Read Online Vineland by Thomas Pynchon - Free Book Online Page B

bullwhip, he appeared in knee socks, buckle shoes, cutoff trousers, blouse, and platinum wig, all borrowed from his wife, Blodwen. “Crabgrass won’t be’ave?” he inquired in a species of French accent. “Haw, haw! No
problem!
Zhust call—The Marquis de Sod. . . . ’E’ll wheep your lawn into shepp!” Pretty soon the business was booming, expanding into pool and tree service, and so much profit rolling in that Millard one time thought to take a few points instead of the fee up front. People out in the non-Tubal world began mistaking him for the real owner, by then usually off on vacation someplace, and Millard, being an actor, started believing them. Little by little he kept buying in and learning the business, as well as elaborating the scripts of his commercials from those old split 30’s during the vampire shift to what were now often five-minute prime-time micromovies, with music and special effects increasingly subbed out to artisans as far away as Marin, in which the Marquis, his wardrobe now upgraded into an authentic eighteenth-century costume, might carry on a dialogue with some substandard lawn while lashing away at it with his bullwhip, each grass blade in extreme close-up being seen to have a face and little mouth, out of which, in thousandfold-echoplexed chorus, would come piping, “More, more! We love eet!” The Marquis, leaning down playfully, “Ah cahn’t ’
ear
you!” Presently the grass would start to sing the company jingle, to a, by then, postdisco arrangement of the
Marseillaise
—
    Â 
    A lawn savant, who’ll lop a tree-ee-uh,
    Nobody beats Mar-
    Quis de Sod!
    Â 
    Millard was known for spreading work around generously, and for paying in cash and off the books too. Half the equipment lot today was filled by a flatbed rig from someplace down in the Mojave, whose load was a single giant rock, charred, pitted, streaked with metallic glazes. “Wealthy customer,” explained the Marquis, “wants it to look like a meteorite just missed his house.”
    Zoyd eyed it gloomily. “Askin’ for trouble, those folks. Messin’ with Fate.”
    They went on back to the office. Blodwen, hair full of pens and pencils, peeping away at the computer, glared at Zoyd. “Elvissa just called in looking for you, your rig’s been impounded.” Ah shit, here it was. Elvissa had been in the Vineland Safeway and when she came back out to the lot had found more law enforcement than she’d seen since her old marching days, surrounding the pickup she’d borrowed that morning from Zoyd as if expecting it to pull a weapon on them. Elvissa tried to find out what was going on, but had no luck.
    â€œListen, Millard, m’man, think I may need a disguise, and soon—can I trouble you for a professional tip or two?”
    â€œWhat’d you do, Zoyd?” Blodwen wanted to know.
    â€œInnocent till proven guilty, whatever happened to that?”
    â€œAll’s I’d like to know is will they be after your money,” a familiar question around here, the subcontractor accounts collectively having more attachments on them than a vacuum cleaner, “More liens,” Zoyd had once suggested, “than the Tower of Pisa,” to which Blodwen had answered, “More garnishes than a California burger—spouses, ex-spouses, welfare, the bank, the Lost Nugget, haberdasheries in faraway zip codes, it’s what you all get for leading these irregular lives.”
    â€œLooks like it’s what
you
get,” Zoyd had remarked.
    â€œIs why most of you ringdings keep gettin’ paid off the books,” she’d advised, making a face Zoyd remembered from teachers in elementary school. She wasn’t a bad person, though Zoyd theorized that she’d’ve been happier if they’d gone to Hollywood. Millard and Blodwen had met in a San Francisco theater group, she doing pretty-girl