Negotiations Mini-Review

Power, survival, seduction, treachery and madness all articles to be negotiated at the ‘Institution,’ an edifice in which Henry, Michael, Jim, Brenda, Martin Kranster and many others spend their days bedeviled by illusory plots. Henry is about to become father to an ‘unknown’ child and a collective bargaining agreement whose substance has become part of the endless thoughts in his restless mind.

‘NEGOTIATIONS’

In a field that was once a pasture, once a forest, once a meadow, an Institution had been formed. Years before, people had constructed it by machine and by hand from glass, brick, rock, wood and steel. Other people occupied it and over the years were replaced by other people who occupied it. It grew somewhat in time, flinging new proportions of itself off into first this and then that direction. Outside, and above, from the perspective of airplane passengers it looked like clumps and groups of different sized and shaped buildings linked by macadam walkways. The surrounding land was still pleasantly shaped field running off into short thickets of wild forest that found refuge along the approaches of a highway. Inside it was more difficult to see what was transpiring. People alone or speaking to one another were often in the middle of very delicate, and not very well understood negotiations.

***

Henry at home.

It was one of those dead weekends in winter. Like an animal he seemed to be hibernating. Pausing only to eat or stare out of the window, his thoughts and near fantasies kept returning him to slumber. Saturday blended into Sunday. There was dark several times. Friday night, Saturday night, and Sunday night though they blurred together obscuring the daylight interruptions. He slept on and off.

Snow fell intermittently all weekend. It never accumulated much on the ground, though. Every so often the gray, overhung skies would become obscured, and scratchy, grainy dits and dots would begin above his eyes and filter toward the ground. When he closed his lids to doze the snow kept falling briefly in his vision.

"The problem with this society is we are no longer interested in achievement or expansion," Hogarth was saying rhythmically rotating his forefinger at Henry's chest.

Henry nodded his head, agreeing and disagreeing, disputing and accepting, his mind lost in a swirl of pros and cons unrelated to Hogarth's.

Hogarth continued talking, spilling out words and truths and fictions all carefully punctuated with deep-felt conviction. Hogarth was obviously reciting a lecture he had prepared and revised over the years and practiced to himself in odd moments like a mad, self-made prophet.

Henry was not interested. He was rooted to the spot, his head nodding, his smile frozen and something inside screaming with impatience to leave. He waited for a break in Hogath's appeal. "...Loss of will, we're finished, we won't create any more, it's all falling apart around us..."

"Well, don't be so pessimistic, it's always been this way. I've got to go, I'm supposed to pick Ellen up at the doctors."

"It's all down hill from here on out…" Hogarth continued, his small, dark eyes resigned though bitter.

Henry dismissed his own smile and stepped backwards with determination. "Got to move along. Got to get Ellen," Henry repeated into the sifting winds that swept grit and sand off the winter highways into their faces.

"So, prepare for the end, we'll be there soon. No surplus, no affluence, no social mobility, no nothing ... The end to the concept of a free society..."

"See you around," Henry replied, backing into the open, away from Hogarth's possession.

***

Ellen was in the kitchen fixing dinner while Henry read the paper on one of the living room couches. Things did not go smoothly for Ellen in the kitchen and soon she began to fight against pots and pans and the harder she fought the less smoothly dinner progressed. She began cursing with bitter vehemence and knocked the remaining pots around to a crescendo of reverberating noise.

Henry did nothing except smirk with the knowledge that regardless of what he did, he was next.

"I'm not cooking! You cook!" She yelled at him from the kitchen. Henry who didn't cook, couldn't cook and wouldn't cook shrugged. "O.K. We'll go out and get something."

"No we won't," she screamed.

"Why not?"

"We can't afford it, that's why not," she declared.

"Then make supper."

"You make it! I'm fed up."

Henry took a gamble. He left the couch and entered the Kitchen. No sooner then he touched a single pot with the intention of moving it somewhere, then Ellen seized the pot from him and pushed him aside.

"I'll do it! You don't know what you're doing out here."

He smiled weekly in triumph and began to retreat once again to the couch, but he paused. "What's bothering you Ellen?"

"NOTHING!" She shrieked, batting loose hairs away from her face.

Henry retreated.

They ate dinner in relative silence. Ellen apologized for being upset in the kitchen explaining that she was tired.

After dinner they sat down to watch television. Henry watched television through his newspaper, Ellen through her knitting.

"You’re ignoring me," she said

"Would you like to make love?"

"No."

"I'm watching television."

"You always ignore, these days," she said.

"I'm sorry." The newspaper in his arms collapsed into a pile and he starred at her. "Hello, I'm not ignoring you."

"Big deal," Ellen continued to knit.

Henry got down off the couch and crawled on his hands and knees across the floor to put his face puppy-like into her lap and peer up through her knitting. "I'm not ignoring you."

She tried not to smile and continued to knit. He stuck out his tongue and began to pant. "You're ignoring me," he said.

"I know. I'm trying hard to," she laughed.

He sat down next to her. "What do you want to talk about? What should I bore you with? Should I complain about the economy?"

"God no, I couldn't take that, anymore."

"Politics?"

"NO."

"I saw Hogarth today," Henry said.

"Whoopee."

They sat quietly for a moment.

"My cousin's baby has a strange rash..." Ellen began.

"Big deal" Henry returned to his couch and collapsed onto it.

I haven't had a satisfying conversation or discussion in weeks, he thought and soon dozed off into a nap, listening to Ellen's laugh in synchronization with television mumble.

***

Rammer, wearing his beige, brown-striped, cowboy shirt, sat at the bar with Johnson. Johnson had surrendered. His eyes bulged incoherently out of his face made silly by drink. His thin arms waggled around in the air balancing himself on on his stool as he laughed with conviction at everything.

Rammer, sweat dripping out of his short, Prussian haircut laughed also, curving his nose into a Semitic scimitar, a genetic gift from long ago Plains Indians.

The bar was active. There was a brawl of happy, laughing honkey tonkers swilling mostly beer but drinking with loud gusto.

Two woman walked past Rammer, catching his eye. "Hello Ladies," he boomed, disentangling his cowboy boots from the bar stool to stand up and present a gallant salute with his beer mug.

The first woman was a dyed, honey-blond with meat on her bones. She had a large posterior and the flesh visible behind her knees was beginning to get too fat. Her smile stretched back a long way, "Hello ... " she cooed above the din.

The girl behind her had long, dangly, dark hair and was thin with a hint of rounded shoulders. Her dress was old and too short. Toward the back of an armpit the frayed lace of her full slip showed. Her eyes were bright blue though she hid them from contact. She nervously combed her hair out of the center of her face with long, angular fingers.

Johnson had swiveled around on his stool and was gazing stupidly at the thin, younger female near him, as she shifted from foot to foot. Her flats were also old and well worn.

Rammer and the older, larger woman were making small talk already. The woman made a joke and pushed Rammer's chest as they laughed.

Johnson leaned his face toward the thin girl. His mind struggled between 'Howdy' and 'How do you do'. He said "Hiya do."

She flicked her eyes up past him and dropped her gaze for a second while deciding what to do. Then her eyes quickly surveyed Johnson and she pierced his eyes with hers, shifted her chewing gum and said from the side of her mouth, "Hy." (Hoi) Then she laughed a little and lowered her eyes downward as her hand rose to cover her teeth, slightly crooked.

It took several minutes but Rammer and the older woman, Adele, negotiated to leave the bar together in Rammer's station wagon to Adele's house. Johnson and the thin girl, Karen, were basically left out of the joking, flirting negotiation process.

Getting Johnson outside to the car was a problem. Either he was that drunk or having a good time faking it, but Adele and Rammer had to carry, drag and prod him through the cool dark air in the gravely parking lot.

"Hey, Ram, I'm floaten," he said, scuffling his boots through the dirt.

They lowered the tail gate of Rammer's car and laid him in the back pushing his legs up. Before closing the tail gate Karen hoped into the back of the wagon nimbly, almost gazelle-like.

Rammer at the wheel, goosed gasoline into the huge engine and entwined an arm around Adele squeezing a mouthy kiss from her, absorbing much red lipstick. Then he clicked the car into reverse.

Karen tried Johnson out immediately. A few seconds of kissing, cooing and rubbing didn't do anything, so she stopped and sat back a moment looking at him. Johnson lay still, his eyes starring up at the car's low ceiling.

"Just how drunk are you?" She asked.

"I don't know," he said, smiling meekly with his boyish grin.

She reached over expertly, like a nurse, undid his pants and yanked his shorts down. She grabbed his penis and began to manipulate it.

"Hold it," Johnson said defensively, startled by her directness.

She stopped. "You want it or not?" She asked.

His hands thrown out to ward her off relaxed falling to his body and she went to work again. She could only produce a half an erection by masturbation and she quietly, catlike knelt down to him whispering, "Don't do it in my mouth."

In seconds Johnson was ready and, she parted her clothing and climbed aboard gliding his erection into a soft, moist hot spot in the center of her person. It took a minute to approach climax and she gritted her teeth impervious to Rammer or Adele or headlights of cars or anything. She pounded downwards in short hard movements her eyes shut and her throat taunt as if she was in solemn prayer.

Johnson seeing her in such concentrated personal ecstasy by unpredictable splashes of headlight became quickly amused, and the fact that this reaction was somehow only dimly related to him caused him to laugh. Her breath quickened and caught in her throat as she trembled to a finish and dismounted just before Johnson lost most of his erection. Seeing his manhood shrivel into an odd position as it were making a funny face at him made Johnson laugh harder.

***

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