D. Harlan Wilson
D. Harlan Wilson is the author of several books of fiction, including The Kafka Effekt, Stranger on the Loose, Pseudo-City, and a new science fiction novel, Dr. Identity, or, Farewell to Plaquedemia. An English professor at Wright State University-Lake Campus, he lives in Ohio with his wife Xtine and daughter Madeleine. In his spare time, he likes to drink Nescafé and work on his bench press, which is approaching 350 lbs. For more information on Wilson and his work, visit his official website at www.dharlanwilson.com.
THE MAN IN THE THICK BLACK SPECTACLES
OR
THE POLITE MAN’S GUIDE TO WARFARE
from the Bizarro Starter Kit
Before opening the door and entering the conference room, the man in the thick black spectacles removed the wad of chewing gum from his mouth and, after glancing in every imaginable direction, stuck it into an unassuming, seemingly clean crack in the wall. He would retrieve the gum from the crack later, after the meeting, which would take no more and no less than five minutes. He knew this for three reasons:
1. This morning the man in the cubicle next door had told him so.
2. There was a neon billboard hanging from the ceiling of the office that read:
MEETING TODAY
5 MINUTES LONG
NO MORE, NO LESS
3. Of the countless meetings he had attended before, he could not remember one of them being more or less than five minutes.
So there was no reason why this meeting should be any different, and no reason why the man in the thick black spectacles should be worried.
And yet he was worried. Five minutes was five minutes, after all.
He placed a fingernail between his teeth and began to chew on it. What if, say, a fly landed on the gum while he was away? He would have no way of knowing what the fly had done to the gum in his absence. For all he knew, the fly would crap on it, meaning that the man in the thick black spectacles, in the not-too-distant future, might very well be chewing on fly shit. This was not a pretty thought, so he tried not to think it, or to think thoughts like it. He couldn’t allow himself to. To allow himself to think that way would be distracting, and this meeting, while short, was, like all of the other meetings, an important one. It required that he be sharp as a tack.
Removing the fingernail from his teeth, he opened the door . . . and hesitated, unable to help himself, despite himself.
Five minutes, he thought. Sometimes one minute seems like an eternity, especially when you’re thinking about that minute. It’s one thing to handle one minute, or rather, one eternity. But can I handle five of them?
Eyeing the gum, he clicked his tongue and stroked his brow. He sighed. Closing the door, he looked back over his right shoulder, his left shoulder, his right shoulder. He looked between his legs, underneath his shoes . . .
Hardly satisfied, but more anxious now about hesitating and being late for the meeting than abandoning the gum, the man in the thick black spectacles walked in at last, closing the door behind him slowly, guardedly, without a sound, pulling his beaklike nose inside just as the door clicked shut.
Immediately the man in the silver handlebar mustache unfolded his appendages and snuck out from behind the water cooler. Giggling, he crept over to the crack in the wall. He stretched out his long neck, rolled out his tongue, and lapped at the gum like a thirsty dog.
At the same time the man in the neon zoot suit wormed his way up from out of the soil in the pot that contained the office’s largest rubber plant, using the branches of the plant for leverage, but still, this worming took a while, and by the time he was free of the soil and had dusted himself off, the man in the silver handlebar mustache was fully engaged, his tongue lapping at high speed. The man in the neon zoot suit would have to wait his turn. Impatient, he cursed in rakish undertones. But soon the man in the flamingo pink top hat fell through a ceiling tile with a crash and at least the man in the neon zoot suit had some company now. He stopped cursing . . . until the man in the flamingo pink top hat started cursing, first because he had fallen, second because of the man in the silver handlebar mustache, who was taking too long, far too long, who was hogging the wad of chewing gum all too himself.
Quickly the man in the neon zoot suit joined his estranged colleague in blasphemous harmony. “Why not give us a go, you filthy bastard?” they bitched. The man in the silver handlebar mustache promptly sucked his tongue back into his mouth, stood upright and about-faced. To his aggressors he replied, “If one wants something, all one has to do is ask. That’s all one has to do.”
The sarcasm in the man in the silver handlebar mustache’s tone of voice was flagrant enough, but neither the man in the neon zoot suit nor the man in the flamingo pink top hat had ever cared enough about sarcasm to be able to detect it, even if it slapped them across both cheeks. Muttering hasty thank yous under their breath, they attacked the crack in the wall at the same time, smacked into each other and collapsed to the floor. They got to their feet and blinked. Following a brief, woozy exchange, they played rock-paper-scissors to see who between them got to lick the gum first.
The man in the flamingo pink top hat won.
“Balls,” said the loser. He ripped the peacock’s feather out of his tando hat and stomped on it as the victor, with the tip of a sharp tongue, began stabbing at the gum, again and again, growing more excitable and outrageous with each snakelike stab. The man in the silver handlebar mustache, now leaning up against the wall with arms crossed, sniggered, then began moving his tongue around the insides of his mouth so that his cheeks kept poking out. He smacked his lips, too, each time glaring derisively at the man in the neon zoot suit out of the corners of his eyes.
Eventually the man in the neon zoot suit reached his breaking point. Being twice as tall and twice as strong as the man in the flamingo pink top hat and the man in the silver handlebar mustache combined, but always hesitant to resort to his brawn until the last straw had been drawn, which it had, which it most definitely had—he backhanded the man in the flamingo pink top hat away from the wall and sent him sliding down the hallway on his spine, arms and legs and sharp tongue waving in the air like the extremities of an overturned beetle. He pointed an angry warning finger at the man in the silver handlebar mustache. All that man did, however, was whistle a quiet tune and feign a reverie. This irked the man in the neon zoot suit, but not enough to lead his one-track mind astray; he merely pressed a finger to one nostril and out the other nostril blasted out an ornery little snot ball. Then, at long last, he opened up his shark mouth and turned and made for the gum that the man in the thick black spectacles had stuck right there in the crack in the wall . . . but too late, too late. The door to the conference room was being opened up, slowly, guardedly, without a sound, and in a flash the man in the silver handlebar mustache had folded himself up behind the water cooler again, and the man in the flamingo pink top hat had both rallied from the backhand and leapt back up into the ceiling, replacing the tile he had fallen through with a fresh one. So the man in the neon zoot suit was all alone. And when the man in the thick black spectacles emerged, it was he and no other that would be to blame, in spite of his innocence. Because even though the man in the neon zoot suit had certainly wanted to lick the gum, and would have licked it if he could have—and the gum had clearly been licked; a forensics expert wasn’t needed to figure that out—the truth of the matter was: he had not licked anything.
At this point the man in the neon zoot suit asked himself three simple questions. He would have asked himself more, but time didn’t permit it.
1. What is to become of me once I get caught?
2. Will the man in the thick black spectacles attack me or give me the opportunity to explain myself?
3. Given the opportunity, how will I explain myself?
The man in the neon zoot suit was about to ask himself a fourth question when something overcame him, something that, when he reflected on it later during a water cooler conversation with the man in the silver handlebar mustache and the man in the flamingo pink top hat, he described as an “impulsive burst of energy” that allowed him to spring up and across the hallway, dive back down into the soil of the rubber plant, and cover himself over just enough so that nobody would take note of his stealth. “It was a brilliant move,” he bragged.
“And yet quite unnecessary,” smiled the man in the silver handlebar mustache.
The man in the flamingo pink top hat added, “Indeed. Quite unnecessary.”
When the man in the neon zoot suit said, “I don’t understand,” the man in the flamingo pink top hat, who had seen everything through a mouse hole in the ceiling, told him. “As it so happened,” he said, “the man in the thick black spectacles, after slipping out the door that led into the conference room, was apparently so preoccupied, he forgot all about his gum. First he clicked shut the door and stood there in the hallway a moment, nervously fingering an ear lobe and flexing his jowls. Then he spent some time making these sickly croaking noises. Finally he scurried off, down the hallway, talking to himself in a worried voice. And that’s that.”
“That’s that,” repeated the man in the neon zoot suit in a dull whisper, then turned with a quick jerk, like a man who wants to be alone with his dread.