On the way back, his passenger, perhaps relieved or pleased with his own assessment of the effect of his oratory, condescended to sit in front, and tried to make small talk with him. “So what’s your name, young man, and what are you studying?” Larry told him. “Well, Gary, you done good, as those poor illiterates would say.” He lapsed into silence until they reached Brockville, whereupon he launched shamelessly into his favourite topic. “I enjoyed talking about myself and my achievements. I’m sure you’re inspired by what you’ve heard. Yup, I’m pretty smug, Barry. Gorgeous wife, nice house, good job, son in recreology in college, daughter in media studies. What are you studying, Harry?” And without waiting for a reply, he was off again. “The coming things, you know, what my kids are studying. We need to know how to use all that recreation time we’re going to have when robots do all the work for us. We won’t need books any more by then, so it’s good to study movies, advertising, even political talk—you know, see through the tricks and slogans and stuff…” The more self-approval he revealed, the more he seemed to Larry to shrink into insignificance. Larry tuned him out, and drove on home.
Reflecting the next day on the banalities and unexamined assumptions he had been subjected to the day before, Larry remembered what an envious friend had said upon hearing that he was working for the prison service. “So you’re doing jail time, huh? I’d rather be doing real work outdoors in the fresh air, not cooped up in a stuffy office!” Yet Larry liked his workplace. ‘Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage,’ he reflected. The poet Richard Lovelace had written that in 1642, not that anyone else would care. Outside, heavy rain pattered against the window. It wasn’t always sunny outside. He recalled O.Henry’s story The Cop and the Anthem, in which Soapy the bum every late fall would commit an act of vandalism and wait to be arrested so that he could spend a cold winter comfortably in a New York jail. Blaise Pascal, Larry also remembered, had famously declared ‘All of mankind’s unhappiness stems from one thing only: that he is incapable of staying quietly in his room.’ He doubted that he would mind confinement. He was so immersed in his reverie that he did not hear footsteps behind him. Don was upstairs in conference with his Director, and imagination was always Larry’s default activity.
“Lost in thought?” It was the pretty secretary Cheryl from across the hall. She smiled at him.
“Yes. Sorry. What can I do for you?”
“Mr. Savoie wonders if you would proof-read his memo for him. He says your English is really good.”
“Of course, but he could write it in French. We’re bilingual now, or should be…”
“True, but he’s heard so much praise for your writing.”
Larry blushed. So Cheryl had heard good things about him, too. Things were looking up…
