Chapter Six

The estate entry-gates automatically glide open in elegant token of silent welcome - in Hollywood. Bob Spracken, however, was forced to descend his chariot, violate a stubborn burr-infested padlock, wrestle a heavy, heavily oxidized ferrous snake, heave back an ornate if flaking grate of gargantuan dimensions in spite of vehemently complaining hinges, walk his patient steed across the threshold, and repeat the tedious process in reverse. Why his dotty folks insisted on this ritual self-imprisonment was a problem long since dismissed from his mind as insoluble. The argument, that should persons of devious intent desire ingress to the grounds, they would have only to trip blithely around the sides of the massive gate-posts to succeed, seemed to be immaterial to Mr. and Mrs. Spracken. They held inflexible as idols of onyx. The gate was to remain locked.

Spracken's mind was presently unconcerned with all this, however. He was thinking deeper thoughts. An illuminating beam, emanant from the unlikeliest source, had suddenly vaporized forever his hobbles of delusion. The scales had deserted his eyes in an avalanche yodeling "Hallelujah!". He quivered with the throbbing hum of the living universe; brow bedewed, blood aboil, soul soaring. Hope, that of the eternally springing variety, had burst into crystallinely intelligible instruction at last, and the way was cleared. Christian, after loathsome toils, beheld Celestial City.

What greeted Bob as he rumbled around the last curve of the winding driveway was not blinding gilded spires but the comfortable decay of Butterspread. It seems, while lost to general memory now, that a Spracken - a certain Robert T. Spracken, posthumously suffixed The First - had, some four generations previous, had the luck, skill, drive, and wherewithal to capitalize on a brief but intense national frenzied craving for apple butter. Robert T. Spracken I parleyed this tide into an apple butter empire with an alacrity which stunned would-be competitors into slack-jawed submission. Spracken's Apple Butter, it was said at the time, would hold its own against Taylor in a general election, and would probably beat Fillmore. Robert T. Spracken I then, in a stroke of genius befitting a captain of industry, after diversifying his line of products to include Spracken's Peach Butter, Spracken's Plum Butter, Spracken's Pear Butter, and Spracken's Quince Butter (something of a disappointment), sold out, lock, stock, and apple barrel, for a fantastic sum rumored to be approaching a million dollars.

The fruit butter craze immediately soured. Robert T. Spracken I, presumably chuckling heartily, raised the now ancestral edifice, christened it Butterspread, and subsequently invested the rumored million in oil and rail stocks. The family has ever since been in the chips, some hundred-and-forty years.

Butterspread, while incontestably out of its glory days, was nonetheless an obvious bastion of affluence. The grounds were extensive, private, and maintained. The pile itself yearned for a little masonic repointing, wistfully contemplated a little roofly retiling, and thirsted immoderately after a tanker of paint; but was for all that not unsound, uncomfortable, or uncomely. There was a ballroom perched atop a grand sweeping staircase. There were servants' quarters on the third floor. There was a carriage house behind, a befountained boulevard before, a path-riddled copse to the left and a quaint garden with a punting-pond to the right. So what if all these things were unused for over half a century. They were there.

Not unused was Robert T. Spracken I's library. There was a fireplace there, and heavy furniture. Not surprisingly, there was also ample space for books. Mr. and Mrs. Spracken liked books, although Mrs. Spracken did tend to become bored and leave off reading them after the first few chapters. She had read the beginning of every book on the shelves. Not knowing how any of them ended did not disqualify her in her own mind from being considered an expert not only on the Spracken library but also on Literature in general. Indeed, she had seemingly absorbed enough about each title to allow her to discourse knowingly on the subject with professors and potentates. Mr. Spracken's tastes were more properly said to lay in Reading than in Literature, so he finished the books he started. Aiding him in this effort was his penchant of only starting books he was dead sure he would like. This rather narrowed his scope into exhausting the works of one proven author at a time. Then, he would rely on the expertise of his scholarly wife for referral to a likely successor.

Of late, Mr. Robert T. Spracken IV had been devouring the opera of one Robin Hoodlum, a contemporary artist possessing what Mr. Spracken considered to be God-like powers. Thralldom was where Hoodlum's words held Spracken IV. His eyes drank as though parched from Hoodlum's fount of adventure and intrigue. The man's pen seemed chained to the desk of the bank harboring the psyche of Robert T. Spracken IV, and of wherever that pen scribbled, Robert T. Spracken IV had no choice but to abide. Not that he wasn't a willing prisoner. The only shadow Mr. Spracken could foresee in his communion with Hoodlum was the depressing fact that there was not an endless supply of Willie Smith novels. Sadly, there were but seven of them. Happily, he had heard there was a new one coming out soon. Until then, he could re-read the others, which he was absorbed in doing when the back door resounded.

"Is that you, Robert?" Mrs. Spracken warbled. "You're late today."

"Yes, mother," Bob answered dutifully. "Yes, mother."

"Were you at that place all this time?"

The elder Sprackens referred to the hospital as That Place, to indicate their disapproval of young Robert's dissolution there. They maintained that a Spracken should pursue a course of enterprise, a course of daring, a course of spirit, or, as in Robert T. Sprackens numbered II, III, and IV, no course at all. This healing of the hoi polloi business, while undeniably enfranchised with a certain nobleness of purpose, seemed to them fraught with appalling uncertainties, not least of which concerned young Robert's unfortunate lack of credentials.

"What will happen," Mr. Spracken intoned, as he was invariably wont to intone following one of Bob's late-night bouts with Death, "when one of those sickies refuses to be healed, and its survivors irrationally decide you, son Robert, are the Black Angel to be stapled with the onus of the result? Exactly this. They will scream for your diploma, to no end, then chase you home and find our pleasant little hovel here; and at that point it's Good-bye Apple Butter straight down the judicial drain, abject misery for us all, and rampant anarchy. I see no alternative on the horizon. Stop it, son, and soon, I say. Stop doing good, or there'll be hell to pay.”

At which time young Robert was invariably wont to calmly respond, "Pooh pooh," or, "Pish tosh," or some such calm, nonsensical but irrefragable rejoinder. It was a dialogue become comfortable in its predictability; and that is why, this time, Mr. Spracken actually moved his head in alarm and went so far as to let the revered volume of Hoodlum slip from his grasp.

"I've quit the hospital," Bob announced calmly.

"Don't be silly, dear," his mother protested. "How can you quit a place you were never at? Officially, you know."

"About time!" his father fired out. "It's about God-damned time! That whole shtick about easing the plight of humanity always gave me the dry heaves! Damn glad you're well out of it! Now maybe you'll take up tennis, or journalism, or politics, or some other field of wasted energy where you can't get into trouble." He bent over and picked up his book, refreshed.

"I've been talking to a singularly uninnocuous man this evening," Bob explained. "He has a plan I am intensely interested in."

"That's nice, dear."

"It may entail lining up a little venture capital to properly put this plan into execution."

"Ye Gods!" Mr. Spracken's attention was wrenched from Hoodlum a second time. "This sounds suspiciously like a business proposition I hear crossing your lips. Can it be true?"

"Well, it would be a non-profit organization, ideally."

"Poison! You'll find more venture capital up a snail's ass than you'll ever find trying to start up a non-profit organization. Profit, and profit alone, will save the world, boy, if it can be saved. Forget this plan of yours, and go find your racket."

"If that's the case, dear, how do these big foundations and so on get started, at first?" Mrs. Spracken asked her hubby.

"I'll tell you how. Some barmy do-gooder with more money than is good for him - which is one lonely dollar in the limp grip of a do-gooder - gores himself and bleeds his boodle into the coffers of his charity of choice; which then makes free to go out and buy Democrats."

Mr. Spracken was obviously tempted to spit. "And before you even think of asking: No!"

"What is this plan, Robert?"

"Well, mother, it's a little rough around the edges yet, but I feel strongly that it has the potential to solve many of the social problems of the country, and, if internationalized, even the world."

"It's a sort of dating service, then?"

"Ah - no, mother, it's a support group."

"Fluff!" father roared, closing Hoodlum in surrender. "Bleeding heart bullshit! Support groups are for tippy-toed flakes!"

"Exactly," Bob agreed.

"Falsetto whiners! Welfare veggies! Wimps of the first water!"

"None other."

"Namby-pamby poltroons!"

"Precisely."

"Technicolor trash!"

"In effect, assholes."

"In effect, you're damn right, assholes!" Mr. Spracken's eyes widened, betraying a slight confusion. "Er, Robert - did you say that, or did I?"

"Assholes. Does that clear it up?"

"Not at all. Are you saying you want to start a support group for assholes?"

"It's Horace's idea, of course. He seems to insist on the tack that an organization with such a nearly universal potential membership would rake in the green hand over fist. I, on the other hand, immediately realized its potential for public service."

"You would," said Mr. Spracken. "Who's this Horace? He sounds like a thinker."

"Horace Aeiouaey. An unlanced blister, actually; but of course that only lends credibility to his inspiration here. He's a natural poster child for assholes. He holds that: approached from the position that it's all right to be one; that as one you are not alone; and that as a group you are discriminated against; the rolls of Assholes Unanimous will swell exponentially. He foresees massive government grants, private bequests, public endowments, etcetera, without end."

"Priscilla! Our long-lost son is found!" Mr. Spracken cried in rapture, jumping to his feet and excitedly pacing the floor. "Robert, where is this your brother at this very minute?"

"Robert!" Mrs. Spracken scolded her husband. "Don't scare the boy like that! And I don't care for all this talk about. . . about those persons. We hear enough about them in the news, and not only from Congress. If you'll not drop the subject, I'll go to my room!"

Sleep well, Priscilla!"

"I'm serious, Robert."

"Bully for you. Robert, here, has finally come up with something I can take an interest in, something I might be able to help him along with, something which, if nurtured gently with loving kid-gloved compassion, may even turn a buck. I want to talk it over with him. If you choose to participate in the discussion, wonderful; but if you choose to take yourself out of it voluntarily I'll thank you not to get all pissed off at me because of your own decision."

"Father, there is no need to get heated over this. If mother - "

"Christ! Robert, show me some sign of life, will you? Have you bones? Where are they? Indicate to your worried father some clue that there's sap in your limbs. You've got a stoneless peach germinating here - wake up! Aren't you invigorated? Aren't you flushed with crimson valor? Shit, man, you've got Goliath by the gonads! Squeeze! Squeeze," Mr. Spracken clenched fist and jaw, "squeeze for all you're worth, boy!"

"Come, mother," said Bob, rising. "I'll walk you to your room."

"Thank you. It's all right, Robert; you know how he gets carried away sometimes."

"Yes, mother." Mother and son exited the vault.

"`Yes, mother.' Bah!" shouted Mr. Spracken, adding in a voice breaking on the rocks of emotion, "I wish I were British! Then I could bellow `Gorblimey' at the bloody top of my bloody lungs!"

"Well," said Mrs. Spracken from the hall, not without sarcasm, "what's stopping you?"

"I don't know what it means," he mumbled to himself, inaudibly deflating.

Mr. Robert T. Spracken IV sank disconsolately into his grizzly of a chair, and thought. Son Robert, so long a bitter disappointment with his quixotic forays into medicine, seemed teetering on the brink of other, if not actually greater, things. He, Spracken IV, would settle for other although naturally preferring greater. Time, he felt, under this suddenly impending other/greater-ness, was even as he sat slipping away straight through the fingers, carrying with it precious figments all bearing that peculiar curvy rune with the two vertical lines through it. One by one, there they went; gone. It was maddening.

He went to the telephone.

Horace had read about this.

It had afflicted millions, this phenomenon, and it seemed this morning to have singled him out as a likely host. Old Sol beamed on the rise, strangers smiled spontaneously, fresh breezes coughed up fragrances befitting the Garden of Earthly Delights, birds trilled merrily on the wing, people answered their phones, etc. These were the external symptoms.

The internal symptoms were no less troubling. Horace eerily seemed to have no cares. He faced the new dawning day with the bristling bold sang froid of a mad welder casting off his cobalt goggles. "Let this minute do its damage," his fey giddiness declared, "and bring on the next!" If this was Horace, Horace mused, it was not the Horace he knew. It was a different Horace, a new Horace. A terrifying prospect, even for those of psychopathic daring, this was. He drove downtown with a cheery free abandon that shook the very roots of his being to unplumbed depths. Horace Aeiouaey was in a good mood.

He tried to rationalize. There must be reasons for this, he felt. What could they be? Well, one, the albatross eclept Willie Smith had finally been dropped overboard. Two, he was about to become rich and, what was more, fabulously wealthy. Three . . . well, he guessed two was enough. He valiantly resisted a gnawing urge to whistle. There were, or should be, after all, limits.

Everything, really, is nothing more than the establishment of limits. Once established, by whatever agent of faith, immorality or chance, there remains only to exceed them, or to accept them. To vacillate quivering eternally about the edge of the limits is not, as is so popularly rhapsodized, to flaunt them in defiance but to depend sapro-psychologically upon them as the moth doth the flame. Such wights, so far from being in the van of futurity, actually do no more than to suck it dry; to the extent that when it arrives it disappoints, not ever being in any form anticipated by the fluttering flocks.

Elastic as these diaphanous bands may be, they are not infinite. Even the most perverted philosopher cannot deny that ultimately limits themselves have limits. Strained to screaming scariousness at one outpost the line must relieve itself by loosing its grip on another less contested. Thus, innocents snugly tucked in the security of the geographic center of the thing awake dangerously near a retreating rear-line as it relaxes to accommodate the raging storm opposite. This bugs people. Minding one's own business is not enough. One must attend also to the heaving of tides, the shifting of magnetic poles, stellar tempests and the turd underfoot in order to attempt to order one's affairs; at which time one finds it not only impossible, but in a high degree of probability actually undesirable. What, after all, is the point? You just get all hunkered down in a hard-earned and well-deserved modest cozy little rut when the earthquake wrinkles by, launching you and yours, rut and all, onto the dizzying apex of a rapier-point oxygen-depleted spiring butte out of sight of the ground without so much as a "Mornin', ma'am." Means of descent consist of thread and a jeweler's hammer. This is not some benign agent of mere frustration. No. This is calculated, successfully, to bequeath to even the most dehydrated anal-retentive comatose anorexic the splattering shits.

Who, or what, then, is this mathematician? It is at the black end of such blind alleys of conjecture that one must discover Faith. A life unguided by an unseen Hand could not conceivably be so difficult. Mysteries abound. Why should tolerances be allowed to slide so intolerably? Why should such intolerance be tolerated? Why are there living people who pretend to understand these questions? The only answer, unsatisfactory as it may be to some, is in the recognition of a Divine Limit to the limiting of limits. Once we free ourselves from the limiting belief that the limit to limits is unlimited, we achieve Infinity, or something. There is at last irrefutable proof of Divinity, the existence of which whose mercy is so desperately sought, in that we are given a great gift: a Way to solve all the problems of the world.

Unfortunately, it's called Death.

One is led irresistibly to the suspicion that the problems of this world are by art magnified so as to make the problems of the next seem insignificant in comparison. This, believe it or not, tempts some to actually find out for themselves. They are quite welcome to try. It is encouraging, in a way, to speculate after the fact on the possibility of their being wrong. Rather a hoisting up of one's self-esteem, is this cheery thought. Hell, it seems, may after all be not this life, but the next. While to rush toward Hell may be foolish, there is no way in the end to rush away from Hell. Getting to Hell, you -

"Get the hell out of your car NOW!"

Horace turned his head and looked for the second time in his life down the barrel of a large hand-held firearm.

"Get the hell out!"

Horace wondered exactly how much Hell his old car was infested with, but only for a moment. Angry people were distracting his thoughts by beating on his windows. Luckily, he thought, from the outside. He appeared to be parked straddling the stripe on the highway in the middle of an overpass.

"Good morning, officer," he said cheerily as he rolled down his window, hoping his good mood was infectious. "What's going on?"

"You have five seconds to get out of your car with the hands up. One."

"You kidder! My car has no hands."

"Two."

"No, none at all."

"Three."

"Where? Really? I don't see - ah yes! The dash clock!"

”Four." The patrolman cocked.

"Kill the bastard!" someone from the other side shouted.

"Excuse me, officew," a lady elbowed her way to the edgy patrolman's side. “Viowence sowves nothing. Wet me speak with the pewpetwatow. Maybe he is iww."

The cop didn't take his eyes off Horace. "Who are you, anyway?" he asked someone. “Kill the bastard!" the unidentified voice shouted again.

"Wowita!" Horace exclaimed brightly, if not too timely, as he recognized the nurse speaking to the policeman.

"You!" Lolita yelled, adding, "Kiww the bastawd!"

Let's get this moving!" someone else shouted. "I been here for half an hour! I'm late for work."

"Yeah! Get him outa the way!" Voices were being raised all around in general support of this strategem.

The policeman reluctantly raised his pistol. "Do you understand me now?" he demanded of Horace. "If so, start your engine and pull this vehicle off the side of the roadway over there - " he pointed " - just beyond the overpass. I have your number and, and, uh, description. Wait for me there. Just get off the road. Do it!" He watched as Horace complied to the letter, then began walking back along the line of cars, exhorting the disgruntled commuters, Lolita O'Roarke among them, to move along.

Horace at first counted the cars, but soon gave that up to count the flicked birds, only to give that up, too. The patrol car finally pulled up behind and the officer, with an obviously brand new pad, and holster unsnapped, sauntered up to Horace. He bore a sort of tight smile. "This," he greeted Horace encouragingly, "will be good!"

Meanwhile, Robert T. Spracken IV glanced at his watch. Mr. Schwirltz, senior partner at Anderson Bronson Robertson Johnson Thompson Simpson Wilson, and Daughters, Attorneys-at-Law Inc., noting his anxiety, spoke up. "Would it be agreeable to perhaps begin a preliminary discussion of what it is your, er, board is attempting to establish?" Son Robert grimaced convincingly.

"Horace is Founder." He put his foot down.

"Dammit, he's late!" observed Spracken IV. "I can't see the harm in laying a little groundwork."

But Spracken V was adamantine. He underscored his refusal by doing a thing very uncharacteristic of both himself and adamant. He slouched. Seeing this, his father knew there was no hope, ticking meter or no. "We'll wait," he sighed.

At the conference table were seated managerial entrepreneurs, financial arbitrageurs, public-relations raconteurs, and other faux frenchmen. They had all been summoned from their lamps two nights ago by phone calls from Robert T. Spracken IV, whose every attention always rubbed them the right way. That green smell was a-wafting.

Finally, an hour after the meeting was scheduled to begin, the door to the conference room opened, and Horace Aeiouaey entered with all the graceful effect of one who had been pushed unexpectedly from behind.

"EEEEEk!" Linda Thompson Simpson, one of the Daughters, ejaculated.

"What is it?"

"Ye Gods!" blurted Spracken IV.

"Security?!" shouted Mr. Schwirltz.

"effective, but alienating," critiqued j f paski, lead creative consultant from the lower caseworks, ltd. advertising agency. "overt, though, cosmetologically."

"May we begin, now, at last?" sniffed Dr. Paola, C. P. A., looking Horace over, "or is he only half here?"

" - or - is - he - own - ly - half - here - " said Sam Windsor, stenographer.

Antonio Neo Neonioni, financial strategist, leaned back with latin grace and arched a haughty eyebrow, saying nothing. "Taken purely as an object," he was thinking, "the dollar bill is itself nothing if not ugly."

And Ms. Wednesday "Wendy" Miller, market analyst extraordinaire, after resuming her seat, thought, "What do you know? Something new under the sun."

"Horace!" Bob greeted him warmly, shaking his hand. "We've been waiting. We thought perhaps you'd forgotten."

"No, no, nothing of the sort," Horace replied. "I just got caught in front of traffic, that's all."

"Ah," ah'd Bob. "Let me introduce you to our brain trust here. Or rather, let me refer that pleasure to my father, as I only just met some of them myself. Horace Aeiouaey, this is my father Robert T. Spracken IV, a personage of some influence, as is indicated by the illustrious panel he has convened here today. Father?" Bob, obviously feeling he had larded the axles sufficiently, sat down.

"Ahem," Mr. Spracken began conventionally. "Er, pleased to meet you, Mr. Aeiouaey. Caught in traffic, eh? Yes, of course, of course, could happen to anyone."

" - hap - pen - to - an - y - one - " mumbled Sam.

"Quite. Well, er - may I call you Horace?"

"My name is yours to abuse," Horace equivocated graciously.

"What? Er, thank you, Horace, I guess," Mr. Spracken continued.

"Well, Horace let me begin by saying that I believe you have something in the way of an idea. By that I mean a good idea. The last good idea to roll by a Spracken made us rich for what I hope will be forever, and I think this idea rates right up there with Apple Butter."

"Apple Butter?" asked Horace weakly.

"Father, he knows nothing of our family history, as far as I know," Bob explained.

”But explain to me how this is possible!" Mr. Neonioni sycophanted con brio, glaring at Horace. "Knows nothing of Spracken? The vacuum in which he must live has seeped into his brain!"

"Horace," Mr. Spracken smiled, "meet Tony Neonioni. He has a way with capital. Under his supervision dollars breed. You must not, however, listen to anything he says which is not investment-oriented.

"To his right sits Mr. paski, who will guide our public-information efforts in cooperation with Wendy over there - "

"Wednesday Miller, of Cruncher and Miller Demographics. How do you do?" she smiled courteously at Horace, while glancing back at Mr. Spracken to determine whether her interruption had at all irritated him.

"How do I do what?" Horace smiled back.

" - anyway, they will orchestrate our introduction to the public. Beside me, here, is one of our hosts, Mr. Manny Schwirltz; to his left is the other, Miss Linda Simpson - "

"Thompson Simpson," corrected Mr. Schwirltz.

" - and last but hardly least is Raul Paola, number cruncher and expert on alternative financing."

"Dr. Paola," he stiffly introduced himself to Horace. "Please, call me Doctor." Bob's cheeks burned.

" - call - me - doc - tor - "

"Ah, yes; and last is Sam - isn't it? - our recorder for the day. Well. Horace, as I mentioned to you during my phone call, I think you have a large-scale inkling here. I hope you don't think me too presumptuous for instigating this hearing today - "

"Not at all," Horace said.

" - er, good; that is, I suspected that you may not have the contacts or the experience it takes to set up a large organization - "

"Correctly."

"What?"

"You suspected correctly."

"I . . . oh. Yes. Well, as Robert said I do have some influence, and I took it upon myself to convince these highly skilled people to aid us - er, you - in your uh, quest. Trust me, Aeiouaey; I have worked with these people before, and they are blue-chippers all. They are also busy people, and their time is valuable beyond known bounds, and they are, I infer, rather curious as to what it is that this is all about. As I myself have only heard a second-hand account of it, and that from a liberal, I think that now is the time for you to take the floor, Horace, and dazzle us."

Mr. Spracken sat down. When Horace had squirted into the room, he had suddenly engendered doubts. Spracken IV realized with a subtlety ordinarily attributed to sledgehammers and laxatives that he had depended rather blindly on Spracken V's interpretation of the situation. He had hopefully envisioned Horace as a man he could deal with, a man of the world; but what had arrived seemed to be a man of some other world. But he was willing to give Horace a chance. It was Robert whose neck was in peril.

All eyes were on Horace, even Manny Schwirltz's glass one, and Horace withered. More people were now attending to him than had ever before even been aware of his presence all at the same time, and he felt not stage fright so much as like he had suddenly crystalized into a parched walrus on a trapeze. For two days he had constructed his spiel to the suits; designed to impress, shock, repulse and above all, convince. But now that he had to swim, his water wings were flaccid. Unseen fingers cranked the cummerbund another notch while his own flippers practiced perspiring. He tried to bellow, but he couldn't even bark. The iceberg he called Assholes Unanimous was never more necessary, and now it was melting before his eyes for want of the freezing blasts of his cold arguments. He blinked his bull's eyes, and blubbered helplessly. As if by choreography, all eyes swung eagerly away from the irritating spectacle to Robert T. Spracken IV for explanation. Spracken IV's eyes swung in relay to Spracken V. Spracken V's eyes calmly returned to Horace, who seemed to be trying to choke himself somehow by wringing his hands.

"Horace," he cooed, pouring a cup half full of water from a pitcher on the table and taking it to him. "Here. Drink this. It's all right. Don't be nervous. We are all on your side here. These people are your friends. They want to help you. We want to help you. That's why we're here. Don't be afraid. We won't hurt you. It's OK. Don't - "

"Jesus Christ!" Horace was forced into voice. "If you utter one more infantile platitude," he shouted, "so help me I'll kick you in the balls! When did you become Etta Eneri anyway? Thanks loads and get out of my face." While Bob smoothed his hair back down, Horace imposed a beatific expression upon his visage, said lovingly to the startled audience, "Excuse me just one moment, would you please?" and walked out of the room, closing the door behind him.

"Robert!" thundered Spracken IV. "If this is all a joke set up between you and your pet idiot there let me assure you I don't get it!"

"Horace is not, apparently," Bob said calmly, "a people person."

Dr. Paola spoke up. "He is not apparently a person at all."

"I have some matters I must attend to," muttered Miss Thompson Simpson, rising. "Excuse me." Others at the table were gathering things together preparatory to departure when they were interrupted by a blood-curdling woman's blood-curdling scream coming from the hallway.

"Merciful heavens!" exclaimed Mr. Schwirltz, mindful of the ever-staid environment of Anderson Bronson Robertson Johnson Thompson Simpson Wilson and Daughters. "What was that?"

The door opened.

Once out in the hall, Horace had breathed easier. He felt much less bulky. But he was ashamed of himself; and that was a sensation, he believed, that the founder of Assholes Unanimous should not countenance. The Founder should provide inspiration, not irresolution. The Founder should live the role. Drawing himself up to his full lack of height, he practiced snorting, and looked about himself. Wiping his lip on his sleeve with a devil-may-care dearth of breeding, he espied a wholesale woman working the copy machine. The light bulb het up. Drawing her attention by throwing his pants at her head, he treated her to a generous lunar view, prompting the unrehearsed but nevertheless leather-lunged reaction which was audible throughout.

"Heh heh heh!" heh-ed Horace. "Oh yeah!" He stepped dramatically back into the conference room, sansculottic, jumped awkwardly but with feeling onto the table, stood, threw his arms into the air, and declared war.

"Ladies and gentlemen!" he boomed on the edge of hilarity. "Behold an Asshole!"

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