My Amputations (Fiction collective ;) (10 page)

Don't ask me why but it was time to approach the Magnan-Rockford Foundation. Mason wrote John Armegurn, Secretary: “ . . . I am back from abroad and am staying at the Gramercy Park. Give me a call as soon as possible. I'm changing banks and want my monthly check to go to the new one, probably Chase-Manhattan. I hope we can make the necessary adjustments by phone. I won't be in New York long and my schedule is hectic.” He thought his own hokum pretty damn good. Maybe he wouldn't need any further eyewash, jive or stuffing for the goose. Armegurn had a sharp high-pitched voice and a dry chuckle. He clearly didn't know Mason's so-called Impostor too well because he didn't question Mason's voice.
But
he did insist that Mason come in. “It's easier.” A trap? Ambush?
It was Wednesday at three. Mason pretended to check his hectic schedule. “I can see you between ten and eleven tomorrow. How's that for you?” Armegurn stood to shake his head as he approached the desk. His secretary was retreating. “You've changed a bit.” He was a handsome, big man, with ashy skin, ashy hair, freckles on his cheeks, even on his lips, thick red hair on the backs of his huge hands. His shake was more than firm: bone crushing. Armegurn's grin was plastic: fixed. “Yesterday, I didn't recognize your voice. But it happens all the time. People change
so
fast. Why, just yesterday, I walked by an old friend—I hadn't seen in two years—on Fifth Avenue. I looked
right
at him and he looked
right
at me. Of course, moments later, we turned and, well . . . Say, how was France?” And so Mason made small, awkward talk about a France he'd never known. Finally, after watching Mason frantically checking his watch every minute or so, Armegurn said, “I've had Jo Ann type up all the necessary papers for the transfer. All we'll need her to do is insert the bank of your choice and your account number. You sign it then take it out to one of our accounts clerks. They'll probably want to see some I.D. then you're set. Okay?” “Sounds fine.” Jo Ann came back when Armegurn buzzed for her then Mason gave her a piece of paper with his Chase account number and the branch address. He stood up and shook with Armegurn again then went out and had a seat while Jo Ann typed. Mason eyed a “battle axe”—his thought, folks, not mine—waiting to see Armegurn who momentarily came out. “Hi, Miss Bambosh—how are ya?” After she'd followed Armegurn into his office Jo Ann, fiftyish and square as a wooden door, said, “She's also a winner.” At that moment a trampy-looking young man shot into the office. He grabbed Jo Ann's arm and shouted insanely in her face: “Why is charity so fucking good but expecting mercy and begging are horrible?” then ran out before she could recover—let alone answer. Finally she said, “Every week he comes in here like that. He's a poet. Also one of our prize winners.” Her smile was glazed with the pain that comes from being hit below the belt. And she wasn't even an official entry.

A light drizzle in May: the morning smelled of pine: no Sherwood Anderson sky here over Seattle. Two cheery English professors picked him up in a monkeyshit-green Buick station wagon. The airport was the most untrustworthy he'd seen. Had it been constructed to trap him? And
two
weird professors? As they tried to engage him in a discussion of swindling in literature all he could think of was the new smackaroos going into his bank account at Chase. The two guys were drinking buddies. Mason agreed to stop with them for a short one. It was one thirty—the lecture wasn't till nine the next morning. That night: they'd take him to dinner at Professor Melvin Lester Bark's, their “most distinguished (ex-CIA) personage of historical literary scholarship.” Bob and Kit, these two, already slightly juiced-eyed, led Mason into a smelly pub on the secret end of North East One Hundred and Twenty-Eighth Street, an old neighborhood bar, their favorite, complete with bar flies, stuck fan in ceiling, unearthly sawdust on floor. Good-Time Charlies, they joked about old ex-agent Bark and his fuddy-duddy fraudulent “historical scholarship.” They hadn't been able to get him to even read good Bellow let alone bad Barthelme. On the q.t., his wife was nice though and they were sure the dinner party would go well. Kit, the thinner, darker one, told Mason he'd tried to read one of his novels, but got confused. He couldn't tell what was going on. Mason smiled. Bob, with dimples and a twinkle, said, “I tried too, and I think I missed something.” Mason wasn't going to bite. This was a crow-hop. Take me to your leader, boys. That night they picked him up at the campus guest house. He was in the faculty club having a drink. Bark lived on Mercer Island so it would take awhile in the rush hour traffic. An early start was wise. The ferry boat was a twilight-lit sea dragon. After that, a short drive through a damp plush wooded area. Bark was a big man with a pumping handshake and a big smile. Mason didn't catch all the names though he was being told as he gripped one hand after another. A plump light-haired woman with tiny hands. One dark in a low-cut dress with a profusion of pimples all over her chest. A weasel
guy. An old poet with yellow teeth and age spots on the backs of his hands. Mason got cornered by the tiny hands-woman. “You have children?” “Yes.” “How many?” “About, oh, thirty, maybe forty.” She gave him a look. Cocked her head. He could see she felt put on. She started to laugh, decided not to, then walked away. He was sick of these people who always wanted to talk about
their
children. The host had brought up good wine from his secret cellar and many were sampling various ones. Others worked on aperitifs and mixed drinks. Low chatter about deception in the department against subdued Mozart. Plush carpets beneath feet. Indirect lighting. Nothing blue or breezy. Tone: definitely not racy or risque: something almost “old family” British. The dark woman with pimples sat on one side of Mason at dinner and Kit on the other. Kit wanted to know what he thought of detective stories. Was Kit some sort of plotter? Sandra Pirsig, Miss Pimples, wanted to know how long he'd be in Seattle. His mouth was full of mystery steak: he couldn't answer either one. By the time Don Giovanni-Ellis was delivered back to the faculty club he was half drunk and suffering with acute sinusitis. Kit's tail lights finally vanished down the driveway. Mason thought of walking. But, The Impostor might be out there in the shadows! Yet lying down would only increase the congestion, the pain. The villainous damp night air had quickly gotten to him. He turned back. Slept poorly. But the coffee in the morning helped. He had a piece of toast with it. Then it was Sandra Pirsig, this time in a plain sweater and skirt, who came for him. He noticed something suggestive in her eye, a kind of nervous vibration from her body reached his. Funny business. Mason read to three hundred students in a lecture hall then talked half an hour. About? Literary snow jobs, blarney-festerings, writerly deception and the conflict and exchange between these states and the sacred grounds of truth. What else? Hum. Then they took him to lunch and he was, finally, at three-thirty free. Sandra asked him if he wanted to be driven anywhere special. No, he wanted to walk. She thought that interesting and decided to walk with him. She led him down to the shopping area
near the university. A pleasant hocus pocus afternoon: an unclear tricky day, and green, green, green and gray, hard gray. The sky was, in part, swollen with dental cement—and sculptures of Presbyterian cows grazing on wet cotton. A mist hung low in the undergrowth as they cut through the park. She kept probing him about himself but his answers were cryptic. Mason tried to unscramble a mental poem buzzing in him but when he succeeded (as she talked on) it turned out to be a woodcut print of—of what? He wasn't sure. Somehow, though, this sadness of moss and lichen along the walkway, appealed to him: nature had declared martial law on civilization. Plush, damp, oozy stretches seemed to pull at his nerve endings. Mrs. Yznaga's seventh grade geography, her talks of the Pacific Northwest, the Olympia National Forest, hadn't prepared him for the sentimental fiddle music nature was coming on with here. Huh? Oh, yes Sandra was saying something about getting together tonight. Oh yes, why not . . . His flight wasn't till ten in the morning.

He was speaking to a mirage of students from the rotunda of a lecture hall in the Engineering Building on the campus of the University of Colorado at Boulder at four-thirty in the afternoon a few days after leaving Seattle, when he saw in the audience, way at the back, an older woman: Painted Turtle. He hadn't noticed her at first. But when he became aware of her he started tripping over the bumpy surfaces of words on his tongue, choking on double entendres. He became a dying man swallowing a fishbone of language. There was another older person, a man, sitting beside her. The man was snickering, covering his mouth, whispering to Painted Turtle. He'd cock his head toward Mason, listen for a few seconds, then rock with suppressed laughter. Painted Turtle wasn't responding to her companion's jollity. Why was she here and who was the scornful mirth-maker
with her? Mason struggled through the talk and the reading then leaped offstage, pushing his way through the unruly crowd of exiting students—against the flow. His heart was apitapat. Not to loose sight of her. Many blonde heads. In a blood curdling frenzy, he knocked the students aside. “
Hay!
What the hell—!” “Mister Lather, ha . . . ” “Get a load of—” But she wasn't there when he got to the top. He was twitchety and hysterical. Frantically, he scanned the remaining people—some of them waiting to ask him questions in private. “May I speak to you a moment?” “Huh?” He brushed the student back and dashed down the aisle. The Turtle had to have gone out this way. “Uh, excuse me: I was wondering if you'd explain—” “In a minute, a minute please!” But
she
wasn't out in the hallway either, nor outside the building. He looked up at the sky. Blue potatoes. Clear as it can get. What bad medicine was this? Some warning? Could she have thought he wouldn't
see
her? He took in a deep breath of the sharp dry Colorado air. “Excuse me, but . . . ” “Yes, yes . . . ” When the students lingering behind finished with him, Mason's host—one of the many kindly old professors of the English Department—led the badly shaken and now muffish “writer” away to the parking lot near Old Main. As they walked Professor Tippoff pointed out the wonders of his campus. Mason hardly heard him. He was jerking his head about: still searching. Then suddenly—on the sidewalk at his feet, these words in blue chalk:
MRF owns Cowie: you're a cow on crutches
. Professor Tippoff: “I apologize for the graffiti. Some student with a laconic message for another. I suppose some things can't be relayed by telephone and sky writing is out of their reach.” He chuckled at his own foolproof humor. Professor Tippoff would put him up that night in his elegant old mansion near the hospital just north of Canyon Road. The spring city was atwinkle and, as they drove by the mall, people were strolling in their thin clothes, watching the tightrope walkers, fire-eaters, belly dancers, sword-swallowers, and each other in their endless blondness. Here at the base of the Flatirons perhaps a kind of calmness might be possible, thought Mason. Anyway, in the morning he'd go skiing,
for sure. It had to be one of the last possible days. Perhaps the spirit of the Arapahoe and hoodoo itself would protect this native son on the white slopes. He thanked the Tippoffs and set out. Up at Lake Eldora he stood in the lift ticket line behind a woman who turned around and giggling, said, “Beautiful day, isn't it.” She introduced herself as Sharon Seeberg.

The fanbelt of time pulled the days weeks months along and everything went smoothly till Mason got his November statement from Chase—one at First Avenue and Twenty-Sixth Street across from Bellevue—which didn't show a MRF deposit. It was now the morning of December eighth and when he went down for coffee at the bar, Sweden, who had no Swedish accent to speak of, handed him a telephone message: “Urgent: call John Armegurn. About your account.” The fanbelt? Coffee, moments later, tasted of axle grease and Frankish Morea sewage in Killini . . . Mason bought the
Times
and returned to the cup. Tricks? Cooler, it hadn't improved. Times: John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation had announced its new grantees. Mason recognized none of them. Urgent? Steep, sharp winds swept down the Alps of his nerves. Red clouds of fear moved over the baked-blood stillness of his mind. Sahara with a blistering scirroco. What an ungodly excuse for foreshadowing! Perhaps he'd need a new identity to get away . . . Already the fanbelt was about to snap—or the shit to hit . . . Mason suddenly got such an uneasy feeling—he felt as though he were being led by three captives into the jungle toward an awful confrontation. Wasn't three a magical number? Maybe only twenty-two was magical. Who knew. Yet he saw himself as a masked figure brought into a village somewhere, perhaps in South America or . . . God knows where, stripped and forced into an arena of Truth: made to account for his sins, his crimes. Brought before the altar of his family, his children, the women he'd betrayed. And he was
supposed to have some kind of message (either in writing or deliverable in some other form) for his executioner—but he couldn't remember where he'd stored it. He was also supposed to drink something called wongo soup before going to the site. He'd failed. Then there was something else about wearing a mask—and, shit, he knew nothing about masks. During this time, too, he kept dreaming of an old man in a red robe but none of it made any sense. Now, Old man Bryn Maur over there, religiously, sipping coffee and reading the
Times
, too.
His
troubles? Any? And there: the retired Lockheed Aircraft guy, Courtlandt, troubles . . . ? And the ex-Commissioner of the Florida Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission retiree, Mister Tredyffrin? The city for him was a troubleless haven? Did
their
coffee taste of the Middle Ages in Greece? of a sewer in Malusi Nquakula? Wasn't it possible to wake to cello and violin, a friendly woman in
Green Pastures
—green emeralds, fire engine-red rubies, cocaine white-diamonds, sapphires, rather than rusty wheelbarrows-without-white-chickens-beside-them and shovels of hardtimes, disappointment, corruption? Corruption? “Urgent . . . ” Banjo buggy rubbish! Shouldn't have sold the Polish machine pistol. The bar mirror gave him back his nutmeg face with sleep-puffiness still clinging to its green chrome. The cortex deep in there was tighter. Tensions between the vertebrae and the disc caused a yanking, a painful fear, he'd not before felt. The yin couldn't find the yang and the outer gray area was a disaster zone with screaming, fleeing mobs. Well, he had to face
it.
Back upstairs in his room, expecting the police to break the door in any moment, he phoned Armegurn. And he was listening to Armegurn for a full five minutes before he
heard
what he was saying: “Two hundred fifty eight of our accounts were sublet last week to Gwertzman, Meisnner, Lowell and Associates which is a division of the Kraus-Worner Foundation for the Arts and Sciences. So if your check is late this month this is the reason. Don't worry . . . ” “But—” “You see, Magnan-Rockford
owns
Kraus-Worner. We're just equalizing some of the responsibilities.” Mason didn't care for Armegurn's chuckle.