‘He looks nervous,’ said Murcheson as the tail leader of the thirty-second spot rolled out of the film gate and began flapping around on the take-up reel.
‘Intense, we thought.’ Dave Valentine, Creative Associate at Unlimited, Ltd., shut off the projector. ‘He looked intense to us.’
‘Nervous.’
‘He needed a cigarette,’ said Valentine.
‘You’ll notice a big difference when it’s transferred to tape,’ said Lou Marquand, Assistant Creative Associate. ‘Film is high resolution, right? It’s not his medium. Wengernook is definitely low-res iconography.’
‘Nervous as a cat,’ said Murcheson. ‘This is not a man I would want leading me into battle, and our customers won’t want him either.’
‘I hate to fail you like this, Phil,’ said Valentine. ‘I can’t tell you the pain I’m experiencing right now.’
Murcheson lit a fresh Pall Mall. ‘Look, what you did is okay for the six o’clock news, the Rise and Shine show, the Sunday morning evangelists. No problem. But this country has a Super Bowl coming up in a couple of months. This is not a Super Bowl presence you’re giving me here, Dave.’
Valentine began jumping up and down. ‘Hold on, Phil! Concept time! Hold on! Here comes the egg… now the sperm… direct hit! Insemination! You’ll love this. It has action, a medieval knight, and a sex-role reversal.’
‘I like the knight. Sex-role reversal?’
‘We’re on top of it. Eighty-five percent of male viewers enjoy sex-role reversals, as long as you keep the threat factor in harness.’
‘Okay. But life is short – need I remind you? The Super Bowl, Dave.’
‘Phil, you’ll have it in time for the goddamn Army-Navy game.’
Robert Wengernook proved a far more persuasive scopas suit salesman than anyone at Eschatological Enterprises had anticipated. Seven seconds after the commercial was aired for the first time, John Frostig’s phone rang. It was the chairman of the Wildgrove Board of Selectmen; he wanted two adult units and three child-size ones. No sooner had John replaced the receiver when the phone jangled again. The principal of Wildgrove High School required seven suits.
By Thanksgiving, John had supplemented his panel truck with a factory showroom, the Civil Defense Stop, open every night till nine.
America was becoming a safe, white country. From sea to shining sea, citizens began wearing their civil defenses as a matter of daily routine. Cheerfully they mastered the arts of eating, sleeping, working, and playing in perpetual preparedness for warheads. Not only did the suits promise survival in times of nuclear exchange, they also discouraged muggings and rapes.
Spin-off industries flourished. Rare was the entrepreneur who could not turn a profit from dry-cleaning scopas suits or adorning them with sashes, plumes, jewels, and decorative inlays. Little girls placing orders with Santa Claus commonly requested scaleddown scopas suits for their dolls. Patches bloomed everywhere, woven from fireproof thread: TRACY LIVES HERE… WHICH WAY TO THE FRONT?… HAUTE PROTECTION CIVILE… DETERRENCE IN PROGRESS.
Fade-in on a village somewhere in medieval Europe. A gang of fat, bearded brigands is running amuck, setting the peasants’ huts on fire. Women and children flee in panic. Men are cut down by the brigands’ spears, axes, and swords.
NARRATOR (voice-over): The threat. It’s always been there. It always will be. Wherever you find freedom, you find forces seeking to destroy it.
A helmeted knight enters the village on a white charger. His armor catches the glow of the burning huts. He dismounts, draws his sword, and falls upon the brigands. Their weapons prove useless against breastplate and mail.
NARRATOR: But for every threat, there is a defense. In ancient times, body armor deflected swords. Today, scopas suits deflect blast, heat, and fallout.
As the victorious knight removes his helmet, his armor is magically transformed into a particularly svelte scopas suit. Surprise: the knight is a woman. She swirls her head, sending luscious blond hair in all directions. The background dissolves. A suburban living room emerges in its place. The woman’s husband rushes over, children trailing behind.
DAD: Marge, you did it! You saw our Eschatological representative!
MOM: Deterrence is only as good as the people it protects, Stan.
DAD: I’m so glad we had that talk.
Fade-out.
When Justine Paxton saw the thirty-second spot during the Army-Navy game, she concluded that she could have done a better Mom than the woman who played the part.
Her acting teacher agreed.
One bitter December morning, as George sat at his work table putting the final cuts in a stencil, he was enveloped by a sense of well-being. The feeling seemed to originate from outside his body. He turned.
The specter stood in the middle of the shop, veil up, smiling. A handbag dangled from her black-shrouded arm. She glanced longingly at Design No. 7034, rendered in South African granite. The granite was blacker than her eyes, the blackest of the black, as Arthur Crippen called it.
‘My name is Nadine Covington,’ she said. How smooth her voice, how young.
‘Why have you been spying on me?’
‘Not spying. Appreciating. You are a good man, George Paxton, a saint in a business swarming with ghouls.’ Although she had no trace of a foreign accent, she spoke as if English were an unfamiliar language. ‘I am honored to meet you.’
Sensations of peace and contentment continued to flow from the specter to George. ‘This is a service business,’ he said. ‘The product comes second. We must be as sensitive as any funeral parlor director – it’s amazing what people have on their minds when they come in here. The idea is to make the customer feel good about his choice, even if it’s the cheapest.’
‘You’re skillful at that.’ Nadine went to an electric heater and began massaging the winter out of her finger bones.
‘No memorial will take away grief, ma’am, but it can help.’ George had not drawn such pleasure from the sheer act of talking since he was three. ‘I’ll tell you what gets me upset, though. It’s when people buy, er, you know’ – what to call them? – ‘guilt stones.’ (That sounded right.) ‘I’m thinking of… well, I won’t say his name, but he treated that kid of his like junk. And then, after the boy drowns, what does this guy do? Has us order a four thousand dollar model of the Taj Mahal.’
‘I must give you your task,’ said Nadine. ‘An ordinary commission – not a guilt stone. I need an epitaph, and something to put it on.’
‘Is this a pre-need?’ he asked.
‘A what?’
‘Do you want the stone for yourself?’
‘No. Some people very close to me are dying… my parents.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Good God – how old were her parents?
‘The stone must endure,’ she said.
‘We carry the best bonded granites.’
‘I fancy this material.’ Nadine caressed the South African sample, which was polished to a mirror brilliance. ‘I can see my face in it.’
‘Our stones have extreme density – they can take the most detailed carving. Also low porosity – no moisture gets inside, ever. The guarantee is unconditional, valid to you, your heirs, and your assignees. If a crack appears, even a hairline, you get a new monument, free.’
‘I have no heirs or assignees. My real concern is the epitaph. I want… eloquence.’
‘Eloquence?’ said George lightly. ‘Really? But why, ma’am? I mean, it’s not like it’s going to be carved in stone or anything… That’s a little joke we have around here.’ He reached into the shelves above his work table and pulled out a plastic binder containing twenty sample epitaphs, typed, double spaced. It began with Number One, IN OUR HEARTS YOU LIVE FOREVER, followed by ASLEEP IN THE ARMS OF JESUS, then I AM THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE, all the way through Number Twenty, GOD IS LOVE. He handed the epitaphs to the old woman, who studied them with pursed lips.