Barkley Bohner, Celebrity Philosopher

Chapter Six

A greenish paisley tablecloth, perfect for camouflaging spills, added an air of gentrification to my wretched hideout. A plastic stained-glass fixture covered the light bulb. Heron-pattern curtains hung from my kitchen window. Fake oriental throw rugs blotted out most of the yellowed linoleum.    

Moosh ran a practiced eye over the room. "Very Art Nouveau-ish," he commented. "Looks like you're going to stick around."

"I might even stay here the rest of my life," I said with a straight face.

We were both sticking to the fiction that I was Dunstar Fobash, world's foremost authority on glaciers.

The day before, Moosh had dropped off a carton and left, hardly saying a word. Sitting on top of several stacks of books and software boxes was a plate of nutmeg-ricotta meatloaf, garlic mashed potatoes, and braised asparagus tips. The books and software had to do with quantum Bohnerology.

Today, Moosh brought around some deli sandwiches. He pulled up a chair, indicating he was sticking around.

"So – Dunstar," he said, once he had sufficiently disposed of the first half of his sandwich, "how're things going?"

Well, I was still breathing and the sandwich did hit the spot. Definitely a good sign. Moreover, a cooling rain held out hope I would get through the day without spontaneously combusting. Not only that, I was no longer smelling yellow curry. It was more like a blue curry. I was smelling blue. Infinitely more refreshing.

But there was this small but potentially catastrophic matter regarding my toast falling up. How to break the news?

"You will recall we were talking about socks disappearing in the drier," I began, as if this were a normal conversation.

"It's a well-known fact," said Moosh, also keeping this on the normal conversation level. Moreover: "And there's the strong likelihood that the missing socks turn up as cables to electronic gear we don't own."

Okay, let's keep the normal conversation going: "So, you're serious about this," I said. "That's why you brought around the books and software."

"You're damn right I'm serious," he shot back "My marriage is totally in the shit. My wife – she's always blaming me for the missing socks in the dryer. Hell, I don't even do the laundry, so how can it be me, but try telling that to her. Moosh this, Moosh that. Moosh, you fundamental disgrace to humanity and total piece of shit. Other day, she attacks me with a whole bunch of cables."

Um, okay. 

"Not any old cables either. Antique cables – cables as thick as your arm – cables with prongs like porcupine quills – millions of quills. These had to be cables to dot matrix printers, for crying out loud. And she's got three or four in each hand and she's coming at me like Bruce Lee with numchakus – all these porcupine quills, inches from my face."

Clearly, in my hideout in Ungentrified Harlem, this sort of conversation was my new normal. Moosh wasn't through:

"Try to have a meaningful dialogue. No way. I try telling her I emptied two trash bags full of cables just yesterday. These were cables with those ten-pound power bricks – cables to 300-pound laptops – cables to the very first computer at Bletchley Park. Darlene – Sweetie Pie – I yell at her in a calm voice. What would I be doing with cables used to crack the Enigma Code?"

Time for constructive engagement: "So you're thinking she'll see the light if you can give her a scientific explanation," I suggested. "A Bohnerology explanation, a quantum Bohnerology explanation."

"Exactly," Moosh said. "But you have to keep it simple. No equations. No Greek letters of the alphabet, no Feynman, no Dyson, no Mandelbrot, no use of the word empirical."