The Broom of the System by David Foster Wallace
There were two reliable ways to identify the Bombardini Building, which was where the firm of Frequent and Vigorous made its home. A look from the south at Erieview Tower, high and rectangular not far from the Terminal section of Cleveland’s downtown, reveals that the sun, always at either a right or a left tangent to the placement of the Tower, casts a huge, dark shadow of the Building over the surrounding area—a deep, severely angled shadow that joins the bottom of the Tower in black union but then bends precipitously off to the side, as if the Erieview Plaza section of Cleveland were a still pool of water, into which the Tower had been dipped, the shadow its refracted submergence. In the morning, when the shadow casts from east to west, the Bombardini Building stands sliced by light, white and black, on the Tower’s northern side. As ‘the day swells and the shadow compacts and moves ponderously in and east, and as clouds begin to complicate the shapes of darknesses, the Bombardini Building is slowly eaten by black, the steady suck of the dark broken only by epileptic flashes of light caused by clouds with pollutant bases bending rays of sun as the Bombardini Building flirts ever more seriously with the border of the shadow. By mid-afternoon the Bombardini Building is in complete darkness, the windows glow yellow, cars go by with headlights. The Bombardini Building, then, is easy to find, occurring nowhere other than on the perimeter of the sweeping scythe of the Midwest’s very most spectacular shadow.
The other aforementioned identifying feature was the white skeleton of General Moses Cleaveland, which found itself in shallow repose in the cement of the sidewalk in front of the Bombardini Building, its outline clearly visible, of no little interest to passing pedestrians and the occasional foraging dog, the latter’s advances discouraged by a thin bit of electrified grillwork, the General’s rest thus largely untroubled save by the pole of a sign which jutted disrespectfully out of Cleaveland’s left eye socket, the sign itself referring to a hugely outlined parking space in front of the Building and reading: THIS SPACE RESERVED FOR NORMAN BOMBARDINI, WITH WHOM YOU DO NOT WANT TO MESS.
Frequent and Vigorous Publishing shared the Bombardini Building with the administrative facilities of the Bombardini Company, a firm involved in some vague genetic engineering enterprises about which Lenore in all honesty cared to know as little as possible. The Bombardini Company occupied most of the lower three floors and a single vertical line of offices up the six-story height of the Bombardini Building’s east side. Frequent and Vigorous took a vertical line of narrow space on the western side of the Building for three floors, then swelled out to take almost all the top three. The Frequent and Vigorous telephone switchboard, where Lenore worked, was in the western corner of the cavernous Bombardini Building lobby, across the huge back wall of which, cast through the giant windows in the front wall of the lobby, the Erieview shadow steadily and even measurably moved, eating the wall. Time could with reasonable accuracy be measured by the position of the shadow against the back wall, except when the black-and-white window-light flickered like a silent movie during the fickle shadow-period of mid-day.
Which it now was. Lenore was hideously late. She hadn’t been able to get through to Candy Mandible on the phone, either. The Shaker Heights Home’s phones were apparently on the fritz: F and V’s number had put Lenore in touch with Cleveland Towing.
“Frequent and Vigorous,” Candy Mandible was saying into the switchboard console phone. “Frequent and Vigorous,” she said. “No this is not Enrique’s House of Cheese. Shall I give you that number, even though it might not work? You’re welcome.”
“Candy God I’m so sorry, it was unavoidable, I couldn’t get through.” Lenore came back behind the counter and into the switchboard cubicle. The window high overhead flashed a cathedral spear of sun, then was dark.
“Lenore, you’re like three hours late. That’s just a little much.”
“My supervisor wouldn’t take it. I’d get fired if I pulled anything like what you guys pull,” Judith Prietht shot off between calls beeping at the Bombardini Company switchboard console a few feet away in the tiny cubicle.
Lenore put her purse by the Security phones. She came close to Candy Mandible. “I tried to call you. Mrs. Tissaw called me out of the shower at like nine-thirty because Schwartz had answered this call for me. I had to go to the nursing home right away.”
“Something’s wrong.”
“Yes.” Lenore saw that Judith Prietht’s ears were aprick. “Can I just talk to you later? Will you be home later on?”
“I’ll be off over at Allied at six,” Candy said. “I was supposed to be over there at freaking twelve—but it’s OK,” seeing Lenore’s expression. “Clint said he’d get somebody to cover for me as long as I wanted. Are you all right? Which one is it?”
“Lenore. ”
“She didn’t ... ?”
“It’s unclear.”
“Unclear?”
“My supervisor, you gotta have reasons for being late, and submit ‘em in advance, and they have to get signed by Mr. Bombardini,” Judith said amid beepings and rings. “But then we have a real business, we get real calls. Bombardini Company. Bombardini Company. One moment.”
“She’s being particularly pleasant today,” said Lenore. Candy made a strangle-motion at Judith, then started to get her stuff together.
Their console sounded. Lenore got it. “Frequent and Vigorous,” she said. She listened and looked up at Candy. “Bambi’s Den of Discipline?” she said. “No, this is most definitely not Bambi’s Den of Discipline ... Candy, do you have the number of a Bambi’s Den of Discipline?” Candy gave her the number but said it probably wouldn’t make any difference. Lenore recited the number and released.
“Bambi’s Den of Discipline?” she said. “That’s a new one. What do you mean there’s probably no difference?”
“I can’t figure it out, I don’t see nothing wrong,” a voice came from under the console counter, under Lenore’s chair, by her legs. Lenore looked down. There were big boots protruding from under the counter. They began to jiggle; a figure struggled to emerge. Lenore shot her chair back.
“Lenore, there’s line trouble that I guess started last night, Vem said,” Candy said. “This is Peter Abbott. He’s with Interactive Cable. They’re trying to fix the problem. ”
“Interactive Cable?”
“Like the phone company, but not the phone company.”
“Oh.” Lenore looked listlessly at Peter Abbott. “Hi.”
“Well hello hello,” said Peter, winking furiously at Lenore and pulling up his collar. Lenore looked up at Candy as Peter played with something hanging from his tool belt.
“Peter is very friendly, it seems,” said Candy Mandible.
“Hmm.”
“Well I can’t see nothing wrong in there, I’m stumped,” Peter said.
“What’s the problem?” Lenore asked.
“It’s not good,” said Candy. “We I guess more or less don’t have a number anymore. Is that right?” She looked at Peter Abbott.
“Well, you got line trouble,” said Peter.
“Right, which apparently in this case means we don’t have a number anymore, or rather we do, but so does like the whole rest of Cleveland, in that we now all of a sudden share a single number with all these other places. All these places that share our line tunnel. You know all those numbers we were just one off of, and we’d just get the wrong numbers all the time—Steve’s Sub, Cleveland Towing, Big B.M. Cafe, Fuss ‘n’ Feathers Pets, Dial-a-Darling? Well now they’re like all the same number. You dial their numbers, and the F and V number rings. Plus a whole lot of new ones: a cheese shop, some Goodyear service office, that Bambi’s Den of Discipline, which by the way gets a disturbing number of calls. We’ve all got the same number now. It’s nuts. Is that right what I said?” she asked Peter Abbott. She got her stuff and got ready to leave, looking at her watch.
“Yeah, line trouble,” Peter Abbott said.
“At least now you’ll have calls. At least now you’ll have something to do for a chang
“How come she’s not messed up?” Lenore gestured at Judith.
“Different line tunnels,” Peter Abbott said. “Bombardini Inc.’s lines are actually it turns out in this tunnel pretty far away, a few blocks west of Erieview. The calls just get into here via a matrix sharing-thread transfer, which is a real complicated plus ancient thing. Your lines are in a tunnel right under this building, under the lobby, out under that guy’s skeleton.” Peter Abbott pointed at the floor.
“So then why are you up here instead of down with the lines?” Candy Mandible wanted to know.
“I’m not a tunnel man. I’m a console man. I don’t do tunnels. They sent some guy from Tunnels down there early this morning. It’s gotta be his problem. I can’t find nothing up here with what you girls got. This’s a twenty-eight, right? I haven’t lost my mind?”
“Right, Centrex twenty-eight.”
“I know it’s a Centrex, that’s all I do, I’m bored as shit with Centrexes, excuse my French.”
“Well what did the guy from the tunnel say?” Lenore asked. Candy was answering a phone.
“Dunno, ‘cause I haven’t talked to him. I sure can’t call him, am I right?”
“What, we can’t dial out on this, either?”
“I was just makin’ a joke. You can call out OK. Just try again if you get an automatic loop into one of the other in-tunnel points. No, I just hafta talk to the tunnel guy in person, back at the office. We hafta write up reports.” Peter looked at Lenore. “You married?”
“Oh, brother.”
“This one’s not married either, right?” Peter Abbott asked Candy, nodding over at Lenore. His hair wasn’t blond so much as just yellow, like a crayon. His face had the color of a kind of dark nut. Not the sort of tan that comes from the sun. Lenore sensed CabanaTan. The guy looked like a photographic negative, she decided.
He sighed. “Two unmarried girls, in distress, working in this tiny little office ...”
“Women,” Candy Mandible corrected.
“I’m not married either,” Judith Prietht called over. Judith Prietht was about fifty.
“Groovy,” said Peter Abbott.
“So can Bambi and Big Bob and all the others even get any calls, now?” Lenore asked. “Do their phones ring at all?”
“Sometimes, sometimes not,” Peter Abbott said, jingling his belt. “The point is they can’t be sure where it’ll ring, and neither can you, which is obviously subpar service. Your number’s not picking you out of the network like it should, it’s as we say picking out a target set and not a target.”
“Lovely. ”
“At least now you’ll have some calls to answer,” said Judith Prietht. “All you ever get is wrong numbers anyway. You guys are going to go bankrupt. Who ever heard of a publishing house in Cleveland?”
“I like your shoes,” Peter Abbott said to Lenore. “I got some shoes just like that.”
“Does Rick know about all this?” Lenore asked Candy.
Candy stopped. “Rick. Lenore, call him right away.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Who knows what’s ever the matter. All I know is first he just had a complete spasm about your not being here. This was at like ten-o-one. And then now he keeps calling down all the time, to see if you’re here yet. He keeps pretending it’s different people asking for you, holding his nose, putting a hankie over the phone, trying this totally pitiful English accent, pretending it’s outside calls for you, which he should know I can tell it isn’t because he knows the way the console light flashes all fast when they’re in-house calls. God knows he spends enough time down here. And now he hasn’t come down for his paper, even, he’s just sitting up there brooding, playing with his hat.”
“What else does he have to do?” said Judith Prietht, who was unwrapping wax paper from a sandwich and blinking coquettishly at Peter Abbott, who was in turn trying to stare down over the counter into Lenore’s cleavage.
“God, well I really need to talk to him, too,” said Lenore.
“Sweetie, I forgot for a second. How just totally horrible. You must be out of your head. Are you sure you’re all right?”
“I think so. Vern’ll be in at six. I’ll call Rick as soon as I can. I have to call my father, too. And his lawyer.”
“I sense something in the wind,” said Peter Abbott.
“You hush,” said Candy Mandible. She squeezed Lenore’s arm as she passed. “I’m late. I have to go. You come home tonight, hear?”
“I’ll call and let you know,” Lenore said.
“What, you guys are roommates?” Peter Abbott asked.
“Partners in crime,” Judith Prietht snorted.
“Lucky room, is all I can say.”
“Let’s just have a universal dropping dead, except for Lenore,” said Candy. She walked off across the marble lobby floor into the moving blackness.
“She’s got another job?” Peter Abbott asked.
“Yes.” The console beeped. “Frequent and Vigorous.”
“Where at?”
Lenore held up a finger for him to wait while she dealt with somebody wanting to price a set of radials. “Over at Allied Sausage Casings, in East Corinth?” she said when she’d released.
“What a gnarly place to work. What does she do?”
“Product testing. Tasting Department.”
“What a disgusting job.”
“Somebody has to do it.”
“Glad it’s not me, boy.”
“But I do assume you have some kind of job to do? Like fixing our lines?”
“I’m off. I’ll be in touch—if possible.” Peter Abbott laughed and left, jingling. He walked into a moving patch of light in the middle of the lobby and the light disappeared, taking him with it.
The console began to beep.
“Frequent and Vigorous,” Lenore said. “Frequent and Vigorous.”
4
1972
TRANSCRIPT OF MEETING BETWEEN THE HONORABLE RAYMOND ZUSATZ, GOVERNOR OF THE STATE OF OHIO; MR. JOSEPH LUNGBERG, GUBERNATORIAL AIDE; MR. NEIL OBSTAT, GUBERNATORIAL AIDE; AND MR. ED ROY YANCEY, VICE PRESIDENT, INDUSTRIAL DESERT DESIGN, INCORPORATED, DALLAS, TEXAS; 21 JUNE 1972.
OVERNOR: Gentlemen, something is not right.
MR. OBSTAT: What do you mean, Chief?
GOVERNOR: With the state, Neil. Something is not right with our state. MR. LUNGBERG: But Chief, unemployment is low, inflation is low, taxes haven’t been raised in two years, pollution is way down except for Cleveland and who the hell cares about Cleveland—just kidding, Neil—but Chief, the people love you, you’re unprecedentedly ahead in the polls, industrial investment and development in the state are at an all-time high....
GOVERNOR: Stop right there. There you go.
MR. OBSTAT: Can you expand on that, Chief?
GOVERNOR: Things are just too good, somehow. I suspect a trap.
MR. LUNGBERG: A trap?
GOVERNOR: Guys, the state is getting soft. I can feel softness out there. It’s getting to be one big suburb and industrial park and mall. Too much development. People are getting complacent. They’re forgetting the way this state was historically hewn out of the wilderness. There’s no more hewing.
MR. OBSTAT: You’ve got a point there, Chief.
GOVERNOR: We need a wasteland.
MR. LUNGBERG and MR. OBSTAT: A wasteland?
GOVERNOR: Gentlemen, we need a desert.
MR. LUNGBERG and MR. OBSTAT: A desert?
GOVERNOR: Gentlemen, a desert. A point of savage reference for the good people of Ohio. A place to fear and love. A blasted region. Something to remind us of what we hewed out of. A place without malls. An Other for Ohio’s Self. Cacti and scorpions and the sun beating down. Desolation. A place for people to wander alone. To reflect. Away from everything. Gentlemen, a desert.
MR. OBSTAT: Just a super idea, Chief.
GOVERNOR: Thanks, Neil. Gentlemen may I present Mr. Ed
MR. LUNGBERG: Hey, there’s apparently a lot of desert in Kuwait. MR. YANCEY: You bet, Joe, and we believe we can provide you folks with a really first-rate desert right here in Ohio.
MR. OBSTAT: What about the cost?
GOVERNOR: Manageable.
MR. LUNGBERG: Where would it be?
MR. YANCEY: Well gentlemen, the Governor and I have conferred, and if I could just direct your attention to this map, here ...
MR. OBSTAT: That’s Ohio, all right.
MR. YANCEY: The spot we have in mind is in the south of your great state. Right about ... here. Actually here to here. Hundred square miles.
MR. OBSTAT: Around Caldwell?
MR. YANCEY: Yup.
MR. LUNGBERG: Don’t quite a few people live around there? GOVERNOR: Relocation. Eminent domain. A desert respects no man. Fits with the whole concept.
MR. LUNGBERG: Isn’t that also pretty near Wayne National Forest? GOVERNOR: Not anymore. (Mr. Lungberg whistles. )
MR. OBSTAT: Hey, my mother lives right near Caldwell.
GOVERNOR: Hits home, eh Neil? Part of the whole concept. Concept has to hit home. Hewing is violence, Neil. We’re going to hew a wilderness out of the soft underbelly of this state. It’s going to hit home.
MR. LUNGBERG: You’re really sold on this, aren’t you, Chief?
GOVERNOR: Joe, I’ve never been more sold on anything. It’s what this state needs. I can feel it.
MR. OBSTAT: You’ll go down in history, Chief. You’ll be immortal.
GOVERNOR: Thanks, Neil. I just feel it’s right, and after conferring with Mr. Yancey, I’m just sold. A hundred miles of blinding white sandy nothingness. ‘Course there’ll be some fishing lakes, at the edges, for people to fish in ...
MR. LUNGBERG: Why white sand, Chief? Why not, say, black sand?
GOVERNOR: Go with that, Joe.
MR. LUNGBERG: Well, really, if the whole idea is supposed to be contrast, otherness, blastedness, should I say sinistemess? Sinistemess is the sense I get.