by Shane Jones
“Someone burned down the refugee center,” I say, then hit the brakes because a white Audi with a license plate HOTSAWCE jolts backward from a front spot. There’s no driver in the Audi, or at least it appears so because the interior is all vape clouds. But a head is in there, somewhere. The brake lights combined with my headlights give the clouds a swirling and haunting vibe.
“On a vanity plate you should pay a 300% tax,” says Elderly who spits something yellow onto his chin then sucks it up. “Like, that person spent his or her time thinking HOTSAWCE for weeks, maybe years, then went to the DMV and paid a fee, installed it, and now everyone has to see it. How’s that fair?”
The car accelerates, the cloud interior flying forward. I follow and turn left. I tell Elderly he’s right, it’s not fair. A hotel is being built next to the mall and the scaffolding is rung with white lights hung from yellow cables, a coffin-narrow elevator is ascending to the top floor of metal beams.
I drive through another parking lot and down another lane. Elderly says we can go home because he has seen what he needs to see. I don’t say a word. He says he misses driving on the highway in his Pontiac, which he insists can still go one hundred miles per hour. He says in the deserts of Iran there’s no speed limit, you can drag race any car, and at the finish line children wave checkered flags.
Back on the highway I check the weather on my phone and Elderly, with his big toe, clicks the hazards on.
“Safety first. Finding your dog next.” He reclines the seat as far as it will go, his head nearly resting on the back seat.
“I’m sorry, V,” he says crossing his arms over his chest and closing his eyes. “But when you’re down, you’re done.”
I’m thinking about the constellation Orion, burning meteorites and Christmas lights. If I had a daughter I’d name her Orion and no one could stop me. I was a child once, and everyone driving to work or taking the bus to work or walking to work was a child once too. I become very childlike before bed, I’ve always been this way, and it’s not embarrassing because who cares, I’m alone.
As a kid, Dad would hang these orange electric candles held by a red plastic wreath in my bedroom window. When I look out my apartment window with the streetlamp outside I can feel my childhood within that light. How does time and space and memory do that? I want to be there, a week before Christmas in the mid 80s because I don’t want to be thinking about tomorrow’s training.
But I’d be lying if I said I haven’t been thinking about what kind of ideal life I’ll be living. What will I see? In high school I said I wanted to be a veterinarian because you had to say something. Did you know there are people who drive abused animals around the country finding them homes? The volunteer who inspected my apartment told me it was her dream job, her ideal gate, you could say. She was saving her money for an RV with built-in cages.
I also like the idea of living on a boat, rocked to bed by waves and catching fish at sunrise. I know, that’s not me, but…it could be? Or maybe a much simpler life with a house in the country and all the healthy food in the world in surrounding fields and gardens. Is that also not me? My ideal gate could be anything.
A cool night breeze blows under the window. Elderly is lugging a bag of cans down the sidewalk and it sounds like he’s running. I’m falling asleep as the gold watch beeps. I flick the tail. Drowsy, I’m ready.
JUNE 7
In the office I wear my headset and drink my PER water and absolutely demolish data entry. I move numbers from one column to another column then click an icon with the waterfall logo. The headset seems to do nothing but slightly muffle the office around me, which is somewhat helpful – right now Michelle and Steve are discussing Indian food. On occasion, I hear a faint beeping like a train in the distance, which is either the headset, the gold watch, or the train station across the river.
Coming back from the bathroom, I walk by Emily’s cubicle and she’s inches from her monitor staring at a pixelated horse. She appears on top of the monitor, ready to embrace it. She zooms-in on the horse’s left eye, jet-black with a cube of reflected light.
“Great horse,” I comment.
“It’s Princess,” snaps Emily, “and she’s mine.”
In the Zone, I move onto the next data entry section. There’s a consistent flow of new numbers, one column with too many and another column with too few, and the numbers, the task, numb me, like I’m not at a computer but somewhere else, a zone itself that I’m plunging headfirst into.
Still, I don’t experience anything different. I’m not seeing any paradise before me. Steve says when you go on vacation in Maine you eat lobster for every meal. He says even if you order pasta you have lobster in every bite.
Francesca forwards an email about a pork chop lunch special.
Michelle forwards a video of her family white water rafting, showing with MS Paint arrows how the three rafts tied together behind them don’t contain people, but coolers of Keystone Light.
It’s all very depressing, but I don’t care because I move the numbers. I submit to PER.
One thing Dorian suggested I do when I arrive to work and when leaving work is close my eyes and count to twenty, then back down to zero, twenty times. Eyes shut, my head feels woozy, like if I stood I’d fall over. Good thing I’m sitting in this chair. I’ve sat in this chair, minus my stint working from home, for almost ten years. If I complete my training maybe it won’t matter so much, but it’s possible I’ll work until the year 2037 in the same chair.
I complete my first day and begin counting.
Elderly isn’t on the street. I notice this much later, after being home and after my routines. His car is here, under the streetlamp, just not him. I check the back seats, then walk around the block, moving through the dark patches of sidewalk between the streetlamps.
Walking in the summer when everyone has their windows open and blinds up is exciting. I love seeing other people’s lives. When I was a kid, I wanted to know how everyone else lived. Leaving school for a doctor’s appointment and being out in the world with only adults was a new world, but they never seemed to be doing much.
I turn another corner and head back home, peeking into homes, these alive dioramas. In one house, a man is stretching neon colored resistance bands over his head while clenching his teeth and looking in the mirror. In another house, a woman is running up the stairs holding multiple suits with the pant legs dragging on the floor. In another house, the front door is open leading to an all wooden space with a single fluorescent lightbulb. And in the last house before my block, a girl is standing with her arms flat by her sides as her mother does squats.
I eat dinner, do twenty sit-ups, and get into bed at 8 pm exactly, sleeping pills supplied by PER as carnation-pink ovals I roll between my finger and thumb before swallowing. Everything is the same. It’s still hot out. I hate sleeping without covers, but the dream is coming.
JUNE 8
I settle into the Zone and work without a break or speaking a word. Dorian’s instructions don’t say to avoid my coworkers, but the more I’m achieving my routine the better. Michelle announces from her cubicle that there’s pending legislation to change Policeman to Police Officer, and Steve rapid-replies that the world is going to hell in a handbasket. So no ideal gate here, and worst of all, Elderly is gone.
This morning his car had a ticket because it’s Thursday, he never moved it, which he never forgets. In all the years I have lived here, Elderly has always been here. He’s as much a neighborhood fixture as the trees, the deaf person singing on her way to work, those who walk their dogs daily down the block. He once told me that vehicles appearing to be worth less than five thousand dollars should be exempt from ticketing. I miss him. But if he lived in Iran, and then lived in a car, then maybe he can take care of himself. Maybe he will reappear like nothing ever happened.
Where does a guy like Elderly go? I could file a police report, but it only reminds me of Dad.
I block what I can from my coworkers, adjust the head
set, and work diligently with speed. Every minute is a step closer to my ideal gate. Every minute forward is me entering my life. How exciting to be both in control and out of control. On the ride and off the ride. No matter what happens, I have my retirement package waiting for me at the end.
JUNE 9
I settle into the Zone and work without a break or speaking a word.
THE WEEKEND
I sleep for 25 hours, and between sleeping, stumble around my apartment.
I’m not depressed. I’m just calm now.
JUNE 12
I settle into the Zone and work without a break or speaking a word.
JUNE 13
I settle into the Zone and work without a break or speaking a word.
Blood emails me: “Stunning proficiency.”
JUNE 14
I settle into the Zone and work without a break or speaking a word.
JUNE 15
I settle into the Zone and work without a break or speaking a word.
JUNE 16
I settle into the Zone and work without a break or speaking a word.
Blood emails me: “The gate is coming.”
THE WEEKEND
42 hours of sleep.
JUNE 19
Monday, the last week of training, hooray, zoooom, I see nothing.
Before putting my headphones on Michelle says mandarin oranges make a salad exotic. Steve made popcorn because he needs attention. Emily has begun decorating the office with Fourth of July ribbons and posters.
Any of this could be distracting, but I’m all silence and work, the gold watch blinking with the waterfall logo, which I imagine is Fang Lu and Billy Krol doing their jobs, we’re connected I think, but I’m not sure how. I don’t ask questions, I just do my job, work toward my ideal gate and the joy I deserve.
There is nothing else to my life but PER, walking to work and home from work, eating, the twenty sit-ups, the pill, and then sleeping. My retirement will be $86,000 annually beginning in 2037, maybe more depending on raises and the completion of the program. It’s waiting for me. I can feel it.
I complete work I can’t remember a second later, the same motion performed for hours.
For maybe less than an hour everything and everyone around me is temporarily gone, a droning outward as I type. I look only at the screen. Then the office, the cubicle walls, the lights, come back into focus.
JUNE 20
Walking to work, I pass a gas station with one of the pumps on fire. The transparent orange flames are nearly unnoticeable in the summer light. Maybe what I’m seeing isn’t real. Everything else surrounding the pump is untouched and no one seems to notice. A dad is pumping gas with three kids inside his van, each holding a phone. I stare and blink at the perfect dome of flame surrounding the pump. It’s real? In the wind I feel increased heat, so I run toward the glass doors advertising purple slushies.
Inside, stationed too close to the door are Bud Light thirty packs displayed in the shape of a car. Where the driver should be is a pool-toy shark with a miniature American flag duct taped to its fin. A banner says to, “Keep it cool with aggressive savings.” I look for a worker. Two middle eastern men are behind the counter standing shoulder-to-shoulder, blank faced, staring at me. Behind them are colorful rows of cigarettes and I don’t smoke, but I want a pack. It’s incredibly clean and air conditioned in here, a cold quiet, the workers still staring as I approach.
I use my professional voice. “One of your pumps, out there,” I point behind my shoulder, “it’s on fire.”
The one on the left sneezes. “We know,” he says indifferently. “We’re waiting for anyone.” He blows his nose into a red and black cloth with stitching as squiggly lines of painted white dots and shrugs.
“It’s on fire now,” I explain.
“We said we know,” says the one on the right. “But if we go out there they kill us.”
“Who?”
“Jesus, what’s wrong with you, man?” says the other, now picking his nose and inspecting his finger between picks. “The people who set the fire.” He points out the window with his other hand and toward the flames.
“I don’t see anyone,” I say, feeling dumb, professional voice defeated. “Wait, who is it? Where?”
A giant man slams two half gallons of butter pecan ice cream down on the counter, forcing me to the side. I say I’m sorry even though there’s no reason to apologize. The giant is a hungry mouth breather who asks for a plastic spoon. With black smoke now billowing around the pump I can’t see who the clerk is pointing at.
“Are you buying anything,” says one of the clerks, the one who sneezed and blew his nose, who is now chewing his fingernails, “or did you just come in here to say we have a fire?”
“Which we already knew about,” the other says and spits green gum into his hand. “Which will probably be out from the next storm before anyone helps us. They take their time now. They’ve picked a side.”
“Yeah,” says the giant with the butter pecan ice cream, unwrapping the plastic spoon. “Don’t you understand what’s going on?”
Continuing my walk to work, protesters, scarred-faced men in baggy carpenter jeans and loose fitting leather vests, are holding picket signs telling “All of them” to return home. For someone who works for the State, I don’t consider myself a political person, my non-action helps no one, out of all the causes in the world someone would choose a war against an entire religion. What does it matter the land your mother shat you out? Everywhere is everywhere.
When I see protesters like these walking from the gas station I remember what Alice told me. Because it’s an easy cause. Anyone can carry a sign that says “My Favorite Color Is Freedom.” Anger is lazy. It helps if the anger is fueled by fear and these guys are terrified. They’re old enough to have lived through the six o’clock news of the Iran Revolution so they believe it could happen here. But those who run the gas station just want to feed their kids and send them to school with new sneakers and backpacks. Does it work? I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m talking about. You’d have to ask someone like Alice.
I speed walk to work, excited and ready to enter the Zone.
In the elevator again is Shawl Lady. She wears the shawl tight around her face, red hair visible, very little else besides the green flats. I move to the back corner after hitting the button for my floor, fourteen. Her floor, eighteen, is already lit up.
Elevator silence when it’s only a man and a woman present is awkward because the man is usually thinking something sexual about the woman and the woman is thinking she doesn’t want to die. Sarah told me that shortly after the stomach touching incident. So I don’t say a word to Shawl Lady.
I exit on my floor and turn to look at her. I can’t help myself. As the doors close, Shawl Lady is facing the back wall in an oval of black.
JUNE 21
I settle into the Zone and work without a break or speaking a word.
JUNE 22
I settle into the Zone and work without a break or speaking a word.
From her cubicle Emily says, “Fuck me, fudge fancies.”
Blood emails me: “Last day. Good luck.”
JUNE 23
There’s an ongoing conversation about what to order for lunch. It’s ten in the morning. Friday in an office environment means Groupon takeout and discussing weekend plans. It doesn’t bother me. I do my work and shatter data entry records. I am all go as the office fades in and out. I’m ready to achieve my gate. Even when Steve says that he hates eggs but loves egg foo yung I keep working, clicking the completion tab over and over again.
“Chinese?”
“Brought my lunch.”
“Oh, whaja’ bring?”
“A sandwich.”
“Sounds good.”
“We should do Chinese. Jade Palace has a special. General Tso’s chicken with fried rice and it comes with those, what do you call them, crab raggins? Whatever those things with the shit inside.”
“Raggins
.”
“Soup please.”
“You’re doing Groupon, right?”
“Yeah.”
“What time should we order?”
“Now.”
“Egg roll?”
“I’m in.”
“Steve, who are you kidding?”
“Ten for Steve.”
“Okay, so I’ll put the order in. I figure everyone wants the General Tso’s chicken combo with wonton soup?”
“And raggins.”
“I want sesame chicken.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Seeds.”
“Yes, hello? Two egg rolls and three General Tso’s chicken lunch specials. Sorry, one Sesame chicken. I can’t understand a word you’re saying. Now that comes with the raggins and wonton soup and fried rice? I want to be sure because last time I didn’t get any and I don’t want to go through an ordeal again. Still there? Give me the total. I have the Groupon coupon. And when the guy comes have him go to the Edgar street side entrance, thank you.”
“Thanks for calling. I hate those people.”
“How long?”
“Ugh, didn’t say. Hold on.”
“Hi. I just ordered, but you didn’t tell me how long. Ten minutes? Okay. Thank you.”
“They always say ten minutes.”
“Was the total like I said?”
“I have an envelope here.”
“I’m going to the little girls’ room.”
“I’m thinking of getting a tattoo on my arm that says Dare To Live.”
“I smell popcorn.”
“I’m sooooo hungry.”
“I don’t eat breakfast.”
“I eat a donut. I know it’s bad for me, but sometimes you just have to say hell with it.”
