The Defenestration of Bob T. Hash III Read online

  It was a gamble, but I had an idea. While Matilda was still in the hallway, there was just enough time to open a living room window. After a moment, when she came into the room in her nice unbuttoned beige raincoat, she found me arms akimbo, pacing to and fro over the mess, shaking my head from side to side in quiet businessman’s disbelief. It was as if I had not long ago arrived on the scene myself and was still trying my hardest to digest it—which was anyway not so far off the truth.

  Matilda threw off the rest of her redundant summer raincoat and raised her hands to her mouth.

  “I can’t see what kind of grammatical construction they’re getting at here at all,” I said—in an authentic Bob T. Hash III voice—“unless it has something to do with an Everday Accidents and Domestic Mishaps page for the forthcoming edition of Forward with English!” Bob T. Hash III had missed his plane and decided to take the day off.

  But Matilda was more concerned with the whereabouts of her parrot—precious, beloved—than any apparent hiccup in her busy husband’s travel schedule.

  “Comenius.”

  She half sobbed, poignantly kneeling down to pick up the little ladder with her long slender fingers.

  “Yes. Poor Comenius must have taken fright and flown out the window.”

  But look on the bright side, I might well have added—he didn’t fall five floors to his death on bone-smashing flagstones.

  “He’s probably just perching on a neighbor’s white picket fence.”

  And, of course, I did feel a bit bad that my first words to Matilda, now in the role of my wife, had to be a fiction in this way, and a painful fiction at that, given the great fondness she had always reserved for her parrot. But I was also aware how unbelievable, how fantastic, any even approximately truthful account would have come across. On the other hand I think you’ll agree that, morally speaking, my little white lie pales into insignificance if you compare it to the stories her husband had been telling her of late, vis-à-vis his so-called “extra workload” at the office.

  Now, remember, I had at this point no idea how long I would remain, and with what degree of stability, under the guise of the good Bob T. Hash III. However, I did possess one useful piece of inside information that gave me at least some peace of mind. From a series of whispered phone conversations, made within earshot of my perch, on a number of evenings leading up to my mentor’s departure, I was privy to the fact of Bob’s secret elopement with Miss Scarlett. Outside the parties involved, I alone knew that Bob was away on far more than a simple routine business trip, I alone knew he had no intention of returning either to his wife or to his picture book duties. In other words, so long as nobody got cold feet or the elopement had been otherwise thwarted, my taking over as Mr. Hash for a little while was unlikely to be challenged—from those quarters at least.

  In any case, I wouldn’t have been surprised if by dinnertime, say, the effects of the cuttlebone had faded, with me returned as parrot to my perch as after my spin under the stars. At which point the only thing left to resolve would be the mysterious non-return of Bob T. Hash III from his business trip—but that would be his problem, not Comenius’s. And even if the cuttlebone’s magical effects should last into the night and Bob, having got cold feet, decided to turn up at midnight with his tail between his legs—well, even then the worst thing that could really happen would be my having to act out some bedroom farce situation in which a twin Bob is seen hiding in the wardrobe.

  As it turned out, the rest of that eventful day passed off without further disaster. Playing at being Bob T. Hash III was really rather easy—a harmless if somewhat audacious pastime. Matilda and I went round each room of the house in turn, searching for Comenius, checking that he (which is to say, I) hadn’t flown into some shaded recess of the house rather than out through the window, as suggested. Having in vain conducted that search, we returned to the living room to reassemble the scattered elements of the bird stand and to clean up the mess (a bit like that big cleaning contraption in The Cat in the Hat—all waggling sprocket, gangling fop-brush, and articulate dustpan). We righted the fallen elm branch wedged vertically in its bucket of ballast cement, reattached the birdcage to its bough, reaffixed the appurtenances (mercifully, nothing was broken). Birdseed and downy gray feathers were vacuumed off the carpet, and a light spattering of guano was daubed off the hearth tiles with a warm soapy sponge.

  Amazingly, at no point during these operations did either my wife or the children (with whom I played a game of post-homework, pre-dinner indoor Frisbee) show suspicion of foul play. At one point as we were nearing the end of the cleanup operation, Matilda did ask, “Nothing to do in the office?” with an eyebrow raised, having perhaps detected a chink in the logic of my impersonation—would the original Bob have ever claimed there was nothing to do in the office? But rather than get angry and say, “My husband would never say a thing like there’s nothing to do in the office—you dastardly impostor,” Matilda just smiled like a regular Lady Macbeth and went on, “Well, you might have gone in and done a few of those ‘Is this a book,’ ‘Is that a pencil,’ to keep your hand in.”

  But that enigmatic little exchange apart, nobody seemed to twig that this well-dressed six-foot parrot was neither their father nor their husband, or that Comenius was among them even as they searched for him, like the apostles searching for Jesus. That’s right, Tom, there’s been a downturn in sales.

  So confident of my impersonation had I become that later, as Matilda was clearing away the dinner dishes, I felt bold enough to plant a moist peck on her cheek. She was bending over the table to retrieve a tureen from its mat of asbestos, wearing an apron with wipe-proof grammatical tips and an easy one-tug bow-knot. I looped a wild strand of hair behind her ear. It would have been difficult to loop by herself with her hands full.

  At which point certain further potential ramifications of my replicant status first dawned in my mind.

  At any event, for that night at least, my condition remained stable. I did not turn back into a parrot. Bob did not cop out of his elopement. To the best of my knowledge there were no sitcom farces from daytime TV involving clanging hangers in hollow wooden wardrobes.

  6

  Introductions: How Do You Do?

  In everyday life we sometimes run over people we’ve not met before (see Idiomatic Expressions) or people whom we’ve only heard of through hearsay. For this section, the teacher can refer to the illustration on page 14 of the picture book showing Client-Speak for Intermediate Level conference attendees taking advantage of a moment’s break in the convention foyer to make one another’s acquaintance.

  (Note to teacher: For skit enactments please cover name tags!)

  –Mr. Cash, this is Mr. Redford. Mr. Redford, this is Mr. Cash. Mr. Redford, this is Mr. Bickwick. Mr. Bickwick, this is Mr. Redford. Mr. Redford, this is Mr. Hash…Mr. Hash?…Oops, Mr. Hash seems to have slipped off somewhere—I expect he’ll be back to join us in a moment!

  (later, at the cocktail party)

  –…and this will be your good lady wife, Mr. Hash?

  –As a matter of fact, this is my secretary, Miss Scarlett. I’ve an important deadline to get something ready for next week’s announcement of the quarterly sales figures and I’ve brought her along to the conference to help me out with her stenographic skills.

  (still at the cocktail party!)

  BOB T. HASH III: I’d like you to meet my better half, Mrs. Hash.

  CUCKOLDING NARRATOR, PECKING THE BACK OF A SLENDER OUTSTRETCHED WRIST: The pleasure is mine…

  (next morning, back in the convention foyer)

  JACK: Mr. Hash, I’d like to introduce you to my colleague Bob T. Hash III.

  MR. HASH: Good to meet you, Bob. How do you do? We do seem to keep crossing each other’s paths, so it’s good at last to meet you in person.

  BOB T. HASH III: I’ve been looking forward to meeting you too, Bob. Jack tells me you’re destined for great things!

  MR. HASH: Well, let’s put it this way: I wo
n’t be jumping out any fifth-floor office windows for the foreseeable future!

  The twin Bobs exchange business cards and shake hands.

  7

  Matutinal routines are the backbone of civilization. They begin, innocently enough, with the song of a melodious window-ledge blue tit and the hum of an electric milk cart. In the ablutive phase alone, they compress sufficient reflexive verbs—to bathe, shave, brush, floss, and so forth—to last most of us the rest of the day. On an easy-wipe blue-checked tablecloth appears an ideal home demonstration breakfast—replete with a variety of hen-eggs (poached, boiled, scrambled, and fried), breakfast cereals, and gelatinous preparations of the citrus persuasion. In the office a day of busy appointments awaits our arrival.

  For the first few moments that next morning when I was woken up by Bob T. Hash III’s digital alarm clock, I actually thought I was Comenius the parrot, back on my perch; I couldn’t understand why the electric buzz of the alarm, also audible from the downstairs living room bird stand, was so near to my ear and so annoyingly loud. I hit the snooze button the way Bob does in the seventh edition of the picture book and lay there for a minute or two listening to sounds coming from the kitchen, which, as the fog of sleep began to lift, I recognized as the sounds of Matilda getting the children ready to go off to school and preparing Bob’s breakfast. Only then, stretching out an arm to trace the warm proverbial imprint of Bob’s wife on the mattress beside me, did the remarkable events of yesterday—and the even more remarkable events of last night—begin to come back into focus.

  Those ablutions, that breakfast, those business appointments stretching on into Bob’s day, would now sadly go empty and turn into no-shows. Meetings canceled, deadlines overshot. The whole grammar book world revolving around him—and Bob not even bothering to put in an appearance! On the other hand, my own agenda was empty. Comenius had no prior appointments, had nowhere to be at a quarter to nine in the morning. Comenius did not even possess an agenda. Comenius was as free as a bird and, besides, could turn in a more than passable Bob T. Hash III. What if Comenius put on Bob’s suit and tie, ate Bob’s breakfast, and went into the office instead? By the time the snooze buzzer came back on I’d made up my mind. For a second time in the space of twenty-four hours I found myself heading barefoot to the Hashes’ upstairs en suite bathroom.

  One round picture book hour later, Bob T. Hash III’s Plymouth Fury gently reversed out the pea-stone drive, the driver bearing a quite uncanny resemblance to the legitimate license holder of that car—a Thunderbird captain with a swashbuckling profile. Viewed through a boom-mounted camera lens craning elastically out from the Hashes’ front porch we see a neighbor’s dog getting splashed by a sprinkler as it barks at the postman, the camera then curtsying upward for the obligatory panning shot over dormer rooftops and the luminous lawns of Day-Glo Suburbia. And look! Appearing from under the lintel of the Hashes’ porch roof a woman’s wistful hand was waving the Plymouth Fury good-bye.

  If the Hash residence had been a set off of Bewitched, then Bob T.’s office in the worldwide headquarters of the Acme International Institute of Languages located on picture book Main Street was Hill Street Blues on chamomile tea. It was a bright diorama of Play-Doh pie charts and Tetra Pak filing cabinets; an open-plan arrangement of desk, swivel chair, computer monitor, and ergonomic partition. On my arrival, any fears I might be mistaken for a parrot impostor were quickly dispelled. Bob Hash’s trademark briefcase under my arm, I was familiar to all, and all, from my intimate knowledge of Forward with English! (editions one through seven), were familiar to me. There was Bert to start off with, at the foyer reception desk downstairs (“Morning, Mr. Hash. No need to sign the register this morning, sir!”). I then shared my ascent in the right-hand capsule of the twin-box elevator with Miss Slowcomb, for whom, arriving out of breath, I held open the lift doors with a gallant elbow that brought a blush to her cheek (“That’s right, Mr. Hash. I’m in Admin these days”). Passing through the abacus to-ings and fro-ings of the top-floor open-plan section to reach my own executive office, I met Janet lugging a box of grammar files (“Morning, Mr. Hash. No, thanks, I can manage”). There was Larry Bickwick rummaging in a metal cabinet for an ink cartridge for the photocopier (“Goodness to Betsy—somebody’s been using the photocopier again!”); there was Chester Cash too, answering an important business phone call (“Be with you in a sec, Bob!”). There was Miss Ratcliffe from the human resources department breaking off from issuing an instruction (“How did your business trip go, Mr. Hash? Oh, there’s something I need to speak to you about, by the way”).

  Bob T. Hash’s executive office itself, at the end of this marshmallow minefield, had a nameplate on the door that said MR. BOB T. HASH III in big bold letters under the venetian blinds, and anyone who wanted to go through that door and who wasn’t Bob T. Hash III in person had to knock first and wait outside for Bob T. Hash’s permission to enter. For a moment, I stood there. I didn’t knock, but I didn’t go in either. This was my Rubicon moment. Either I was Bob T. Hash III and did not need to knock, or I was not Bob T. Hash III and did need to. Funnily enough, despite my inside knowledge regarding Bob’s elopement, and even after the welcomes I had just received from his colleagues—I still half expected to look through the venetian blinds and see Bob at his desk with his nose in last month’s sales figures.

  I looked through the slats. My fears were unfounded. I went through the door without knocking. There was a nice, thick wall-to-wall off-gray carpet and an impressive air-conditioned plushness. Like picture book Bob T. Hash III, I hung my trilby on a prong of the hat stand and, before sitting down, went over to get a quick look out the window—down down down to the quiet well-tended toy-town, a dizzying five stories below. Along Main Street cars were floating by as meek as electrical milk carts, and pedestrians were sliding along sidewalks as if on casters. The sidewalks were so tidy and clean they might have been scrubbed down only that morning. At Peccary’s department store opposite, I watched a truck delivering haberdashery supplies—a fine bolt of cloth, a bumper consignment of trilbies stacked in cartons. In its window display a mannequin in a Lacoste polo shirt and sun visor was readying to putt for a birdie.

  I came away from the window, did a lap of the desk, and sat down in Bob’s comfy executive chair. Leaning back, cupping my hands at the back of my head, I surveyed diverse objects arranged on the pale burgundy leather canvas of the desk top—an oversize black Bakelite telephone with an old-fashioned ring dial and externally mounted bells; a framed photo of the Hash family posed in front of the house porch on Remington Drive; a mercury-filled executive stress toy with a little ladder (that I was later to break); and, oh yes, in the out-tray section of an otherwise empty three-tiered plastic stack arrangement there was a large manila envelope that jumped out at me as looking strangely familiar.

  The three-bunk-tiered office work tray can be made of either plastic or aluminum; while manilas—the whole-wheat mulatto of the envelope world—exude by design a dull bluff anonymity that is off-putting enough for an addressee, let alone an impartial, truth-seeking bystander such as myself. When plastic, as in the case of Bob T. Hash III’s, the tray arrangement (in, out, pending) alas didn’t display the same range of color that my rungs did. All the more surprising then that my interest should have been piqued, all the more unexpected that the manila envelope should—I nearly said in a jiffy—find itself in my hands.

  “Could this envelope contain the manuscript that Bob had been so busy with in the run-up to his dramatic elopement?” I reached over and palpated the dense sheaf of paper inside the manila. It’s true, Bob had been bringing more work home of late than usual—to work on at his living room desk in the evenings—as if he’d been working on some extracurricular project, with its own stringent deadline; and it’s true he did keep his work in a manila envelope, just like the one I was now holding in my hands.

  What valiant ping-pong monograph had so obsessed Bob, what learned thesis had taken up so many of his final ref
lective evenings? Perhaps some tractatus on marketing strategy, an omnibus of business terms, or some glossy brochure on phrasal verbs? Well, if I was right about the manila, then I was perhaps about to find out. As I undid the envelope’s metal wing clips I had a strange foreboding that I was about to unveil some important further clue in connection to Bob’s disappearance—that I was on the brink of discovering some significant riddle-like link between my mentor’s unscheduled departure and my own even bolder misadventure.

  I had barely time to browse through a page or so of Asking for Directions when there was a knock on my executive door imperious enough to rattle the venetians. It was Miss Ratcliffe from Human Resources. When Miss Ratcliffe entered the office and bid Bob once again a good morning, my first inclination was to fly up onto a spare prong of the hat stand and go “Morning, Mr. Hash!…Morning, Mr. Hash! in the classic, screechy singsong who’s-a-pretty-Polly parrot voice, for which parrots are indeed rightly famed. Fortunately for the hat stand, and my budding career as a Bob T. Hash III, I desisted, for Miss Ratcliffe was dropping by, on a personal basis, to bring me bad news. In her own courtesy call voice (that I recognized from Acme Business Audiocassette 3), Miss Ratcliffe informed me that Miss Scarlett, my personal assistant, had not come into the office today. Since it was most unusual for Miss Scarlett to turn up late for work, the department of human resources was naturally anxious that something untoward might have happened. “We’ve tried calling her at her home, but no one’s answering the phone.”