Panorama City (10 page)

 

Behind the front counter sat a woman in tight clothing, her ponytail tied up high, arms crossed tight across her chest. Paul walked up to her and said a few words, she picked up
the phone, spoke into it, hung up, and recrossed her arms. When health club members came in, they swiped a card over a box, she nodded at them. I recognized her as a fellow wage slave and gave her a smile, she smiled back quickly with her mouth only, no other motion in her face. I sat on a bench, the box at my feet, I tried to place the smell in the air, laundry, sweat, and a third thing, an air freshener that must have been designed in a lab somewhere, there was no way to describe it. Paul sat next to me and explained that we were waiting for the head honcho, that he would liaison with the head honcho and then let me get to selling, he explained that he would love to stick around and help me, but that in order to keep up appearances he would have to return to the field office. I was about to ask him what he meant when the so-called head honcho came out. His name was Carter, he had a bumpy bald head and strange eyebrows, it looked like he had shaved off his eyebrows and then darkened the skin where they'd been, his skin looked like it'd been burned and then fixed by doctors, is the best way I can put it. He was large, I mean he was thick, I couldn't tell if he was in shape, or had been in shape but no longer was, there was no way to know whether he was built of fat or muscle without touching him. I realized immediately that he and Paul had talked before, which was a relief. Paul explained that as the West Coast regional sales representative for a pharmaceutical firm he couldn't name because of market research-related privacy concerns, all his words, he couldn't be more excited to roll out this new antioxidant cream through selected, by which he said he meant exclusive, outlets in Southern California, by which he meant Carter's health club. He then introduced me as a rising star on his sales team and told him I'd be handling the table today. I shook hands with Carter, his hand was warm like it had been resting on a radiator. Carter said that if there was anything he could do for me, and then he didn't finish the sentence. Paul and I set up a folding table near the entrance, just past where people swiped their cards, and together we arranged a few rows of antioxidant creams and penlights, and then he pulled out a little folding cardboard sign that listed the benefits of the product and so on. He said that there was one thing I shouldn't forget while I was working today, which was that we were in a temple, that we had entered a sacred space, that this was a temple to the body, and that the most important organ was not the brain, as some thought, or the heart, but the skin, without the skin the brain and heart would be useless. We had brought with us a product to honor that organ, we had brought with us the most advanced antioxidant skin cream available, and then he said surely I could riff on that for a while, surely I could elaborate on that pitch, he had many things to take care of, he was already late for the lunch shift, but soon there would be no more parking cars, he said, no more picking trash off dumpsters, he was putting his faith and trust in me, he had no doubt I would succeed.

***

I didn't have an opportunity to use Paul's sales pitch, exactly, I mean that by the time I'd asked someone what the most important organ was in the human body, they had already swiped their card and nodded at the girl behind the counter and were gone inside. Or, if they were on the way out, they pointed at their watches, or just smiled and apologized and kept moving. A few people paused long enough for me to say that the skin was the most important organ, but then they kept going, one said huh, and more than one said, as if asking, but not really asking, The skin is an organ? before going deeper into the health club or out the front door. Finally a guy approached my table, he was on his way out, he smelled like a fresh shower, his hair was still wet, he was wearing a suit and had a duffel bag over his shoulder, he asked me if this was the sort of shit his wife would like. I explained that the special qualities of the cream were such that when used in conjunction with the UV penlights it could make someone look younger after about two weeks of regular application. He grabbed a tube from the table, opened it, and held it to his face. His nose wrinkled up and then he said he wasn't about to step into the doghouse by giving his wife something that was supposed to make her look younger. He left without buying anything, but his presence at the table, his standing there for a moment or two, attracted a few more potential customers, which is related to Roger Macarona's ideas about the ideal number of cars in the drive-thru line, which I will cover later, if there is time. Anyhow, the next potential customer was a woman who had heard me talking about looking younger, she asked me whether the cream could help retard the effects of aging, were the words she used, on the backs of her hands. You might be picturing a very old woman, Juan-George, you might be wondering what kind of old woman goes to a health club and has maintained such keen hearing into old age, but this woman was not in the least old, I believe she was younger than I was, she couldn't have been much older than twenty-five, if that, and she was in excellent shape, with excellent skin, and the backs of her hands were no different than any other part of her. This is where the genius of Paul Renfro comes in, I mean if I had been trying to sell the antioxidant cream on my own I might have gone to a nursing home, or to the park where the wrinklies played cards, I mean I would have tried to sell the cream to those who could actually benefit from it. But as Paul explained later we were appealing to youth, to the vanity of youth, not the actual skin of old age.

 

While she was deciding whether to buy the cream, I mean she had put some on the back of her hand and was sniffing it, a man who had been standing behind her stepped up to the table, he said he had a few questions. He asked if the cream worked on men or was it just for women. I told him it was for everyone. Then he said he would be interested,
but only if he could be sure it worked, he didn't want to throw away money on something that didn't work, he'd been snookered before. I said I understood, I said that we'd taken that into account with our money back guarantee. If he used the cream for two weeks and discovered it had no effect on him, which was unlikely, I said, it had been formulated by one of the greatest thinkers of the twentieth century, if it had no effect, or if he was unsatisfied in any way, he could return the unused portion for a complete refund, we stood behind our product that much, some of Paul's words and some of mine. The man nodded, he carefully read the cardboard sign that Paul had set up, he picked up a tube of cream to assess its weight, he flicked a penlight on and off. He was tempted, but he wasn't sure he was ready to pull the trigger, his words. What we needed, his opinion, was a trial period. Now the woman who was standing next to him chimed in, she thought that would be a good idea too. I suggested that a money back guarantee was as good as a trial period. The man said that with a money back guarantee it was up to the customer to return the unused portion, it was up to the customer to get his money back, it was up to the customer to wait to get his money back, and so on. With a trial, if the product is truly excellent, the customer pays, and if it's not, that's the end of that, there's no returning anything, no back and forth. If you stand behind your product a trial is the way to go. I considered what he said, I assessed it from all sides, and I thought about Paul and what he had said about the antioxidant
cream, and I thought too about how long I had been there already without anyone stopping by the table, and here was an opportunity to actually move some product, as they say. I told the man I'd be willing to offer the product as a trial, I'd be willing to let him take a tube for two weeks, after which, if he was satisfied, we could meet back at the health club, two weeks from today, I said, we could meet right there and he could pay me. I asked him to write down his name. I gave him his tube and penlight and shook hands with him, I could see in his eyes, Juan-George, that he was an honest man, I could see that when the cream worked for him he would be back in two weeks to pay me, two weeks was not long in the scheme of things, I thought, what difference did it make if some of the money took a little longer to trickle in, people waited two weeks for their paychecks, didn't they? Once he had gotten his free trial, the woman who had walked up, the young woman who had been waiting to the side so patiently, she'd set her handbag on the table, ready to get her wallet out perhaps, and had now pulled it off the table, she asked whether I'd be willing to do the same thing for her. I couldn't see why not. And then, according to what I'll call Oppen Porter's corollary to Roger Macarona's ideas about the ideal number of cars in the drive-thru line, other people stepped up to the counter, other people interested in the properties of the antioxidant cream, other people who wondered whether I'd be willing to offer the same free trial deal to them, one after the other, in an unbroken stream of customers, or potential customers, I should say, until there was nothing left on the table but Paul's standing cardboard sign and my list of names.

 

If I knew then what I know now, I wouldn't have gone back to Paul's apartment building that day, and so I wouldn't have found myself standing on the sidewalk looking into a car windshield at a crumpled fast-food place bag with Paul's hand-drawn map on it. How strange, I thought, I remember thinking, that Paul's map should be staring at me from the dashboard of a car parked in front of Paul's building. How strange that that car should be the same kind as Aunt Liz's. How strange, and then it dawned on me, that Aunt Liz herself should be getting out of that car and walking toward me with an unhappy look on her face. What the heck did I think I was doing, she wanted to know, why the heck was I here instead of at the fastfood place, she wanted to know, Roger Macarona called her when I didn't show up to work and she had been looking for me ever since, she had almost called the police, she said that twice, the police. She'd had to cancel a whole slew of notary public appointments, which were her bread and butter, to wander the valley looking for me, first along the bus lines, then everywhere between her house and the fast-food place, and finally, luckily, she'd looked through my things, she looked around my room, and found, sitting on the dresser, this map, she held up Paul's map, finally here of all places. All of this was very serious, she said, she was very disappointed that I had somehow found time to see the one person she had expressly forbidden me to see, for my own good, that man Paul. I didn't deny it, I don't believe in lying, there's enough to keep track of already in this world, but I also didn't admit it, I didn't say anything, I just got into the car, I was shocked, I think, I was shocked and stunned and I kept quiet, to express how I was feeling I moved the seat back as far as it would go, I moved the seat back to what was a comfortable position for me but which would require Aunt Liz to turn around completely if she wanted to talk to my face. We rode in silence for a while, and then Aunt Liz cleared her throat. Here it comes, I thought. But the first thing she did was apologize, I hadn't expected that, she started by saying that she was sorry she hadn't thought of my feelings before, that she hadn't thought about how lonely I would be in Panorama City.

 

It was perfectly natural, her words, that I would try to make new friends, she couldn't blame me, but she wasn't going to apologize for keeping me away from that man Paul, her words, he was trouble, she knew it from the first time she laid eyes on him through the peephole in her front door. The whole thing was her fault, her words, because she had made the same mistake as her brother, my father, your grandfather, she had extended me too much freedom, how could she expect me to follow the righteous path without drawing me a map, I should have been following her map, not Paul's, it was a good thing she'd managed to find me, she'd been worried sick, she didn't want to imagine the alternative, all her words. It is difficult for me to remember how I responded to Aunt Liz, again it wasn't just her talking and me listening, though I didn't say much, I wasn't sure what she was getting at about freedom, about extending me too much, because between the fast-food place and Dr. Rosenkleig and our regular meals with the unlit candle I didn't feel free at all, I didn't feel like Aunt Liz had extended me any freedom whatsoever. But one thing about freedom is that you don't notice it until someone takes it away. Of course Aunt Liz had her own philosophy about freedom, which was that freedom isn't free. She said it repeatedly, I could not wrap my head around it. Even after she explained that she meant I would have to earn my freedom from her with responsible behavior, that when I proved myself worthy, meaning that I would make good use of so-called free time, meaning not getting involved in any unsavory business, even after that explanation I couldn't understand why freedom shouldn't be free. Free was right there in the word
freedom
. It was the most preposterous philosophy in Aunt Liz's arsenal of small ideas, Paul's later words. What Aunt Liz was offering, I came to understand, was the opposite of freedom, she would release me only once I began behaving like a prisoner. There are invisible lines, Juan-George, and then there are invisible fences.

TAPE
4,
SIDES A & B;
TAPE
5,
SIDES A & B;
TAPE
6,
SIDE A

Aunt Liz found me under the covers, breathing my own air, she had been calling me to dinner and I had not responded. She was going to introduce me to someone new, she said, a surprise friend, so I would no longer be lonely in Panorama City. In fact I hadn't been lonely there at all, I met new people every day, I hadn't made friends with Paul because I was lonely, I had made friends with Paul because he was a fellow thinker. Aunt Liz wouldn't listen to my explanations, her ideas were fixed in her head. Which I talked to Dr. Rosenkleig about, Aunt Liz had made an emergency appointment, it was that day I finally had a conversation with Dr. Rosenkleig that was more than talking in circles. For the first time Dr. Rosenkleig sat straight up, he looked almost like he was leaning toward me, he didn't sway to the side, his eyelids didn't droop. His goal always seemed to be to make me say more, to liberate me from my words, to get me to use up all of my words, to let loose a flow of words until the source was dry. That day, though, he was responsive, he asked questions, he came up with an idea. He didn't look like a cat lazing in the sun anymore, he looked like a dog pointing into tall
grass. I told him about Aunt Liz and her idea of freedom, and how she was trying to keep me from communicating with the one fellow thinker I knew, and how she was trying to quash any ambitions or dreams I had, and how in general she was steering me away from greatness at every turn, some of which were my words and some of which were Paul's. I told him about the lack of flexibility in her thinking, about the rigidity of her thoughts, and about her bodily proximity to the steering wheel. I told him that Paul had initiated me as a man of science, that he had taught me about the scientific method and about experiments, and about two principles he had developed in his youth, when he had been a promising young scientist, before his brain overheated, as he put it, which were, one, nature is always ironic and, two, there are no such things as constants, neither of which I really understood but, as Paul said, they were advanced ideas. Talk of science got Dr. Rosenkleig excited, he was a man of science, he believed himself a man of science, he wondered aloud if we could discuss my situation in those terms, from one scientist to another, which made sense to me. Clearly Aunt Liz and I were having trouble agreeing on what was best for me, we had different ideas about it, but rather than battling back and forth endlessly why not resolve the question with a scientific experiment? It was fortunate, Dr. Rosenkleig's words, that I had developed an interest in science, we could skip the preliminaries and get right to designing the experiment. There was no way to know whether Aunt Liz's plan for me was truly objectionable unless we subjected it to
experimental technique. He stood and pushed the chair away behind him. He proposed something called a clinical trial. For one month, I would follow Aunt Liz's plan without questioning my feelings about it. Only then could I truly know whether she might have had access to some secret knowledge, some insight she couldn't fully articulate that was nevertheless informing her decision-making process. I objected that I couldn't just turn my back on Paul Renfro. Dr. Rosenkleig made the point that a month wasn't a long time, that for the sake of a scientific approach we should pursue this experiment, that it wouldn't win the war between thinkers and nonthinkers, of course, but that sometimes science had to pursue more modest goals, and that at the end of the month, having followed Aunt Liz's plan, if the results were less than favorable, we would know Aunt Liz's plan was baseless and I could escape, I would be justified in escaping, to work with Paul Renfro or do whatever it was I wanted to do for the rest of my life, but that in the meanwhile I should focus on putting Aunt Liz's plan to the test, empirically and wholeheartedly, like the scientist I had become. I considered Dr. Rosenkleig's suggestion quite seriously, turned it over in my head, ran through all of the possibilities, debated whether I was going to pursue it or not, and finally, in the end, after much serious deliberation, I made my decision. Despite his professionalism, despite his being a professional, I decided to give Dr. Rosenkleig the benefit of the doubt, I decided to focus on the positive aspects. Independent of the issues surrounding professionalism, it was a good idea to put Aunt Liz's plans to the scientific test, something that I felt confident I could do, something through which I could continue to pursue the sciences, through which I could advance thinking in general. All right, I said to Aunt Liz, all right, I said to her outside Dr. Rosenkleig's home office, after my session with him was over and I had considered his suggestion quite seriously, had turned it over in my head and looked at it thoroughly from all angles. All right, I said.