The Secret Society of Demolition Writers (16 page)

The dream—which she’d had most recently a week ago— seemed to have been waiting in ambush. She smelled coffee, and then the astringent of nervous bodies sweating. Not quite knowing why, Cassandra was kicking off her Nikes and stripping to her underwear. Twelve or fifteen other women were crowded around her, also taking off their clothes. She felt repulsed at first, brushing up against them—glancing quickly away from the loose midriffs, scars, unruly pubic hair. One of the women had a rose tattooed in the small of her back. It looked like a decal, and although the creature it adorned was in her twenties, the clichéd representation was already beginning to fade.

Cassandra extracted a pair of black panty hose from her purse. While pulling these on, she noticed that her head was no longer shaved. Either she was wearing a wig, or her hair had grown to shoulder length, just the way she’d worn it in high school.
I’ll yank on it,
she thought,
see if it’s real.
But she didn’t do so.
What does it matter if it’s real,
she thought.
This is, after all,
just a dream.

The group of which she was a part was gathered in what seemed to be an executive office. There was a large wooden desk at one end, with an I’m-so-important-that-I have-terrible-back-trouble black leather desk chair behind it. The women were clumped around a gray metal cart that held piles of uniforms. There were bombazine skirts that fastened at the waist with decorative bows. The blouses were of a wash-and-wear material that chafed Cassandra painfully under the arms. An embroidered patch above the left breast had a cornucopia imperfectly rendered in machine needlepoint and bearing the legend: Delectation Catering: You won’t know we’re there. Above the rustle of fabric, the women whispered questions about children, diets, and television personalities. A stout stranger with a mole on her chin asked Cassandra: “How’s the teaching?”

A slim blonde in a dark suit pushed through the crowd, kicked off her heels, stepped into the seat of the gigantic office chair and from that onto the wooden desk.

“Can I have your attention, please?” she said. “Can I have your attention, please?” Under her helmet of blond hair the woman’s face was hard and lined. She was puffy around the eyes. Looked like she’d just come off a three-day bender.

There was a ripple of merriment and then silence. “I hear laughter,” the blonde said. “I love the sound, but not here. I’m certain you all have delightful personalities. Save them for your husbands. Or lovers,” she said, which got a titter. “In ten minutes you’re on duty. You all know the rules. No smoking. No speaking, unless spoken to. No eating. If there is food or coffee left over, we can have it during cleanup.

“This job should take three hours. You will be handsomely paid. The money will be your own. These three hours are mine.”

The blonde jumped gracefully from the desk, slipped back into her shoes, clapped her hands, and led the group into a second room that was lined with tables. These held carafes of coffee, heaps of bagels, tubs of cream cheese, platters of lox, and large bowls of cubed fruit. Men in white smocks stood behind the tables and passed out prepared plates of food.

Cassandra was handed a silver thermos of decaffeinated coffee and a black one of true java.

The blonde opened another door, and the group, laden with supplies, filed into a long, narrow, and low-ceilinged boardroom.

Cassandra gasped. None of the other waitresses indicated surprise:
but then this is my dream,
she thought.

The chair at the head of the table was occupied by an alarm clock as large as a man. This instrument had a rust stain on one tin side and a damaged clapper. The chair to the clock’s right held a gigantic magnet in the familiar horseshoe form, painted fire-engine red, and yellow at its ends. A crowbar was resting awkwardly across the arms of the chair to the clock’s left, and on its yellow legal pad were the words: “Give me a place to stand, and I will move the world.”

The first six places were taken by outsized tools: the clock, the lever, the magnet, a hammer, a steak knife, a block and tackle. Beyond that the board members were of the scale in which you might find them in life. Some were perched in chairs, others sat right up on the table.

A television set in a wooden console with rabbit ears, one of which was broken and hung pitifully down in front of the screen, was calling for decaf. Cassandra poured, stood back, and looked around for other customers. Each tool and piece of machinery had been given a plate of food, but none of them seemed to be eating.

Moving down the table, dispensing regular coffee to a hair dryer and a Little Giant sump pump, Cassandra smelled the food. She realized suddenly that she was hungry, preternaturally hungry. Her mouth flushed with saliva. She remembered that she’d been sick, that she’d skipped dinner.

“Ever since the abacus, we’ve been smarter than they are,” said a Black & Decker toaster oven.

“God knows they can’t figure me out,” said a Sony VCR. “They boast about not being able to figure me out.”

The television nodded. “They know we’re superior. They give us their children to raise.”

“We don’t defecate,” said the toaster oven. “Nor do we perspire.”

“Without me they can’t close their refrigerator door, or determine true north,” said the magnet.

“We don’t need sleep,” said the lever. “Or food. Or even encouragement.”

“It’s already happening,” said the magnet. “We have given them each so many numbers to remember that they think they’re losing their minds. They spend more time looking into screens than into each other’s faces.”

“They like to think we’re servants and friends,” said a combination DVD player and VCR. “They are all so lonely that they could die.”

Putting the carafes down in the center of the table, Cassandra grabbed a bagel off the plate set out before a vacuum cleaner. She thrust the bread into a ball of cream cheese and brought the food to her mouth.

“The only question,” said the clock, “is one of timing.”

A Palm Pilot, sitting with several cell phones, was beeping wildly for recognition.

“They don’t even bury us when we die,” said the PDA.

“They’re beginning to learn humility,” said the steak knife. “The elliptical trainer limits them to twenty minutes and asks to be wiped off afterward. The voice-mail menu goes in a circle.”

“What I especially like,” said the TV, “is where Microsoft Word is supposed to finish the date for them. So they type Feb and it writes out February 5, 2004.”

“So?” said the Palm Pilot.

“It’s February 13,” said the TV.

“You!” said the alarm clock, and then “You!” again, before Cassandra realized that she was the one being spoken to. “What are you doing?”

She wiped the cream cheese from her lips with the back of her hand. “Nothing,” she said, blushing. “Nothing.”

“Characteristic of the species,” said the clock, “but will you kindly do nothing then in another room.”

Cassandra picked up her thermoses, turned, and began to walk quickly toward the door back into the room with the food. This was some distance away. As she moved, the writer sensed danger. The ominous grinding of metal on metal caught her ear and then grew louder. She dropped one carafe, then another, and began to trot. Running, she caught her toe in the carpet. Now she was falling. Falling into darkness. She heard the rumble of heavy machinery. Tank treads?

Cassandra Benjamin woke with a start. A garbage truck was in the castle courtyard, its compactor grinding noisily.

THE ST. FRANCIS campus was not a large one; the entire student body, graduate and postgraduate, was fewer than four thousand students. And yet Marc didn’t see Alice once on the day after they’d slept together. When the noon whistle sounded on the following day, he sprinted back to his dorm room and called.

Alice picked up on the third ring. “What are you reading?” she asked.

“Me?” he said. “Nothing. I’m on the phone. “

“Pick up a book,” she said. “Open it to any page and read a sentence. We’ll see if it’s great.”

“All right,” he said. “I’ve got
Lucky,
by Alice Sebold.”

“Great first name,” said Alice. “Read from it.”

“All right. Here goes: ‘I became a machine. I think it must be the way men patrol during wartime, completely attuned to movement or threat.’ ”

“Is that great?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Pick another book and open to any page.”

“Okay.”

“Read aloud.”

“ ‘. . . before she dropped into an unconscious dream, she envisioned her body as the inside of a machine, all the parts gleaming, the silicon slab of her heart recharged, relieved.’ ”

“Great?” she asked.

“Maybe,” he said.

“Those are both women,” she said.

“How do you know that?” he asked.

“I just do,” she said.

“Okay,” he said. “Here’s a book by a man. Opened at random: ‘. . . horses walked a lazy single file. Half an hour later they still strolled with heads down, performing their function like machines. I was embarrassed for the animals, domesticated to disgrace.’ ”

“Great?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I’m not certain I buy the theory. But let’s talk about it. Dinner? A walk?”

“Not today honey,” she said. “Call back tomorrow, though, same time.”

And he did. “Please leave a message,” the answering machine said in its slightly hysterical digital voice.

Next day at noon, he phoned again. Got the machine a second time.

“Hiya kid. Still interested in literature? Want to meet for coffee? Coffee and a smoke? Call back. 578-666-1243.”

“Is this Alice Cheever?” he asked the machine at noon on the following day. “Did I do anything? Where you been? Miss your cigarettes. And the rest of you. Give me a call. 578-666-1243.”

“Alice? Are you there?” he said when he got the machine the next day, and he couldn’t keep the anxiety out of his voice. “Are you all right? This is Marc. Marc Schwartz. I miss you. I don’t know why, exactly,” he said, acting as if he really expected the machine on the other end of the line to interact. “You make me feel alive. This is your great good friend calling. Call him back. 578-666-1234. I mean 1243. That’s 578-666-1243.”

And then, finally, on the day before his second class with Cassandra Benjamin: “This is Marc Schwartz calling for Alice Cheever. Do I have the right number? If this is the wrong number, would you do me a giant favor and call and tell me. That’s 578-666-1243.”

There she was, of course, on Monday when he exited the building immediately after his writing class. Same jeans. Same maroon crewneck sweater. He looked away and kept walking. Alice fell into step beside him.

“Where have you been?” she asked.

“Where have
I
been?”

“Let’s skip all that,” she said. “Can we go to your room?”

Marc meant to say no, actually formed the word in his mouth, but found himself nodding instead. He looked over at the woman and she was smiling. So he nodded again, this time more enthusiastically. “My room,” he said. “Sure. Absolutely!”

By three they were both sitting up in bed smoking.

“So how was the second class?”

“I get the feeling that you’re using me for my knowledge of Cassandra Benjamin,” he said.

Alice shrugged pleasantly. “Maybe,” she said. “Do you mind?”

“Not really,” he said. “Although I wish the class met more than once a week.”

Alice chuckled deeply. “So what happened?” she asked.

“Three of us read from works-in-progress.”

“Anything memorable?”

“I rather liked the piece I read.”

“You read?”

“Yes,” he said. “Why are you always surprised when I do anything?”

“Not surprised,” said Alice. “More pleased than surprised. So what did you read?”

“It’s a story,” he said. “I started it a week ago. A love story.”

“A love story,” she said, her voice falling away in disappointment. “I despise love stories. They’re so . . . static.”

“My but you
are
softhearted,” he said.

Alice shrugged prettily. “That’s what everybody tells me,” she said. “But enough about me. What did the great one think of your work?”

“She looks for one thing,” Marc said. “She’s famous for this. She listens while you read, and when you come to a part she doesn’t admire, she stops you.”

“And?”

“She wants to know where you got it from. If you dreamed it. If it happened. Or if you are manipulating the audience.”

“So where did she stop you?”

“I had this scene with a man and woman in bed. An alarm clock goes off. It’s his bed. And she tells him that she hates machines. Cassandra stopped me there.”

“What did she say?”

“She wanted to know where I got the idea of a woman who hates machines.”

“And what did you say?”

“I said I knew a woman whose father lost both legs in a tractor accident.”

“Ouch,” said Alice. “Did you know such a woman?”

“No.”

“So you were lying?”

“Yes, I was lying. And she knew it, because she called on somebody else. When you’re reading, you come up to her desk and sit in her chair. And she interrupts with questions. If she’s happy with the answers, you keep reading. If she’s not happy, she calls on somebody else.”

“She that good at spotting lies?” asked Alice.

“Apparently.”

“But she must have liked your prose. You were chosen to read.”

“It may have been the prose. It may also have been that she’s interested in me because I was a priest. She’s one of those people who flirts with religion.”

“What makes you think she’s flirting with Catholicism?”

“She’s a big fan of Waugh’s. But also she said I should come up to the castle and see her.”

“You going to?”

“Yup.”

“When?”

“This evening.”

“I’d better get out of here.”

He reached out and took the girl’s left arm in his right hand. “Only if you promise to come back.”

“I’ll be back,” she said. “I want to hear about this meeting.” Believing this, he let go her arm.

MARC WONDERED IF it was his anxiety about the meeting with Cassandra that warped his senses. Or maybe there was something extraordinary in the atmosphere that evening. Maybe a stranger would have picked it up. In any case the air outside his dorm had the increased viscosity of a dream. Sounds were muffled, as if he were moving along at the bottom of the ocean.