Giving Away The Store

Fintushel, JULIUS SAVES THE EARTH

11

Eliot Fintushel

4,300 words

489 Sonoma Avenue

Santa Rosa CA 95401

(707) 526-1481

fintush@sinic.net

JULIUS SAVES THE EARTH

by

Eliot Fintushel

Malacz settled into a black leather chesterfield at his cousin's favorite taproom in Halifax. Cousin Arshin liked to take him to McVee's in order to show off. In their childhood Malacz always had been the smart one, but now he was poor, and Arshin was rich. Arshin was a shipping magnate. Malacz was a mere newsman, and small time at that. He ran the Latvian Register of Ashville, Oregon, an ethnic weekly supported by advertising from importers of records from the former USSR and restaurateurs who understood the Slavic palate. Also by subscriptions, a little.

With his cueball haircut and comfy girth, Malacz gave the impression of a medicine ball in blue shirtsleeves. Arshin, slender and tall, dashing in his finely tailored white sports jacket, occupied a whole sofa, spreading out his arms and ordering bottles of expensive wine.

"Look at all this." Arshin made a grand sweeping gesture. "Not just anybody can saunter into a fine place like this, order whatever he wants, have all the waiters fawn over him and call him by name, give him the best table and all that. Cousin, you should give up that pitiful weekly of yours and get into Import-Export like me. Tell me, what good is a life like yours anyway?"

"Mmhmm." Malacz examined the hors d'oeuvres-plump green olives in a polished wooden bowl. "One has one's work to do, Cousin. Rich or poor, one has one's work."

"Still, if you were rich like me, you could marry a beauty instead of..."

"Is Arlene well?"

"Very well. Very, very well. Perfect, in fact. I was saying...instead of a horse like your Selma, ha ha!"

"You used to fancy her, I think."

"Don't be silly. But is she well, our Selma?"

"Quite well, Cousin, thank you."

For a moment, Arshin seemed lost in reverie. He strummed his fingers on the low oak table before them. Then he recovered himself and looked Malacz up and down.

"You look all right," Arshin granted him. "The newspaper business picking up?"

Malacz was thoughtful. "Mmhmm. I have my addressograph man back."

Arshin laughed, then realized that Malacz was serious. "Cousin, whatever are you talking about? Can your business depend on an office lackey?"

Malacz speared a large green olive, delivered it to his lips at the end of a tinseled toothpick, and spoke, with a lump in his cheek, while the brine trickled down his tongue. "Arshin, my dear successful cousin, let me tell you about Julius."

#

My Julius (said Malacz) is a butter ball, but indispensable. His most interesting job, the one I will tell you about in a minute, he got through Dahlia. He got Dahlia through his older brother, Jake. Jake set up a date for them in high school.

Dahlia had been sweet on Jake. He was six three and built like a tank. He was a miler, a half-back, and a great kisser. But Jake was in training, so he threw her to Julius, with his zits, coke bottle bottom glasses, and all. Dahlia complied for love of Jake, to keep the connection, you see.

Eventually she settled on the kid brother because everybody said he was very brainy and had a great future ahead of him. Also, Dahlia's looks, decent as they were, did not put her above the necessity of a prudent investment in the husband department.

Julius was willing--grateful even. He'd never kissed a girl. He didn't know how to ask, much less demand. He played chess and waited to be noticed. Even at chess, he made bad moves on purpose when he felt that a good one would sadden his opponent. He only got what was given him on a platter.

So Dahlia gave herself to him on a platter. His last words before climax at the motel after the prom were, "Dahlia, are you sure it's okay...?" She wasn't. It was simply this: Julius was the best she could do.

#

Arshin swilled wine and started to look bored. "How do you know all these intimate things about this Julius?"

"Why, I drink with him Cousin, as you do with me. He withholds nothing-that's Julius. An open book. That's how he saved the Earth in fact."

"Saved the Earth? Is this a joke?"

"Listen . . . "

#

On Julius's graduation from Columbia, they married-because Dahlia wanted to. He acquired a Ph.D. in continental philosophy, and, accordingly, he bounced from one menial job to another. Addressograph machine operator at an ethnic weekly (mine) cheesecake delivery man, porter, security guard: he hardly cared, as long as he got some think time behind the wheel, the desk, the bus tray, or the bundling machine.

People found Julius strange at first, then reliable, then essential. He did everything on automatic pilot--but perfectly--while he thought, and he didn't care what you gave him or did with him. Employers appreciated that, until he left, when, like an unbutlered noble, they tended to hit the skids.

Such was my fate, Cousin, in the unhappy period following Julius's departure.

You see, Dahlia had taken things into her own hands. Her brother Mo, inseparable from his hooded windbreaker throughout Junior High, the guy who was always being thrown out of Math class for his famous, hilarious mime of self-abuse by a Capuchin monk, had become a general in the United States Army.

#

Arshin screwed up his eyes. "I used to do a trick like that."

"Did you?" said Malacz. "I'd forgotten that. But let me go on..."

#

As a joke, some slightly higher-ups had shunted Mo into the military's secret SETI program, much the way Dahlia had been shunted into Julius. It was a dead-end position with no chance to get in anybody's way. Little Green Men. Fat chance, yes? But he was in control of a number of well-salaried positions. So Dahlia leaned on the general to hire her Julius.

"C'mon, Mo, he's a Ph-frigging-D," she'd say.

"Does he know how to type?"

"I want my husband to have a respectable job. I'm tired of Laundromats. I want major appliances, a home entertainment center, and how about a decent place to put them? Is that too much to ask, or should I tell your three-star pals about what you can do under a goddam hood?"

"I'm not promising anything. I'll check it out."

In the meantime, and just after Julius learned to type on the job, he left his positions at the Latvian Register and at the small pizza parlor where he bussed tables part-time. He began actually to make a little money, though he took no pleasure in it: it was all Dahlia. He reconciled himself to having to figure out income tax for the first time in his life. "Whatever makes you happy, Dahlia." Shortly after Julius's departure, the pizza parlor folded.

Dahlia got her first credit card and ran up a bill. Realtors no longer snickered when Julius disclosed their fiduciary. They got a house in the suburbs, a Volvo station wagon--kids almost, but Dahlia wanted to have a few more affairs before she ruined her figure. The way she was feeling with the new loot and booty, even Jake might not be entirely out of the picture.

Jake still lived in town. He was a dentist, a good-looking dentist, a good-looking married dentist with an ugly fertile wife, three boys, and a girl. Definitely in the ballpark.

"I saw your brother yesterday, Julius."

"Did you, snookums . . . ? Gotta run."

"I saw, I conquered, I came," she said to the door Julius closed behind him, as he ran to catch the bus he took on days when Dahlia "shopped." Dahlia smiled. Dahlia settled into the Lazyboy and watched a tape of The Young and the Restless on a TV screen that occupied a whole wall. She picked up the phone and dialed Jake.

Then the ETIs came. Their ships choked the sky like June bugs or like swarming apostrophes, holes in the sky. Without approaching or arriving, they were there. Their brute presence mocked the vast arrays of radio dishes, the probes, the expensive search time at the National Radio Observatory in Charlottesville, at Arecibo, Muedon, Byurakan, the decimetric in Sologne. All the dough Mo handled, all the brain boys advising, executing, scratching their heads, and now, suddenly, all you had to do was look up.

#

"Now you're teasing me," said Arshin. He was already tipsy. "Thanks be to God and to the United States Army, it was all cleared up. There were a million rumors flying about, but the upshot is, it was all a fiction. Astigmatisms. Atmospheric anomalies. Nothing was there and it affected nobody."

"Not London? Not Paris?"

Arshin waved his wineglass, sloshing port over the low, oak table. "Bah. Rumors. Fairy tales. National Enquirer stuff. All that never happened."

"Hear me, Arshin," Malacz said with a sly smile.

#

They hovered there for eighteen months, impervious to NATO and SAC jets and the variety of other craft dispatched to challenge them. General Mo, the faithful sibling, dispatched videotapes to Dahlia in exchange for a holy vow of secrecy. Dahlia watched everything on the south wall of her suburban home, sometimes in Jake's arms, while Julius pushed papers for General Mo. Two brothers hunting and pecking, each after his kind.

"I think they should just let them alone," Dahlia said. "They're not hurting anybody. I don't even think there's anybody in those things. Our planes and bombs and stuff go straight through them. Look." On the south wall, a squadron of black fighter jets smokily fired a barrage of missiles at one of the bullet-shaped black ships. Like all the others, the missiles passed through them and exploded harmlessly in the distance.

"Honey," Jake said, "they can't do that. You're not a guy, you wouldn't understand this, but if you show any weakness in a situation like this, that's it--you're wishbones and chicken feathers. You got to defend your turf."

"That's what Mo says. Mo is very big now, you know. Everybody's calling him and asking him stuff and looking up to him."

"Does he still do that thing in the hood? I used to love that."

The phone rang. "Don't answer it," Dahlia said. "It's probably Malacz, the Latvian Register guy, asking for Julius back. Or the cheesecake one. They're all desperate for him. If any of them got through to Julius, he'd probably go right back, minimum wage and everything. I just say, 'Wrong number.' Screw 'em. Julius does what I want." She never returned my calls.

Invasion. No invasion. Life goes on.

Meanwhile, at Mo's offices, Julius slaved away. One day the general strutted into Julius's cubicle and stood behind him for a long time. Julius never turned away from his desk until the general began to speak. "Julius, life is funny, you know what I mean? There you are, the brain trust of Franklin High, shuffling papers, and here I am...

Hearing him, Julius turned to face the general. Mo was a big man, big as Jake almost but round and soft where Jake was flat and hard. Mo had an elfin face and a mop of red hair that belied his age. For those who had known him in high school, it was hard to see Mo without imagining the hood and what he used to do in it. Now he was smartly uniformed and covered with badges, peacetime badges, badges for persistent good humor and likeability mostly, with one or two big ones for not making waves at critical moments. Julius understood Mo's uniform, and he saw the hood there too, but it just didn't matter to him.

"What can I do for you, General?"

Julius was already balding. He had hereditary bad teeth. He was too skinny and had a slight stoop.

Mo sighed. "I've been talking to the President. The things have sent us a communication." He called them things. Everybody in the project, even astrophysicists and linguists, out of deference to the general, called them things. Like Castilians lisping. "I'm going up to Command HQ with the big boys to deal with this. I need someone to take notes, run errands, and so on. You're coming with me. We're going right now." When Julius started to ask questions, Mo waved him off: "I'll buy you a toothbrush and a change of undies there."

"Shouldn't I ask Dahlia about it?"

The general rolled his eyes. "Goddammit, Julius, Dahlia is fucking your brother. She'll make good use of the time."

Julius looked down and swallowed. He hadn't noticed the grooves that the casters on his swivel chair had been making in the tile floor. It was supposed to be good tile, battleship tile. It wasn't supposed to get marked up so easily. Dahlia was fucking Jake.

#

"Cousin Malacz, the devil with women!" Arshin was becoming teary-eyed. "My wife has gotten herself a lover, did you know? She's taken a lover, and I can't bring it up to her for fear of losing the bitch. She's putting horns on me, and I'm helpless. I don't dare say a word, because I love her, Malacz.

"Oh, poor Julius! Oh, mankind!"

"There, there, Arshin!" Malacz filled up his cousin's glass. "She'll come round."

"What did your Julius do, Malacz? Ignore the whole thing and go on?"

"Just that, Cousin. That was Julius for you . . . "

#

"When will we leave?" Julius said to his brother-in-law.

"Right now. I'll have someone leave a message with Dahlia. We'll be a few days, I think, maybe more--who knows? Depends on the things, doesn't it?"

Julius stood up and pushed his chair flush to the desk. He stood quite still, waiting to see exactly what would be required of him next.

"Aren't you even curious about what the things said in their communication?"

"No-unless you want to tell me."

"Yes, I do, Julius. I want to tell you. They said, 'Surrender or die.' Let's go."

At the headquarters, underground, in a bunker outside Washington DC, Julius stood behind Mo and three other men whose eyes were glued to a monitor. He held a cardboard tray of Styrofoam coffee cups with coded lids: one black (no sugar) and three with cream (one double sugar, one single, and one without.) He also had a memo in his hand that a breathless soldier had handed him in the hallway. Nobody could go into this room but the four honchos or Julius, their gofer. Julius waited for them to notice him. They were scrolling through the communications log.

#

.

.

.

THINGS: "Surrender or die."

EARTH: "Withdraw immediately or we will destroy you."

#

"They're bluffing." Mo stood at the left end of the huddle. He turned away to light a cigar. Smoke billowed. "Goddam things do everything upside-down. They couldn't possibly coordinate an effective attack. We've determined by their movements and by the pattern of their ship-to-ship transmissions that the lowest ranking vessels, the front-line troopships, initiate all the maneuvers. Then the command moves up the line. The worthies, the ones in the most elaborate, best-protected vessels, are the last to get the word. Can you believe it? Mudfaces rule the roost."

The man on the other end was the President's, snake-like, long-necked, with a bony face that resembled a death's head. "They obviously don't know how to wage a war. If they could do any more to us than we've done to them, don't you think they would have already done it?"

The man on Mo's right, a Russian diplomat in a Hawaiian shirt with eyebrows like overgrown hedgerows nodded. "We're getting the laser cannon positioned now, Henry. We'll smash them. I only hope there'll be enough left for some analysis."

"Grigory, really!" The burly munitions magnate in the three piece suit and the blond toupe undulated in displeasure. "You will be measured in your response, I hope. This is a priceless treasure of scientific information we've got here."

"Of course, Leonard. Of course, of course."

Mo was about to say something when he noticed Julius and the tray of coffees. Julius smiled. The men took their coffees, sipped, grimaced, traded, sipped, grimaced, and traded again before Julius could explain his lid code.

Henry spied Julius's note and stopped blowing across his cream-and-two-sugars. "Hey, Mo, what's he got in his hand there?"

"What's that, Julius?" said Mo.

"Note from a soldier in the hall."

"Give it here." Mo took the note Julius offered him, opened it, read it, and went limp. "Paris has been destroyed?"

#

"My God!" Arshin threw his arms around Malacz, then drew back and looked him in the eye. "You mean to say it's all true? The things actually destroyed Paris?"

"That's what I'm telling you, Cousin." The hors d'oeuvres were gone. Malacz nodded to a passing waiter; the waiter scooped up the empty bowl and went off for a full one. Malacz released himself from Arshin's embrace and started to pick his teeth with a tinseled toothpick.

"Poor Julius!" Arshin slumped forward, head in his hands, elbows on his knees. "In the middle of all that, and his wife cheating on him as well. Can there be a hell deeper and hotter than this Earth of ours?"

"There's more, Arshin..."

#

Grigory, the Russian, gripped Mo around the shoulders. "Destroyed? What do you mean, 'destroyed?'"

"Nothing left but ashes. Wiped out. Decimated."

Across the monitor a new message was forming.

#

THINGS: "Not negotiable. Surrender or die."

#

Mo pounded the table, "No." Suddenly he looked up. His mouth fell open. A rasping sound escaped his throat. Clutching his heart, he fell to his knees.

The others dropped back. "General! General!"

Then Leonard fell. "My God!" He too dropped to his knees, then slumped down to his side and rolled onto his face. A thin stream of blood issued from his nose.

Julius, fingers on Mo's carotid, then on Leonard's, confirmed that the two men were dead. His lower lip trembled, and he quietly cried while cleaning up the blood with a spare napkin from the coffee tray. He daubed at his tears with another, which he carefully kept separate from the first.

Henry, hyperventilating, craned his death's head toward Grigory, "Did they do it, Grigory? The things?"

"Of course it was them."

"Which is the leader? Can't we just take out the leader? Just hit one crucial one, the mothership?"

"Henry, get a hold of yourself. Their command structure is reverse, remember?"

Across the screen the words formed:

#

THINGS: "We can be very precise. Or we can be very gross."

#

From the hallway, a crazed howl: "London. They've hit London. There's no more London."

#

"London," wailed Arshin. "Not London too?" He staggered to his feet. "Waiter! Hey! Another bottle here."

#

THINGS: "Surrender or die."#

Grigory literally fell onto the keyboard below the monitor. His forearm, striking first, produced a confusion of symbols scrolling down the screen. Then he typed:

#

EARTH: "Laser cannon at the ready. Withdraw or . . . "

#

Grigory fell back, gurgling and clawing at the air. Henry, the White House man, ran for the door. "Call the President. Call the President." He fled down the corridor. Julius was left alone with three dead men and a monitor flashing:

#

THINGS: "Surrender or die."#

A phone rang, and Julius, bewildered, searched for the right one among a bank of a dozen or more. "Hello? Hello? Hello...?"

Finally he heard Dahlia's voice. "Mo! Mo! What's going on? Tell your sister, Mo."

"Dahlia?"

"Julius, you putz, is that where you are? Give me Mo. I don't want to talk to you, for crissakes."

The screen was still flashing:

#

THINGS: "Surrender or die."#

"I'm sorry, Dahlia," Julius said, "I can't talk to you right now. Mo and everybody here are dead, and I'm the only one left. I think I have to surrender the Earth before we all get wiped out. Bye, honey." Julius hung up.

He pushed a swivel chair over to the monitor, carefully maneuvering it around the corpses of his brotherinlaw, the Russian, and the businessman. He sat down before the monitor, which was now saying:

#

THINGS: "New York is next. Surrender or die."#

Julius typed in:

#

EARTH: "OK."#

After a pause, some further dialogue ensued.

#

THINGS: "Repeat message?"

EARTH: "OK. We surrender . . . Is there anything else we can do for you?"

#

This time there was a long pause. Then:

#

THINGS: "You can have all our ships."

#

Julius thought about this. It didn't seem to him that the things could really mean it. They must have traveled trillions and trillions of miles in those vessels. It was probably like home to them. It was nice of them to be so conciliatory, and he was glad to see them coming round, but still . . .

#

EARTH: "No, that's OK. You can keep them. Thanks for the offer, though. I guess our whole planet is yours now. What would you like us to do next? Do you need landing pads or anything?"

THINGS: "We will be your slaves. You can eat us."

EARTH: "Guys, really! We'll do whatever you like. You win. Come and set up your government or whatever."

#

Julius suddenly realized that a crowd had formed behind him. He turned around. There were a dozen men and women, soldiers, scientists, and government officials leaning over his shoulder and around him-including the President of the United States. Julius started to yield his chair.

#

"The President of the United States," said Arshin, shushing himself as he said it, one finger to his lips. "Now you've lost me, Cousin. I don't believe a word of it. Do you mean to say that the President of the United States was standing behind your Julius?"

"That's how it was, Arshin. That's what Julius told me, and he was in a condition not unlike your own, a condition in which untruthfulness is not possible."

"You're right there, Cousin. I couldn't tell a lie if I wanted to. Why, it's enough trouble staying vertical, isn't it? I am vertical, yes? Who would dare call me a liar, anyway? I have mansions. I have yachts. Go on with your story, for heaven's sake."

#

Julius started to get up, but the President wouldn't let him. "Please stay as you are. Go on. You're the only one who's been able to make any headway."

The screen said:

#

THINGS: "What is it, your cities? London and Paris? Is that the problem? We can put them back just the way they were. No sweat. Please destroy us, punish us, whatever you like. We beg you.

EARTH: "Honestly, don't put yourselves out..."

#

A young man ran in from the hallway. "Sir! Sir!"-slowing as he reached the President-"Paris and London..."

"I know," said the President. "They're back the way they were, just as if nothing had happened, right?"

Mo sat up, grabbed the back of Julius's chair, and stood. Grigory was already on his feet and helping Leonard up. Mo started to speak.

"Shush," said the President. "It's fascinating-some kind of status game that controls their belligerence.

"Julius, offer them something more. Tell them they can take me as a hostage or a specimen or whatever."

#

EARTH: "The Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, the President of the United States of America, wants me to tell you that you can have him as a token of our esteem, and to please feel free to do whatever you like with him. Where shall we put him for your pick-up?"

THINGS: "Keep your president, we beg of you. We are sending down a robot vessel with all our technical and scientific archives for you to use as you like, along with keys to all our communications and detailed maps of all our planets and installations and military depots."

EARTH: "Really, there's no need . . . "

THINGS: "We beg you to let us withdraw."

#

The President was tapping Julius on the shoulder. "Julius, tell them it's okay-but to come back and destroy us whenever they like."

#

EARTH: "My boss says okay. Please feel free to go, but do come and get us whenever you want to. We're all yours.

THINGS: "Thank you. We're going. But we're all yours."

EARTH: "Really, you won.

THINGS: "No, you won."

EARTH: "Whatever you say."

THINGS: "Whatever you say.

.

.

.

ETC.#

"And they went away?" said Arshin, bloated, flushed, becalmed.

"They went away," said Malacz. "That's what happened. And after the general jubilation, confusion, obfuscation, misinformation, and politicization, Julius found himself back at the addressograph machine of the Latvian Register with plenty of think time-and a personally autographed photo of the President of the United States. I myself have had many opportunities to inspect that photograph minutely, and the signature is definitely original.

"Of course, the SETI Program went downhill as soon as Julius was cashiered, but no one thought to connect its decline with Julius's departure. Dahlia divorced him for the assertiveness training instructor at a local night school.

"Mo and everyone else who had been present in the war room clammed up on the whole affair. They eventually managed to convince themselves that Julius had had nothing to do with it save the typing in of messages that they, in their infinite cleverness, had contrived to send.

"Except for the few indiscretions in my company, Cousin, through which I learned of all this, Julius never talked about it, either. He is happy to have saved the Earth, so he can address, bundle, and think in peace-and do whatever else Mr. Malacz tells him."

"For a life like that," Arshin wept, "I would give up my houses and yachts."

###