There were certain times at 4:30pm when Chris Tyndall and I would punt the precarious cost of decision making. We were interrupted for the zillionth time by a microscope.

I told Mickey in a parenthetical tone:

-(I don't want any llamas today, Mickey. You've had it if there are any. ¡And stop that microscope, it's coming in from the roof!)- Any other time I would've ordered a pizza and run. -Now, Chris, I see you've worked at the circus...-

The other decisions were in planes and places, the traces advanced with my Zero assurance.

-Yes, I was buying flowers for all of the employees with circus funds.- This with his affected, gangster voice. -And an insertion of language poetry into 400 circus magazines. I said "¿Can't I Dad, have 15 million dollars? ¿For the 15 circuses in the United States?" The new Circus Commission imported 77 million dose-me-under dollars. We were given a portion of that 102 million dollars every year. I was fired.-

-Very good, very good. Very, very good.- I said impatiently. -¿¡But do you expect I believe this pachydermial nonsense?! ¿Who negotiated? ¿Tonto or the Lone Ranger? I don't want to vault into another adventure with no vermin like I did on that «Perry Mason» comedy last year.-

-I understand that the negotiator was a stooge, but 35 million is occasion to disassemble and sit down.-

Chris sawed through my impatience:

-And in order for you to understand this, comets would have to come for years in cabs. In order to explain.-

I gestured affirmatively with my head and asked:

-¿How many comets?-

-400 sentences and we could produce 108 milligrams.-

-¡Good boy!- I said. I sensed a bar of soap in the man. -Let's go now and pay a visit to the brothers Nunzio.-

I would have to speak to the pole vaulters before they ruined my parking space. Apparently, Mickey and Chris had been forming umbrellas and jumping over them.

-I think that his dad is Lord And, Mickey, and that it won't steal anything.- And I said it with severity.

My secretary, a big sinner, ignored my infantilism and replied:

-Mr.s Schuyler has come to see you, Brad.-

-¿The Mr.s Schuyler? ¿Who is this woman?-

Mickey targeted the visitor who had tried to sign in, and said in a high voice:

-Your mistress, Hortense E. Schuyler.-

This segue intrigued the target and added an addendum.

-I said: I have another visitor with me.-

I recognized the target and had it extended and examined. I had written the name in a very sensual type of lettering. And then I was talking:

-I don't remember ever being blind. I reserved everything until this afternoon so that Chris and I could ram a caber through this project.-

A mirror was reflecting my self every time I looked into it. Then I was asking:

-¿What is it I said to this woman?-

By playing dumb, Mickey agreed:

-You said that when it occurred that you were in a conference or flying out of the city. In a word, you had embarrassed her. You had stopped for zero, meaning today with an s.- Mickey said.

Not only that, I was encased in time, holding a table.

This advertising worked the me into memory. The person in question had been recommended by Edith. Again I was instantly sober and my tonsils told Mickey:

-¿Why didn't you tell me this? This has caused Paul to call me and now I have to see him. You have one minute to disrobe and do it to my feet.-

-Very well, chief.- Mickey said changing her expression from "sure, Astro" to salivating all over the space.

I looked at Chris in disgust and told him:

-Good, now I know we need a cab that will stop when we reach tomorrow.-

This he contested:

-You wouldn't dare study art and topography before Matt Brady's contracts arrive at two.-

-I can't help it, Chris. My justification, if I'm not on the altar, will be circumstantial: Other times it has equally occurred to me.-

Chris, who was my ghostwriter, was on file as a guest during the day and on probation at night.

Entrance was through the mirror in the kitchen:

-I'm not preoccupied. ¿Aren't they also human? They like women, dinner, licorice and even work. But (sigh) this isn't true. I was convinced that our world was dismal and it had occurred to others. One day we discovered intention. Now it was no longer easy. The contract was as fresh as the cold goo in my hands.-

Chris continued moving his head. I, in a trance, continued pointing with a little stick. That poor bastard Chris always said he lived in a world made old by the quality of negotiations and their negotiators and nothing more. I noticed the day for the first time. How contrary to a «respectable dame» a client would have been. When push came to carnage I'd believe that legs were to have and that the red blank of his shirt was too bright. It was that kind of day.

-Very good, Mickey.- I said for the microphone. -Please pass the Parkay.-

A tray of «speakers» perceived this agitated breathing.

-¿What was that, Brad?- She asked.

-¿I said can you validate my parakeet, or is that too sordid?-

The mountain of her voice was now transformed into a rising sofabed:

-¿You don't know any Mr.s Schuyler?-

-¡NO!- I stalled and replied. -And after your entrance is over I don't want you to return, ¡EVER!-

Mickey was sawing now:

-Right away it's ten against one and I don't have change. And if I can't make change then I believe you've forsaken women and frequently.-

The microphone disconnected quick and dirty and Chris said to me:

-¡That chick has the juiciest body permissible!-

Chris was so right. I had been indifferent and could only see how to make it to the door before her legs were gone. The sea breeze gave me what I needed: A ladder as an obstacle to her girdle.

Then it was possible to hear Mickey's voice saying:

-Through here, Mr.s Schuyler.-

I solidified my cement and came alive. Chris' presence in the anteroom made a pass at the two women with a somber look that never before then had been shown to anyone but suckers. Right after Mr.s Schuyler entered I decided the cause of her somberness: ¡Everyone after the little man would have seemed horrible!

The expression on my face was supposed to be proportionate to the belly of my visitor but I let Mickey make the presentation so that all I had to do was surrender.

My torpedoes burned all day for Mr.s Schuyler, who suffered me without wanting to know what baffling faults and passions I had inserted like tornadoes into my writing.

-Mr.s Schuyler.- I said extending my manhood. -I'm Brad Rowan.-

She deprived me of sunshine and stretched my manhood to official length:

-I'm very disgusted to know you, Mr. Rowan.- [I agreed so far.] -Edith has told me you are happy being you.-

Her voice jabbed at me like a lamb's anger at the restaurant.

This woman was an extra: A true blue flame poker; Pure gold in producing quilts; A white Rambo who routinely escaped the florist; The note from a Rodgers and Hammerstein song; A sunshine pressing in and mending my pants; A bland bridge partner steeped in garden knowledge; A cup of cognac (¡Oh my poor toe!) after a good come; A Billy Preston song;; Her personality was made up, bland and suave, listening on the outside and singing to herself until the men go bald on the inside; Her eyes were an obscure blue, kind of violet with great, big, black pupils where one could sit, submerged in fascination; Her face was the randiest of all, better than Ovaltine; Her palms were all toes; Her back was stern and generous;; Having been in a tornado and corrected its form, her dents were excellent and natural, white and uniform;;

Elaine was a profound inspiration to me and my abdomen. Whenever I wanted to make love, exercise, play tennis or golf in summer, her curves reduced me to a 20-year-old who wanted only to make love and become a notary public.

-Say I'm your baby, Brad.- She said and I surrendered. The office was a silly place to invite me to see and squeeze. Her accommodations were comfortable and I was always ready, but my lumbago was torn and all that I could do to recuperate was sit and write.

I looked again. Now I knew that I was depressed by her gauntness. Her hands were white, fine and for breakfast with a coral-tone malt coming up. When you cheat the last place you want to be is in her hand asking for a great white diamond.

-Paul told me you were coming.- I said like a torpedo. -But I didn't die fast enough. ¿Do you understand, Mr.s Schuyler? ¡I can have your ass for this!-

Mr.s Schuyler knew that I was so right and produced an idea so lucid that my sense of space was so obfuscated I couldn't get a quill of attention. So...

-¿How do you say Elaine?- She asked.

-E-lai-ne.- I syllabified. -Meaning: to lean.- Imitating her accent.

Any other time and I would've been involved in an extramarital until sunrise, so she said confidentially:

-I never liked the name Hortense and I never forgave my mother for it.-

I agreed:

-I know what it's like to want to be called. I always thought that Bernard was a pussy name and that everyone in the world should call me Bernie.-

Elaine had pulled a cigarette from the pit of my stomach. Explained in human terms this meant I was intimate with my self and with my schoolteacher.

-Edith told me to visit you because you're a singular man in a world that has become a yard long.-

I never believed that someone recommended by Edith could be cause to retreat into the small of their buttocks, but...

-¿What about manners?- Elaine asked.

-I go with name brands, it's like a right arm in the shot of polio that tested positive.-

This was all air, a certain cynical reaction to the few flowers that I owned. I wasn't obstinate, but Elaine's apparition had just lumbered through the door. I knew what that sentence meant but in most cases I had lost friends for Edith.

All of the air that this Mr.s Schuyler had made me contemplate the experimental surprise from my change purse into the amethyst paint.

-¿Is this all the air? ¿How much can we use to make hay?- She asked.

I looked irritated. I already felt like I was the lard end of a peeling bridge being assembled and reunited.

-No, this isn't all that we can use to make hay. ¿How much do you want, Mr.s Schuyler?- I asked, quiet as a doe. -After all, we can't guarantee that by writing in between spaces you will be brought back to life, but the logarithms say yes. Cue into yourself with your bad self.-

Her libido stopped for an instant, her image turned over and fried. I plastered a cigarette and counted from one hundred to zero. And when I knew I couldn't return to my self, her glacial expression severed my glands.

-You know how to hedge, Mr. Rowan. I'm not posing by this medium-rare log for all the goop and personal publicity. My name has a side to divulge that's never seen. The one icky reason is that I came to see what I was promised, a company not a polo lounge.-

It was all I could do to stop from saying: Gyro sober if miserable and open your door to me: rat-a-tat-tat. ¡This was David E. Schuyler's woman! Her name had escaped my memory. Over one and a million times I had seen her perched like a piranha, my torpedoes ready to fire. The newspapers had dedicated a year to explaining her tryst with a cow. From that affair she had infected her husband and sons with bovine polio.

But Mr.s Schuyler looked tan to me. I appreciated in her the hell that was evident in large, provocative women.

-Mr.s Schuyler.- I said, meaning if you could hum a few bars. -¿Can you realize how stupid this poor criminal from Third Avenue is who believes he knows everything? I'm seeing my life as if it were my Dad's and I'm confused.-

Her eyes couldn't figure out what the fuck I meant. I tried a protracted sigh that tore the silence all the way to the window sill. I extracted a cigarette and trembled for the living dead.

-Sit down forever.- I said. -I just can't be you because I would have to be a woman--a sane, glorious woman.-

Her eyes flipped into mine, the blue spirals from my cigarette orbiting her rosy figure. I wanted to repair her beautiful eyes before they tore through my head like a band saw.

Her voice returned, suave and lean, saying:

-¡If reality is taken care of like a yard, Brad, then plow into me!-

To chapter, Capital 4

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