"Notes on the State of Virginia" - Chapter 2
by Peter Pnin
We begin the third and final week of PILCROW’s Inaugural Serialized Novel Contest. After its conclusion, subscribers (both free and paid) will vote on a Winner to be fully serialized here on the Substack (Finalists are awarded $500; the Winner $1,000.)
Our Finalists for this round:
Seasons Clear, and Awe by Matthew Gasda
Mites by Gregory Freedman
Notes on the State of Virginia by Peter Pnin
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I sing a hero’s head, large eye
And bearded bronze, but not a man…
From “The Man with the Blue Guitar” by Wallace Stevens
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—QUERY II—
Limits
An Exact Description of the Limits and Boundaries of Virginia?
We face Virginia eyes to eyes. Her left side is to our right, that is, east by our visual compass. Thus, Virginia, as we face her, is bounded on the east by an arm—her left—imbued with dominance over its right-side counterpart. It hangs gracefully from its originating joint, culminating below in the tip of a middle digit, tap, tap, tapping on the thigh of her left lower limb.
Next, at 5’ 9” from ground, is the top of her head, which is properly formed and tightly crowned by a hat of mostly woolen composition of deep blue with an American flag stitched on the eastern side (a gift to members of the United States women’s 2015 U-18 ice hockey world championship team). Kicking out from under the hat’s lower perimeter are browner-than-blonde strands of the young woman’s hair.
Then to our left, the western shore. From the shoulder, a descending right arm takes a southwesterly jut outward—an arm that once, not long ago, suffered fracture of its humerus (surgery by Dr. Stanis) and which carried a plaster cast that protected Virginia from further injury (and which was inscribed by friends with various scientific formulas, images, art, and notable numbers—no words permitted!).
Absent east-west symmetry at this juncture, the angled right arm turns southeasterly toward the medial line to a right hand fixed at the hip on denim-covered pelvic structures that move outward in proper mature fashion, thus beginning a line of catching curvatures characterizing Virginia’s southern latitudes. From there, we descend along an attractive western thigh, discreetly revealed by the woman on appropriate occasions; then to the knee, once repaired (Dr. Stanis again), but in good working order; then we slide southwest down the straight tibial surface inasmuch as the right foot is in turnout position, a remnant of three years of insufferable ballet; and, finally, to the aforesaid foot, known to frequently apply excessive force to car accelerators. At that point, we skip across the triangular aperture formed by floor and legs and back up the eastern leg to the tapping previously referenced.
In circumnavigating farther from that finger-thigh nexus, we decline to take the northerly path of the left arm, preferring instead to tack northwest at a heading of 340°, which directs us to an inner abdominal track along Virginia’s trim external oblique musculature, that of a concaving waist sensuously dividing the female anatomy pleasurably north and south, thus demarcating two separate fields of desire, shall we say. From that delightful isthmus we return north-northeasterly, hewing the line of the upper torso where we come to Virginia’s left breast.
That path leads to the axilla beneath the joinder of arm and shoulder where this woman, however oddly, occasionally eschews topical deodorants. Then straight down the inside of the pendulous eastern arm to fingers that could once fearlessly play Bach figurations, but, alas, with greater facility than their right-side counterparts. Thus, the tapping here and not over there.
Now upward again along the arm and outward to Virginia’s broad shoulders, which join centrally for her neck—not delicately slim, but solidly feminine, harboring voice bearing mid-range timbre. Then to her face (where we omit particular details—one’s visage being altogether gestalt in perception), which we can state is, at minimum, pleasingly pleasant with splendid teeth.
Thus arrayed are the physical boundaries of Virginia Statusen.
We will neglect, however, the geography of Virginia’s outstanding mind, since it would be less a map than a catalog of emanations—limitless behaviors extruded into the world by forces that we can hardly understand. Their underlying formulations are unfathomable, not subject to laws of economy, thermodynamics, mathematics, poetry, architecture, philosophy, astronomy, or comedy.
Rather, only those behaviors that have been reliably observed and noted will be reported here, for we are interested only in Virginia’s world as sculpted without, although brief excursions inward may on occasion be made as circumstances and curiosity require.
—QUERY III—
Standup
A Notice of Irony?
I started out as a physics major, but I had to stop when my nightmares began. The first one was the scariest. Let me explain what happened. As everyone knows, all matter is made up of atoms. But atoms are basically empty space, except for tiny, tiny quantum particles flying all around. In fact, there’s a concept that if all that empty space in our universe were eliminated and all those particles or whatever they are were packed tightly together we would have in the end an object no bigger than something like a frying pan, a basketball, or even a hamster. Well, in my dream God suddenly appears and says that he needs a break, so he asks me to do him a favor. He says, “Look, I’ve scrunched up the universe here in this bowling ball. Take care of it for five minutes and I’ll be right back.” This struck me as really strange, but I say, “Sure.” I figured this could only help me at some later point. So he gives me this nice bowling ball, but the thing is so goddamn heavy I immediately drop it on my left toe. I scream out “Jesus Christ, don’t do that again!!” and that’s when I woke up.
Virginia, with blue iris eyes, stood on a lambent stage on St. Crispin’s Day, her birthday, number twenty-one, October 25, 2017.
I know what light looks like when it’s going 186,282 miles per second. But I want to know what it looks like standing still.
In her right pocket, her hand clutched Svesty, a lucky trollish trinket, which Tedd bought for her en route to a hockey tournament in Illinois. (“Here Bright, this’ll help you score some goals.”).
Ever since physicists started thinking that a parallel universe exists, it seems I’ve been worrying twice as much about everything.
Virginia’s left hand held a microphone. She wore boots enclosed at top by skin-tight jeans. Her eyes—dominant in shape and balanced placement—met the visions of the watching-ones, those who shared the waves of light falling betwixt and between. From the stage, Virginia beheld the fleeting perceptions of these friendly forms of heads and eyes.
Don’t you all hate the second law of thermodynamics. It’s really messed with my head. You know the one—it says that physical processes can’t be reversed. That’s why I never bother returning stuff to stores anymore. One time I tried to return some underwear and the clerk told me: “Sorry lady, you can’t do this—the entropy of an isolated macroscopic system never decreases.” What could I do? I had no comeback for that.
Friends formed a circle at tables close before her, including teammates; boyfriend Jeff; and other notables. With their encouragement, Virginia found the guts for this one time. They sat as her abettors, eager to lend support to her verbal experiment where they merely sought disruption of the banality of daily rigors.
But I think I figured a way to get around this—time travel. Once physicists figure out how to do this, I’ll go back with a ton of stuff. And I won’t need receipts.
Her lips were lit with a light rouge gloss. Her hair hung in partial, flummoxed coils that brushed the upright collar of a jacket of deep brown leather. The right wrist (below a folded-up sleeve) carried her gold Movado watch with hands reflecting eastern time. Her teeth were straight in rigid white array, while her heart beat out at a quickened pace.
And what about quantum mechanics? I don’t trust them either.
The idea was hatched last year before—somewhere between Utica and Albany after a hockey game—with Virginia and Cecilia sitting sideways in a bus with legs up and crossed while playing cards. It came from a reverie induced by a motored hum—in dimly lit air—with muted music sounds scattered about—and fatigue draped on their nubile shoulders.
Virginia: Cecy, you’re pretty funny. Have you ever thought about doing standup at that club in Collegetown?
Cecy, quickly: No, have you?
Virginia, pausing to review her cards, said: Me? Why do you ask?
Cecy: Why did you ask me?
Virginia: Because you’re funny.
Cecy: Well, you’re pretty clever yourself.
Virginia: No, I’m not.
Cecy: I assume you’re been thinking about doing that, right? I know you, girl.
Virginia: Sort of.
Cecy: Why don’t you do it? I’ll help you.
Virginia: Think I should?
In ensuing months, Virginia hardly fathomed why she, wary of overt forwardness, embarked on this gambol. Yet here she was: speaker, prober, a trying joker, breaker, a comedic jejune with a letter C on an inside shirt and pretty hair. She came onstage to eschew the scrutable in an inscrutable world, facing people in place, who sat poised for a soft unsettling and a wordy unnerving. Could they, hearing her oddities and fillips, cede autonomy, let their lips loosen and their eyes crinkle, and emit an amused eruption from a central core?
Gravity always gets me down.
Wherefrom came this tug and pull? Why was she up here, she wondered, and not down there?
But scientists say that gravity is a weak force. If that’s true, then why it’s so hard to get up in the morning?
Then, again, it’s strong enough to bend a rainbow.
She sought only the return of mirthful sounds—a lightening joy redounding, slipping on the airscape back to her ears.
I believe in free will. My boyfriend is the opposite—he’s a determinist. If I want sex, I always have to make the first move.
(Jeff couldn’t help but blush.)
On the other hand, sometimes I’m not sure about free will. After all, I’ve never opened a door unless I had to.
Shoot, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say that.
The gathering of souls, perhaps forty in total, comprised generally well-thought, nsightful sorts, not lacking in wits. Beyond Virginia’s friends, there were some erudites, two pedants, a Nietzschean, a sophist, and, silently, at the back near the bar, a philosopher, all aware that a student, our Virginia, would be performing on Beginner’s Night, this Wednesday, at The Bark on College Avenue.
Of course, we would all suppose that God has free will.
But that’s an oxymoron.
He can’t have free will because he always knows what’s coming, right?
By the way, I know I just used the word oxymoron. Does everyone know what that means? Well, I don’t know what it means either—it’s one of those undefinable words. I’m sorry. Did I just oxymoron?.
Helen, a woman in black and gray and wife of Professor Sanipedes, was a stately curator of Chinese artifacts and a fan of Virginia’s talent. She, a woman of notable height, admired the fact that Virginia, with three rapid strides, could achieve full speed on Cornell’s foremost hockey line. Helen sat with her husband in the middle of the arena and marveled at the girl’s intrepidness. With each construction of oddness that Virginia presented, Helen saw an ironic architecture assembling in bright, focused light. To Helen, almost forty-seven, Virginia was an entrancing sight—a brash near-graduate articulating playful concepts, even though, on the stage, Virginia was bereft of her customary grounding, standing starkly forward as a temptress to failure. Helen leaned to her professor husband, a mathematical man, and spoke near to his ear. He heard and nodded and smiled in return and kept eyes focused on Virginia, who voiced a conundrum on endlessness:
So, I figured out how infinity ends. It’s just that I can’t understand how it begins.
Professor Sanipedes was a man of discrete, numerical symbols. So when he heard the word “infinity,” he noted its unendingness, vast and long, far and forever. Being Virginia’s past teacher of multivariable calculus, he saw her now as a fount of arch, contoured abstractedness, plucking upon cerebral sinews of curiosity. He thought (with a prized sense of insight) that were Virginia a mathematical concept she would be a tangent to an arc of the adventurous, sloping high and up without impediment, impervious to gravity. Yes, he agreed with Helen, they would have her over for dinner one night.
At 9:57 p.m., Virginia’s performance was approaching completion. Over the summer, she had practiced and refined cadences, pauses, and play of words. (Just do it once and it would be done for good, she had said to herself.) The venture had become for her a continuing mental joust—a proposition thrust ahead by a steely mettle to be rebuked each time by her more cautionary framework. But, alas, the cautionary lost.
I’m taking this statistics class with a professor who likes to play with our heads. So he tells us this: He says that God appears to a guy and shows him three doors. God tells the guy that behind one door is the stairway to heaven and behind the other two are stairways to hell. God tells the guy that he gets to pick one door and that door will be a ticket to his ultimate fate—either upstairs to heaven or downstairs to hell. The guy’s chances aren’t good—only one out of three. In any event, the guy goes high and picks door number 3. But then God opens door 1 and there’s one of the stairways to hell and God asks him: “Do you want to switch to door 2?” The guy says: “Whoa!! You’re giving me a chance to switch?’ God says, “Yes, I’m a nice guy.” The guy thinks about it: There are only two doors left—one to heaven and one to hell. But then he assumes that this must be a trick because, after all, how could switching now improve his chances? He realizes that God, being all powerful, could screw him no matter what he does. So the guy walks away, looks back at God, and says: “I don’t trust you. I’m not playing—I’ll take my chances with you later.”
Tedd had warned her: “Bright, this stuff isn’t easy.”
To which Virginia replied: “I know it isn’t, but I’m not planning a career in this. I just want to try it. So what if I go down in flames.”
Virginia would note in her Journal (Volume X, October 25, 2017 titled “21”) that on this day she proffered subtle dissembling and deceits to pleasantly distort twenty-two minutes of a standard day. But one school of thought suggested that she wanted to fail, that her life had been overly fettered with successes, and that, if not seeking actual pain, she sought to feel with her fingers the edge of a less amiable fate.
So, sometimes, I volunteer to make fundraising phone calls for Cornell. I’ve gotten to be good at schmoozing alumni. So this one night, I’m at the call center on campus and I’m going through this stack of cards, calling people, and raking in a lot of money. Then I came to this one for a man named Morey. I looked at his card and noticed something unusual about his previous gifts. So, I called him.A woman answered the phone.I say: “Hello, may I speak to Morey Darmeister?” The lady says, “One moment.” Then a man gets on the phone and says, “Hello.” “Hello, Mr. Morey Darmeister. This is Virginia Statusen calling on behalf of the Cornell Annual Fund. How are you this evening? “I’m good, but I’d prefer if you called me Stan.” I found this a bit unusual, but I’ll go along with practically anything to get a pledge. So, I say:“Okay, Stan. I see that you’ve been a very generous donor to Cornell over the years and we certainly thank you for your continued support of Cornell. “Well, you’re very welcome.” “But I must admit that I’m fascinated by the amounts of money that you’ve given over the years. You give very precise and odd amounts.”
“Excuse me, but may I call you Clarice?” Now this really struck me as strange, so I asked him: “Why do you want to call me Clarice?” “Because you remind me of a woman named Clarice that I once knew.”
“Sure, fine, whatever. But can I ask you about your gifts?
“Sure, Clarice, whatever you want.”
“So, for example, in 2013, you gave $6,626.06. Why that particular amount?”
“Don’t you recognize that number, Clarice? You’re a smart girl, aren’t you, Clarice? What’s your GPA, Clarice?”
Now, this was starting to get creepy. But I figured it wouldn’t hurt to put that number out there. You never know where a job could come from: “4.11.”
“Very good, Clarice. You are a smart girl. Think of 6.62606 x 10-34 joule seconds. Does that ring a bell, Clarice?”
I said to myself: That’s the Planck Constant. Stan’s gift was the Planck Constant.
“What’s the matter, Clarice? Didn’t you ace Physics?
“That’s the Planck Constant.”
“That’s right, Clarice. Give me another number. What did I give in 2014?”
“$16,021.76.”
“Ah, Clarice, you should know that one, too.”
Quickly, on my laptop, I put the number into Google, but nothing relevant popped up.
“It’s elementary, Clarice.”
Oh, my god. I threw “elementary constant” into Google and there it was—the elementary charge of an electron: 1.602176 ×10−19 coulombs. I was stunned.
“What’s the matter, Clarice, did you drop out of physics?”
“That’s the elementary charge of an electron.”
I looked again at his card. I said: “2016. $60,221.41.”
“That was a very good year, Clarice, especially for the Avogadro
Constant.”
I didn’t even have to check that. This was all too weird.
“Look, Stan, I don’t know what’s going on, but I have to ask you: What can
you afford this year?”
“Certainly I can help, Clarice, but this has been a bad year for me. I’ve
made some bad choices, you understand. So I need to economize. Let’s
see, what about the temperature of Antares?”
“I have no clue. So what would that be?”
“Clarice, I’m disappointed.”
“Well, how about 9,000 Kelvin?”
“I’m sorry, Clarice, you’re wrong—only 3,400. I hope that amount will
be acceptable to you this year as a donation.”
“Well, anything is appreciated, Mr. Darmeister. Thank you.”
“You’ll send a thank you note, won’t you?”
“Oh, of course.”
“Clarice, I’ve enjoyed my time talking to you. I hate to see it end. Could
we get a bite to eat after your fundraising duties tonight? Maybe somewhere in Collegetown?”
“No, I’m sorry. That’s against the rules.”
“I understand. Clarice, before you go, I need to tell you something.
“What’s that?”
“I’m not who you think I am.”
“What do you mean?”
“Clarice, look at your telephone display for the number that you
dialed.”
“Okay, I’m looking.”
“Now look at the number that you wanted to dial.”
I looked at the display and then at the number on Mr. Darmeister’s card and
suddenly a chill went through me. I had dialed the wrong number.
“You’re not Mr. Darmeister, are you?”
“No, Clarice, I’m not. But I think fate has brought us together, Clarice, don’t you?”
“I really have to go, Stan.”
“I’m sure we’ll see each other again.
“Sure, Stan, anything you say.”
“Be brave, Clarice, and sweet dreams.”
“Don’t forget, Stan, Cornell appreciates your support, Stan.”
Thank you everyone. Sweet dreams to you, too. Good night.
(Exit music: Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams [Are Made of This]”)
In the rear of the room stood a man, leaning aslant against the wall. He wore unnecessary tinted glasses, and a flea market fedora tilted forward to the top of the frames as if to mask the man that he was. The professor came for Statusen’s monologue (“insufferable dreck,” he thought) and a quick drink of Kentucky bourbon.
Now, satisfied that his was a mind of vast superiority, he quickly turned to beat a hasty retreat.
