Vertigo Park and Other Tall Tales (18 page)

DEAR MR. CABAL—

I don’t believe in psychics or psychiatry, and sometimes I even doubt physics, but just in case, I am sending you a contribution. Will it change my luck even if I’m not sure it will? I’ve had peck after peck of nothing but bad apples. I could try not to doubt you.

Panhandle Pegleg

Many, or anyway, you, are prey to doubt. I sense your aura is an uninvited guest in the House of Atlantis, and the rule there is He Who Doubts Must Not Be Spoken To. Yet, I am speaking to you, or anyway, addressing you in my column. That must reveal something to you.

DEAR MR. CABAL—

When I had my nose job, I wrote to you wondering if I would survive. I didn’t hear from you but I figured you sent out your helpful vibrations without fanfare. After all, I’d had several small problems you cleared up without my even having to write to you. Guess what, I survived! And now I have a beautiful little baby nose which is the light of my life—and my husband’s. How can I ever thank you?

Peachy in Alberta

Your accompanying donation is all the thanks I needed or expected.

DEAR MR. CABAL—

My friend John (not his real name) and I (I am also named John, though not really, because I’ve changed our matching names to still match) seem to be on a close psychic wavelength, and it scares me. For example, last summer, during the heat wave, I phoned him and it turned out we were both sipping cold water. His was bottled, but it was the same beverage. Last week I saw him at the muffler replacement center. We were both having our mufflers replaced. When the bills came, they were identical. Then on Friday we ran into each other and ran out of chat, and there was a silence, and then we both said, “Well, have a nice weekend!” At the same time, nearly. The burden of a bond
like this is frightening. What can I do to keep from merging with him into a four-armed blob? And what if it doesn’t merge exactly right and we only have one-and-a-half heads or something? That would make it even harder to find work.

One Guy, for Now

It won’t happen. I can sense your two energies completing a sort of goodwill “jamboree” they’ve been having together, and now they’re going in skew directions. You’re safe. For extra security, start calling yourself Jack, or whatever is the equivalent nickname for your real name, which I know perfectly well.

DEAR MR. CABAL—

I have written to you many times, and my problems have never seemed interesting enough to answer in your column, so this time I am including a stamped, self-addressed envelope along with my donation, so you can answer me without boring your readers. The people where I work must hate me, but they cover it with smiles and nice gifts. Here’s a photo of us all at the last Christmas party. I’m the one everyone’s kissing. What can you pick up about their real hatred? Can they be stopped?

Secretly Stung in the International Bank of The Hague

Thank you for your contribution. They like you now.

DEAR MR. CABAL—

If you’re so psychic, I don’t even have to tell you my problem, do I?

Betcha I Gotcha

No, you don’t.

DEAR MR. CABAL—

I was in Thailand recently, looking for my father, a mercenary whom I’ve never met. I was stranded in a small airport during a monsoon and was struck by a piece of flying luggage. While I was unconscious, a great Siamese cat came to me and said I would recover. I realized it was a dream so I didn’t bother to ask it any serious questions like where my father was or life’s whole point. Sure enough, though, I regained consciousness. It turned out I’d been struck by a flying cat carrier. There hadn’t been a cat in it, but if there had, it probably wouldn’t have had the altitude or velocity to strike me. Now I wonder if I should try to get hit by another piece of luggage and ask the right questions this time. Would it have to be the same cat carrier? Is it considered cheating to try to set up these things? Would I be taunted for my presumption once I’d lost consciousness? What if, since I’d be insensible, I forgot to ask the right questions? I’d hate to go to the trouble, then. Also, I might get killed if something else in the wind hits me.

New Cat Fancier

I think you’ve answered your own question.

DEAR MR. CABAL—

I get this powerful feeling that there is a parallel universe in which I’m a super-warlock ruler, and people there like me. I do magic from my throne and they invite me to sit with them after. I can’t seem to get to this parallel universe, however, and I worry about my kingdom there going unsupervised. My people must miss me.

The King of Somewhere

I projected my inner beam and found your kingdom in a very charming little parallel universe, and all is well there. It’s one of those rare worlds in which everything runs fine without rulers or even magic. Your subjects send their best, but they don’t need you. Don’t worry about it. Get it off your mind. Live in the world you’re in.

THE STATE OF THE HATE

I was recently a guest at a dinner party hosted by a friend, Janet X (her real name, strangely enough; she blames a careless male registrar at Ellis Island). Owing to a string of coincidences, the husbands and boyfriends invited had stayed home to watch the Super Bowl, and I was the only man in a group that otherwise included four women. Despite the thick shag of my masculine oblivion, though maybe I’m flattering myself there, I still sensed tension, like in those deco thrillers where one of the period house-guests must be the murderer. I guessed it to be residual rankling from the afternoon seminar on the Duties of Venereal Disobedience all of them had
attended earlier at our local Pottery Barn. Furthermore, the keynote speaker at the seminar also happened to be the guest of honor at Janet’s dinner, and all cocktail glasses tipped toward her in anticipation.

She was the notorious but here nameless (in fact, everywhere nameless; she, too, blamed the man at Ellis Island) author of a best-selling trilogy on erotic insurgence,
Date Hate
; its follow-up,
Mate Hate
; and her latest,
Ex Hex
, loud volumes that had sent revolutionary ripples across many a steno pool. She was the last word in blonded misanthropy, and had just made headlines by decking her own grandfather at a press conference for calling her Honey (“That’s something fat male bears eat!”). In the wake of such a fomentress, and in any case flash-stapled to her celebrity, I was hotly self-conscious, like a living tableau of Testosterone Captive Before Athena.

At first I tried to amuse the company with the harmless old clip-on bowtie routine, playing multiple stock roles as I switched voices and the bowtie from hairbow position to mustache to collar: “I
can’t
pay the rent!” “You
must
pay the rent!” “
I’ll
pay the rent!” It didn’t go over as well as it always had at camp, and Janet even pointed out that Hairbow might have paid the rent for Collar, that I had overlooked that possibility. I did it again that way, but it was wearing thin, and besides, I’m thirty-three years old.

Then I tried to talk to the famous yet nameless author, though I had to catch her eye to get her attention because of her namelessness. In a conciliatory spirit, I asked her if her grandmother didn’t ever call her Honey.

“My grandmother is dead,” she answered with piercing flatness, if physics allows such a medley.

“Typical,” one of the other women responded.

I might have pointed out that women live longer than men, but it didn’t seem an opportune moment. I tried a friendly gambit instead. “Well, you do get first crack at the lifeboats!” I smiled, but no one matched me, and I was left with paradoxically masculine egg on my face.

At last the meal ended, and we decompressed over coffee and rich slices of LaBrea fudge decadence cake. I had just finished innocently observing that I could eat all I wanted of anything and never gain weight, when I noticed the assembly looking at me with no longer concealed hostility, as if I were the flippant meteorologist who once named hurricanes after women. Hoping to defuse any ticking ill will, I raised my vocal register slightly, involuntarily but I hoped as a gesture of solidarity, and asked for another piece of the cake.

“You sure outdid yourself baking this!” I offered as I helped myself, hoping to show men don’t have to be waited on.

“She didn’t bake it, she bought it,” the woman next to me commented tersely, seeming to foam at the edges like an ovum under the microscope. She had been divorced several months before, and had reverted to her mother’s maiden name, effectively divorcing her father into the bargain. I had inadvertently got on her wrong side by pointing out that she still bore a man’s last name, and would have to reach back through countless generations to unyoke
herself, and when she finally got to Eve, there would be no last name to adopt.

“Typical,” she had said.

I nervously shoveled a forkful of LaBrea cake into my mouth, and impetuously chose the same moment to grin ingratiatingly. Another of the women stared at me with what my father used to call the Furry Eyeball.
“Men”
she said at last.
“They’re both alike.”

Her statement disconcerted me, but then I remembered that she was a widow’s only child who had been schooled in a girls’ convent, and only recently had broken up with her first serious boyfriend, a taciturn hulk who refused to explore his feelings with her, no matter how simple the questionnaires she submitted to him, and who could never, it seemed, be reached at work (he is a well-known race car driver).

I shifted uneasily and realized my praise for the dessert might have seemed condescending, especially since Janet hadn’t baked it herself. I tried to make up to her without admitting I’d offended. “I have to admit—” I groped. “Not many men would know where to buy a delicious cake like that!”

My concession wafted miserably to the floor, and the women looked at each other and rolled their eyes. I sensed the yin was about to hit the yang.

“Don’t you ever get tired of causing pain?” the writer asked me pointedly, and added, “Quick, yes or no?”