Nice
New York
I was a derision to all my people; and their song all the day.
Lamentations 3:14
ONE
Where Have You Been?
TWO
What Did You See?
THREE
What Will You Do Now?
One
The coin fell with a chink.
“Hey thanks, mister,” he said, looking up with bloodshot eyes.
“Take care.”
Jerry Renfrow, alias Mr Nice Guy, walked homeward at a brisk pace, enjoying the sunshine on his face, the cupped palm of the sky and reflections off cars and signs and storefronts, his lungs swelling with spring air. What a day! Everybody, it seemed, was out tasting the afternoon. Glorious! Those who weren’t squatting stuporously or lying on the pavement went about their business with springy steps as if readying for a race. At that instant he decided that he would change into his favorite celery-colored shorts and new sneakers and go for a trot in the park through its famed Woland Gardens.
“The future’s gonna be (he began to sing),
Home-made, Home-made …”
Upon reaching his building, he bounded up the stairs, three flights, and, whistling, strode into the apartment where the breeze tossed a curtain at the open window and he saw his wife spread-eagled on the couch, her chin on a bony shoulder, bobbing, and a look of distant concentration in her eye …
Her fingers clasped air, her breaths came in puffs.
Then her gaze slowly focused on him: her eyes grew wide. She drummed her fist on the slim, happily rocking back.
“Huhh?”
The rocking stopped. A ruddy face with round, smooth cheeks looked at him. Now the face caved in with alarm.
“Excuse me,” said Mr Nice Guy, hurrying past while the young man scurried off in search of his pants.
Suddenly breathless from the stairs, he went to the kitchen and groped in a special bottom drawer. But he didn’t find what he was seeking. He grunted, his jaw working spasmodically, then remembered the top shelf of the cupboard. He reached high, waggled his fingers hopefully in a wicker basket, and came down with chicolo balls of mintgreen and bruisy plum. These he fingered into his mouth, one at a time, chewing meditatively as he looked around the kitchen. He decided to tidy up. On the countertop, the spine of an ice-cube tray lay in a tepid puddle, alongside lime rinds and a bottle of gin. He took a sponge and wiped the counter clean, put the bottle back under the sink and refilled the ice-cube tray, carefully sliding it into the freezer compartment without sloshing. He hated sloshing.
“Jerry?”
He turned around, where Barbara stood at the kitchen doorway, tying the string belt of her kimono.
“I’m sorry, baby. You came in so suddenly. Of course I wasn’t expecting you. I’m so embarrassed. I’m sorry.”
Mr Nice Guy rinsed out the sponge, then began to twist it dry.
“I hadn’t planned to return early but they recessed us at the courthouse. Of course I had no idea, Raba. What bad timing!”
Barbara disappeared into the living room for a moment, then returned with a white carton, holding it out to him. “There’s pizza here if you want some.”
He looked at her. “Honey, I’m sorry for interrupting. I bet you didn’t even get to come.”
She opened the carton, a smell of basil and tomatoes wafting up as she reached inside and pulled him out a wedge, gooey strands of cheese stretching and resisting as she tuned them upwards till they broke, and presented him the slice.
“Here sweetheart. Well no, I didn’t, but that’s all right.”
He blew on the pizza before biting it. “Drag, though,” he said, chewing, traces of sauce in the corners of his mouth.
She kissed him. “It was just an accident, Jerry. He got scared badly. He was in such a hurry. I didn’t even have time to pay him for the pizza.”
She extracted a piece for herself and put the carton on the counter as she climbed up onto a stool.
“Well, next time I come home early,” he told her, “I’ll ring first.”
When she sat on the stool, a gap appeared in the front of her kimono, shadowy and pink. She reached out and tenderly touched his cheek, shaking her head, whispering, “Listen, you’re the only one I really want.” After having run his tongue around his lips and wiped off his tomatoed fingers on a napkin, Mr Nice Guy responded by sliding his hand inside the gap. The gentle movement of his wrist made the opening larger till her belt came loose and the kimono fell open, her breasts and belly rounding the air. She leaned closer. “I’m still all tingly, Jerry.”
The phone rang.
“Oh, gee whiz,” he said. His hand stopped, he looked at her. Another ring, and he moved away to answer.
“Let it go,” she told him, catching her balance, “we can let it go.”
“Sorry, honey, but that could be my jury foreman. We’re on call for instructions.”
He plucked the receiver off the wall. “Yesss?”
Before the voice on the other end uttered a syllable, he knew that it was most definitely not the jury foreman. Over the line came high-pitched dog yapping, piercing squeals and whining. Then the rush of words:
“Jer, come on now, tell me the truth, just when are we gonna move on this deal? Me and the puppies can’t hold out much longer. We’re going apeshit. They’re tearing the hell out of everything! They even eat linoleum! My couch is chewed down to the frame, man. Don’t let me down!”
“Garson, you have to give me two more weeks.”
The reply exploded out of the telephone receiver—Mr Nice Guy held it away from his ear.
“Two weeks! What am I supposed to do with them for two weeks? Walk them in the park twenty at a time? I can’t believe what you’re saying. You’re jerkin’ me around, man, that’s what you’re doing—”
“Now Garson,” began Mr Nice Guy, as Barbara sighed and hopped down from the stool, reached into the carton for another slice of pizza, “these are exceptional circumstances. I have jury duty and there’s no way to get out of it. Believe me! Why would I lie to you? This delay is costing me. Listen, I’ll send you another 500 dollars, the check will go out today, I promise. That’s more than enough for expenses. You can keep anything you don’t spend.”
“Six hundred, Jerry. Zap me with six hundred volts.”
“All right then, six hundred.”
“This is a favor Jer, you know that. You owe me big time now. Be informed that I am officially bummed to the max.”
Mr Nice Guy consoled him in his best soothing telephone voice (both his mother and Barbara agreed, he could be masterful at this) till eventually Garson calmed down, though the dogs still wowed-wowed in the background. Finally he hung up the phone and turned to Barbara.
“Sorry, darling. Would you like to go to the bedroom? There are more conveniences.”
She smiled, but before she could answer the doorbell rang.
“Oh, what now?” he exclaimed.
He trotted to answer the front door. When he opened it, the young man stepped back immediately, edging toward the stairwell.
“What is it?” asked Mr Nice Guy.
“I—uh—the keys to my motor scooter are on the coffee table. I got to have them. The scooter doesn’t belong to me.”
Mr Nice Guy went back and fetched the keys while the youth waited outside the door. He handed them across the threshold.
“There you go. And the pizza—how much do we owe you?”
Two
Of course, people don’t know him as Mr Nice Guy. He’s always Jerry Renfrow. His wife is Barbara Oliver. I’m the only one who calls him Mr Nice Guy—because he deserves it. I write this not to make fun of him but to give him his due. Though it might be hard to share his way of dealing with the world (as for myself, I’m not so nice), though plenty of his acquaintances could not understand his warmth or join in his delight, Mr Nice Guy was determined to shine.
He invited others to join him, too. Wanted them, please, to come to his side. Together they would mend human hearts. Together they would restore America’s luster.
It wasn’t his fault that most people ignored his call, but simply tried to position themselves in front of his happy beam. They treated his personality like some old-fashioned crank contraption of a nature no one had ever seen—a sunshine machine!—which, to their astonishment, actually worked, turning without a squeak of protest on the power of one man’s hope and perseverance. To tell the truth, it felt delicious. Oh, they could smile, act superior if they wanted, but they had to admit that it was very comfortable to be in front of. In the right place at the right time, they basked.
Mr Nice Guy worked hard at it. He turned and twisted and cranked and turned. Only Barbara appreciated the sacrifices involved, understood that his inspiration was only fractionally good vibrations and significantly more pain and howling distress. The planet was in agony. How tired, sometimes, his arm grew! She loved him dearly, yet even she, who knew him better than anyone else, could not see the man completely. For she was too close!
Barbara’s predicament was unique. The love letters she still found in her pockets. His reassuring hand on her shoulder as he brushed her hair. Rose petals in her underwear drawer. What about the cassette planted surreptitiously in her car?
If I ain’t so smart
There’s always heaven above.
You want pearls of wisdom.
You want pearls of love.
Barbara listened to this familiar voice sing a cappella on her way to work at the Secreast Museum, and though she laughed, she was also touched. With such devotion how could he not endear himself? His attentions also included her relatives, down to the smallest family details, such as the fact that Cousin Julie could sleep only with her head pointing north, Uncle Bruce was allergic to milk products, and Javanitos were Norbert’s favorite cigars. The furniture was rearranged, the menu changed, the humidor stocked before people even walked through the door.
“Damn cat had kittens again,” said Cousin Julie’s husband, Mike, when they were visiting from the country. They were hippie farmers who raised rabbits and goats and hemp. Mike scratched at his knees. “We never get it spayed in time. Guess I’ll have to drown them.”
Mr Nice Guy flipped open his datebook. “Tuesday … Tuesday morning around 10 o’clock. How’s that for you?”
Always ready to be of service! People were sometimes taken aback but they rarely ever said No.
Naturally he never forgot a birthday. For his ailing mother’s 66th he did a magic show, pulled a basketball out of silk kerchiefs while she and her old teammates laughed and clapped (he’d summoned them from all corners of America for this moment, an unprecedented feat in itself, calculated for nothing less than keeping his mother alive): he sent the basketball with a bounce pass to Darlene Stevens, who tossed it to Connie King, who (with a plate of birthday cake balanced on her lap) whipped it over to Dee Dee Wilson, who threw it to Maureen Zeck, who gently passed it to his mother.
She struggled to her feet. “Let’s put it in,” and with voices rising, then blending into a single cheer, they cleared the way for her, helped her out the door to the basket above her driveway.
They were the Pantherettes. 1949 Iowa State Champions. The glory days of the six-girl teams. Over the years Mrs Renfrow had seen several of her teammates at school reunions, and had visited Margie Keats when she was dying of injuries from a supermarket shooting, but never had the entire team, the survivors, been reassembled. The idea of a surprise reunion came to her son one day while she was reminiscing about the ’49 tournament final. “There were only six seconds left, and Maureen got the rebound. She passed it to me, I passed it to Connie. Then Connie, she never lost her cool—she threw it all the way cross court to Darlene, who was standing there by herself. You should’ve seen it—”
“A perfect strike,” said Mr Nice Guy, bending over to unlace her shoes so he could rub her feet. Her diabetes gave her no end of problems with her extremities. Lately his visits consisted of little more than extended foot-rubbing sessions. She shifted in her lounger, which creaked under her weight. Mrs Renfrow was a big woman who favored loose print dresses and cooled herself with vigorous swoops of a lacquered Chinese fan.
“A perfect strike. Darlene just popped it in. Two points.” His mother paused, as she always did at this part of the story, and the Chinese fan came to rest on her bosom. She sighed as his thumbs began to press and knead her arch. Despite her girth her lower legs were still shapely, and she was vain about them. “There was a kind of hush in the auditorium for a whole second, thousands of people. Then it sinks in what we’d done, that it’s all over, 58 to 57, and the auditorium exploded! Amazing, Jerry.”
“I’m sure it was.”
“You know I haven’t seen Connie in forty-six years …”
And now Connie caught the ball in the Renfrow driveway when his mother passed it, and she sent it, one more time, to Darlene. And Darlene looped in a left-handed lay-up.
Mr Nice Guy stood on the front yard grass and watched them, quick-handed gray ladies in pant-suits, talking loudly and happily and everyone at the same time. The ball arced through the air, skidded and thonked off the backboard. He could not help comparing his mother to the others, noticing how Maureen looked great, ready for a game right now, while his mother—not old, he told himself, not really—was struggling; disease was eating her, making her shaky. Even big fat Dee Dee was more spry, surprisingly so. The only one weaker than his mother was Darlene who, Mr Nice Guy knew from earlier reports, was still under radiation therapy. She soon left the others and sat on the front steps to watch, her chin on her fist, not far from Mr Nice Guy. He went inside and as he cleaned up the dishes, began to grieve for the 1949 Pantherettes.
Disease was one of those things that tortured Mr Nice Guy. Pain—where could he put it? Nothing could explain it away, and he knew it. Sometimes, when the horizon bore down on him too keenly, he could not hide his rage. Disease was a force that did not fit, that offended beyond words, that defied his intuitions and that in confusion he lashed out against. He had a problem with what some considered the most obvious truths, such as: people you loved died.
A part of your spirit, amputated. Friends, younger than himself, were already underground or their ashes dispersed. (Wait! he cried. Hold on! Let’s reconsider.) They were already being forgotten by the living, by even their friends and family who claimed they would remember and maybe even believed it but it was not true, they were forgetting, at least several details of their loved one per day. A person did not merely die once, a person died over and over, not the same death, either, but a cumulative one, growing more and more dead as time passed.
Frankly, Mr Nice Guy would not stand for it. He would do what he could to stop this trend, take action, on all fronts. Since death was so huge and persistent, he would consecrate the small and ephemeral. Nothing would be ignored, for everything was vital. Life was in the details! One day, for instance, upon learning from a newspaper obituary of the death from cervical cancer of Nancy Rizzuti, whom he hadn’t seen in 15 years but whom he still remembered clearly—his fifth grade girlfriend with unevenly spaced teeth and a green tongue from eating candy Zotz, a vaccination mark on her left arm which a school bully named Lyle Bishop had compared to the rear end of a cat—cervical cancer! Nancy hadn’t even reached the age of 35. He found himself walking blindly through the park, voice straining as he spoke aloud to remember her better, resuscitate as many details as he could. “Father a mailman … her laughter, little hiccuping gasps … Willy, I think [the name of the cat] …” Saying these things, Mr Nice Guy looked and sounded like a crazy man. Occasionally his fists slashed at the air.
Oh, he would rub his mother’s feet, rub them desperately, while longing to be able to do more. It was a ferocious battle. She couldn’t have one foot in the grave, because he wouldn’t let go.
Three
Once, when he was a young boy with noodle arms, his mother had shown him an envelope in which was a fibrous, brownish powder.
“What is it?” he asked.
She closed the envelope.
“It’s your father’s moustache. He shaved it off when he was stationed in Pensacola and sent it to me.”
Young Mr Nice Guy’s feet began to skitter under him. “Hey, let me see that again.”
She lifted the flap once more, and he peeked inside.
“Someday I’ll give it to you.”
His feet stopped, and he looked up at her. “Gee.”
There was something intensely personal in such a promise, the confidence seemed almost holy. His mother was always telling him how much he resembled his father, and when he thought of the man he felt conscious of a hole in himself, a hole big enough to put an adult fist through. One of his few memories of him was of sitting on his knees at the kitchen table as he described an explosion he’d witnessed when he was stationed in Nevada. He later learned it was one of his father’s proudest achievements. “I had a front row seat, I volunteered, the most amazing thing that ever happened to me. GaaaBOOOM! Not Boom, but GaaBOOOM!” His fist struck the table twice, with increasing force; plates rattled, a cup jumped. “And the brilliance! I’ll never forget that flash.”
In fact, even when his bones were riddled with cancer and he lay immobile with tubes in his nose and penis (young Mr Nice Guy stood at the side of the bed, speechless), he returned to the subject, croaking in a voice as if he were choking on sand. “I’d be lying if I said the flash wasn’t beautiful.”
He was completely hairless. His eyes glinted, and there was a luster to his forefinger, too, as he pointed at the boy. For years thereafter, his words would return to Mr Nice Guy and he would try to reassemble them into a satisfactory meaning, just as when a child he’d tried to reconstruct in his imagination the handsomest version of the disintegrated moustache and return it, lovingly, to his father’s face. The words (were they an explanation? or advice? or maybe a warning?) were: “Son, you do whatever you can.”
Four
He was no coward. For all his precautions and eagerness to please, no weakling. In fact, in his own impervious way, Mr Nice Guy could be fearless, such as the night he walked up to his employee Garson’s cabin after Garson had drunk a bottle of pepper vodka and shot out all his lights and windows. The neighbors threatened to call the police, but Garson bawled out his shattered living room glass in a voice both belligerent and weary (his rifle barrel flashing, then disappearing, now flashing back) that if anybody dared call the cops he would come back and shoot whoever did it, if not tomorrow, then someday, they could count on it, he would never forget, he would come looking for that sonuvabitch.
This made the neighbors pause.
They called Mr Nice Guy instead.
So Mr Nice Guy found himself in front of Garson’s cabin heading up a gravel path in the dark. At one point he stubbed his toe on a root and stumbled, almost lost his balance.
“Who is it?” Garson shouted. “Who’s out there?”
Mr Nice Guy stopped.
“It’s me. Jerry! Garson, what’s going on in there? Why are you doing this?”
“That’s nobody’s goddamn business! Why don’t people just leave me alone?”
“Garson, put that gun away.”
There was a howl of anger, a splintering screek as the screen door was kicked open, then two sharp reports, yellow-red spurts in the dark. Mr Nice Guy felt the air move beside his left cheek, then the air closed over on itself, still again. Silence. He stood frozen, heart thumping in his chest.
Garson’s voice came out small:
“I didn’t hit you, did I, Jer? You still there?”
“Yes, I’m still here.”
“You better go away. Stuff’s happening. You could get hurt. Go away, Jer.”
Mr Nice Guy was afraid, very afraid. But he knew Garson was in trouble. He edged up the path toward the door.
“Maybe you shouldn’t be alone right now, Garson. Maybe you should tell me what’s going on. I won’t talk about it to anyone else. I promise.”
“I don’t want people messin’ in my business.”
“That’s not what I mean. I won’t mess in your business.” He was at the foot of the steps now. “Here I am. You wouldn’t turn down a guy in need of a beer, would you?”
Garson’s craggy shape stood outlined in the doorframe. When Mr Nice Guy came up the steps, to his relief Garson handed him the gun without a murmur (he wouldn’t have dared grab or wrestle for it the way he’d seen cops do in movies: many a time he’d seen Garson effortlessly crack open walnuts by clasping his hands as if to pray). They went inside.
“I can’t see anything,” said Mr Nice Guy. The stock of the gun was damp with Garson’s sweat, the barrel still warm. Garson flicked on his cigarette lighter and led Mr Nice Guy into his living room where the air was acrid with smoke from spent cartridges. As he moved, Garson let his lighter go out several times when his thumb became too hot; he bumped into upturned furniture and cursed. Mr Nice Guy groped his way onto a broken recliner and settled in, with the gun across his lap.
“How can you do this to your place?” he asked him. “I’m surprised at you.” He knew that Garson was proud of his cabin, an American Classics model which he’d constructed himself from a kit.
“I can fix it! What’s it to you, anyway? Why you asking? Is that any of your business?”
“Nope, nope, it isn’t!” said Mr Nice Guy quickly. “That’s not what I meant.”
“I got candles here somewhere,” Garson grunted, fumbling. “The wiring shorted out except for the TV fuse, so I had light from the TV for a while, until I shot the TV. It was attracting skeeters.”
Eventually he found a stubby red Christmas candle that he lit and placed on the corner of the table where it cast flickering light against the log walls. Mr Nice Guy’s eyes adjusted to take in the pockmarks on the ceiling, the shattered glass. Garson dropped heavily on the splayed couch, his face looming momentarily over the candle, bloated crimson and calf-like, his eyes looking out through tangles of long, greasy hair.
Then, to Mr Nice Guy’s alarm, Garson, grunting, bent over and pulled out another gun from beneath the couch, slapping and snapping the clip into place. He reached under the couch again and came up with a box of shells.
“Your automatic might be a handsome motherfucker but this Emerson packs the real kick-ass power.” He laughed low and leaned to peer out the window. “It’s Howdy Doody time, Jerry. They ain’t never gonna take us now.”
Mr Nice Guy shifted in his chair, his temples pounding, and fished a pack of gum out of his pocket from which, with two flicks of his wrist, he shook out a stick. This he folded into his mouth. His jaws worked quickly, methodically.
“Garson—umm—how about that beer?”
“Don’t got any. No more vodka, either, or Colorado White. I’m down to the schnapps.”
“Well, get me a schnapps then.”
While Garson hunted for the bottle amid sticky trays of finished microwave dinners, back issues of Boy Eats Girl, Mr Nice Guy tried to think of a way to disarm him. As delicate a moment as he’d ever encountered! He helped himself to an additional stick of gum, his mind racing, his jaws masticating madly. Now, where could he find an opening? Unlikely he could get his hands on Garson’s weapon unnoticed, and even if he could accomplish such a thing, he wasn’t sure how to go about unloading, how to work the clip and the levery gizmo. (Mr Nice Guy wasn’t versed in firearms.) By the time Garson returned he’d decided that his only option was to stall, and drink schnapps with him: keep him distracted.
There was 3/4 of a bottle, and he didn’t like hard stuff, but they went for it heavily, Mr Nice Guy even encouraging the process, drinking snort after snort. He forced Garson to converse, occasionally tried to reason with him and then adeptly changed course whenever Garson riled. He knew when he had to back off and assume another tack, meander around a subject till eventually he could zero in again. “But why? Why do you do this? You’re only hurting yourself.”
By now Garson had found other candles, which he fixed upright in puddles of wax. The entire cabin was rosy, aflicker. He took a big hit of schnapps, then shook his hair back, his face beetlike in this light. He slammed his fist down.
“What’s wrong with a guy doin’ what he wants to do? Why’s it anybody’s goddamn business? Is this a free country or not?”
Politics must be avoided, Mr Nice Guy knew, but Garson was launched, he took another slug, then rose to his feet, lumbered toward Mr Nice Guy, his lips curling into a snarl. “We’re talking unalienable rights here, fundamental freedoms, you nimble little fuckface. Got it? I don’t take orders from nobody, understand? You do understand?”
“I do!” Mr Nice Guy nodded briskly, “I gotcha one hundred per cent!”
Garson glared, weighing the words which, despite their capitulation, seemed to disappoint him. “Listen, I’m gonna have it all. I’m gonna—” He staggered back, sat down with a crash.
In the hours that Mr Nice Guy was there, risking his life, not another shot was fired. An alcohol flush rose to his face, then spread down his neck and eventually felt like warm hands pressing on his chest. The danger passed when Garson stopped quarreling and became ill. The schnapps was too much on top of everything else he’d consumed, and suddenly he was down on the floorboards, crawling on his hands and knees, groaning, inquiring why God treated him so. Then, racked with violent spasms, he was stupendously sick. That harrowing, pinkly candlelit moment would return to Mr Nice Guy’s mind—against his will!—for years afterward. Garson’s effusions went on, and on, and on. When he was finally finished, his eyes rolled back. He collapsed in a heap in front of his gaping TV.
Mr Nice Guy stood up stiffly, dizzy, and covering his nose with his handkerchief, began to gather up all the ammunition he could see. He blew out the candles. “Good night!”
Five
When it’s sub-zero cold and getting dark and your car battery’s dead and you have no cables and everyone in the parking lot is in a hurry to go home, who’s going to stop and roll down his window and ask if he can give you a jump start? You know who. Though he doesn’t smoke himself, he always has a light. Who never forgets to flush a public toilet behind him? To squeeze the toothpaste from the bottom? Who, for his wife’s sake, shaves not in the morning after rising but in the evening before going to bed, so as not to chafe her cheeks, or thighs? That’s our man. And though it’s true that he’s not the life of the party, that his earnestness could convict him of a lack of hilarity, that he actually liked card tricks where you had to think of a number and count them into piles, then add your birthdate and divide by—oh, never mind—there was also that hopeful, teetering-on-glorious moment when people have eaten and drunk and the music comes up and your feet start to move, you just can’t help it, and all of a sudden someone goes to work pushing aside the tables and clearing chairs to make room for everyone to dance—why, it’s Mr Nice Guy! Everybody, everybody fall in!
Such impulses did more than win him personal appreciation; they also earned him a living. They were the spark of his business success. Mr Nice Guy not only took initiatives, he had that extra quality that made all the difference—he anticipated. He possessed the most potent form of American know-how: buttressed by know-when. That was Mr Nice Guy’s inspiration: making the present blossom, then milking it for all it was worth.
Admittedly, he did not know how to go for the jugular, he lacked the claws necessary to become a fat cat. He would probably never join the club of the super-rich. But he could never come up empty-handed, either, since he noticed needs. In an economy of expanding services, he was at once a maverick and a traditionalist, an entrepreneur in human wishes, a free-lance pleaser with offices and a modem out of his fourth floor apartment. His company, Home-Made Services, was a pioneer in the personal duty market.
Anniversaries, birthdays, retirements, commemorations—these were his bread and butter. For a fee, you could register all your personal duty data in his Forget-Me-Not computer. A week before your Aunt Maggie’s birthday, for instance, you would get a card or a phone call (your choice—or for both, add $1.25 to subscription price) reminding you: hey, you’d better write to your Auntie now!
For a slightly higher fee, you’d receive a draft letter, which you could adapt to your needs (Letter 42c, Female/*Retired/*Widowed/*High Blood Pressure) or, for $5 more, a custom-made letter. All you had to do was tell Mr Nice Guy over the phone (or leave your Sentiment Guidelines on his handy 24-hour 800 number):
“Uh, she’s the one who lives in Cincinnati, and ever
since Uncle Leon died she’s just gotten more depressed
and fatter and fatter, it stresses her out, she’s all alone
now in a cramped room and they’ve quit singing,
I never know what to say to her (click).”
Within 48 hours, you receive the following fax for you to copy out by hand:
Dear Aunt Maggie,
Another birthday! Isn’t it remarkable! I want to take a moment to congratulate you. Perhaps you might believe that you’ve already seen too many birthdays but this is precisely the occasion for me to tell you what a place you have in this family, a place that I haven’t put into words before. You are our grande dame and we are proud of you. Although I am sure that Leon’s absence weighs heavily in times of solitude (when I think of you I think of him, too) you should know that on this special day we pay our respect to you, as you are now, with greatest affection,
Love
[sign here]
Hypocritical? Not at all, for Home-Made Services were sender-guaranteed. If the subscriber was unhappy with a draft, all he or she had to do was call Mr Nice Guy, let him know what the problem was, the sticking point (“Too serious—put in a joke somewhere” or “You forgot the canaries”), and a revised version would be faxed within hours. It often took several drafts to get it right, but it was precisely this process, helping people find what they wanted to say, that instilled loyalty in Mr Nice Guy’s clientele, who gave him his best, word-of-mouth advertising. Hypocritical? How could it be, in the face of the toughest critics of all, the senders who would have to sign their name at the bottom, who wanted a good letter badly enough to pay for it? The real hypocrites could dash off any message, for either they didn’t care enough to be picky, or on the contrary, they already knew exactly what they wanted, as only hypocrites can. No, Mr Nice Guy helped people who struggled sincerely for words of comfort or praise or condolence or affection, words from the heart and even deeper (a shared source beyond the mere individual, the hearth—that was how Mr Nice Guy thought of it), a desired Communion with the receiver. For lack of time or simply out of fear, many people could not find the words themselves. Or sadder still, circumstances had evolved so hearthlessly for some that they’d never been close enough to experience such words, feel them on their lips. Yet they still missed them for, somewhere inside, in a painful human inheritance, they ached to say them.
Mr Nice Guy stepped up from behind, whispered into their ear. (Via express mail or fax, or you could download on-line.) Discreet, comprehensive, and principled. He could’ve easily price-gouged on death condolences, for instance, the duty correspondence most in demand, the one people found hardest to do on their own. But for Mr Nice Guy’s subscribers, death condolences were the same price, part of the same package deal, as St. Patrick’s Day wishes and Congratulations Sore Knees! (For runners who had finished their marathons.) He prided himself on offering a full range of services.
On Arbor Day you needed an acorn, pronto? Where could you get your hands on a Guy Fawkes effigy, a roll of red carpet or a bona-fide Maypole? Who had a virtual monopoly in a four-state area on 100% biodegradable confetti?
He did one-shot gigs, too. Actually, this was the part of his job that he enjoyed best, found the most fulfilling. On an April day he leaped out of an airplane (thrilling at the sight of his planet rushing toward him: “Yes! Yes! Yes!”) and tumbled neatly upon striking his destination, strode over with hand outstretched to a young woman whose mouth dropped open in amazement, for he proffered a diamond ring. A nervous fellow beside her swallowed profoundly, nodded at Mr Nice Guy, then took the woman’s hand and began to propose marriage.
Or, in one of his higher-priced performances, Mr Nice Guy jumped out of a darkened stairwell, wearing a ski-mask and flashing a knife, and engaged in hand-to-hand combat with a client who was trying to impress his girlfriend. As prearranged, Mr Nice Guy lost the struggle to his manly rival. For his efforts he got several contusions, and $800.
His most satisfying work, though, came in reconciliations. Some of his pleading and promising letters had brought troubled couples back together:
… I don’t expect you to forgive me. But on the other hand I know you’ll never forget that night on Wanamaker Island. Oh, choco! I pledge to respect that memory and if you’ll only give me the chance, to make you feel that beautiful again … (Etc., etc.)
In some cases, as a direct result of his letters, children were born. People wrote back to thank him. Men and women loved and made love because of Mr Nice Guy. To his mind he was following his father’s advice, doing whatever he could. Perhaps no one knew better than Barbara.
Six
A person shouldn’t be too quick to judge her. Blame—if blame you must—Mr Nice Guy. When it came to human desires he was nothing if not a facilitator. For the general public this was easy enough to live with, downright impressive, some thought, because to show graciousness in an increasingly mean and slovenly world, to cultivate civility made him the most up-to-date man of action, even a rebel.
But for Barbara it was different. For those whose fortune or burden it is to share life with a hero, it always is. She saw him in another, more modest light, less master planner than travel agent, one for whom her destination might be her most personal fantasy. And to his credit, his trips left no regrets, for with him you took off from a rock solid somewhere. Not for you a hippie goose chase to discover your True Self or the posturing of the sexual pilgrim, holding forth about spasmodic holy lands, gift shop enlightenments. No. Precious warmth and security were already in your most intimate possession, you could always click your heels and go back; wherever you ventured, your return reservation was already booked: Home.
Step back through the door: how wonderful it looked now! Put down your bag of unwashed laundry and maybe a few trophies, all those personal effects which had begun to seem heavy, even a burden, and go over and sit down in front of the fire with a happy grunt or a sigh of relief (maybe you’re a little sore), and hold out your hands, feeling the welcoming light on your face.
“Bring you a cup of cocoa?” comes his cheerful voice.
The situation was this: in matters most personal, including sexual, Barbara was not much different from you. Yes, you. Mr Nice Guy wasn’t naive about such things. He told himself: if Barbara finds someone attractive, the idea of standing closer to that person does not disturb her. One could bet that it causes neither disgust nor dread. And in certain circumstances, kisses are something she is very fond of. Something for which she feels an inclination. Like touching. And being touched. Why should she be deprived?
“Huh?” she’d said one day in bed shortly after they were married, and had just slid between the sheets, and he’d expressed this sentiment. She stopped plumping her pillow. “How’s that, Jerry?”
“If you have extra needs, honey, that’s okay. I want you to be as fulfilled as possible.”
At first she didn’t believe him. Thought he was joking. She shook her head. “I don’t think I get it. What are you driving at?”
“I want you to be happy.”
“Seems doubtful that’s how. That kind of openness is usually a sham.”
Barbara did not consider herself particularly adventurous, not anymore. Though Mr Nice Guy was only vaguely aware of this aspect of her past, in her younger days she’d experimented. Tried on different lives like tops in a shop. Yet that era seemed distant now, though it wasn’t so long ago, really, that she’d left school and gone looking for a style that fit the shape of her aspirations; she’d rejected the West and moved to New York, which was the place to be when you were young and destined to be original (at least that’s what everybody said). She shared a studio on Polsen Street and found work in a gallery selling aesthetic black-and-white postcards, where all the employees dressed in tight minimalist monochrome. She experienced the attentions of artistic younger men who were bored—much of being hip, she discovered, is being bored with your surroundings—and started getting high a lot, then more than a lot. She alternated between intense enjoyment and feeling sick. (Truth was, she never did get the hang of the cool and usual punishments.) The weather inside her grew very unpredictable. Early one morning, after a party at her place when the first rays of sunlight came slanting through the window, she stumbled into her bathroom with her head happily swimming and a pleasant prickling all over her skin and managed to find her way onto the toilet—then observed, in the bathtub next to her, a young man turning blue.
She thought he would die. He was dying, before her very eyes. She struggled to her feet, pulling up her panties, then dropped to her knees beside the tub and began shaking his shoulders, crying, telling him, “No, please! Stop! Stop!” She punched at him to wake up. Through the tears she also tried to pray, convinced that if she left him long enough to call an ambulance it would be too late when she came back. She could not let him die alone. “Oh God, please don’t!”
She got him to sit up, and suddenly he bent forward, vomited between his knees, and ceased trembling; he turned his head and blinked at her.
Running the showerhead over the top of his scalp, on his chest and over his back, then holding his shoulders while he shivered and whimpered and became pink again—such a little manboy—Barbara felt miles and miles away.
Inside her, there was a momentary clearing in the weather, as when from a distance you can discern where you live. That morning her intentions shifted. Her doubts won out. For why pretend? She realized that she was indifferent to this place, to the local catechism, the way that everyone, whether a new arrival or to the city born, kept repeating to each other that this island was the mecca, the hippest locale on the entire planet and just by being here and walking the streets, some of its importance accrued to you. That’s what made it OK to be less than what you knew or wanted. You could say you were important.
She realized how lonely, terribly lonely she was among these wishful and needy people. Earnest friends and true believers. She helped her guest to her mattress, threw a blanket over him and went to wash. Later she stepped out for a long walk which lasted the rest of the day. She wandered through the canyons of buildings which meant nothing to her, and every now and then looked up, thinking: how empty the would-be capital of the world, for when it comes to love, we are still hunters and gatherers.
That was it. She wanted love. As simple (simple?) as that, and she refused to apologize for it, wrap it up in a different guise. That was the only thing she cared about. The rest was … was … she would let other people decide for themselves what it was because to her it didn’t matter, since she didn’t want it anyway. Walking the streets that day, amid the honk and grind of Manhattan, she felt as light and unattached as a leaf flitting on the sidewalk.