Y Is for Fidelity

by Logan Ryan Smith

  Y is for Fidelity

  a novel by

  Logan Ryan Smith

  Transmission Press

  Sacramento, California

  First Electronic Edition

  Transmission Press, Sacramento 95816

  © 2016 by Logan Ryan Smith

  All rights reserved. Published 2016.

  Cover art: “Friends with a Remote” © 2014 by Matthew Arnone.

  All rights reserved. For more on Matthew Arnone,

  visit: https://www.instagram.com/mstevenarnone/

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written consent of the author, except where permitted by law.

  Y is for Fidelity is a work of fiction (duh). All names, characters and events are figments of the author’s excuse for an imagination. Anything resembling reality is purely coincidental. Thank the great bearded sky wizard for that.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  dedication

  epigraph

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER 1.

  CHAPTER 2.

  CHAPTER 3.

  CHAPTER 4.

  CHAPTER 5.

  CHAPTER 6.

  CHAPTER 7.

  CHAPTER 8.

  CHAPTER 9.

  CHAPTER 10.

  CHAPTER 11.

  CHAPTER 12.

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER 13.

  CHAPTER 14.

  CHAPTER 15.

  CHAPTER 16.

  CHAPTER 17.

  CHAPTER 18.

  CHAPTER 19.

  CHAPTER 20.

  CHAPTER 21.

  CHAPTER 22.

  CHAPTER 23.

  PART THREE

  CHAPTER 24.

  CHAPTER 25.

  CHAPTER 26.

  CHAPTER 27.

  CHAPTER 28.

  CHAPTER 29.

  CHAPTER 30.

  CHAPTER 31.

  CHAPTER 32.

  CHAPTER 33.

  CHAPTER 34.

  EPILOGUE

  For friends…

  First you fill me with thunder

  Then you let me go under

  — Robert Palmer, “Under Suspicion”

  The wild dogs cry out in the night

  As they grow restless, longing for some solitary company

  — Toto, “Africa”

  Your heart’s on your sleeve, but your sleeve is rolled up

  — Phil Collins, “Doesn’t Anybody Stay Together Anymore”

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER 1.

  BUZZZZ

  What the hell?

  BUZZZZ BUZZZZ BUZZZZ

  The room shakes. The room rattles. The room quivers and quiets and calms. The walls, hung with Kinkade and LeRoy Neiman prints, show they’ve received no abuse. That it was no earthquake. That a tornado didn’t just hit. That it was no major event. The TV, however, did seem to lose internet connection for a half second, interrupting and jarring the program, All Creatures Great and Small, which I’m playing on Netflix through my PlayStation.

  BUZZZZ

  My heart jumps and my stomach drops, because I know what it is.

  There’s someone.

  There’s someone at the front gate.

  There’s someone buzzing my apartment, standing at the front gate, expecting me to answer.

  It happens.

  It happens sometimes. Sometimes someone gives the wrong apartment number when ordering a pizza. Sometimes some drunk frat guy wanders a few blocks off course from Wrigley Field and mistakenly thinks my building is his friend’s building and that I’m someone waiting for him to arrive so we can drink beer, chest bump, shout about the Cubs, and go find some fags to beat up—fags being his word, not mine.

  But I don’t answer.

  I never answer.

  No one comes to my door.

  No one buzzes my apartment.

  No one.

  Why would they?

  BUZZZZ

  Sometimes it’s one of my neighbors. See, I live in this big building, three-stories tall, shaped like a jagged V in Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood. People, you see, sometimes get locked out. Even I have gotten locked out—once. Only, I didn’t bang on random buttons at the gate hoping someone would let me in so I could find a way inside my apartment thereafter. No, of course I didn’t. What good would that do? You get in the gate, you get to your apartment, and then what? You still have no keys!

  Ridiculous.

  No, the one time I locked myself out I phoned the onsite building engineer, Gregor, like any good tenant would. I phoned him a dozen times until he picked up and groaned and asked me in his thick Slovakian accent what it was that I wanted. I told him, and he grunted and groaned some more until finally digging himself out of whatever underground bunker he lives in within this giant, jagged V-shaped building, letting me into the courtyard, and then into my apartment.

  I didn’t want to bother him. Just as I wouldn’t want to bother anybody. Let alone my neighbors, who, for some reason, do feel a need to bother their neighbors from time to time.

  For instance, when they lock themselves out. Or, their cat got out of their apartment and they knock and knock and knock on my door. Over and over. Relentless!

  But I don’t answer.

  Why would I answer?

  So they go down the hall to the next door and I hear them answer and open their door and I shove my ear against my door and hear how a cat’s been lost and has anyone seen it.

  Who cares?

  Call Animal Services! Don’t come knocking on my door.

  And my neighbors…

  You know that jerk that drives up the shoulder on the freeway, passing perhaps miles of cars stuck patiently in traffic, just knowing someone up there, eventually, will let him in?

  It’s the same thing!

  Someone always accommodates the pushy, petulant jerk!

  Someone always lets that guy with the silver Porsche Boxster in and the rest of us, stuck behind the guy letting him in, have to suffer.

  It’s the same with people all over.

  It only takes one sucker. One push-over to mess it up for the rest of us.

  Some jerk loses her cat and we’re all expected to stop whatever it is we’re doing and talk to them, listen to them, console them, and maybe even help them.

  Listen, if I have information that can help, I’m glad to help. But if I have that information, the likelihood is that I would have already offered that information!

  Look, lady, do you really think I saw your blue-eyed, dark-faced, light-coated Siamese kitty (that goes by the name of Pooky) creeping through the corridors and decided not to tell anyone?

  Jesus.

  People.

  But that’s the problem, right? Most people wouldn’t tell anyone. They’d see this collared cat frolicking through the hallways and think to do nothing about it. They’d go home, make their macaroni and cheese, watch The Big Bang Theory, and have little to no thought pass through their head that night about the wandering pussy, let alone anything else. And then they’d fall asleep, wake the next day, go to work, come home and answer the door when some jerk comes banging on every door in the complex, looking for her poor lost putty tat.

  Incredible! It never ends.

  BUZZZZ

  This time, they jump—that is, Christopher Timothy and Peter Davidson, who play James Herriot and Tristan Farnon, respectively, in the series, All Creatures Great and Small, a late seventies BBC production about small town veterinarians dealing with everything from pooches to horses and sheep in Darrowby, a village in the Yorkshire Dales of England.

  Anyway, they jumped
, right up against the glass of my plasma TV, their pale Welsh and English faces humorously expressing surprise.

  Of course I jumped from the couch, both from the nervousness caused by the constant buzzing, but also the unexpected faces smashed up against the inside of my TV.

  I jumped.

  I jumped and dropped to the floor and nearly clipped my chin on the glass-topped coffee table in front of the couch.

  BUZZZZ

  Why won’t they leave me alone?

  Of course, I could just go to the intercom, press the button and ask them what they want. But just the thought of that drains every last bit of energy from my purple veins.

  On hands and knees, I crawl from the living room into the adjacent kitchen, which has a backdoor leading out onto a deck and the wooden steps that go three flights down into the back area, which offers escape through the alley.

  I feel pretty stupid crouching here in the kitchen.

  I feel especially stupid when I realize why someone’s buzzing my apartment from the gate keeping everyone out of the jagged-V courtyard and my apartment building.

  Of course I know why.

  At the behest of my therapist, I posted an ad on Craigslist for the second bedroom in my apartment. I didn’t want to, but Madelyn (she’s not a doctor and I will not refer to her as such) said I needed more human interaction. And, brilliant therapist she is, the best she could come up with was, “Ian, I think it would do you wonders to have a housemate—you know, someone you weren’t betrothed to, but still had to work with, in a fashion, on a daily basis. Someone whose presence you’d simply have to accept.”

  Of course I told her I didn’t have the right to sublet.

  She told me to get permission from my landlord.

  But my landlord isn’t even a person!

  My landlord is Superior Housing Rental Estate. That’s not a person. I call them and I’m bound to have to talk to a dozen people before I get to talk to someone who is oh-so-very likely to tell me I’ve called the wrong person!

  Either that or I talk to twelve people and get someone who tells me they’re very sorry, but, no, they cannot help me—or, more directly, that no, I cannot do as I like.

  And I guess I’m supposed to retort with something like, “But, Sir or Madam, I respectfully ask you to reconsider. I am a very, very responsible tenant, never late on rent, never a bother to my neighbors, and quite clean. I respectfully ask you to reconsider allowing me the privilege to have someone take the empty room in my apartment so that I may have reduced rent and my therapist off my back.”

  NO!

  I can’t do that. You know why? Because I simply cannot stand up for myself.

  Or, rather, I cannot ask. I cannot ask for anything for myself.

  Like I said, if my cat got out of my apartment (and no, I have no cat—why would I allow some selfish four-legged thing to live with me only to show me its disdain for me through cold indifference while pooping in a box I have to keep inside my apartment?) I would never go around inconveniencing my neighbors because of my carelessness, no matter how much loss or dread I felt due to the absence of the creature.

  I get prickly needles under my skin just thinking about asking anyone for anything.

  Of course I force those prickly needles down and ignore them when necessary—for things, you know, like ordering kung pao tofu, asking a grocer where the plums are (I don’t know why I just said plums, there are no plums in Chicago grocery stores—silly!), or asking the gas company why my bill is suddenly double what it was last winter.

  BUZZZZ

  It’s John, Terry, Eric, Graham, Michael, or some such—I can’t recall. That jerk is buzzing the gate of my apartment building because that jerk for some reason thinks he’ll get to live with me. In my space.

  I have a hard time encountering anyone in the hallway, on the stairs, in the courtyard. How can anyone think I’m going to let them sit on my couch, watch my Netflix, use my toilet—oh, god. Oh, god.

  Oh, god.

  BUZZZZ

  Go away!

  I curl up against the back door in the kitchen, one shoulder up against the cupboards, knees pulled close, my jaw tense and chattering.

  BUZZZZ

  “Go away!” I actually yell out, and wait.

  And wait.

  And wait.

  And I wait until the tinkling, jaunty piano theme of All Creatures Great and Small bounds off my apartment walls, announcing a new episode has begun and that I’ve cowered in my kitchen for maybe forty minutes.

  CHAPTER 2.

  Two days later, I’m home from my job as sysadmin at Inmerica, an insurance and financial services company. I spent the commute on the El from The Loop listening to Robert Palmer’s classic, Riptide, and reading up on new security software in TechNet despite the fact that I spend much of my time changing fans on servers and drinking Lipton Ice Tea. The rest of my time is at employee cubicles, updating Windows or showing them loopholes around necessary administrative approval so they can upload their own Phil Collins and Toto MP3s to their computer, put headphones on, and block out the clucking of the telemarketers and sales team about thirty feet away.

  It’s against the rules to show them loopholes, but they pester. They pester and pester. And eventually I crack. I do so because I’d really rather not deal with them at all. When installing new database and accounting programs I usually tell them to take a walk and leave me be because, I tell them, this is very serious work that requires my focus entirely. People are stupid about computers, even in this day and age, and gladly get lost, believing me to possess some kind of impossible-to-understand tech wizardry.

  Like most things in modern life, it’s just pushing buttons and following instructions.

  Anyway, I’m not home ten minutes when: BANG BANG BANG!

  I’m at the kitchen sink washing a plate, preparing to make my dinner of pasta marinara and garlic bread that I can enjoy while watching classic Doctor Who on Amazon Prime. I’m staring out the kitchen window, which looks out onto the small wood deck, the back of the building, and the strip of grass yard below that runs straight out until hitting the chain-link fence, the alley beyond that. The May twilight makes this plain urban scene rather inviting. Lights in the high-rises off in the distance, towering over the lake, flicker as dark windows turn shades of yellow and orange.

  CRASH

  I dropped the damned plate, having been startled out of my lull.

  When the BANG happens again, I flinch and realize it’s someone at my front door, impatient and ready to knock the thing off its hinges.

  I swallow my adam’s apple and begin quietly picking the broken pieces of plate out from the sink. I breathe slowly, shallowly, as if whoever’s at the door might hear me breathing in here and continue to knock, refusing to go away.

  Carefully, I open the trash bin and place the broken plate bits into it.

  BANG BANG BANG

  Then: “Hello? Ian? Are you there?”

  Damn.

  I tiptoe out of the kitchen to the door and peer out the peephole. There’s a man in the hallway with pale skin and dark eyes and he doesn’t have the look of someone that will go take a walk and get lost.

  “Yes?” I venture.

  “Ian? Hi. It’s Benoit. We emailed last week. You told me to drop by any time this week after regular working hours.”

  He has a faint accent I can’t quite place.

  “Were…” I tell the door, my hand gripping the doorknob.

  “Yeah?”

  “Were you here a few days ago?”

  “What?”

  “Buzzing the gate over and over?”

  “No. No, that wasn’t me.”

  “How did you get in the gate?”

  “It was propped open. Looks like there’s some landscapers here hedging the bushes in the courtyard.”

  “Hmm…” I make a mental note to make a formal complaint about the landscapers’ carelessness in propping open the security gate. It’s a security gate, for Chris
t’s sake! What good is it if it isn’t providing security?

  “Ian, is now not a good time?”

  My therapist told me I’m miserable. I told Madelyn I wasn’t miserable. My therapist told me I was lonely. I told Madelyn I wasn’t lonely. My therapist told me I need to learn how to be around other people and interact so that I can develop close, meaningful, and long-lasting relationships. I told Madelyn that I didn’t and, besides, I’m thirty-five-years-old and know damn well that there’s no such thing as meaningful, long-lasting relationships. My therapist told me to get a housemate—that it’d be like jumping in the deep-end of the pool and learning to swim out of sheer necessity. Sink or swim, Madelyn told me, her lips curving into a wry half-smile. She seemed so proud of herself. For some reason I didn’t retort any longer. She wore me out. Everyone wears me out. I asked Madelyn why she couldn’t just give me some happy drugs and she stuttered and before Madelyn could answer I reminded her that she’s not a doctor and that I seriously doubt the Northwestern diploma for a master’s in psychology that hangs in her office—which, by the way, is just the den in her Victorian home in Evanston.

  Nothing about Madelyn is official.

  Why don’t I just get another therapist? Or, better yet, a real psychiatrist that can provide me with all the pharmaceuticals my sad sad heart desires? I don’t know. It just seems like a lot of work to find someone else—to have to talk to someone new.

  Besides, I think Madelyn is helping.

  And I don’t really believe in pill-popping to solve problems, anyway.

  When I pull the door open to let Benoit in, I see the man is carrying an old fashioned beige suitcase. My jaw drops, partly because I’m taken aback, but also because I intend to tell this Benoit that the room is no longer available.

  “So, this is the place, is it?” Benoit says, stepping past me and into the living room. I still can’t place his accent. Italian, maybe?

  “It is… um… when did we email?”

  “Last week,” Benoit says over his shoulder, studying my entertainment center replete with fifty-two-inch plasma TV, Bose stereo system, PlayStation, and Xbox.