Ugh. I can see by Stag’s expression that I am not describing this too well. Of course, I won’t hold you, the reader, to his standards. You get it, don’t you? These people, or one of them, wrote down all these little manifestos and social reforms, invented a culture even, stacked all this shit in a building and waited for the plans to take action. Some of the employees liked to call it a time machine. It was no fucking time machine, let me tell you, but it had a certain je ne sais quoi. A certain genuineness to it that made me believe the bullshit. Made me think it was all really going to happen. The main thing that instilled my confidence in its verisimilitude was actually just the paycheck. Somehow these bastards managed to pay me every month, and generously, too.
And for what, huh? To stand in the empty halls and act like we had visitors. That’s right, I would stand in the Impusendeum all day, teetering from the backs of my heels to the toes, whistling and keeping a prosaically vigilant eye for anyone who stepped too close to any of the exhibits. Of course, no one did. Why? Because no one came to the Impusendeum. No one knew about it.
So why pay some sap to stand guard in the exhibits? Because the head of the whole idea was someone who believed a little too much in superstition. And why not? He was a wizard. That’s right. No, no. Not like he had a purple hat and pointy clothes with glitter all over him. He was a man completely obsessed with the occult. Whatever mythos or anti-religious spiritualism he fanaticized over was beyond me. In fact, he may have invented his own regimes or theories. That would make sense, being that he was trying to invent history. Why not go hog wild and invent a higher set of morals and physics, or spiritualism?
This brings me to a good question. What, may I ask, is the difference between spiritualism and physics? No, no. Better phrasing. What is the difference between science and faith? Can you tell me, Stag Ropehorn? Can you? Well, I know the answer. I’ll tell you in a minute. But first, let me introduce a character. Oh, goodness me. I meant to say a friend. But I’m all so rolled up in this narrative business that I said character. At any rate, he was a character. And a friend.
Thomas Biddler. Mr. Biddler. He was a fellow employee at the Impusendeum. We would roam the halls together, exchange ironic or mischievous glances to one another. That was about all. We weren’t allowed to talk because it disturbed the visitors. There were no visitors. But it disturbed the visitors. So we would just look at each other. I tell you, Mr. Thomas Biddler had the face that could tell more than any prose writer could articulate in words. He made me want to laugh every time with those looks of his. Not the usual eyebrow raise or the usual pursed lip pressed like a burst of laugh was coming. No. In a single look he could say, “Hey, man, I’m going to piss on the Stretson exhibit in five minutes.” Jocose of course. Or maybe, “Hey, dude, at around noon I was hungry so I ate a bagel.” All in one look. Can you believe that, Stag? In one look he could tell me what he had for lunch. Tried and tested, too. That very day I saw bagel crumbs in his locker as he was changing to leave the premises. That face. You heard that aphorism, or what. “A picture is worth a thousand words.” Then why can’t a face be worth just a many? Incredulous, Stag? You puny shit. There are fifty muscles in the human face. Well, there’s about. Fifty muscles! And you’re telling me you can’t express legions, torrents, hoards of words in all those wrinkles, flexes, and shifts? Fifty muscles! Do you know about permutations, Stag? Well, do you?
“Yes,” said Stag Ropehorn.
Well, good. Because you can think of those fifty muscles as a permutation, each one capable of at least two positions or functions. What does that mean? That function or position A of muscle 1 can be in combination with position A of muscle 2, 3,4, and all the rest. 50 times 49, times 48, times 47. My god, man! I should make you write the whole damn thing so it gets through that weasel skull of yours. That may very well equal more than the 250,000 words in the English language. In fact it does. By so many fold! So why are you over there snickering about his face being capable of speaking better than poets? His face was ten thousand poems, shifting from one page to the next in its voluminous bulk as muscle 32 switched to position or function B, or muscle 14 to position or function A, and so forth ad holy-shittum. Did you get that? Ad Holy-shittum.
Yeah, we didn’t talk much at all. Even in the locker. We didn’t have to, all had already been said in those unperturbed hallways and galleries of the Impusendeum. Now, I’m not claiming that I, myself, can articulate my face like the veritable Mr. Biddler. No. Some friendships are only in need of one speaker, you understand. The one friend tells, the other listens. This was our chemistry to the umpteenth degree. I listened to those faces like I’d never been audience to anything. And it fulfilled all that was necessary in the friendship. So the one day I said but six words to him in the locker, I felt like an ass. All I said was, “Do you want to have lunch?” No sooner had those words been spoken then I felt like some alter boy defecating on a crucifix. That wasn’t it, man. That wasn’t the friendship. It ended in those hallways, in those galleries. We couldn’t take that kind of pretense out to lunch. And for what? To ring it out and try to catch something new between us. No. Because that was us. Not the us that the one of us knew as the one side of us, you see. But the us conglomerate. We were only meant for each other to exchange those faces. Definitely not to go to lunch and talk about nonsense. Any other subject besides the Impusendeum would have been nonsense. And that was work. Who goes to lunch to talk about work? Businessmen, maybe. That’s why their gender is included in their title. The words are even put together, as if their penis had been fused to their briefcase. They are one entity with their job. Not Mr. Biddler and I, though. We were one entity that could exist only in the context of that job.
That’s why I was torn up when he turned in his resignation. I saw it while we were passing by the Richards-Daugherty exhibit. He said it solemnly, with a twinge of regret for not going to lunch, paradoxically with that knowledge that it was a futile idea anyway. That was the last time I saw Mr. Biddler’s face in the Impusendeum. But strangely, it wasn’t the last time I saw his face.
On a Monday morning, right when you settle down to bite the first piece of toast, your nostrils all full of egg and potato, the paper in your one uninvolved hand, what do you do when you see something like that in the obituary? What happens to your appetite when you see the name of a friend- someone close, tangible- delivered up like a cold meat at a deli in some formally written three-sentence obituary? I tell you, that kind of shock will make you skip breakfast all together. Then you find yourself walking on the lawn without any pants, gripping your stomach from some pain that will soon transform into liqui-shit. Where did that shit come from? I didn’t eat anything, god damn it. But I’m not angry at the liqui-shit. I’m angry because Mr. Biddler is dead. “Found dead of natural causes in his apartment.” How dry. I thought long about those few words used to describe the most articulate man I’d ever known. I didn’t want to have that describe his existence’s leave of my world. I wanted his face, smiling up at me with some detailed description, wry and warm like some final page in that novel of faces. So hell, I thought, I’ll crash the funeral!
I had to find out where it was, though. Luckily, Mr. Biddler had given me his aunt’s phone number one time in the Impusendeum. He’d said I should call her and buy her Honda because my car was a piece of shit. He always saw me beating the starter with a wrench every day after work so I could start the car and drive home. This, of course, spoken without words. Couldn’t disturb the visitors.
So I called his aunt. A nice lady, few words by voice, she was. Of course. It must have run in the family, that whole face speaking quality. I guess. I never did find out which face was hers at the funeral. I didn’t look too hard. I was there to see Mr. Thomas Biddler deceased, and that was all.
That face. Oh. I saw it when I paid my respects. So hard I tried to wipe the wet from my eyes, just so I could see clearly, perfectly, that face for the last time. Tragic, it was. Not in expression. In fact, not an expression. Just a limp face. A dead face. Where had those magic muscles behind the brow and at the corners of his lips gone? It was all slack and blank, a true testament that his soul had evaporated from that body forever.