Dayworld

Chapter 21

At the end of the workday, Repp taxied home. After working out on a gym set, he showered and then ate a light supper. He arrived at the Thirteen-Principles Towers Building at exactly 7:25 P.M. and was in the studio at 7:30. Here he was made comfortable by the secretary of the host of the ILL Show, Ras Irving Lenin Lundquist. During coffee, he read the strip display that described the guest list and the topics and suggested a few witty remarks he might like to make.

At 8:40, Repp left the studio. He was satisfied with his performance, though several of Lundquist's remarks had stung him. It was good publicity to be seen on the ILL Show, hosted by the self-styled Gray Monk of the Mind. Lundquist avoided the showy and flamboyant and went for the serious and the intellectual. Instead of dazzling stage scenes and a startling and flashy costume, the studio room was modeled like the host's idea of a medieval monk's cell. Clad in a gray robe, he sat on a chair behind a desk on a platform that was a foot higher than the guests' chairs. Lundquist was thus able to give the impression that he was the inquisitor-general of Spain and that his guests were on trial. During the nasty questions and comments he hurled at Repp, Repp made the studio audience laugh. He asked Lundquist when he was bringing in the rack and the iron maiden. Because the ILL Show audience was composed mostly of the better-educated or those who thought they were, Repp could be assured that it understood the references. That was one of the reasons Repp had exposed himself to the barbs and insults. Another was that he hoped to give as good as or better than he got. Also, it was well known that Lundquist, no matter how he seemed to despise his guests, invited only those he thought had somehow managed to get at least in the neighborhood of his intellectual eminence.

Lundquist attacked Repp on the premise that his character was insecure and shaky.

"You seem to be hung up on role-changing and shapeshifting, Ras Repp. I need enumerate only a few of your movies, which reflect this obsession, this compulsion, which, in turn, reflects the basic core of your being. Or perhaps I should say, reflects the lack of stable identity. There are, for instance, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Odyssey, Proteus at Miami, Helen of Troy, and Custer and Crazy Horse: Two Parallels That Met.

"All these have to do with disguises, hallucinations, or illusions about identity, or changing of shapes and, hence, change of identity or a seeming change. Curiously enough, you are best known as the man who writes the best Westerns. In fact, as the man who resurrected the Western drama, which had been dead for a thousand years. Some say, better dead.

"Yet those works which have attracted the attention and even the blessing of some art critics have not been Westerns. Except, of course, for your Custer and Crazy Horse. And that is a most curious Western. Custer and Crazy Horse both get the idea that they'll go to a medicine man, get shape-changing powers from the medicine man, adopt each other's shapes, and lead their enemies to their deaths. Of course, neither knows that the other is doing this. Thus, Custer-as-Crazy Horse kills Crazy Horse-as-Custer, and then, unable to change his shape, is killed by whites."

Lundquist smiled his infamous smile, which had been likened to, among other things, a vagina with teeth.

"I have it from a reliable source that your current work-inprogress, Dillinger Didn't Die, is based on a remarkably similar idea. In fact, your protagonist, the ancient bank robber, escapes from the FBI, the organics of the twentieth century, by magically turning into a woman. He does this by getting his moll, I mean, his woman lover, Billie Frechette, an Indian of the Wisconsin Menominee tribe, to take him to the tabu abode of Wabosso, the Great White Hare, the Menominee Trickster. This creature of ancient Indian legend and folk tale gives Dillinger the power to turn into a woman at an appropriate time.

"And so, when the FBI starts closing in, Dillinger gets Jimmy Lawrence, a petty crook whose days are numbered because of his heart trouble, to pose as him. Then Dillinger becomes A

Lundquist sneered, and the studio audience laughed loudly.

"In other words, your protagonist takes the identity of a woman, becomes a woman. I understand that you are pla

Lundquist sneered again, and the audience laughed even more loudly.

" ... in which Dillinger has great difficulty with the social, economic, and emotional identity of a woman. Eventually, he adapts, and he even comes to like being a woman. He, she, rather, marries, has children, and then goes back to a life of crime as a female whose gang is composed of her sons and their gunmolls. She has quite a colorful, if violent, career under the name of Ma Barker but is finally killed, her guns blazing in a final but futile gesture of defiance, by the organics.

"However, my data banker tells me that A

"Still, these two lived so long ago that historical anachronism is of little importance. In which case, why didn't you drag Robin Hood in? Though I suppose that he would have turned out to be Maid Marian!"

The audience hooted and roared.

"Do not all these repetitions ofa theme, your inability to use a different idea, your constant hammering at the problem of identity, betray your insecurity and doubts about your own identity? Doesn't that undoubted mental instability require examination by the government psychicists?"

The audience was in an uproar. Repp was taken aback by this unexpected disclosure about his drama. While he should have been thinking about his reply, he was wondering which of his colleagues had leaked the information about the movie.

As the cries and boos trailed away, he decided that he would have to start his own inquisition next Friday. After work hours, of course. Meanwhile, he had better take care of Lundquist.

He rose from the chair, stuck his thumbs in his big belt, and swaggered across the platform to the "pulpit." Standing, he was able to stare down at Lundquist despite the host's elevated chair. Lundquist was still smiling, but he blinked furiously. He did not like having to look up at his guest.

"Pilgrim, those are hard words, and I'm glad you smiled when you said them. Now, if these were the old days, I'd punch you in the nose."

Lundquist and the audience gasped.

"But these are nonviolent and civilized times. I've contracted not to sue you for anything you say about me. And you can't sue me, either. It's a no-holds-barred, kick-in-the-nuts-or-what-have-you, gouge-eyes-out, half-alligator, half-bear-wrestling-and-ear-chewing show. Verbally, that is.

"So, I say you're a liar and a word-twister and a fact-bender. Out of sixty movies I've made, only nine have been about shape-changing and role-exchanging. Any fool can see that I'm not hung up or obsessed with the problem of identity. Any fool but you, I reckon. As for your careless and malicious remark about my mental instability, if I did have a screw loose, I would've popped you one. See how calm I am? See this hand? Is it shaking? It's not, but if it did, who'd blame me?