Free The Captive Condition by Kevin P. Keating Page A

his sheepish grin, recognized his nervous, shifting eyes, cringed at the sound of his pompous voice, and I could tell even from a distance that he was embarrassed to be seen with Mrs. Ryan. Once, as a kind of academic exercise and as part of the research for my unfinished thesis, I followed them into the art gallery. After all, it’s not every day that a student sees his former adviser strolling the quad with an attractive woman. Pretending to search for the nearest drinking fountain, feeling like a part-time student and full-time troll, I stepped inside the lobby and slipped behind a cluster of phony ficus trees, where I observed the professor and Mrs. Ryan wandering through the galleries where there was an exhibition of famous stolen paintings.
    “Vermeer. Van Gogh. Picasso. Monet. Gauguin.”
    Emily struggled to read each placard next to the poorly executed copies of original masterworks, and Kingsley tried to suppress a smug smile of superiority. As an educated man, and one married to an art enthusiast, he knew the power of proper pronunciation, especially in a cultural backwater like Normandy Falls, where a nasally drawl and a healthy dose of double negatives had become status symbols, the means by which someone like Emily could broadcast that she possessed knowledge of a kind for which there were no degrees. To his credit Kingsley knew all about the disruptive effects of an improperly placed editorial intrusion and wisely kept his trap shut.
    “
The Storm on the Sea of Galilee
by Rembrandt van Rijn,” Emily said with a frown. “This looks so familiar—”
    She took a step forward to scrutinize a small fishing boat buffeted by gale-force winds, the bow lifted by a massive swell toward parting black clouds. The panicked crew appealed to a serene passenger and begged him for calm seas and a safe harbor.
    One of the girls screamed—it was only a matter of time before Madeline and Sophie began to test their voices for an echo in the open space—and the startled curator politely asked them to leave the gallery. I dashed out the door before Kingsley could spot me, but those crafty ticks had prepared an ambush, and as I galloped down the steps I heard their high-pitched cackles of derision. “Stop ogling the professor’s wench!” they shouted. “Yeah, don’t play dumb. You know what we’re talking about. We’ve seen you watching her, drooling, fantasizing. Don’t deny it.”
    Giraffeneck, Cockburn, Mudflap, Jittery, Frosty, Monkey, Leper, Sliver—they all crowded around and laughed in my face, dousing me in spittle. At the Department of Plant Services every employee had a nickname, typically an allusion to some calamity that had left its owner physically and psychologically scarred, and though I wasn’t entirely certain about the legitimacy of some—Peter, Skip, Ralph, Randy—I could guess the truth about most, and in a vaguely masochistic way I hoped to earn my own nickname, one that like Molière, Voltaire, Twain, Orwell could serve as a clever and timeless nom de plume if I ever managed to finish my novel.
    “Can’t have a nickname till he initiates you. Has he initiated you yet?” Whenever the men asked this question, as they often did, they slapped their hands on the lunchroom table and convulsed with mad laughter. A few laughed so hard they nearly fell out of their chairs. “No? Well, he’s just waiting for the right opportunity, that’s all. I wouldn’t worry about it. You’ll get your new name, sure as shit. You must become one of us, you understand. Because the Gonk doesn’t tolerate interlopers in this town.”
    The Gonk’s name alone remained a total mystery to me, and the men, unwilling to give up the secret just yet, were circumspect with their answers when I questioned them.
    “Oh, he probably got that name when he was born. The doctor took one look at that face and called him the Gonk.”
    Some said the name had its roots in sound, in music, in an accidental drumbeat, a stick