Joyfully appreciating his reacquaintance with “A Perfect Day For Bananafish,” on a steady sunshine day at the office in San Francisco, his feet high and easy on his desk, the chair that leans backward and if you don’t watch it tips over, deciding that it was late enough in the afternoon not to field any more calls, the office empty except for the man and the machines, Morb Orring spent a brief, reflective moment acknowledging that he was lucky with his job. Baseball game on the radio. And if not baseball, jazz. It was four in the afternoon. He’d read by accident that there have been 27 days of rain out of 50 in Manhattan. A gloomy photograph on the internet of Madison Avenue, and a whiney caption that attempted to reveal the mood of New Yorkers. Morb had forgotten all about New York. It was a surprise, nearly a shock, that he should know or pay attention to how the weather was back east. “Perhaps I should phone my brother,” he thought, “and get his input.” Is it truly bleak? What’s it like to experience rain in May and June?
Morb would admit to you that he’d forgotten what June was like anyhow, what a summer was supposed to be, a tongue that can taste humidity. He had decided long ago to concentrate on other things. Rain?, he thought: Amazing. Morb continued with the story, flew with ease through the man’s prose to the point where Seymour shoots himself in the temple on the unoccupied twin bed, gazing down upon his wife whom he’d previously jilted (he was, remember, a casualty of war, a man who perhaps should never have been released from the army hospital, and who maybe did not possess all of his f-a-c-u-l-t-i-e-s), and then quickly he set his feet to the floor. Morb turned off the radio. The afternoon heat was getting thick in the office, the result of the west-facing window receiving multiple kilos of sunlight, the shades not quite mastering light, and he reasoned that it was time to quench his thirst.
He would tell you that he likes his street. On it the barber who tends his hair on coke. The bagel shop that feeds him his daily bread. And the bar that affords the occasional sip. He is not as Matthew in Manhattan is, a man who after work each day meets with his college roommate and tips back a few before “heading home to the wife.” Morb is not that way. He drinks occasionally, and during work hours as a young man would smoke a joint before seeing a movie. “Sort of twists the office and the desk and the heat around a bit; makes it like a holiday.”
His feet firmly stamped to the ground, he stood from his lean-back-almost-fall chair on wheels and grabbed his hat. Into the searing glare he bit, a sidewalk hard and hot, a mother rushing by, surprised by the slamming office door (the slam not his fault; blame it on the hydraulic swing), a Mexican man who once cleared up the spelling for him of “banditos” riding on his forklift, a car, a hearse, the mailman, an accountant with his leather briefcase leaving the office and streaming for his car, two women in tights and towels around their necks walking with a lean toward their exercise class. Morb moved his body casually, without hurry, in the manner and stride he has carefully developed over the last 45 years of his life. It is a paramountly rare occasion that he ever hurries: not when late to work, not when late to the symphony, not when the bus is about to pull away will he force a run; not to meet a suppertime date. His last panicked run was at the airport in Chicago to make a connecting flight. For this he would stretch his limits and enforce the public display. Today, in the afternoon sun, convinced that Salinger was an accident of good timing and nothing more (besides, he would admit, an interesting and engaging narrative tone, with some certain flashes of brilliant phrase and humor), he moved his feet as if metronomed by a blasé whistle. He made effortlessly and quite harmoniously (he’d said a brilliant hello to the florist) the corner bar, the Cross of the King.
He ordered a Balvenie, fingering gently away the bartender from the 21-year, and thanked her. He did not hear at first the $14. “What?” he leaned. Stanford was playing in the College World Series on all four televisions. The bar inhabited by older men in their fifties, sixties and rising, afternoon guys, gurus of the slick look and the urban way of life. The bargirl repeated the number and Morb coughed up the money from his wallet, let her keep a dollar (which she did anyhow without asking, tossing it without turning her back from the register into a bucket), and retreated to a stool near the window and the enjoyment of his drink. He inhaled, flexing nostrils, the Scotch for five minutes. This was subconscious. The stained-glass window next to him was open, the sound of the occasional rushing car or bus, and an easy breeze off the water, infusing his afternoon moment of surreptitious slippery from the office with schoolboy excitement, of skipping a class, of the last day of school, the beginning of summer. He observed an outfielder make a great, sliding catch. The television replayed the heroism five times. Morb removed the first sip of his whisky.
He drank the rest slowly, meaningfully, and contemplated the size of the woman’s hit in a shot glass against what he pays for a bottle at home. He laughed. “Perhaps I should begin the process of utilizing a flask,” he said. He was between bottles. He finished the drink sooner than he’d hoped. It felt nice enough, sure. But the moment was gone. He walked down the street back to work. He’d left the door unlocked and therefore did not need to unlock it now. The door slammed after he’d entered. He felt a slight buzz. But fourteen dollars down some tube, his tube, goodbye? Not buzz enough, he thought. “Well, that’s what you get,” he said. And it wasn’t dissatisfaction, it wasn’t that. It was, just, an ephemeral moment, a flash, disappeared into alcohol vapors and a wash of sea breeze. Damn, he thought. He visualized calculations in his head. He saw the slight shot he’d received and stacked them up to make a bottle. They’re making a hundred bucks on an outlay of thirty, the thought. He did not presume to be entirely accurate, nor did he care. Dealing with ballpark figures. The office was boiling now, his colleagues who come in early in the morning understand the deal, a complex relationship with the sun in northern California, the spin of fog, the cold ocean. “Jesus, it’s hot,” he said to himself. He kept the radio off. He was not interested in set and setting any longer. He wanted to go home. To hell with the office. He sat heavily in the chair and reasoned that the chair smelled, the fabric having soaked up his sweaty ass for too long. Maybe vinyl he should get, he thought. No, then he’d stick. Leather? Damn. He began turning off lights.
He slid his keys in the lock in anticipation of closing. He turned the computers off and remembered the switch for the copy machine this time. The fax ran something in from the outside world and he ignored it. He walked the hallway to the bathroom and turned on the water in the sink. He left it on. This was so it would run cold, and he would effect a “clearing of the pipes,” as he might term it, some wives' tale it may be, but one he employed nonetheless. He walked back to his desk and grabbed his empty plastic water bottle. He walked the long hallway and filled up his plastic water bottle. He returned to his desk, snatching some scissors from Washington’s cubicle, and he sat down in his smelly chair. He leaned over so that he could remove his wallet. He extricated a five and two ones from his leather. He began by cutting the bills into small pieces, and the small pieces into smaller slivers. He pinched small bits of his money pile and placed each pinch into his mouth. He chased it with the cold, urban-pipe water from his plastic bottle. He repeated the process of pinching the paper money, a move much like he’d seen with fellows and chewing tobacco, until the last was in his mouth and he’d followed it with water for the hard swallow. Now he smiled, now Morb had a feeling that he had retained balance to his hot afternoon. He locked up the office and walked home the long way.