by Paul Neilan
“You got anybody who gives a shit one way or the other what happens to you?”
“That’s not a very nice question to ask somebody.”
We looked at each other, and I thought for a second he knew that I was right.
Chapter 5
I had planned to skip my Tuesday with the landlord’s wife. I was still embarrassed about the bullshit Leaf Man story, even though I kept telling myself that I shouldn’t be and that really I was just there for some rent-subsidized sex so who cared either way. I was not very convincing.
So I went, but only on the condition that I would trick her into telling me something about herself, something guarded and personal, which I would then use to humiliate her in a seemingly innocent and unintentional way. Then we’d be even, and we could go back to being silent and normal again.
But when I got there I didn’t follow through. Because pride is stupid. And because she never gave me a chance to. I don’t think I would have though, even if she did. We just had our sex and then she told me to go. Still, it felt like we had reestablished something, if it felt like anything at all.
The Tuesday after that we were lying beside each other, not touching like we always did, and I was waiting for her to tell me to leave. I was staring up at the ceiling fan and imagining I was stuck in a Tennessee Williams play, although I wasn’t sure which one. The only one I could ever remember was Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, because of Elizabeth Taylor, but I hoped that wasn’t it. I didn’t want to ever have to call another man Big Daddy.
The fan was spinning and as the shadows passed over the white ceiling I let my eyes unfocus until all of it looked like a universe being born or a planet unraveling, some creation or catastrophe depending on which way gravity was going and at what end you were standing. So instead of Elizabeth Taylor I thought about stars and how little I knew about them, and how if I was an explorer and I had to sail a boat across the ocean without radar or a talking electronic compass I’d be fucked because the only constellations I knew were the Big and Little Dipper and I always got them confused. And even though I’d probably never have to sail that boat I still wished I knew more about stars and other things. And I wished I could remember lying on the grass in my backyard as a kid with my hands locked behind my head, looking up at the night sky and dreaming. But I couldn’t, because it wasn’t something I’d ever done. It would have been a nice memory though. Maybe it would have helped me somehow. If I was ever in jungle combat and I was captured and tortured I could look back on it and remember that innocence and all the things that seemed possible then, and I’d know why we were here fighting and dying in this godforsaken country. It was for the children. It always is. And that knowledge would have comforted me, though it would not have been enough to dim the searing pain as the electrodes sparked on my withered testicles.
“What are you afraid of?” she asked out of nowhere.
“Torture,” I said.
“What else?”
“Vampires and dinosaurs.”
“What else?”
“Men with tattoos on their faces.”
“Why?”
“I think they might be vampires.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Is that why you wear that cross around your neck?”
“Pretty much,” I said, and it was true. It was a crucifix I’d gotten for my first communion, a silver one, so it kind of protected against werewolves too even though I wasn’t scared of them anymore. I took it off only to shower or have sex, and I always did both as fast as possible, and never totally without fear.
“Are you afraid of clowns?” I said.
“No.”
“Good,” I meant to think, but I said it instead.
We lay there for a long time with the fan turning above us and I wanted her to hold my hand but she didn’t.
“I think you should go,” she said.
I didn’t think so, but I didn’t want to move too fast. So I left. I said goodbye though, loud enough so she could hear me. And I didn’t use my cigarette voice either.
Things were getting more dangerous. The plastic lock snap on my crappy yarmulke helmet broke off on one of my rides home in the rain, and since I had no brakes I couldn’t go back and pick it up. The next day at work I made my own complicated fastening contraption out of paper clips. It was brilliant. I used to watch MacGyver like every week when it was on. Mine was just as good as the original plastic snap except that the sharp tips of the paper clips, no matter how I bent them, always lodged themselves right up against my jugular vein so if I turned my head suddenly or at all I would have died. And it looked like I was wearing headgear. “Good for that little retarded boy. He got himself some braces!” the people in their cars said as I sailed through an intersection staring straight ahead, sweating, my heart pounding, waiting to be broadsided and decapitated at the same time. I would at least die an interesting death.
My job was also getting more dangerous. And by dangerous, I mean humiliating and depressing. One morning I came back from the bathroom to an email:
Hey gang! Exciting news! Due to a recent floor restructuring, our team is gaining a new cubicle! It will most likely be utilized as a conference cube or for storage, but I thought it might be fun to have a little “cube warming” party. I know you’ve all been working extremely hard, and this will be a good chance for us to “blow off some steam” as we welcome our newest insentient addition. Say, 10 A.M.? Be there or be square. Or, cubed, rather!
Regards,
Andrew
Then there was a rush of responses, people saying things like, “I haven’t been cubed since high school!” and “Better cubed than trapezoidal!” and “All this excitement is making me elliptical!” Everyone yukking it up in their cubicles, throwing out their best geometric one-liners, hoping for that flash of comic gold that would be forwarded to people on other teams and floors at Panopticon and talked about for weeks afterwards, remembered at company picnics and holiday parties and reminisced over at retirement send-offs until they were all eventually fired or dead. This was the mid-level corporate anecdotal immortality for which they all yearned. And when Jim Fresney, a divorced, lonely, sallow-faced college football enthusiast and thirteen-year Panopticon employee wrote “Will we dance the rhombus at the cube warming?” he became a god.
After I stopped crying I saw that it was 10:17. I was late.
“Shane! There you are!”
The entire team was assembled, milling around the new cubicle with its burgundy walls and gray carpet, identical in sterility and hopelessness to every other goddamn cubicle in the entire building. All it needed was a few pictures of some ugly kids and one of those “Success Is Defined by Those Who Succeed” posters of a guy climbing a mountain, or an unframed Thomas Kincaid print, to personalize it completely. This truly was a joyous occasion.
“We have treats!” Andrew said. “I’ve brought some fruit. Please, help yourself.”
That fruit was my only consolation. Even as I stood there, speechless with shame and disgust, I could feel a beautiful, lasting memory being made. All of them, my teammates, the ugly guy, the fat guy who was gay, Jim Fresney, the old woman with the stringy hair, even Andrew, were standing around that cubicle with bananas in their hands. They were all eating bananas. And that’s how I knew I would always remember them: a bunch of fucking monkeys in their natural habitat.
As I was basking in this, Andrew cleared his throat.
“You missed my earlier speech thanking everyone,” he said to me, but loud enough so that everyone stopped their mumbled conversations and listened, “but I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank you especially Shane. I know the workload can sometimes get a little crazy—”
“Sometimes?” Jim Fresney said, and everybody laughed, “Ha ha ha, hahhh.” He would never forget this day.
“Yes, that’s true.” Andrew was smiling. “But I just wanted you to know Shane, you’re doing an amazing job on your alphabetizing.”
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It was the most humiliating compliment I would ever receive. And I knew then that I wanted Andrew to deliver the eulogy at my funeral, which would be as soon as I had a free moment to kill myself.
“I’m sure I speak for the whole team when I say thank you. You are very appreciated.” And then he began to clap. And all those monkey motherfuckers did too. They gave me a standing ovation. Smiling, nodding their heads, their hands limply slapping their banana peels as the desperate reality of this world and my place in it came crashing through the ceiling like a fucking cartoon safe. I was a man who could be applauded for his alphabetizing. That was me, at my best. I achieved on a second grade level. Did they know I could also tie my shoes and write my name in script? Would they have been astonished?
What can a grown man say to such things? I would have to ask Andrew to drop the pretenses and pay me in pelts and flat stones that I could use to make tools and fire. Oooga boooga, me am caveman.
After the applause and my dignity had completely died, Andrew said, “All right, I know this isn’t how we usually do things, and I may be jumping a little ahead of myself, but the atmosphere in this cube is really getting to me so here I go. I’d like to introduce a new quotation for Inspiration Alley.”
There was a collective gasp from the team as if Andrew was a detective who’d announced that the murderer was someone nobody had even suspected, like Merv Griffin. They froze in simian anticipation, their half-eaten bananas in their hands.
“I’ve always found this to be particularly inspirational, and while it of course has to be approved by a majority team vote—” Here everyone smiled at each other, knowing that this was mere formality. All votes were always unanimous. They were more than just a collection of random bullshit strangers who all worked for the same giant insurance company. They were a collection of random bullshit strangers who all sat on the same floor in the same cluster of cubicles. And that kind of bond cannot be broken. “—I think it will survive the process,” Andrew said, and cleared his throat again. “It’s by Evelyn Underhill: ‘He goes because he must, as Galahad went towards the Grail: knowing that for those who can live it, this alone is life.’ ”
“Ahhhh” they sighed collectively, all of them beaming. Then they ripped into another round of applause which, if it weren’t empirically impossible, might have cheapened the ovation I’d gotten.
“I think I can speak for all of us when I say that this belongs in Inspiration Alley,” some guy in glasses and a yellow polo shirt said. I think his name was Mitch. Everyone nodded and kept their smiles pasted, but I could see they were a little disappointed that Mitch had managed to kiss ass first. They got their faces right in afterwards though, and Andrew bent over to take it like the good boss that he was.
The cube-warming assfest ended when a phone rang obscenely loud from a nearby cubicle. Mitch bolted from the gangbang to answer it. He literally fucking ran, nimbly making a right-angle turn into his own cube. Before he picked up though he said, loud enough for everyone to hear, “No more phone calls please, we have a winner!” Then softly, “Hello, Rob speaking, how may I help you?”
Mitch or Rob or whoever the fuck he was would go far at Panopticon. Everyone laughed that politely sincere laugh that ends in a sigh and sounds like resignation and defeat from the outside, but on the inside feels like just another day at the office. Everyone except Jim Fresney. He looked heartbroken. He wasn’t the team comedian anymore. His fifteen minutes were over. They’d gone so fast. He would have to live on memories from now on.
“Well, I guess it’s back to work,” they said, and were thankful for the break and the bananas. I had a hard time fathoming that this wasn’t all shameful and degrading for them too. This wasn’t abject humiliation. This was a good day. Team. Bananas. Inspiration Alley. No more phone calls please, we have a winner, ha ha ha, hahhh. For them, this was life.
I was early for my Doug appointment so I went into a fancy restaurant down the street and pretended to wait for my wife. Rich people with their napkins in their laps were having Saturday brunch. Waiters were smiling and little kids were swinging their legs under their chairs and holding their forks in their fists. Classical music was playing softly from everywhere. It sounded like Vivaldi, though I didn’t really know what Vivaldi sounded like. It was all beautiful in an unfair sort of way.
I checked my watch even though I was not wearing one, and shook my head. My imaginary wife was late.
Then, when no one was looking, I stole two saltshakers. Good ones. Glass ones. Not like the brown, ribbed, lampshade kind that I’d been reduced to grabbing from bars and chain restaurants, so stark and ugly I found them insulting. They were the tenement high-rises of saltshakers. They had no imagination, and led to drugs and poverty and dreams deferred. I still stole them but I was never happy about it, or satisfied.
But these were nice. Slender and elegant, like swans, and so high class they could have been crystal. They could have been a wedding present. There wasn’t even a seam in the glass, or a screw top or anything. I had no idea how they got the salt in. Maybe grain by grain, hand-fed through the hole on top like those clipper ships in a bottle. I felt sophisticated having stolen them.
“When my wife arrives could you tell her I’ve gone to the dentist?” I said to the maître d’ as I was leaving.
“Certainly sir,” he said.
The perfect crime. I was an English jewel thief. I felt good.
“HI STINK!” Marlene shouted when I walked into the office. That’s what she’d called me ever since her goddamn party. It always made her laugh out loud, the memory of me standing in her backyard being ridiculed by a mob of deaf strangers.
I was not amused. I was an English jewel thief. I was a man with a crystal saltshaker in each pocket. I was many things. But I was not Stink. And it was wrong for her to say that I was. Doug could be Bus Door Head. That was true. That was right. But not this. Not this.
“Hi Deaf!” I yelled back at her. No I didn’t. I always wanted to though, and it was hard not to. It would have been easy, and wrong, but it would have felt so right until I saw the look on her face. So I didn’t. And that makes me a good person.
Hi fuckhead, I signed instead, then gave her the finger.
Hi dicknose, she signed back.
Hi shitface.
Hi cocksucker.
Hi asshead.
I always ran out of real curses before she did. Then we’d both smile, overly sarcastic, and squint our eyes and bow to each other repeatedly while performing elaborate gibberish hand gestures to say that we were sorry. It was like kabuki theater. Then she’d laugh because she was only kidding, and I’d laugh too because at least I could fucking hear.
Where’s Doug? I want to piss on his head. He eats my shit, I signed.
He’s waiting for you in the back, and she made the universal sign with her fist up to her mouth and her tongue poking the inside of her cheek, the one that said my dick would soon be in Doug’s mouth. She grabbed my sleeve as I walked past her.
I have to talk to you later.
About what?
“SSSHHHH!!!” she said as she held her finger to her lips, making the loudest plea for silence I had ever heard. It was very ironic.
“Good morning Shane!” Doug was chipper and smiling. He must not have taken the bus to work. “Let’s see what we have today!”
I was reclined in the chair and he sat on his stool beside me and looked at the x-rays of my mouth, trying to show me the de cay and the crumbling enamel and the roots that were going bad.
“You see that spot there? That’s an old filling that’s rotted, tsk tsk.”
I didn’t like looking at skeleton me. It made me think of brain tumors and cancers. There’s never good news in those things. My white skull splayed out on that black sheet looked like the flag of a pirate ship I did not want to sail. I closed my eyes and nodded.
“I’ve done just about all the basic work I can do, cleaned up what I could . . .”
As he talk
ed I could feel something inching up my thigh, and if both of his hands weren’t holding on to the x-ray I would’ve punched him in the face or just been very quiet and sad.
“I think the next step has to be crowns. I won’t lie to you, they’re expensive, and it’s a pretty involved procedure, but they’re more permanent than the patchwork I’ve been doing. And you’re going to need some root canal. . . .”
It felt like Mobo’s guinea pig was slowly climbing out of my pocket, which was very interesting since I didn’t even know he was in there. I was pretty sure he wasn’t. I’d have blamed the laughing gas but Doug hadn’t given me any yet.
“Like I said, it’s going to be expensive, so we’ll have to work something out. And, ahh, we should probably take a look at the bills you have on the books for the, ahh, other work. I think—”
It wasn’t until after Ivan had rolled stiffly over my hip like he had rigor mortis or like he was being especially erotic, until after he had jumped from my pocket and I heard the shattering of glass and the scattering of tiny mice right afterwards, that I remembered my fancy saltshakers.
“Ahhh!” Doug sighed, so effeminate he sounded like a Southern belle swooning, and the x-ray floated to the floor. He leapt down from his stool and landed with a crunch. I sat up in the chair and turned around.
“Shit.” There was glass and salt everywhere. My beautiful saltshaker. “Sorry about that Doug. It was, uh, Doug?”
He was standing rigid, his arms and legs bent awkward like he was a discarded action figure, and his eyes were watering. He took a halting step and crunched more salt under his shoe, and the tears streamed down his face.
He cried out like a wounded buffalo and ran hunchbacked out of the room, lifting his legs in a cruel impersonation of a retarded Heisman Trophy winner. I heard the door of his office slam, and then I was alone.
This is what it had come to. I already had salt all over me from the night before when I’d fallen asleep with five shakers in my pockets. Now one of my fancy new ones was busted and there was salt all over the floor, and Doug was crying. What the fuck was going on.
