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m e m o
    to: John Kenton
    from: Riddley
    re: Possible incoming package
    Yassuh, Mist Kenton!
    Riddley Mail Roomp>
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    from T H E S A K R E D B O O K O F C A R L O S
    SAKRED MONTH OF FEBBA (Entry #64)
    I know how to get him. I have set things in motion, praise Abbalah. Praise Green Demeter. I’ll get them all. Green Green “ must be seen.” Ha! You Ju d a s !
    Little do you know! But I know! All about your girlfriend, too—only girlfriend is now girlFIEND, little do you know what she is up to! T h e re is another mule kicking in your stall, Mr. Judas Big-Shot Editor! OUIJA says this mu l e ’s name is GARY! In my dreams I have seen them and G A RY is HAIRY! Not like you, you wimpy little J U DAS! Soon I’m sending you a present! Everyone pros-p e rs! Every Judas safe in the arms of Abbalah! Come Abbalah! COME GREAT DEM E T E R !
    COME GREEN!
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    February 25
    Dear Ruth,
    I’ve got a case of the mean reds, so I thought I’d pass some of them on—
    see the enclosed Xeroxes, concluding with a typically impudent communication from Riddley, he of the coal-black skin and three hundred huge white teeth.
    You’ll notice that Roger kicked my ass good and hard—not much like Roger, and doubly sobering for that very reason. I don’t think one has to be very paranoid to see that he’s talking about the possibility of firing me. If I’d talked this out with him over martinis at Flaherty’s after work, I doubt very much if he would have come down so hard, and of course I had no idea he was waiting on a call from Enders. I undoubtedly deserved the ass-kicking I got—I haven’t really been doing my job—but he has no idea of the scare that letter threw into me when I realized it was Detweiller again. I’m too goddam thin-skinned for my own good, that’s what Roger thinks...but Detweiller is scary for other, less easily grasped reasons. Being the idée that’s gotten fixe in some crazy’s head has got to be one of the most uncomfortable feelings in the world—if I knew Jody Foster, I think I’d give her a jingle and tell her I know exactly how she feels. There’s an almost palpable texture of slime about Detweiller’s communications, and oh boy, oh yeah, I wish I could get him out of my head, but I still have nightmares about those pictures.
    Anyway, I have taken care of matters as well as I can, and no, I have no intention of calling Central Falls. We have an editorial meeting tomorrow.
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    I’ll try to the best of my limited abilities to get back on the beam...except at Zenith House the beam is so narrow it almost doesn’t exist.
    I love you, I miss you, I long for your return. Maybe you being gone is part of the problem. Not to make you feel guilty.
    All my love,
    John
    From the journals of Riddley Walker
    2/23/81
    Like a stone thrown into a large and stagnant pond, the Detweiller affair has caused any number of ripples at my place of employment. I thought that all of them had gone by; yet this afternoon one more rolled past, and who is to say even that one will be the last?
    I have included a Xerox of an exceedingly curious memo I received from Kenton at 2:35 P.M. plus my own reply (the memo came just after Gelb left,in something of a huff; why he should have been in a huff eludes me since today he brought his own dice and I did him the courtesy of not even checking them, but Ah g’iss Ah woan nevuh understand dese white folks). I think I have covered the Detweiller affair to a nicety in these pages, but I should add that it never surprised me in the least that Kenton was the one to bring Detweiller, the rogue comet, into the erratic (and, I fear, degenerating) orbit of Zenith House. He is brighter than Sandra 44
     
    Jackson; brighter than that crap-shooting, Ivy League tie-wearing devil William Gelb; far brighter than Herbert Porter (Porter, as previously noted, is not above wandering into Ms. Jackson’s office after she has left for the day and sniffing the seat of her office chair—a strange