Plane Geometry And Othe Affairs Of The Heart - Excerpt

On the morning of his thirteenth birthday Harry Sneltzer woke to the disquieting realization that he was becoming his father. He slid from his bed, stumbles into the bathroom and, staring at his sleep - gazed eyes in the mirror, tried out a few characteristic phrases:

"Harry, son …"

"Seen the paper?"

"Can't find my socks." Yes, though a decade has passed since his father's death, Harry still remembered the voice well enough to recognize it - the rapid spitting out of syllables, an affinity for rising inflections, the explosive reiterations. Even his body this morning was not his own. He stared at his legs. Spindly and faintly bowed, with flesh too pale and hair too black and wiry, these were the legs Harry had seen beneath his father's heavy white shirted torso in the hall of his parents' home. But worse than these physical transformations was a feeling - he had no idea from where it came - that at any moment he might say or do something that wasn't his own, that even his thoughts were coming from somewhere else. Was this a crisis, he wondered stepping into the shower? He fiddled with the water flow. He couldn't remember if his father had preferred warm or stinging cold.

"Harry, Son, it's good- GOOD- to see you again!" Harry turned away from his office window and gazed into the white incisors and bulbous jowls beaming at him from his desk.

"Dad. Why, what are you doing here?"

"Hah! That's good, Harry. That's clever. A real sense of humor, that boy. What am I doing in your office? Is that it? Hah, hah! Rich."

"Hah, hah …"

"But I've seen you looking better." His father frowned down momentarily at Harry's briefcase resting on the floor to the side of the desk, then cut his eyes at Harry thoughtfully.

"Yes. I've definitely seen you looking less peakish."

"Well, jeez, Dad, I guess it's this influence business."

"Influence?"

"Don't get me wrong. I liked you. It's just that … well, one of you seemed enough."

His father came out from behind the desk and threw his arm over Harry's shoulders.

"Son, Son, Son, life is fat with changes, swollen to bursting with them. You never know a minute you're not being transformed, ands today-TODAY- Harry, is just a small kink in the customary order of things. Think of it this way: for the first time in your life, you know before you finish where you will conclude. That, Harry, is a privilege. Relax." He yanked the briefcase from the floor and replaced it in the corner by the coat tree.

"I don't like it."

"Now, Harry, you're acting a bit of the spoiled sport, don't you think?"

"But I don't want to be you, Dad. I want to be me."

"Mee, schmee. Just do what you want, Son. It's that simple."

"But what I want is what you want."

"Wanted."

"Wanted."

"Hmmmm." Harry's father placed his own briefcase in the space beside the desk and with a sigh lowered himself back into the chair.

"Then, Harry boy, looks like you've got a problem."

Harry finished his shower, dressed and caught the number ninety-two bus down to his office. He pushed open the door - same old unoiled whine - and stood gazing in. Perhaps the office was part of the difficulty. They had moved him only a couple of weeks ago, on the day after he'd received his bank statement. He could remember the day clearly because the statement wasn't just the monthly; it was the bi-annual - the one with his savings, too. And this statement was more significant than others. A fifth digit had at last materialized to the left of the decimal. Ten thousand thirty-six dollars and odd cents. But instead of drawing his usual confidence from these numbers, Harry had felt depressed. He could go back to school now if he wanted, take a leave of absence, travel, even pick up his saxophone again. Still there was something unresolved about these new possibilities, something threatening. He had eaten too much for supper that night and gone to bed with a stomachache.

Then the next morning when he had arrived at his office the furniture was missing.

"We're moving you, Harry," Callen had said, his eyes half open and a smile drooping across his chin.

"Need the space for the girls. You'll be in with Requisitions. Fifth floor."

Harry had stared back at him.

"Fifth floor? That's my father's old - "

Callen had nodded sleepily.

"Yeah. The super remembers. Says it's even the same office."

And though there was no way to be sure if the supervisor had known what he was talking about or not, enough of the details were right to make Harry wonder - the perpetually swinging brass light fixture, the crack in the plaster by the door, the top window pane whited-out then scratched partially clear again. He walked over to his desk and lowered himself into the chair. It's casters rolled smoothly with only the faintest squeak. Honey-colored with a badly scored seat and sweat-darkened arms, it clearly had a couple of decades' use behind it and might have been Harry Sr.'s own. Harry felt a cold prickling in his shoulders as he leaned back. The springs sang softly. He lifted his heels into a shallow worn depression above the left desk drawers. They fit perfectly.