Love In The Time Of Apps (24 page)

It was not what these Sheilas said, but how they said it that disturbed Goodwin. There was something quite different about them, a characteristic he had never seen in the Original Sheila before, perhaps another unexpected side effect of the lightning. While there were no real signs that he could point to, he sensed malevolence. His next thought was disquieting; not only did he have two wives; he had two wives that were really out to get him. In view of their rising celebrity status, Goodwin suspected, they would probably have the means to do so.

As he walked to the parking lot, Goodwin activated the PPR App that took him immediately to his ratings, PPR 19, down seven points. Goodwin was speechless.

Compassion

G
oodwin’s ride home from the Meditainment Center midst a torrential rainstorm was torturous. He felt broken by his traumatic humiliation on television and was in a depressed panic. Goodwin never cared about people laughing at him, so long as he was the instigator, the author of a self-deprecating joke or off the cuff remark. This was different, however. To be so disgraced on national television was crushing and virtually unbearable. How could he show his face anywhere after his public flogging at the hands of the Two Sheilas?

As he approached his house, Goodwin’s body tensed to the point where he gripped the wheel so hard that his knuckles became white and his fingers began to ache. No doubt, this was caused by his knowledge that the “press piranhas,” a descriptor of his from a somewhat happier time, would be waiting and anxious to spray him with harsh and embarrassing questions. The best that could be said for him was that he understood that his emotional state was fragile. He knew that emotionally he was the on edge, perhaps over the edge, and that when taunted by members of the press he might lose control and say or do something that would further diminish his tattered reputation. With that knowledge in hand, he cautioned himself that the watchword of the moment was forbearance. “Whatever you do,” he advised himself, “do not lose control. Don’t let them get under your skin.”

Despite some hard questions and punishing barbs fired at him as he walked from his car to his house, Goodwin followed his own instructions. Just a few more steps and he would be home free. All
he had to do was to say nothing or at most “no comment,” then open his door and close it behind him. His key was in his door when he heard a mocking, “So Mr. Goodwin, tell us a joke.” A chorus of more reporters, some laughing, joined in. “Yeah, Goodwin, tell us a joke.” This was followed by a collective snigger and then a united chant of, “Joke, joke, joke.”

At that moment he was in a quintessential position to yield to his other self, the Dybbuk without the high school diploma, and was poised to do or say something completely irrational. Goodwin felt the symptoms coming on and was actually ready to embrace them, and probably scream obscenities at his antagonists. Remarkably, they passed without taking hold. An overwhelming fatigue overcame him. He hardly had the energy to speak. Goodwin faced the jeering corps of reporters and asked in a soft sad voice, with single involuntary tear running down his face, “Don’t you think you could show a little compassion?” Before anyone could answer, Goodwin turned and entered his house.

The phone rang, but Goodwin chose not to pick it up. When it went into message mode, he heard Lolli Glick. It only took her first two words for Goodwin to realize that it was over between them. Her tone and modulation told him everything he needed to know. “Hi Philip, look something has come up and I can’t see you this week. I will be in touch. Don’t try to call me, I’ll be pretty busy.” Lolli had just broken up with him.

Goodwin was not heartbroken or even saddened by his dismissal from Lolli’s life. Though sane and perfect for him, according to all his friends, she was not Sophie. Despite the brevity of his affair with Sophie and its strange ending, he still had deep longings for her. The timing of Lolli’s call, however, “sucked.” Goodwin punched in his access code for other messages and was advised, “You have one new message.” Goodwin knew that the message would be from the Two Sheilas, and that its content would not be good news.

“Philip, this is the Sheila.” He still had difficulty grasping the concept that the woman who was speaking was now one of a pair. Her tone was reserved, but laced with an undercurrent of controlled anger. It
was the voice of the Original Sheila, yet different. As the Two Sheilas message started to roll out Goodwin whispered quietly to himself, “Momma.”

“You know, Philip, as soon as we were alone, we decided to retain a lawyer. You’re probably asking yourself how we found an attorney so quickly. The answer is that we asked Wang and he put us in touch with his brother, Oliver Wendell Holmes Wang. He has an office in the Meditainment Center’s admittance section; gets the personal injury cases while they’re still hot. That is particularly true of burn cases. Get the double entendre, Philip? Too complex for you? We could tell you a joke with a single entendre, if you wish.”

“Now, Philip, it is extremely important that you listen to what we have to say. First, no one authorized you to hire an agent for us or even cut deals on our behalf. We want, no we demand, a full and immediate accounting. All royalty income, including what you paid out to Schnell, belongs to us, not you. And if any of those deals fell short of the mark, we are holding you personally liable. You should be getting a letter soon from the forensic accounting section of Price Waterhouse who Wang has retained for a possible lawsuit against you and Schnell. It would be best that you make a full disclosure to them and to cooperate. Also, tell Schnell we’ve fired him. We have a new agent.”

As if the Two Sheilas were actually on the phone, Goodwin replied weakly, “But Schnell is great and has negotiated some fabulous deals for you. Who did you get to represent you?”

He heard the other Sheila laughing in the background. “One more thing, and this is extremely important, do not under any circumstances refer to us as the ‘Two Sheilas’ or ‘Sheila Left’ or ‘Sheila Right.’ We are to be referred only as the unitary Sheila, or The Sheila. We are one. Understand?” The inflection of “understand” was not so much a question, but an aggressive and angry order. “And that’s on advice of counsel.”

“On advice of counsel?” he said to himself. That struck him as odd and for a moment he wondered about their motivation.

“And by the way, you won’t hear from us for a few weeks. We will be incommunicado. Don’t call us. We’ll call you, though you will be able
to see us when we appear on the Obrah/Vinfrey show in two weeks in our tell all, no holds barred, interview. Watch out, Philip.”

The following morning editorials denouncing Goodwin’s plea for compassion the night before appeared in virtually all major newspapers. Photographs that magnified his single tear were juxtaposed over captions such as “Crybaby” and “He Can Dish Out, But Can’t Take It,” and “He’s the Joke!” were ubiquitous. This proved to Goodwin what he knew all along: when you are unpopular anything you say or do, which under normal circumstances would never be criticized, will be held against you. The only paper praising Goodwin was The Al Qaeda Gazette which bore the headline, “
(heart) Philip Goodwin.” Goodwin’s favorable mention in the Al-Qaeda Gazette led to the opening of a file on him that day by Homeland Security and the FBI.

Awakened from a fitful night’s sleep, Goodwin tuned into CNN news. The PPR ticker ran across the bottom of his screen. “Philip Goodwin 17.” He had dropped two more points overnight due to Asian voting. The Two Sheila’s held steady at 28. Above the tape, he saw Lolli Glick being interviewed at her palatial home. “Well, I only went out with Mr. Goodwin a few times. But, I finally decided that there was no real future in it for me. His cruel streak was just too much to bear.”

“His cruel streak?” the reporter interjected.

“Oh, yes. He used to brag about how he purposely made jokes that Sheila would never understand just to get under her skin. The man is a sadist. When I asked him if he ever felt a sense of compassion for Sheila, he laughed hysterically and said, ‘I’m always suspicious of people who ask for compassion.”

“That’s quite ironic,” the reporter said.

“My sentiments exactly.”

All Goodwin could do at that moment was shake his head in bewilderment. Her story was a total fabrication. He wondered, “Do people simply make things up when being interviewed on television because they want to be liked or to please the reporter interviewing them?”

The fact was that Lolli had confided in him that she always felt he was much too good for Sheila and was shocked how he could stay with a woman who had no sense of humor. She had once remarked, “God
forgive me for saying this Philip, but I secretly hope Sheila stays comatose forever. I don’t want to share you.” Lolli had laughed at every joke he made. Now, he wondered if she had simply been playing him.

For the first time in his life, Goodwin felt helpless and isolated. He had lost all incentive to leave his house or to speak with anyone. His goal now was seclusion, at least for a few days. In the 21st century, however, isolation is no easy task. Most hermits, according to a national survey, had their own email address and smart phones. Total escape from the news of the Two Sheilas or the media was impossible. Virtually every email he received, and every television program he turned on were devoted to them.

Out of desperation, in an effort to see something on television that did not relate to the Two Sheilas, Goodwin turned to the Home Shoppers Channel. No luck. That channel as well as the other shopping channels was devoting the next two weeks to Two Sheilas’ products, including twin Sheila dolls, booked as “Barbie’s Favorite Aunts.” The show also featured a hastily put together “Tickle Us Sheila,” in which, like Elmo in the Christmas of 1996, the dolls, mini-replicas of the Two Sheilas, made in China, would laugh and say: “Hey, we’re funny” whenever their ultra-flat stomachs (a condition imposed in an agreement with their licensee) were pressed. HBO was promoting the Two Sheilas Christmas Special:
Christmas in Grace Harbor
,” sponsored by Vogue. The Two Sheilas’ secret new agent was quite good, Goodwin admitted begrudgingly. His last hope, the Golf Channel, failed to provide the escape he needed. It was promoting the “Front Tee Golf Classic,” in honor of Sydney Maxine, for golfers who hit from the front tees.

He was slaloming from channel to channel looking for an oasis of non-Sheila content and thought he finally found it on Calm TV, a channel that had no content and showed a serene scene of an isolated beach. As Goodwin watched and wished he was there, the telecast and every other television program airing was interrupted by breaking celebrity news story live from the Federal courthouse in Foley Square. Oliver Wendell Holmes Wang was speaking into a bunch of microphones and telling the press and the television audience that
The Sheila retained his firm in a suit against Philip Goodwin and his agent Max Schnell.

“In our complaint against the Defendants,” Wang said, showing the document to which he referred, “we are demanding the return of all royalties collected for The Sheila’s license agreements including interest, attorneys’ fees, and court costs. What we are alleging is, and I quote, ‘That such fees were collected illegally by the Defendants with malice of forethought, malice of afterthought and malice of in between- thought,’ which as everyone knows is the very worst kind of malice because it shows an ongoing malice.” The malice phraseology had no legal significance whatsoever and was pure gibberish, but it sounded impressive on television and Wang delivered the lines so expertly that Goodwin found himself shaking his head in agreement.

Wang continued: “And if every penny collected is not accounted for, I am authorized to bring a Civil RICO suit against Mr. Goodwin and against Mr. Goodwin’s co-conspirator, Max Schnell. Schnell, I should add, had been indicted years earlier when one of his multiple personalities, the one who was the financial genius, embezzled millions of dollars.”

“Schnell never told me about the embezzlement part.” Goodwin complained to an empty room. He had left all of Sheila’s financial matters in the hands of Schnell and trusted him without reservation. Thus, when he phoned Schnell midst an enormous panic attack and heard background samba music and Schnell’s voice message “Olá Eu sou em Brasil agora and for those not fluent in Portuguese, I’m in Brazil right now...” he began to feel faint.

Before he could lose consciousness, however, which would have been good timing on his part, the breaking news story he was watching was itself interrupted by a chilling, for Goodwin at least, breaking news story. The somber newscaster said, “We have just been advised that Philip Goodwin is suspected of having ties to Al Qaeda and that the FBI and Homeland Security have him on their watch lists. We now return to regularly scheduled programming.” The beach reappeared though it now depicted dark skies and stormy seas.

The only way Goodwin could cope with these awful events and protect his frail degree of sanity was to avoid all outside stimuli for as long as possible, since anything he saw or heard would only serve to escalate his anxiety. He pushed the off button on Mr. Remotee Two, unplugged the phones, downed the shades, and said to himself, “I have enough food and toilet paper to last about two weeks. I’ll simply read and pretend none of this happened. The book he chose to read first was one he had read before and loved. It was
Love in The Time of Cholera.