Professional Amateurs
REALITY CODE — INDEX 10A MS LIBCON-DOMITIAN-3576-F. 10 (recto) CLAUSE MAJEUR (In verbo populorum: The Bob Dole Law):
ALL COMMERCIALS ON ANY CHANNEL OF THE WORLD NETWORK AT ANY TIME MUST INCLUDE NO MATERIAL OTHER THAN THE TESTIMONIAL OF A WILLING AND AMATEUR VOLUNTEER EXPRESSING HIS OR HER TRUE THOUGHTS AND OPINIONS ABOUT THE FEATURED PRODUCT.
R.CODE SPECIFICATION I — TO INDEX 10A (April 1, Year 132):
THE AMATEUR VOLUNTEER MAY, HOWEVER, RECEIVE COMPENSATION.
I
I used to teach owls to sing for the Department of Parklands. It was time consuming and required a solid background in music theory as well as a good bit of owlishness. The key was getting them in the mood.
There were better jobs, and I knew it. My friend Bengt was a professional amateur, for instance, and he’s the reason I’m no longer with the owls.
Bengt is an insufferable showoff, always has been. He stands tall, topped with black hair that looks painted on to his cannonball head. His pearlies are whiter than the glint on the hood of a new car. While I did the owls he was number two on the international network. He radiated untrained charm in all genres—teary testimonials for self-help programs, “high concept category” spots for meat or plastic, sodapop comedies, law firm epics and toothpaste pastorals.
But he really made it with a luxury commercial. The big one. The biggest.
We were at the Cafe Mirabell at the top of the Nokia building, having the angel hair with veal. Bengt had his fork in one hand and his palmer in the other, ready for action and as gauche as a left-handed left hand. I didn’t care. The food was brill and I was delighted to be out—and he was paying, anyway. Soft candlelight glinted off of the mirrors as white-robed waiters made their rounds like clockwork sufis whirling.
Then Ella entered. Impossibly fresh skin, breasts that could be compared to all manner of dirigibles and aquatic structures. Her lower back, exposed, straight as the side of a skyscraper. White daub made her lips a fleshy extension of her teeth. Kanis-Qanis lipsmudge, season five in perfect ivory. That was in. She had made Kanis-Qanis the “it” thing with a shocking series of ad spots the winter before. It was said that she could make men ejaculate with her voice alone.
“Ella,” Bengt smiled. “Number one.”
“Oh, really,” I said. “She’s shorter than she looks on tv.”
“I’m amazed she doesn’t have a bodyguard.”
On the stage, the Nickrenz Quartet was performing Hansell’s Dahmer Sonata and their violinist was absolutely glisten. She cried as she dug into the rain of staccato sharps at the end of the first movement. It was a storm of feelings and it rang true through the perfect acoustic space of the Cafe, hovering above the clink of plate and fork as a banner might fly above an army.
“That violinist is blind brilliant,” I said to Bengt and no sooner had the words gone into the air than a paparazzo approached brandishing dealcard and camera. I waved the bastard off.
“You never do commercials, Arny—It makes me sad,” Bengt said to me in that perfectly modulated, perfectly chill voice of his. When he was young his voice had been scratchy and low like a frog’s. He had an alley doctor put a fly in his throat to make it sound better. The fly stuck to the vocal cords or something, buzzing at just the right frequency. He had to take it out before he went to sleep. To feed it. Major reality crime. We learned in school that the code says that the body is what defines reality and to modify it is a sin, but Bengt never really cared for school.
