Celestial Inventories (14 page)

“What is it you are looking for?” she asked again, insisting.

“I want the flesh,” he said, crying, “the flesh he would have been. The flesh that lasts forever.”

And then she opened up around him, and in so doing pulled him apart. And he lost the last vestiges of his control. And the secret flesh within him began to whisper in Mark’s voice, filling the emptiness of his body.

When Jim arrived at the hospital the next morning a different technician was in charge. A young man, short dark hair, very professional. A human. The young man Mark might have been. A sheet covered Mark’s body.

The technician frowned slightly. “You are?”

“His father.” Always.

The young man’s composure slipped a fraction. “Oh, I’m sorry. The committee . . . made a decision. We . . .” He gestured toward the body.

“That’s okay,” Jim said. “There’s no need to apologize.”

The young man’s movements suddenly became quick and slightly awkward. He touched the bed bearing Mark’s body, and twisted back to look at Jim. There seemed to be a vague sort of panic in his eyes. “You can view the body, if you wish. Would you like that?”

“I already have,” Jim said, and turned away.

The flesh that would have been Mark’s. A flesh that would last beyond the small details of a life. What he had always needed. What anyone needs. Jim could feel the gift of their lovemaking opening up inside him, new sensory apparatus for interpreting and dreaming the world.

Somewhere below Jim’s rib cage, hidden among pancreas, kidneys, and intestines, the organ of his secret flesh took nourishment from longings and dreams, and with a steady supply of blood began, at last, to function.

Almost at once it became habit. During long days in the file room with no one to talk to, his hands normally unoccupied would snag some scrap of paper or trash and speak what he was unable to find words for. Staring at the scenery his eyes invented out of textured ceiling, out the window where gorgeous creatures reclined in cloud, he would catch his hands pulling and twisting at a candy wrapper, a hen-scratched Post It, a sheet of lost and yellowing stationery, until at last the first glimmer of bird came through.

He had no inkling of the long traditions of paper folding. He knew far less than his hands knew: of bending, pressing, worrying free the shape poised for flight out of garbage. And when he ran out of garbage he made birds out of the grim chronicles of neglect, disease, and grief salvaged from these long-dead patients’ files.

That first paper bird had been a strange thing: wings with the shattered angles of lightning, beak a twisted black tear. Over the years the shapes refined: at times almost delicate in the ways the multiple-creased necks reached up to support the complicated heads, at times unsoundly fantastic as paper stub wings evolved into great wavering flyleaves of actuarial data ready to take the sad facts of a life and journey south over some dark and troubled continent to the nesting grounds along the far edge of where we all came from.

There was no money in what his hands made, of course, but then he had no talent for money, or much else, working only to clothe and feed his small family. Freedom was something fine and good in the antique gold-tooled novels his grandfather had passed his way, which he had sold after a single reading. And he knew he was lucky to live in a country that had so much of it, although he’d never quite been able to grasp the details.

Years later when they cleaned out the old hospital records, decades of paper and film and what no longer matters, carried the lot to bins and incinerators, they discovered the waste of his hands and heart: birds put away neatly in every folder, birds tucked into envelopes and nested in the gaps of the unused alphabet, birds secreted into record books, birth records, treatment plans, and autopsy reports, birds by the thousands spilling from the boxes the workers carried outside, caught by the wind funneled between the tall buildings, rising with the orderly progress of the flames, set free into air and light, and they all, all of them stopped their lives that day to watch.

Main thing is, you’re selling something those folks need, something they can’t live without.

“It’s not the bang in your buck, it’s the buck in your bang.” At the end of the commercial the words blaze a brilliant white across the black screen, then fade. Emil remembers a time when clarity was of the utmost importance in sales, conventional wisdom being that people would not buy an unknown quantity. Of course, what they thought they were getting might not bear much resemblance to the object eventually delivered wrapped in brown paper C.O.D., but at least the transaction began with that image in mind, clear if erroneous.

Now, a certain degree of clairvoyance is required to discern what goods are actually being advertised. Emil, himself in the sales business, watches commercials in the hotel rooms along his route, trying to map out exactly what the rules are now. What troubles him most is that they seem to be not just about new sales techniques, but about a change in the human psyche itself. We have become the creatures in our dreams, he thinks, poured into pleasing and biodegradable packaging.

People want something—that has been the message behind the message in every ad or commercial.
You want something
, they remind us. The ads advertise want. They advertise need. No wonder the actual product remains in the background. At some level the advertisers have finally realized their products are merely symbolic, almost irrelevant.

Much of the mysterious advertising, Emil has finally concluded, is for various brands of pants.

After a few years, all the towns, all the countless burgs and villes line up like endless doors opening one by one, and seem like the same town, the same Main Street with the same row of worn brick or white-washed wood on each side, the same people of pink or yellow or brown in their denims, corduroys, cottons, or polyesters, waving or not waving depending on how friendly toward strangers they are feeling on this particular day. And yet Emil, the professional salesman, has never really thought of himself as a stranger.

That was the first thing he learned in sales: you cannot act like or think of yourself as a stranger. Not if they are going to trust you. Not if they are going to
buy
. And how is buying any different from shaking a hand, giving a good how-do-you-do, getting married, kissing the kids good night? Not much, when you really think about it. Just another form of social exchange, value for value, you rub my back and I’ll rub yours. You don’t want to be left back on the shelf when everybody’s buying. That’s the very worst thing. You don’t want to remain unsold all your life.

Sometimes Emil is so intent he is on the eventual accounting that he forgets sales is more than that. It is a matter of wishes and dreams, of planning and foresight, of frustration and expectation. After years on the road, each town is exactly what he’d expected it to be. The streets are exactly what he’d imagined; the people are perfectly familiar because they’ve already walked these streets in one of his countless motel daydreams.

It is as if, every day, the citizens of these tiny communities rebuild their town according to his expectations, anticipating his particular arrival. Given how self centred human beings are, this is no doubt a common misperception. It is one of the first things you learn as a salesman, and if you are good at your job, you use it to your advantage.

Emil is not good at his job. In fact, if there is a worse salesman out there on the road Emil has not yet met him. The man with the off-kilter eyes fills the screen with a loopy grin. A dolly back to reveal the rest of the family: the wife rubbing up against him in her new red dress, barely able to contain herself, the kids jumpy. Emil thinks the boy may have peed his pants.

They are all holding up great wads of fake cash to the camera: the portrait on one of the bills resembles Clark Gable more than any president Emil can think of. And yet these people are so thrilled to have it in their hands—they jump around as if affected by some nervous disease.

Having little tolerance anymore for the manic patter of commercials he keeps the volume down as he watches the television family pantomime surprise, joy, delirium. They’ve gotten what they’ve always wanted, or at least now they can afford to buy what they’ve always wanted. Failing that, perhaps they can rent it. If it’s still available. If they can ever figure out what it is.

He really shouldn’t make fun, he thinks. If people didn’t behave this way, if they stopped looking for something to make them happy, they wouldn’t buy.

Of course, people seldom buy from him in any case. In fact, Emil has come to think of himself as the Anti-salesman, like some super villain with a huge grey cape and unpleasant teeth.

Emil has in his pocket a letter from an old salesman he used to meet out on the road a couple of times a year. Their paths might cross in Goodland, or in Hugo, perhaps even in Kansas City. Supposedly Walt had been quite successful in his time, but Emil knows him only as this tired-looking fellow who might have been a retired teacher or someone recently recovered from a lengthy illness.

“Emil, This is a job offer of sorts. Not for a specific job really but it is the promise of a job, a good job with regular hours and good benefits. And there’s
no
travel involved. My friends and I have had this dream we’ve developed over years on the road, a dream built a stick at a time in hotel rooms and all night diners, of someday having our own town, a factory outlet town where customers would come to
you
to buy the things they really needed to buy. So no sales pitches or how-many-should-I-put-you-down-fors. Why, any pressure high or low would simply be out of the question! We need salesmen to run the stores of this new town, trained salesmen who have become more interested in helping people than they are in earning high commissions . . .”

Emil has taken this letter out and unfolded it and reread it so many times it threatens to fragment into a dozen or so worn paper squares held together by a few commas and dashes.

He has never visited this new town. It just makes him feel good knowing that it is there.

Sometimes Emil fantasizes that he will find a way to sneak back and catch the residents of a town unawares. Then he will find out exactly what each of these places is really like. Perhaps at last he will discover what people really think about him. The thought is both exciting, and dreadful.

Emil’s career in sales hasn’t always been like this. In the beginning he never knew what to expect when he arrived in a new town. It had been interesting. It had made him anxious. He never knew if he’d find hell or a paradise. Most of the time it had been neither, of course, a necklace of grey towns and grey people, but at least that heady anticipation had always been there.

“The
main
thing is . . .” Jack looked around for a place to spit. Emil moved his feet out of the way. Finally the old man looked over his shoulder and spat behind him. “Main thing is, you’re selling something those folks
need
, something they can’t live without.”

“I don’t want to lie to anybody,” Emil had said.

“Lie? Who said anything about lying, boy? I don
’t want you to
lie
, for chrissake! Who knows what anybody needs? I don’t know what you need. Are you arrogant enough to tell me you know what
I
need? Do you really know what
you
need? I doubt it. Even occasional self knowledge is a rare thing, boy. It’s luck, pure and simple. So don
’t talk to me about lies. Guesses, would be more accurate.”

“I don’t even know what I’m selling,” Emil said.

“That’s because I haven’t told you yet, boy.” Jack pulled an oft-creased, yellowing square of paper out of his back pants pocket. Ignoring the tiny paper slivers that flaked off and littered the floor, he unfolded it, unfolded it again. When it was about a yard square he stopped and pressed his nose against it. The paper was so worn and discoloured it made Emil think of a thin layer of old skin. He could practically read Jack’s expression through the huge square: the wrinkled forehead, the pursed lips, the mushy dark grey eyes like a baby’s. But Emil couldn’t make out any of the writing, or even if there was any writing.

“There’s some difference of opinion on this.” Jack’s voice raised and lifted the paper as if it were a floating tissue. “But encyclopaedias best for a beginner, I suspect. You’re offering them the world of knowledge, the flying carpet to distant lands, all of that for just a few bucks a month. Just gotta remember that with encyclopaedias you only call on people who have kids.”

“Because most adults think their learning days are over,” Emil added helpfully.

“Somethin’ like that. Tell me, are
you
willing to learn, or do you just want to put your own two cents in?”

“Oh, yes, I want to learn. Really.” It was just to be a short term job following graduation, something to put food in his mouth and a roof over his head until something better came along.

“OK, then. The thing about selling encyclopaedias is you can convince them they need to buy a set for their kids’ futures. Everybody wants to do things for the future of their kids—in this country we spoil them rotten.”

Emil’s own parents had begrudged him every penny. You would have thought they might have found the cure for cancer if only they hadn’t had to worry about their only son.

If he ever had children, if he ever could convince a woman he was worth raising a family with, he’d surely buy them a set of encyclopaedias. A whole damn library. You could not do enough for your kids.

“You’d buy your own kids encyclopaedias, wouldn’t you? I mean if you had any?” It was as if the old man read his mind. A good salesman, according to that first training manual, could tell when interest had peaked, when the customer was growing bored, as well as determine the particular magic phrase that might turn sales, and lives, around.

“Oh, well, of course. If I had the money . . .”

“Even if you didn’t have the money you’d do it! You’d find a way somehow. Now don’t tell me that you wouldn’t!”

“Well, you’re right . . .”

“See now,
that’s
what I’m talking about. In this country we buy our kids things, especially if we have even the vaguest notion it’ll give them a better life than what we’ve had. Something bright and shiny, and fluttering with colour and motion. That’s pretty much the American way.”

Jack somehow found an opportunity to drop the word American into practically every conversation, his particular style of sales patter. Emil wasn’t sure he himself had his own style, even after all these years, except that it involved a great deal of sitting, of daydreaming through visits in old fashioned parlours and newly-decorated living rooms, waiting for a change in the air or the light, or the order of the universe.

“You know, I’ve never sold anything before,” Emil said.

“Sure you have. Like everybody else you’ve been selling all your life. The question is whether you’ve been giving the people good value.”

Sales had been as unlikely an occupation for someone of Emil’s temperament as anything he might imagine. He’d gone on very few dates, unable to sell himself to women. He’d been passed over for the simplest jobs, because he’d been unable to sell himself to employers. Whatever friends he had acquired seemed largely accidental.

He had no aptitude for closing the deal, shaking the hand, laughing at the obligatory jokes. It was the world’s sense of humour that had brought him into sales after graduation—you understood that sort of thing if you were a salesman.

So it had all come down to the day he’
d picked up his sample set at the warehouse, along with the brochures and studies proving how kids raised on encyclopaedias had increased IQ, appetite and stamina, and set out his first time on the road using the route map the old man had given him. Instead of the usual dots or squares to represent towns and cities, there were little drawings of houses, all of them the same size, crude yet childishly cheerful, pastel yellows and blues and pinks. When he examined those tiny houses with his magnifying glass he spied children’s faces in the windows of several, here and there a smiling mother or father out on the lawn, baby brother in a stroller, the shirtless neighbour watering his lawn. A tiny blotch of ink that might have been a dog, or a cat.

A company-owned car was provided for his first trip out. Imagine, a company car! But he was alarmed to discover a broad scrape along the length of the passenger side, and cracks in the windows. “They want you to keep that passenger side parked away from your customers’ houses at all times,” the chief dispatcher informed him.

The brown dashboard had enough cracks in it to fill a dried-out riverbed. The clock was missing an hour hand (if he scrunched sideways against the steering wheel he could just see that missing hand reclining in the bottom scoop of the dial). The seat and back had even more cracks, futilely repaired with a variety of tapes that caught and pulled at his neatly pressed suit.

Out on the road he realized that major cities—New York, St. Louis, Philadelphia, Chicago—weren’t even depicted on the map. “We like to leave the big places for the veterans,” Jack had told him.

Now and then over the years he would come to a town that felt far more familiar than most. With a “B” name like Bennett or Bailey or Baxter, it would be a town with ambition: the main street in the process of restoration, new motels and restaurants at the outskirts, and at least one new mall. A construction sign just outside town limits advertises a multiplex. Overpriced town homes are being erected along the distant foothills.

Emil has met the desk clerk at the cheapest hotel and asks about the health of his youngest daughter. The clerk does not act surprised. At the bake sale outside the post office, the woman in the bright yellow dress sells him a small bag of ginger snaps for the eighth time this year.

In the windows of the hardware store are pictures of missing children. It is an epidemic; he wonders about the strangers who steal children out of the Baileys and Baxters and Bennetts of the world. Perhaps the kidnapper is an airline pilot, he thinks. Perhaps he is the representative of some obscure government regulatory agency. Perhaps he is a travelling salesman who is lost in the identical towns and quiet streets of America.