2009 - The Unknown Knowns Page 3

  Dead ahead, midway up the shelves, was a complete series of Mr. District Attorney, including the prescient issue N°5 (“Exposing the crudest racket in the world – ’The Counterfeit Medicine Mob!”’; G; $60). Next to that was Nyoka the Jungle Girl N°27 (NM; $280). Skip a few boxes, and you’d find Plastic Man N°39 (VG; $136). “Who dares follow Plastic Man down the stairway to madness?” I can’t tell you how many times I answered that question in the affirmative.

  I had a real oddity from 1952. The virulently anti-McCarthyite issue of Shock SuspenStories (Jingoistic he-man says: “Give it to him, the dirty Red!”; Modern woman says: “Stop it! Please! What you’re doing is wrong! Act like Americans!”; VG; $205). My collection also included several well-preserved issues of Rulah, Jungle Goddess. Why so many comics about feral women? Feel free to write your own report on this topic and e–mail it to the Pentagon.

  I’ll wrap up our tour on the bottom shelf, where you’d find one of my most prized possessions shielded from insidious forces and mildew in a doubled plastic sleeve. Wonder Woman N°26 (“The Golden Women and the White Star!”; G; $260). If this had been Superman, the price would be double. But that’s the Neanderthal world of comics collecting for you! You should see the meatheads who do the appraising.

  I tugged a length of kite string to snap on the overhead bulb and then pulled down the garage door behind me. My task was secret – I was looking for the so-called lost issue of Namora (N°4, 1948). Suppressed by the Comics Council, halted by the publisher, this was one of only five copies extant on our planet, or any other planet that I know of. Now, thanks to your government trying to protect our vital interests, there are only four. Taking out insurgents one rare, collectible comic at a time!

  Namora, if you don’t know, was the cousin of Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner. Like Namor, she was fathered by a land dweller but raised in Atlantis, where she joined the ruling elite. In the late forties they handed Namora her own series, but it was discontinued under suspicious circumstances after only three issues.

  I removed the apocryphal issue N°4 from its plastic sleeve and laid it out on my felt desktop, using long surgical tweezers to turn the pages. It looked so frail, the images so quaint, with their one-piece bathing suits and USO hairdos. Who would ever consider this a threat to American values? What could be so dangerous about a half-aquatic heroine with shapely legs and somewhat libertarian ideals? Historians will tell you she was gagged for her overt feminist themes, and for the ‘unequivocal depictions of Sapphic romance’. And it’s true, issue N°4 describes a feminist coup in her undersea birthplace, Maritanus. Under the mutinous leadership of Namora herself, all the women depart to establish their own colony deep in the Sea of Japan. There they form a psychic alliance with the Amazons to battle a school of marauding bull sharks. At the end we see one cell depicting subaquatic homosocial hand-holding. Big deal.

  It was my mother who acquired this relic for my collection. The occasion was my eighth birthday, and it probably cost her plenty. On an assistant professor’s salary this was a huge sacrifice, one that I have never forgotten.

  I’d come all the way out here to Stor-Mor because I couldn’t remember an important detail from this issue. How did Namora and her rebel band get from Maritanus to the Sea of Japan? I found the answer on page 24, a caravan of blue whales with saddles strapped to their humps, those little huts you see on the backs of camels in movies about Cleopatra. This was something I could definitely use in a diorama.

  We’re talking now about my physical storage unit. But of course I had another unit. It was padlocked in the section of the brain where we keep our hopes. Based on certain pressures I feel when going there, I have determined that it resides somewhere in the rear left of the skull. This is where I built my conceptual dioramas and printed the imaginary white placards to hot-glue on the walls beside them. This was the Museum of the Aquatic Ape of the Mind, behind its own shrieking garage door, corrugated orange and white, no secret password to enter, no archival boxes for the agents to raid, no voice–mail messages for some congressman to broadcast in front of a whole chamber of dignitaries.

  I sat down and felt the pressure of tears mounting in my sockets, felt the heaviness in the rear left of my skull, and with these sensations came a wave of sadness.

  By the time I got home, Jean was already back from the office. She works in organization management for a corporate development firm. When you’re dealing with Complexity Theory and critical thinking all day, it can get pretty stressful. You’d be surprised how much resistance there is when you offer alternatives to command-and-control leadership methods. So I couldn’t blame Jean if she brought her work home with her sometimes.

  I lingered at the door, car keys and laser-pointer springing from hand to hand. From there I could see her on all fours in the full bath, rummaging through the cabinet under the sink.

  “I’m back!” I shouted cheerfully but maybe not loud enough.

  “Where did you put my goddamn razor?” said Jean. “Have you been using it again?”

  “I went out to do some archival research,” I said. “For the Museum.”

  “Why can’t you shave your armpits with your own razor?” she said. And then to herself: “What’s wrong with him?” Her head was under the sink. I could tell by the muffled quality of her voice.

  “So…did you eat yet?” I fired the laser in the direction of the bathroom, drawing the shape of a heart on her substantial behind. “Hon?”

  “If you don’t stop with that thing, I’m going to have my brother break your fingers.”

  “Okay! I was thinking burritos.”

  I’d learned from experience that the best way to manage Jean’s bad weather was with a steady outpouring of sunshine. Stay positive, Jim. Stay up. Let her know she’s safe. Of course that tactic failed miserably in the end; nothing could keep the storm front of heartbreak at bay forever.

  Even as I sit here on the deck of the Endurance, on this dismal, drippy night, I feel the muscle reflex at the corners of my mouth that signals happiness. My lawyer congratulates me when I smile. “Keep it up, Jimmy,” he says. “It helps.” This is the Fat Man, my court-appointed counsel, with his steady intake of Diet Pepsi. I am a cheerful person by nature, but the more I think about where that’s gotten me, the more I want to repudiate optimism in all its forms. I can’t think of a lot of compelling reasons to smile. But look here: at the corners of my mouth. They point in the direction of optimism. Keep smiling, I say. Keep shining.

  My wife and I spent the rest of that evening in separate states of engagement. Jean watched a depressing show about child prostitution on public television and ate a microwave burrito. I ate a microwave burrito standing at the kitchen island, watching Jean.

  “When do you plan to stop staring at me?” she said finally.

  “Jean, is this something we should talk about?” I said. I wasn’t staring. “Talking might be a good idea. If it’s the Museum that’s bothering you, I can put that aside for a while.” This was all said in the spirit of diplomacy; but I couldn’t put the Museum aside – not for a while, not for a day. I was trying to be conciliatory, to the point of sugarcoating destiny, never a good idea.

  Jean put the remainder of her burrito on the coffee table, perilously close to my autographed copy of Elaine Morgan’s The Descent of Woman. I worried about bean seepage but didn’t say anything. She considered me with paper-dry eyes.

  “I don’t even know what museum you’re talking about, Jim. I don’t even know – ”

  “The Museum of the Aquatic Ape,” I volunteered.

  “ – what this museum is. It doesn’t exist in the reality of our life. The whole Aquaman thing, I mean it was cute for a while, but honestly.”

  I surprised her by smiling. “This is good,” I said.

  “Look, Jim.” She stood and moved close beside me. “This inner life of yours, I always liked that.”

  “We’re talking. It’s a development.”

  “I used to get a real kick o
ut of your inner life. It was one of the things I liked about you.”

  “Liked.” My smile vanished when I realized we were in the past tense.

  “Yes,” she said. “Now I just want things to be real.”

  “Liked?”

  “You can go out to Stor-Mor and play with your models, but it’s got to be a hobby. Do you understand? I’m not just talking for me, because the next woman you meet – ”

  “Next woman?” At this stage I think I was yelling.

  “ – the next woman is going to say the same thing. Jim, you don’t even know how to swim.”

  “I’m going to stand here until you take that back.”

  “About swimming?”

  “The other thing. The next woman. Which is pure fantasy. I’m not going to sit down or move or blink until you take it back.”

  She turned off the TV, bundled up the remains of her dinner, and dropped it in the kitchen trash.

  “I’m serious,” I said, trying not to move my lips, trying not to move anything. “I want to be adult about this, but I’m not moving.” She set the timer on the coffeemaker for 7:00 a.m. and went to the bedroom, closing the door behind her. “Not moving until you take it back!”

  Jean returned forty-five minutes later, just as I suspected she would. She found me, true to my word, standing completely motionless in the dim kitchenette.

  “You have to move sometime, jerk.” She pushed my shoulder and gave me a laughing look, as if we were complicit in some kind of comedy skit. I recognized what she was doing. She was giving me the opportunity to soften my stance, to acquiesce. But this was not an offer I could permit myself to take.

  “I’m sorry I said you play with models. How’s that?” She poked me under the arm, a vulnerable spot. “Truce?”

  I refused her extended hand and with it her offer of detente. To accept would have been a breach of my stated position, and then the whole thing would have crumbled.

  “I’m sorry I said you stole my razor.”

  I gave her a hurt look, trying not to move the muscles of my face, which is impossible. The hurt look requires a squinching of the eyebrows and the slight protrusion of the lower lip.

  “Ha!” She poked with both hands now, index-fingering both my underarms. “You moved. Game over, Jim!”

  I tried not to use my lips when I said, “It’s not the razor. It’s that you don’t believe in me.” I felt like the most depressing ventriloquist on earth. Try saying the word believe without moving your mouth. “You don’t believe in me anymore.” Next came the pleasant sting of tears, not from sadness but from keeping my eyes open too long. I wondered if even this tiny reflex action would count as moving.

  “I do deleeth,” said Jean, mocking me. I held my position. She saw the tears in my eyes.

  “No – come on,” she said, putting her face so close to mine that I could see the inconsistencies in her lip gloss application. “I believe in Jim.”

  She put an arm around my rigid shoulders, now aching and starting to cramp. “I believe in the old Jim. I like the nerdy comics guy Jim. Bookmobile Jim. Sea Monkey Jim. But there has to be a part of your life that’s not that. I’m not saying you’re obsessed. Okay, you’re obsessed. But maybe that’s my problem. Maybe you need somebody who – ”

  “I don’t need somebody who.” My lips were still not moving, so the word somebody came out sounding like sundoddy. A tear had found its way into the trough that goes from the nostril to the corner of your mouth. Whatever that’s called. I couldn’t think of the name of it, but it tickled anyway. Still, I held fast to my position.

  “Well,” she said, releasing my shoulders. I saw the diplomacy dry up. The window had closed. She was done. “Maybe that’s my point.”

  By nine o’clock that night I had allowed my knees to buckle. Soon I was kneeling on the linoleum, my forehead resting against cool stainless steel. I was actively revising the rules, or adding new corollaries to the old rules. I thought that allowing gravity to do its work wasn’t, technically speaking, moving. Not in an active sense, not with malice aforethought and all. Out of the corner of one eye I could see the minutes ticking by on my Helvner.

  Maybe, I remember thinking, maybe this is getting ridiculous. Maybe you should just leave, Jim. Go to the Hilton. Let Jean think about things while you’re gone. I was tired of playing the martyr. If she wanted me – the actual Jim, Sea Monkey Jim – she could make the next move. Why should I always have to make the next move?

  I recall that being my reasoning at the time, which in retrospect seems kind of flawed.

  When I stood up, my knees clicked. The sound was like a death sentence, a clicky death sentence. I didn’t recall my knees making noises before. I was thirty-eight years old in the worst way possible.

  FOUR

  Rep. Neil Frost: Son, I’m sure your lawyers have briefed you on why we wanted you here.

  Agent Les Diaz: Yes, Congressman. I’ve been briefed.

  Rep. Frost: We just want you to answer as honestly, clearly, and completely as you can.

  Diaz: I make it my policy never to do otherwise.

  Rep. Frost: Good for you, son. You comfortable? Want some water? Get some water in here for Agent Diaz.

  Diaz: That won’t be necessary.

  FIVE

  It was 9:45 by the dashboard clock when I eased out of the condo parking lot. My shoulders still felt crampy from standing still so long. Through the windshield I took one last look at our curtains to see if Jean was watching me leave. She was not. So I honked, flashed my brights, and waited a minute. Still nothing. My first stop was the Hot Mart, for my customary Paycheck bar. At 10:15 I reached the Hilton hotel and pulled the hand brake on the Corolla without depressing the little thumb button at the end. I didn’t care if it made that ratchety noise. I felt reckless and fatalistic. Like I’d played the Lyre of Doom and was now ready to face whatever interdimensional hydra I’d summoned forth.

  The sliding glass doors of the Hilton lobby slid open and I accepted their whispered invitation. Corey gave me a what’s-up signal but I was too bummed to respond in kind.

  “You don’t look so good,” he said. I neither denied this nor confirmed it. Corey could see in me whatever he wanted to see.

  He informed me that the pool was being ‘serviced,’ a word that aroused my suspicions. I was told to ‘cool it’ for an hour or so. I took a seat in the lobby to wait. The sofa suite at the hotel is Colonial-style, decorated with some kind of brocade showing military life in the period reflected in the design of the furniture. It was, I always thought, like embroidering a midcentury modern love seat with a picture of the atomic bomb. My eyebrows, I realized, had been arched for some time. I returned them to their default position and settled back into the imperialist upholstery.

  With my three-ring binder on my knee I began to organize my thoughts for the evening’s session. This was not easy, of course, given my delicate state. Whenever I fought with Jean it didn’t just make me upset, it had an impact on my sense of being. I was always surprised that I still commanded a presence at all, that I occupied space and moved through it. That in my opinion is the most creepy symptom of regret, the sense that you are dislocated from existence. It took Corey’s ‘what’s up’ to remind me that I was. If this sounds dramatic, it’s not nearly as dramatic as it felt at the time. I was attached to Jean with ontological tentacles. Jim and Jean. Jean and Jim.

  I moved my eyes back and forth, and the dim museum of my brain showed me one familiar tableau after another. The hotel desk, where the poseable figure of Corey sat drawing pictures on a cocktail napkin. The pool area, where patio furniture crouched menacing and spidery in the dark around an impassive black lake. Back to Corey again, whose realistic details had shifted in the short interval like actual organic matter, flesh and breath. To the left of the desk I saw the bank of elevators. The lights above the doors suggested the rise and fall of real passengers through actual floors. By scanning the room in this manner, seeing it as a series of discrete di
oramas, I was verifying my own subjectivity in the face of the Jean situation.

  It was nearly 10:45 by the time the maintenance man cleared out and Corey gave me the green light to enter the pool area. The pool is housed in an extension off one side of the hotel. And though it might be an enticement to a weary traveler on the belt-way, it’s kind of a rip-off when you actually get inside. The patio furniture looks wrought-iron but it’s really powder-coated aluminum. The tiled floor is of Spanish derivation, polished like they’re begging for a lawsuit. But look closer and you can see the flamenco characters are SpongeBob and his starfish friend. The water laps with genuine fervor against the sides of the pool, but the air is redolent of feet and bleach.

  After hours they keep the pool area dark, but the mercury-vapor lamps shine in from the parking lot to project a mirror of the pool on the glass walls. A lesser intellect might be fooled by this, might not know where the water ends and the solid world begins, but I have no trouble with illusions. I know them too well.

  I stole to the edge of the water, avoiding eye contact with the surveillance camera, per Corey’s instructions. Where the tiles give way to a glazed blue lip I slid in, toes pointed, until I was submerged up to my collarbone. I strapped on my scuba mask, an old–fashioned Cousteau job made of natural rubber. It’s got plenty of face suction and the Plexiglas is so thick it might even be bulletproof. Though I wouldn’t want to test this hypothesis.

  I pinched my nose and blew out to attain a more amphibious pressure in the ear canal. Then I slipped the nozzle of the snorkel between my lips and wetted it with my tongue. On better nights, the snorkel had the rubbery flavor of adventure, and often I hung there sucking on the nozzle and dreaming of past explorers of note – Sir Ernest Shackleton, Ponce de Leon, and Mungo Park. But that night the nozzle tasted like nothing but imminent failure.