Actually, Norman Kevic lived a borderline life and he knew it. He was lying here on the couch in his office because he didn’t want to go home, and the exhaustion simply gave him a good excuse. His house was too big and too empty. Because he was who and what he was, he got a lot of sex. It had been years since he had a real relationship, with a woman who would talk to him and be there when he wanted company but didn’t want a party. Nice women never liked him for long, and he didn’t blame them any more than he blamed his maids. His mouth started running and he just couldn’t make it stop. His nerves got to tingling and his body revved up and his mind shifted into high gear and it was all over, nobody could talk to him, nobody to slow him down, he was out and about and on another rampage.
Right now, he was in the middle of another collapse. As soon as the show was over, he had come in here and laid himself out. He wouldn’t be able to get up again for hours unless he made an effort at it, which he did not intend to do. He let his hand drop to the carpet and felt around on the floor for his buzzer. It was the kind of buzzer patients are given in hospitals so they can call a nurse. Norm pressed down on it three or four times and then let it drop.
In no time at all, there were footsteps in the hallway outside, sharp little cracks that spoke of stiletto heels on engineered parquet. Norm considered opening his fly and decided against it. Stiletto heels meant Julia Stern, and Julia Stern had no use for him at all. For a while, Norm had taken to insisting on having his buzzer answered only by the women he wanted it answered by, but it hadn’t worked out in the long run. The women he wanted hadn’t wanted him and had had a tendency to quit when they were forced to deal with him on a regular basis. There were other things he wanted from his partners and the general manager that trading this sort of favor for was an easy way to get Julia Stern didn’t like him, but she was efficient, and he could use a little efficiency for a time.
The stiletto heels stopped just outside the door. The doorknob turned and the door opened. Julia Stern was a woman in her twenties with too much hair piled too high on her head and too much flab around the middle. Norm wondered what it was like, being a woman this homely and knowing that you were homely. He wondered that about a lot of women, and then sat back in astonishment as they each and every one of them got married and settled down to have a passel of kids. They always married just the sort of men Norm thought would be more interested in someone who looked like Melanie Griffith.
Julia Stern was wearing a short black leather skirt cut halfway up her thigh and a long cotton sweater that reached nearly to the skirt’s hem. Norm wondered why it was that heavy young women were always so eager to show off their legs. Julia Stern was chewing gum.
“You buzzed,” she said. “I presume that means you want something.”
“Breakfast,” Norm said solemnly.
“What kind of breakfast? Ham and eggs? Pancakes and syrup? Didn’t you have breakfast before?”
Norm couldn’t remember if he’d had breakfast before or not. The idea of ham and eggs made him ill. The idea of pancakes and syrup made him feel he was suffocating in maple.
“I want three large glasses of orange juice and a pot of coffee,” he said. “I think I’ve got the orange juice in the refrigerator downstairs. I’m dehydrated.”
“Right,” Julia Stern said.
“Go get him something to eat,” the voice of Steve Harald said, booming into the room from the hall. “I’ve got to talk to him and I want him sober.”
Julia Stern made a face and turned away, muttering something under her breath that was probably subversive. Norm paid no attention. If he paid attention to every subversive thing every member of his staff ever said, he wouldn’t have any staff. Once the doorway was clear, it was filled with the form of Steve Harald, who was tall and thin and fashionable and the station manager. Norm was almost as curious about him as he was about homely women. When Norm was in high school, it was always people like Steve Harald who were the most important ones, the ones who got elected to things, the ones whose yearbook prophecies were solemn predictions of future success instead of jokey references to adolescent embarrassments. Norm’s yearbook prophecy had read “Most likely to be eating a Hostess Twinkie when the world ends.”
And yet here they were.
Steve was the station manager, with a salary but no stake in the enterprise, with three thousand square feet in Paoli and his kids in public schools.
Norm was the star with a piece of the action.
Was any of this supposed to make any sense?
Steve leaned against the doorjamb and said, “Fifteen Japanese jokes an hour. I counted them.”