Tech or M.I.T. virtuoso, scribbled while half-asleep between the completion of differential calculus assignments and stumbling trips to the laundromat, seeking fresh quarters for the playing of coin-op machines ad nauseum, to keep his emotions in check. “Because,” says the imagined virtuoso, “one cannot do rigorous Science on a diet of sentiment!…” And with that emphasis scurries away, giggling, an odd sound effect tracing his retreat.
“Surely,” reasoned the engineers and planners, “the creator must be someone like ourselves—a man of genius, a man of character, a Renaissance man.”
They did not know, nor would they ever meet, Harold Wyneset, because the man died before his creation ever reached the hands of a Government auditor. He died one evening, late, while walking home from The New Globe: stumbled partially thru a gutter-grate, then lay unconscious, his head in the lane, exposed to passing vehicles. The first vehicle went past, but the second ran him over. His obituary read, “Retail worker destroyed, possessions at auction 25th, etc. etc.” Neither personal nor sympathetic, this “Retail worker destroyed…” which appeared in all the local dailies, of which there were two major and six minor rags. An estimated 70 percent of the populace subscribed to one of the two majors. Thus the town Cadaver City and its several outlying communities generally knew about the death of her native son, Harold Wyneset—generally knew, and generally did not care about the event, considering other, more pressing concerns, such as the headlining story, “Governor Gets a Wax-Job.”
The auction was not well attended. Among those who did attend, most came to gape at the mural painted on the ceiling of the Grand Auction Hall, modeled after the Sistine Chapel in Rome but depicting, as opposed to biblical scenes, what the artist termed ‘Rabelaisian’ subject matter: many a pock-marked and fat-bodied professor niggled the undersides of slovenly whores, who seemed to rejoice as they gulped sausages and guzzled great wine-bladders; policemen pilloried, teachers transfixed, drunk town councilmen making friends with everything inert and mobile; lawyers asked their friends for money, church men asked their lawyers for spiritual advice; dogs, cats, wombats, all fornicating strangely; rubber candy makers; helmet-wearing pacifists, militant doctors marching in lock-step, children putting their heads into vices, slowly self-ratcheting their hearts into their necks; also dragons, of course, significant pagan material; snakes, medusas both modern and archaic, airport computer terminals bursting with split wires. Near the center was a child, wrapped in swaddling clothes, checking stock quotes, cigar in mouth and grinning evilly. It appeared somehow capable of calling the entire ongoing Scene to a sudden halt; imposing a diminished subset of Order upon the reigning Chaos; or, worse yet, casting it all down to the black sea of Void.
Commissioned by the town council in accord with business interests (these ‘business interests’ being more than a little wide-spread), there was at first a fair bit of controversy about this mural: certain parties, which subsequently could not keep away, thought it ‘scandalous.’ Accosted in the supermarket’s pasta-&-coffee aisle, the artist was forced to defend his work: “It’s true that I indulged myself—yes,” he sniffed. “And why shouldn’t I indulge myself? They hired me—didn’t they—so the first indulgence was theirs. I was to do my level best for the State, and not indulge myself. But if I didn’t indulge myself, I would indulge other people. That’s plagiarism. So I indulged myself—a bit.” He’s carted away to the hospital where he will spend the next six months in recovery before beginning his next work. “My tendency,” he adds, just before the glass doors close on him, “is to think you should let me do what I want.”
Many people find his work instructive. These people come to the Grand Auction House wearing bowler hats and flower dresses—the ladies wear straw hats, and the bowlers have flowers stuck in the brim. But the gapers do such a job leaning their heads back, mouths wide open, that the flowers fall into the laps of the people behind them, going back and back until a line of petals powders the floor beyond the very last pew. And these folks’ open mouths exude such a stink!—terrible. Luckily a Mexican steward emerges from an alcove. He looks over the crowd and grins, slaps his leg: Ay madre, he chuckles. Among his many duties is the application of Universal Breath Sanitizer. He enjoys this task most of all. Disappearing in the alcove he brings forth an oversized spray device. This he applies by turns, painstakingly to the exposed tongue of every gaper. With each application a gaper startles up, looks about, and as if surprised by his surrounds flees the premises. In this way many bowler hats, many ladies’ hats, are lost. These the steward collects—still grinning, still slapping his leg, and cursing in his strange tongue.
Among those left to hear the crying of Harold Wyneset’s estate was a young woman, of Semitic aspect and rail-thin, somewhat drug-addled but wildly attentive to every tufted mote, to each imperceptible flicker of electric light. She habitually hugged her elbows and scratched. She seemed to take notes, to set down bullet points with her lips. This, that! Everything interested her. The door, there’s a door there; the Mexican steward with spray-bottle. What’s he laughing at? Why, everything—the World. How those devils can Deal, just smack their lips and gam. All a game, all a game; they got their work. Damn! Damn them, she thinks, for they walk the aisle of the blessed…
Among the pews was another man, white hat with a band, no flowers in it. He did not like flowers. He did not need them at all; in fact, flowers disgusted him.
And so this white-hatted man, in his children, left a wake of Caesars and fools, his thin trail of hard cash scattered to the far winds.
