Peerless Television Service and Repair

Dominic’s Not Here

    Canny reader that you are, you noticed, in the preceding chapter, that the message on my answering machine identifies my home business, Memoirs While You Wait. That is the means by which I support the Leroy ménage. As I told the caller who wanted Peerless Television Service and Repair, I assist people with the writing of their memoirs, and, for clients who haven’t the time or patience to produce a memoir, even with my assistance, I ghostwrite memoirs. I’m a hack.
    Because I am sometimes required to talk to my clients on the telephone and even to sit in rooms with them while they fill the air with blather and bullshit, I put up a front of professionalism during my hackworking hours. I masquerade as a professional. An important part of the mask is, I think, the professional way in which I answer the phone when I don’t leave that to the machine. I answer crisply and efficiently, thus: “Peter Leroy.”
    So, later that day, when the phone rang again during the hackwork hours, I answered, “Peter Leroy,” resisting the temptation to add, “peerless hack,” which would only have confused matters.
    “Huh?” said the caller.
    “Peter Leroy,” I said again, with undiminished crispness and efficiency.
    “I want to talk to Dominic.”
    “There is no Dominic here.”
    “What happened to him?”
    “I can’t say.”
    “You mean you’re, like, sworn to secrecy?”
    “No, I mean that I don’t know.”
    “I get you. You didn’t see nothing. You didn’t hear nothing. You don’t know nothing. Right?”
    “Right,” I said, adding, mentally, “mutatis mutandis.”
    “Geez,” said the caller with a sigh, “I never thought Domenic was into anything that would get him—ah—you know.”
    “I know nothing.”
    “Yeah. Right. I hear what you’re saying, but—ah—let me ask you something.”
    “Shoot.”
    “Boy, you’re a cool one. Nerves of steel.”
    “What do you want to ask me?”
    “Do you fix TVs?”
    “No, I don’t. This isn’t Peerless Television Service and Repair. When I rented this house, I seem to have gotten their old number.”
    “Oh. Oh, I see. I see! I got the wrong number.”
    “Actually, you got the right number, but the number you got is no longer Peerless’s number.”
    “So nothing happened to Dominic?”
    “Not that I know of.”
    “But you’re getting his calls?”
    “I am.”
    “That must be a real pain in the butt.”
    “Not yet, but I can see that it has that potential.”
    “So, tell me this: how come you answer the phone like that—‘Peter Leroy’?”
    “It sounds more professional than ‘Hello.’”
    “Oh, yeah? What’s your profession? What do you do? I mean, since you don’t fix TVs?”
    “I write. I’m a writer.”
    “Mysteries?”
    “Memoirs.”
    “You’re one of those guys who pretends to have had a childhood of misery and deprivation when you actually grew up in an affluent suburb with both parents, four grandparents, and a sweet sister in an atmosphere of privilege and comfort?”
    “No.”
    “You mean you’re honest?”
    “Not quite. All memoirists lie.”
    “Hey, at least you’re honest about that.”
    “Right. I’m honest about the lying that I do.”
    “Honesty is your shtick. Hey! That could be your slogan: ‘Honesty is my shtick.’”
    “Maybe I’ll use it.”
    “Yeah, well if you do, I hope you credit me. Anthony Leopardi.”
    “I certainly will, Anthony. After all, honesty is my shtick.”
    “Man, I wish you repaired TVs. It’s hard to find an honest TV guy.”
    “What about Dominic?”
    “Yeah, Dominic was one of the good ones.”
    “Don’t rush into the past tense. He may still be around. I don’t know that Peerless doesn’t exist. All I know is that they don’t have this number anymore.”
    “That sounds like the end to me. ‘Requiescat in pace,’ you know what I mean?”
    “Yes, I do, but before you give up, I suggest that you try Information.”
    “You mean Directory Assistance. It’s not Information anymore, and calling is not the experience it once was. When I was young, I used to entertain fantasies about information operators. I used to call and ask for a number just so I could envision a Venus with a headset, sitting at a switchboard with her long legs crossed, one tiny run in her stocking, inching its way up her thigh—”
    “Anthony, have you given any thought to writing your memoirs?”