Harry, Revised by Mark Sarvas

Author:Mark Sarvas [Mark Sarvas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781847676818
Publisher: Canongate Books
Published: 2009-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

The acrid chemical smell of the printing shop and the rattling cacophony of photocopying machines do little to settle Harry’s stomach as he bobs and wobbles nervously at the counter, awaiting his turn. He spreads his materials out and looks them over, reluctant to raise his head and make eye contact with anyone. Presently, ten stubby, ink-stained fingers with nails chewed to nothingness enter his field of vision. Harry contents himself to address the fingers.

“Can you print this”—Harry indicates one pile of materials—“to match this?” he asks, indicating the other. Fingers turns Harry’s handiwork toward himself and peruses it.

“Offset?”

“Sure,” Harry says, having absolutely no idea what he means.

“Yeah, no problem. What’s it for?”

Harry has feared all along that this bit of guerrilla cut-and-paste was likely to prompt questions. Fortunately, he’s anticipated this and has a riposte—albeit a feeble one—at hand.

“It’s a prop. For a play.”

Another day, another lie.

What am I turning into? Harry wonders. Okay, this is a stranger and not his wife. And he’s lying to fingers, after all, as opposed to looking into eyes and letting rip. But there’s a light-headed ease, coupled with a premeditation absent from his lies to Anna, that rumbles suggestively within like a pre-eruption temblor.

What the hell am I doing?

Fingers lifts the document and examines it. What Harry is doing is this: He has obtained an actual UCLA business school diploma. (Max’s son Josh was a graduate whose stellar academic performance saw him summoned to Wall Street within hours of his graduation, leaving the reliably cooperative and incurious Max the custodian of his degree.) Using an X-Acto knife, Harry has liberated the document from the confines of its plain black frame, his sloppy and unsteady cuts confirming the wisdom of his choice not to pursue a career in surgery. Matching the diploma’s font on his computer, Harry has overlaid Nicole’s name and is now poised at the penultimate step, the final stage being a meticulous reframing of the original, as well as the creation of a matching frame for the copy.

Harry’s aware of a whole host of logistical concerns that he hasn’t even begun to tackle, not the least of which is how to enlist Nicole’s aid in this deception. But it’s all Harry can do to move forward one step at a time, clinging blindly to a conviction that somehow things will work out and he’ll make it if he can just get through today, through this particular problem. And although there’s little in Harry’s past to give him such limitless faith in his ingenuity, it’s all he has at the moment. As is his fashion, Harry makes do.

Fingers sets down the diploma as Harry pulls out his wallet.

“How much?”

“Thirty-five. Plus tax.”

A steal. “Great.” Harry pulls out two twenties and slides them to Fingers. “Can I wait for it?”

Fingers’ sarcastic laugh is the first thing to alert Harry that he’s back in that familiar, trouble-strewn landscape known as Harry-land.

“End of next week. Maybe Wednesday.”

Harry feels his head in a gradually tightening vise, a deep throb making its way to the surface.

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