Part 9 (1/2)

Daddy's last upright public appearance was on the bar stool in the VFW, where one final shot of whiskey felled hily skeletal forh each week he's sanded closer to the bone But he'd been floating farther fro when I'd left him-he'd left me? I never could decide-more than a decade before

The aood hand wipes his wet face then swats my hand away

11

In Search of Incompetence I don't drink every day, but I find myself unpredictably blotto at inopportune times don't drink every day, but I find myself unpredictably blotto at inopportune tiht before my thirtieth birthday: I lie fully dressed-albeit shoeless-in a charcoal business suit in the bathtub of a Silicon Valleywhiskey from one of those minibar bottles that makes you pucker your lips into a doll's pinhole al pad with notes for le x and y axis drawn into an L-shaped graph To say I'm ill prepared understates the problem My sole plan is to: (1) stride into the boardroom; (2) sine a diaphanous veil falling across the rest of my presentation

I lie in the cold bath as in a tomb From the outer hallway cobeater Much of the Loyolasoame with a tennis ball Every now and then they hurl the ball against my hollow-core door This is not an accident

Earlier tonight, with rabid expression and possibly some spit spray, I told the team they had to keep it down or I'd call the front desk They froze and stared as if so creature had reared up froame resumed at full decibel level

The rusty old clerk who caer's hu over his shoulder at the ballplayers arrayed behind as he said, We're full tonight I can't htailed it through the gauntlet of giants back to the elevator, which two looainst the hotel door, the tennis ball occasionally whaes If they could bust in, they'd throw me on a bonfire and torch me, I know it

Theythirty, far froo Worst of all, I've failed to publish a book, whicha writer has abraded off like the name on a orn tombstone

I unscrew the tiny bottle of vodka's red lid and suck a few drops Every asshole I know has published a book Over six years, I've collected rejections for my manuscript, sometimes the occasional nice note for second place So a sheaf of dog-eared pages curling at the edges lies onpoe, which is-as Warren points out-not nothing

But unless a book publisher stitches the job that'll let me shed snakeskinlike the business suit I wear like an unwilling drag queen It's an old drea for the jacket photo in the bathroo the baleful, heavy-lidded pout I figured would look snappy, she'd cackle like a ain My response? I'd pinch o psss psss psss psss psss psss like a puff adder Soesture drove her batshi+t like a puff adder Soesture drove her batshi+t

By age thirty, I' schedule, knowing full well my favorite poet was a full-ti e, but that seeh even I know the crap I crank out referring to Hoil is pretentious before Warren carefully pens pretentious pretentious on page botto in feels like a stone island I've shi+pwrecked myself on My pantyhose have twisted around, and the black unwashed soles gross ins out reports on Swedish telecoy, or packet switching and deregulation

Oh, and reviews of assholes who've actually published poetry collections, in a azine my husband edits Which, if he didn't revise et in to

Barisly fuckers! If I had a firears you are

Now I've taken up a weensy bottle of Scotch, J&B in the green bottle What ned these bottles so small? And why a minibar when a maxibar is clearly what's called for?

Today on the phone, the big-deal consultant who got ive this presentation into work in the hospital as a janitor and winding up perforery

Don't remind me, I said

Think about it, he mused Your whole business career has derived from a series of flukes

While he talked, I stretched the phone cord and dexterously slipped the se key into its slot I said, Aren't you supposed to be finding flights?

My travel agent's going to ring the other line, he said

He was a captain of industry, this guy Once the thirtyso president of my old co bucks, pro and le I could doubleup intervals for poetry

On the phone to reat business best seller First there was In Search of Excellence In Search of Excellence, Mary Karr brings us In Search of Incoh to be jovial about this, but I knew if I screwed up the presentation and lost this client's fat retainer, I'd be dead, for without this expert's benevolent referrals, I had zero credential

Can you help h the phone's overseas hiss, I heard another phone start ringing, and he said, Maybe this other flight ca across the Asian oceans, and I resisted the impulse to pound the phone receiver on the first solid surface

Toward dawn in the hotel rooal pad and try to envision rease board, I'll draw a horizontal line-an X axis-saying, This line represents your spending It goes fro out shi+tloads of ht My vertical Y axisback zero at the bottoonna tell the president of Company X and his minions that they need to spend as little as possible whileshi+tloads in return The question is, how to stretch this expensive advice into a nine-hourMr Consultant skids into the boardrooot on He takes the laser pointer from my hand, and I sit sweatily at the conference table Other than taking notes, I' a poet looks to uys in clip-on ties

Sitting there, I fantasize about the birthday dinner uru planned in San Francisobfore I catch the red-eye back He'll talk about translating the great Polish nobel dude and about the ballads of Wordsworth and about his own drunk h He knows the botanical names of plants and how to do carpentry work In my mind, I picture his curious, becalmed expression the way certain saffron-robed acolytes do Buddha His very stare will rebaptize me a writer, despite my business suit

But he doesn't make it (Later, I'll find out his bloody divorce had just started) On the verge ofback to the rental car and weave drunkenly through the fog to the airport, where I toss down enough cocktails to note how costlytolerance is Eventually, I call Warren fros, and I hear my own voice on the machine, and I say, Pick up, pick up

He listens patiently, for he is both patient and a listener And he reminds me his book isn't in print yet, either It's the work that counts I feelwords as I ask hi for ht you wanted that party we're having, he says, with your sister cootiated He's noting the traffic to and fro he'll lose Should I offer to cancel the party in order to be picked up? When he hangs up, I feel confident that I'll see hi touched down in Boston at dawn, I wander through the airport with an inner plunging sense-no sign of Warren When the ressed terror of a kid lost in the glass cubicles of a department store because her manic mother has just wandered off-maybe on purpose, et past it, I ask ot that sense of acceptance and security as a kid?

You've got to nurture yourself through those instants, he says, recognize the source of the misery as out of kilter with the stimulus Realize you're not lost You're an adult Warren didn't hurt you on purpose You were perfectly capable of getting yourself holoot home?

If that calms you, he says One drink

Just what I hoped he'd say

12

Bent Bender ”Well, if God doesn't exist, who's laughing at us?”-Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karascrude or trashy or otherwise unsee with Harold, she says,of late in the spare rooay

Happened, she says They showed up drunk last night, talking about the hustle contest at Get Down Brown's

Lecia lives two hours from our ho I wonder were they doing this with Daddy in the house!

Who knows? Lecia says Daddy's so out of it, he , he likes Harold better than Mother

Harold's nicer, I say Way nicer