Awards

Don Quixote of New Jersey

by

Mark Tarallo

Published in Red Mountain Review

(This story is the first chapter of a novel called The Impresario of High Human Qualities.
Copyright material.  All rights reserved.)

    THERE MAY BE better places to sound for depth, to mine for connections, to steep oneself in the near-eternal and give the ultracontemporary world the slip, than Edgewater, New Jersey.

     But from just outside my three rented rooms on Undercliff Avenue, through the rusty sideways diamonds of the staggering fence that runs along the walk and separates the occasional pedestrian from the oil tanks and cranes below, there is much to consider.

     There are the buildings of north Manhattan, densely set, in various shades of russet, umber and faded grey, colors which for some reason give them the air of intellectual residences. I recognize two -- the high square tower of Riverside Church, and the dome under which Ulysses S. Grant lies. [Ask the motionless guard who spends his days staring at the tomb why Grant, a midwesterner, is buried in New York, and he will tell you.]

     There is the languid Hudson, running shimmery and slow in a foreboding shade of slate blue that suggests eternity and infinity and death. But the river takes in more light as it moves south, so when following its path with your eyes you may see what looks like sheets of silver or perfect glass interleaved with long narrow patches of shadow, until the last line of sea bleeds into a vague shape that rises off the far shore [which may or may not be Battery Park, I’m not quite sure].

      Between the buildings and the river, cars, tiny in the distance, move slowly north and south on the tree-masked West Side Highway.
     
      THIS CAN BE seen from a place I think of as Ideation Headquarters, situated mid-cliff in the upper Palisades, off a street called Undercliff Avenue. A wonderful space for a wonderer. Right now, in fact, I wishing hard for immediate transport to that street, to be gazing at the river through the rusty sideways diamonds of the staggering fence.

     For it was there that I decided to undertake The Investigation, driven by the river shadings, building representations and even the distance from which I saw them. All are related to what I am trying to accomplish. But before anything further, it would be wise to turn my attention to matters at hand, for Rick has started to yelp.

    Once again, it is DialAmerica time.

    --Wake 'em up! Rick yelps. It's DialAmerica time! Let's hear some bells! We're doin' Beeperphones this morning; we're doin' Beeperphones. Let's here some bells, guys and gals! Let's hear some bells!

     Grinning, Rick paces the front of the room. From somewhere behind me the ding of a clerk's bell sounds, signaling a sale. Rick stops; his head turns.

     --Ahhhh, the lovely Beryl Lomax! Rick says, smiling at a young woman in the back, already on her next call. Keep it up, Beryl, keep it up. C'mon guys, who's gonna match Beryl? Who's gonna match Beryl? Let's hear some bells, guys. Let's hear some bells!

     On days like these, when Rick's bantering seems deeply depression-inducing, I make use of the sole brilliancy that has come to me here: Beeping.

     --Yes, may I speak to Mr. Lutz? Mr. Lutz, my name is Kevin Piercey and I’m calling about Beeperphone...

     After the word Beeperphone I press one of the tough-tone keys on the receiver. <Burrrrrp!> it sounds.

     --...the portable pager system. As you probably know, Mr. Lutz, cellular phone technology is revolutionizing our marketplace and personal lives, and Beeperphone <Burrrrrrp!>  is on the cutting edge...

     --What's that sound? interrupts Mr. Lutz. 

     --Excuse me? I say, even though I understood the question.

     --I just heard two beeping sounds. Did you press one of the buttons by mistake?

     --Oh, no, ahh, that's part of the presentation, I say.

     Mr. Lutz does not respond.

     --Okay, I continue, ummm, as I was saying, Beeperphone <Burrrrrp!> is on the cutting edge of that technology. Beeperphone <Burrrrrp!> offers a state of the art communication system that you can strap onto your belt, allowing you to be reached by phone no matter where you are--indoors or out. And Bee....

     There is a loud click, then the harsh buzz of the dial tone, once defined as the sound of a disengaged soul.
    
     ONE CREDENTIAL ALONE, I have decided, qualifies me to undertake The Investigation -- lack of distinction. Academics? I spent a distracted five years generating mediocre grades at an ordinary state university.

     Worldliness? After graduation I backpacked through Europe in an effort to relieve the crushing obligation to solicit culture in the temples of the Old World. I doubt I had one fresh thought about the usual cities, paintings, churches and squares that I took in, with the possible exception that a portion of Paris' 15th arrondisement resembles certain sections of Hoboken.

     Career? Ready to embark on life at 24, I have taken a temporary job at DialAmerica, the nation's largest telemarketing firm (national headquarters: Jones Road Office Park, Fort Lee, N.J.) while I search for true vocation.

     Of course, one may counter-argue, and say that my unqualifications qualify me as a model representative for the Generation X, the latest progeny of the Lost Generation to mistakenly assume originality.

    Sorry. Here I fail on a different count. For citizens of the slacker-world -- in their drifting, purposelessness, and no-future philosophies – always assume a certain confidence, something I do not possess.

    For I have not yet mastered the correct exteriors for expected behaviors. What is the proper glance for the passing pedestrian who faces you on the sidewalk? How does one respond, without stammering, to the unexpected question from a stranger at the bus stop?

    Is there truth buried in my discomfort, in its recognition of the complexity of interaction? Perhaps.  Nonetheless, it makes living harder. To an idealist like myself, eradicating irony, posturing, sarcasm, coldness and all the other tropes in the repertoire of day-to-day living may sound pleasing. But some rehearsed gestures are needed to get through our world. Every point of contact, every exchange, cannot be dwelled upon. You would end up like me.

     I have often succumbed to the American practice of measuring progress by pitting oneself against all others in one’s peer group. In every newspaper profile I read, I count up from the subject’s birth year to see what he or she was up to at my age. The conclusion is always clear: I am markedly unaccomplished. Meanwhile, my contemporaries cruise. The young entrepreneurs are amassing their fortunes. The gifted writers are reading favorable notices of their first novels. The young science doctoral candidates are engaged in advanced cellular research, making a contribution toward a cure for cancer. The esquires-to-be are setting their sights on a seat in the US House of Representatives.

     And yet I sometimes suspect that no one is more qualified to undertake The Investigation than I.
     Only someone like myself, a congressman of undistinction, can represent the vast constituency of the utterly undistinquished, those without academic pedigree, who have not surmounted the odds or survived broken homes, the uncertain, the nervous, the tentative. For them The Investigation holds great redemptive....

     --Takin' a break there, Mr Piercey? Rick says. No problem, no problem, just don't take too long. Lotta Beeperphones to be sold this morning, Kevin. Lotta Beeperphones.

     Red-faced, I wave a limp hand of acknowledgement at Rick. Jesus. The beeps are my only solace. I decide to try a long one.

     --Mr. Capezzuto, my name is Kevin Piercey, and I'm calling about Beeperphone portable pager systems. As you probably know, Mr. Capezzuto, cellular phone technology is
<Burrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr...

     I hold the button down for a ten count, without taking the receiver from my ear. Finally I let it go and resume speaking at a passage near the bottom of the script.

     --........rrrrrrrrrp> you to try Beeperphone on a no-risk trial basis?

     --I-I didn't hear what you said with that beeping sound, Mr. Capezzuto says excitedly.

     --Hmmmm, that's strange, I didn't hear anything. Must be...

     --You didn't hear that? Mr Capezzuto says. I thought you did it!

     --No, hmmmm. Well, what I was saying was that Beeperphone is <Burrrrrrrrrrrrpppp.......

     I press the button for another ten seconds, wondering if Mr. Capezzuto will hang on that long. When I finally release it I hear a dial tone, not surprising in the least.

     These beeps are more, much more, than a silly prank. They are actions of surprise and they feel heady, almost dizzying. Dialing again, I decide to supplement the beeps with some British diction.

     --Yes, is that Mr. Rizzo? I say.

     --Who is this? Mr. Rizzo answers. A voice like a clenched fist.

     --Mr. Rizzo? Hallo, Kevin Piercey here, and I'm ringing you up to chat about Beeperphone, the portable home...

     --Quit botherin' me at home, godDAMMIT!

     The hammer-on-anvil sound of a slammed receiver explodes in my ear. I sit, stunned, with heat rising off me, and stew in the sweaty fires of humiliation.

     I PRESS HEAVILY against the backrest of my chair, trying to shake off the Rizzo episode, and attempt to refocus on the big picture -- The Investigation.

      Ideation? I’m hip, the know-it-alls will say, claiming prior knowledge, as is their wont. I’ve got it covered. The act of the mind by which objects of sense are apprehended and retained as objects of thought.  No mystery there, dude!

      Yet at the risk of excessive expatiation, I feel compelled to explain what the apprehension of objects of sense, and their retention as objects of thought, actually means vis-a-vis The Investigation. I full well realize I may be attempting something I haven't the words to describe. And perhaps this is not the best time to flesh these things out, since I am still reeling from Mr. Rizzo's nastiness.

      But what the hell: The Investigation involves delving below the surface of everyday life, in search of the substantial. To excavate human existence, measure its comparative levels of depth, and, once having done so, to slip the shackles of the contemporary and fuse oneself with the essential, the deep, the eternal or near-eternal. With Life.

    How I will do this remains a mystery.

    What will happen if I am successful remains mysterious.     

    I am reasonably certain it cannot be done from the offices of DialAmerica. But I believe my vantagepoint next to the staggering fence, outside the three rented rooms, holds great promise. And I am optimistic about what is hidden in the shadings of the Hudson, and in the arrangement of the buildings of north Manhattan.

     And I do know what The Investigation does not entail:

     Becoming a writer. Enlisting in a latter-day Abraham Lincoln brigade and defending freedom and Western values in a faraway war. Traversing Asia with a backpack. Developing a feverish interest in social causes. Doing volunteer work. Joining the Peace Corp. Living on a kibbutz. Losing myself in religion. Or history. (I once met a graduate student who tried to imitate an eighteenth century man of letters by wearing queer hats and quoting John Donne. Blind to the vulnerability of his position, he did not refrain from criticizing all oddities around him. His style gave me courage). This is not to disparage the nobility of any of these actions. I simply know that The Investigation is not about them.

     And I know that nothing can stop me except myself. Inwardly, my enemies have already claimed choice high ground and are armed to the teeth: loneliness, social scorn, unintentionally comic humiliations, and the fear of being perceived as a failure. Perhaps it is folly to even consider fighting them -- to risk annihilation and 100-proof bitterness -- and expect to succeed. For how long can in-dwelling treachery be staved off?

     Then there is the most dangerous adversary of all: the rusted-shut heart, stocked with stirrings and longings denied release, carried around in the chest like a bomb.

     All this may have you thinking of me as the most ridiculous person in the world, the Don Quixote of New Jersey, a transcendentalist gone awry, the Outcast of the Universe. Well, think what you will. I will take my chances, and trust in the wisdom of that old sweet song:

      "If they had a king of fools then I would wear that crown,

     And you can all die laughing because I'll wear it proudly."
     
     Bells, silent for most of the morning, ring three or four times in quick succession.

     --A flurry of sales! Rick exclaims, almost leaving the ground in excitement. A flurry of sales! Who was that, Beryl again? Tim? Kim Deats? Good work, guys. Good work. That's what we like to hear.

     No sales for me thus far. I return to the phone. After two no answers, I come to a Sylvia Hershberg.

     --Hello, Ms. Hershberg?

     --Yesssss? comes a sleepy voice.

     Oh God, I woke her up. Yet the voice holds little just-woken panic. Instead, surprise, and a trifle of suspicion. Something in the voice betrays a desire -- a small hope -- to give one the benefit of the doubt. An altogether admirable voice.

     --Ms. Hershberg, my name is Kevin Piercey and I'm calling about Beeperphone <Burrrrrrp> portable pager systems.

     A small jot of guilt rises in my chest. I had beeped mainly out of force of habit, but it gives me pause to sully a voice such as hers (and one just out of sleep, no less) with a beep. I decide to allow myself one final beep -- one for the road -- with an ad-lib thrown in for good measure.

     --As you probably know, Ms. Hershberg, cellular telephone technology is revolutionizing the entire field of communications, and Beeperphone <Burrrrrrp> is in the avant-garde of that revolution...

     I hear a sleepy, sexy laugh, wonderful yet still worrying. Did I misuse "avant-garde?" Is it "on the avant-garde" instead of "in the avant-garde," like "on a wing and a prayer?" Is it a Marxist term?

     --The beeps after the beeperphone are great, she says. Did you make that up yourself?

     --Oh, hehheh, thanks, I reply. Anyway, Ms. Hershberg, with Beeperphone <Burrrrrp> portable paging systems, you never have to miss a call, no matter where you are, indoors or out.

     There is a few seconds of tremulous silence as I await her response.       

    --Well, Kevin, Beeperphone <breep> certainly sounds like a wonderful system, but to tell you the truth I’m not important enough to use a pager, even one as great as Beeperphone <breep>.

     A sloppy, overloud laugh sluices out of my mouth.  Inwardly I scold myself: Don't be a fucking giggly schoolboy.

     --Even if Lenin used it to call Trotsky during the Russian revolution, she says.

     Another overloud laugh on my part, and in desperation I ransack my brain for a conversation-extender. I come up completely dry. Once again, this is where it all ends, with me at a loss and scared to risk…. 

     --Now let me ask you a question, she says. If you were writing the secret history of existence, what would you include?

    I nearly fall out of my damn chair.
 

     --WOW. WELL, UMMMM…the secret history of existence...that sounds pretty impressive.

     --Well, I don’t know how impressive it is. I was working on it before I took a nap, so I thought I should continue. Hence the question. I think I dreamt some good ideas, but now I have to remember them. Either that or I had them right before I fell asleep. Last thing I remember I was being harangued by the afternoon sun.

     --You dreamed you were being harangued by the sun? Was he chasing you?

     --What makes you think its a he?

     --Oh yeah, no, right. Was she chasing you?

     --No, this was happening while I was still awake. The afternoon sun bothers me when I’m indoors on a Saturday. You feel obligated to be outside. In the morning it’s so pretty but you can say you'll be out enjoying it later, and dusk can be beautiful but it’s ending anyway. But in the afternoon, it feels so unnatural to be inside when you could be out.

    --Why don’t you just go out?

    --Too much work. But I was in procrastination mode, which always makes me sleepy. So I took a nap, my usual response to work. Now I’m still in procrastination mode. Which is why I am bothering you.

     --Hey, listen, no bother at all. This is a much better alternative to work, I must say. I’d like to hear more of the history of secret existence.

    --Secret history of existence. The acronym is S-H-E, SHE.

    --Oh, so it’s a she, like the sun.

    --It’s a she.

    --Ohhhhh, okay. I get it. What’s it about?

    --Do you really want to hear this? You don’t have to get back to work? You won’t get in trouble?  

    --Definitely. You’ve peaked my interest.

    --Well, I’m trying to write about an alternative form of history, that doesn’t consist of the usual events most people think of when they define a life. Things like different states of consciousness, changes of perception, experiences that are often forgotten, the cumulative effect and influence of your surroundings, things like that. I know these things sound very vague without specific examples, but I’m trying to define them and construct some sort of framework for them in my thesis. So, I’m going through a wide variety of sources, poems, paintings, music, philosophy, criticism, films…the idea is that these are things that different writers and artists and philosophers have tried to get at, and for one reason or another they haven’t been given the status of major life events, but actually they get closer to describing life than many other things.

    --That's wild! I cry. My enthusiasm is genuine but embarrassing nonetheless.

    --The problem is, it’s endless, because there’s an infinite number of sources to choose from. So I probably won’t be finished until I’m an old lady.

    --That’s so cool, I say.

    To this she gives a gentle ‘hmmph’ which sounds slightly tired but approving.

    Meanwhile, my mind races in circles and I plot. This plotting feels devious, and in gross violation to the spirit of the conversation, which is the spirit of marvelous chance. But who, I rationalize, could speak to a warm-voiced woman writing the secret history of existence, and not try to meet her? To let this one pass, to not even try, would be to condemn oneself to an endless self-kicking of one’s own ass.

    --And I definitely could see how you could get a lot from poetry, I continue. There are a bunch of contemporary poets I’ve heard that give you that feeling, it’s like…another world, an existence you don’t hear about too much.

    --Mmmm. I’m not familiar with most of the poets writing today. I wish I was, I could probably get some good stuff from them. I use the moderns a lot, and some before them.

    --Yeah, in fact, I caught a great one awhile back at a poetry reading at the Ear. I wish I could remember his name, I think he was somewhat known. Have you ever been to that place, the Ear? It’s pretty cool.

    --I’ve heard of it but I don’t think I’ve been.

    With awkwardness, rejection and humiliation -- my loyal camerados -- smiling their knowing smiles at me, I make a silent appear to the sympathetic quality of her voice, the polestar of mercy, the place where benefits of the doubt are handed out for free. In the past these moments have seen me slipping away quietly. I take a breath.

    --Yeah, in fact, I was gonna go again this Sunday, since the reading was so good last time. I think they have them every week. And listen, you should try to make it if you get a chance. You might hear stuff you could use for your project. It’d be cool. The other thing is, I’m starting a campaign to meet interesting new people with interesting ideas, instead of the usual car-worship types I meet in New Jersey. I know it might sound kind of weird to you meeting a random telemarketer at a poetry reading, but I’m not a telemarketer at heart and I have my own projects going, which I think are somewhat similar to yours. So I would love to hear more about your work, if you could swing by on Sunday at some point.

    This brummagem begging for friendship feels shameless, but I am not exactly negotiating from a position of strength.   

    --Is New Jersey really that bad? I guess it has that reputation. Some of my friends at Columbia won’t step foot in it, she says.

    A bit of anger courses through me when I hear this, strangely enough.  

    --I can understand where they’re coming from, but actually, I’m trying to redeem the state, I say.

    --Redeeming the entire state? That sounds pretty ambitious.

    --It’s a Herculean task. But anyway, yeah, the Ear’s pretty cool. Its real name is the Bar Inn, but the squiqqles fell off the B on the sign and now everyone calls it the Ear.

    --I think I’ve heard of it. Is it kind of a divey-type place?

    A stinging characterization, which throws me a little. But she says this in calm timbres, sans disdain, and seems willing to leave unacknowledged the oddness of meeting an unknown telemarketer, in a bar. I take cautious heart and plod forward.

    --Yeah, well, kind of, but it’s actually pretty cool. I think the reading will be going on most of the day, so you could come by anytime, and maybe after its over you could tell me more about your thesis over coffee or a beer or something. I should be there all day.

    --Where is it again? In Soho?

    --Yeah, on Spring Street, all the way west, past Hudson, on the left hand side if you’re walking toward the river. It’s about a block past another good place called the Bell Cafe.

    There is silence, and the waiting quiet is like a strange land no one has ever fully explored. I drift through lost, powerless, with hope the only useful feeling.

    --Well, she says tentatively, I was planning on being downtown on Sunday.

    Yes!

    --Yeah, I mean, if you’re down there in the afternoon, I don’t know, maybe we could meet around 5 or so. I’m flexible, I say.

    --A little later will work better for me, like 6, 6:30.

    --Sounds good. I’ll still be there by then. I’ll wear a green shirt, so you can pick me out. I’ve got dark hair, I’m about five-nine, and I’m fairly thin. I’ll try to grab a table if one’s available, so you can look for somebody sitting alone. And if something comes up and you can’t make it, don’t feel bad, because I’m gonna go anyway for the reading.

    --There is a chance I won’t be downtown, and if so it will be hard for me to make it.

    Another stinger, which I try to shake off.

    --Yeah, no problem. There’ll be more readings. But I look forward to hearing about your work if you can make it.

    --Well, I look forward to the redemption of New Jersey.

    --Don’t we all. Hey listen, it was great talking to you, Sylvia.

    --You too.

    --And don’t let the sun give you too much of a hard time.

    --I won’t, she says with a lightest trace of a laugh imaginable.

    --Alright. Take care.

    --Bye.

    I hang up the phone dazed and goofy. Marathon personal calls get under Rick’s skin; most likely he was casting daggers my way throughout. Who the fuck cares! The fear of retribution is nowhere within me. If he approached me now for a scolding I might stand and give him a bracing hug.

     In good faith, could he penalize me for seeking true experience? For as soon as Sylvia Hershberg started talking about being harangued by the sun, I had the feeling that she was interested in something outside of contemporaryness. My guess is that she is in a good position to do so: she sounded pretty and poised, like someone who could dance through the minefield of expected behaviors while quietly storing her energies for deeper pursuits. Offering intelligence, grace, and a means of interpretation, a focus. What one person could do!

      There was something about her that made me feel she possessed eternal qualities. So that when I thought of Thinking of being in her presence makes me feel certain, rather than uncertain. With someone like her, one could speak with the dead, and through her one could read the world – perhaps even judge the world, with newfound fairness, from a perspective never encountered before.  Maybe that’s what I could offer, from my perch at Ideation Headquarters -- a new perspective. Millions put existence on trial every day, and every day they find that it falls woefully short. Given the sum total of all suffering, how could you blame them? But with the assistance of Sylvia Hershberg, maybe The Investigation would conclude with a magnificent evaluation, generous and true. You usually looked to the artists, the intellectuals, the visionaries, to do this. But perhaps an unremarkable, undistinguished existent from Edgewater, New Jersey, had all the right qualities.

    My shift is near its close. Back in the visible world, there is something that needs attention. I flip back a few cards and find Mr. Rizzo’s number. Nervousness grips me as I listen to the rings.

    --Hello, sneers Mr. Rizzo, perpetually pissed. My heart is pumping.

    Your asshole’s on fire, I whisper, then slam the phone down. I have an urge, almost uncontrollable, to ring the hotel clerk bell that sits next to me, but I resist.

                            *                                    *                                   *

          AFTER MY IGNOBLE exit from the Dial I recline on the hood of my Buick Century in the small parking lot of the Jones Road Office Park, lying in wait for Tim Dennison, friend and fellow telemarketer. The sky’s unearthly shade, lighter than grey and darker than blue, looks calm but wildly untouchable, a fitting visual counterpoint to the feeling of the cool metal pressing through the back of my shirt. This is Fort Lee, two towns over from Edgewater and greater in affluence and commerce. I have yet to find an ounce of sympathy in this town, a nod in the direction of humanity or even the smallest acknowledgement of something resembling a soul. Sports cars -- some red, some black -- buzz indifferently along Jones Road. Stores offer appeal after appeal to the basest of desires, and sometimes even to cruelty.

    --Hey man, sorry if you were waiting. I was busy plotting Rick’s death.

    Tim tosses his ravaged green backpack on the roof of my car, rips the wraparound zipper open, and pulls out a blue notebook. His face, as always, appears steadfast to me -- features flat and pleasant; jaw squared, but sans arrogance; frameless glass rectangles over each eye. For a second I wonder: Should I tell him what transpired with Sylvia Hershberg?

    --Listen to this, he says to me over the roof. I was in the city last week trying to get some books from the public library and afterward, I stopped in this little café.

    --Oh, cool. How was it?

    --Pretty good, but the guys who worked there were really pretentious. They took a long time to serve me because I wasn’t wearing a black turtleneck.

    --Yeah, really. I know those places.

    --The bathroom was really falling apart and someone wrote on the wall—“Dad’s sex trailer.” In neat handwriting too.

    --Good God.

    --It inspired me. I wrote a poem -- “Home Memories.” What do you think? More people will read this than my thesis.

    From the last page of the notebook he reads solemnly to me over the car roof:

    --Unblessed…
    and undressed,

    I got it in—
    Then rammed her rim.

    She told me jokes,

    And gave me smokes,

    And shared some tales…

    Of dad’s sex trailer.
   
     --Oh man! True art! I say through a puffed laugh. You’re a sick man. Hey, fuck the thesis, just hand that in. When is your thesis due, anyway?

    --I have like five years…but the deadline’s not the problem. The problem is that it’s slop.

    Slowly we lower ourselves onto the front seat. The massive doors slam shut: two cannon blasts. (Despite its enormity, the Century has only two doors, and they will never close quietly). We leave DialAmerica behind and chuff down Jones Road.

    --Yeah, my mistake was leaving school without finishing the thesis, Tim says in a low voice.

    Then he turns to me, animated.

    --It’s much easier to finish something like this in grad school, he says, because everybody around you is doing equally irrelevent things and you feel at home. But when you’re out of school and realize that working on your thesis is totally meaningless.

    --Yeah, right. Welcome to the real world, I say.

    --Which is just as bad. Have you ever noticed how everybody’s always waiting for the great times to start happening, like, okay, things will be great just around the corner. But this is it! We’re there! It’s not going to get any better.

    --Yeah right, I say, silently unwilling to give this quelling sentiment serious consideration. No mention of Sylvia, I decide.

    We ride in silence for awhile, then near the house of Howard and Janice, Tim’s parents. Tim located himself here after leaving graduate school.

    --Listen, we should get together soon, I say. What’s your schedule like this week?

    --I’m going to see Margaret this weekend. Next weekend she has to go to a relative thing, so I’ll be around.

    With the mention of his girlfriend Margaret, I reconsider mentioning Sylvia. No. I will pay tribute to her mystery with silence.

    --We should go into the city sometime, he says, starting to get out.

    Little does he know how anxious I am to jump on this one. My leg jiggles with anticipation under the steering wheel and I twist my torso to face him completely.

    --Yeah, let’s go in the day sometime and hang out, do like, the whole island, I say. We can start up by the Cloisters, subway down to Cathedral of St. John’s, then walk from there to the Village—through the Upper West Side, museum mile, midtown, Grammercy Park, swerve over to the West Village, do Soho…an urban adventure. It’ll be great.

    --Then we’ll definitely need a beer—before, during and after.

    --Yeah, no, seriously, when we get thirsty, we can stop for a quick beer, rest and move on. It’ll be cool. We can spend the whole day there. Maybe next weekend, since you’ll be around. I’ll give you a call. Are you working any day shifts at the Dial next week?

    --Nah, I just have two nights. Hey, want to come in for a post-work consolation beer? You can meet Howie. Although he might be in his skivvies. I would hate to subject you to that.

    --No listen, I would, but I’m supposed to meet some people at Gil’s, that watering hole I told you about. Thanks anyway though; I’ll definitely hang with Howie some other time, I say, chuckling.

    The part about meeting people was actually a lie, but truth be told I really wouldn’t know what to say to his old man.

    Tim’s eyes, a bit tired, consider me through his square rimless glasses.

    --Don’t get too drunk, he says, you might realize you work for DialAmerica.

    --Yeah really. Alright man, see ya.

     I TAKE THE ruminative route back, driving south on Palisades Avenue to Route 5, a wide switchback descent blasted out of the tenebrous sandstone indigenous to this area. The Century cants down to the river, tacking through the cliffs. My gaze strays sideways and my eyes briefly gorge themselves on the brilliant Manhattan skyline, which seems thrilling and unreal as it appears over the boulders flanking the road.

    I am headed, finally, for Ideation Headquarters.  

    Tim was a real find. Since our first meeting at the Dial, he has shared with me tales from his high school years, which he spent in a rural Ohio suburb, far away from anything. There was no Manhattan across the river. Next to his blank town stood more blank towns, no redeemers in sight.

    On different occasions, I have heard of a burnout, perpetually disoriented by hallucinogenics, who would utter obscene non sequitors at parties; of a young alcoholic who awoke from a blackout to find he had defecated on the floor of his friend’s bedroom; of a girl who was renamed Pebbles after a young lover swore he had pulled out a small stone while fingering her. The stories are horrifying, and Tim has the keenest eye for surreal detail. Yet I relish his manner of telling them, as gradually I have come to realize that in his own subtle and irreverent way he always sides with the confused.

   Growing up in Bumfuck Ohio, I gather, was like a prolonged assassination of the spirit. Tim’s sense of independence, much like mine, was not strong enough to buck the crowd completely, so he took his place among the dreary partiers of his high school. They drank in parking lots -- hallowed ground for sex, fights, and getting wasted -- and hoisted green-and-gold Ballantine’s cans to a skyline of factory lights. Once, hitting the bong in a garage with his circle of stoners, someone mentioned that the class ranks had come out that day and Tim had made number five. The lead stoner looked at him with half-shut wondering eyes. Dennison? he said. Are you smart? Dennison?

    --He couldn’t believe it, Tim told me later, with some satisfaction. He thought I was one of them because I could party as hard as they could. He didn't know I got all As.

    He tried to escape the bleak by taking refuge in literature, but once in graduate school he found it to be just another guise, not all that different from his earlier fake identity as a parking lot stoner.

    --No one really cared about the books, he once said to me. The students wanted to be known as young intellectuals and they would throw around all the trendy theories, but I don't think any of them really liked literature. And the teachers cared about it even less. It was just something technical they needed to master to advance their careers. And they hated dissent. When I first got there, one of the teachers at orientation stood up and said: ‘Yours is not to make judgements on the value of the discourse. Yours is to decide if you want to participate in the discourse.’ What an asshole.

     So Tim bailed on grad school. With an unfinished master’s thesis and some smoldering hostility, he moved back in with his folks. The pains of reentry were sometimes acute. His brother Ted -- possessor of the same native intelligence as Tim, but much more of a wayward soul -- had also moved back home after dropping out of junior college. I caught one of their arguments on my first and only visit to their house. From what I could surmise, Tim, sick to death of his brother's anti-social behavior, had devised a few house rules limiting excessive noise, eating in the TV room, etc. Ted would have none of it.

    --C’mon Ted, try to see a different point of view, Tim said, a little patronizingly.

    --Tim, you’re just making up all these rules because you’re bored off your ass, Ted said. Tomorrow it’s gonna be: No `Fruit of the Looms, just Hanes!’

    I was thunderstruck to find someone like Tim at DialAmerica. But sadly enough, it is beginning to make more sense. I suspect failure feels more real to Tim than literature or inebriation. He is so down on the academy that he has tarred himself for spending time there. He has degraded his true potential.

   Occasionally I want to shout at him: It's you, man! It's you! You’re the one from which a category should be drawn. Not the narrow scholar or the dreary partier or your wayward brother. You do not feel at home among them: rejoice.

    And so I feel that, knowing Tim’s promise, I have a role as his assurer. Granted, his knowledge of 20th Century American poetry counts for little almost anywhere. This I have to concede. But despite that injustice, Tim could still prevail. I wanted dearly to help him in this, to give him a shove in the direction of worthiness, before he sank into despair. And at the same time I wanted to deny, or at least consider unproven, his quelling sentiment of already being where we think we’re going, of it never getting much better than this, the feeling that more -- much, much more -- than what we realize is already over and done with.

     Back on Undercliff Avenue I ditch the Century and take up my spot at Ideation Headquarters. Through the rusty sideways diamonds of the staggering fence, I gaze at the river and the brilliant Manhattan skyline hovering above it.

    There is nothing wrong with this setting in purely physical terms. But it is populated by countless human husks, sunken in despair. Some are angry, verging on violence. (How sorrowful it would be if Tim joined their ranks.)

     Something corrosive had made New Jersey into a bad idea. What was it? I cannot name it,
yet I can still attest for its power. You can taste it in the Italian restaurants, the meat swimming in oil or drowning in tomato sauce. You can see in the streets on the bitterest winter days, in the pale grimaces of people straining against doors of the video stores. You can hear it in angry acceleration of the sports cars. Gratification of its most physical and base needs was uppermost, and the gratification itself was so strong it formed its own community.

    But maybe, just maybe, we could come together on different terms. In these very suburbs we could enter into a new covenant, to seek truer experience, with subtlety, richness and restraint. Perhaps hearts ready to explode with pent-up longing could be detonated. Or, if not, maybe there would be an explosion of a completely different nature, having the effect of a giant ringing alarm clock that awakens us from the false idea of New Jersey.

     Maybe New Jersey itself could be awakened, like Sylvia Hershberg was awakened a short time ago by some random telemarketer. Maybe New Jersey could then speak in a new, altogether admirable voice, like hers, a voice that held the desire to give one the benefit of the doubt.    

     I silently communicate this idea to the river and it spangles back its endorsement, a thousand eyes winking at me.