The Blindfold Test Read online

  THE BLINDFOLD TEST

  © 2009 Barry Schechter

  Melville House Publishing

  145 Plymouth Street

  Brooklyn, NY 11201

  www.mhpbooks.com

  ISBN 9781933638835

  Ebook ISBN 9781612198835

  First Melville House Printing: April 2009

  Book design: Kelly Blair

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Schechter, Barry.

  The blindfold test : a novel/Barry Schechter.

  1. Political satire. I. Title.

  PS3619.C339B65 2009

  813’.6–dc22

  2009009760

  a_prh_5.5.0_c0_r0

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Acknowledgments and Notes

  About the Author

  In memory of my parents,

  Allan Schechter, December 28, 1912–February 14, 2007

  and

  Edith Schechter, December 10, 1916–September 29, 2008

  ONE

  “Not only that,” Fran was saying. “You’re unobservant.”

  Parker closed his eyes. His left temple, an electric bass, and the pale orange spot behind his eyelids throbbed in unison. “The tablecloth is red, green, and black—a plaid gingham.”

  “You don’t know what gingham is.”

  “You have three gray hairs above your forehead,” he continued, “just to the left of the part. Your glass is two-thirds full, and you haven’t touched it for fifteen minutes. Your teeth are clenched. The cocktail napkin you’re shredding had a cartoon of two Mexicans tipping sombreros at a busty woman on a mule. I couldn’t read the caption upside down by candlelight, but it was in nine-point California type and ended with an exclamation point. The mule was beige.”

  “California type? You’re bluffing. What else?”

  “You’re wearing black wool stockings—probably stopped shaving your legs again—a blue denim skirt, a white blouse, and a defense perimeter of sweaters and vests. Oh, and new shoes, brown with low heels.”

  “Had ’em for years. I’m wearing one sweater and one vest. Have you missed anything important?”

  “Ummm. It’s 1985.”

  “You’ve observed what year it is, and it’s only October—spectacular. What are you missing?”

  Parker opened his eyes and, brushing back the tablecloth, theatrically checked his fly.

  “Cute,” she snapped, eyes narrowed, twin blips of candle flame at the centers. “Haven’t you noticed the guy in the booth behind you across the aisle? Oh God, don’t turn around.”

  “Okay, I won’t. What should we talk about now?”

  “What I hate most is you’ve just given up,” she said. “You have your book and a Ph.D. from Cornell. So why are you teaching Freshman Comp at Skokie Valley Community College?”

  “Nobody was giving me tenure, remember? You know how long it’s been since I was called back after an interview? I used to have a joke about how long it’s been. I’ve forgotten the joke. That’s how long it’s been.”

  “I can imagine what you’re like at interviews.” Slouching in her seat, she ran her thumb along an imaginary drooping mustache. “ ‘I know I won’t get the job and you’ve called me here for your own amusement, so get it over with.’ Jeff, your luck will change if you’ll give it a chance. It’s statistically inevitable.”

  “Not necessarily. It’s statistically inevitable that some people be unlucky all the time. If you flip three billion coins for eternity, seven hundred thirty-three will come up tails forever.”

  “Is that true? What’s your source?” She was staring past his shoulder.

  “I don’t know. Modern science. By any chance are you staring at a bald guy wearing mirror sunglasses, a trenchcoat with the collar turned up, and a slightly askew fake beard?”

  She leaned forward. “He was at the restaurant this evening and in the lobby of the Biograph. If you noticed, why haven’t you said anything?”

  “He probably thinks he’s on a mission, right? He thinks we’re part of it but he’s not sure. Keep staring at him and you’re going to be part of his mission. Why don’t you come home with me, Fran?”

  She was gathering up the shreds of her napkin and rolling them into a ball. Fran had long, dark hair, light green eyes and cheekbones Parker had once compared to small blunt instruments. “Considering our history, is that a good idea?”

  “Considering our history is never a good idea.”

  She propped her chin on her hand. “Tell you what, Jeffrey. Why don’t I give you a ride home, and—Goddamnit!”—her eyes had shifted to the right again—“I’ll ask him what he wants.”

  Fran had spent most of her twenty-seven years in Schuyler, Minnesota, pop. 5,000, and her notion of a homicidal maniac was still based, no doubt, on rude salesclerks and people who talked at the movies. Parker grabbed her wrist as she rose out of the booth.

  She looked imperiously at his hand on her wrist. “Jeff…”

  “All right,” he said, “charge!”

  Dropping two fives on the table, he came up behind her where she was standing over the heavily disguised man and saying, “Mission accomplished. Report back to headquarters at once.”

  “Beg pardon?” Lights from the nearby video games swarmed in his mirror lenses. “You with the convention, ma’am?”

  She said, “Haven’t I seen you someplace before—like the Biograph and the Twenty Three-Fifty Pub?”

  “I get it. Lady, you must’ve seen three guys wearin’ beards, shades, and trenchcoats. Guess you didn’t hear about the convention. It was on all the news shows, Bob Greene did a column on us. My name’s Hank Monroe, Junior.” His lips distended into what might, in a less disguised man, have been a smile.

  “I’m Jeff, this is Fran. We were just leaving, but nice meeting you.”

  “Hold it, Jeff. Fran here asked me a question. There’re about a hundred of us: We’re Vietnam vets, and we dress like this so people will know about our little hassle with the V.A. See, the Vet’s got a limit on how many facial reconstructions they’ll pay for. After that, if you can breathe through it, and swallow with it, and make noises with it, it’s a face. They ain’t payin’ to make us pretty. We call ourselves the Legion of Faceless Men, and we dress like this ’cause you wish we’d stay underground and incognito. We don’t get some action soon, the beards, the make-up, the shades—it’s all comin’ off. You better get some pretty shoes that day, Fran, ’cause you’re gonna spend a lotta time lookin’ down! Ever wonder what a Claymore mine can do t’ your face? Take my face. Please. Ain’t much of it left—most of what you see here’s made from this stuff like Silly Putty. You could poke a hole in it, I wouldn’t even feel it. Go on, Fran, give it a shot!”

  It seemed to Parker that the man was going for spectacle rather than perfect realism. But Fran looked spooked; she backed into their waitress, who just managed to steady a tray of drinks.

  “I’m sorry,” Fran pleaded to the waitress, Parker, and the heavily disguised man. “God I….” Putting an arm round her shoulders, Parker started for the door.

  “It’s okay, lady,” said Hank Monroe, Jr.

  She stiffened when a shrill male voice yelled,
“What’s the problem, buddy?” At the bar a crowd had gathered round a massive neck in a DePaul sweatshirt and a clenched little man shouting “What—what’s the problem?”

  He was steering her through the crowd near the door when somebody tapped his shoulder; the waitress handed him his jacket.

  “Oh, right, thanks!”

  “Unobservant?” Fran murmured as he guided her out the door.

  The crawl sign on Halsted Federal read 1:05…58°…ASK ABOUT TAX DEFERRED IRA. They crossed the street to Fran’s blue Omni.

  “You couldn’t be too upset if you’re still keeping score,” Parker said.

  She was looking at the dim blue neon of a darkened Chinese restaurant. “Okay Joy,” she read in a cracked voice. Through willpower or sheer decorum she could hold a tear beaded in each eye without shedding it.

  He hugged her, her hair blasting around them. “I’ve missed you.”

  “Me too.”

  “You haven’t said anything about my leather jacket.” He zipped it up, hoping the chance to make fun of him might lift her spirits. “My mom found it in her basement. Got it nineteen years ago when I was sixteen. How about it: Peter Fonda in The Wild Angels?”

  “Hmm. The Glum Angels,” she said tracing his lips with her finger. She put his collar up. “Would you mind taking the El, Jeff? I’d like to go home and scream for a while. Do you hate me?”

  “We’ll see. Why should you let that guy—do you really think we saw three of them, and they’re all bald? Faceless men’s convention, come on! The last American casualties would have been how many years ago? Silly Putty, come on.”

  “I didn’t say I believed him, I just—”

  “And he was following us.”

  She tucked her hair behind her ears. “Um…why?”

  “I don’t know, some kind of nutball performance art. I think he gets off on reactions like yours. Anyway, I doubt there’s anything wrong with his face.”

  “There’s a place for you in the Reagan administration. You could review disability benefits.”

  “What happened to you back there? You had me on the ropes in the argument. Then you face down the madman like he’s some harmless neighbor playing his music too loud. You were magnificent! And then you buckled. You know why his story blindsided you? It’s growing up in Schuyler. I’ve always thought it left you with an insufficient sense of horrible possibility.”

  She laughed. “What a nice way of saying I’m naïve.” She turned her profile to him as she sometimes did when she needed to think. Her tremendous length of straight dark hair seemed to have its own weather, roiling and rippling. He liked to watch her think. Sometimes in light like this, he’d stare into the deeps of her cheekbones and wonder what was going on in there.

  She turned back to face him. “Has it occurred to you that I might be upset because he was making it up? He picks us out at random, follows us around in disguise—just so he can tell that story? How do you know I wasn’t shaken up by that? By not believing him.” God, she was resourceful! “Doesn’t it disturb you at all that you can be a good person minding your own business and suddenly you’re picked out?”

  “I’m just trying to understand you. Clearly you weren’t afraid of him. I don’t think you’d get so upset unless you believed his story…But no need to make excuses—you’re compassionate. Now that I’m thinking about it, it’s not so implausible. He didn’t say it was Silly Putty. It’s a prosthetic substance with some surgical property that’s somehow like Silly Putty. They’re doing amazing things with artificial skin.”

  She gave him a soft punch in the arm. “Don’t patronize me. And stop using Schuyler to explain me. I haven’t lived there for five years. We had maniacs in Schuyler. The maniacs were nicer, that’s all.”

  “Tell you what. We’ll go back there, I’ll pull his beard off. If there’s nothing wrong with his face, you go home with me.”

  “That’s the least romantic proposition I’ve ever had. Look, in spite of everything it was good to see you again. If you decide you don’t hate me, call me tomorrow.” She gave him a quick kiss and ducked into her car.

  * * *

  —

  He won the argument by himself on the northbound El. He decided, first of all, that he wasn’t unobservant, or at least not insensitive. True, he’d left stores without his bags; he once put the lit end of a cigarette in his mouth; and Fran liked to recall the barbecue where he started mixing piña coladas with no lid on the blender—oblivious, she claimed, to the flies gathering on his eyebrows. But even when he’d escorted her into a lamppost, he was listening all the while to what she said.

  Fran’s encounter with their stalker had reaffirmed Parker’s belief in selective observation. He liked to remind her that a third of all homicides result from unnecessary eye contact. The statistic, which he’d made up, had occurred to him seven years ago at about 3 a.m. in the New York subway. He’d been in New York that August to accept a job at City College that was suddenly withdrawn in a flurry of apologies and budget statistics. The friends he stayed with had to work the next morning, so on his last night in town he sat alone through three sets at the Blue Note and two more drinks at a bar next door, then caught the subway at West Fourth Street. He was depressed, fairly drunk, and sweating so much that during a stop the peeling of his shirtfront from his skin was audible. He was closing his eyes when someone yelled “Commies!” Across the aisle a blotchy man in a fishing hat was jabbering to himself in the window. None of his other sounds seemed to be language, and the explosion of graffiti above his head might have served for a thought balloon. There were four other people in the car, all pointing, mouthing, giggling, screaming. The words, shipwrecked, were incantations: Jesus, cancer, twat, shit, brainwaves, butt-fuck, commies. He’d heard that thousands of psychotics lived in the subway, attracted by something more mysterious than freedom from vagrancy. He was thinking that people like these must ride the subway during the day, particles in a larger chaos, when he noticed he’d missed his changeover at 59th. On the train back, two out of five passengers were talking to themselves, and a man in a Hawaiian shirt stood glaring at him. The Broadway Local platform at 59th was patrolled by a huge bag lady in a quaking red dress. Her terrifying bass voice boomed gibberish in liturgical rhythms. When two lanky teenagers came over and told her to shut the fuck up, she inhaled, a wolf about to blow down their house. The fury she released threw them back cringing. At that moment she caught Parker looking at her: Here was the man who tore up her petitions unread; who filled her brain with fumes; who kept her ovaries in a little green jar. She was swelling up, massing above Parker’s bench; he was too exhausted for any defense but to slouch lower. Whatever insulated him against noises, smells, and indignities seemed to have peeled away and skittered off with the gum wrappers. The Number 1 train slammed in just as she puffed to full size; he ducked under her outspread arms through the doors. Since then, he still believed he’d help anyone in trouble, but in the presence of solo dialogue, spittled enthusiasm, and elbows nudging the air, he was actively unobservant. He unobserved.

  But what if he were unobservant in a less voluntary sense? Another Alfred Levitt? When Parker was a grad student at Cornell, Levitt held the McDowell Chair in Literary Criticism. He was a plump, stately man in his mid-fifties with white hair that could fill pillows. Everyone agreed he was kind and witty, and no one doubted his eminence in the field. Nonetheless he was snubbed by the faculty and held at more than a respectful distance by his students. When word got out that he felt unwelcome at Cornell, Harvard and Yale extended offers, then withdrew them. They’d just, uh, changed their minds, and they didn’t want to talk about it, okay? Everyone else in the department knew the reason, but who’d dare tell Levitt (who, unfortunately, had never married)? It had nothing to do with factions or personalities. It was just that when Levitt spoke he’d pause every three or four words—“interstices of the expressible,” “the actualized
ideal”—to gag and snort down snot. As one of his teaching assistants put it, a five-pound ball of snot circulated perpetually through his body.

  After years of layoffs, non-renewals, and rejections, Parker dreaded he was missing some snotball of his own. There had to be something about him that everyone else could see—that turned whatever he said or did ridiculous, contemptible, or ineffectual. He sometimes imagined it perched on his head: a foul-mouthed parrot or a striped propeller beanie. At any rate, he wasn’t unattractive if you counted “off-beat good looks”: tall and thin, with a long, bony face, a drooping mustache, dark irreparably messed-up hair, and a characteristic expression that Fran called sardonic bewilderment—as if, she liked to say, he’d suddenly forgotten something witty. It occurred to him with genuine horror that at this moment he was dressed like Peter Fonda in Wild Angels. He looked around, but no one on the El was staring at him: A couple were necking and a few people read the papers, but most, like Parker, studied the imaginary partition two inches in front of their faces.

  The problem didn’t seem to be his teaching; according to Fran he was simply lazy and unambitious. It was true that even the idea for his dissertation had come to him as a joke. Someone at a department party had complained that if free verse was like playing tennis without a net, contemporary poets were playing without the ball. “In that case,” Parker had observed, “good sportsmanship is everything.” Form and Responsibility had elevated good sportsmanship to an aesthetic doctrine. It argued that since the personality of the poet had replaced myth and conventional form as organizing principles, aesthetic failures could usually be traced to failures of character. He barely had time to decide whether he believed any of this when he found himself praised at twenty-five as “the vanguard of a new moral criticism” (PMLA). It was also true that most of his writing in the years since had consisted of freelance reviews for Down Beat and Film Comment; but even so, he had nearly enough literary criticism for a second manuscript.