Nicholson Baker - Checkpoint: A Novel

Contents

For Carroll,

and in memory of Bob

May 2004

Adele Hotel and Suites

Washington, D.C.

JAY: Testing, testing. Testing. Testing.

BEN: Is it working?

JAY: I think so. [Click... click, click.] Yes, see the little readout? Whered you get it?

BEN: Circuit City.

JAY: Three hundred and ninety minutes. That should definitely do it. Ill pay you back.

BEN: No, its fine, honestly.

JAY: Well, thanks, man. I just feel I have a lot in my noggin right now.

BEN: So I gather. You look good, Jay.

JAY: Really? I was working on a fishing boat for a while, dropped some pounds. Are those new glasses?

BEN: Yeah, Julie helped me pick them. Did you know Brooks Brothers made glasses frames?

JAY: No, I did not. Let me see them.

BEN: Sure.

JAY: Made in China. I always check. Anyway, they suit you. Really, you look less like a bird.

BEN: Im glad to hear it. So tell me whats up.

JAY: Oh, lets see. Where to begin? Where to begin?

BEN: Obviously you have something on your mind.

JAY: Thats true.

BEN: You could begin with that.

JAY: Okay. Uh, Im going tookay, Ill just say it. Um.

BEN: What is it?

JAY: Im going to assassinate the president.

BEN: What do you mean?

JAY: Take his life.

BEN: Youre shitting me, right?

JAY: No.

BEN: Tell me this is one of your little flippancies.

JAY: Its not a flippancy.

BEN: Come on, Jay. This isntturn that off.

JAY: No, Id like it on. Before I do it I want to explain, for the record.

BEN: Please turn that off right now.

JAY: Its got to stay on.

BEN: I think I better go.

JAY: Already?

BEN: Yes already. Youre talking about the pres-ident, am I right? That is what you said. Or did I just hallucinate?

JAY: No, that is what I said. But you cant go.

BEN: This isnt what I thought you were calling me about. I thought maybe your girlfriend had left you.

JAY: She did.

BEN: Well, okay. Thats more like it.

JAY: But I also have this plan that I need to execute. Calm down, will you?

BEN: Thats pretty funny.

JAY: What?

BEN: Youre telling me to calm down when youve got this... deed on your mind. Its a major, major, major crime. It doesnt get much more major.

JAY: I know, and its high time, too. I havent felt this way about any of the other ones. Not Nixon, not Bonzo, even. For the good of humankind.

BEN: Do you have a gun?

JAY: I dont like guns.

BEN: But do you have one?

JAY: I may.

BEN: That is so low. Youre a civilized person.

JAY: Not anymore.

BEN: You cantthe country has no need for this service.

JAY: I think it does. I think we have to lance the fucking boil.

BEN: No, Im serious, hell be out of power eventually. Either he loses and hes out, or he wins, and then hes out a little later. Either way, his time will pass in a twinkling. Many years from now youll be reading the comics in some caf somewhere, and youll think, Boy oh boy, Im sure glad I didnt do that.

JAY: Im going to do it today.

BEN: Lets just set it aside, shall we? Just put that off to one side. You know youll never get away with it. Theyll shoot you full of bullets and youll die. Or theyll fry you. Seriously, youll die. And for what? Do you know what a bullet does?

JAY: It tears into your flesh at high speed. It rips through your vitals.

BEN: If you get hit here? Half-digested material leaks out of your intestines into your abdominal cavity.

JAY: Thats what happened to McKinley.

BEN: You mean President McKinley?

JAY: Yes.

BEN: Well, right. Do you want that to happen to you? They have snipers up on the roof.

JAY: I know, Ive seen them. Theyve got missile launchers up there, too.

BEN: Those guys want to put bullets into you.

JAY: They dont know about me.

BEN: Oh, but they know that there are bad people out there.

JAY: Thats true, and Im one of them.

BEN: I dont think so.

JAY: No, Ben, this guy is beyond the beyond. What hes done with this war. The murder of the innocent. And now the prisons. Its too much. It makes me so angry. And its a new kind of anger, too. There was a story a year ago, April last year. It was a family at a checkpoint. Do you remember?

BEN: Im not sure.

JAY: It was a family fleeing in a car. The mother was one of the few survivors. And she said,
I saw Sorry. I cant.

BEN: Its all right.

JAY: Im not going to let him get away with this.

BEN: You think this is all him? What about, you know, Cheney? What about Donald? What about all the generals who came up with the attack plans? And the hopheads who flew the airplanes?

JAY: Hey hey, ho hoGeorge Bush has got to go.

BEN: Look, hes going to go, its inevitable, hell have a successor.

JAY: Now. He has to go now.

BEN: Set it aside. Just set it off to one side, please, will you? What have you been up to?

JAY: Oh, Ive had a bunch of jobs. I got into a slight financial scrape.

BEN: How bad?

JAY: Well, I nearly had to declare personalinsolvency, shall we say.

BEN: Ouch.

JAY: It was intense.

BEN: I bet.

JAY: So Ive been working as a day laborer.

BEN: You havent been teaching at all?

JAY: That kind of ended. It was really a part-time thing, anyway, so... But the day labor has been really good for me. When you do gruntwork for hours and hours you actually have a lot of mental time.

BEN: Mm.

JAY: Your body is working and your brain can kind of cruise here and there.

BEN: Yeah, I find in the evenings, like when Im chopping up a cucumber to make salad, that rhythmic chop, chop, chop, sometimes I think of a little connection that didnt occur to me all day.

JAY: So tell me how your book is coming.

BEN: Which one? You mean the one

JAY: The one about the government department during the war, the department that steamed open the envelopes.

BEN: Oh, the Office of Censorship, right. Well, I kind of hit a retaining wall with that one. But we dont need to talk about that.

JAY: I want to. It sounded very interesting when you told me about it.

BEN: Well, okay, I spent some time at the National Archives and then I went to Wisconsin, and I spent some time there, thats where some of the papers are, and, well, the material hasnt started to sing to me yet. But it will, it will.

JAY: When did we last get together? Was that three years ago?

BEN: May have been. Long time.

JAY: Im so sorry about that wheelbarrow, man.

BEN: No no no.

JAY: I felt bad, I just didnt see it in the dark.

BEN: Its fine, it still works. It lists a little, thats all.

JAY: Really sorry. So what have you been working on instead?

BEN: Instead of what?

JAY: Instead of the book about the steaming open of the envelopes.

BEN: Oh, a few thingsa few Cold War themes that Ive been pursuing. And my classes take up timeI co-teach an honors seminar every spring.

JAY: Some good students?

BEN: A few. Oh, and I bought a camera! Thats my big news.

JAY: A camera, huh? Digital?

BEN: Well, I have a digital camera, but no, this one that I bought is a film camera. Its called a Bronicaa Bronica GS-1.

JAY: A Bronica GS-1. Whats that?

BEN: Its a big heavy camera, it uses a wider kind of film.

JAY: Wheres it made? Germany?