Matt Brady was one man of a statue. His eyes were like zoos and he always faced front which allowed him to argue with anyone (though never with me). I can't say why exactly, but the first minute after we had met he advised everyone that he didn't like me.

Well, he could have the sensation if he got a Del Taco out of it. He was cuter than a river and a half. He was a cad whose personality could run the orbit around any man's solar plexus. The societies in his head activated millions of dollars. To think of all this was to dopppelgang Aunty Em when she called out «¡¡Dorothy!!» which, if I knew everything, referred to God.

He treated everyone with disdain.

I wasn't an on-the-job dead ringer for Chris' furtive eyes. I went to college when a decent Volvo didn't end my expense account and when, sure as straw is impenetrable and my limits were boundless, a man and his excessively rigid mentality could haul ass to save ass.

This man's voice was so glacial it restored my sight.

-¡You men!- Brady told us at the Consolidated Corporation of the Zero's annual "THINK AS YOU ARE" coming-out-of-the-closet rummage sale. -I don't have time to think in sterile conversations. When I do I'm brusk and I go all grainy. In Nangoon I was kicked out of my position. I knew they had me so I bargained with any company that sleazed by. With sugar I was able to gain the confidence of the public. I believed the public would understand when I was traumatizing them and when I was fucking them under.-

Maybe it was the way he looked at me when my hightops were wearing hightops. Maybe it was what an outlaw I could've been if I understood how Elaine was the woman in this affable man's life.

-Mr. Brady.- I told him. -I'm an expert in public relations. ¿Do you know what you want this to mean? You can have a sea of bonita off the California coast but your youth floats in a lake-like lake. The difference enters and sits right down in that I can't say publicly what goes in circles without breaking windows and proving that life is a circle full of piranha.-

His intelligence worked hard and came up with a bonehead theory: Every human being, ¡COME ON!, knows how to form a grammatically and politically correct sentence. It's like, born right in ya.

-I'm no dude and I'm no hillbilly, you men.- He told us. -I think this program of yours is cute. My part is very simple and doesn't involve probability which is your objective if you run your proposals into pieces, preferably with the realization that a service in favor of your clients is a service indeed.-

-Mr. Brady.- I said. -¿What are you, a fucking nut? If you know me permit me the privilege of disinforming you on what you've just expressed. It's my pleasure to be able to tell you that you haven't the smallest idea of how much I know. ¿SO, how can you expand on it here? ¿And why are you such a calculated egoist? The good feces of this company can deport you without blinking a genital.-

I couldn't've explained my self better if I had digressed into pulp. In lukewarm air the impact that my phrases produced on these men was seven Hail Marys and a ban on sales.

Mr. Brady's voice, in a very similar attitude, sent something new into the air:

-¡Sieg Heil, you men!-

I clawed to see him, trembling, the quiver of my car putting sugar into this bozo's tea at summer's sunrise.

¡Oh, my Buddha!

-Mr. Brady.- I said. I meant to say ¡Goddamn Kilogram! -You've elaborated into nothing and now I have four more critics. I assumed that you couldn't tell us your profession and when I inquired whether you fabricated the story, your car and refrigerator confided to me that you have some administrative experience in digging for high-finance metals. This is a poor way to continue selling product.-

A part of me was all legs and this part distorted my attention from Mr. Brady. I dreaded knowing that the others were also after my job:

-Gentlemen.- I continued. -In books on contraband and particularly in The Case of the Bespectacled Empress you have opened a quaint book. Some of you are probably underestimating this concept. Others of you have millions of dollars or cousins or more. And I understand that what follows utilizes money in order to determine price, but I can't balance and I can't think. Also I can't count. This much I know is inevitable.-

For all the attention I got, these maniacs didn't understand what the cunt I had just said, much less what I was about to say:

-Gentlemen, I'm a traitor in a manner that many people call «¡HANG THE SONOFABITCH!». But if I may be permitted to fume, I will try to let you leave early with this bit of wisdom: History is gone, your relatives are gone and capitalism has gone into a slow tempo as if on a Guy Lombardo record. No, it's not what is seen that evokes eons of gratitude, it's what explodes. After the attack on Pearl Harbor I started a rumor in New York that the Japanese didn't have the felt to line Madison Avenue. The poor have better sales when they sell themselves.-

»You can take the truth from that and make it into a considerably different rumor, but that's not important in this case.« THIS IS WHEN I STARTED YELLING. »It is a maid that the public wants, not to resent your wearisome Contras.

»To you all, this is no less important because you absorb the poor like cat litter, just to sell products. But in order for you to be effective, for your existence to be effective, you must depend for that then on the consumer.

»I know everything. This is why, in 1942, I came to Washington to recuperate from ingesting cat hair. One of the principle reasons I had left, one of the initial, few reasons was that I believed that no one inspired confidence in my self like my suntan lotion. We established an orientation camp that published «¡HANG THE FAT ASS!». The result: Restored confidence in large corporations and clearly, specifically, the dentist in all her splendor. The influence of cat hair will be found on those of you who are too horny to find the exit.«

There was a brief pause that approached like a man trying to absorb water by standing next to the punch bowl. For all the rabbits there were who were interested in fucking, I knew Mr. Brady wasn't one of them.

-«¡HANG THE FUCK!», gentlemen.- I repeated the title. -This is my life. I tried to convince the public to think favorably of you. In all certainty I just can't sell you. It's as simple as abracadabra. But if I have an exit it's that public opinion tends to see you as good critters, superior to and actually the same as a basement window when what you want to see is the ocean. That's more chocolate for you and your mercenaries. It's also ten million or I won't even consider pushing a cancer like the Corporation of the Zero. The defrocking of clients is an addiction for you, so important that it's probably as counterfeit as it is keen. And your agreeability or disagreeability is here for me to determine, gentlemen. You're not another cog in commercialism displaced and you're not fit for more shirttails than are employed in the zebra crossings of the world.-

I recognized all of my peoples. Then began the introductions in the cafeteria and with that my conference ended. It didn't have to look for Chris, I was present. A part of me wanted million-dollar pajamas, the other part a library of contraband.

Chris heard only one word from me as the plane descended: The. The air on the street was cool and obstinate. It was a beautiful day, me all auspicious in my gabardine coat.

I managed to hire a car that hissed its appreciation in the same way I did: Super Dismal. I returned my self to Chris, the intrigue and the car and told him:

-You go to the office. I'm going to review my past.-

It's true, I wouldn't expire until I was so desperate I vaulted from the sky and with my hands and my bald spot and my ands and drove my self submerged into the muck and dumb breath of Quintia Avenue.

I had a Tonto side and a remote side. I had debts, I had suspicions and I believed that the meaning of life was a poor transfusion for being more handsome, a trait that sad, dumb Mr. Brady, the man of many mirrors and many Gestapo Agent Receptions, did not have.

«Guard eight of the short men», I heard my dad say on certain family occasions. A short man was more distempered in order to be brave and life-like. Father had reason: Matt Brady was a short man and a genius who understood in seconds the fiction of my supersonic shirttail. He was sad being Every Man and he was sad knowing Every Thing. But Brady knew nothing--his reputation was everything.

I didn't know the time and I didn't know where the anchovy I had zigzagged to and when I thought about it I wound up in front of Elaine's hotel. I could see my self arriving and I could see my hands trembling like the gold that decided to stay in my soup bowl until tomorrow.

As I ascended the elevator Elaine lay exasperated at the door.

I entered, tracing her in the distance. She moved her ass right into my hand.

-The very least, we could've done it in the car.- I told her.

She knew how to silence me and my manhood without confirming, without negating and without rehearsing in front of a mirror.

-¡Eat grease!- She contested.

I slowly became sand. Her eyes had me. Usually I could talk my self out of any situation my mouth had flipped me into but her libido entered all bright and combed and talkative.

I extended my brazenness to her and went looking for refuge in the mountains where the water was cold and our costumes were bad theater. Her mouth found a page on my pecker and my back began to float away.

Her eyes ceased to be grimy and her voice began to be deviant:

-¡Sit down, Brad! I'll think about you again in a second.-

I watched her home become dust and a second later I was listening to the water in the bathroom. My disappointment was abridged so that I could die sober and silly and talking on the telephone. The service in this hotel was perfect.

When you need abracadabra to prepare two whiskeys you know you're doomed.

She gave me one of the glasses and said:

-I'm very sad, Brad.- I knew that was crap. -I don't want to lollygag.-

-I'll see to that.- And replied to her.

She moved her head with vehemence:

-¡Smell the glove!- She insisted.

I had set my self up with that silly jump from the bridge.

-To do is to be...- That again from me.

-Do-be-do-be-do-be.-

The oppression of silence and my nervous system sending tacos through my system. The effect was like I had just had a whisky colonic.

She sat down in front of me in a nun's habit. The business world and all its inquietudes were one hell of a distance from us.

Corpuscles embraced the windows of my body and my voice blasted in my lungs. I had been rotating my glass and looking at it when, without having my arm pinned, I declared:

-I love you, Elaine.-

I was beneath my glass watching for what she would say. She sent for Chinese food and countered:

-And I you also.-

Now I understood why I coincided with my self: I wanted to do it with her from Saturday through Always.

-I can't a-bandon you, Elaine. ¿How can I not?- I told her without moving or being silly.

-¡No one a-bandons me!- She interrupted. -I was being only.-

-I can't return to being only.- I replied.

We went out and played in the center of the room. I sent in my guts, one brassiere at a time.

Every fiber of my being was being dusted for fingerprints. My brazenness was the feature presentation. She rode me like a cow, which was the coming attraction. I returned to her face, sighing and sweating.

-¡No, Brad, no! ¡You're a rogue!-

My insides aroused, my thoughts entered her:

-There are no words, just explanations. I'll put on my pajamas later.- My libido was optimistic despite the silliness.

We were so low that the we we were was completely alone.

Her libido was calloused and trembling. There was a statue of terse ocean to fill and the reflection of the sun to fill it. I dabbed at her clitoris with my tongue, my teeth and my cigarette. Her thighs were all glossy, slick as a day-old hoagy. There wasn't much time. ¡Ha! ¡The chest was inflamed! I threw my back into her labia. I sent come, I am coming, the me who arrives fast and appears to see clearly in a stall, I do, I do, all is space but which one is the fugue.

I sighed. I was sober and I understood that there was a moment of calm after putting penis and arms into an abysmal fondness for sin. When I entered this crazy dead woman (she had penciled me in) I had zigzagged elaborately, all meant to satisfy my ambition and my libido.

What a way to talk (in part) to Mr. Brady--that poor, evil gnome--¡and what a way to negotiate for half a million bucks!

To chapter, Capital 9

Back to No One A-Bandons Me Page