1 Breakfast at Madeline's (3 page)

"So what's on this
disk, anyway?" he asked conver
sationally.

"Hey, aren't you supposed to turn around?"

Young Gray Suit just laughed, thinking I was joking. Apparently some sloppy bank official—someone other than Thin Lips—had trained him insufficiently in bank-vault etiquette. Or maybe he was just being young and rebellious. Because now, safe from the watchful eyes of his colleagues, he was loosening up and turning positively friendly. Exactly what I didn't need. "So you're really meeting with Spielberg?"

"I'm serious; Ms. Reingold always turns her back."

At the mention
of her name, Young Gray Suit in
stantly tightened up. No surprise there; the woman had the same effect on me. Young Gray Suit frowned. "You're not trying to pull anything, are you?"

"Of course not," I said with a chuckle.

He chuckled too. And, thank God, finally turned his back.

I whipped out The
Penn’s
key and found box num
ber 2011. The key turned easily enough in the lock. But
when I started to take out the box it made a horrifying rasping sound—metal scraping metal—
scree-eek!

I froze, expecting Young Gray Suit to turn back around. Suddenly that
whole rationale about just cut
ting a few corners wasn't so reassuring anymore. If this guy caught me redhanded with two safety-deposit boxes open in front of me, I was in deep shit. How deep I didn't know, but I suspected Thin Lips would get a thrill out of making my life truly miserable.

And no way in hell would I ever get another shot at The
Penn’s
box.

But amazingly, so far the bank guy hadn't moved. Either that
scree-eek!
wasn't really as loud as it sounded to my insanely terrified ears, or else he just assumed the noise came from my metal box being jostled on the metal shelf as I searched for a disk. In any case, I took a deep breath and looked down at The
Penn’s
box. I'd pulled it out two inches, which meant thirteen more inches of metallic rasping left to go.

My adrenaline was pumping so fast it didn't even occur to me to just shove the box back in and give up. Instead I pulled the box out more, and the
scree-eek!
got even worse. Desperate to cover up the sound, I started babbling fast and loud.
"Actually, I'm gonna tell Spiel
berg about this new movie idea I have. It's about a—"
Scree-eek!
I noisily cleared my throat and blathered on rapidly, "This movie, it's about a guy like you in his twenties—picture Leonardo DiCaprio, okay?—who's working at some de
ad-end job, like a bank or some
thing, and all of a sudden—
all of a sudden!"
I yelled, as I yanked The
Penn’s
box the rest of the way out.

"All of a sudden what?" asked Young Gray Suit, and he started turning around.

I quickly shielded The
Penn’s
box from his sight. "Hey, watch it, or
I’ll
tell Ms. Reingold."

The guy still couldn't tell if I was joking or not, but he decided not to take any chances. He turned away.

"So what happens?" he asked.

I didn't answer. I barely even heard him. At last, I had Donald Penn's mysterious safety-deposit box right there in front of me, ripe for the plucking. But what if there was nothing in it after all but dirty socks? I reached out and opened it.

And stood there in awe.

The Penn's entire life work was staring up at me. The 10 x 12 x 15-i
nch box was crammed to overflow
ing with spiral noteb
ooks, looseleaf notebooks, old-
fashioned composition notebooks, white scrap paper, pink scrap paper, toilet paper, old menus,
paper bags, torn milk cartons.
..

And every single one of these motley surfaces was filled from top to bottom with Donald Penn's very small, very neat handwriting.

Behind me Young
Gray Suit tapped his feet rest
lessly.

"So here's what happens," I said, opening my day pack and frantically stuffing it with The Penn's papers. "One day Leonardo is out walking in the park and there's this odd-looking little bug. A mutant beetle."

"A mutant beetle?"

I reached down and grabbed a couple of heavily scribbled-on paper towels that had fluttered to the floor. "Exactly. And this mutant beetle
jumps
onto Leonardo." I checked The Penn's box—empty. His life's work was now inside my day pack. All I had to do was get his safety-deposit box back into its slot, and I'd be home free.

"So here's the twist," I announced loudly, to cover that damn
scree-eek!
as I shoved in the box as hard as I could—

But it got stuck halfway.

"Here's the twist!"
I called out
even louder, as I des
perately tried to twist the box back onto its tray. I yanked and rattled and shoved—
"Here's the twist!"
I shouted—and finally,
finally,
the box slid in. Just in time too, because that final shout turned Young Gray Suit around to look at me.

I heaved a huge sigh of relief. "Okay, we're all set," I said to Young Gray Suit.

"So what's the twist?" he asked.

I thought about it for a moment. "I don't know yet. We'll have to leave that to Spielberg."

Young Gray Suit shot me a disappointed look as he led me out of the bank vault—

—and straight into Thin Lips, who was carrying her takeout lunch—salad and plain no-fat yogurt, no doubt—back to her desk. She stopped and glowered at me suspiciously. "What are
you
doing here?" she snarled.

"Mutant beetles," I said briskly, and pointed a thumb at Young Gray Suit. "Ask him. Long story. Got a plane to catch."

Then I hustled off as fast as I could without running, expecting at any moment now to hear her yell for the bank guard to stop me. I could already
feel the hand
cuffs tightening around my wrists.

But I guess Ms. Thin Lips was too hungry to pursue the issue.

Or maybe I was just plain lucky that day.

And like my agent always tells me: It's better to be lucky than smart.

4

I jumped on my bike and dashed off, eager to examine what I hoped wo
uld be a masterpiece. Some seem
ingly poverty-stricken derelicts squirrel away millions of dollars. Had The Penn squirreled away millions of precious words?

I needed to find someplace quiet and solemn, where I could let the dead man's thoughts envelop my soul. A church or synagogue would be perfect, except that places of worship always gave me the heebie jeebies, so I went to the next best place.

Madeline's.

Early afternoon is their slowest time and the front room was deserted except for Rob, my ex-film major friend, and the one and only Madeline herself. Madeline is a slightly plump but attractive young dynamo who used to work at the mall. Like most people who work at malls, she hated it. Unlike most people, though,
she fig
ured out a way to do something about it. She opened up her very own espresso bar.

Madeline's was a classy joint with marble tabletops, comfortable sofas and
easy chairs, and esoteric maga
zines. At first, we Saratogians just shook our heads. We already had one bagel place and one upscale coffee shop, and we figured there was no way our little town cou
ld support an espresso bar too,
for goodness sake. But Madeline proved us wrong, and now, at age twenty-nine, she was one of Saratoga's most impressiv
e, suc
cessful young citizen
s. Almost enough to make you be
lieve in capitalism.

Madeline and Rob were behind the counter leafing through a bridal magazine when I walked in. She was exuberantly pushing the merits of baked salmon as a main wedding dish, and he was indulgently nodding his head. I smiled. They made a cute couple: the bubbly outgoing type and the quiet artistic type. Kind of like my marriage with Andrea.

They looked up as I came over to the counter. "Hey man, where'd you run off to this morning?" asked Rob.

I knew if I told him the truth he wouldn't believe me any more than my agent had, so I went ahead. "I was robbing a bank," I said.

"Yeah, right," he sno
rted, as Madeline came around th
e counter and gave me a hug. "Oh, Jacob, we're gonna miss that guy," she said.

I nodded. "So what do you know about him, anyway? What was his shtick?"

Madeline furrowed her eyebrows. "All I really know is he liked Ethiopian.
I used to make it just for him—
hardly anyone else ever drank it."

Rob smiled wryly. "I guess people don't like eating or drinking stuff from a country where everyone's always starving to death. It's bad karma."

Madeline sighed. "I made a pot of Ethiopian this morning, and it's just sitting there. Makes me sad."

"I’ll
have some," I told her. S
he looked at me and nod
ded gratefully.

Rob took her arm.
"Hey, you know what would be re
ally cool? When we do our memorial ceremony for The Penn, we should give everyone a cup of Ethiopian."

"Yeah, that'll bring people in for sure," I teased Rob. He looked a little hurt, so I added, "Just kidding. That's a real nice touch."

I paid for my coffee and headed for the corner table in the back room, my favorite spot. But unfortunately, Madeline had just hung a new exhibit, and right above my head was a bizarre pointillist painting of a grossly overweight, naked man sunning himself on the beach. The kind of thing that can ruin your digestion.

I angled my chair so I wouldn't be facing Pointillist Fat Man, but the walls were covered by other obese nudes, and no matter how I angled my chair I couldn't escape them. I muttered "Oh phooey," or words to that effect, and just then Rob came up behind me. "You know," he said, "the way you sit back here muttering to yourself, you'd make
a fabulous character in a low-
budget art film."

"An anarchist? Plotti
ng to blow up the Statue of Lib
erty?"

"No, I was thinking comic relief. Crazy old Uncle Fred."

Is that how he saw me? Shoot, I really must be getting old. I was tempted to tell him I truly
did
rob a bank.

Instead I opened up my day pack and brought out a fistful of pages. "Ch
eck this out. The Penn's master
piece."

Rob's eyes widened, and he reached out his hand. "Let me see."

"No, they're mine," I said.

Rob laughed. "Yo, come on." Then he picked up a few pages from the table and started reading.

I snatched the pages away from him. I knew I was being unreasonable, but I couldn't stop myself. Rob eyed me, annoyed, and I shrugged apologetically. "I'm sorry, Rob, The Penn wanted me to have it. I'll let you read it after I finish."

"You're a nut, you know that? So why'd he want you to have it, anyway?"

"How the hell should I know?"

"Hey, I got it!" Rob snapped his fingers, excited. "We should, like,
cover
the wa
lls with these pages. As a trib
ute to The Penn. Be an awesome exhibit—better than this garbage, anyway,"
he added, pointing up at a por
trait of a gargantuan Asian woman who looked like she was leering at me.

I turned away from her. "That's a beautiful idea, Rob. I think The Penn would really have appreciated that."

Rob nodded. "I'll clear it with the boss lady."

As if she'd heard him talking about her, Madeline called out from the other room, "Or chicken if you want. We can always go with that, if you don't want salmon."

"Either one is fine, honey," Rob called back, then whispered to me, "I'll thank God when this wedding is over."

I laughed. "Don't worry, it won't be half as bad as going to the dentist."

"Yeah, but at least when you go to the dentist, you don't have to wear a tux." He stood up. "Well, happy reading, dude. Let me know if it's the next
Ulysses
."

"I hope not.
Ulysses
is junk. James Joyce is the worst famous writer that ever lived."

He threw me a disgusted look. "I don't know why we even let you into a high-class eatery like this."

As Rob walked away, I spread Penn's writings on the table in front of me. It was a huge jumble. None of the notebooks, loose pages or scribbled-on envelopes were numbered. No way of knowing where to start.

I decided to try a green spiral notebook that looked relatively recent. It was bought at Staples, which only opened up in this area about four years ago. I turned to page one.

At the top of the page was the word
Preface
.

I sipped my Ethiopian and dove in.

It was a dark and delirious day in December,
I read,
when I first learned that my mother and father did not love each other.

If only Bob Dylan and Joan Baez had stayed together. He was righteous anger and she was kindness. But how to harness the two? How to combine Tupac Shakur with Liberace?

They say no two
snowflakes
are ever alike. But then they say a lot of things, and where's the proof? In my mother's case, 151 proof, the result of much research: The Cheapest Way to Ingest Alcohol. Studies show 151 Clear Sky beats MD 20 20, which has it over the generic no-name beers hands down.

Myself, I go for Ethiopian, zero cents a cup where possible, until death do me part. Never touch clear sky or anything else, since the snow came down that day.

Of course, all would have transpired otherwise in these days of waxless skis. No more carefully stored containers of red, blue, and purple wax, to say nothing of glisters and clisters, which were at issue that cold winter morning. All my father wanted was a simple little ski, but where was the clister? A man has a day off, just one day, and does he want to spend it looking around the whole frigging—
frigging
, not
fucking
, because they were simpler days then, and yet harder—house for his glister, or clister, memory fades, but stays with this thought: A man wants a substance, a substance to put on his skis, so his skis can glide, so he can fly, so the air rushes by, so the whish of the wind and the sn
ow enters his soul, and the fac
tory disappears and so does his wife and even his child—yes, I must say from this vantage point of time, yes, even his child.

But Dylan will never marry Baez, and Tupac will never marry Liberace, except in heaven perhaps though studies show that heaven probably does not exist. For if they did marry, it would be like my father and mother, in contravention of the natural order. Do gorillas marry? Or baboons? And if they did, would the male work in a
shoe factory all day? Highly un
likely, and this is what we must remember when we evaluate the actions of mere mortals for whom the merest act of love
brings unbearable responsibility. And this is why we, all of us, choose to live our deepest lives in isolation—in clear sky, in Ethiopian, in newspapers. And if you choose to interrupt our lonesome glide, you do so at your peril, for one man's Ethiopian may be another man's clister, and he will fight for that ion of deepest life with every weapon at his command.

And this is why I am entitling this tome "The History of Western Civilization Careening, as Seen through the Eyes of One of Its Primary Practitioners." Volume 1, as you shall see, is History. Volume 2 is Car
eening. And Volume 3 is Practic
ing.

Pretty darn weird, I thought to myself, but intriguing. Not really my cup of tea, but then again, neither is Joyce.

I took another sip of Ethiopian and turned the page.

Preface,
I read.
It was a dark and dreamy night when I first learned that O.J. Simpson and Paula Barbieri did not love each other. To those who would say, no, O.J. was at this time a mere child with rickets, and it was your own progenitors at issue, I would reply: All life is metaph
or, and one man's clister is an
other man's Ethiopian.

Indeed, all might have transpired otherwise in these days of waxless skis. The years of red, green, and blue wax are no more, and you can travel the streets for many years, as I have, without meeting a man who knows whether it's
clister or glis
ter...

I skimmed the rest o
f the page long enough to deter
mine this was a reworking of the same preface. Again, there seemed to be some indication that his father had been searching for clister, or glister, one snowy morning so he could put it on his cross-country skis. Beyond that, the narrative once again twisted, turned, and ended with the now-familiar announcement that this was a preface to a three-volume
"History of Western Civilization Careening, as Seen through the Eyes of One of Its Primary Practitioners."

I turned the page.

Preface,
I read.
Snoopy might have said it was a dark and lonely night, and he would
have been correct, the most com
mon and even comical
clichés
being the truest. Here, of course, the wrinkle was clister, or as some would have it, glister.

I flipped the page.

Preface,
I read.
Beware of clister; or as it may be, Ethiopian.

I flipped again.

Preface,
I read.

I flipped.
Preface.
I flipped again, and again, and again.
Preface. Preface. Preface.

I put the notebook down and picked up another one. A red one, with a date on the cover: June, 1983. Beneath that Penn had written:
Civ Careening: Vol. 2.

Volume 2. Okay, h
ere we go. I opened up the note
book.
Preface,
I read.
Every man has a clister, or glister, as I learned one dark and snowy night...

I quickly turned the page.
Preface
. Shit. I flipped the pages faster and faster, reading that ugly word
Preface
over and over, getting more and more frantic.

I flung the notebook down, snatched another one and opened it. My heart sank.

I threw open every single notebook. They went back thirty years, to 1968, and with every goddamn one it was the same. I shook all of The Penn's restaurant menus, Kleenexes, and cereal boxes out of my day pack. Each and every available writing surface had the word
Preface
at the top.

I threw the whole mess on the floor and sat there. Donald Penn.

His whole life had been one big preface.

And that was all.

Finis
.