Terry Southern

“ Guy inquired genially.
“Laird K. Russell,” murmured Esther in pure wonder as some dear forgotten name loomed up to marvel her softly from the far far away.
“Bertrand Russell!” exclaimed Agnes sharply, “the philosopher! Good heavens, Esther!”
“Not Bertrand Russell,” cried Ginger Horton, “Lord Russell of Liverpool. The atrocity books!”
“Good Heavens,” said Agnes.
“Well, do you know what we did?” Ginger Horton demanded. “Bitsy and I sat right down and pretended that this ... this ... Thorndike had been captured and brought to justice and all those atrocities had been done to him! ”

“ As the reports flooded in, along with an avalanche of lawsuits, staffers at the conference table grew restive.
“Well, can’t win ’em all,” said Grand with a good loser’s chuckle. “Common Zen savvy tells us as much,” and he was content to dismiss the product’s failure with this, eager now to get started on something new; but as it became ever more apparent that their million-dollar planning had gone so terribly wrong, the staffers got panicky.
“We do our best,” said Grand, shaking his head stoically. “No man can say more.” ”

“ Another contractor, three workers, a truck of sand and gravel, and six sacks of quick-drying cement arrived at the working site at two o’clock, but were forced to wait until the new forms were complete. Then a sheet of metal was lowered into place and the concrete was poured into the forms. Under Grand’s spirited command, it was all so speedily done that well before dusk the work was ended, including the installation of a great gas burner there, star-shaped with a thousand dark jets, like a giant upturned squid stretched beneath the structure. ”

“ Grand?”
“Thank you no, Jason,” said Guy, “I have the car today.” And with a pleasant smile for the man, he turned adroitly on his heel, north towards Worth Street.
Guy Grand’s gait was brisk indeed—small sharp steps, rising on the toes. It was the gait of a man who appears to be snapping his fingers as he walks.
Half a block on he reached the car, though he seemed to have a momentary difficulty in recognizing it; beneath the windshield wiper lay a big parking ticket, which Grand slowly withdrew, regarding it curiously. ”

“ It was well known that Ginger Horton did write—wrote unceasingly—relentless torrents of a deeply introspective prose.
“Sorry,” muttered Grand, sitting back again, “get a bit carried away sometimes, I expect.”
“Feeling and passion!” agreed Ginger Horton in a shriek. “Of course most of the nasty little people around don’t feel a thing! Not a single thing!” ”

“ Well, I ask68 you staffers, where does that leave us? Monotheism shot to pieces on the one hand—dire craving for an absolute existing on the other. I submit to you staffers that the solution establishes itself before our very eyes: namely, that an absolute—in any particular field—must be presented as a dichotomy! Yes, if one mother company, such as our Vanity, could confront the public with a pure dichotomy, in any particular product, it would gain virtual monopoly there. Yes, and we will present such a dichotomy! Two sides which embrace the extremes and meet in the middle! ”

“ Guy would say tersely, and while the rest of the party looked on in pure114 amazement, Grand, big helmet completely obscuring his sight, would take up the huge gun and, staggering under its weight, brace it against the great cushion at his stomach, and blindly fire one of the mammoth shells into the bush, blasting a wide swath through the tall grass and felling trees as though they were stalks of corn. The recoil of the weapon would fling Grand about forty feet backwards through the air where he would land in a heap, apparently unconscious. ”

“ Show me the man who looks back—and I’ll show you: a first-rate imbecile!”
This brought conference around, and under Grand’s good guidance, they ignored the raging anathema without and looked to the future.
“Our M.R. people have come up with something,” said Grand, “—that’s what we pay them for—well, they’ve come up with a couple of consumer principles we can kick around here at conference: one, the insatiate craving of the public for an absolute; and two, the modern failure of monotheism—that is to say, the failure of the notion that any absolute can be presented as one separate thing.” ”

“ Quite incidental to what was happening during the drill, fifty crew members took advantage of the occasion to go around to the cabins, lounges, and dining rooms, and to substitute a thin length of balsa wood for one leg of every chair, table, and dresser on ship.
When the Captain finished his lengthy and voiceless discourse, he smiled, gave an easy salute and left the bridge house. It was about this time that all the furniture began to collapse—in half an hour’s time there wasn’t one standing stick of it aboard the Christian. ”

“ At any rate, one amusing diversion in which he took a central role himself was when he played grand gourmet at the world’s most luxurious restaurants.
Guy would arrive in faultless evening attire, attended by his poker-faced valet, who carried a special gourmet’s chair and a large valise of additional equipment. The chair, heavily weighted at the bottom so it could not be easily overturned, was also fitted with a big waist strap which was firmly secured around Grand’s middle as soon as he was seated. ”

“ Big Get-Acquainted Sale
Grand was behind the counter himself, wearing a sort of white smock—not too unlike his big Vanity lab smock—when the store opened that evening.
His first customer was a man who lived next door to the store. He bought a carton of Grape-Ade.
“That will be three cents,” said Grand.
“How much?” asked the man, with a frown.
“Three cents.”
“Three cents? For six Grape-Ade? Are you kidding?”
“It’s our two-for-one Get-Acquainted on Grape-Ade,” said Grand. “It’s new policy.”
“Boy, I’ll say it’s new,” said the man. “And how! Three cents? Okay by me, brother!” ”

“ An account executive, for example, might be entertaining an extremely important client in his own office, a little tête-à-tête of the very first seriousness—perhaps with an emissary of one of the soap-flake kings—when the door would burst open and in would fly the president, scrambling across the room and under the desk, shrieking pure gibberish, and then out he’d go again, scuttling crabwise over the carpet, teeth and eyes blazing. ”

“ Ginger Horton was saying, “the best writing comes out of the heart, and not the head!”
“I’ll buy that!” agreed Guy Grand, coming forward on his big chair in ready interest, his voice going a bit taut with feeling as he continued:
“For my money the best ... the very best darn writing is done right out of the old guts, by God!” And he gave his budding paunch a short slap to strengthen his meaning.
104
“Good Heavens,” said Esther crouching forward into a sea of giggles.
“And no rewrite!” said Guy strongly, “... right out of the old guts onto the goddamn paper!”
“Guy!” exclaimed Agnes, “really!” ”

“ The man, glaring, took a tentative step forward.
“Say, I don’t get you, mister!”
“Well,” drawled Grand, chuckling down at his fat wallet, browsing about in it, “simple enough really....” And he took out a few thousand. “I have this ticket, as you know, and I was just wondering if you would care to eat it, for, say”—a quick glance to ascertain—“six thousand dollars?”
“What do you mean, ‘eat it’?” demanded the dark-suited man in a kind of a snarl. “Say, what’re you anyway, bub, a wise-guy?”
“‘Wise-guy’ or ‘grand guy’—call me anything you like ... ”

“ Despite their roominess, power, and road-holding potential, the big cars did prove impractical in the city, because their turning-arc—for the ordinary 90° change of direction—was greater than the distance between the street-angled buildings, so that by five thirty all four of the sleek Devil Rockets were wedged at angles across various intersections around Columbus Circle, each a barrier to thoroughfare in four directions, and causing quite a snarl indeed until cranes and derricks could be brought up from the East River to pry the big cars out. ”

“ Aunt Esther covertly twittered again, her eyes bright above the very white hand that hid her mouth, and Agnes turned her own face sharply away in mock exasperation with the boy.
“Not give them the money, Guy!” Agnes exclaimed.38 “They wouldn’t hear of it, of course—the young man, Sol, especially. Surely you know how proud those people are ... a defensive-mechanism, I suppose; but there you are, even so! ”

“ The extraordinary thing was that each one blew up so big that it simply obscured the person wearing it, ballooning out about them, above their heads, below their feet, and to a diameter of perhaps twelve feet—so that if they were in an open space, such as their cabins, the lounge, or on deck, they simply rolled or lolled about on the floor, quite hidden from view, whereas if they were in a corridor, they were hopelessly stuck. ”

“ Offices of Grand’s are occupied by companies which deal in mutual funds—giant and fantastic corporations whose policies define the shape of nations.
August Guy Grand himself was a billionaire. He10 had 180 millions cash deposit in New York banks, and this ready capital was of course but a part of his gross holdings.
In the beginning, Grand’s associates, wealthy men themselves, saw nothing extraordinary about him; a reticent man of simple tastes, they thought, a man who had inherited most of his money and had preserved it through large safe investments in steel, rubber, and oil. ”

“ This simple insert misplaced the emphasis of the scene; the fire-glint blade seemed to portend dire evil, and occurring as it did early in the story, simply “spoiled” the film.
Grand would hang around the lobby after the show to overhear the remarks of those leaving, and often he would join in himself:
“What was that part about the knife?” he would demand querulously, stalking up and down the lobby, striking his fist into his open hand, “... he had that knife ... I thought he was going to try and kill her! Christ, I don’t get it!” ”

“ The manager was a shrewd and capable man of many years’ experience in cinema management, a man whose position represented for him the fruit of a life’s work. He decided that his best move, under the circumstances, would be to go to Grand and cheerfully recommend salary cuts for all. ”

“ Esther started to answer, but in the end looked to Guy instead.
“Oh, it’s just a manner of speaking,” said Guy Grand easily. “What really gives the expression bite, of course, is that six is generally an easy point to make, you see, and, well ... but then the fact is really, that the ... uh, the national economy, so to speak, isn’t in the best of shape just now. Not a buyer’s market at all really. A bit bearish as a matter of fact.” He gave a chuckle, looking at the Pekinese.
Ginger Horton seized the opportunity to bring the dog into it.
“Well, it’s all over our head, isn’t it, Bitsy? Hmm? ”

“ It was known that for any personal service Grand was inclined to tip generously, and because of this there were usually three or four porters loitering in the corridor nearby. They kept a sharp eye on the compartment door, in case Grand should signal some need or other; and, as the train pulled out of the station, they could hear him moving about inside, humming to himself, and shuffling papers to and fro on his desk. Before the train made its first stop, however, they would have to scurry, for Grand’s orders were that the porters should not be seen when he came out of his compartment ”

“ Following this fantastic clatter and commotion—which left him covered from the top of his head to his waist with food—the expressionless valet would lean forward and unfasten the chair100 strap, and Guy would bolt from the table and rush pell-mell towards the kitchen, covered and dripping with food, hair matted with it, one arm extended full length as in a congratulatory handshake, shouting at the top of his voice:
“MES COMPLIMENTS AU CHEF!” ”

“ I suppose you’re right,” said Guy, “... hard to say really. Might catch on—might not ... just wanted to put out a feeler or two on it. Always best to keep an open mind in the investment game.”
** *** Grand had a bit of fun when he engaged a man to smash crackers with a sledge-hammer in Times Square.
The stout fellow arrived with his gear—a box of107 saltine crackers and a sixty-pound sledge—at precisely 9 A.M. and “set up shop,” as Guy expressed it, just outside the subway entrance on Forty-Second Street, the busiest thoroughfare in the world at this particular hour. ”

“ There are some goddamn things that are against the law, Max, and that kind of stuff you had going out last week, that ‘I pity the moron whose life is so empty he would look at this,’ and that kind of crap cannot go out over the air! Don’t you understand that? It’s not me, Max, you know that. ”