jconley77
08-24-2010, 12:55 AM
If you've got the stomach for it...
-Also, not trying to circumvent the filters, its just the way the story is. Check it unfiltered at http://burningants.wordpress.com/2010/08/24/good-enough-ii/
Thanks dudes
GOOD ENOUGH
I.
There was a knock at the door. James MaCally answered. Through the screen door he saw two sharply groomed men. They wore suits. They worked for the government.
“James MaCally?” one of them said.
“Yes?”
“My name is Agent Cortazzo, this here is my partner Agent Reynolds. We’re from the Bureau. We think you know which one. Mind if we have a few words?”
MaCally looked at the two men. The one, Reynolds, had a briefcase held under his arm. Agent Cortazzo moved his head about, sunglasses on, in some apparent hurry.
“No, come in.”
MaCally led the men into his kitchen. He hurriedly set out two chairs at the kitchen table. Agent Reynolds set the briefcase on the table, took the chair to MaCally’s left, spun it once, and sat resting his chin on his arms folded flat across its back. Cortazzo sat to MaCally’s right, his posture very correct.
“How can I help you gentlemen?”
“Mr. MaCally, it has come to our attention that you have been soliciting unapproved written material,” Cortazzo said. He removed his sunglasses, took out a neatly folded handkerchief and touched it once to his eye.
“There must be some mistake, I-”
“Bull****,” said Reynolds.
MaCally gave a look to Agent Reynolds. Reynolds hid the comment only half-heartedly behind a false cough. Reynolds looked to Cortazzo and smiled, who sat unamused.
“I’m afraid Agent Reynolds here is right, Mr. MaCally.” He continued eyeing over his papers intently. He looked then at MaCally. “That’s bull****.”
“I don’t understand,” MaCally said.
“We have it on good word that you’ve been passing out unlicensed work at the Route 30 Diner,” said Cortazzo
“That’s impossible! I would never give out my work,” MaCally said. “I’ve been dealing with the Bureau as long as I can remember.”
“Exactly how long has that been, Mr. MaCally?” Cortazzo said.
“I’d say not very long,” Reynolds said.
“I’d say,” said Cortazzo.
“We got a stack of your **** back at the office piled high enough to touch a giraffe in the Adam’s apple, pal,” Reynolds said.
Agents of the Bureau were notorious ballbreakers. Reynolds and Cortazzo were little exception. Agents of the Bureau often had little patience for writers.
“Stacks of what?” MaCally asked.
“What?”
“What kind of work did you find?” MaCally said.
“We didn’t find any kind of work,” Cortazzo said, “because that’s not our job. We are federal agents. We do not have time to read your bull**** stories.
“We have interns to do that,” Reynolds said.
“Do we look like ****ing librarians, MaCally?”
Agent Cortazzo spared the papers his attention and stared straight at MaCally, unflinching. The Bureau often sent their goons out on unannounced compliance checks. MaCally had always done well with the Agents. He knew the protocols. He complied.
MaCally had never dealt with Cortazzo before, though. He had a hard time understanding his hostility.
“We’re really only here to enforce the protocols of the Bureau, you see,” Reynolds said.
“And I’m quite sure you are familiar with our protocols, aren’t you?” Cortazzo said. He tapped his pen on the papers strewn about the desk.
MaCally stared at the men in near disbelief. He had always turned his work over to the Bureau. Writers had been choked nearly out of existence. Only those who complied were spared their jobs. It was always better to work with the censors than around them. And he had.
“Yes, I-“
“You write some bull****,” Cortazzo interrupted. “Say you want to get it published, filmed - whatever. You send it to the Bureau. There, our interns read it. They decide whether it is worth the time of the people.”
“The culture cap,” Reynolds said. “It’s all very simple.”
The culture cap was the main thrust of the twenty-eighth amendment. In an effort to preserve the viability of art, the government proposed an amendment that limited the volume of creative output the country could produce in a given year. As people multiplied, art multiplied. Hack artists found ways to get their work to the public, while genuine talent fell by the wayside. Proponents of the bill called it a friendliness to creativity. It was all meant to keep nonsense from devouring true art and to enlighten the general public.
“If it is decided your bull**** is worth the people’s time,” Cortazzo said, “it gets our stamp of approval.”
Proponents of the bill called it a friendliness to creativity.
“If not,” he continued, “we torch it, and say better luck next time.”
Reynolds lifted his hands in a motion of rising smoke and made a ‘fwoosh’ sound, imitating the burning of documents. He laughed.
Cortazzo pointed to himself and Reynolds. “We do not torch your bull****. We do not read your bull****. Reynolds and I step in when one of you pencil-necked geeks decides you know what’s better for the people than we do.”
“We’re here to help,” Reynolds said.
“People are busy,” Cortazzo said. “Some of them work, unlike you. They don’t have time to decide what’s good and what isn’t. That’s why we’re here. That’s why you go through us, MaCally.”
“****ing Aye,” Reynolds said.
“****ing Aye,” Cortazzo said. “Now, you tell us all about these documents at the Route 30 Diner, or Agent Reynolds and I will set about doing this the hard way.”
MaCally was taken aback. He knew he’d never given out his work before.
“I’m sorry, I really don’t know what you’re talking about. I know how to work with the Bureau. I’ve already sent in three manuscripts this month.”
“Don’t give a ****,” Cortazzo said bluntly.
“Look, what do you want me to say? Look at my track record. I’ve never been in trouble with the Bureau. Do you want to see my papers?”
Cortazzo stared at MaCally intensely. A smile crept up on him. He squashed it quickly.
“Reynolds!” he said, still staring at MaCally. “Go take a look around.”
“Aye-aye,” said Reynolds. He got up from his chair, looked at MaCally and made the ‘fwoosh’ sound one more time. He laughed to himself, grabbed a soda out of the fridge and went into the living room. He left the refrigerator door open.
Cortazzo grabbed up his few papers and slid them neatly back into a blank manila folder. He put it in his briefcase, closed it up, and set it carefully off to his side. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack of smokes. MaCally had been quietly awaiting his next move. Cortazzo made him nervous.
“I don’t smoke,” MaCally said. Cortazzo lit the cigarette anyway, threw the match out onto the carpet. He put his feet heavily on the table, leaned back, and blew the first puff of smoke in MaCally’s direction.
“Big Brother. Big government, and all that kind of ****,” Cortazzo said. “That’s how you see me, isn’t it, MaCally? One of a bunch of faceless goons, trying to wipe people like you out of the picture. To take art out of the equation. Yes, MaCally, we’re here in search of a world without art and without writers! And for what? Out of some blind obedience to an all-powerful government? Kill ‘em all!” he cried, laughing. “Make more room for the people who build buildings, who make roads, **** like that. The working man!”
Cortazzo relaxed himself, laughing still. “Ain’t that right?” he said.
MaCally shook visibly. He didn’t answer.
“Hah. Well. The world can be as bleak as you like, MaCally. People will still have **** to do.”
Cortazzo leaned back further, rocking on two legs of the rotting old chair. MaCally watched the chair, anticipating the time it would finally break.
“You picture types,” he continued, “you’re all the same, aren’t you?”
“What?”
“You know the rules of the game. But you still don’t want to play ball.”
“Is there some problem with my work?”
Cortazzo quickly set his feet down, lurched over the table, looked at MaCally like he didn’t speak the language.
“The problem’s with you, MaCally. You call that work? Sitting on your *** all day, making **** up?”
“Yes.”
Cortazzo leaned back, feet on the table again.
“Really fulfilling stuff,” he said.
“What is it, Agent Cortazzo? Would you prefer I sat in an office all day?”
“I’d prefer all you picture types would grow the **** up.”
“And be working stiffs like you?”
Cortazzo’s face grew a look of amusement.
“A stiff? If it weren’t for guys like me, there would be chaos! You picture-types all think your work is so goddamned important.”
“It is,” MaCally said through gritting teeth.
Cortazzo stood and walked around, moving his arms vibrantly to intensify his speech.
“What do you do? I’ll tell you. You steal some ideas from someone else, sauce em’ up with your own little words, and then act like you reinvented the wheel.”
Cortazzo stepped to the threshold of the kitchen, looking around for Reynolds.
“And people wonder why this country’s so ****ed up,” he muttered.
“You think the country is worse off because of writers?” MaCally said, aghast.
“Writers, actors, musicians - the whole lot of you.”
“Maybe the country is worse off because people like me are persecuted by people like you.”
“Please. Why do you think so many people want to do what you do?”
“Because they feel like they have something to share with the world?”
“Bull****!”
Cortazzo spun round quickly, put his hands violently down on the table, shaking the old thing so that the legs creaked. MaCally instinctively steadied the table, his gaze matching Cortazzo’s.
“It’s because the idea of a hard day’s work makes them sick to their stomachs,” Cortazzo said. “They just want to sit on their asses all day, like you.” He pointed at MaCally, nearly poking him in the nose.
“I worked like hell to get where I am!” MaCally cried. It was true. He’d been a licensed writer for ten years. It took eight years of oversight prior to that before he was determined to be professional, original, to be a benefit to the public culture. He’d written tens of thousands of pages of Bureau-certified work. He was a veteran, as far as the averages were concerned.
Cortazzo relaxed his grip on the table and backed away slowly.
“I wouldn’t call sucking dick hard work, MaCally,” he said.
MaCally got up from the table briskly. He knocked the frail old chair to the ground. He didn’t bother picking it up.
“I don’t need to take this,” MaCally said.
“Oh, you don’t think so, pal?”
“No, I don’t,” MaCally said. He approached Cortazzo. “I don’t have to prove a goddamned thing to you.” He poked the well-groomed Agent in the chest. Cortazzo prepared to sock the man in the face.
“Found something!” Reynolds cried.
Cortazzo and MaCally both looked to see Reynolds enter the kitchen holding a massive manuscript with both hands, holding it out like a loaded serving tray. He scooted around the standoff, made his way to the table and began leafing through the pages quickly, intently.
Cortazzo put his hand on MaCally’s shoulder, walked him back to the table and sat him down heavily.
“Have a seat, smart guy.”
Cortazzo picked up the chair which had been knocked to the floor, pulled it to the side of the table opposite Reynolds and grabbed the massive stack of papers away from him. Reynolds gave him a look, but Cortazzo was nose deep in the massive manuscript.
“What is this, Moby ****ing Dick?”
“It’s my novel,” MaCally said.
“Oh, you hear that, Agent Reynolds? Smart guy here says this is his novel.”
“I didn’t know they still made those,” Reynolds said with a laugh.
“Why isn’t it our novel, smart guy?”
“It isn’t finished yet,” MaCally seethed.
“Really?”
Cortazzo reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a pen. He sloppily turned the immense stack upside down, flipped the last page over and began to write.
“What are you doing?” MaCally said.
Cortazzo slid the page to him. Below the text were the words THE END, in Cortazzo’s handwriting.
“Funny,” he said, “looks done to me.”
“What the hell is wrong with you!” MaCally cried.
MaCally dove to steal the manuscript away from the agents. Cortazzo grabbed them up with one hand and held it out away from the panicked writer, his other arm holding MaCally at a distance. MaCally backed off. Cortazzo smiled, leaned close to him and whispered.
“Fifty bucks?”
“What?”
Cortazzo spun deftly to face Reynolds.
“Ho! You hear that Reynolds? Son of a ***** just tried to sell me this thing for fifty bucks!”
He threw the stack back on the table carelessly, to Reynolds. Reynolds shook his head and smiled, neatly gathering the papers back together.
“Whatever you say,” Reynolds said.
“This is bull****!” MaCally cried. “You’ll both be fired, you hear me! I’ll have both of you thrown out of the Bureau so fast you won’t know which ****ing door you went through!”
Cortazzo once again got right in MaCally’s face, smiling now.
“No, MaCally, you won’t. You can’t touch me. And you’re going to do whatever I say. Right now, that means you’re gonna give us Moby Dick over there. You’re gonna take it, and your hard drive, and your pens and your pencils, and all your notes and all your books and you’re gonna pack it all up, real nice, in a box addressed to me and Reynolds here, and its gonna be sitting on my desk by noon tomorrow. Is that understood?”
“I’ve been working on that novel for eight years!” MaCally pleaded.
“Eight years and nothing to show for it,” Cortazzo said. “Maybe you should have been a plumber, MaCally.
Cortazzo turned away. He grabbed the briefcase off the table and began walking out of the kitchen, signaling for Reynolds to follow. Reynolds got up promptly, nestled the stack of papers under one arm and made his way out of the kitchen. He backtracked slightly at the threshold to grab an apple. He tossed it slightly, grabbed it deftly out of the air, as if to say “thank you,” and took a big bite as he made his way out of the kitchen.
MaCally was stunned. He had never given out his work. He had never had a run-in with the Bureau. Now, he was about to lose his novel. His license. His entire career. Eight years and 937 pages walked out the door under the arm of a careless agent and his belligerent partner.
MaCally raced to the living room. He stood tall in the back of the room as the Agents made their way toward the front door.
“**** you!” he cried. “At least I made something! At least I did something! People will remember my work! They’ll know who I was! I’ll still be around when you ****ers are dead and gone and your last miserable family member is no longer around to carry on your lousy names! Forgotten! They’ll all forget you, you and your miserable, useless work! Oh, but don’t blame me! It’s not my fault people don’t remember the meter maids of the FBI!”
Cortazzo and Reynolds stopped dead in their tracks. Reynolds looked at Cortazzo, laughing. Cortazzo looked at MaCally. He shoved the briefcase into Reynolds chest, not looking where it went. Reynolds dropped his apple as he struggled to grab the briefcase without dropping MaCally’s manuscript. Cortazzo began rolling up his sleeves, lurching slowly toward the writer, a glint in his eye. MaCally backed away, fearful.
Reynolds reached down, grabbed the apple, took a bite and held it in his teeth. He grabbed the briefcase, setting it down immediately to open the door. The screen door was set to close automatically, and closed on Reynolds face. He set the briefcase back down, opened it one more time and dove into it. Holding it open with his ***, he grabbed the briefcase and set it on the porch. Sounds of MaCally screaming drowned as he reached back to close the main door.
When Cortazzo came out, MaCally was sitting on the porch steps, intently reading the manuscript. The apple core lay on the ground next to him.
“Say, this thing ain’t too bad.” Reynolds didn’t lift his gaze from the manuscript. Cortazzo rubbed his right hand and shook it tenderly.
“Yeah that’s great, Reynolds,” he said. “Get in the car.
II.
Those less fortunate are said to be born into the world with two strikes against them. Dennis Cortazzo came in without a bat.
Specifics aside, it certainly helps to explain his hostility toward others.
“I don’t get it, Reynolds,” he said.
Reynolds and Cortazzo were on the road early. The MaCally case had been closed. The Bureau found James MaCally guilty of soliciting unapproved written material. His license was irrevocably banned. His work was torched. Previously approved materials were taken out of circulation. Moby Dick was gone. Everything had been taken.
“What’s that?” Reynolds said.
The car moved leisurely down the road. Reynolds found it difficult to drive with any haste as the fog of sleep interrupted clung to his eyes. His response to Cortazzo was automatic.
“I don’t get why you bothered to read that ****,” Cortazzo said.
The men had been called in for an emergency executive review. It had been found during the MaCally review that Agent Reynolds had read parts of the condemned manuscripts without express authority. It was a violation of the protocols of the Bureau. Reynolds and Cortazzo had both been called in to discuss the violation.
“It wasn’t really that bad,” he said.
The road was empty, save for the dull, yellowing blush of street lights on the grayed pavement. Signs for businesses struggled to cast a glow on the route through years of grime and for want of working light bulbs. Tractor trailers occasionally blew through the morning dirge, flying past the Agents in their modest old sedan at breakneck speeds. Soon, there would be cars and there would be people and they’d all be going to or returning from work. Always work. The end hadn’t yet arrived if there was still work to do.
Cortazzo made no reply. Reynolds spotted their destination. Without signaling, he made a slow right into the fractured parking lot of the Route 30 Diner. They were to meet their boss there, for the review. It had been his suggestion to take the affair out of the office.
“It should make for a nice change of scenery,” Boss had said.
Reynolds and Cortazzo stepped out of the car and into the mist of morning. It was a particularly foggy morning. Ancient neon still clutched the brick walls of the diner. Half the neon gas had broken free of the glass chambers. In daylight, the sign read: “Fine Dining, Cocktails.” A martini glass spiraled out of the letters. In the dark and fog of morning, with half its neon gas escaped into the atmosphere, it read only: “Fine Din, Cockt.” The martini glass was still lit.
They entered the diner, Cortazzo first. It was musty, brownish, dark still with all its lights turned on. The men grabbed a booth along the front of the diner, facing the highway. They were the only people in the place.
“This is a nice change of scenery?” Cortazzo said. He straightened out his suit jacket, back erect. He lit a cigarette.
“No, that meant nothing,” Reynolds said. “This is the place MaCally was supposed to have been passing off his work. You read the papers?”
Reynolds meant the original papers which MaCally had solicited illegally in the diner. Cortazzo took out his handkerchief, touched it to his eye and shook his head. Neither agent had a look at the offending manuscripts. They had only the word that MaCally had been in the place, peddling his work. Good enough.
“I don’t get it, Reynolds,” Cortazzo said. Smoke escaped with each word.
“What’s that?”
“People demonize us.”
“You and me?”
“All us agents, I mean.”
Agents of the Bureau were famously unpopular. Their enforcement of the Culture Cap was notoriously unpleasant, according to those who had to follow it. Colloquially, it was hated by everyone. It was government gone out of control, people said. It was a sign that the end was near, they said.
“It’s just the law,” Cortazzo said.
“Mm-hmm.”
“What can we do? It was our job. That’s all.”
“Hear hear.”
“He should have followed protocol.”
“Should’ve.”
Reynolds sat reading the newspaper. Cortazzo touched the handkerchief to his eye, and looked out the window. Still fog and dark. He scanned the diner for signs of service. Reynolds noticed his search.
“Place even open?” Reynolds said.
“Probably not,” he said. He took a few more drags of the cigarette. Reynolds continued reading.
“Don’t see why we got to be here at the dick-dawn of morning,” Cortazzo said. “In fact, I don’t see why we got to be here at all.”
“If it makes Boss happy,” Reynolds said. They sat silent for another few moments. Reynolds read his paper. Cortazzo finished his cigarette, touched the handkerchief to his eye. He waited impatiently for service.
“What time is it, anyway?”
“He’ll be here.”
“Still, what’s the time?”
“Aren’t you wearing your watch?”
“What?”
“Why aren’t wearing your watch, Taz?”
“I don’t like the watch.”
“That’s a shame.”
“I don’t like any watch.”
“It’s a nice watch.
“**** the watch, Reynolds.”
“It’s part of the suit.”
“Then **** the suit.”
“You love the suit.”
“I hate the watch.”
“Then what of the suit?”
“Its part of the suit, isn’t it, Reynolds?”
“The watch?”
“Yes.”
“I suppose.”
“Then I don’t like the suit.”
“You’re an ***.”
“What time is it?”
“What?”
“What, time, is it?”
Reynolds gave him a glare. Even at dawn Cortazzo could break a guy’s balls with professional aplomb.
“5:31.”
“He’s late.”
“He’ll be here.”
“A guy like him shouldn’t be late like he is. He’s the boss.”
“He’s a busy guy.”
“Too busy to do his job?”
“He is doing his job.”
“Like you did yours?”
“Yeah,” Reynolds said.
Silence passed. No Boss. No service. Cortazzo’s impatience grew. He yawned angrily.
“Wouldn’t even be here if you hadn’t read that Moby Dick bull****,” he said.
“**** you! You busted the guy’s nose!”
“Doesn’t break protocol.”
“Dress code. Somewhere, I don’t know where, but its in there. Suit. Tie. Watch. Protocol. And you’re breaking it.”
“I don’t like the watch, Reynolds.”
“Yeah.”
The two continued on their habits - Reynolds reading quietly, Cortazzo permanently anxious. Cortazzo’s anxiousness was legendary. He wanted to get everything done right now. Work was only part of it. His disgust with writers was also part. It helped to fuel his work ethic. Both itched at him as dawn started to break over the diner.
“Here’s what rubs me, Reynolds,” he said suddenly. “Is what the hell does a guy do getting into a business like that in the first place?”
“What kind of business is that?” Reynolds said without looking up.
“Any business of the kind. Writing for pictures, acting in pictures. Taking pictures, painting pictures. **** like that.”
“Artists, you mean?”
“****ing art!”
“It’s a thing to do.”
Cortazzo looked out the window. “Thing to do,” he said. “No, no, it isn’t. Working, like we work, is a thing to do. Driving a garbage truck is a thing to do.” He turned and yelled toward the counter. “Waiting tables is a thing to do!” Still looking at the counter, he said quietly, “What’s a picture-type gonna do that no picture-type before him didn’t do better already?”
Reynolds folded his paper, looked at Cortazzo for the first time. He let his fingers keep his page marked.
“You saying that all people should be working-stiff types like you and me?”
“There’s that term again. What do you mean, working-stiff types?”
“Nothing.”
“No, no. Tell me about it.”
“All I mean is, you and me? We’re regular guys.”
“Pardon?”
“We work for a living.”
“I know I work for a living, Reynolds.”
“Okay. So then that’s us. We’re working stiffs.”
“Oh, well that explains everything.”
“Look, Cortazzo-“
“Reynolds, please! Elaborate. Enlighten me, if you will.”
“All I mean is we work for a living! You see the suits? The ties? That goddamn company car? We work. These picture-types, they work, too, except they make ****. Remember for me, off the top of your greasy little head, the last time you made something.”
“I made love to your sister.”
It was true.
“I mean made something! With your hands and your head, and your dick still in your pants.”
Reynolds lost his page as he pointed at Cortazzo, challenging him. Cortazzo looked away, out the window again. A bevy of tractor-trailers whizzed by. The morning rush was just beginning, or the night-shift guys were rolling through. Cortazzo lit a smoke, blew it out and sat back against the unpadded booth.
“I don’t do that,” he said, indirectly.
“You don’t do that?”
“No, Reynolds, I don’t ****ing do that.” He sat forward again.
“Says he works all day but he never made nothing. You, my friend, are a stiff.”
“I’ll give you a stiff one.”
“I gave your mother a stiff one.”
“**** off, Reynolds.”
Reynolds laughed. He returned to reading his paper.
Cortazzo sat, still impatient. He looked over at Reynolds, put off by his peacefulness so early in the morning. He looked at his watch.
“Timex piece of ****,” he observed. Reynolds folded back the paper, looked down at the watch then up at Cortazzo.
“Thanks,” he said, and returned to reading. A few minutes passed. Reynolds spoke then from behind his newspaper.
“Say Taz, I think my watch battery here is dead. You got the time?” He folded the paper down and smiled at him.
“Matter of fact, I do,” Cortazzo said. “It’s early as ****. Way too early for Agent Cortazzo to be dressed and working. He should be in bed. He should be happy, and sleeping. But he’s not. He’s here. In some ****hole diner. Waiting on an emergency executive review, of some ****, that he didn’t do. And Agent Cortazzo could have gone to the bar last night.”
“Oh, to hell with the bar.”
“Wednesday is my night to go to the bar, Reynolds, you know that!”
“My apologies.”
The agents returned to their momentary silence. Eventually, Cortazzo got up, rubbed his neck. He touched the handkerchief to his eye. He returned the folded handkerchief to his jacket pocket, walked to the counter and hit the service bell once. He stepped back, put folded hands at his waist and bounced slightly on his toes as he waited. He looked for a clock, but couldn’t find one. He stepped forward slightly, tapped the bell once more.
“Excuse me?” he said. There was no response.
“Any luck with that?” Reynolds called.
Cortazzo continued bouncing on his toes for a few more moments. He stepped forward once more, picked up a heavy silver napkin dispenser from the counter. It was ancient. He looked it over, tossed it slightly a few times, impressed with the weight of the thing. He grabbed it in one hand, held it out to look from another perspective, and crashed it down heavily on the service bell. Once, twice, repeatedly until the bell had fallen out and the vaguely silver thing had been smashed into a concave little bowl.
Cortazzo looked at the bottom of the napkin dispenser. It was unharmed. Impressed, he set it on the counter, picked one napkin out of its mouth and touched it lightly to his eye. He balled the napkin up and placed it neatly inside his jacket. He folded his hands once more and bounced pleasantly on his toes.
“Impressive display, Agent Cortazzo.”
Boss had walked in during the silent tirade. Cortazzo turned his upper body to meet the man’s gaze. “Thank you, sir,” he said, smiling. Boss ignored the sarcasm and took a seat at the counter. Reynolds sighed, shimmied his way out of the booth and took a seat next to Boss. Cortazzo sat on the other side of Boss. Both men had seated themselves before Boss managed to get comfortable. He had a spectacular weight problem. It took him some time to shift his weight to an acceptable fulcrum on the beleaguered stool.
“Files, Reynolds?” Boss said. Reynolds searched his briefcase for the files that outlined the executive review process. Boss held up and examined the smashed service bell. Cortazzo faced forward, dipped his head down and tried to look at the bell only out of the corners of his eyes. He pursed his lips, unsure how he’d explain it if prompted.
“Maybe you should lay off the coffee, son.”
“Actually sir, a little cofee may have prevented that.”
“How’s that?”
“Here you go,” Reynolds interrupted.
He handed Boss a few papers and a pen. Boss took a tiny pair of glasses out of his front pocket, placed them low on his fat red nose. He craned his neck up and backward, tilted his chin up, held the papers straight out and read through peering eyes.
“Says here the review process requires a minutes log of the meeting,” he finally said.
Cortazzo sighed and dipped his head. Official Bureau workings had always been encumbered with bull****. Boss was deliberately slow to begin with. The review could take hours.
“Seems silly, but business is business,” Boss said. He set to writing. “What’s the time there, Cortazzo?”
“Ah, about that.”
Boss faced Cortazzo, his eyes fixed straight at him while his head seemed to stay moving forward. There was no neck for it to turn on.
“Is there a problem, son?
“Agent Cortazzo has an aversion to the subpar timepieces of the administration, sir,” said Reynolds.
“You’re not wearing you watch, Agent Cortazzo?”
“I don’t like the watch, sir.”
“He doesn’t like any watch, Boss.”
“Well that’s a shame.”
“It is a shame,” Reynolds said.
“It’s a nice watch,” Boss said.
“That’s what I tried telling him.”
“It’s part of the suit, Agent Cortazzo.”
“It’s a nice suit,” Reynolds said.
“A very nice suit,” Boss said.
Cortazzo leaned back on his stool and inhaled violently. A phone rang as he prepared to unload on Reynolds. Boss shifted his weight to one side. His sausage fingers struggled to free the cell phone from its belt holster. Cortazzo and Reynolds watched the stool lean heavily, anticipating the antique thing would snap at any moment. Boss eventually freed the phone. “Hyello,” he said. The call alternated terse, one-word responses and labored nasal breathing in between. Cortazzo and Reynolds glanced at each other behind Boss’ back.
The call ended. Another balancing act as he returned the phone to its holster. Boss lifted the glass lid off a serving stand on the counter, grabbed one of the cardboard doughnuts it held and returned the glass. “Wellp,” he said. He ate the doughnut in one bite. The nasal breathing intensified as his massive jaw worked to force the stale pastry down his cave of a throat. Hours passed, or could have. He finally finished and reached back to the stand, hauling in four or five more frosted and glazed hockey pucks. “Let’s talk.”
The three returned to the booth where they could more easily conduct the meeting, Reynolds and Cortazzo seated uncomfortably next to each other as Boss’s girth spilled out on the front and side of his bench. Neither Reynolds nor Cortazzo was particularly out of shape, but the table somehow managed to touch all three men in their stomachs at once. Boss inhaled the doughnuts, each one whole, as he laid out all the pertinent paperwork.
“What’s this guy’s name again?” Boss said.
“Mackey?” Cortazzo said.
“MaCally,” Reynolds said. “James MaCally. Been licensed by the Bureau for the past ten years.”
“A veteran?” Boss said.
Boss struggled to free a tiny pair of sunglasses from his jacket pocket. He perched the glasses atop his massive nose. They reached as far back as his sideburns, held on by the outward pressure exerted by his giant cheeks, rather than his ears. The glasses may have actually been normal sized, looking tiny only in the context of Boss’ titanic head. He looked over the documents laid out on the table, his bratwurst fingers camouflaging whole paragraphs as he slid them across the page, reading the line above.
“Says here the offense was the proliferation of unlicensed and unapproved documents.” Boss said.
“Yes sir.” Reynolds said.
“And it says here that your offense was the consumption of said materials, Agent Reynolds?”
“Yes sir,” Cortazzo said quickly. He glared at Reynolds.
Boss continued reading over the files. Reynolds sat quietly, hands folded, looking out the window at the highway taking life. Cortazzo continued sitting impatiently, looking for service. No waitress had appeared.
“Wellp,” Boss began, “I guess you boys both know why you’re here, then.”
“Yessir,” they said in unison.
“And you both understand the protocols?”
“Yessir.”
“And we all understand that this won’t be a problem again,” he said, tilting his head forward to look over his glasses at Reynolds.
“Yes sir,” they said.
“Got that all down, Agent Reynolds?”
“Got it,” Reynolds said. He finished the minutes log of the meeting in one sentence.
“Good,” Boss said, and shoveled another doughnut into his mouth. “Meeting adjourned.”
He struggled to return his glasses to his pocket. Reynolds began placing the documents back in their manila folders.
“No way,” Cortazzo said.
“Pack it in, Cortazzo,” Reynolds said.
“No way!”
“Is there a problem, Agent Cortazzo?” Boss said.
“You mean to tell me I missed out on going to my bar on what was supposed to be my night off to come here! For what?”
Boss peered at Cortazzo, becoming serious for the first time.
“What’s the matter, Agent Cortazzo? Am I interfering with a pressing engagement?” Boss shoveled the last hockey puck doughnut into his mouth. His words became muffled by the cardboard material sponging every bit of moisture out of his well-exercised salivary glands. “I’m sorry I didn’t consult you,” he paused to swallow, “before I made the decision to do my job.”
“**** it!” Cortazzo cried. “**** the meeting, I don’t care. I’m here. I did my goddamn job.” He got up from the booth, walked to the counter and shouted back toward the kitchen.
“I did my goddamn job!” he cried. They had first walked into the diner nearly half an hour ago. Nothing had happened to suggest they weren’t the only people in the place.
“MY GOD-DAMN JOB!” he reiterated.
“Give it a rest, Taz,” Reynolds said from the booth.
“I just want some coffee, Reynolds,” he said. He turned back to face the kitchen. “Just some FRESH, HOT, COFFEE!”
“Agent Cortazzo!”
Boss had finally lost his patience. Cortazzo stopped his tirade at hearing his superior shout at him. Boss got up from the booth slowly, smashing the table with his gut as he moved, smashing it repeatedly into Reynolds’ chest as he struggled to heave his girth out of the vinyl-wrapped quicksand of the old booth. It was like wrestling a carp out of a Chinese finger trap.
Fully thirty seconds passed before Boss was able to even stand, let alone confront his belligerent agent. The belligerent agent stood, suddenly silenced, and watched the man settle his ruffled clothing and make his way to the counter. Boss huffed heavily and stood facing Cortazzo, leaning a heavy arm on the counter to level himself.
“Are you done?” he wheezed.
“I’d like my coffee, sir.”
“Just do your job, Agent Cortazzo.” Boss reached for a few more doughnuts.
“My job? I’m not the reason we’re here! I’m not the one who can’t follow protocol!”
“**** you, Cortazzo!” Reynolds called.
“**** you, Reynolds!”
“Boys!” Boss pleaded. “The protocols! Come on!”
As they bickered, a mass of humanity crashed heavily through the front door, slamming the glass door against the wall behind it and knocking the welcome bell clean off its hanger. A man lay on the floor, mumbling, and struggled to get up. All three had leveled their sidearms quickly at the threat, and laid them down as they watched him move with all the grace of a drunken baby deer.
The man found his feet, stumbled clumsily to a booth at the far end of the diner, clung to the table for dear life, and climbed aboard the seat with even more trouble than the blimpish Boss. He looked up at the ceiling for a moment, then brought his head down heavily on the table. The crash he made on the ceramic-topped table could have knocked loose his teeth. His hands hung at his sides. He was asleep. Cortazzo laughed.
“Hey-ey, bastard!” ”What?” Boss said. ”That’s the writer, sir,” Reynolds said. ”The one whose manuscript you read?” ”Ah, yessir,” Reynolds said, and ducked his eyes downward. ”Doesn’t look like much of a writer.” ”Looks like a ****ing bum,” Cortazzo said. He lit a cigarette.
MaCally’s clothes were tattered. A long-sleeve flannel tee shirt did little to cover the stains of alcohol and vomit that frosted his shirt. His hair was much longer than when the agents had first accosted him. His glasses were broken, frames bent with a lens missing, partly courtesy of Cortazzo’s left hook. He smelled strongly of alcohol and failure. He hadn’t shaved in the weeks since the cancellation of his license. His beard grew in spotty, looked like ****. The sleep was the best thing for him.
“He looks upset,” Boss said. ”He looks like ****,” Cortazzo said.
MaCally, head still on the table, shook and muttered indiscernible nonsense. He awoke, briefly, and folded the thin paper placemat into a small bowl and vomited into it. He folded the paper placemat closed and set the ball of mess on the floor, his newfound alcoholism struggling to usurp his former courteousness. Pleased, he leaned his head back. It hung as though on a broken neck. He passed out again. Three stunned Agents of the Bureau wordlessly watched the display from the far end of the diner.
“This guy’s an *******, Reynolds,” Cortazzo said. He put out his cigarette on the tabletop. “Why’d you take the time to even read his Moby Dick bull**** in the first place?”
“Your wife was out of town.”
“It was probably ****, anyway,” Cortazzo said.
“It wasn’t ****.”
“He probably thought that, too,” Boss said, motioning toward the unconscious MaCally. MaCally’s head jerked involuntarily forward. His forehead came to a rest on the corner of the table. He vomited on his own feet.
“Tough ****, anyways,” Cortazzo said. “Should’ve known about the cap.”
“Everyone should know about the cap,” Reynolds added.
“He didn’t,” said Cortazzo, pointing at MaCally.
“I think he did,” said Reynolds. “He had to have. He had his license. Do you remember how much **** we took from his place? Boxes full! You don’t risk a career’s worth of work like that without knowing about the cap. He’s been published before. The culture cap is nothing new. He had to have known.”
Cortazzo and Boss momentarily considered what Reynolds had said. It was quite unlike an Agent of the Bureau to speak with sympathy on behalf of a writer. Neither answered. The men instead returned to watching MaCally, awaiting his next drunken move.
“I don’t see why he went to the trouble of making all that **** in the first place,” Cortazzo said.
“It’s what they do,” said Reynolds.
“Bastards?”
“Picture-types.”
“Bastards,” Cortazzo said under his breath.
“What do you think you know, Agent Cortazzo?” Boss said.
Cortazzo got up, walked backwards away from the booth, still facing the other men. He put his hands up, feigning defensiveness.
“I know how to follow protocols,” Cortazzo said. “If I were a picture-type, I would know how to apply for licensing,” he said, pointing at MaCally. “If I were a higher-up, I’d know how to send a memo,” he said, looking at Boss. “And if I were a waitress, I would know how to provide excellent service.”
Cortazzo turned away from them, walking around aimlessly, surveying the place. He ran his hands over the browning, aging countertop, and found the bricklike napkin holder which he’d used to smash the service bell. He picked up the napkin holder and walked away juggling the thing in one hand. He wound up, made a pitcher’s motion and threw it down the length of the diner. He disappeared down the far end of the diner, screaming nonsense about coffee for a moment. Reynolds returned to mindlessly admiring his watch. Boss had given up. He made no movement but the heavy rise and fall of his pregnant-looking belly as his lungs fought his throat in search of air.
“Excellent, ****ing, service!” The cry came from somewhere in the distance.
The cry awoke the drunken writer. MaCally slowly made his way off the seat and staggered drunkenly past the two agents, away from where Cortazzo had disappeared to. Cortazzo returned to the group with a thin film of sweat on his forehead, and watched MaCally make his way, hands grasping anything that might help him stand. He was headed toward the light switch on the far end of the diner. He paused momentarily to vomit into a decorative planter.
“Goddamn genius, right there,” Cortazzo said.
MaCally finally found the wall. He slapped his hand heavily against the wall and slid it up and down, like he was wiping it clean with his palms, searching for the switch. He found it. He flicked the light switch off and back on, three times, and staggered slowly back to his stool. The three men said nothing, watching him, wondering what had gone on. A young woman emerged from the kitchen area of the diner.
“Excuse me, miss!” Cortazzo called. She ignored him, moved straight for MaCally. She smiled, slipped him a pen and a cocktail napkin, and he began to write. Cortazzo was appalled.
“See, this is the ****! This is the same ****! This is why he nabbed him, and took away all his bull****, picture-type nonsense! Passing off his garbage work in a garbage diner!”
“Come on, Taz, let it go,” Reynolds said.
“Hey, bastard! Bastard!”
Sensing leadership, Boss slowly fought his way out of the booth. Reynolds got up and lent him a hand, more to avoid getting crushed by the table again than to be helpful. Boss stood, shuffled his pants back and forth several times, produced a badge and made his way over toward the writer and his waitress.
“Mr. MaCally!” he said, approaching them, breathing labored, “may I remind you that you are in violation of-“
“Violation of what, Boss?” Reynolds called. “He has nothing left, no writing, no license,” Reynolds said.
“Because we took it,” Boss said, more to MaCally than Reynolds.
“He’s already been cleaned out,” Reynolds said, “just leave him be.”
“Hey, ****head!” Cortazzo cried. “Give us the note, or I’ll bust your lip again.”
“Agent Cortazzo!”
The waitress left, watching the strange men bicker. MaCally flipped a crooked middle finger at Cortazzo from across the room. Boss feigned leadership once again. His authority was fueled more as a response to Cortazzo’s incessant *****ing than by any loyalty to the Bureau. He waddled his way back to the smiling Agent Cortazzo, yelling as he moved.
“Dammit, Cortazzo, we’ve got a 4-54 in progress and you are undermining my authority in front of a repeat offender!”
“Just let him go, Boss,” Reynolds pleaded.
“He has no license,” Boss said.
“He had a license, he’s entitled to write a love note,” Reynolds said.
“He is entitled to nothing!” Boss wheezed angrily.
“He’s not hurting anything in a goddamn diner!” Reynolds said.
“Bull****!” Cortazzo cried.
“Does it look like he’s trying to undermine the public good, Taz?”
“How do you know he isn’t?” Cortazzo said.
“It’s a love note!”
“It’s unapproved, unlicensed and unconstitutional!”
“So you know for a fact the drunk bastard is on a mission to ruin the world?”
“Of course I do!”
“Did he tell you he is, Taz?”
“What?”
“Do you speak on MaCally’s behalf now, too?”
“**** you! I’ll speak for anyone I please, especially a washed-up, no-good picture-type who can’t even do his job!”
“Did you ask MaCally what he thinks?”
“**** what he thinks!”
“Did you even read the first papers, Cortazzo?”
Reynolds meant the original papers which MaCally had solicited illegally in the diner. Cortazzo took out his handkerchief, touched it to his eye and shook his head. Neither agent had a look at the offending manuscripts. They had only the good word that MaCally had been in the place, peddling his work.
“No, Reynolds. I didn’t read it. Did you?”
Reynolds sat back, looked around at nothing.
“No.”
The two agents turned at looked at their Boss. Somewhere between the rise and fall of his giant belly he managed to shrug his shoulders. No one had read the original papers. They’d only heard of them. Good enough.
“Wellp,” said Boss, shuffling his waist and wiping the sweat from his brow, “I think we go see what all this is about then.”
He slicked his hair back and the three made their way toward MaCally again. The waitress returned, and placed a small cup of coffee on the table in front of MaCally. Cortazzo seethed. He smacked it off the table and onto the floor. He snatched away the napkin, still standing, and the others huddled around him to read it.
“Oh, ****,” Cortazzo whispered.
It read:
‘One cup. Cream. No sugar. Thank you.’
Reynolds looked up. MaCally met his gaze, eyes red. Tears streaked his face, disappearing into his filthy new beard. He got up, laughed a laugh of despair and began staggering for the door. Boss slowly backed away as if to distance himself. Reynolds stared holes through the back of Cortazzo’s head.
“Hey, hey! Get back here!”
Cortazzo ran, caught the drunken MaCally and spun him round to face him. His pride swelled, twisted and solidified into a five-hundred pound ball of iron that dropped out of his skull and landed at the bottom of his stomach. His only natural response was to confront MaCally again. He stared at MaCally, who looked at the handkerchief held in Cortazzo’s left hand. He’d held the handkerchief there all morning. His eye never stopped running. Cortazzo looked over at the waitress. She was behind the counter, investigating the smashed and broken service bell. He looked at MaCally, holding up the note.
“Is this all it was?”
MaCally, tears streaming through the grime and dried vomit on his face, smiled a black-hearted smile, as if to say yes. Cortazzo looked over at the waitress. She said nothing, but smiled at him, and motioned with her hands. She said nothing as she pantomimed, motioning as if pouring a cup of coffee. Only her expression awaited his answer. She was deaf.
He looked back at MaCally, at the note in his hand. MaCally gaze remained fixed on his handkerchief.
“Do you think you can ask her for another cup of coffee?” he said.
MaCally breathed quickly, painfully. He choked on the air. He couldn’t laugh, though he was hysterical. He couldn’t make a sound for all his crying. He began to shake, violently, until a laugh of hysteria emerged finally from him. He turned away from Cortazzo, the agents and the diner. He walked out into the highway. Headlights of the tractor-trailers streaming past melted invisible in the emerging daylight. He stumbled down the length of the parking lot, walking parallel with the highway. The morning rush was on. Thousands of cars screamed past, throwing the dirt and grime and gray of the highway at him with the wind they created. He laughed as he walked, arms held out, balancing himself on the cracking concrete curbs as though walking a tightrope.
“GOOD ENOUGH”
by James Conley
Original Story “Good Enough for Government Work” by James Conley
Subsequent Revisions by James Conley and Evan Mulgrave
First Draft March 2010
Current Draft August 2010
[email protected]
http://burningants.wordpress.com
-Also, not trying to circumvent the filters, its just the way the story is. Check it unfiltered at http://burningants.wordpress.com/2010/08/24/good-enough-ii/
Thanks dudes
GOOD ENOUGH
I.
There was a knock at the door. James MaCally answered. Through the screen door he saw two sharply groomed men. They wore suits. They worked for the government.
“James MaCally?” one of them said.
“Yes?”
“My name is Agent Cortazzo, this here is my partner Agent Reynolds. We’re from the Bureau. We think you know which one. Mind if we have a few words?”
MaCally looked at the two men. The one, Reynolds, had a briefcase held under his arm. Agent Cortazzo moved his head about, sunglasses on, in some apparent hurry.
“No, come in.”
MaCally led the men into his kitchen. He hurriedly set out two chairs at the kitchen table. Agent Reynolds set the briefcase on the table, took the chair to MaCally’s left, spun it once, and sat resting his chin on his arms folded flat across its back. Cortazzo sat to MaCally’s right, his posture very correct.
“How can I help you gentlemen?”
“Mr. MaCally, it has come to our attention that you have been soliciting unapproved written material,” Cortazzo said. He removed his sunglasses, took out a neatly folded handkerchief and touched it once to his eye.
“There must be some mistake, I-”
“Bull****,” said Reynolds.
MaCally gave a look to Agent Reynolds. Reynolds hid the comment only half-heartedly behind a false cough. Reynolds looked to Cortazzo and smiled, who sat unamused.
“I’m afraid Agent Reynolds here is right, Mr. MaCally.” He continued eyeing over his papers intently. He looked then at MaCally. “That’s bull****.”
“I don’t understand,” MaCally said.
“We have it on good word that you’ve been passing out unlicensed work at the Route 30 Diner,” said Cortazzo
“That’s impossible! I would never give out my work,” MaCally said. “I’ve been dealing with the Bureau as long as I can remember.”
“Exactly how long has that been, Mr. MaCally?” Cortazzo said.
“I’d say not very long,” Reynolds said.
“I’d say,” said Cortazzo.
“We got a stack of your **** back at the office piled high enough to touch a giraffe in the Adam’s apple, pal,” Reynolds said.
Agents of the Bureau were notorious ballbreakers. Reynolds and Cortazzo were little exception. Agents of the Bureau often had little patience for writers.
“Stacks of what?” MaCally asked.
“What?”
“What kind of work did you find?” MaCally said.
“We didn’t find any kind of work,” Cortazzo said, “because that’s not our job. We are federal agents. We do not have time to read your bull**** stories.
“We have interns to do that,” Reynolds said.
“Do we look like ****ing librarians, MaCally?”
Agent Cortazzo spared the papers his attention and stared straight at MaCally, unflinching. The Bureau often sent their goons out on unannounced compliance checks. MaCally had always done well with the Agents. He knew the protocols. He complied.
MaCally had never dealt with Cortazzo before, though. He had a hard time understanding his hostility.
“We’re really only here to enforce the protocols of the Bureau, you see,” Reynolds said.
“And I’m quite sure you are familiar with our protocols, aren’t you?” Cortazzo said. He tapped his pen on the papers strewn about the desk.
MaCally stared at the men in near disbelief. He had always turned his work over to the Bureau. Writers had been choked nearly out of existence. Only those who complied were spared their jobs. It was always better to work with the censors than around them. And he had.
“Yes, I-“
“You write some bull****,” Cortazzo interrupted. “Say you want to get it published, filmed - whatever. You send it to the Bureau. There, our interns read it. They decide whether it is worth the time of the people.”
“The culture cap,” Reynolds said. “It’s all very simple.”
The culture cap was the main thrust of the twenty-eighth amendment. In an effort to preserve the viability of art, the government proposed an amendment that limited the volume of creative output the country could produce in a given year. As people multiplied, art multiplied. Hack artists found ways to get their work to the public, while genuine talent fell by the wayside. Proponents of the bill called it a friendliness to creativity. It was all meant to keep nonsense from devouring true art and to enlighten the general public.
“If it is decided your bull**** is worth the people’s time,” Cortazzo said, “it gets our stamp of approval.”
Proponents of the bill called it a friendliness to creativity.
“If not,” he continued, “we torch it, and say better luck next time.”
Reynolds lifted his hands in a motion of rising smoke and made a ‘fwoosh’ sound, imitating the burning of documents. He laughed.
Cortazzo pointed to himself and Reynolds. “We do not torch your bull****. We do not read your bull****. Reynolds and I step in when one of you pencil-necked geeks decides you know what’s better for the people than we do.”
“We’re here to help,” Reynolds said.
“People are busy,” Cortazzo said. “Some of them work, unlike you. They don’t have time to decide what’s good and what isn’t. That’s why we’re here. That’s why you go through us, MaCally.”
“****ing Aye,” Reynolds said.
“****ing Aye,” Cortazzo said. “Now, you tell us all about these documents at the Route 30 Diner, or Agent Reynolds and I will set about doing this the hard way.”
MaCally was taken aback. He knew he’d never given out his work before.
“I’m sorry, I really don’t know what you’re talking about. I know how to work with the Bureau. I’ve already sent in three manuscripts this month.”
“Don’t give a ****,” Cortazzo said bluntly.
“Look, what do you want me to say? Look at my track record. I’ve never been in trouble with the Bureau. Do you want to see my papers?”
Cortazzo stared at MaCally intensely. A smile crept up on him. He squashed it quickly.
“Reynolds!” he said, still staring at MaCally. “Go take a look around.”
“Aye-aye,” said Reynolds. He got up from his chair, looked at MaCally and made the ‘fwoosh’ sound one more time. He laughed to himself, grabbed a soda out of the fridge and went into the living room. He left the refrigerator door open.
Cortazzo grabbed up his few papers and slid them neatly back into a blank manila folder. He put it in his briefcase, closed it up, and set it carefully off to his side. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack of smokes. MaCally had been quietly awaiting his next move. Cortazzo made him nervous.
“I don’t smoke,” MaCally said. Cortazzo lit the cigarette anyway, threw the match out onto the carpet. He put his feet heavily on the table, leaned back, and blew the first puff of smoke in MaCally’s direction.
“Big Brother. Big government, and all that kind of ****,” Cortazzo said. “That’s how you see me, isn’t it, MaCally? One of a bunch of faceless goons, trying to wipe people like you out of the picture. To take art out of the equation. Yes, MaCally, we’re here in search of a world without art and without writers! And for what? Out of some blind obedience to an all-powerful government? Kill ‘em all!” he cried, laughing. “Make more room for the people who build buildings, who make roads, **** like that. The working man!”
Cortazzo relaxed himself, laughing still. “Ain’t that right?” he said.
MaCally shook visibly. He didn’t answer.
“Hah. Well. The world can be as bleak as you like, MaCally. People will still have **** to do.”
Cortazzo leaned back further, rocking on two legs of the rotting old chair. MaCally watched the chair, anticipating the time it would finally break.
“You picture types,” he continued, “you’re all the same, aren’t you?”
“What?”
“You know the rules of the game. But you still don’t want to play ball.”
“Is there some problem with my work?”
Cortazzo quickly set his feet down, lurched over the table, looked at MaCally like he didn’t speak the language.
“The problem’s with you, MaCally. You call that work? Sitting on your *** all day, making **** up?”
“Yes.”
Cortazzo leaned back, feet on the table again.
“Really fulfilling stuff,” he said.
“What is it, Agent Cortazzo? Would you prefer I sat in an office all day?”
“I’d prefer all you picture types would grow the **** up.”
“And be working stiffs like you?”
Cortazzo’s face grew a look of amusement.
“A stiff? If it weren’t for guys like me, there would be chaos! You picture-types all think your work is so goddamned important.”
“It is,” MaCally said through gritting teeth.
Cortazzo stood and walked around, moving his arms vibrantly to intensify his speech.
“What do you do? I’ll tell you. You steal some ideas from someone else, sauce em’ up with your own little words, and then act like you reinvented the wheel.”
Cortazzo stepped to the threshold of the kitchen, looking around for Reynolds.
“And people wonder why this country’s so ****ed up,” he muttered.
“You think the country is worse off because of writers?” MaCally said, aghast.
“Writers, actors, musicians - the whole lot of you.”
“Maybe the country is worse off because people like me are persecuted by people like you.”
“Please. Why do you think so many people want to do what you do?”
“Because they feel like they have something to share with the world?”
“Bull****!”
Cortazzo spun round quickly, put his hands violently down on the table, shaking the old thing so that the legs creaked. MaCally instinctively steadied the table, his gaze matching Cortazzo’s.
“It’s because the idea of a hard day’s work makes them sick to their stomachs,” Cortazzo said. “They just want to sit on their asses all day, like you.” He pointed at MaCally, nearly poking him in the nose.
“I worked like hell to get where I am!” MaCally cried. It was true. He’d been a licensed writer for ten years. It took eight years of oversight prior to that before he was determined to be professional, original, to be a benefit to the public culture. He’d written tens of thousands of pages of Bureau-certified work. He was a veteran, as far as the averages were concerned.
Cortazzo relaxed his grip on the table and backed away slowly.
“I wouldn’t call sucking dick hard work, MaCally,” he said.
MaCally got up from the table briskly. He knocked the frail old chair to the ground. He didn’t bother picking it up.
“I don’t need to take this,” MaCally said.
“Oh, you don’t think so, pal?”
“No, I don’t,” MaCally said. He approached Cortazzo. “I don’t have to prove a goddamned thing to you.” He poked the well-groomed Agent in the chest. Cortazzo prepared to sock the man in the face.
“Found something!” Reynolds cried.
Cortazzo and MaCally both looked to see Reynolds enter the kitchen holding a massive manuscript with both hands, holding it out like a loaded serving tray. He scooted around the standoff, made his way to the table and began leafing through the pages quickly, intently.
Cortazzo put his hand on MaCally’s shoulder, walked him back to the table and sat him down heavily.
“Have a seat, smart guy.”
Cortazzo picked up the chair which had been knocked to the floor, pulled it to the side of the table opposite Reynolds and grabbed the massive stack of papers away from him. Reynolds gave him a look, but Cortazzo was nose deep in the massive manuscript.
“What is this, Moby ****ing Dick?”
“It’s my novel,” MaCally said.
“Oh, you hear that, Agent Reynolds? Smart guy here says this is his novel.”
“I didn’t know they still made those,” Reynolds said with a laugh.
“Why isn’t it our novel, smart guy?”
“It isn’t finished yet,” MaCally seethed.
“Really?”
Cortazzo reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a pen. He sloppily turned the immense stack upside down, flipped the last page over and began to write.
“What are you doing?” MaCally said.
Cortazzo slid the page to him. Below the text were the words THE END, in Cortazzo’s handwriting.
“Funny,” he said, “looks done to me.”
“What the hell is wrong with you!” MaCally cried.
MaCally dove to steal the manuscript away from the agents. Cortazzo grabbed them up with one hand and held it out away from the panicked writer, his other arm holding MaCally at a distance. MaCally backed off. Cortazzo smiled, leaned close to him and whispered.
“Fifty bucks?”
“What?”
Cortazzo spun deftly to face Reynolds.
“Ho! You hear that Reynolds? Son of a ***** just tried to sell me this thing for fifty bucks!”
He threw the stack back on the table carelessly, to Reynolds. Reynolds shook his head and smiled, neatly gathering the papers back together.
“Whatever you say,” Reynolds said.
“This is bull****!” MaCally cried. “You’ll both be fired, you hear me! I’ll have both of you thrown out of the Bureau so fast you won’t know which ****ing door you went through!”
Cortazzo once again got right in MaCally’s face, smiling now.
“No, MaCally, you won’t. You can’t touch me. And you’re going to do whatever I say. Right now, that means you’re gonna give us Moby Dick over there. You’re gonna take it, and your hard drive, and your pens and your pencils, and all your notes and all your books and you’re gonna pack it all up, real nice, in a box addressed to me and Reynolds here, and its gonna be sitting on my desk by noon tomorrow. Is that understood?”
“I’ve been working on that novel for eight years!” MaCally pleaded.
“Eight years and nothing to show for it,” Cortazzo said. “Maybe you should have been a plumber, MaCally.
Cortazzo turned away. He grabbed the briefcase off the table and began walking out of the kitchen, signaling for Reynolds to follow. Reynolds got up promptly, nestled the stack of papers under one arm and made his way out of the kitchen. He backtracked slightly at the threshold to grab an apple. He tossed it slightly, grabbed it deftly out of the air, as if to say “thank you,” and took a big bite as he made his way out of the kitchen.
MaCally was stunned. He had never given out his work. He had never had a run-in with the Bureau. Now, he was about to lose his novel. His license. His entire career. Eight years and 937 pages walked out the door under the arm of a careless agent and his belligerent partner.
MaCally raced to the living room. He stood tall in the back of the room as the Agents made their way toward the front door.
“**** you!” he cried. “At least I made something! At least I did something! People will remember my work! They’ll know who I was! I’ll still be around when you ****ers are dead and gone and your last miserable family member is no longer around to carry on your lousy names! Forgotten! They’ll all forget you, you and your miserable, useless work! Oh, but don’t blame me! It’s not my fault people don’t remember the meter maids of the FBI!”
Cortazzo and Reynolds stopped dead in their tracks. Reynolds looked at Cortazzo, laughing. Cortazzo looked at MaCally. He shoved the briefcase into Reynolds chest, not looking where it went. Reynolds dropped his apple as he struggled to grab the briefcase without dropping MaCally’s manuscript. Cortazzo began rolling up his sleeves, lurching slowly toward the writer, a glint in his eye. MaCally backed away, fearful.
Reynolds reached down, grabbed the apple, took a bite and held it in his teeth. He grabbed the briefcase, setting it down immediately to open the door. The screen door was set to close automatically, and closed on Reynolds face. He set the briefcase back down, opened it one more time and dove into it. Holding it open with his ***, he grabbed the briefcase and set it on the porch. Sounds of MaCally screaming drowned as he reached back to close the main door.
When Cortazzo came out, MaCally was sitting on the porch steps, intently reading the manuscript. The apple core lay on the ground next to him.
“Say, this thing ain’t too bad.” Reynolds didn’t lift his gaze from the manuscript. Cortazzo rubbed his right hand and shook it tenderly.
“Yeah that’s great, Reynolds,” he said. “Get in the car.
II.
Those less fortunate are said to be born into the world with two strikes against them. Dennis Cortazzo came in without a bat.
Specifics aside, it certainly helps to explain his hostility toward others.
“I don’t get it, Reynolds,” he said.
Reynolds and Cortazzo were on the road early. The MaCally case had been closed. The Bureau found James MaCally guilty of soliciting unapproved written material. His license was irrevocably banned. His work was torched. Previously approved materials were taken out of circulation. Moby Dick was gone. Everything had been taken.
“What’s that?” Reynolds said.
The car moved leisurely down the road. Reynolds found it difficult to drive with any haste as the fog of sleep interrupted clung to his eyes. His response to Cortazzo was automatic.
“I don’t get why you bothered to read that ****,” Cortazzo said.
The men had been called in for an emergency executive review. It had been found during the MaCally review that Agent Reynolds had read parts of the condemned manuscripts without express authority. It was a violation of the protocols of the Bureau. Reynolds and Cortazzo had both been called in to discuss the violation.
“It wasn’t really that bad,” he said.
The road was empty, save for the dull, yellowing blush of street lights on the grayed pavement. Signs for businesses struggled to cast a glow on the route through years of grime and for want of working light bulbs. Tractor trailers occasionally blew through the morning dirge, flying past the Agents in their modest old sedan at breakneck speeds. Soon, there would be cars and there would be people and they’d all be going to or returning from work. Always work. The end hadn’t yet arrived if there was still work to do.
Cortazzo made no reply. Reynolds spotted their destination. Without signaling, he made a slow right into the fractured parking lot of the Route 30 Diner. They were to meet their boss there, for the review. It had been his suggestion to take the affair out of the office.
“It should make for a nice change of scenery,” Boss had said.
Reynolds and Cortazzo stepped out of the car and into the mist of morning. It was a particularly foggy morning. Ancient neon still clutched the brick walls of the diner. Half the neon gas had broken free of the glass chambers. In daylight, the sign read: “Fine Dining, Cocktails.” A martini glass spiraled out of the letters. In the dark and fog of morning, with half its neon gas escaped into the atmosphere, it read only: “Fine Din, Cockt.” The martini glass was still lit.
They entered the diner, Cortazzo first. It was musty, brownish, dark still with all its lights turned on. The men grabbed a booth along the front of the diner, facing the highway. They were the only people in the place.
“This is a nice change of scenery?” Cortazzo said. He straightened out his suit jacket, back erect. He lit a cigarette.
“No, that meant nothing,” Reynolds said. “This is the place MaCally was supposed to have been passing off his work. You read the papers?”
Reynolds meant the original papers which MaCally had solicited illegally in the diner. Cortazzo took out his handkerchief, touched it to his eye and shook his head. Neither agent had a look at the offending manuscripts. They had only the word that MaCally had been in the place, peddling his work. Good enough.
“I don’t get it, Reynolds,” Cortazzo said. Smoke escaped with each word.
“What’s that?”
“People demonize us.”
“You and me?”
“All us agents, I mean.”
Agents of the Bureau were famously unpopular. Their enforcement of the Culture Cap was notoriously unpleasant, according to those who had to follow it. Colloquially, it was hated by everyone. It was government gone out of control, people said. It was a sign that the end was near, they said.
“It’s just the law,” Cortazzo said.
“Mm-hmm.”
“What can we do? It was our job. That’s all.”
“Hear hear.”
“He should have followed protocol.”
“Should’ve.”
Reynolds sat reading the newspaper. Cortazzo touched the handkerchief to his eye, and looked out the window. Still fog and dark. He scanned the diner for signs of service. Reynolds noticed his search.
“Place even open?” Reynolds said.
“Probably not,” he said. He took a few more drags of the cigarette. Reynolds continued reading.
“Don’t see why we got to be here at the dick-dawn of morning,” Cortazzo said. “In fact, I don’t see why we got to be here at all.”
“If it makes Boss happy,” Reynolds said. They sat silent for another few moments. Reynolds read his paper. Cortazzo finished his cigarette, touched the handkerchief to his eye. He waited impatiently for service.
“What time is it, anyway?”
“He’ll be here.”
“Still, what’s the time?”
“Aren’t you wearing your watch?”
“What?”
“Why aren’t wearing your watch, Taz?”
“I don’t like the watch.”
“That’s a shame.”
“I don’t like any watch.”
“It’s a nice watch.
“**** the watch, Reynolds.”
“It’s part of the suit.”
“Then **** the suit.”
“You love the suit.”
“I hate the watch.”
“Then what of the suit?”
“Its part of the suit, isn’t it, Reynolds?”
“The watch?”
“Yes.”
“I suppose.”
“Then I don’t like the suit.”
“You’re an ***.”
“What time is it?”
“What?”
“What, time, is it?”
Reynolds gave him a glare. Even at dawn Cortazzo could break a guy’s balls with professional aplomb.
“5:31.”
“He’s late.”
“He’ll be here.”
“A guy like him shouldn’t be late like he is. He’s the boss.”
“He’s a busy guy.”
“Too busy to do his job?”
“He is doing his job.”
“Like you did yours?”
“Yeah,” Reynolds said.
Silence passed. No Boss. No service. Cortazzo’s impatience grew. He yawned angrily.
“Wouldn’t even be here if you hadn’t read that Moby Dick bull****,” he said.
“**** you! You busted the guy’s nose!”
“Doesn’t break protocol.”
“Dress code. Somewhere, I don’t know where, but its in there. Suit. Tie. Watch. Protocol. And you’re breaking it.”
“I don’t like the watch, Reynolds.”
“Yeah.”
The two continued on their habits - Reynolds reading quietly, Cortazzo permanently anxious. Cortazzo’s anxiousness was legendary. He wanted to get everything done right now. Work was only part of it. His disgust with writers was also part. It helped to fuel his work ethic. Both itched at him as dawn started to break over the diner.
“Here’s what rubs me, Reynolds,” he said suddenly. “Is what the hell does a guy do getting into a business like that in the first place?”
“What kind of business is that?” Reynolds said without looking up.
“Any business of the kind. Writing for pictures, acting in pictures. Taking pictures, painting pictures. **** like that.”
“Artists, you mean?”
“****ing art!”
“It’s a thing to do.”
Cortazzo looked out the window. “Thing to do,” he said. “No, no, it isn’t. Working, like we work, is a thing to do. Driving a garbage truck is a thing to do.” He turned and yelled toward the counter. “Waiting tables is a thing to do!” Still looking at the counter, he said quietly, “What’s a picture-type gonna do that no picture-type before him didn’t do better already?”
Reynolds folded his paper, looked at Cortazzo for the first time. He let his fingers keep his page marked.
“You saying that all people should be working-stiff types like you and me?”
“There’s that term again. What do you mean, working-stiff types?”
“Nothing.”
“No, no. Tell me about it.”
“All I mean is, you and me? We’re regular guys.”
“Pardon?”
“We work for a living.”
“I know I work for a living, Reynolds.”
“Okay. So then that’s us. We’re working stiffs.”
“Oh, well that explains everything.”
“Look, Cortazzo-“
“Reynolds, please! Elaborate. Enlighten me, if you will.”
“All I mean is we work for a living! You see the suits? The ties? That goddamn company car? We work. These picture-types, they work, too, except they make ****. Remember for me, off the top of your greasy little head, the last time you made something.”
“I made love to your sister.”
It was true.
“I mean made something! With your hands and your head, and your dick still in your pants.”
Reynolds lost his page as he pointed at Cortazzo, challenging him. Cortazzo looked away, out the window again. A bevy of tractor-trailers whizzed by. The morning rush was just beginning, or the night-shift guys were rolling through. Cortazzo lit a smoke, blew it out and sat back against the unpadded booth.
“I don’t do that,” he said, indirectly.
“You don’t do that?”
“No, Reynolds, I don’t ****ing do that.” He sat forward again.
“Says he works all day but he never made nothing. You, my friend, are a stiff.”
“I’ll give you a stiff one.”
“I gave your mother a stiff one.”
“**** off, Reynolds.”
Reynolds laughed. He returned to reading his paper.
Cortazzo sat, still impatient. He looked over at Reynolds, put off by his peacefulness so early in the morning. He looked at his watch.
“Timex piece of ****,” he observed. Reynolds folded back the paper, looked down at the watch then up at Cortazzo.
“Thanks,” he said, and returned to reading. A few minutes passed. Reynolds spoke then from behind his newspaper.
“Say Taz, I think my watch battery here is dead. You got the time?” He folded the paper down and smiled at him.
“Matter of fact, I do,” Cortazzo said. “It’s early as ****. Way too early for Agent Cortazzo to be dressed and working. He should be in bed. He should be happy, and sleeping. But he’s not. He’s here. In some ****hole diner. Waiting on an emergency executive review, of some ****, that he didn’t do. And Agent Cortazzo could have gone to the bar last night.”
“Oh, to hell with the bar.”
“Wednesday is my night to go to the bar, Reynolds, you know that!”
“My apologies.”
The agents returned to their momentary silence. Eventually, Cortazzo got up, rubbed his neck. He touched the handkerchief to his eye. He returned the folded handkerchief to his jacket pocket, walked to the counter and hit the service bell once. He stepped back, put folded hands at his waist and bounced slightly on his toes as he waited. He looked for a clock, but couldn’t find one. He stepped forward slightly, tapped the bell once more.
“Excuse me?” he said. There was no response.
“Any luck with that?” Reynolds called.
Cortazzo continued bouncing on his toes for a few more moments. He stepped forward once more, picked up a heavy silver napkin dispenser from the counter. It was ancient. He looked it over, tossed it slightly a few times, impressed with the weight of the thing. He grabbed it in one hand, held it out to look from another perspective, and crashed it down heavily on the service bell. Once, twice, repeatedly until the bell had fallen out and the vaguely silver thing had been smashed into a concave little bowl.
Cortazzo looked at the bottom of the napkin dispenser. It was unharmed. Impressed, he set it on the counter, picked one napkin out of its mouth and touched it lightly to his eye. He balled the napkin up and placed it neatly inside his jacket. He folded his hands once more and bounced pleasantly on his toes.
“Impressive display, Agent Cortazzo.”
Boss had walked in during the silent tirade. Cortazzo turned his upper body to meet the man’s gaze. “Thank you, sir,” he said, smiling. Boss ignored the sarcasm and took a seat at the counter. Reynolds sighed, shimmied his way out of the booth and took a seat next to Boss. Cortazzo sat on the other side of Boss. Both men had seated themselves before Boss managed to get comfortable. He had a spectacular weight problem. It took him some time to shift his weight to an acceptable fulcrum on the beleaguered stool.
“Files, Reynolds?” Boss said. Reynolds searched his briefcase for the files that outlined the executive review process. Boss held up and examined the smashed service bell. Cortazzo faced forward, dipped his head down and tried to look at the bell only out of the corners of his eyes. He pursed his lips, unsure how he’d explain it if prompted.
“Maybe you should lay off the coffee, son.”
“Actually sir, a little cofee may have prevented that.”
“How’s that?”
“Here you go,” Reynolds interrupted.
He handed Boss a few papers and a pen. Boss took a tiny pair of glasses out of his front pocket, placed them low on his fat red nose. He craned his neck up and backward, tilted his chin up, held the papers straight out and read through peering eyes.
“Says here the review process requires a minutes log of the meeting,” he finally said.
Cortazzo sighed and dipped his head. Official Bureau workings had always been encumbered with bull****. Boss was deliberately slow to begin with. The review could take hours.
“Seems silly, but business is business,” Boss said. He set to writing. “What’s the time there, Cortazzo?”
“Ah, about that.”
Boss faced Cortazzo, his eyes fixed straight at him while his head seemed to stay moving forward. There was no neck for it to turn on.
“Is there a problem, son?
“Agent Cortazzo has an aversion to the subpar timepieces of the administration, sir,” said Reynolds.
“You’re not wearing you watch, Agent Cortazzo?”
“I don’t like the watch, sir.”
“He doesn’t like any watch, Boss.”
“Well that’s a shame.”
“It is a shame,” Reynolds said.
“It’s a nice watch,” Boss said.
“That’s what I tried telling him.”
“It’s part of the suit, Agent Cortazzo.”
“It’s a nice suit,” Reynolds said.
“A very nice suit,” Boss said.
Cortazzo leaned back on his stool and inhaled violently. A phone rang as he prepared to unload on Reynolds. Boss shifted his weight to one side. His sausage fingers struggled to free the cell phone from its belt holster. Cortazzo and Reynolds watched the stool lean heavily, anticipating the antique thing would snap at any moment. Boss eventually freed the phone. “Hyello,” he said. The call alternated terse, one-word responses and labored nasal breathing in between. Cortazzo and Reynolds glanced at each other behind Boss’ back.
The call ended. Another balancing act as he returned the phone to its holster. Boss lifted the glass lid off a serving stand on the counter, grabbed one of the cardboard doughnuts it held and returned the glass. “Wellp,” he said. He ate the doughnut in one bite. The nasal breathing intensified as his massive jaw worked to force the stale pastry down his cave of a throat. Hours passed, or could have. He finally finished and reached back to the stand, hauling in four or five more frosted and glazed hockey pucks. “Let’s talk.”
The three returned to the booth where they could more easily conduct the meeting, Reynolds and Cortazzo seated uncomfortably next to each other as Boss’s girth spilled out on the front and side of his bench. Neither Reynolds nor Cortazzo was particularly out of shape, but the table somehow managed to touch all three men in their stomachs at once. Boss inhaled the doughnuts, each one whole, as he laid out all the pertinent paperwork.
“What’s this guy’s name again?” Boss said.
“Mackey?” Cortazzo said.
“MaCally,” Reynolds said. “James MaCally. Been licensed by the Bureau for the past ten years.”
“A veteran?” Boss said.
Boss struggled to free a tiny pair of sunglasses from his jacket pocket. He perched the glasses atop his massive nose. They reached as far back as his sideburns, held on by the outward pressure exerted by his giant cheeks, rather than his ears. The glasses may have actually been normal sized, looking tiny only in the context of Boss’ titanic head. He looked over the documents laid out on the table, his bratwurst fingers camouflaging whole paragraphs as he slid them across the page, reading the line above.
“Says here the offense was the proliferation of unlicensed and unapproved documents.” Boss said.
“Yes sir.” Reynolds said.
“And it says here that your offense was the consumption of said materials, Agent Reynolds?”
“Yes sir,” Cortazzo said quickly. He glared at Reynolds.
Boss continued reading over the files. Reynolds sat quietly, hands folded, looking out the window at the highway taking life. Cortazzo continued sitting impatiently, looking for service. No waitress had appeared.
“Wellp,” Boss began, “I guess you boys both know why you’re here, then.”
“Yessir,” they said in unison.
“And you both understand the protocols?”
“Yessir.”
“And we all understand that this won’t be a problem again,” he said, tilting his head forward to look over his glasses at Reynolds.
“Yes sir,” they said.
“Got that all down, Agent Reynolds?”
“Got it,” Reynolds said. He finished the minutes log of the meeting in one sentence.
“Good,” Boss said, and shoveled another doughnut into his mouth. “Meeting adjourned.”
He struggled to return his glasses to his pocket. Reynolds began placing the documents back in their manila folders.
“No way,” Cortazzo said.
“Pack it in, Cortazzo,” Reynolds said.
“No way!”
“Is there a problem, Agent Cortazzo?” Boss said.
“You mean to tell me I missed out on going to my bar on what was supposed to be my night off to come here! For what?”
Boss peered at Cortazzo, becoming serious for the first time.
“What’s the matter, Agent Cortazzo? Am I interfering with a pressing engagement?” Boss shoveled the last hockey puck doughnut into his mouth. His words became muffled by the cardboard material sponging every bit of moisture out of his well-exercised salivary glands. “I’m sorry I didn’t consult you,” he paused to swallow, “before I made the decision to do my job.”
“**** it!” Cortazzo cried. “**** the meeting, I don’t care. I’m here. I did my goddamn job.” He got up from the booth, walked to the counter and shouted back toward the kitchen.
“I did my goddamn job!” he cried. They had first walked into the diner nearly half an hour ago. Nothing had happened to suggest they weren’t the only people in the place.
“MY GOD-DAMN JOB!” he reiterated.
“Give it a rest, Taz,” Reynolds said from the booth.
“I just want some coffee, Reynolds,” he said. He turned back to face the kitchen. “Just some FRESH, HOT, COFFEE!”
“Agent Cortazzo!”
Boss had finally lost his patience. Cortazzo stopped his tirade at hearing his superior shout at him. Boss got up from the booth slowly, smashing the table with his gut as he moved, smashing it repeatedly into Reynolds’ chest as he struggled to heave his girth out of the vinyl-wrapped quicksand of the old booth. It was like wrestling a carp out of a Chinese finger trap.
Fully thirty seconds passed before Boss was able to even stand, let alone confront his belligerent agent. The belligerent agent stood, suddenly silenced, and watched the man settle his ruffled clothing and make his way to the counter. Boss huffed heavily and stood facing Cortazzo, leaning a heavy arm on the counter to level himself.
“Are you done?” he wheezed.
“I’d like my coffee, sir.”
“Just do your job, Agent Cortazzo.” Boss reached for a few more doughnuts.
“My job? I’m not the reason we’re here! I’m not the one who can’t follow protocol!”
“**** you, Cortazzo!” Reynolds called.
“**** you, Reynolds!”
“Boys!” Boss pleaded. “The protocols! Come on!”
As they bickered, a mass of humanity crashed heavily through the front door, slamming the glass door against the wall behind it and knocking the welcome bell clean off its hanger. A man lay on the floor, mumbling, and struggled to get up. All three had leveled their sidearms quickly at the threat, and laid them down as they watched him move with all the grace of a drunken baby deer.
The man found his feet, stumbled clumsily to a booth at the far end of the diner, clung to the table for dear life, and climbed aboard the seat with even more trouble than the blimpish Boss. He looked up at the ceiling for a moment, then brought his head down heavily on the table. The crash he made on the ceramic-topped table could have knocked loose his teeth. His hands hung at his sides. He was asleep. Cortazzo laughed.
“Hey-ey, bastard!” ”What?” Boss said. ”That’s the writer, sir,” Reynolds said. ”The one whose manuscript you read?” ”Ah, yessir,” Reynolds said, and ducked his eyes downward. ”Doesn’t look like much of a writer.” ”Looks like a ****ing bum,” Cortazzo said. He lit a cigarette.
MaCally’s clothes were tattered. A long-sleeve flannel tee shirt did little to cover the stains of alcohol and vomit that frosted his shirt. His hair was much longer than when the agents had first accosted him. His glasses were broken, frames bent with a lens missing, partly courtesy of Cortazzo’s left hook. He smelled strongly of alcohol and failure. He hadn’t shaved in the weeks since the cancellation of his license. His beard grew in spotty, looked like ****. The sleep was the best thing for him.
“He looks upset,” Boss said. ”He looks like ****,” Cortazzo said.
MaCally, head still on the table, shook and muttered indiscernible nonsense. He awoke, briefly, and folded the thin paper placemat into a small bowl and vomited into it. He folded the paper placemat closed and set the ball of mess on the floor, his newfound alcoholism struggling to usurp his former courteousness. Pleased, he leaned his head back. It hung as though on a broken neck. He passed out again. Three stunned Agents of the Bureau wordlessly watched the display from the far end of the diner.
“This guy’s an *******, Reynolds,” Cortazzo said. He put out his cigarette on the tabletop. “Why’d you take the time to even read his Moby Dick bull**** in the first place?”
“Your wife was out of town.”
“It was probably ****, anyway,” Cortazzo said.
“It wasn’t ****.”
“He probably thought that, too,” Boss said, motioning toward the unconscious MaCally. MaCally’s head jerked involuntarily forward. His forehead came to a rest on the corner of the table. He vomited on his own feet.
“Tough ****, anyways,” Cortazzo said. “Should’ve known about the cap.”
“Everyone should know about the cap,” Reynolds added.
“He didn’t,” said Cortazzo, pointing at MaCally.
“I think he did,” said Reynolds. “He had to have. He had his license. Do you remember how much **** we took from his place? Boxes full! You don’t risk a career’s worth of work like that without knowing about the cap. He’s been published before. The culture cap is nothing new. He had to have known.”
Cortazzo and Boss momentarily considered what Reynolds had said. It was quite unlike an Agent of the Bureau to speak with sympathy on behalf of a writer. Neither answered. The men instead returned to watching MaCally, awaiting his next drunken move.
“I don’t see why he went to the trouble of making all that **** in the first place,” Cortazzo said.
“It’s what they do,” said Reynolds.
“Bastards?”
“Picture-types.”
“Bastards,” Cortazzo said under his breath.
“What do you think you know, Agent Cortazzo?” Boss said.
Cortazzo got up, walked backwards away from the booth, still facing the other men. He put his hands up, feigning defensiveness.
“I know how to follow protocols,” Cortazzo said. “If I were a picture-type, I would know how to apply for licensing,” he said, pointing at MaCally. “If I were a higher-up, I’d know how to send a memo,” he said, looking at Boss. “And if I were a waitress, I would know how to provide excellent service.”
Cortazzo turned away from them, walking around aimlessly, surveying the place. He ran his hands over the browning, aging countertop, and found the bricklike napkin holder which he’d used to smash the service bell. He picked up the napkin holder and walked away juggling the thing in one hand. He wound up, made a pitcher’s motion and threw it down the length of the diner. He disappeared down the far end of the diner, screaming nonsense about coffee for a moment. Reynolds returned to mindlessly admiring his watch. Boss had given up. He made no movement but the heavy rise and fall of his pregnant-looking belly as his lungs fought his throat in search of air.
“Excellent, ****ing, service!” The cry came from somewhere in the distance.
The cry awoke the drunken writer. MaCally slowly made his way off the seat and staggered drunkenly past the two agents, away from where Cortazzo had disappeared to. Cortazzo returned to the group with a thin film of sweat on his forehead, and watched MaCally make his way, hands grasping anything that might help him stand. He was headed toward the light switch on the far end of the diner. He paused momentarily to vomit into a decorative planter.
“Goddamn genius, right there,” Cortazzo said.
MaCally finally found the wall. He slapped his hand heavily against the wall and slid it up and down, like he was wiping it clean with his palms, searching for the switch. He found it. He flicked the light switch off and back on, three times, and staggered slowly back to his stool. The three men said nothing, watching him, wondering what had gone on. A young woman emerged from the kitchen area of the diner.
“Excuse me, miss!” Cortazzo called. She ignored him, moved straight for MaCally. She smiled, slipped him a pen and a cocktail napkin, and he began to write. Cortazzo was appalled.
“See, this is the ****! This is the same ****! This is why he nabbed him, and took away all his bull****, picture-type nonsense! Passing off his garbage work in a garbage diner!”
“Come on, Taz, let it go,” Reynolds said.
“Hey, bastard! Bastard!”
Sensing leadership, Boss slowly fought his way out of the booth. Reynolds got up and lent him a hand, more to avoid getting crushed by the table again than to be helpful. Boss stood, shuffled his pants back and forth several times, produced a badge and made his way over toward the writer and his waitress.
“Mr. MaCally!” he said, approaching them, breathing labored, “may I remind you that you are in violation of-“
“Violation of what, Boss?” Reynolds called. “He has nothing left, no writing, no license,” Reynolds said.
“Because we took it,” Boss said, more to MaCally than Reynolds.
“He’s already been cleaned out,” Reynolds said, “just leave him be.”
“Hey, ****head!” Cortazzo cried. “Give us the note, or I’ll bust your lip again.”
“Agent Cortazzo!”
The waitress left, watching the strange men bicker. MaCally flipped a crooked middle finger at Cortazzo from across the room. Boss feigned leadership once again. His authority was fueled more as a response to Cortazzo’s incessant *****ing than by any loyalty to the Bureau. He waddled his way back to the smiling Agent Cortazzo, yelling as he moved.
“Dammit, Cortazzo, we’ve got a 4-54 in progress and you are undermining my authority in front of a repeat offender!”
“Just let him go, Boss,” Reynolds pleaded.
“He has no license,” Boss said.
“He had a license, he’s entitled to write a love note,” Reynolds said.
“He is entitled to nothing!” Boss wheezed angrily.
“He’s not hurting anything in a goddamn diner!” Reynolds said.
“Bull****!” Cortazzo cried.
“Does it look like he’s trying to undermine the public good, Taz?”
“How do you know he isn’t?” Cortazzo said.
“It’s a love note!”
“It’s unapproved, unlicensed and unconstitutional!”
“So you know for a fact the drunk bastard is on a mission to ruin the world?”
“Of course I do!”
“Did he tell you he is, Taz?”
“What?”
“Do you speak on MaCally’s behalf now, too?”
“**** you! I’ll speak for anyone I please, especially a washed-up, no-good picture-type who can’t even do his job!”
“Did you ask MaCally what he thinks?”
“**** what he thinks!”
“Did you even read the first papers, Cortazzo?”
Reynolds meant the original papers which MaCally had solicited illegally in the diner. Cortazzo took out his handkerchief, touched it to his eye and shook his head. Neither agent had a look at the offending manuscripts. They had only the good word that MaCally had been in the place, peddling his work.
“No, Reynolds. I didn’t read it. Did you?”
Reynolds sat back, looked around at nothing.
“No.”
The two agents turned at looked at their Boss. Somewhere between the rise and fall of his giant belly he managed to shrug his shoulders. No one had read the original papers. They’d only heard of them. Good enough.
“Wellp,” said Boss, shuffling his waist and wiping the sweat from his brow, “I think we go see what all this is about then.”
He slicked his hair back and the three made their way toward MaCally again. The waitress returned, and placed a small cup of coffee on the table in front of MaCally. Cortazzo seethed. He smacked it off the table and onto the floor. He snatched away the napkin, still standing, and the others huddled around him to read it.
“Oh, ****,” Cortazzo whispered.
It read:
‘One cup. Cream. No sugar. Thank you.’
Reynolds looked up. MaCally met his gaze, eyes red. Tears streaked his face, disappearing into his filthy new beard. He got up, laughed a laugh of despair and began staggering for the door. Boss slowly backed away as if to distance himself. Reynolds stared holes through the back of Cortazzo’s head.
“Hey, hey! Get back here!”
Cortazzo ran, caught the drunken MaCally and spun him round to face him. His pride swelled, twisted and solidified into a five-hundred pound ball of iron that dropped out of his skull and landed at the bottom of his stomach. His only natural response was to confront MaCally again. He stared at MaCally, who looked at the handkerchief held in Cortazzo’s left hand. He’d held the handkerchief there all morning. His eye never stopped running. Cortazzo looked over at the waitress. She was behind the counter, investigating the smashed and broken service bell. He looked at MaCally, holding up the note.
“Is this all it was?”
MaCally, tears streaming through the grime and dried vomit on his face, smiled a black-hearted smile, as if to say yes. Cortazzo looked over at the waitress. She said nothing, but smiled at him, and motioned with her hands. She said nothing as she pantomimed, motioning as if pouring a cup of coffee. Only her expression awaited his answer. She was deaf.
He looked back at MaCally, at the note in his hand. MaCally gaze remained fixed on his handkerchief.
“Do you think you can ask her for another cup of coffee?” he said.
MaCally breathed quickly, painfully. He choked on the air. He couldn’t laugh, though he was hysterical. He couldn’t make a sound for all his crying. He began to shake, violently, until a laugh of hysteria emerged finally from him. He turned away from Cortazzo, the agents and the diner. He walked out into the highway. Headlights of the tractor-trailers streaming past melted invisible in the emerging daylight. He stumbled down the length of the parking lot, walking parallel with the highway. The morning rush was on. Thousands of cars screamed past, throwing the dirt and grime and gray of the highway at him with the wind they created. He laughed as he walked, arms held out, balancing himself on the cracking concrete curbs as though walking a tightrope.
“GOOD ENOUGH”
by James Conley
Original Story “Good Enough for Government Work” by James Conley
Subsequent Revisions by James Conley and Evan Mulgrave
First Draft March 2010
Current Draft August 2010
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