Prose: 'Tom Foolery' Chapter 1

Introduction by the Author

THIS IS THE OPENING EPISODE OF THE PROJECTED ADVENTURES OF TOM FOOLERY, WHICH CONCERN TOM BEING HIRED BY A MAN TO DISTRACT HIS BROTHER DURING A BIG BUSINESS DEAL.




1.

I have a little writing desk set up in the sun room of my apartment. I don’t use it, but it gives the impression I have something to say at parties. The kinds of parties I get invited to are given by the kind of people whose parties I wouldn’t want to attend, unless it were to have a bit of fun at their expense. Even though I’m by far more attractive, I'm consistently neglected in favour of my brother, because I’ve often inspected his garbage and found invitations pre-dating mine by the time it took him to receive and reject his. This phenomenon exists for many reasons, but, to scratch the surface, my brother is higher up than me because he rarely accepts invitations, and is generally entertaining and well-rounded. I, on the other hand, am unfulfilled and have rounded out since my days as a swimming champion. In our youth, ah, things were different. When I was about seventeen, my father once told me he admired me. He said he admired that I maintained my social profile despite my atrocious behaviour. If he meant it, it might be the only thing anyone ever admired about me that wasn’t my body. My body used to be something to behold, particularly at swimming carnivals where all but the most modest per centage of it would be on display: rosy-nipples, taut skin, jaw-line well drawn as if by a master sculpter (who I do not believe in), just some of the highlights. Externally, I was a work of art. I had a different girl at every party, with none to tie me down. No matter how offensive I behaved, people still laughed. Then my twenties happened. My father didn’t live to see my twenties. He died of emphysema, smoked himself out of his hole. If he did, I’m sure he would have said it was my fault for losing my hair, my fault for not getting picked for those swimming teams, my fault for quitting. Quitting is something I’ve taken pride in doing far too many times. By the time my thirties rolled around, I was no longer someone receptionists were glad to see, and it bothered me into bitterness, so I took comfort in making everyone else feel worse than I did. Developed it into an art.

I never dreamed someone would pay for me doing it until one evening when I was minding my own business, abusing a society mother (who must have escaped the under-30 screening process at the club) for asking me for my brother’s autograph.

“You slug, you worm,” I was saying to her, in good humour, “if this is all you live for, shall I strap you in bed, rig you up to a drip, liquefy my old Disneyland autograph book and feed it to you, because I have it at home underneath my bed beside my Danish pornography,” then I nudged a white-capped gent beside me and uttered, sotto voce, “the Danish material is,” and mimed how delicious it was by kissing my thumb and forefinger and winking. “You know, eh? Am I right?” But the gentleman was not very supportive and shook his head vehemently, causing spittle to fly from his floppy lip. He was entertaining two girls who looked just barely too old to be let in. If they were under half his age they were twice his shoe-size. Standing together they looked like a “W,” but one of those voluptuous handwritten W’s with a middle stalk at half-mast. I continued to stare at the gentleman because I thought it bothered him, when suddenly something occurred to him. He put on his monacle and said, “would you say that again?”

“Ah, certainly.” I cleared my throat and began from the top, even though my virtue was spontaneity and I withered with repetition. “… am I right?” I finished.

“Oh I see,” the gentleman said. If he was eighty the two giant ladies must have been forty, on my earlier arithmetic, which is the best age to still be in one piece, one better than forty-one.

The gentleman utterly surprised me by quoting his profession, with no relevance to the current situation.

“Sir, I’m a sort of freelance entertainment agent, and…”

“How very nice for you. I’m a daytime bat exterminator.”

“I didn’t know there were daytime bats.”

“There aren’t many, but when there are, they’re ill-tempered. My work requires immense creativity: in passing the time, and in getting jobs, before the great daytime bat extermination of last week, it wasn’t as if we could get hired by average citizens to kill wild bats, what claim did they have over a particular bat? Then the government gave us our biggest job since we opened ten years ago and we’ve been living off it ever since last week.”

“Are you trying to be funny?”

“Lord no, actually I’m trying to be irritating – is it working?”

“Actually, its mildly entertaining.”

On all levels, an unsatisfactory response. He paused and examined every shadowy place on my face his eagle-eye could dart in a moment. “Can I buy you a drink?”

“I don’t know, can you afford it on your pension?”

He looked down at his liver-spotted hand and smiled wryly. “I am a working man. I think I mentioned it.”

“Did you? I think I’d recall such an improbable claim from such an old gent,” I said, still just about as curious as I am in antique shops, as we entrenched ourselves at the bar, laying down fortifications against the encroaching hordes of go-getters and gimme-that’ers, all clad in I’m-important city-gear, suits or dress-suits, itself protective armour against the X-factor of the city. I made no excuses to the forgettable characters I’d accidentally got bogged down with about pairing off with the old gent. I was a free agent at this party, I’d brought no wife, lover, poker buddy or lawyer with me just so I could maintain the liberty to go where I please till I was (god forbid) ready to settle down.

“You must be the oldest working man in the country,” I jibed him.

“I’ll be eighty next August.”

“You’re mad - that’s what happens if you plan your after-life poorly.”

“I work because I’m the only person in my company who knows the identity of our biggest-paying clients. The day I retire, they’ll have to look for another patron who shares my… discretion.”

I felt my face elongate like a talking television horse.

“Sir, you have intrigued me like reality television has failed to do for the past few weeks.”

“I’m flattered to hear it.”

“Don’t be.”

The bartender finally paid attention to us, at which point my new little old friend whispered something to the bartender, which caused him to nod and click his fingers (literally) which, in turn, caused a genie in a white suit to appear.

“Good evening Mr Trowell, I trust your evening has been fine.”

Trowell, eh? When I first heard it I thought of a garden implement, which made me think of a garden gnome which in turn brought a pet cemetery to mind; a strange chain of command which stuck like embalming fluid to my mental picture of this “Trowell” from that moment on.

“It has been fine, Robert,” Mr Trowell said and some money exchanged hands in a secret hand-
shake.

“Hey!” I said, darting my face down to make a fuss. “What was that?”

“It was nothing,” Trowell smirked, “lead on Robert.”

“I saw that, you gave him money,” I was carrying on, fishing for a reaction, still cock-eyed to the fact that this man might be offering me a job, which was lucky, because it transpired he was after somebody who refused to behave himself.

“I’m glad,” Trowell said, baring a gold tooth at me, which made me flinch the first time I saw it.

The fellow Trowell had given money to for no apparent reason – tipping is an uncommon practice in Sydney, Australia – led us to a velvet door deep in the bowels of the club. He knocked thrice upon its threshold and the face of yet another good-looking romeo appeared (all club-staff are chic and matchlessly cloned).

I heard “Robert” say something about a velvet room, which gained us access to some inner-sanctum. My tongue was numb from anticipation, but it wouldn’t have mattered what he had on his mind, I would have agreed to anything, no matter how repellent I usually would have found it. As it turns out, his proposition was to be the single most delicious of my career. It was my career.

The short hallway was dark but for strips of lights that appeared to have been lifted from the aisle of a very tiny aeroplane, a minor aberration in taste for an otherwise exquisitely designed club. He sat me down in the most exclusive environment in the entire club. Two martinis were waiting for us. Something told me he was trying to impress me.
So I thought of the only critical thing I had on my mind.

“Those lights on the floor out there are a bit tacky,” I said, looking into his bloodshot eyes.
He rubbed his receding scalp. He looked exhausted – I’m sure if there was any other place for him to meet potential clients and employees he would have been there.
He took his monacle off, which was a relief because it had been tickling my funny-bone ever since he put it on.

“I’m not going to ask you why you acted like a fool out there, and I’m not going to ask you whether you want to give up bat-farming.”

“Well, its bat catching, if its anything.”

“Its not important. I’m not going to ask you what you really do with your days, because I know I won’t get a straight answer out of you, but luckily I’m not interested in getting a straight answer out of you. I want to hire that quality, and the others you displayed outside, and perhaps more you’ll acquire, to loan out to private contractors who need

“Its part private detective, part reality television, but there’s no cameras rolling. You might be asked to play the stooge at a family gathering, to pretend to be somebody’s husband who wants to never have to see their relatives again. You might be hired to trip somebody up, just a quickie, or perhaps, a slow-burner, to work alongside them, gradually driving them crazy.”

“How would that work if they didn’t hire me?”

“Our organisation could take care of that.”

“How…”

“We are a small agency well supported by our wealthy clients, and we reciprocate this trust by keeping their identities secret. I’m not on the lookout for new clients, and nor will you ever find out about that part of the process, so don’t even consider trying. You will never be asked to enter a situation with the client themselves. Whatever the character, clients come to my group, which is very secretive, because we don’t ask questions. If you contravene that clause of your contract, it will be terminated. Any questions?”

“About a million…”

“Even though I just told you I’m after people who don’t ask questions?”

I still had to think for a moment. “Now I think about it, maybe I don’t have any questions.”

“Good. I don’t want you to think I don’t appreciate what you do – its what I’m hiring you for, but if you learn to focus your identity and switch between the persona required when you’re on a job, and the more reasonable gentleman who talks about that persona in the third person, then you might better preserve your sanity.”

Following the train of this logic almost made my eyes uncross: I have lived with one lazy eye and one hyperactive brain for as long as I can remember, and I’ve always found it gave me a head-start in convincing people I was unhinged. I’ve never really needed to say much to accomplish this, but I do say a lot because it brings me joy.

“How does that go hand in hand with sanity?”

“You must distinguish between your identities in an orderly way, like a scientific expert on your own identity.”

“Alright pops, I’ll see how I feel about it when the time comes.”

I got up to go but Trowell seized me by the wrist and pulled my ear down close to his.

“That time has already come and gone.”

I brought my good eye around and looked right into his: from this distance I could see the guy sitting in the next room behind him.

“And you made the wrong choice. Get in control of your personality, Bygber, before it begins to control you.”

I shook myself free of him, adjusted my black coat and uttered the obvious: “I didn’t tell you my name.”

Trowell showed me his teeth again and tapped the side of his nose conspiratorially. “Now you’re getting it,” he said.

I frowned at him, more confused than I was normally comfortable being. “Alright, Trowell, you’re the boss.”

He liked that, I could tell because it made him bare more of his teeth than I’d yet been privy to, which made me wish I still hadn’t been privy to them.And that’s the story of how I met the man of my dreams. I must admit Mr Trowell was about sixty years, a sex-change and an appointment with a dentist-to-the-stars miracle man away from my tastes. The jockey-past-his-prime thing left nothing to be desired. On a scale of stranger to open book, I would say I had a mere sketch of Mr Trowell. I knew the way he talked, the way he looked and some vague conjectures about his business, but did I know where it was located, its business hours? How about what brand of underpants he favoured, his understanding of fine wines or the great inventor Leonardo Da Vinci who managed to imagine humans flying and paint an ambiguous picture of a woman (both world firsts)?





* I have only 11,000 words so far, let me know if you think this is worth going on with.