Left No Forwarding Address

by Gerald J. Davis

  “I hadn’t really…that is…it…”

  He put his frail hand on my shoulder. “That is quite all right. You don’t have to tell me in this very moment. You may think about it and tell me when you are ready.”

  I nodded. “What is your name?” I said.

  “My name is Ashok. I am always here. Seven days a week I am open. You may come here at any moment. I will always be here to serve you.”

  That was a comforting thought. No one had ever always been there to serve me.

  CHAPTER V

  “You know you need your wife’s notarized signature on this form.”

  I nodded. “Yes, I know. Can I have the form.”

  The woman glared at me. She was a young black woman with very short cropped hair. A new Human Relations type of haircut. In the old days, when the corporate departments were called Personnel, her hair would have been longer, straightened and waved. But this was a new angry type of haircut.

  She didn’t give me the form. Maybe she was resentful because she thought of me as a deserter for telling her I was leaving the company and I wanted to roll my 401K into an IRA. Or maybe it was because she imagined my ancestors had taken the lash to her ancestors. Or maybe it was just because I was a dead white male.

  I didn’t know why she was upset with me. I’d never seen her before or even spoken to her. She was attractive in a corporate sort of way and I’d tried to be as polite as possible. I’d complimented her on her windowless office which was a small office, as far as offices go, but was larger than my cubicle. It was decorated with those pathetic little personal touches that employees use to differentiate their work spaces as a form of territorial imperative, since pissing around the perimeter of the space was frowned upon, at least in this corporation.

  “I’ll have to make a copy for you,” she said. “Wait here, but don’t touch anything.”

  She rose and left the room to go to the copy machine down the hallway.

  What was I going to touch? The little picture of a child framed with small seashells and red hearts? A single wilting rosebud in a thin transparent bud vase? A sign on her desk that read “Today is the first day of the rest of your life”? A shrine to kitsch—that’s what her office was.

  Or maybe my personnel file. Maybe that’s what she was referring to.

  I glanced around the room. Where could it be and what would it say?

  It would be very specific and not existential at all. It wouldn’t say anything about a man who found his life weary, flat, stale and unprofitable. It would contain my progress reports, salary history and personnel evaluations. Reasonably well-adjusted, reasonably competent output, no demerits or black marks. If there were a bell curve of personnel evaluations, mine would be at the top of the very center. Mediocre, but mediocrity raised to the highest level. The gold standard of mediocrity.

  It would be a far cry from the promise I had exhibited as a youth. Everyone had expected so much from me. You’ll be successful in any profession you choose, they’d said. You have the intelligence and the looks and the personality, they said. But one attribute I didn’t have was the drive. Or, perhaps better said, the greed. And I suppose that made all the difference. No drive means no progress. It means stasis, but no progress.

  There were two file cabinets in her office, but they didn’t look like they contained the personnel files. There wasn’t enough room for all the employees’ files. Besides, I didn’t have the guts to go searching through them. What if she came back and caught me? It would be far beyond something as trivial as sexual harassment. It would be an invasion of her privacy. A violation of her civil rights. She would haul me into court and I would have no defense, except for an overwhelming curiosity. I wondered, would it be a criminal case or would it be a civil case?

  My mind was drifting off into all sort of trivial speculations when she returned to the room.

  “Why do you dislike me?” I said.

  Her eyes widened. She stopped walking toward me. “Why do you say that? I don’t dislike you.” She studied me very carefully, as though a new and dangerous element had been added to our routine corporate intercourse. "I don’t even know you.”

  “I can tell by the way you speak to me.”

  She shook her head as much for herself as for me. “That’s silly. I don’t dislike you. You’re an employee, that’s all.”

  “But you don’t like me.” For the first time, I could say whatever I wanted without worrying about what the repercussions would be. I felt a surge of exhilaration from this newfound freedom. I sucked in a deep breath of recycled air and exhaled slowly. If this was what my new life was going to be like, I couldn’t wait for it to begin.

  She sighed in defeat. “I like you, I like you,” she said and, from the way she said it, you could tell she detested me. But she was obviously afraid to start a corporate spitting match with this deranged man who faced her. For I had nothing to lose and she was just starting up the company staircase and had her whole sparkling career in front of her. Her shoulders slumped and her eyes lost the hostile gleam that had first confronted me.

  It was a small triumph, granted.

  But it was the first triumph I’d had in a very long time.

  CHAPTER VI

  I went back to Ashok’s store with my new dilemma. The question was very simply, how was I going to get my wife’s notarized signature on the 401K rollover form?

  There wasn’t much in the 401K. $21, 435.54 to be exact. But it would be enough to give me a start. Everything else would go to my wife. The equity in the house, the cars, the small mutual fund portfolios. I didn’t want anything that would encumber me. For I was going to become that bane of society, a naked nomad, to use George Gilder’s term. A single male with no ties or responsibilities. The root of all of our country’s misfortunes. A drifter with nothing to contribute and no reason to add to the nation’s gross domestic product.

  “Do you know how I can get my wife’s signature notarized?” I asked Ashok.

  The dark little man gave me a sly look. “Certainly,” he said. He wagged his head from side to side. “She can go to any notary and he will be pleased to notarize her signature. There is a notary on almost any corner. It is quite easy and inexpensive.”

  “No, no,” I said. “You don’t understand.” But he understood all too well. He was just having me on. It was his way of getting some enjoyment at my expense.

  The shop seemed even smaller than before, but it was just because some new cartons had come in and had been stacked on whatever floor space was available. The place was almost like a maze. You had to edge your way forward by walking sideways between the cartons that were stacked higher than your line of sight.

  “What I mean is that I need my wife’s signature notarized without her knowledge.”

  “Is it actually your wife’s signature?” The head wag. The faint smile.

  I spread out my hands.

  He nodded. “I see.” He turned and made his way to the rear of the store. He spoke some words in a language I didn’t understand to someone in the back office.

  A tall light-skinned young man in his mid-twenties came out of the back office and joined us. We shook hands. His grip was limp, not a corporate-type handshake at all.

  “This is Haresh,” the old man said. “But you may call him Harry.”

  “Harry,” I said. “Can you help me out?”

  “No problem.” I’d once read that this phrase, no problem, was the most widely-understood and used expression in every corner of the world, from rice paddies to industrial parks.

  “I need a signature notarized. Can you do that for me?”

  “No problem. Just give me a minute and I’ll get my stamp from the back.”

  Harry’s voice was smooth and soft, just like the old man’s, but he had no trace of an accent. It was the difference between being born overseas, far beyond the Khyber Pass, and being born here on Kingsbridge Road. He had an easy manner that made you want to trust him. But I wasn’t sure that w
as wise to do.

  Harry returned with a rubber stamp and pad. He walked behind the glass counter and put the stamp and pad down on top of it.

  “Let me see the signature,” he said.

  I pulled out the rollover form. The space for my wife’s signature was blank.

  “There’s no signature,” he said and looked up at me. His eyes were dark and hooded.

  “I know. I can sign it for you.”

  He smiled conspiratorially. “You’re not your wife. Your wife has to sign it, otherwise it’s not her signature.”

  “I know that. Do you think I’m a fool?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

  I put my hands on the counter. It felt dirty. “Listen, I can sign my wife’s name so well no one could tell the difference. I’ll be willing to pay for the notary stamp.”

  He opened the ink pad and breathed slowly on the rubber stamp. “I know you will. It’ll cost you three hundred.” He breathed on the rubber stamp again.

  “Three hundred bucks? That’s a lot of money for a notary’s stamp.”

  He grinned at me. “I believe it’s worth much more than that to you.” He made a motion as if he were starting to put the stamp away.

  “No, wait…” I said. “I’ll pay the price.” I reached for my wallet and pulled it out. “I have eighty-five bucks in cash and I can write you a check for the balance.” I took out my checkbook and placed it on the counter.

  The sitar music stopped and, for a moment, the store was very quiet. Everything seemed suspended during that brief interval in time. There was no sound and nothing moved. Frozen in time and space for a short eternity. Then the old man spoke. “Please, only grrreens.” He rolled the “r” but I thought the word sounded like greens.

  “What?” I said.

  He moved closer to me and whispered into my ear. “Grrreens, only grrreens.”

  “What is that?”

  “It is cash money, you know.” The head wagged. “It is not wise to write a check or to accept one.”

  “I understand. Thanks for the tip.” I slipped the checkbook back into my jacket pocket.

  “It is for your benefit and our benefit, you know. One cannot be too careful.”

  I nodded. “Sure thing. I get it. Only greens.”

  And so I was about to enter the world of grrreens, with the rrr rolled slowly on the tongue. A world with its own set of rules where there were no taxes, no bureaucracy and no environmental concerns. Where subsistence was a day-to-day affair, and OSHA and political correctness were as alien as the craters on the moon. Where there were no credit cards or checkbooks and all commerce was conducted with cash. A subculture that thumbed its nose at W-9s and 1040s and frequent flyer miles.

  There used to be an advertisement for a Canadian beer that featured the grizzly bear. It said something like, “He don’t pay mortgage, he don’t pay taxes, he don’t pay alimony. He’s the Canadian grizzly.”

  I was the grizzly.

  CHAPTER VII

  I sat across the dinner table from my wife and wondered how she would react to my leaving. Would she be distraught or would she just breathe a sigh and say, “I must carry on.”? Would she even miss me? Perhaps she would be better off. She could talk on the phone with her girlfriends at all hours and go out with them at any time without my being in the way. That was just rationalizing, I knew, but I didn’t care.

  Without much relish, I finished the macaroni and cheese meal she had prepared. I was full but not satisfied. We cleaned up the dishes and turned on the dishwasher. It was eight-thirty.

  “What would you like to watch?” she said.

  “What’s on?” I said.

  “I don’t know. Here’s the TV Guide. Why don’t you decide while I go upstairs and brush my teeth.”

  That was her way. Clean, methodical, practical and unimaginative. I was starting to feel sorry for her, but I knew that wouldn’t hinder my plans. I went into the family room, plopped down on the sofa and thumbed idly through the pages of the TV Guide. There was nothing that sparked my interest. I surveyed the room and remembered all the evenings we had spent here. How predictable this room was, how cozy, how comfortable, how boring.

  Finally, I decided on a DVD I’d been meaning to watch. It was called “Seconds” and it starred Rock Hudson and Salome Jens. This was living dangerously, I knew. But it was the thrill of being reckless that drew me on. The need for the surge of adrenaline. For the possibility of being found out.

  The movie was the story of a middle-aged man who leaves his wife, transfers his assets to a malevolent corporation, undergoes plastic surgery to become a good-looking Rock Hudson, moves to a seaside house and falls in love with a beautiful Salome Jens. The problem arises when he wants to return to his wife and finds he cannot because it would cause harm to the corporation. As we know, a corporation cannot be harmed because that would weaken the underpinnings of society. The corporation is inviolate. It is only the individual who can be harmed.

  We watched the movie without comment. If my wife suspected anything, she didn’t give a hint of it. When the movie was finished, I reached over to pick up the remote but, before I could, my wife put her hand on mine.

  I knew what that meant. It was our little unspoken signal. After so many years of marriage, you get to know each other’s wishes very well. Every married couple has its own method of communicating the universal and timeless urge for coitus. But, in our case, the gesture hadn’t been put to use for quite some time. Maybe half a year to my best reckoning.

  I didn’t know what to do. It wouldn’t have been unpleasant to engage in the good old in-out. But it would have been unfair to her. On the other hand, an old Middle Eastern proverb said that when a woman desires sex, it is a sin for the man to refuse her. On the horns of a Hegelian dialectic, I was.

  The TV screen was blank. There was a soft hiss from the speakers.

  I put my hand on hers but I didn’t say anything. If I were planning to leave, it would have been a betrayal to have sex with her because I would be taking unfair advantage of the knowledge I had. Was this convoluted reasoning? If she knew I was going to leave, would she want to engage in this act? I wrestled with this philosophic thesis and antithesis until I finally reached a synthesis.

  “I’m tired,” I said softly. “Very tired.”

  It wasn’t a lie.

  CHAPTER VIII

  The walk from my office on the Avenue of the Americas, or Sixth Avenue as veteran New Yorkers or no-nonsense types called it, to Ashok’s store took twenty-one minutes. But they were the longest twenty-one minutes in duration because you traveled halfway around the world to get there. From a gleaming immaculate first-world setting to a teeming third-world bazaar. It was not only a geographic voyage but also a trip through time. As I walked, I considered the changing nature of the neighborhoods I passed through. There was Seventh Avenue and Broadway and an energized theater district crowded with slack-jawed tourists and Senegalese street hawkers with ten-dollar Rolexes. Then a recently sterilized and lobotomized forty-second Street and, beyond that, the seedy precincts of the Port Authority Bus Terminal and Hell’s Kitchen. Then you entered the universe of little electronic shops that sold to both wholesale and retail customers and whose employees spoke broken English with heavy traces of Indian and Chinese and Korean accents

  It seemed to me that most stories involved a heroic journey. That is to say, the hero starts out on a quest to find something or to redeem himself. But I had no illusions. My journey would be unheroic, to put it in the best possible light. I was simply escaping from an intolerable life to one that held the prospect of an unknown promise.

  “I’m here for that notarized signature,” I said. “I have the greens.”

  The little old man looked at me. “You are a dependable and responsible man. One can rely upon your word.”

  I didn’t even respond to that. “Is Haresh…Harry…available?”

  “Haresh is always available. The question is, is he here?�
�� His eyes twinkled at having caught me.

  “You’re right. I should have rephrased the question. Is Haresh here?”

  The old man wagged his head from side to side. “Yes, he is here. He is in the back of the shop. I believe he is sleeping. Shall I wake him for you?”

  “If you would, please. I’d like to get this over with.”

  He nodded. “Certainly. I shall call him for you. He will be pleased to see you.”

  “I’m sure he will. Quickest three hundred bucks he ever made.”

  The old man slowly threaded his way through the maze of cartons until I couldn’t see him any more. I stood there alone and listened to the sitar music and the enchanting female voice singing and thought how timeless it all seemed. So beautiful and timeless and unhurried.

  After a few minutes, Harry appeared, moving slowly and blinking. When he saw me, he stopped as if he had forgotten something and retraced his steps to the back of the store. He returned holding up his index finger as if to say, wait for me.

  “I’ll be back shortly,” he said and walked out of the store.

  I watched his back as it faded away through the soiled plate glass window. My hopes seemed to fade away with him. Then the old man reappeared at my side.

  “Where’s he going?” I asked.

  Ashok turned to face me. “He has forgotten his stamp. One cannot be a notary without a stamp, yes?”

  “I guess that would be a good saying for a fortune cookie, don’t you think?”

  The old man nodded. “Yes, in fact, it is a good fortune, you know. A notary will enable you to inscribe your name for good fortune.”