Chickenhawk: Back in the World

I thought of a different approach: an inflatable mirror. Just put two circular sheets of plastic on top of each other, one of them transparent, the other mirrored. Seal the edges and clamp the plastic in a frame. Pump some air between the sheets, and they’d both push out, making convex surfaces. If the transparent side of this arrangement is pointed at the sun, the mirrored side should focus sunlight. Would it actually work? I spent a couple of days at the factory building one.

My prototype was four feet in diameter. A concave glass reflector that size would cost a couple of thousand dollars. My plastic one cost twenty bucks. I mounted the two sheets of plastic between two plywood rings and screwed everything together, sealing it with a bunch of silicone rubber. I put a tire valve in the edge of the frame and pumped it up with a bicycle pump. Looking through the clear plastic, the mirrored plastic formed a perfectly beautiful concave surface (spherical, not parabolic, just fine for concentrating sunlight). I took it outside on Twenty-eighth Street. The afternoon sun was low. I put a soggy piece of cardboard I found in the gutter on a chain-link fence, stood back about twenty feet, and aimed the sizzling beam from my mirror at it. In less than a second, the cardboard poofed into a cloud of smoke and then burst into flames.

Patience and some of the people at the factory saw this test, and I had them sign my drawings as witnesses. I intended to patent this thing, become rich and famous, and contribute something besides decorated mirrors to the world.

I went to a law firm that Ed Pollitz recommended. (Pollitz, after seeing my solar-powered car working, thought I “had savvy.”) The patent attorneys were impressed at the simplicity of the idea; the fundamental nature of it reeked of originality. No one had heard of such a thing. I put together a set of drawings and applied. Two weeks later, I got the result of the patent search. Someone had patented the idea nearly a century before it could’ve been made.

I was so disappointed I gave up. Abe was openly relieved. He’d seen me messing around with toy cars, about five different kinds of glass reflectors, and now this plastic inflatable thing. He claimed I’d been diverted from my real responsibilities dreaming about this solar thing: “Now can we get back to work?”

Had I any brains, I would’ve applied for a design patent—a patent on the way the mirror was actually made and how it would be used to collect solar energy. But I didn’t.

In the midst of a bustling factory pumping out rock and roll mirrors by the thousands, I had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that the company was coming apart. A few weeks after the solar mirror debacle, Abe came to see me.

“Bob, this album mirror thing is going great.”

“Yeah, Abe, as long as it lasts.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll get more customers.” Abe paused, frowned. “Y’know, Bob,” he said, shrugging, “Dad thinks that ten percent is way out of line now. He’s got a point, too. Who would’ve thought this would do so well?”

“You want to cut my share?”

Abe nodded. “Five percent?”

“I’ve dedicated myself to this for over two years and now you want to cut me out?”

“Not out, Bob. You’ll still make a goddamn fortune.”

I stared at Abe. This was perfect. I had learned enough about business to recognize real talent when I saw it and to know I didn’t have it. I’d been feeling terrible about what I was doing. Even moving to a better, rent-free apartment, getting a new company car, a twenty-five percent raise, cash bonuses, none of that helped me feel good about myself. Looking for help, I’d read Your Erroneous Zones, by Wayne Dyer. I was impressed by one of the questions in it: “What would you do if you had six months left to live?” The point of the question was that if your answer wasn’t what you were doing, then you weren’t doing what you—in your heart of hearts—wanted to be doing. I asked a lot of people this question, including Abe. Usually they said they’d go on a big trip, move to Tahiti, kill their worst enemy, or something similarly exotic. When I asked Bill Smith, he said, “I’d work a little faster so I could finish this book.” He was the only person I knew who wouldn’t change what he was doing. I didn’t know if I wanted to be a writer, but I knew I didn’t want to make rock and roll mirrors and get ulcers worrying about future sales. Let somebody who’s going to live forever put up with this shit. I looked at Abe and said, “Okay. I quit.”

CHAPTER 8