Year of the Rhinoceros

Chapter 21: The Powers of Rodin — Pecking Order — Year of The Rhinoceros — The Glue of Common Loathing — Something As Basic As Heat

244 ~ Year of the Rhinoceros Chapter 21 The Powers of Rodin — Pecking Order — Year of The Rhinoceros — The Glue of Common Loathing — Something As Basic As Heat AT THE CLOSE OF EVENING, PATHOS from the day’s industry at OWC, having pinched Manny’s nervous system like a trauma, shoved him before a bathroom mirror and forced him to go face-to-face with himself. The confrontation continued for several minutes until he grudgingly accepted a role as superhero in his own psychocinema production. The current shooting location: Hunsecker’s office. The most recent take portrayed Captain Garden-of-Eden defending the fair Tammy Pon while salvaging what little of his honor remained by making use of both fury and physics to suspend the Triumphant Beast in mid-air above his own desk, prepped like a funeral slab to receive him. The death blow fallen, the camera eye zoomed onto the godhead of darkness looking like a bloody melon on the vine. Another close-up revealing the final breath and slump to lifelessness. In the second act of the film, Captain Garden-of-Eden suspended his Hamlet-like rage in order to search America for his rock-singer love, she having vanished on a leave of extended illness following that disheartening manifestation of the surreal Luna. It was vital upon finding his heroine that he restore her confidence, rejuvenate her by any means necessary, for she was braver and stronger than he, and he knew America’s faithful would perish without her. Meanwhile, as the self-absorbed Tammy wandered the Washington burbs, aloof and unavailable for conflict, wounds and outrage deluged the mail room of OWC. The despised whistleblowers were left hanging by their thumbs, their fingers plugging a thousand dykes from St. Croix to Anchorage, their conscience tested in a war of nips and bites spread thin by time, apathy, and a Gulag psychology. They resisted M. B. Neff ~ 245 the corporate mob of Washington Inc., fought their snarling bosses in the halls and on the elevators, living each day in a conspiracy of fear. They cured their ignorance with the burden of knowledge, and as one, said to themselves: We are the conscience of a smug and stupid people. * * * FULLY AWARE OF THE URGENCY, and the time bombs set and ticking, Manny wastes no time finagling Laney’s address from a suspicious Deejah. At 8:30 A.M. the next morning he borrows E-Man’s old ’77 Datsun and drives out to Laney’s place in Falls Church, VA. The day is blue and mild. He pulls up to the curb, feeling calmed by the appearance of her home: a vintage, sun-yellow Cape Cod with maroon shutters, a row of azalea bushes flush against the house, and an open-air porch with two pine rocking chairs. The car parked in her driveway (and Manny gasps when he sees it) is a fire-engine red, ‘65 MGB roadster—and in mint condition. Manny gets out and walks up the drive. He places his hand on the hood of the MGB. It is cold. He rings both the front and kitchen doorbells, even fogs a few windows. No Laney appears. He finally gives up and inserts a note in the front screen door that he will return later that evening. At 4:45 PM, he arrives once again in E-Man’s car, slowing to a prowl. Her MGB has vanished and his note on the front door has been replaced by a bright yellow slip of paper. The new note, scrawled in Laney’s shaky hand and nearly indecipherable, instructs him to meet her at noon the following day in the park across from the Corcoran Museum on 17th Street. She will be the one “disguised as a tree.” Near the appointed time, Manny Eden halts a block down Vermont Avenue and pretends to linger. He wants to make sure no one 246 ~ Year of the Rhinoceros is following him. He eases like a gawking tourist through Lafayette Park, walks in two circles, and seeks Rochambeau’s horizon, south to the Corcoran. Minutes later, he finds her. She is sang-froid and cross-legged beneath a 19th century poplar tree, staring up to the sky through black sunglasses, the poplar limbs playing over her face like a dozen dark fingers. Despite this distraction—and her looking like lumberjack tomboy in red plaid shirt and blue...