"Nechtr did say he got them from somebody he trusted a lot, Mr. Steelritter," from Sternberg's corner.
"I'll stamp him out. He's through in the industry. In every industry. Ambrose is dinked. He's zotzed."
"Of course he got them from him," D.L. says, her tone weariness over glee. "Just tell him, love."
"I got them under the condition I don't say where, if asked," Mark says quietly.
"That rat," J.D. says, his voice high with disbelief. "That hairless arrogant puss, that I brought up from a franchised nothing."
"Pop, this oil light's flashing kind of bright, right here."
J.D. is rapping his big forehead with the heel of his hand. "How fucking untidy."
"Nechtr said they give you an odd sort of self-control, sir," Sternberg says. Which Mark did not. Mark doesn't even look at him. He's staring at J.D. Steelritter's fine face.
"These things are the violent end of American advertising, kid,"
J.D. grimaces critically at the dusty, well-traveled crud in the blurred Baggie. "Advertising embodied."
Sternbeg horrified for reaclass="underline" "What?"
DeHaven's own distracting confusion sends a plume of talcum from a well-scratched scalp. "But we eat those suckers all the time," he says. "Fridge's full of them. Mom has to buy extra baking soda. They don't taste great, kind of corny. Mom says creative geniuses have perverse tastes, is all." He looks down at D.L. "What's the deal?"
DeHaven's oil light flashes OIL, illuminating redly each time the clown's lit nose is jounced with the car on the shittily maintained county road.
"They're obscene," D.L. says without expression. "That's the only deal they're part of."
'They make certain wishes come true, sir, don't they," Sternberg says.
Magda looks at Sternberg as if he's about five.
"Don't be an idiot," J.D. shouts, as they nearly sideswipe that Chrysler, which has fishtailed out of a blind verdant intersection's gravel and is now going East, the wrong way. The sunlight's color through the clouds is that of quality licorice, and the air is chill. Lightning convulses in the sky's western flank.
"Make wishes come true," J.D. snorts. There's no cigar in his mouth. "They make wishes. There's a difference, no?" Yes, he thinks. Until the Reunion.
"They're obsce-ene," D.L. says in the singsong of the ignored.
"Take what you fear most and turn it to wishes. Ambrose doesn't know what he and you are into, kid back there."
Mark says he has no idea what Mr. Steelritter is talking about.
What Mark Nechtr fears most: solipsistic solipsism: silence.
What Tom Sternberg fears most: whatever he's inside.
What Drew-Lynn Eberhardt fears most: as yet unbetrayed, thus unknown.
What Dr. C— Ambrose fears most: the loss of his object and interpretive wedge: stained skirt, prostheses, pretend-history, blonde wig off its stem.
What DeHaven Steelritter fears most: see below.
"You think an ad's just a piece of art?" J.D. is saying. "You think it's not about what life's really about? That your fears and desires grow on trees? Come out of nowhere? That you just naturally want what we, your fathers, work night and day to make sure you want? Grow up, for Christ's sake. Join the world. We produce what makes you want to need to consume. Advertising. Laxatives. HMO's. Baking soda. Insurance. Your fears are built—and your wishes, on that foundation." He raises above his headrest Mark's stash, and his own. "These were my own Pop's. From a funeral, back East. They bring the two inside each other. Marriage of violence. Shotgun wedding."
"Cooking flowers is supposed to get you off?" DeHaven says. His half-and-half clown's profile pivots between creepy confusion and complete fear of his own instrumentation.
"They're a drug?" Sternberg says. "Except organic? An anti-fear pro-desire drug?"
"They're wrong," D.L. says in the strident voice of her Tarot tutor. "They stand for the fact that they're wrong. They're not only obscene symbols, they're clumsy symbols."
"Steelritter…" Magda begins huskily.
J.D. waves the rearview image of her orange face and askew wig aside, now so into what he's bet his life on that he's almost sublimated his utter dread about rain diluting the Reunion. Fucking Midwest weather. He says, "The Post-product missy's right, on this one. They're just symbols. They're about as subtle as a brick, for Christ's sake."
"Eating symbols?"
DeHaven's looking at the steady red light. "Pop?" J.D. cannot believe the back-stabbing innocence of a man who'd pass out symbols like they grew on trees. He addresses the back through the rearview. "And you think how you appear, how you feel, are your adman's only levers? Your only source of fear? That Today has gone on forever?"
Sternberg's affirmative is ear-splitting.
"Then you've got some coming of age to do, Mr. Always-looks-at-himself-half-the-time. 'Cause the ad business goes way, way back. You've got fears so deeply conditioned they're ingrained. Built right in. Hidden in plain sight. You know you feel it, back there. This feeling it's so conditioned it's part of you. As in there's certain things that, no matter what, one doesn't do those things. You don't kill your father. You don't betray your lover. You don't lie. Except when absolutely necessary. You don't aim a loaded weapon. Except in self-defense."
You don't disappear," D.L. says tonelessly. "You don't scald people in their sleep."
"I'd go ahead and put those up there, too," J.D. nods seriously, grim. "And another one, see. You don't put what's beautiful inside you, as fuel, when the whole reason it's beautiful is that it's outside you. Supposedly certain things are in the world. To see. Not to chew up and swallow and expel."
DeHaven's point of view on all this is diffracted. He's thinking of the probably several tons of roses he's consumed, at the farmhouse, over his childhood; and experiencing a growing affinity with D.L. Eberhardt, who's looking, as she hears the confirmation of her psychic's sagest advice, more and more like a cat hissing at the big shadow of some nameless and total threat — and has pretty well-developed canine teeth to begin with — and he's getting more and more afraid that a sleep-deprived J.D. is maybe off his fatherly nut, a bit, about the roses that have no, and I mean zero, historical effect on DeHaven; and the de-nosed clown is afraid that J.D.'s going to make him drive his malevolent car, that he built and lubricated with his own two ungloved hands, right into oil-depletion and seizure and breakdown; and begins to wish very much that they could simply stop, idle a bit, let J.D. calm down about what're only after all snacks and commercials, let DeHaven have a look at his own dipstick. . that they could simply stop to check how things are, under the glittered hood; that they could suffer a brief interruption that would maybe probably ultimately save time; wishes they—
"Pop."
"But those deep-in-your-bones feelings are conditioning, too," J.D. says. "You know what the first real ingenious timeless ad campaign even was?" He sees in the rearview two blank stares flanking two closed eyes. "Jesus," he shakes his head in disgust. "But the boredom, at least: even you kids know you feel the boredom in your gut, right along with the fear. 'Do not do what is not right.' Tired image. Hackneyed jingle. No marriage, anymore. Obsolete. Conditioning has obsolescence built right in. Like the Jew what's his name and his bells and dogs that drool. Dog hears the ching of that fucking bell over and over, plus his pups, generations of dogs, ching, ching, till the sound is like the sound of the dogs' own blood in their heads — they can't hear it anymore, don't listen — they after a while stop the drooling over meat the bell had started. Give them enough time and enough bells and they start yawning, at the ching. Over at Steelritter Ads we've done conditioning research up to here," holding one hand like a blade to his fine head's top, gently squeezing the flowers with the other, in the bag.