Include Me Out

Include Me Out

Eddie Burrows looked into his rum mug and shook his head.

"I can't figure it out, Carl. I work my buns off and I get nothing. Yet when I slack off it's like finding a genie."

"How so?" asked his friend.

"Well, I make this line of furniture, then promote it. Boy, did I promote! Spent thousands on ads: TV, newspaper flyers, the whole nine yards. I don't know how many demonstrations I gave at furniture shows. But I didn't get a nibble. So you know what? I gave up. Then, out of the clear blue, the orders flood in like an ocean of Tsunamis. Can't fill them all!"

Carl looked out the window of the dock-side cafe. A pair of well-tanned, shapely legs strolled by.

"Did you hear a word I said?"

"Yes. That you finally figured how it works. The harder you work the luckier you get."

"You don't understand," responded Eddie, stretching to see what had attracted his friend's attention. "None of the orders came from any of the things I did. I asked the buyers. Not a single sale from the ads, flyers, or demonstrations. I don't know why they bought."

Satisfied the legs were gone, Carl focused on Eddie as he said, "So what do you have to say?"

"This," said Carl. "No one says we get immediate results nor from where we expect them. Ever hear of Theodore Geissel's attempts to get his Dr. Seuss books published?"

"No. And I don't see what it has to do with furniture."

"It has nothing to do with furniture," answered Carl, "but everything to do with sales. Geissel worked his buns off trying to get published. Twenty or more publishers and everyone said no. Then a high school friend happened to stroll by in New York City -- get a load of that, will you? A friend bumps into him in the largest city in the U.S. byaccident. If that's not enough, the friend happens to be a publisher. The rest is history. But the moral for you is just like I said: work hard and the rewards come.

Sometimes out of the blue. That's simply how it works."

Eddie was too deliberate, too cause-and-effect to appreciate his friend's analysis. Born a Taurus, the well-grounded furniture man drowned his confusion in rum.

"So look, Eddie," said his friend, his mind off legs, "aren't you curious why I asked you here?"

"No," said the chair man."

"Well, for starters, I figure if I got some booze in you, you'd say yes easier."

"I can say yes without booze. Watch: Yes."

"Great. Now I won't have to give my spiel. Just sign here."

"I haven't hadthatmuch rum, my friend."

"So," said Carl, smiling at the exchange, "first we have to make a deal, because this is a biggie: no more rum, no more legs."

"If you can do it, so can I."

Carl made a dramatic gesture by pretending to peek down the wharf, then said, "Your business is going great. Well enough to run itself what with all the organization people you hired. The the way I see it, that frees you for what I know you like best."

"What do I like best?"

"You've only said it a thousand times through the years: designing."

"By God, Carl, you're right. I'd rather design than anything. Let the manufacturers do the manufacturing. So what's the deal?"

"Well, you know that I head up a boat company: I take half-decent sail boats, tugs, speed boats, and I make them look gorgeous. I work only with the finest woods and materials."

"I've heard. But where do I come in?"

"I need a Head Designer. Someone with imagination, boldness, thetouch. I want you to join the team."

Eddie Burrows stared into his empty mug. He wasn't so rum-numb that he couldn't hear the gulls gagging on the other side of the window as tourists threw bread into the air and watched the birds dive-bomb. Finally Eddie said, "Carl, you know I get seasick looking at a bathtub. It's all I can do to look out the window at the birds. Remember when we took the ferry in high school? I was sick for three days. I'll work on anything but a boat."

Carl chuckled. "You won't have to be near water, Eddie. Not even boats. You can sit in your office high and dry and design your head off. If you want, you can board when the boat's on land, but you won't have to."

Eddie looked up, interested. "You mean I can design at home, like an architect, and never have to get anywhere near the water?"

"I promise."

"I'll take the job."

As the weeks passed, Eddie Burrows learned that a designer does not have to be near water and tides and waves and currents and typhoons and sea legs and spray and seasickness. He was amazed when he found that many of Carl's workmen disliked the sea just like him. They could as easily have been constructing kitchen cabinets in Omaha as building a deck on a thirty-eight foot sailing sloop.

Two years later Eddie and Carl sat at the same dockside cafe. While Carl watched the shapely legs strut down the weather-grayed boards as Eddie enjoyed a hot buttered rum.

"So tell me, Carl," smiled the wood worker. "Why did you ask me here this time? Got another deal?"

"Of course, I'm a man of deals. But maybe you should have another rum this time. I don't think you're sufficiently warmed up yet."

"I see it coming: you want me to say yes again. So,Yes. Now, what do you want me to do?"

"Who needs rum when you're a yes-man? Okay, here it is." And Carl laid out a scheme so ultra-modern, so futuristic, that Eddie wished he hadn't had so much rum.

Finally, the wood designer said, "You mean you want me to design anunder-the seacity when you know I hate water? That I never even put my head under in the bathtub? Me go down there in your Super Bubble?"

"Ah, Eddie, you're psychic, too. Yes, Super Bubble. It's the only way to workwithout getting wet. But check this out: there is NO POSSIBILITY of the slightest leak. Don't you get it? The bubble has to be perfect before a soul steps into it. Which means that by the time you go to work, a thousand others will have laid the foundation and superstructure and..."

"HAS to be perfect, you say. So it's not perfectNOW."

"Oh, it's beyond perfect, my friend, on paper. It's so perfect that an upside-down Tsunami couldn't wiggle it."

"But only on paper."

"Oh, God," blurted Carl. "You know me better than to quibble with minute possibilities. The Super Bubbleisperfect. And if you promise not to spill the beans..."

"I promise not to spill the beans. But I do not promise to be a guinea pig

by lowering myself into an inverted fish bowl."

"I am pleased to hear you say that, because it means that our security is tight. You see, the Bubble has been under construction for the past six months. And it's air tight enough that people are already working in shirts and ties, not wet suits."

"What? Where?"

"Off Santa Monica."

"I don't believe it. If it's that close then I would have heard about it. The whole world would have."

"Not quite. You see, if we did it within U.S. boundaries, then all sorts of legislation would have been necessary, and with that, publicity. So we put it in international waters. There, billion-dollar enterprises can be pulled off without the public or media being wise. And that's exactly what we've done. Now, having already said yes and it still hush-hush, it means that you are part of it whether you like it or not." Then, smiling, he added, "Of course, if you don't sign up, we will have to kill you."

"So remind me, Carl: what have I volunteered to do? Keep the lid on?"

"Eddie, my friend, since you've proven yourself in both the furniture business and boat designing, you know it'll have something to do with wood. Don't sweat the water."

"Good. But I'll not hit a nail, drive a screw, or glue a swatch until the bubble is PERFECT."

"What's the matter with you, Eddie? You never set foot on a boat yet you designed their interiors. Same with the Bubble. You can design your landlubbering head off AT HOME in your very firm, terra-firma office. You'll never get your head wet!"

Eddie smiled. "Now can I have that hot buttered rum you promised?"

"You haven't said yes yet."

"You're losing it, Carl. I said that at the beginning." The two laughed as one sipped rum and the other kept a lookout for tan legs.

And so it came to pass that the woodwork for the first Underwater City was designed by the man who hated water and refused to set foot under the historic dome. And never did, even though the Super Bubble proved to be Perfect to the hundredth power.