Ken Hada is a fourth generation Oklahoman, descendant of Danish and Hungarian immigrants: Gypsy poets, barn dance aficionados, art lovers, amateur philosophers, wheat farmers, preachers, teachers and common-sense craftsmen.

“These poems, acting as spare parts themselves, go into the making of one smooth-running, powerful engine.”

 - Diane Glancy

Author of Pushing the Bear

In this Economy | by Justin Heinze

 

WHEN HE FINALLY HAD A BREAK between class and his next set of open office hours, philosophy doctoral candidate Theodore Marx locked the door to Professor Archer’s office, pulled closed the shades, and plopped his long, angular frame down into the swivel leather chair behind the huge oak desk that inhabited the majority of the room. There was a cup of black tea half-finished in a saucer, no doubt grown cold now after an hour or so of sitting while he was teaching the undergrad course: Intro to the Psychology of Existentialism. Open-faced on the table lie a copy of Notes from the Underground, his own notes scribbled in hasty ink along the margins. After momentarily weighing the benefits and costs of a walk to the lounge to boil more water for fresh tea (list of the latter running far longer than that of the former), he heaved a sigh, shut the book closed, and buried his face in his hands, massaging his temples. Faint patches of red highlighted the skin around his eyes. A wave of nausea passed him over but he shook it away.

Beneath his elbows on the desk was a white envelope, the contents of which he could guess without a terrible amount of difficulty. The letter was from his mother, and it would not be containing, this time, he presumed, a few singles, an admonition to keep up with his studies, a brief report on the declining level of service at Martin and Kline’s international bank, and a suggestion as to which kind of sweetened sustenance he could “treat himself” to with the enclosed cash. Occasionally pizza would be recommended.  Each time the letters came he would go through the same slightly exasperated, slightly disinterested ritual usually involving a brief shake of his head and a wonder as to the last time an L.A. slice, or a small scoop of ice cream, could be traded for less than two bucks.

 But this time, there would be no pleasantries. There were still another two weeks or so before her monthly card was due to arrive. This envelope was here for a different purpose.

Can’t be good for your studies, you know…cannot say that I approve of this…can only imagine what else you’ve done that I’ll never see…

The words seem to slip through the seal, floating up into the air of the office and outing themselves in high-pitched, catty tones.

With disdain, with indignation, he shoved the envelope aside, and instead regarded the phone. There were any number of people he could call, he knew, but it was almost never a matter of just hearing another voice. There were only two whom required calling, and he had a furious but brief battle in his mind as to which should have priority.

“’Lo?”

“Mack. Mack, did I wake you up?”

“The hell is this?”

“Mack, it’s me, for chrissake.”

“You know how early it is?” the voice barked.

“Mack, its 11:30 in the morning. It’s almost lunch.”

“That you, Ted?” the voice suddenly seemed relaxed.

“Yes, goddamnit, Mack, it’s me.”

“Oh,” he said, and there was a shuffling on the other end of the line: Marx imagined Mack, 6’3 and wiry, disentangling himself unsuccessfully from a bouquet of sheets. “Sorry. How the hell are you?”

“Alright, man. Fine. Sorry I woke you up.”

“S’fine. I worked till four last night. They hired someone who only speaks Mandarin Chinese, and of course no one in the goddamn plant speaks Mandarin Chinese, and what with ‘communication, clarity, and clairvoyance’ or something like that being the Three Guiding Principles its pretty hard to get anything done. Take this one guy…”

And Mack was off and going in no time, and Marx slowly lost focus of what he was saying. He was holding the receiver to his ear with one hand while rubbing his temples with the other. His elbows were back on the desk. Forgetting that it had gone cold he sipped the tea; spat it back out instantly, shoving the saucer to the rejected corner of the desk with the white envelope.  

 “…and the point is that I would sooner club a baby seal than spend absolutely any more time with these people than I need to.”

“You need to quit that place, Mack.”

There was laughing, punctuated by the cracking of what Marx presumed to be a soda can.

 “I want to,” Mack said, slurping down his soda and muffling his words. “…the thing. I want to as soon as possible. I need to go to Europe (slurp)…someplace (slurp)…lose my goddamn mind.”

“Jesus Mack, couldja put down the orange and cream for maybe one second, I can’t hear a word you’re saying.”

“I said I need to get the hell out of here.”

“So do it.”

“I want to. Thing is I got nowhere to go. I’m reapplyin’ in the fall for school. There’s no other job for me right now. No college, no experience. Need I give you the in this economy shtick –”

 “Uhh, that won’t be necessary.”

“Teddy buddy lemme tell you something, the way the country is today, in other words, in this economy –”

“Do you care at all for the health of my brain?”

“In this economy I don’t see how healthy brains could be a priority.”

“I’m gonna puke all over this economy the next time somebody says that to me.”

“You need to go easier on people,” Mack said, dangerously crossing his honking chortle with another healthy and vocal slurp from his soda can. Somewhere in there Marx thought he heard the crack of another can opening.

 “You need to go easier on the goddamn orange soda,” Marx said.

 Mack said he meant it.

“I mean it,” he said. “Some people are in it bad. I mean take these people I work with. They’re in it bad.”

“Mack, at the risk of sounding like a pretentious douche, don’t make me sick. I’ll be nearly half a million in debt by the time I get my PhD. You were third in our class in high school and they’re got you chopping turkey. We’re as screwed as anyone.”

“Yeah, well, that’s life in this economy, buddy.”

“Yeah.”

They were quiet for a time. Marx ran his thumb through the sides of Notes.

 “So listen, Mack. You wouldn’t happen to read the L.A. Times, now wouldja?”

“The paper? No. Not unless you count it when the Inquirer gets lazy after a Phils-Dodgers game or something and just syndicates an article.”

“Okay.”

“Why? What’s going on?”

“You wouldn’t happen to be at a computer right now, wouldja?”

“Checking the Caps-Rangers score as we speak.”

“Do you mind looking at the arts and entertainment section? Of the Times?”

“What the hell is this about?”

“Just do it.”

There was a clatter of keys, more slurping; Marx closed his eyes, waiting through the silence. The receiver suddenly felt very heavy in his hand, his elbow had cramped from holding it in the same position for too long.

“Mack?”

“Uh.”

“Mack, did the page come up?”

“That’s you?”

“Yeah, Mack.”

“That’s you, in the picture. With her.”

“Yessir.”

“But how the hell did you meet her?”

Marx took a deep breath – suddenly he was excited, the headache forgotten, the words bursting from his lips.   

“Alright. I’m friends with this girl in the English department who’s working on a film with this screenwriter. This screenwriter knows a few fashion photographers, the fashion photographers know a few models. Upshot was I got invited from a friend’s friend’s friend to a party at a house outside the city a few weeks later. A house in Coldwater Canyon.”

“Jesus.”

“A real Hollywood party. It actually wasn’t as bad as you might expect.”

“Uh, Ted buddy, I wouldn’t expect a real Hollywood party to be bad.”

“It’s just the contradiction of saying ‘real’ and ‘Hollywood’ in the same sentence…”

“And did you tell her you wanted to be a professor of Philo-Theological-Complex-Genius-as-Shit-Crap at one of the top universities in the world?”

“Not right away, no.”

“Christ! What the hell do you mean by saying it like that, ‘not right away, no.’ And nonchalant like that. How the hell did the whole thing come about?”

“Kind of classically stereotypical. The house was too loud and I wasn’t drunk, so I went out back for a break and to have a look around. They’ve got this huge deck, in ground pool, the whole deal, obviously. I don’t even know whose house it was, to be honest. There were probably a hundred people there that night and every one of them could have lived there. They all had famous faces.

“Anyway there’s dozens of little fountains in the backyard with little lanterns on the ground by them to light up the water. She was there by herself, chugging champagne, and writing a poem.”

“A poem?”

“Or, well, lyrics, I guess.”

“Like a song about Animal Farm?”

“What?”

“You said, ‘Orwell lyrics.’”

Mack burst into a spit of laughter, not all of which Marx was convinced was sincere, giving a pause before he joined in. After a moment Mack regained his senses.

“I just don’t get it. You’re at a party with models and actresses from all over the world. Not to mention directors whose brains probably look something like a computer harddrive...”

“And I end up with Icie.”

“And you end up with the freshest face of this decade’s teenie bopper pop star movement on the planet.”

“Okay, Mack. Alright there. She’s our age. She’s something like four months older than you or something.”

“As if that matters, now.”

“And sure her music is…juvenile. Sure it sounds horrible to people with a classic-indie taste in music. But it’s her real, true feelings, real, true words and emotions, and she’s getting paid millions of dollars to let the recording industry turn them into platinum records, so that she can be free to do whatever the hell she wants for the rest of her life. Now you tell me where that’s wrong? I mean if we want to get philosophical about it...”

“We don’t.”

“Then we could argue that it’s simply a matter of trading values, selling yourself for freedom. She’s real where it counts.”

Mack grew quiet.

“Listen, man,” he finally said. “It’s not wrong, per se. I don’t have a problem with you fooling around with shallow girls. But you? You’re the one that’s always on about being true to yourself…”

“She is true to herself, that’s what I’m trying to tell you-”

“…about not even trying to make money in the first place, because money is this horrible corrupting thing that steals our youth and belittles our spiritual energy, or somesuch nonsense…”

“Well I’m sorry but I don’t think cleaning up investment bank accounts, or overseeing the production of chicken slicers, or rolling bread dough until your joints fail sets anyone’s ‘soul on fire.’”

“I mean I figured you’d end up with some beautiful little undergrad in one of your T.A. classes begging you to sweep her off her feet with lines from a Nietzche poem or some shit– ”

“I don’t think Nietzche wrote poetry.”

“Didn’t he, the bastard? Well lines from Jim Morrison, or Cormac McCarthy, someone dark, you understand me –”

“Jesus Mack.”

“…I mean hell man, marry Teresa, or Colleen, or Annie for chrissakes, Annie’s pretty and smart and all that stuff…

“Would you listen to me? Would you listen to me for just one goddamn second? I’m not looking to marry anyone, okay? Jesus Christ, man. She’s my girlfriend, is all.”

“I just can’t believe you. All this, after four years of hearing you bitch to me every day about looking for a deep girl who was real and a brainiac and –”

“Well I’m sorry man, the thing was when we would hang out together and you’d start introducing me to everyone we met as ‘Theodore, who you may know from Complicated as Shit 101, or The Unanswerable Mysteries of the Tangent Universe Section 211…”

“Oh come on, ladies love that stuff…”

“…he also teaches the evening section of ‘The Unteachable Things You’ll Never Know’, and ‘The Interpretation of Impossibly Old and By-Now Irrelevant Texts’, for upperclassmen and liberal arts majors only…”

“You’re saying this wouldn’t work on fucking Icie?”

“No. No, it wouldn’t.”

“Buddy. Buddy. She takes her stage name from the long-held pop-culture fad which somehow associates expensive jewelry with frozen water.”

“Well. It’s meant to be ironic.”

“Oh yeah? She tell you that?”

“Actually I saw it in one of her interviews on youtube…”

There was a long silence on the other end of the line.

 “Don’t tell me you’ve become one of those guys that googles his girlfriend to make himself feel accomplished.”

“I didn’t know that was a subspecies, Mack, but thanks a hell of a lot for that. I mean thanks a hell of a lot. I have no desire to feel accomplished, and Kay is plenty accomplished enough for her fame to extend beyond google.”

“You call her Kay now?”

“What, did you think Mrs. Mathers calls her son ‘Slim Shady’?”

Mack let loose a deep bellow.

 “She wants me to quit school, Mack,” he finally said.

“Well. To hell with that, buddy.”

“She says that I can live with her. Have a room all to myself in her house.”

“Mansion,” he corrected, “I don’t have to see it, to know it. Where does she live.”

“Beverly, uh, Hills.”

“Beverly Uh-hills. I don’t know buddy. Tough neighborhood.”

“Can you be serious for one second? I mean one second?” Marx yanked the trash can from under the desk to between the soles of his shoes, feeling a sudden impulse to retch.

 “I am being serious,” Mack said sharply. “Now this isn’t just about a girl anymore. She’s asking you to give up on your dreams. I mean, you’ve got what, three semesters left, buddy? That’d be about the dumbest thing your smart ass ever done.”

“That’s the thing, Mack.” He was fervently rubbing his temples, his eyes tightly shut. “I don’t think this is my dream. I hate this place like you hate that turkey plant. I mean, do you realize I haven’t written in three years? Nothing since the paper. She says I can have my own study to write in, if I want. I mean not to mention all the extra time I’d have to go and live -”

“You’re talking brave cause you’re getting laid, man. You’re talking about throwing away four years of undergrad, two years grad school, just for a girl you’ve known what? Two months?”

“Two weeks.”

“Jesus, Teddy. Jesus Christ, Teddy.”

“No one’s throwing away anything,” he said. “I’m not gonna forget everything I learned.”

“Yeah but your degree, Teddy-buddy. Your degree. No doctorate of Philotheologies, no professorship at Oxford, or Mensa –”

“Can you even be a ‘Mensa’ professor? I mean is that even possible?”

“- or Duke, or any top school – ”

“I’ve seen what it’s like to be a philosophy professor at a ‘top’ school,” he said. “No thanks.”

“No thanks? That’s what you say to all this dreaming –”

“Listen, Mack. You don’t know these people. You don’t know what they’re capable of. The kinds of jokes they make. How horribly cynical they are about the worst things. You can’t buy a loaf of bread without being accosted about the Heinz principle, or somesuch nonsense.”

“Teddy, I hate to say it,” he said. “But with a philosophy degree, and one year’s experience working the Kosher counter at the Food Mart...in this economy, that ain’t gonna get you shit.”

“Excuse me while I rid myself of my past three meals.”

“I hate to say it. I really really do. But honest, you quit school, you said it yourself, what the hell’s gonna happen to your loans, with no job?”

“She said they’ll be taken care of.”

“Oh she did. Oh the hell she did.”

“Mack, you’re not supposed to be the crass one. You’re supposed to be all pumped about this type of shit.”

“Yeah. That’s it. Me. Not you. Me. We’re a team, dude. That was the whole point.”

Marx grew quiet. His eyelids flittered open and shut, the discarded candy wrapper at the bottom of the trash bin swum in his vision. I’m sure Archer would get a hell of an ironic laugh from the department if they saw that, he thought with equal measures distaste and scorn.

“Listen,” Mack said. “I empathize the hell out of your position. I do. I really really do. But what, are you just gonna leech off her? She’s not offering to give you happiness, buddy. She’s offering to buy it for you.”

The doctoral candidate kept his eyes shut. He fiddled with the yellow-puke colored phone cord. The light in the office was growing dimmer as the clouds darkened outside the window; the thin rays of puke-colored light streaming through the angled shutters were vanishing into the carpet and the shadowed stacks of books.

 “What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. I called you.”

“The hell was I supposed to do?”

“I don’t know. Say you’re proud of me.”

“Teddy, I would chortle at you if I knew how to make that sound.”

Eventually Mack went off about the Caps taking it to the Rangers even with Ovechkin still in a funk, how since the Olympic break Ovechkin had been off (“Just a half a step off, you can see it”). They hung up. Teddy leaned back, languid, in the professor’s chair. His head was pounding again, the air in the office was going stale. He checked his clock. There was to be another meeting in twenty minutes. Teddy would be presenting to the department a draft of his thesis entitled simply, ‘The Defense.’ He ran over the details in his head once more, the tired repetitions, the quotations and citations and proofs. His headache returned worse. It was a paper he had finished long ago – sometime in the middle of his undergrad years – just when the novelty of academia had really begun to wear off. A portion he had submitted as his writing sample in his application to graduate school, and he was using the remainder as his doctoral work. “This is inspired stuff!” Professor Archer liked to say, each time he printed out a new section. “Inspired!”

 “That doesn’t bother me,” Marx would reply.

 

***

 

The departmental suite was occupied by a dozen or so men and women who each seemed slightly more enthused than the occasion warranted. Most were older men, professors, priests, doctors and masters and reverends of some standing who saw the world for what it was – but what was it? It was exactly this unheralded confidence, this false bravado, which disenchanted Marx from the moment he walked in.

 Bits of ancient Catholic artwork adorned the walls. Opulent, red-garbed cardinals leered knowingly down at the rectangular table. Battle scenes from Greece, Rome, Yorktown were reproduced in watercolor. In the corner, behind a heap of old boxes, were the remnants of an M.L.K. poster that had coffee spilled on it during the spring social the semester past. The walls were chalk white, holding the light from the fluorescent lampbars above. A small brown table near the back had been set up for the purpose of hot caffeinated beverages with names whose degree of Frenchness seemed to increase with the height of the bile in Marx’s stomach. The tiny little square windows had been levied open just enough to circulate the air, not enough to stop bits of rain seeping in and covering the top empty shelf of a dusty bookcase with a thin layer of humidity (eyed with grandiose delight by a pair of old priests sitting nearby). The sounds of the cars streaming by far below drifted through the misty air, the steady distant roar of engines, squeaking brakes, splashing puddles.

To begin the meeting Professor Archer inevitably made a comment about it being a beautiful day, punctuated by a reference to something Sappho or someone had said about rain.

“And now for a reference,” Professor Archer said with a horrible smile, “To something Sappho or someone said about rain.”

The world swayed dangerously before Marx’s eyes. He wasn’t hearing right. He blinked and Archer was reading something muted from a folder, shuffling his papers, and there were still assorted mutterings in the crowd.

 “Rain,” Archer was saying, “And a reference to something Sappho or someone said about it.”

“Thank you,” Marx said, and without hesitation turned on his heel and walked straight out of the room.

 

 

***

 

In the hallway it seemed as though everyone was watching him. The students, of course, talking ignorantly, blundering into him blindly – he all the while muttering things about how this, the one time he was not feeling well, the one time he was not going out of his way to be unnecessarily kind to the world, everyone smashed into him. And the worst of it was that they all seemed so horrible when they did it. He glared angrily at a short meathead type with earbuds who was looking behind him as he walked around a bend in the hall. The nausea was coming back. He felt clammy, imminently sick. The ceiling spun, pictures of Jesuits upsidedown-frowned at him serenely. He stopped for a moment beside a portrait of St. Ignatius of Loyola.

“The hell do you want?” he said to its beady brown eyes, and vomited in the trash can at its foot.

He ignored the stares now, indignant, striding on down the corridor (they all hated his class, they all hated philosophy). There were seventeen majors in a university of nine-thousand. Kids took the class because there was a general educational requirement to take philosophy. They bristled at being told how to spend their time. Deeper questions about the existence of humanity were unrelated to their employment opportunities and G.P.A.’s. What did contemplating the origins of the universe have to do with benefit analysis ratios, or compound earnings problems, or whatever it was that was preached in the business school? They had no place for him and his nervous existential soliloquies. They had decided already what they were going to get out of the benefits of some few thousand years of human thought and history.

“Well I have no place for them,” he said, not a little loudly. A pair of polo-gelled ZetaKappas eyed him warily as he passed.

 Outside the rain had stopped. The light of the clouded sun momentarily blinded him, piercing his skull at the crown of his forehead. He almost was sick again and heaved over at the waist, but straightened shortly.

 In the cab the driver asked him where he was headed.

“Coldwater Canyon,” he said. “Go ahead.”