Software Vault: The Gold Collection/Software Vault - The Gold Collection (American Databankers) (1993).ISO/cdr11/rubyv21.zip/RUBY21-3

Text File | 1993-06-04 | 13KB | 255 lines

Copyright 1993(c)

           THE SECRET OF MISTER WASHINGTON'S SUCCESS
                        By Franchot Lewis

                               I.

     The old man said, "You can be who you want to be by
day, but by night you must be what you are."
     I was at his door, holding, then turning the knob.
     "Go," he said.
     I opened the door, held my car keys and jingled them in
my unsteady grip.
     "Stay?" he asked.
     I paused to adjust to the cold outside. The winter air
rushed in, carrying with it the odors of a barren street. No
fumes of traffic, no sweat of people, only the smell of ice.
     "Close the door or go," he said.
     I moved away from the door, walking backwards.
     "Will you please sit down, again, Mr. Washington?" the
old man asked.
     "So you can insult my intelligence again?"
     "You have come to steal my secret for success like the
others," said the old man.
     "I was invited here," I answered.
     "Yes, recommended by an old friend, who thinks you will
make a nice car salesman on his lot, but you need to be
trained."
     "I need the job."
     "Just a job?" The old man took an old worn Bible from the end
table, said, "I lend you this, take it and read."
     "I've read the Bible," I said.
     "Good," said the old man.
     "I thought you would be more helpful. Mr. Frost, my
employer --"
     "Who wants to promote you," said the old man.
     "Mr. Frost warned me about your insults."
     "He warned me about you too," said the old man. "You are a
young man with ambition." He smiled. "Here," he said.
     He took a plain silver colored cross from the table. "Take
this and carry it."
     "With all due respect, Sir, you are wasting my time." I
started to leave again.
      "Wait," he said. "A career won't be enough for you,
you want to be a boss. Take this." He took a small golden
ornament in the shape of a pentacle.
     "What is this? A joke?"
     "No, young man, I repeat what I first said to you, you
can be who you want to be by day, but by night, you must be
what you are."
     "Riddles, riddles," I groaned. "More riddles."
     "All day long until twelve midnight, you can be whatever you
want, a captain, a king, a poet, but at night, from twelve midnight
until six in the morning, you must be what you are."
     I made a rude laugh. "A challenge?" he asked.
     "Goodbye," I said.
     "Go to this old woman, I shall send you to, and you will
never have to work for anyone again, or worry about anything again,
by day, that is."
     "Shit," I said.
     He grinned. "You are a young man who cannot resist having your
dreams. Go see the old woman and be rich, or come back and call me
an old fool. Young man, go for your dreams."
     "You're wasting my time," I said, again.
     He laughed. "You will go, a young man like you cannot resist."
                              II.
     I found walking to the old woman's house troublesome.
     A half foot of snow was on the ground. Sleet was falling;
the wind blowing. The temperature was dropping. The street
was overgrown with ice.
     I wanted to turn back to my apartment with its tight
windows and forced air heat, but my feet kept saying, No.
That way. -- That way, that way, that way. Though I could
feel my bones growing cold, and my back cramped and wet from
the dampness from the ice that seeped through my coat, I
could not turn back. My soul, itself, was cold and wet in
the damp air I breathed, everyday - air worn thin by
misfortunes past, and by the generations of my kin. I went
forward --over sidewalk that was loosen by the ice - a great
chunk of concrete, a slab, heaved and broke under the weight
of my feet. My feet under the influence of their now frantic
nature wouldn't wait for balance to be restored, and in their
impatience made a futile effort to keep from falling into
the chaos that the ice and the snow had made of the concrete.
     I got up. Ice and snow were all over me. I shook myself.
The air was somehow thicker, or my lungs were. A burning
sensation had joined the dampness and the chill that were
clawing at the skin of my back. My heart's thoughts now
joined my nagging feet. "I must press on." I would press on.
     The old woman's house was a shack. It looked terrible.
It wouldn't have passed the most lenient inspection codes. I
hesitated outside, checked the house number, walked back to
the street corner and checked the street sign. I had come to
the address I was given. She had a door bell. I rang.
     As the door opened, a rush passed over me, heat, the
place was hot, like on fire  - and the smell of lilacs -
sent an involuntary shiver down my spine. I swear, I felt
the tingle on each vertebra. My eyes blinked. Maybe, I
looked as if I would faint, because she stared with a pair of
reddened black eyes, both with the clarity of burning coals in
an old fashioned stove, I remembered my Grandmother had. I
looked away, hoping to avoid more of that stare. She yanked
me back to those eyes, "Young man," she said. "Won't you
come in from the cold? Are you bashful? Afraid to look a
lady in the eye?"
     I looked, my eyes blinked. She smiled and escorted me
into her house.
     Lilacs, flowers, blooms everywhere. Her living room
was one garden sea of potted plants, filled to nausea. The
plant odors were loathsome. The house heat was enough to
push me toward a propensity to faint. The garden sea odors
filled me with a sea sickness, and my stomach with the
propensity to vomit.
     "Young man," she called me to look her in the face
again. I did so with a look of loathing, feeling disgust.
     "Drink some tea, young man," she offered me a cup,
holding the cup up to my face. The odors from the cup broke
the thin thread that kept me up on my feet.
     How long I was out? Hours? Days? I don't know.
                              III.
     I awoke slowly. I could just make out the outline of the
massive stacks of books in my attorney's office, when I heard
him speak. "Mr. Washington," he asked, "How are you feeling?"
     Every muscle in my back ached and tightened.
     "Should I call a doctor?"
     I turned to a window. The curtains had been drawn. We
were on the sixtieth floor, too high up to tell the time. My
heart felt as if it would shatter, my flesh as if it was
wearing down, as was my bony frame. How dark was the night?
The deep darkness of midnight? I had to get up and away. I
was being held there. I tried with all my will to project
myself as a whole man, and to keep myself whole through the
pain. I willed those organs that were crying out to break
down to calm themselves and to hold. I knew what why what
was going on inside as I knew that the darkest time was
going on outside. I tried to get up and move toward the
door, but the slightest movement brought great pain. After
what seemed like an eternity of trying to move, I was no
nearer to the door.
     "I'm calling a doctor!"
     I struggled to speak. My throat and jaw muscles tightened,
and my efforts to speak intensified, as my attorney
announced, "I am sending for an ambulance."
     Real or imagined, I thought I saw a sliver of light
brown scamp across the wall, or perhaps a ceiling somewhere
in my attorney's office or within. But from which? My heart
pounded. The pain came like electrical charges that now
went through me, following closer after each other.
     Opposites attract? Me and that brown scamp that ran
across the wall? It leaving a slick, oily, female smell that
drew me to nausea. Somewhere, here or there, the irrational
compartment of my mind screamed in total terror, yet I could
make no audible sound. I became acutely aware of each
individual hair on my legs, and every nerve in my skin stood
on end. The smallest draft brought the oily scent, and sent
a trillion neurons screaming the imperative for my will to hold.
     I heard the rustle of legs rubbing together, and smelled the
oily female gas. I had to get on my feet. My body felt
elastic, like it would shrink in a second if all my will was
not brought to bear. The brown spot on the wall looked static.
I focused my will on the wall, forming my thoughts in a ball
of electricity to demonstrate the power of man to resist. The
spot was a smudge.
     My eyes watered with relief as I forced my voice to a
near-audible whine, "No."
     Incredulously, my attorney was not moving to bend to my
will, but was moving toward a course that could put me closer
to ruin. He looked so concerned for my health, while my
mind screamed, and I tried to force my tongue to echo the
urgency I felt within outward to him. Lost in the torrent
of my irrational truth was the rationality of his lawyerly
mind. My eyes screamed, as his gentle eyes sought to know
why mine were demanding no doctors.
     "Mr. Washington, I am getting you a doctor."
     I glared at him, and for a second his eyes looked as if
he wanted to run for safety. Rationality drowns in the
overflow of irrationality, or falls meaningless to the
irrational will. I let my voice go into its most guttural
form. My jaws ached as I forced out the words, "If you want
me as a client, for God's sakes no, just get me a cab."
     "You may have had a heart attack," he replied softly.
     "I am a three-million-dollar-a-year account to you, get
me a cab."
     My attorney shook his head, quietly.
     I uttered, throat muscles straining, "Fuck, you, get me
a cab."
     He wouldn't. He would. We had talked late into the
evening. A big meeting was planned for tomorrow. A merger
could result that could make his firm many more millions, and
me, a cool billion. "A cab," I made a tight smile.
     He was a good lawyer, a past President of the bar
association, a man of high ethics and methods. But I could
smile. I saw the first hint that he would forget about
doctors and do what I told him, rising as a distant glint, at
the back of his eyes, looking like a midnight train approaching
from a far on a cold night. "I do not like doctors," I
explained. "My fear of them might not quite be real, yet it
not imaginary either." I pulled my lips into my mouth and let
my tongue wet them, as if to wash away some of the anxiety I
felt.
     The cab took me back to my hotel. I locked myself in the
room, put a do not disturb sign on the door.
     I stumbled and fell on the bed, without opening my coat.
I lay on the covers and let the pain go, and let my will
rest, as I lay behind the now massive hotel room door. After
laying in the dark for a moment, my eyes rested upon the huge
walls. They were clean and white, with not a smudge. This
was a fine hotel, like the pictures of it in the magazines,
without a single speck of dust.
     Transfixed to a spot on the bed, I stood on my hind legs
and peered into the face of this giant that looked like a
monument when I awoke and shook, knowing that my sanctuary
had been invaded.
     "Christ!" the giant screamed, the covers on the bed
shook. "A cockroach in Trump's Plaza, I would not have thought
it."
     The instinct for survival is the perfect knowledge. I
was immobile not a second longer. I would ponder later,
construct reasons, discuss their motive for invading this
place. My legs did not fail me, but gave me speed to flee as
the giant swatted the blanket with his hat. I scooted along
the bedding, down the sheet and around under the bed to the
frame and a wooden slack. I hid in the darkness, listened,
and waited for them to leave.
     "Where is he?" I heard another voice near the center of
the big cavern that was now the room. The lights were on, still
I had the impression that I was listening to shadows, but I
was the one in the shadows hiding under the bed.
     "Look at that! His clothes are laid on the bed like
he's just stepped out of them. This is a set-up. He was
tipped."
     "No way, man."
     "We have a leak in the organization."
     "No way, man."
     "Let's get out of here; he's not here."
     I had to see them, to study their faces, so I could
recognize them. I worked my way around the other side of the
bed and among the debris of my papers that they had thrown
on the floor.
     "Nothing here to tell us where he is."
     As I pushed forward, the door opened and the sound that
it gave off made a loud noise which led to a burst of
explosive gunfire, that echoed off the walls as would thunder
in a canyon. I jumped involuntarily, my body tingling from
the overabundant instinct to flee. I heard rumbling behind
and in front of me, a man was losing his balance, and feet
were thundering forward. I saw a shadow in a corner where I
could hide that had a straight line of sight to the doorway.
A hotel guard was down on the floor, and two other giants
were running away, walking over his body as they fled. I
wondered, how long before six? I couldn't be found in the
room after six. I had to get to some place where I would be
safe at six, where there was clothing, so I could get
dressed.
                               END