“What has that got to do with anything?”
Betty squeezed my arm and whispered in a loud voice, “Chewing ice cubes means you’re sexually frustrated, dear. It’s okay. We’ve all been there.” See? Everything into something about sex.
It was surreal. Getting advice on my love life from octogenarians! “I’ve always chewed ice cubes.”
“I know.” Betty’s eyes blinked wide. “And you’ve never been with a man, have you?”
They were all staring at me.
“Have you?” Grandmother was the only one who looked as if she didn’t want to hear the answer to the question.
“No.”
“See, that’s the problem. You should stop yelling at him, dear. He might start thinking you don’t like him.”
“But I don’t!” Was this so difficult a concept to grasp?
“Of course you do.”
“Of course I don’t.”
“Playing hard to get is fine for the young, but you don’t have the luxury of youth, do you?”
Thank you, Betty. “Are you trying to marry me off?”
“Would it be so bad?”
“I’m perfectly happy on my own.”
“No, you’re not.” Just because she wanted someone, she assumed everyone else did too.
“So you want me to throw myself on someone I’ve barely even met?”
They all stared at me.
“You do? Why?”
“Because you need someone, dear.”
“Listen, I know this concept is foreign to your generation, but modern women don’t need anyone. It’s perfectly acceptable to go through life on your own these days.”
They were shaking their heads. “But not for you.”
I decided to play along, hoping it would allow me to get to bed earlier. Better yet, maybe I could shock them and they’d all just go home. “So what do you want me to do, sleep with him?”
“Yes. Well…maybe not. But you could at least make him think you want to.”
If I hadn’t loved her fuzzy head so much, I’d have strangled Adele. “What! You’re supposed to be a moral example. And you want me to hop in someone’s bed? Just like that?”
“We went through the war years.”
“You mean the old ‘sleep with me, I might die tomorrow’ line works?”
“Only when you wanted it to.”
I really, really hadn’t wanted to know that about Adele.
“You just never knew which boys wouldn’t be coming home. And sometimes, it wasn’t practical to get married before they left…such a lot of good boys never came home…” You could tell Betty was flipping through her mental scrapbook of wartime flings.
“He’s a nice boy and he likes you. Help him out a little.” Adele patted me on the arm. “You can do that, can’t you?”
He likes me? Really? “Did he say that?”
“We’re not blind. Yet.” Thelma always told the truth, no matter what. Tanks had eyes in the back of their heads. And turrets. I knew from experience.
Adele gave me a quick hug and a kiss. “Just think about it.”
I went upstairs and got ready for bed. Joe’s scent still lingered in the hall. Exactly how long had he stood there watching me before he’d bothered to “knock”? Just the thought gave me a funny feeling in my stomach. I stood there in the doorway, trying to see what he must have seen.
My bedspread from India, bought at a time when I was thinking charitable thoughts about my mother. Old challis shawls from a thrift store made into curtains.
The floor-to-ceiling gilt mirror I’d rescued from a dumpster behind an old boarding house. The frame was beautiful, but the mirror was useless, clouded with spots and streaks.
My prized Bride and Prejudice poster.
I’m a Bollywood fan. Along with millions of other people in the world. It’s amazing to me that an Indian movie industry which produces more films and sells more tickets than Hollywood is still so unknown in the U.S.
I watched my first Bollywood movie just to see what it was like where my mother was living. Granted, after the first 15 minutes I knew it was an idealistic picture of India, but it had the illusion of the reality of daydreams. An Indian’s daydreams. So it was India just the same. And gazing at the images swirling in front of me, I could believe my mother believed she was living in a better place than here. A world filled with family who cared enough to try to control your life. A family who loved you enough to feel as though they had a stake in every decision you were making. A world vibrant with color and motion. Who wouldn’t want to live there?
Of course, the India that existed outside of Bollywood was composed of filth and squalor. A few years into my Bollywood obsession, I was able to separate fact from fantasy, but by then I was hooked.
I’ve acquired most of my Bollywood DVD collection through eBay. And my eBay habit was expensive. But there was just…something…about the combination of music, song, and dance. The idea that family was more important than the individual. The concept that love could be honorable. And controllable.
Most of the time, in Bollywood, the characters never even kiss.
That’s my kind of love.
I closed the door and stood in front of the bulletin board it had hidden. The one Joe could not have seen. The bulletin board held a photo of my best friend: Andreas. We’d met each other in junior high. Hung out together through high school. Hung out, in fact, until he had died of AIDS three years before.
The bulletin board also held photos of the children I sponsor. Orphans, all. Though I grew up without a mother, they all have it ten times worse. I’ve always sponsored two from the same orphanage. I liked to imagine they could be friends. As I stood there, I said a prayer for Antonio and Jorge, hoping the Mexican sun would smile on them in the morning. For Nicolette and Adriana, that they would be protected from the diseases which run rampant in Haiti. For Maria and Gloria, that they would never be tempted by the corruption in Columbia. And for Carlos and Juan, that they would be inspired in their studies.
Then I sat down and wrote them each a letter.
The next morning the phone rang at 5:45.
I was up. The Academy class schedule started at 7:00 and so the work day on the hill, even during summer break, began at 6:45. But just because I was up didn’t mean I wanted to talk on the phone.
But Joe didn’t know that. If he had, I doubt he would have cared.
“Jackie? Hey, would you mind doing me a favor? Following me over to Motor City on the way to work? I have to drop the SUV off.”
“For good?”
“For a headlight replacement.”
Too bad. “Sure. What time?”
“Six thirty?”
“Fine. See you then.”
At 6:30 exactly, Joe rolled down the street and pulled in front of my car, and then we proceeded down the hill, went up Manitou Avenue, and headed over to Motor City. At least it wasn’t far away. Most of the dealerships in town had decided to display their products in one location. If you couldn’t find a car in Motor City, you weren’t looking hard enough. Or you’d given up out of sheer exhaustion.
I followed him to his dealership, turned off the car, and wondered if there wasn’t any other way to attract business than multicolored pennant flags.
Joe jogged over to my car, opened the door, and slid inside. Bonked his head on the roof when he straightened in his seat. Tried to slouch, but his legs were too long. Felt for a lever to adjust it.
“On the side.”
He found one. The seat collapsed behind him.
“The other one.”
He pulled at it and the seat shot back. He folded his arms behind his head and crossed his feet. “Not so bad at the right angle. You might want to go through Garden of the Gods. The interstate’s backed up.”
“Can’t. It’s not open. Not until eight.” I eyed the interstate that ran above us. No one was moving. At least not in the direction we wanted to go. “We’ll go through town.”
I backt
racked. Drove under the interstate on Cimarron. Turned north onto Nevada. Passed tree-populated Acacia Park, rapidly approaching the statue of General Palmer that sat in the middle of the road. No one ever quite knew for certain how to drive around him.
General Palmer is the reason Colorado Springs maintains its small-town mentality. It has more than 500,000 people, but it cannot figure out what to do about General Palmer and his trusty horse. Local wisdom held that the founder of Colorado Springs deserved a lovely, unobstructed view of Pikes Peak. To place him anywhere else would diminish his stature.
Well, he was dead. His stature has been diminishing for nearly a hundred years.
The answer, of course, was obvious. Move him across the road to Acacia Park. Give him his own little square of concrete so he didn’t have to take up ours. As it is, the general causes untold traffic accidents each year. Mostly caused by drivers who are unable to decide, until the last minute, how to navigate around him.
When the city finally does something about the general, when it deals with the unreasonable influence a long-absent person has wielded over the simple interchanges of daily life, then the city will be well and truly ready to deal with growth. As it is, it remains unwilling to address serious problems like water, traffic, and infrastructure. Until it does, it may grow like a weed, but it will never mature. Never offer to its citizens all it could.
I’d blog about it, but then I’d give myself away. If anyone were looking.
“Isn’t Poor Richard’s around here somewhere?”
“The bookstore? It’s one corner over. Tejon and Platte.”
“Does it still have the restaurant? And live music?”
“I’m not sure.”
“I used to go there with a roommate. We had these great wigs. Blond, shoulder-length surfer-style. The girls from Colorado College would at least talk to us when we were wearing wigs.”
“Versus…?”
“If we came as cadets.”
No surprise there. By some twist of fate, one of the most liberal colleges in the country, Colorado College, shared the same location as the Air Force Academy, one of the most conservative. “Great guy, your roommate.”
“Oh, yeah. We used to…we’d go to Garden of the Gods all the time. We’d climb to the top of South Gateway Rock, the first one you see as you drive into the park, early on Saturday mornings when nobody was around. We’d rappel halfway down, then when tourists started driving through, we’d dangle there and scream for help. When they’d started panicking, we’d climb back up and drop down the other side.”
“I didn’t think you could climb in the park.”
“You can if you register.”
“You probably gave someone a heart attack.”
“It was all in fun.”
“Maybe for you.”
We drove through the Colorado College campus. Passed the east side of Shove Chapel. It would have looked more at home in a Crusader’s village with its small narrow windows and austere facade.
Joe sat up. Partially. “I always loved this campus. It’s pretty.”
It was pretty. It had grace and elegance. Century-old trees. Almost everything the Academy lacked. Except, perhaps, moral fortitude.
We made it to the Academy by 7:30. Not that anyone cared. New instructor training would start on 10 July. And until then, everyone who wanted to take leave had been encouraged to do so.
I worked on a program for online test taking and homework. I was hoping to have it up and running so it could be beta tested before classes started. It was a simple multiple-choice format. The challenge lay in security issues. How to ensure Cadet A didn’t sign in as Cadet B. How to ensure answers couldn’t be changed.
This experiment would be the precursor to online essay test taking and term paper submission. Most of the department’s tests, even at the lower levels, were taken in essay format. By having cadets submit their tests online, we were hoping to lessen the temptation for cheating. And the impact of hundreds of paper copies on the environment.
I worked on it through lunch, waving Joe off when he tried to convince me to go eat with him.
I fiddled with fonts and formats. Debated the error messages. Was it better to remind cadets to select from answers (a)–(e) or was it better just to ignore the smart alecks if they tried to enter answers like (?) or (#%$)? Should the program report the scores to the cadets immediately, or should it reveal the result to the instructors’ eyes only?
I ran through the test at least 20 times that afternoon. Made note of the things I needed to rework or rethink, including whether or not to have music from Beethoven’s Fifth play whenever someone chose the wrong answer. I could picture it: The text from the question slowly dissolving into granular nothingness while the chords of the symphony pounded with despair, the word “WRONG” accompanying each beat. For a right answer? The Hallelujah Chorus?
Maybe not.
“You almost done?” His voice came from above me.
Startled, I looked up.
I found him staring down at me from over the cubicle wall. He grinned. “I wish I had your concentration.”
“Are you…standing on your desk?”
“Yeah. I would’ve rolled around and come to the front door, but the wheels of my chair always get stuck in the carpet. Anyway, I’d like to pick the SUV up before they close if you don’t mind.”
I glanced at the computer clock. It was already quarter to five. “What time do they close?”
“Five thirty.”
“Let’s go.” I saved everything and then logged off the network. “Did you log off?”
“Nope. It’ll do it for me in…what? Twenty minutes?”
“You can never be too careful.”
“Or too anal. How about this? I’ll do the lazy man’s log off.”
I walked around the cubicle wall just in time to see him turn off the power to his monitor.
“Positive points for energy conservation. Negative points for poor security.”
“That’s me. An all-around well-balanced kind of guy.”
I could think of a couple of other descriptions for him.
Joe folded himself into my car and then turned on the radio. “What is this? NPR?” He sent the dial off in the other direction before I could respond. Tuned into a song wailing about some paradise city. Started singing along.
I glanced over at him.
He was concentrating on playing an air guitar; concentrating so hard his eyes were shut tight from the extraordinary effort it must have required. He popped an eye open. “Why aren’t you singing? This is a classic.”
“I don’t know this one.” Or any other “classic” song for that matter. How do you fit in with your peers when you don’t have a mother? There’s a whole generation of influence missing in your life. At home, there’s not a generation gap, there’s a chasm. A gaping canyon that can never be spanned. Classic rock to my friends had been ’50s music. Classic rock to Grandmother was something that has yet to be invented. Swing is as down as she gets. Glenn Miller is her favorite.
We sped down the interstate, just ahead of rush hour traffic, and made it to the dealership in about 20 minutes.
Joe hopped out of the car and went inside to the office.
I turned the radio back to NPR.
A minute later he stepped out of the door and gave me a wave. My signal to leave.
I rolled up to the garage about 15 minutes later.
Got out to push up the door.
As I got in the car and shut the car door, I was assaulted by the scent of Joe. A familiar scent that immediately brought to mind our cubicle.
I recognized the slightest hint of lavender. A suggestion of fir. Something powerful and…masculine. And something else. Some underlying note. Of cleanliness.
Something clean.
And pure.
THE CUBICLE NEXT DOOR BLOG
What’s wrong with me?
I’m worse than a shark.
I can smell your cologne from 100
yards away.
And it lingers in my senses, long after you are gone. Lingers in your cubicle like a forlorn ghost.
Posted on June 22 in The Cubicle Next Door | Permalink
Comments
Maybe you’re allergic to colognes and perfumes.
Posted by: justluvmyjob | June 23 at 01:52 AM
Sounds like maybe those cubicle walls are blocking the circulation of air through the office. Is there a window you could open or something?
Posted by: megluvsphysics | June 23 at 05:31 PM
Are you sure it’s not lingering in your heart?
Posted by: philosophie | June 23 at 11:27 PM
Eight
The next day Joe came into work with a request. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Maybe.”
“Do you go to church?”
“Hypothetically.”
There was silence, a rolling of wheels across his floor mat, and then a grunt as they hit the resistance of the carpet. Next, the sound of papers being shoved across a desk. A moment later his head appeared above the wall. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I haven’t found one yet.”
“And you’ve been here…?”
“Ten years.”
“I thought you’d lived here all your life.”
“The church I went to before college was great. But when I came back, after Grandmother broke her hip, it had gone weirdo.”
“Where’d you go to school?”
“East Coast. MIT.”
“I had a roommate named Tim once who loved MIT T-shirts. Whenever he looked in a mirror, it said ‘TIM.’”
“I suppose it’s better than wearing a University of Portland T-shirt.”
He snickered. “Computers?”
I nodded. “It wasn’t fuzzy studies.”
“Fuzzy?”
“In computers, things either work or they don’t. And if they don’t, there’s a reason. It’s because you, the person, have done something wrong. In fuzzy studies, from what I remember, almost anything can be right or wrong, depending on what sort of proof you can find.”
“Or how well you can support your opinion. I guess you’re right. But at least I could always bluff my way through papers. Bet you couldn’t.”
The Cubicle Next Door Page 6
