The Three Rs' Press

By J. Hayes Hurley

A mysterious donor has given a gift to a New York publishing house to pursue the question “Is there progress in philosophy?” A senior editor, Dan Snyder, forms a separate imprint called the Three Rs’ Press, named after the three philosophers Charles Ralston, Michael Radigan, and Eugene Robinson, who will work on this imprint. What follows is both highly comic and philosophically revealing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Dec 21, 2016
• ISBN: 9781483462288

J. Hayes Hurley

J. Hayes Hurley is the author of 69 novels, including Those Brownsville Blues, Dawkins and Daughter, and The Turtle Bay Novels. As well, he holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from Yale University.

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HURLEY

Copyright © 2016 J. Hayes Hurley.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of both publisher and author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

ISBN: 978-1-4834-6227-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-6228-8 (e)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 12/09/2016

CONTENTS

The Three Rs’ Press

Part One

Part Two

THE THREE RS’ PRESS

A novel

By

J. Hayes Hurley

Part One

Was it still dark outside or was it the drapes? There was, from the horizontal prospect where novelist and philosopher Charles Ralston lay in his bed in a sumptuously decorated, Louis XV style room at the Raphael Hotel on the Avenue Kléber in Paris, having just come awake a moment earlier, no way to tell unless he turned on a light and looked either at his watch or at the clock on his bedside table, or waited until he received a prearranged wake up call from the desk, or got out of bed, walked over to the window, made a parting in the drapes with his hand, and then peered outside through that opening. Yet all these ways of knowing were ruled out of bounds on this and every morning of his life, save on those early summer days when intuition would tell him that the sun would in all likelihood be up before he opened his eyes, for Ralston took pleasure in entertaining cognitive problems of a safe sort in his free moments, and this was one such stickler.

Often he considered raising such questions to the status of philosophical inquiry the way some philosophers did with sounds, as in trying to guess the direction an unseen ambulance is traveling with its siren wailing while passing by their fixed position. That Ralston had not written such an article as yet was more to do with his devotion to animal comfort than it was either to philosophical curiosity or to the methodological strictures he applied to that discipline. In any case there was no literary tie in, that being his overriding concern. Aside from this he feared that such musings, if made public, would render his entire life frivolous in some way that was risible to everyone but him. Yet that was not fair in his judgment. For Ralston was ambitious. He was devoted. He was disciplined. He wanted to be both the writer creating a character that he wanted to be, and he wanted to be the character he created, too. He wanted to dwell in aesthetical realms where superfluous details did not exit either on the pages of the book or in his life and, often enough, he managed to do just that; he managed to breathe life into a page while turning flesh into paper.

*

It snowed all day Sunday and on through the night. Then at dawn the sky cleared rapidly, allowing the rising sun to shine down upon a world freshly coated in white, inducing people to say things like isn’t it beautiful out? or you ever noticed how the snow looks so pristine before the sand trucks come along and ruin it? Yet from where Michael Radigan sat working behind the outside window wall of a Dunkin’ Donuts outlet stuck between an alleyway and a pizza parlor in a Farmington Avenue strip mall located a half mile south of the center of the town of West Hartford, Connecticut, there was no sense of beauty at hand, for the rising sun, mustard yellow in color, poured an unchecked flood of dreariness into the franchise, and into his soul as well.

As he worked cold air poured into the outlet and nipped at his legs, for the continual crush of customers entering and exiting did not give the outside door a chance to close. He had no thoughts of leaving; he worked in public places, rotating them according to his whim, yet he sat idle for a moment, being both drawn to and repulsed by some of the customers who sat in chairs and at tables exactly like his. The old woman seated directly in front of Radigan and facing him had sundry flyer supplements from three different newspapers piled up before her. She was systematically going through every line of every page with a critical eye.

Radigan decided he did not like this old woman, though he could think of no reason why, unless it was simply because of her unattractiveness. Her forehead, shining like polished porcelain despite being severely wrinkled, continued so high up it imbalanced the face below. Her nose was a swollen patch of red; her upper lip was filled with vertical lines and in each crevice there appeared white hairs as thick as cat whiskers. The hair on top of her head, what was left of it, had resolved itself into a patchwork of islands thrusting upward in a rippling sea of baldness with strips of pinkish skin suggesting frothy waves.

With some effort he turned his eyes away from the sight of the old woman, only to become more intrigued and more repulsed by the sight of the man sitting diagonally across the room from him at a table beside the far wall. He was a vast, hulking creature wrapped up in an amorphous greatcoat from some forgotten era. His head and the sides of his face were covered in a leather hat with a thick fleecy lining and with earflaps dangling down onto his shoulders, its tie strings snaking down along the convex curve of his back. For the longest while Radigan stared at this giant thinking him mad, for he was not eating or drinking, but moving his over-sized hands in ways Radigan found disconcerting if not frankly alarming. The giant would press his palms together while staring ahead of him towards the back wall of the doughnut shop, a wall Radigan could not see from where he sat because the end of the uniform counter blocked his view. He got the idea the man was about to commit mass murder and praying to God for forgiveness ahead of time, but after watching him for some seconds it became clear that he was not mad, or dangerous, but was taking advantage of the sunlight pouring through the glass wall to make shadow pictures with his hands. That Radigan could not see these shadows, most likely of dogs or rabbits, had fooled him up till this point but now that he surmised what was going on he lost interest in the customer and called upon his editing discipline again. He sipped coffee, munched on a Boston crème doughnut, and readdressed his keyboard. Suddenly, without hesitation, and with no aforethought he wrote,

Consciousness is not both local and transcendent, it is local, transcendent. There is a certain appositional presence to mind that obeys no logical laws. One can at once be conscious of being bathed in a dead yellow light while remembering snow falling through the pre-dawn sky. These two intentional acts need no logical connectors.

Jerking his head back he thought,

What did I just scribble?

He wrote another line.

But to juxtapose, then to be aware of that, and then to be aware that one is aware of that means one has to entertain echoes, and then echoes of echoes in a single act of intentionality.

Radigan pressed the page down button with a curse. He closed this file and opened one he was assigned to work on this week. This script happened to be about consciousness, too. At once Radigan recognized what was going on: the author wanted to promote property dualism and was trotting out the party line. Radigan passed rapidly through the text and then closed it and opened yet another file, and then another, and then another. He worked furiously and without further interruption until four in the afternoon, pushing hard to get as much work done as possible by turning his fingers into a single blurry line, then shut off his laptop and started for home. Radigan worked for eight hours a day Mondays through Fridays; four hours a day on Saturdays and Sundays, holiday or no, and he even put in four hours a day when he took his family on vacation. But when he was finished working for the day he was finished! Radigan was a family man.

Daddy!

Daddy!

As soon as Radigan parked his old Toyota behind his wife’s even older Honda in the driveway of their modest house in a box lot on an unassuming side street in Newington, Connecticut, close to the Elmwood section of West Hartford, turned off the engine and stared to climb out, his daughter Judy, and his son Tom, ran diagonally across the postage stamp back yard using a pathway Tom had shoveled earlier and threw their arms around their father, nearly causing him to fall back into his seat.

Hey! Hey! Give a guy a break, will ya! Radigan protested while laughing. He gave them hugs, then retrieved his laptop from the car and, flanked by his children, who pulled on his coat and pants, made for the back door of the house.

His nine-year-old daughter, Judy, was what teachers at the special school she attended in West Hartford called multiply challenged. She was intellectually dull. Her legal blindness was only partially addressed by a pair of eyeglasses as thick as inkwells. Her left leg was two inches shorter than her right leg. A telltale scar on her upper lip left glaring traces of a badly botched operation to correct a harelip and, besides all these woes there were numerous other medical maladies that cropped up both regularly and by surprise. These defects made Judy all the more precious to Radigan, for he loved her unconditionally. As he said to people, whether they called for such an explanation from him or not, and usually they did not,

My daughter will always have a home for herself where love reigns. What else could anyone want? I say she is privileged, not handicapped.

To which he would sometimes add a few inarticulate words, whispering things like,

I don’t care if intelligence is so important ... ah ... not with my daughter. There is … we have to think of love as a value that …

Tom, eleven years old, was a husky lad whose one dream in life was to be a hockey player. Radigan paid to give him lessons at a rink over in Avon but only after his wife agreed to drive the boy to and from practices, since they were at god-awful hours in the morning and Radigan did not want to be tired when it came time for him to work. Unfortunately the boy had absolutely no athletic talent. Worse, he compensated for that by his bullying behavior.

Mikey!

Mary, Radigan’s wife, greeted him just inside the kitchen doorway by completely filling his mouth with her tongue, which tasted of tobacco along with various foodstuffs both sweet and salty. She followed this up with a hug that squeezed his chest like a vice.

OK, OK, OK, OK, he protested again, once his lips and the rest of his body were released. He laughed again and asked,

What’s for supper?

Hot dogs and beans! Tom shouted out in his raspy voice.

Good! Anything but doughnuts.

Radigan took a beer out of the refrigerator, popped the lid and sat on a section of the red and green tiled kitchen counter, his son sitting on one side of him, his daughter on the other, their feet dangling off the kitchen floor linoleum and banging against the lower cabinet drawer while Mary ran back and forth attending to the hot dogs and beans while depositing further, wet, sloppy kisses into Radigan’s mouth. She was, and with Radigan’s hearty approval, a frank sensualist. Mary relished the same junk foods she had devoured as a teenager because they tasted good. She drank beer because it made her high. She smoked cigarettes, inhaling them deeply, because smoke felt good hitting her throat and lungs. Radigan loved her for all these reasons and more. True, he approved of Dewey’s distinction between that which is desired and that which is desirable, he being the company pragmatist, but Mary was his love and he allowed her the honor of overriding all scientific insights.

Mary and Mikey, as they were called, met on their first day of high school and became sweethearts at once. Back then Mikey Radigan was a slim, soft-bodied, homely boy. Now, at the age of forty-two neither his face nor his body weight had changed. He remained youthful looking despite his eating fast food all through his workdays, then wolfing down Mary’s plain but plentiful suppers, and then further indulging in beer and snacks until bedtime.

Mary, once a sturdy teenage girl, was now a sturdy woman. Her thick black hair, which she rarely bothered to comb, cascaded down in all directions, and her puffy face was dominated by a large, round, fleshy nose. She projected an intense physicality at all times, and from their very first date overwhelmed Radigan with her French kisses, kisses that made him float with happiness, and her hugs, which never failed to make his chest ache alarmingly. Her breasts, which they both bragged about, and that measured a 38d cup when she was fourteen, and which Radigan called my left and right playgrounds, still remained her husband’s twin delights.

More importantly, and going to the ground of their relationship, were her bodily smells. Radigan’s declarations of love were tied to those smells as much as they were to her kisses. That his wife was frankly sensual and never ever resorted to feminine wiles was, for him, proof of his continuous good luck as a man. If there was one thing Radigan could not fathom, it was those comments from men who said that their wives had mysterious moods, or withheld sex as a means of punishing them, or that their marriages had settled down, which was supposed to be a good thing, or had grown stale, which was supposed to be a bad thing. Mikey and Mary’s marriage remained unchanged.

They got married the same weekend they graduated from high school. Radigan went to the State University on money borrowed from Mary’s parents and never returned a dime of it. His own parents disapproved of his marriage and to this day remained continuously aloof to both their son and his wife. Radigan gave his parents no thought at all.

He and Mary lived with Mary’s parents, Bob and Karen Gennaro, for the first seven years they were married, and this included his college days and his first three years of his doctoral program in philosophy. Mary had four miscarriages during this time and after suffering periods of brief but intense depression carried on as before, relying on Radigan’s love moment to moment. When Radigan started earning small amounts of money from his teaching assistant assignments he and Mary moved into the modest house in Newington. In that same year they had a daughter named Louise, a girl who died from a combination of birth defects when she was four. Once again Mary was plunged into depression but this time Radigan was depressed as well and could scarcely bolster his wife’s spirits. They were helped through this dark period, helped both emotionally and financially, by Mary’s parents, whom Radigan always praised for keeping a homey home. He would say to Mary,

You grew up in a homey home. That is what I want.

That’s what he got. They were blessed with two more children in their early thirties, and were as happy as could be. True, their daughter, Judy, did have many of the same birth defects as had her departed sister Louise, yet the parents took this in stride. That their son was not either bright or talented mattered a little, but this was a loving home regardless.

After finishing his doctorate Radigan taught for one year at the state university and then went to work for Bremmer and Cross Publishing with the understanding that he could work at home in Connecticut and only go down to the city when necessary.

They ate supper at a square maple kitchen table that creaked and wobbled, its legs having to be screwed back in every other day to keep them from detaching. Then they filed into their tiny living room to watch television, something they did every evening until ready to go to bed. Radigan let Mary have the clicker and never complained as she jumped from channel to channel; he was just happy to be relaxing with his family. They sat on the same lumpy couch they got from Mary’s parents as a house-warming gift but never thought of reupholstering. By now the fabric was so full of chocolate smears, the lining under the seats so crusted with potato chip crumbs and kernels of un-popped popcorn, and the sides so completely worn down, that Radigan, rather than complaining about its being hopelessly dirty and dilapidated, considered it, instead, as a prime example of hominess. In his mind, if you have an old couch and everyone sits on it every night, why, that is love.

The kids went to bed at nine and Radigan and Mary were bedded down by ten p.m. Once she had him behind the closed door Mary grabbed onto her husband, stretched him flat, squeezed him until his chest ached, filled his mouth with her tongue the way a bottle washer thrusts a sponge-on-a-wire into the neck of the empty, and then rolled over on her back inviting Radigan to play with her breasts for a few minutes before getting on with the act of love. Afterwards, they lay, side by side, panting, smelling the repeats of their supper, and giggling softly. Mary fell asleep first and began snoring gently. Radigan soon joined her.

*

Eugene Robinson opened the door leading onto the rear terrace of the Ritz Carlton at Half Moon Bay, California, and passed outside. There to greet him was a strong wind, a light rain, and the dramatic sight of waves crashing just beyond a green putting lawn stretching back to the base of the raised terrace. Robinson wore a fleecy windbreaker over a wool sweater but he was hatless. He slowly made his way across the maze of walkways on the terrace and ended up on the common golf and pedestrian walkway heading south along the coastline.

He checked into the Ritz Carlton at Half Moon Bay quite often given his meeting schedule, and took this walk several times a day. The stark beauty of the sea as seen from the bluffs, along with the irregular line of spare hills to the east never failed to move him aesthetically, and in any weather, though he liked it best in winter when storms were stacked up in the Pacific and the air came in heavily laden with moisture, for it allowed him to cut away the barriers of time and space to make conceptual contact with the ancient Milesians, leaving him connected to nature and thus rightfully humbled.

As he gained the first hill to where he could see the sea both ahead of him and behind him, something twice serendipitous happened: the sun broke through the clouds in the southeastern sky and the thick foam riding on the tops of the whitecaps drifted backwards and away from the direction of the incoming waves. Foam from each individual wave hovered over the water for some seconds before disappearing into the air, and then the process was repeated all over again with the next incoming wave.

Regardless of his being so familiar with these natural phenomena Robinson was unfailingly taken in wonder each time he stepped on these cliffs. He walked along the bluff to where the concrete steps led down to the sea and here he paused, deciding not to descend on this trip, not to place his shoes on the wet sand or upon the low stretch of rock, not to chance getting his legs soaked by a wave that fooled him with its reach. A woman walking her dog, an Irish Setter, said hello to him and Robinson nodded his head and smiled, reached out one hand to touch the dog’s head, and then passed on along the trail, coming to the wooden bridge spanning a wide, deep gully where water running off from the hills to the east dug a deep channel. Here the pines growing on the slopes reached their branches out to him like so many hands wanting to be shook; while the delicate bushes coating the slopes beside and under the bridge presented themselves to his gaze like employees standing at attention before a supervisor. A golfer appeared going too quickly in his cart and, gazing off at the gully, nearly ran into Robinson, who shouted out a curse word. This caused the golfer to jerk his cart out of the way. Robinson’s anger dissolved at once; such things happened when raw nature and planned development clashed.

He continued his walk along the shared trail beyond the bridge. To his left and right golfers were busy doing the usual, looking for the balls they had driven into the mercy of the wind and rain. Robinson answered the hellos and the waves of these golfers, though he ever wondered what they got out of their activity. To him it was a contradiction in terms, their stepping into the beautiful and then ignoring it. Though he did play golf when ordered.

Next, his steps led him uphill towards the end of the south golf course along the bluff. To the east where the low hills along the horizon and in front of them stretched out across the eastern edge of the golf course itself, stood what these days were referred to as McMansions. These multi-million dollar houses, built very close together and taking advantage of the western view of both the sea and the golf course were quite familiar to Robinson, who knew as much about development as he did pristine nature. He continued on to the end of the paved trail allowed for pedestrians, past the fragile strips of plant habitat at the very edge of the bluff, but did not continue on past the Anchor fencing where a working farm began. Joggers did so, but Robinson, who knew virtually every inch of the California coastline, picked his spots.

Standing still, he stared at the coastal view to the south. At once he forgot about the joggers and the golfers and the walkers and the workmen. He tuned out the aesthetic of the moment; he drew his attention away from the wind and the rain and the moisture-laden air. His only thought was a contradiction in terms.

Develop the bluff; do not develop the bluff.

Turning on his heel he started back towards the hotel. The view of the Ritz Carlton from that distance, half-shrouded in lifting fog, half-bathed in muted sunlight, brought to Robinson’s mind vague memories of European castles he and Jeannie had visited when they were newly married. This was more bitter than sweet, more like a pair of lips drawn into a thin, Stoic expression of passiveness than into a grim smile. He sighed and breathed aloud,

At least there is lots of work to do.

*

Sitting in his kitchen in his row house in Flatbush, Brooklyn, Bremmer and Cross Senior Editor Dan Snyder thought back to when this latest venture started. He had the trio on a conference phone call, including Ralston over in Europe, Radigan up in Newington, and Robinson out in California, and gave them the news such as it was, while withholding most of the business details. That these three were chosen was odd enough, for Radigan was already burdened with full time work for Bremmer and Cross, and Ralston and Robinson had their own careers and only took up technical philosophical work part time.

We have a new imprint, gentleman. On a whim I named it after you three, though we can let that be our little insider’s joke. Informally we can refer to it as Three R. Formally I call it the ‘Three Rs’ Press.’

The trio laughed politely. They held their tongues and listened to the old man’s plans that sounded, at this early stage, quite vague. Dan held back for he was somewhat clueless himself. The main points were that Bremmer and Cross had gotten the money to do this venture from an outside source yet to be named, and had put Dan Snyder, a man about to retire, in charge. Radigan’s salary would be shifted over to the new imprint in part along with a small pay increase, while consulting money would be handed out to Ralston and Robinson. These items were being taken up on the conference call. For Ralston and Robinson the choice of participating was very much up in the air, for they did not need the money. On the other hand Radigan, who had no choice in the matter but could use the extra money, was automatically enthusiastic. Besides, Radigan was the prototypical company man who was not only there to be ordered around by Snyder, but was under the thumb of two other senior editors, Martin Handy and Mindy Lucas, both of whom worked him from afar like a draught horse. As Snyder rambled on, Ralston, in growing impatience, finally broke in.

Dan? Cut to the chase. What is this new imprint about and what is our contribution to be regarding it.

This direct assault did the trick and a few rusty keys turned in the old man’s mind. He stated his purpose clearly, more or less making it up on the spot.

The whole idea of the imprint will be for philosophers to explore the age-old question: ‘Is there progress in philosophy?’

You must be joking.

Not at all.

But who wants that question explored?

Our benefactor. So don’t ask.

What are we to do?

You three are going to be the readers of all the submissions.

Why us?

You, Charles, know the history of philosophy inside out. You are charged with rejecting any theory already out there in one guise or another.

Everything is already out there, Dan.

Never mind that. You, Michael, must insist that whatever someone submits will be pragmatically helpful to humanity.

A tall order in philosophy, Dan.

Never mind that again. And you, Eugene, being a ‘reasonable skeptic’, will be our watchdog. Nothing that gets by the others will get by you unless you feel it should.

After a silence, Robinson made this observation.

If a submission has to be new in the field of philosophy, serve a practical purpose for humankind, and must avoid the objections of a skeptic, then the odds of anything getting published in the Three Rs’ Press may in all likelihood be nil.

So be it. It is not our money we are spending.

Thinking back on that call now, Dan chuckled, and whispered,

I should have called it the Aporia Press.

*

Ralston still lay in his bed in the dark in his room at the Raphael. He was by now reasonably sure dawn had come to Paris though he was not yet willing to get up and confirm that with his hands and eyes. He was thinking about his friends and former fellow graduate students Michael Radigan and Eugene Robinson that moment, and of how they had over the years since graduation kept in touch without laying eyes on one another. Now that they were working together on the Three Rs’ Press their correspondence had picked up considerably and they all enjoyed the increased contact even though their lives had taken very different turns.

Ralston had quit teaching philosophy after one year to begin writing novels, finding minor success almost at once. He accrued a tiny but loyal readership and, thanks entirely to a trust fund handed to him by his grandfather, soon left the United States for Europe where he led a minimalist life, striving to be like one of his own literary characters. This explained the uncertainty he felt every morning upon waking. Now and again he did take on side jobs in philosophy just to keep his hand in, agreeing to work with Dan Snyder on this Three Rs’ Press project was one of them.

Lying there now, with nostalgic thoughts of his friends washing over him, Ralston felt very much at ease and, whenever he felt this much at ease, his thoughts invariably turned to the anticipation of his enjoyment of his morning coffee. This, alone, was worth the concentrated effort.

*

In the morning, with the snow still piled upon the earth like so many blankets and pillows, Radigan drove his Toyota through scraped, sanded, and salted streets, turning right and left at random as was his rule. Finally he settled into the Burger King on New Britain Avenue below Borders Books and Music. This fast food outlet was newly renovated in contrasting tones of violet with a series of neoclassic photo-realism prints on the walls featuring James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, and Elvis. Radigan liked setting up here though he avoided ordering anything at this early hour save a large cup of black coffee. He would wait until just before noon, minutes before the big crowds came, and buy two cheeseburgers with extra ketchup.

The tables here were large and Radigan was able to set up comfortably in one of them by a south-facing window where the air outside the glass was a milky colored smear, reminding Radigan of veins showing on the fair skin of women with white-blonde hair, or of bottles of milk pasteurized but not homogenized, and where, after one siphoned the rich cream off the top, the residue below resembled a coat of thin white primer with bluish highlights.

The help in this Burger King was pretty much as it was at the Dunkin’ Donuts, Hispanic women save for the one male supervisor, or manager. He was a sad-eyed fellow in the habit of holding his lungs half filled with air and he counterbalanced the loud chatter of his help with a series of hand gestures designed to guide them along the path of efficiency. The right hand would point to the stainless steel outbox indicating breakfast sandwich ready or to the cash register meaning get over there and help the next customer; the left hand would subtly highlight the place where extra condiments were kept or to where the coffee maker needed changing. He was as concerned about the flow inside the franchise as he was to the buildup of cars leading to the outside takeout window; now and again he indicated, with a dip of his right shoulder, that an outside order needed to be delivered to the first driver in line.

Customers looking to take their food and go kept on coming and going. Those who, like Radigan, were using this franchise as a place to be in for hours on end included a group of retired people who gathered in the center tables around the contemporary water feature, a floor to ceiling, clear plastic pole within which bubbles traveled up and down in the trapped liquid. These retirees were mostly but not exclusively male and their activities consisted of reading the newspapers, then commenting to one another on what they had just read, then recalling, in turn, anecdotes from their individual childhoods, then passing judgment on one or more of their members who had passed on to another life, or not, then making general observations on the present political situation in the United States, and then, and finally, and if the few ladies present did not mind, entering into never ending discussions of baseball, the national pastime. Some retirees lengthened their stay by breaking out packs of cards or by opening checkerboards. They made sure they ordered plenty of food during the rush hours so they could justify taking up so many tables, though the sad-eyed manager never once said a disparaging word to them. They need not have worried; they were as welcome in the Burger King as was the philosophy book editor, Michael Radigan.

Another customer sort was comprised of mothers and their small children determined to pass the morning hours, or the afternoon hours in the play area facing the road. This was a noisy accomplishment but, and thankfully for Radigan, the noise was contained inside the play area except for those interrupting periods when discussions between mothers and children about the ordering of Whoppers and fries were shouted back and forth between the play area and the table area with the soundproof door between left opened.

Radigan never complained. He was ever patient. He worked in these public places and he respected them. He was a pragmatic pragmatist, he understood what was expected of him, and he was thankful for the opportunities given him everywhere he set up to work. These were his well lighted cafes so to speak, places he could both use and observe, places that served him as an office. At home he could not do so. Mary, who was a full time, stay at home wife and mother, and who loved him dearly, had no idea how to stay out of his way when he was home, which was fine with him. His daughter, Judy, when made aware that her father was home, just took it for granted that he was at home for her, which he was, and his son, Tom, took every opportunity when Radigan was at home to talk guy stuff with his dad, and Radigan heartedly approved of such talk as well. There was no question of working at home, then, and no room to do so even if he so wanted. To open his computer at the creaky, wobbly kitchen table would be to get in Mary’s way, and to work in the bedroom meant, inevitably, that Mary would come in there and interrupt him with her all-out kisses, be it morning, afternoon, or evening. So it was that Radigan worked in franchises. He had zero office rent to pay working in such outlets and the little money he spent on food and on coffee was trivial.

Sipping his coffee and staring at his laptop, Radigan fingers paused over the keyboard as he considered what file he ought open first. He had textbooks to edit. He had monographs of serious scholarship to edit. He had to collections of articles to edit. Now there was the additional work from Snyder and the Three R imprint, meaning he had to read submissions from philosophers all over the world, all of whom were hoping to get their cutting edge research published in the new imprint.

He opened and closed files rapidly, his flying fingers never pausing once. He edited three long letters, broke for lunch to wolf down his cheeseburgers with extra ketchup, gulped two coffees with extra half and half, and then got right back to work, this time on Three R business. The idea was that submissions that passed his pragmatic rule of thumb were to be E-mailed on as attachments to Ralston in Europe and Robinson in California. Anything surviving all three was to be sent on to Snyder, though, so far, and not surprisingly, nothing survived. At three-thirty Radigan closed all his work files and, without thinking about it, opened that file he had spontaneously written in yesterday, the one having nothing to do with his Bremmer and Cross duties. His fingers still flying, he wrote,

"Some people argue that consciousness arises out of experience. Others claim that experience rises out of consciousness. I juxtapose both in my mind! Consciousness in my mind is a pretty term, is it not? Experience in my mind; that is another beauty. Can they both be in my mind while my mind is ‘out there’ in the world? I do not know. All I do know is that consciousness, experience, are standing over against one another without a logical connector. Thus it would be a mistake for me to go on to explore whether consciousness provides the ground for experience or experience the ground for consciousness."

Radigan stopped writing abruptly, closed the file with an exaggerated deliberateness, then shut down his laptop, then stared out the window of the Burger King. The wan sun sent blue-white beams his way, but they were too weak to cause him to squint or to shield his eyes. He thought,

What the hell am I doing? I do not need these subtleties entering my mind any more than an electrician, with ten houses to wire, needs to spend time contemplating the theory of electromagnetism. That is a luxury I cannot afford. I am an editor with a family to support and on what is a meager salary. I receive cutting edge philosophical research; I am not in the business of supplying that stuff myself. I have no ego. I do not.

Radigan spent the last remaining minutes of his stay at Burger King trying to get hold of a couple of authors to do with textbook material on his cell phone but without success. At four o’clock he drove home.

Jesus Christ, Mary! Can’t you keep the kid’s ass clean?

Yeah, well fuck you, Mikey. You do it.

Judy had chronic problems with her toilet and though Mary was there in the day to clean up after their daughter when she got too confused or too forgetful to wipe herself properly, the special teachers did this task when Judy was at school, the Radigans routinely fought over who should see to Judy when Michael was at home or, as was the case this afternoon, when he happened to arrive home to find his daughter dirty and then refused to allow that his wife had been busy with other matters and had not gotten to the girl yet.

Listen to me. I am out working my own ass off all day while you are sitting on yours. The least you can do is … Jesus Christ! Did you mean to let her sit down to supper like that?

I am cooking the god-damned spaghetti when the kid shits her pants. That was two minutes ago. Before I can clean her up you come home acting like King Fucking Tut. Give me a break!

They went on yelling, went on spitting out crude curses for minute or so and then without another word said Radigan took his daughter into the bathroom and cleaned her up, hugging her and kissing her the while, and eventually getting her to stop bawling by telling her how much he loved her. Meanwhile Mary went back to her stove and comforted herself by yelling at Tom, who had been busy picking his nose while his parents were fighting. Most importantly the four Radigans returned to routine once the furor subsided and by the time supper was on the table, Mary’s tongue was back in Radigan’s mouth, Judy was giggling and pulling on her father’s trousers, and Tom was telling a long, convoluted, and ultimately pointless story about his experiences at the hockey rink that morning. The boy went on until Mary served them all a second helping of spaghetti and meatballs. It was abundantly clear that Tom loved to be on the ice while wearing his skates and he liked to check opponents with his shoulder, bringing his entire body in behind the thrust, and he liked it better when they went oomph and crumbled down onto the ice.

Radigan often questioned his son about hockey strategy but got little in the way of response. Tom had no idea what athletic success might entail, for he was blind to his own lack of talent. Whenever anything real crept into his consciousness regarding his future in hockey he pouted and changed the subject.

After supper they watched television. Mary and the children argued over what show to watch. Mary, holding the clicker, went though every channel numerous times, effectively taking away the possibility of their watching any one show completely. Radigan drank beer and laughed,

I am the king.

Not necessarily King Fucking Tut as Mary had it when she was bristling, but a king of some sort nevertheless.

I am the King of Newington.

As he rolled this around in his mind Mary said,

Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you, Mikey, one of your bosses, Martin Handy, called you here today.

What’s he calling me here for? I mean why didn’t he E-mail me or call me on my cell. What did he want?

He says you got to go down to Manhattan to see him in person again.

Jesus. I hate going down to the city.

Such