Run Over While Staring At A Woman's Legs

Run Over While Staring at a Woman’s Legs

I’VE GOT A PROPOSITION for you, Bulkowkovich. Donner spun in his swivel-chair, hands clasped behind his head. Want to come to a party this afternoon?

What’s the occasion? I asked.

Family gathering. No big deal.

Where is it?

Uncle Roy’s.

One of your Uncles is still alive? Jeepers.

Mike Donner is sixty-three. White-haired, neat, thin, he is The Pleasantville Echo’s oldest hack. I considered him from my desk across the office. We had worked together for thirteen years. I’m thirty-one now, and bald as an egg. My expanding store of flab edges me steadily towards fatness. Thirteen years. It seemed a long time, which was odd, because I couldn’t remember the first thing about them.

Listen, do you want to come or not? he asked.

Yeah, okay. Sounds like fun.

Sorry, Bulkowkovich. I don’t think you can. Thing is, you don’t have a product.

A product? What do you mean?

"I mean, what are you selling? What’s your product? You don’t have one do you?"

I guess not.

Then you can’t come.

What if I had a product? I asked. Could I come then?

Sure, why not?

Well, I think I might have one, I said.

Donner shook his head.

I don’t think you do.

I looked around my desk, spotted a blue biro and picked it up.

Look, I said. Here it is.

What is it? Donner asked suspiciously.

It’s a pen. I use it to...

I know what a pen does, Bulkowkovich. He sighed in disappointment.

I put the pen down, thought about it for a moment, picked it up again.

Actually, I said, I’ve got one of these.

What is it? asked Donner with renewed interest.

It’s a Positive Space Impaction Device.

Oh yeah? What does it do?

That’s the beautiful thing. Look at this. I took a piece of paper and held it up. Blank, right? Now, watch this! I drew a stick figure on it, with the words Positive Impact beneath, and held it up once more. "You see? Transference of mental images, both verbal and pictorial, onto a kind of tabula rasa."

Gee, said Mike, clearly impressed. Positive Impact Space...?

Positive Space Impaction Device. I’m not exaggerating when I say it’s almost an act of creation.

And anyone can use one?

With training.

That’s a good product, Bulkowkovich.

Want to buy one? I asked him.

No, but why don’t you come along to Uncle Roy’s? Bring your gizmo with you.

UNCLE ROY LIVED IN Pigeon Heights. The long walk up from the road took us along an avenue of oaks, then out into a red gravel courtyard. The centrepiece was a giant, ugly cast-iron fountain that somehow reminded me of art. The house was bigger than my cousin Audrey’s butt, but not flesh-toned. It was mansion white. We were moving up in the world.

You got your product with you? asked Donner.

I patted my top pocket.

No problem. The lid of the Positive Space Impaction Device has a dinky little clip that keeps it attached to most garments.

No kidding? Manually operated? Donner rang Uncle Roy’s polished doorbell.

Completely idiot-proof. Want to buy one?

No.

So what does your Uncle Roy do? I asked.

He’s a product placement broker, Donner told me. It’s a modular thing. He bite-sizes the indigestible, synthesizing the defragmentation of concept development into a non-nebulous yet stratified presentation package.

Salesman?

Salesman.

"By the way Donner, what’s your product?"

THE PARTY WAS ALREADY in full swing. There were forty people in the sunroom at the rear of the house. I knew a few of the guests: I spotted Donner’s own nephew Burt Ridley, a skinny punkish guy of twenty-five with black hair and stovepipes. And there was Rick Noogenet, Donner’s neighbour from across the street. He was a sweaty man in his thirties who always wore a suit and tie. I waved across the room at him. He took a moment to recognize me before nodding back eagerly.

Other people were there, neither family nor friends. They were networking the ether between gobfuls of beer and cream cheese, sharp and streamlined youngsters, or men in their forties, tired-eyed and paunched, but manfully mustering enthusiasm. There was a handful of younger women too, in their twenties, unremittingly attractive and viperous.

Sorry about that, a voice whispered in my ear. Gate crashers. What can you do?

Uncle Roy! Mike smiled.

He was eighty if he was a day, yet he moved with the severity of a much younger man. His hair was pure white, and his warm but tough eyes looked out through the lenses of steel-rimmed spectacles. He loomed over us, big-framed and truly avuncular.

A concession to my frailty, Uncle Roy joked, taking off the glasses and handing them to me for inspection. I swapped them with a North Sea rigger for a bag of monkey poot seventeen years ago. Not one scratch on the glass in all that time. Take care of things, and they’ll take care of you.

I handed the glasses back.

Bag of monkey poot, you say? Congratulations. Nice pair. Technically, I suppose I’m a gate crasher too.

Uncle Roy, this is Al Bulkowkovich, Mike introduced us.

I’ve heard a lot about you. All good, you hope. Did Mike tell you he’s doing today’s presentation?

Donner swelled with pride.

Hope it’s a good one, Mike, Uncle Roy dropped us another smile before a pair of women in their fifties sidled up and grabbed him by the arms, dragging him away amidst mock protestations.

IT TURNED OUT TO BE a pretty cool party. The room itself was white, high-ceilinged, all windows and potted palms. The floor was chequerboard, tiled in big slabs of shiny black-and-white. Donner slunk off somewhere and I got comfortable on the fat L-shaped divan near the windows. From where I was I had a good view of the lawn, sloping gently towards a high stone wall amidst a scattering of cherries, maples and Chinese elms.

I didn’t have long to wait before an old man ambled over and sat down beside me. He exhaled self-consciously then introduced himself as Len Hadley. It turned out he was a contemporary of Uncle Roy, but of the two Hadley seemed the more aged. He was a genial fellow with a heavily creased face. Soon I was trying to sell him on the Positive Space Impaction Device.

Ever wondered how it would be to impact positively on an area of space? I purred. This little beauty will allow you to do just that. Comes in at least three colours. Black, blue and red. This is the blue one. I like to think of it as actualizing a unique blueness out of the void of potentiality.

Hadley feigned interest superbly before turning the conversation.

That’s a brilliant idea, Al. You like theatre?

Not really.

Well, that’s a coincidence.

Is it?

"My little grandson Simon just finished playing Third Mushroom Along from Cardboard Tree in The Little Forest Folk. School play. St Anne’s Prep, Hegley-on-Rye. How about that?"

That’s great, Len! Little thespian, is he?

Sometimes, but we don’t worry about that as long as he learns his lines. It’s a shame, because the play’s over now, and as a theatre lover, I guess you might have been interested in seeing it.

I doubt it.

Well, you’re in luck today, my friend! I can’t show you the whole play of course, but I’ve got the next best thing! Len pulled a glossy A5 softback from his pocket and shoved it in my face. It was The Little Forest Folk Companion Volume No. 2. He shoved it in my face as he flicked through it. It’s all there, Al. Signed souvenir pull-out posters of the children who played The Pixie Folk. Interviews with the main fungal characters, including Simon. See? If you want to know, for instance, what sort of rectal thermometer Simon prefers when his parents suspect he might have a temperature, it’s right here on page one hundred thirty-nine. Was it hard being cooped up in the mushroom suit for a whole hour every night for three days? What are his hopes, dreams, his ambitions? Does he want to branch out into toadstools and bracket fungi?

"Number One sold out?" I asked.

Keep this under your hat, he whispered. "There was no Number One. Number Two sounds better, makes people think you’ve sold a pile already. If you stay in this business long enough, you’ll learn all the tricks. Tell you what, you buy Number Two and I’ll throw in Number One for nothing. What do you say?"

Rick Noogenet had been working the room, and now, walking by, he sat down on the divan and slid into our conversation.

Hey, Al. Long time.

Still living across the street from Donner? I asked.

Well, not really, Noogenet grimaced. He lives across the street from me. What you got there, Len?

Len told him. It was still drizzling outside, and it was far from hot in the big, bright room, yet Noogenet was sweating profusely. He was earnest, but greasy. He had a skin problem. He listened intently as Len wrapped up his spiel,

"So you understand, Rick, it makes the perfect gift for anybody who isn’t blind. Frankly, I expect to shift a stack, but I doubt I’ll be selling any to cheapskates and losers. As I was saying to Al Bulkowkovich here, I’m prepared to throw in a copy of Number One with any order of thirty or more. Make it forty."

Noogenet shook his head in admiration.

"I think you’re onto a winner there, Len, and where I come from that makes you a winner. And one thing I do know, is that winners like winners. That’s why I know you’re going to like this. Rick held up a plastic sphere that had been concealed in his hand. It was green, and the size of a hockey ball, and covered in tiny holes. Take a look