A Self Made Monster (2 page)

Jimmy refilled her glass.

“Thanks,” she smiled.

She smiled at me! Jimmy realized. And he felt that awkward lust, his penis swelling and his palms itching. She’s perfect for me, Jimmy thought. At feet seven inches, she was only seven inches taller than Jimmy. Her nipples, Jimmy thought, were in easy reach of his mouth.

Jimmy was summoning the courage to ask Holly for a date when she whistled across the room to a friend. “See ya, Jimmy. Thanks for the beer.” She rose without looking at him.

Jimmy cursed under his breath. At least she had sat with him for half an hour. Jimmy watched her disappear into a circle of students passing around a joint.
  

He
had
to spool her.

That’s it, Jimmy promised himself. Tomorrow he would transfer into Holly’s literature class. He would be a week behind and he hated to read, but he would be able to see Holly every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

Professor Alex Resartus leaned against the lectern. “I forget. What was your homework for today?”

“Nothing,” a couple students said.

“Not exactly. ‘Nothing’ is what you got out of your homework.” He snapped his fingers. “I remember. It was to start
Lady Chatterly’s Lover
. More from our friend D. H. Lawrence.” He glanced at his notes. “Now. What do you make of the gentleman in the wheel chair?”

Jimmy hid in a back corner. He did not speak or move. He hoped that by remaining still, like a hunted deer, the professor would not call on him. Unfortunately, Jimmy was the second student called upon.

“I’m new in the class,” he complained.

“Your excuse is old.” Alex resented students who showed up a week late without announcement.

“And your name is Mr…?”

“Stubbs.”

“Stubbs.” Alex smiled. Perfect for the little smart ass, Alex thought. Sitting there in studied indifference, arms folded across his chest.
 
“Stubbs,” he repeated loudly.

Jimmy instantly hated the professor. The professor wore tinted glasses and battered cotton slacks. Maybe he’s an old hippie, Jimmy guessed. Although he had never met a hippie, Jimmy hated them. Jimmy next noticed that the professor wore scuffed wingtips. Jimmy concluded that Resartus simply couldn’t dress.

The professor also yawned, smoked, frowned, and forgot questions in mid-sentence. Worst of all, Jimmy could not understand a single thing the professor said. Metafiction? Mythic archetypes? Marxist subtext? For Christ’s sake, Jimmy thought, he’s just talking about a stupid story.

The class got worse. At one point, the professor forgot the year
Lady Chatterly
was published.

A student with a pasty complexion instantly raised his hand.

“Yes, Mr…”
 
The professor shrugged amiably.
 
“Your name…?”

“Edward Head.” Edward enunciated each syllable precisely, hoping the professor would remember. Edward pushed a greasy bang of black hair from his forehead. “
Lady Chatterly’s Lover
was published in 1928. It was a private edition.”

Alex raised his eyebrows at this fact, one of many that he had forgotten. “That’s right.”

“An expurgated edition was put out in London in 1933. No, that’s ‘32.”

“That’s very good.”

“The complete edition,” Edward continued, “wasn’t brought out until 1960. That didn’t do much good for Lawrence, ‘cause he died in 1930.”

The students shifted in their chairs, offended by Edward’s knowledge. Several glanced at their watches. Jimmy cradled his chin in one palm and discreetly extended the hand’s middle finger at the know it all.

After Alex dismissed class, Edward approached the professor’s desk.

“Yes, Mr…”

“Mr. Head.”

“Right.”

“I wanted–I’d like to tell you that I really liked
The Best Year of His Life
.”

Alex considered Edward anew. Not many students knew about his writing.

“I think it’s really great. I took your class because of it.” Edward’s voice lowered, as if confiding a secret to a lover.
 
“I found it in a book sale this summer—really, it’s one of the best books I’ve ever read.”

“Thanks.” Alex lit a Dunhill, grinned through the smoke. He almost ate the match, then thought better of it. “That’s quite a compliment. I do appreciate it,” Alex lied. He was beyond caring about
The Best Year of His Life
.

“If you don’t mind me asking—?”

Alex smiled patiently.

“Well, why do you write? I mean, what’s your motive?”

Nobody had asked that question in years. “I write for…”Alex gathered his thoughts.”…for the same reason I read.
 
A desire to be elsewhere.”

“Huh…you mean, someplace other from here? At Tailor?”

“No, not Tailor specifically. Just to be…elsewhere.”

“What about your other novels?”

Alex removed his glasses and rubbed his hollowed, blood-shot eyes. “There are no others.”

“But that one is worth ten bad ones, I mean ordinary ones.”

“Thanks. Nice of you to remember.”

Jimmy caught up with Holly in the hallway.

“I didn’t know you were going to take this class,” Holly said.

“My advisor told me I should take it for humanities credit. Is it tough?”

“I can’t tell yet. What did you think?”

“I don’t like the professor much.”

“I’ve heard he’s OK. Just all over the road. Did you know he’s a writer?”

“Really?” Jimmy tried to sound interested. Before Holly had a chance to continue, Jimmy suggested they get a coffee at the student union. Holly agreed.

Jimmy discovered that besides talking about rock music and beer, Holly enjoyed talking about money. After graduation, she explained, she was moving to New York City to work in publishing. She hoped to be an agent. Agents, she said breathlessly, get up to fifteen percent of an author’s earnings.

“That’s why I’m in professor Resartus’s class,” she said. “He might have connections. If I do OK in his class, I hope he writes a recommendation.”

“What kind of stuff does he write?”

“I don’t know. Some sort of, of writing.”

Talk turned to Resartus’s assignments. Holly placed the class syllabus on the table. Jimmy pretended to study the syllabus and managed to move his chair closer to Holly’s. Being short could be good sometimes, he told himself. From the corner of his eye, he could study the heft of Holly’s breasts.

An erection forced him to reposition himself. He turned his head, pretended to cough, and repositioned himself a second time.

“This syllabus doesn’t look too bad,” he said casually. “I think that—” He swore. Holly was three tables over, talking to Edward Know It All.

Alex worked in his office until the sun was safely in the distant west. He put on his sunglasses, got a cigarette, and walked to his car. Thank hobbled Jesus, Alex thought, it’s only February.

He dreaded each spring because spring brought summer. Summer sun was the most dangerous. During the summer, he waited until dusk to come outside. He wore sunglasses, a hat, gloves, and a jacket with a full collar. Heavy clothing looked odd in July, so he said that he had suffered melanoma as a child. Winter sun was the least dangerous: he could go outside in the late afternoon if he wore sunglasses and dressed carefully.

But noon was always dangerous. Even the noon sun of December raised gelatinous blisters the size of fried eggs. And high noon in July! The thought appalled him. Alex would smoke and pop, like an insect trapped under a cruel child’s magnifying glass.

At home, Alex searched through his dozens of bookcases and found a copy of
The Best Year of His Life
. The novel covered one year in the life of Eric, a surgeon. In the course of the year, Eric slips and falls on his wife while performing the Heimlich; her skull is split and she dies in the ambulance. Some months later, Eric’s mother goes into insulin shock and dies on his operating table as he performs a biopsy. The mayor’s daughter, awaiting a tracheotomy, dies of anaphylactic shock caused by anesthesia. Meanwhile, Eric’s former girlfriend Happy threatens to sue for child support payments. Eric believes the child is his, but he is too distracted by his ruined career to communicate with her.

Eric’s faith in medicine is ruined, and he even avoids seeing a dentist about a toothache. The toothache worsens. In drunken despair, Eric pulls the offending tooth, using only channel looks, oil of clove, and Old Bushmill’s.

After pulling the tooth, Eric calls Happy and proposes a scheme. The scheme is complicated, Happy is not bright, and Eric must often pause to hold an ice bag to his mouth. But he finally manages to explain the scheme: Eric will perform needless exploratory heart surgery. Happy will file a malpractice suit, win, and the two will flee to Cancun.

The scheme succeeds, although Eric must bribe a colleague to testify against him in court. Eric and Happy flee with $2,000,000 to Cancun. Eric, Happy, and their child operate a hotel on the beach. Eric acts as the hotel’s beachside bartender and off-hours dentist.

Several strips of transparent tape on the novel’s dust jacket had turned yellow and brittle. Alex smiled at the reviews on the back:

“The finest example of black humor of the season. Horrific laughter, not mere
     

 
bitterness!”-
The New York Times

“Mr. Resartus’s first novel blasts off and never falters. He is now the young member of that old fraternity of such writers as Heller, Donleavy, Stewart, and Southern, writers who kept black humor alive even as the uncertain new millennium waited patiently.”-
The Fresno Bee.

“Nobody in recent years has so effectively wedded a pessimistic outlook with a comic technique.”-
The Chicago Tribune.

As he read the reviews, Alex tried to recall the promise his career once held. His family predicted fame and fortune. Alex fended off such talk, but hoped they were correct. The fact that Alex suffered from schizophrenia, the publisher hoped, might provide invaluable extra publicity. “You could be the next big thing, a real idiot savant!” his agent enthused. “Hard to buy that kind of publicity!” But
The Best Year of His Life
bombed. Alex’s only royalty check, $788, mocked his hopes. He urged his publisher to promote the book more, but the publisher replied that the book was dead.

Dead, just like his brother David.

David, a physician, was murdered in an emergency room six months after Alex’s novel was published. Alex happened to be with David that day, but he remembered only fleeting details: David yelling for help. Blood on the floor, on the ceiling, on hands and faces and white jackets. Somebody who was hurt or demented sitting beside Alex and laughing, blood spilling from his mouth as his laughter grew hysterical.

Alex often tried to recall that day, but the details eluded him. Alex simply knew that he improved that day: no more anxieties, no more depression, no more David. And a new therapy–human blood–replaced David’s drug therapy.

“Psychiatrists really are quacks,” David often said while giving Alex another psychoactive cocktail: various mixtures of lithium, trazodone, and haloperidol. “Freud’s primitive psychoanalysis is still polluting modern medicine. Analyzing dreams, for Christ’s sake! But don’t worry, Alex. Drugs will eradicate all mental illness in the 21st century.”

Alex smiled weakly. “Well we’re almost there.”

“That’s the spirit!” And so Alex’s already brittle psyche was strained, whipped, and pureed by David’s reckless drug therapy.

When David was murdered, Alex feared the novel was jinxed. David’s murder naturally dampened the family enthusiasm for Alex’s novel. And besides, mom and dad confessed the day after the funeral that they did not like
The Best Year of His Life
. “It’s kind of depressing,” his mom complained. When the novel died almost simultaneously with David, Alex hated David even more. At least he’s dead now, Alex often told himself.

Alex used his novel’s good reviews and the embers of his literary reputation to get a job at Tailor. Tailor was in the middle of
Illinois
, close enough for excursions into
Chicago
and
St. Louis
. And the surrounding dozing towns contained plenty of potential victims.

The literary world forgot Alex. His schizophrenia, and his tendency to assume victims’ traits, often left him severely disorganized. He could not develop his ideas. Now he sat at his kitchen table, staring at his copy of
The Best Year of His Life
.

If I could just concentrate, just remember things, Alex mused, I could write another novel.

Edward Head lived two miles from campus in a bungalow that was converted into two apartments. Edward lived in the basement apartment and filled his time there studying, listening to CD’s, and tinkering with videotape equipment and hidden microphones. Jill and Cheryl, two coeds, lived in the apartment above him. On occasion, he used tiny microphones to spy on the coeds. Recently, the coeds had not provided much entertainment. They had stopped seeing their boyfriends and killed time with TV and arguments about bathroom rights.