more hollowness to the already bloated convention-hall vagueness of the music.
Then, almost two weeks to the day since he first began his campaign to get a rise out of the Credenzas—the record on the turntable was “Asleep in the Deep,” sung by the South Philadelphia A.C. Girls’ Aquacade Chorus and recorded at poolside—he purposely brushed his elbow against the switch on his table mike, and beginning not only in mid-sentence but in mid-syllable so that it seemed accidental, he said in perfectly controlled, conversational speech, as if to a guest with him in the studio, “ … rstand that Charley’s wife, Grace, and Poke Credenza have been seeing a lot of each other lately. More than it’s usual for a brother- and sister-in-law to see each other. More than it’s even legal, if you know what I mean. Well, what the hell, Charley Credenza’s been down at Lincoln with the legislature two months now. Grace told him she couldn’t be away from the house that long. Couldn’t or wouldn’t. Anyway, she’s an attractive, healthy woman, even if she is too heavy. Poke likes them big, I guess, though why he didn’t marry a large woman in the first place instead of that furled umbrella of a Lucy, I can’t say—unless of course the talk is true that he had to. Come to think of it, it might be true at that. That woman has hot pants. Did you see the way she was riding Louis III’s right leg at the Fourth of July dance, and how she put her hand on his ass? I thought there’d be trouble, but old Poke was making out too good with Grace even to notice. Wait a minute, I’ve got to take this record off … ” Then, as if he hadn’t noticed that the switch was already on, he turned it off and, extending the myth of the accident, spoke into the dead microphone: “That was ‘Asleep in the Deep.’ We hear now ‘Come Josephine in My Flying Machine’ in the new instrumental version recorded by the Association of Missouri Underwriters.”
He faced the engineer and winked, but couldn’t get the man’s attention.
He went back to the transmitter shack convinced that at last he’d torn it, and when he got there things did seem different.
For one thing the beds were empty. Carpenter, the off-duty engineer, in whose car they had returned to the shack without speaking, hung around only long enough to pick up Mullins, the off-duty transmitter man; then they had gone off to town together. Murtaugh, the other transmitter man, was not by his equipment but had gone out behind the shack to check a guy wire on the tall main transmitter. Alone, the cramped, submariney quarters seemed almost spacious to him. He lay down on his bunk and it occurred to him that except for those few minutes in the outhouse when spurning the new flush toilet he had vainly sought Credenza brotherhood by emerging himself in what he took to be the Credenza smell, despite his knowledge to the contrary—he knew they were only the anonymous and corrupt smells of former staff, an indiscriminate odor that was no longer shit but shit’s shit, chemically changed, fermented to something beyond the strongest wine in the world but vineyardy still, acrid and eye-searing, smelling not of the cozy, snuggish intestines at all but of fire, or of sun gas perhaps, if you could get close enough—this was the first time in the months since he had come to work for them that he was by himself, without an engineer, without a bunkmate, without anyone.
Then he heard the radio.
“I knew it was no accident I was alone, that the Credenzas had anticipated me, that plans had been laid in advance, that Carpenter and Mullins now worked as a team, that the Credenzas picked up their check and they rode to town on Credenza gasoline to toast my disaster in Credenza beers. Still in my bunk I looked out the single window at Murtaugh, the transmitter man, squatting on his heels by the base of the antenna fooling with a wire and I thought: you lazy bastard, is that what Credenza (they had
Then, almost two weeks to the day since he first began his campaign to get a rise out of the Credenzas—the record on the turntable was “Asleep in the Deep,” sung by the South Philadelphia A.C. Girls’ Aquacade Chorus and recorded at poolside—he purposely brushed his elbow against the switch on his table mike, and beginning not only in mid-sentence but in mid-syllable so that it seemed accidental, he said in perfectly controlled, conversational speech, as if to a guest with him in the studio, “ … rstand that Charley’s wife, Grace, and Poke Credenza have been seeing a lot of each other lately. More than it’s usual for a brother- and sister-in-law to see each other. More than it’s even legal, if you know what I mean. Well, what the hell, Charley Credenza’s been down at Lincoln with the legislature two months now. Grace told him she couldn’t be away from the house that long. Couldn’t or wouldn’t. Anyway, she’s an attractive, healthy woman, even if she is too heavy. Poke likes them big, I guess, though why he didn’t marry a large woman in the first place instead of that furled umbrella of a Lucy, I can’t say—unless of course the talk is true that he had to. Come to think of it, it might be true at that. That woman has hot pants. Did you see the way she was riding Louis III’s right leg at the Fourth of July dance, and how she put her hand on his ass? I thought there’d be trouble, but old Poke was making out too good with Grace even to notice. Wait a minute, I’ve got to take this record off … ” Then, as if he hadn’t noticed that the switch was already on, he turned it off and, extending the myth of the accident, spoke into the dead microphone: “That was ‘Asleep in the Deep.’ We hear now ‘Come Josephine in My Flying Machine’ in the new instrumental version recorded by the Association of Missouri Underwriters.”
He faced the engineer and winked, but couldn’t get the man’s attention.
He went back to the transmitter shack convinced that at last he’d torn it, and when he got there things did seem different.
For one thing the beds were empty. Carpenter, the off-duty engineer, in whose car they had returned to the shack without speaking, hung around only long enough to pick up Mullins, the off-duty transmitter man; then they had gone off to town together. Murtaugh, the other transmitter man, was not by his equipment but had gone out behind the shack to check a guy wire on the tall main transmitter. Alone, the cramped, submariney quarters seemed almost spacious to him. He lay down on his bunk and it occurred to him that except for those few minutes in the outhouse when spurning the new flush toilet he had vainly sought Credenza brotherhood by emerging himself in what he took to be the Credenza smell, despite his knowledge to the contrary—he knew they were only the anonymous and corrupt smells of former staff, an indiscriminate odor that was no longer shit but shit’s shit, chemically changed, fermented to something beyond the strongest wine in the world but vineyardy still, acrid and eye-searing, smelling not of the cozy, snuggish intestines at all but of fire, or of sun gas perhaps, if you could get close enough—this was the first time in the months since he had come to work for them that he was by himself, without an engineer, without a bunkmate, without anyone.
Then he heard the radio.
“I knew it was no accident I was alone, that the Credenzas had anticipated me, that plans had been laid in advance, that Carpenter and Mullins now worked as a team, that the Credenzas picked up their check and they rode to town on Credenza gasoline to toast my disaster in Credenza beers. Still in my bunk I looked out the single window at Murtaugh, the transmitter man, squatting on his heels by the base of the antenna fooling with a wire and I thought: you lazy bastard, is that what Credenza (they had
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