Me and My Manny (11 page)
Authors: M.A. MacAfee
The next morning, at the kitchen table, I penciled the info to be printed on the business cards, envelopes, and vehicle-logo I intended to order for my pioneering enterprise. First off, I’d need a phone number that customers could easily remember. There’s 1-800-I Got Mannys. Nope, too many words. 1-800-Oh Manny had the correct sum of letters, but I didn’t like the implied inflection. So I considered 1-800-Go Manny. It sounded upbeat like hurrahs from a group of high school cheerleaders.
I left off doodling and looked up at Harry, sitting across from me. He was glaring at Wolf, who sat on an adjacent chair, braced in an upright position with one arm resting on the table.
“Does that blockhead have to sit at the breakfast table every morning?”
“I wish you wouldn’t refer to him in such derogatory terms.”
“Why not? He doesn’t seem to mind.”
“He might not, but I do. It makes me feel like I’m back in my parents’ house.” I recalled that every morning started with a fight that cast a cloud over the entire day.
“Knock, knock,” Harry said suddenly jovial.
“Who’s there?”
“Wooden.”
“Wooden who?”
“Wooden you like to eat breakfast alone with your second-to-none other half?”
Smiling, I again glanced at Wolf; and in that instant, I could have sworn that his bright red lips jutted forward in the actual blowing of an air-kiss. I sipped my coffee and turned to Harry.
“It’s the strangest thing, but sometimes I think I see movement in the manny. Sometimes from the corner of my eye, it’s like I glimpse a slight twitch of his hand. Or a tiny jerk of his foot.”
“He’s made of wood, you know, wood expands and contracts.”
“Yeah but what I see is barely perceptible. It’s more like an involuntary knee-jerk reaction.”
“El Fake-o can’t react because he’s solid.”
“I wish you wouldn’t say things like that. How would you like it if somebody called you nasty names?”
“All right, I’m sorry. Let’s forget it, okay?” Harry lifted his coffee to his lips.
As he lowered the cup, I asked, “Do you suppose it’s possible to animate an inanimate object by just thinking about it? I don’t mean that if someone visualized a manikin jumping from its chair and dancing the jig, it really would. I was thinking of something more along the lines of a talent, like telekinesis.”
Just as Harry opened his mouth to speak, the china in the cupboard rattled, and for some time he sat, agape. Without telling Harry that Spike colliding with the wall in the next-door apartment had probably caused the disturbance, I went on. “I’ve heard that telekinetic events can really get wild when the person’s under stress.”
“A body at rest is not a body in motion,” Harry mumbled. “Laws of physics.”
Rather than quiz him on which law of physics, I elaborated. “There was a movie once where the main character demonstrated the destructive potential of telekinesis. She became so angry over being picked on by her classmates that she tapped into her wild talent and brought down an entire town.”
“Sell all you want, I ain’t buying,” Harry said just as the overhead light bulb flashed with a loud
pop
and burnt out.
“Mind over matter,” I resumed. “Though it’s not normally under a person’s conscious control.”
“I can’t talk to you when you go off on one of these illogical tangents.”
“I’m not so sure it is illogical. There’s documented evidence.”
“Unreliable evidence.”
Then suddenly, Wolf’s arm slipped off the table and dangled at his side, swaying. I looked at Harry, staring saucer-eyed at the displaced limb.
Such incidents, occurring as they had right before my eyes, prompted me to dwell on the possibility that I could be moving my manny with my subconscious mind. It was a disturbing prospect. By implication, it meant that if I ever became so mad over Harry’s scorn of Wolf that I’d be as dangerous as a loaded gun.
Were my dendrites jump-starting Wolf? Were my neurotransmitters triggering him? To find out, I wound my mind up and flung a thought at the manny.
Hop to it!
I waited, but nothing happened.
In truth, I hadn’t expected anything to happen. Telekinetic power can’t be reigned over. Further, I doubted my subconscious mind could rattle dishes and blow out light bulbs. Rather, in my own inimitable way, I figured my wild talent was object-specific and limited solely to the manny.
To verify the phenomenon that the manny could be activated by my brain, I would attach bells to Wolfs frame. Whenever he shifted, flexed, or stretched by way of my subconscious mind, the bells would tinkle and as such confirm my suspicions.
That very night, sure enough, my manny’s bells went off.
“What the—” Harry sat up in bed and angled his head. “Did you hear that? I thought I heard something.”
Not recalling that I’d booby-trapped Wolf, I stirred and, in a tired voice, said, “It’s only the mice. Go back to sleep.”
“I got to check,” Harry said. “It was a tinkling sound, like glass breaking, like someone cracking a window.”
“Nobody can break into a place on the fourth floor,” I muttered, rolling onto my back.
With his robe on, his slippers flopping, Harry had gotten as far as the bedroom door when I bolted upright.
“Don’t go out there!”
“Why not?” He turned, looking annoyed.
“I didn’t want to tell you, but it’s Wolf. He’s up and around.”
“The dummy is up and around,” Harry slowly repeated through clenched teeth.
I nodded. “Remember what I told you about mind over matter?” Even in the dimness, I could see anger flaring like struck matches in Harry’s eyes. “Well, I’ve managed to achieve it. Wolfs been animated. He could be dangerous.”
Despite my protests, Harry pivoted smartly and tramped out of the room.
In the meantime, I sat frozen by visions of a deranged manikin shambling out of the darkness and toward Harry, intent on getting even for the pounding it took.
“I don’t believe it,” Harry moaned from another room, hence scaring the wits out of me.
I shot from the bed and scurried into the lighted kitchen.
“He looks strung up like a Christmas tree,” Harry said, now hunched over Wolf’s body slumped on the floor beside a chair.
The window across from where Wolf had been sitting was opened a few inches and through the crack came an errant breeze that tinkled Wolf’s bells and from the looks of things had also blown him over.
“I couldn’t be sure of my powers,” I explained. “Being telekinetic is like having a split personality. One half of you doesn’t know what the other half is up to because the talent’s not under your conscious control.”
Looking bewildered, Harry stared at me for what seemed an eternity. He then went back into the bedroom and slammed the door closed.
Never one to make a critical decision without first consulting reliable sources, I was about to check my horoscope in a supermarket tabloid, when someone knocked on the front door. I set the paper aside, eyed Lisa through the peephole, and invited her in.
“Have you seen Miss Kitty? I’ve searched for her everywhere,” she said in a worried voice.
I recalled finding what looked like a cat’s paw after seeing Spike in the hall up to no good. Yet I declined mentioning the incident because of the trouble it might cause Ruthie, another happy manny user and possibly part of my marketing strategy. Hoping against hope that the cat hadn’t been divested of all her nine lives at once, I said that I had seen neither hide nor hair of her, but I’d be on the lookout.
Lisa glanced beyond me and at the tabloid on the table. “Oh, the horoscopes. Are you finished with it?”
“Not yet. I need to make sure it’s in the stars for me to advance my manny as a simulator. You know, for the purpose of interpersonal education, relationships, and such.”
“A simulator?” Lisa appeared interested. “You mean like those high-fidelity manikins now used to train med students?”
“Similar, but without the removable intestines and canned medical complaints. I mean, who needs a date that wheezes, coughs, and bellyaches?”
“That’s for sure,” Lisa said with a look that encouraged me to go on.
“Since a simulated experience is somewhat an imitation of the real thing, I figure the manny could be used as a tool to practice on before making a long-term commitment.”
“Good idea. If you’re going to screw up, it’s best to do it on the make-believe.”
“My sentiments exactly.” Fancy that. In the brave new world of virtual reality, I was something of a trendsetter.
“Amazing how many relationships start off on the wrong foot,” Lisa said, plopping down on the sofa. “You take the plunge, only to find out later that you and your partner are totally mismatched. Before you know it, you’re smashing windshields, slashing tires, and gouging paint.”
“Breaking up is hard to do.” I now comprehended why Ernie was forever attending to his vehicle.
“It’s wrong to expect too much from your spouse,” Lisa said. “No one can fill all of another’s emotional needs.”
“That’s the area a manny’s most effective. Just a small amount of contact with it and bingo—” I broke off and shrugged.
“The manny does nothing,” Lisa supplied.
“Now
you
got it. Doesn’t she Wolf?” I leaned toward the alcove where I’d left Wolf on a stool wedged in a corner. “That’s my manny.” I pretended to listen as if expecting a response. “In one ear and out the other.”
Lisa nodded in agreement. “Because a manny disregards you from the start, contact with it is good training.”
“From day one,” I said, echoing her point, “a manny compels you to become your own person and to practice self-reliance. The lower your expectations, the fewer your disappointments.”
“I never thought about it that way.”
“I’m not saying that a manny can guarantee marital bliss. But, by using it to make a few dry runs, you end up better prepared to avoid actual problems… broken windshields, slashed tires, you name it.”
“Don’t forget impotency.” And name it she did. “Amazing how tying the knot lynches sex.”
Swallowing hard, I again glanced at the manny propped on the stool without a care in the world. No adrenaline, no testosterone, no glandular fluids of any kind.
Lisa sank back against a plump cushion. “Wolfs mysterious appeal could have something to do with the times—you know, with the information age. The libido might be in the brain, but messing around with a tangible manny has got to be better than the spacey nothingness of cybersex.”
“Asexuality is a manny’s trade mark. No way will one ever get mixed up in some messy love triangle where the players have to go on a reality show for a genetic test to determine paternity.” I made a mental note to include another chapter in my pending manny manual; its heading could be tips for the sophisticated woman’s unfettered relationship.
“You’re right about one thing,” Lisa began, “simple companionship can be more gratifying than intimacy, which is hardly as gratifying as people pretend.”
“Rather than filling up your senses, a manny helps you empty them. A manny’s like an antidote for toxic love,” I said. “It provides a sort of cleansing process.”
I valued Lisa’s opinion. She had sampled the product and approved of it. Since nothing sells the merchandise faster than a good word from the mouth of a satisfied customer, I intended to ask her to do a testimonial in my campaign to advertise mannys. But of first importance, she must realize that a manny was more than a plaything.
“Strange, isn’t it,” Lisa said in an easy, meditative voice. “We have all these fabulous new ways to communicate—computers, cell phones, the Net. They bring us together in an instant and drive us apart just as fast. Our families are smaller; our friends are fewer; we can stay in touch, but rarely face-to-face.”
“Out of sight, out of mind,” I said.
“Speaking of which”—Lisa knitted her brow—“my Miss Kitty is always wondering off. Maybe if I got a dog, she’d get jealous and stick around. One of those teacup-sized poodles would be nice.”
Humph, Spike would down that teacup in one gulp. But, recalling Lisa’s threat about a rent hike to cover Wolf’s occupancy, I thought it best to say nothing.
“By the way,” I said, intent on changing the issue, “I was thinking of doing a little business from my home office here in the apartment.” I gestured toward the alcove where from my computer I wrote e-mails and paid bills.
“No problem. Your lease doesn’t exclude working from home, provided you don’t break the law or disturb other tenants.”
Unable to find anything taboo about marketing mannys, I said, “Good,” and in the next instant, the phone began to ring. From an end table, I picked it up on the second bell. It was Ernie, calling from the office.
“He says something in a long tube came for Mrs. Crumble and he wants you to drop it off,” I told her.
“Tell him to drop—” Lisa broke off, raising her hand as if stopping herself, and the several gaudy bracelets she got from a home shopping channel tinkled over her spangled wristwatch. “Oh, never mind,” she said, standing. “He’s just trying to get out of delivering Sarah’s copy of the
Last Supper
. The old crone found four of the twelve apostles in the new drapes that the handyman put up for her. Ever since, she’s been pestering us about the poster she sent for.”
“Sounds like she’s trying to crack her own Da Vinci code,” I said, escorting Lisa out.
When the door closed, I went to Wolf, patiently waiting in my new home office. “Bless your little wooden heart, Wolfie. You are gonna rock their world— virtually.”