It's Called Disturbing

by Buddy Roy Baldry

  The eyes were not green. And not blue either. What was the colour for water? Marine? Aquamarine? Now the glasses were there but they did not mask the eyes the way Tom suspected they would. In fact, the eyes were enhanced. They glowed. Now the glasses evaporated. The slow liquid blink. Tom could still see the ocean eyes leaking between the drawn shades of eyelids.

  “So, I see the book sitting next to this chubbyman. I don’t know it then,” Belraj tapped the side of his head. “But I know it now, oh boy. ‘Catcher in the Rye’ I read it many times after that.”

  “Catcher in the Rye?” Tom nodded. Sure. High school. Did anyone have eyes that colour in real life?

  “That man is retracing the Catcher in the Rye’s footsteps around New York City,” Belraj said. “I had no idea at that time what was going on. What was going to happen.”

  In Tom, curiosity resembled anger. It was slow to build without true instigation. Self-righteous restraint could be a cousin to skepticism. But once piqued; once primed, both can evolve quickly. Both mutate and hunt for resolution. Tom’s anger dissolved to curiosity this quickly. “That guy was in your cab?” He asked. “That Chapman guy? On the same day?”

  “December the 8th, 1980.” Belraj nodded solemnly. “He killed the Beatleman.”

  “That’s something.” Tom admitted. “like, THE Mark David Chapman.”

  “It is something. And I wonder what he is doing, acting out like a book. So I let him stay, thinking no harm will come to Belraj, and he asks me about the ducks and I tell him I do not know.”

  “And then?”

  “And then he says: ‘I need a hooker.’”

  Tom formed the word wow. This time there was no irony in the facial expression.

  “I drop him off and see him all over the newspapers and the televisions for the next many years.” Belraj finished and breathed deeply, expelling the memory, expelling the actual deed. “And when I see you today...” He waved off their meeting, turning to the traffic passing them by. “In my taxi, I come across someone every few years who does not like to see the leaves falling from the trees. I see it in their eyes and in the way they answer my queries.”

  I don’t know what you mean Tom wanted to say. But he felt his eyes pulled upward. Two small bubbles rising quickly to the surface of a dark sea. The woman in the mural magically replaced her glasses and blinked at him. Winked at him. Her face looked so smooth. Clean. Soft. Fleshy and round. The only sharp angles were cheekbones.

  Belraj turned to face him straight on. “My friend,” he said slowly while Tom looked everywhere but in the man’s eyes. “Speak to someone you love. You are drowning.”

  Tom snorted scorn. In the rearview mirror, the morning heat shimmered and distorted the image of oncoming cars. Their bodies floating on invisible waves, tires appearing like landing gear on floatplanes. Over Belraj’s shoulder, the office towers sat fat and wide, the upper stories trying to block out the sun and snag the clouds. They were the large black rocks on a foreboding island. But above their shared life raft Belraj and Tom both stared at the wondrous siren that guided them to a safe oasis.

  Belraj jerked his thumb at her image. “I love women with glasses.” He leered. “You take them off you got a different chick.”

  This made Tom laugh, knowing how much Eddy would disapprove of the word “chick”, but hell, this was just two guys sharing a private joke. Two warm-blooded men looking at a photo of a beautiful woman. Two men of different generations, enjoying... Tom frowned. What year did Belraj say he drove taxi in New York City? 1978? Tom counted backwards in his head, lost count and began adding decades to the year 1978. How many years was that? That couldn’t be right. “Hold on a second, Belraj,” Tom said as the cab moved slowly back into the morning traffic.

  “I told you, Tom, no worries, you won’t be late my friend.”

  “How old are you?” Tom asked, sitting forward to get a better look at Belraj in the rearview mirror. “How old did you say you were again?” The eyes looked back at him, suddenly shifting from the street ahead to Tom, they creased at the corners as if Belraj was smiling. But Tom could see a small bead of sweat appear on the man’s dark forehead. “You drove cab in 1978?” Tom asked. “What were you? Ten years old?”

  “Pshht..” Belraj waved a hand in the air and changed lanes too quickly, causing a cacophony of horns. He gave a nervous laugh. “Sneaky back door.”

  “You didn’t drive cab in New York City, did you?” Tom asked. No response. “You didn’t meet that man that killed Paul McCartney at all, did you?” Tom was leaning forward in his seat now, trying to meet the man’s shifting eyes.

  “Not Paul McCartney, he died in a car crash in 1966.” Belraj said, the thick accent suddenly gone. A Canadian East Coast twang Tom heard now and then around the city. “You’re thinking of John Lennon.”

  “What the hell, man?” Tom said, genuinely offended. “Why would you lie about that?”

  “Hey, man, give me a break,” Belraj said. Tom was looking at him closely. He seemed now much younger than his previous accent suggested. “I’m studying to be an actor. Just trying things out on you. Pretty good, eh?”

  “So that didn’t happen?” Tom asked.

  Belraj wrinkled his brows as he glanced back at Tom. “Come on, dude, I bet we’re the same age. I was just trying out a character. Channelling my grandfather or something.”

  “But you made up that whole story!” Tom was agitated now.

  “Oh, come on!” Belraj twanged, “I was just trying something out. Plus, those conspiracy stories kind of give me a kick.”

  Tom slumped back in his seat, disillusioned. “Huh.”

  “Oh, don’t flip out,” Belraj said and pulled the car to Tom’s building, double parking. The meter still read $0.00. “Everyone is obsessed with something.”

  Chapter 4

  The water cooler went glug, glug, glug, with a weighty authority. Nearly empty, but the bottles sitting full on the floor appeared too heavy for anyone to bother replacing.

  “Did you hear about this salesman guy that died and went up to heaven?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Anyway, this insurance guy dies and goes up to heaven and St. Peter’s about to let him in the gates, you know, with full benefits and everything...”

  “Full benefits, hah!”

  “Yeah, but there’s the Devil standing there and he says to this insurance guy, ‘Hey, man, don’t go in there until you check out what I have to offer.’”

  “Yeah?”

  “No, wait. First of all, Peter says to the guy, well, you aren’t good and you aren’t bad you could either go in here or down below, you know.”

  “Right... heh...”

  “Right, and the guy says, you know, no contest, I’ll go in here.”

  “Full benefits.”

  “With full benefits. And then the devil tempts him down. So the guy figures, what the hell, it’s not like he can keep me there, right?”

  “Right...”

  “Right. So the guy goes down below with the devil and, wow, the place is incredible. This beautiful blonde meets him at the door. And there’s tennis courts and Jacuzzi’s, and the devil shows him his house that he would live in and it’s, like, a mansion...”

  “Heh... heh...”

  “And the devil tells the guy that this is just the beginning...”

  “It gets better, eh?”

  “It gets better all the time. Anything he needs, he can get it (snap) just like that. And the guy, he’s all, ‘Oh, wow!’ And the devil lights him up a big cigar and gives him a big glass of wine and the beautiful blonde starts rubbing his shoulders and coming on real lovey-dovey.”

  “Heh... heh...”

  “And the guy says: ‘sold’ and he signs the contract and heads back upstairs to tell Peter that there’s been a change of plans.”

  “No doubt... heh... heh...”

  “And he heads back down to start living the high life. But when he gets there, things have changed.”

 
“Uh, oh... heh... heh...”

  “Yeah, things have changed, all right. Now it’s all fire and brimstone and crap, and much gnashing of teeth. And the guy says to the devil: ‘Hey, what the hell? I thought this place was paradise, you told me things were going to be real good down here.’ And the devil says back to him: ‘Oh, right. Well, that was when I was recruiting...”

  “...”

  “That was when I was recruiting...”

  “...”

  $$$

  It was a hoax. Above him, below him, on all four sides he could hear it. Telltale hearts of frantic keys clicking, creaking file cabinets, the whisper of paper. And, just outside his closed door, the rush of people working on something. He did not know what. He arranged his Money-Market™ bi-weeklies. He stared at the phone wondering why the receiver had become so heavy. He feigned interest in the communiqué e-mailed to him at an unreasonable rate. He kept the office door locked, incubated against the noise outside. The others’ work became muffled and mumbled sounds and fury.

  It reminded him of a story his father told him. He joined band in the sixth grade and decided to play the trombone. There was no romantic reason why; he chose it with little interest. He recalled the first day of practice. All were taught to take apart and clean their instruments. Taught about the reed and the valves. Taught to take pride in the authoritative gold gleam. The next practice they were shown how to make sounds by pursing your lips like this. But the third day is a mystery. Maybe the years wore through a day in memory, but his father insists he did not miss a day of school, and by extension did not miss a day of practice. Yet his friends and classmates on that third day seemed to know exactly where and when to blow, and how to read the music that seemed so enigmatic. Literally blowing him away. He could not read the music. He did not know how to move the slide into position to make the same sort of squawk as the others. It was as though he missed a day and they were ahead of him somehow.

  There was the feeling Tom related to. Everyone knew something he didn’t. Or learned it somehow and he missed that day. Smarter, better, taller, kinder, more honest, less perverted, wiser with money, handier with tools, more mechanically inclined, more organized, larger penises, more intuitive sexually, angrier, more focused, happier, gentler, better with friends, braver, more grounded, harder working, better dancers, less inhibited, happier, and on and on.

  Still, around him, the other agents excavated the mountains of cold-calls. Each instructed to set a mirror on the desk and watch his/her face while they spoke to strangers on the phone. Smiling. A smile can translate over the phone. A voice with a smile will get better and quicker results. Better and quicker define efficiency. Tom’s own mirror reflected only bewildered eyes. Behind them, Tom feared, was nothing at all. Sometimes, there would be a kick in him. An uplifting. As if there was a part of him that would survive this, whatever it was at any given moment. A will to carry on and do something. He could tell that it was not innate. He had not been born with it. Yet most times, behind that feeling would come another nagging, darker feeling. Like a lightning storm behind the beautiful air it pushes through. As though that will to survive was born not out of Tom’s genes, but out of some sort of catalytic event. A cataclysmic event. But be fucked if he could figure it out.

  $$$

  Kudos to the man (or woman perhaps) who invented call display. Kudos. And yet more kudos. It solved the mystery forever of who was on the other end of a ceaselessly ringing telephone. Before, all one could do was let the phone beckon and beckon. That nerve-shattering, trilling siren. Sounding urgent. Never pleading, always demanding: pick me up, now, dammit. Then the silence after. The ringing somehow louder in its absence. Who could it have been? What could they have wanted? What if it’s an emergency? Then they could call back. What if they needed you and only you? Who could need me and only me? Your mother is dying. Your Uncle has been in an accident. There is an important, unscheduled meeting at work. You’re late paying the rent. There is someone lurking outside your house this very minute, looking for a way inside, we saw them from across the street and we know you’re home, too. Why won’t you answer? The roof of your apartment is on fire. Your girlfriend has fainted at work; she is in the hospital calling for you. They could all call back. The bad news would still be bad news.

  How about good news then? Lottery? Promotions? Old girlfriend longing for forgiveness and lost days? Good news could wait as well. Good news travels fast, after all. Or was that the saying for bad news. No matter, the news would get to him eventually.

  What could people possibly want? More disconcerting yet when the phone would cease ringing only to start up again. Demanding. He would dare pick it up and be trapped by the person he least wanted to speak with, whoever that may be. Telemarketer. Mom. Work. Even a possible wrong number could seem vaguely threatening and suspicious.

  But call display? Misanthropic heaven:

  250-865-1310. Mom. He would call her back.

  780-356-8045. Uncle Rich. What humiliation did he need to bestow?

  Unknown Caller. I don’t know you.

  Telus Mobility. Fine, I will pay it tomorrow. There was no need to talk.

  He did not need to be accosted in his own home. It was enough he had to talk to people all day at work as part of his job. That was more than enough. So desperate had he been for a job that he never thought about the actual work involved. The recruiting process and questionnaires should have filtered him out. He should have been weeded out, as they say. He was not a people person. He hated people. Not in the aggregate sense, but in the individual sense. The screening tests he had done should have been 97% accurate to match his personality with the job in question. It was foolproof. Yet, the fool had fooled it.

  He lied.

  You enjoy working with others?: A.) Strongly Agree B.) Agree C.) Undecided. D.) Disagree. E.) Strongly disagree. He had strongly agreed. And he lied. When you tell someone you will return his or her call, you do so in a timely and appropriate manner? He lied. You make decisions quickly? Five minutes debating that one. And still, he lied. In the end, the tests proved him to be the perfect candidate for the insurance business. All based on his lies.

  More lies when he reluctantly returned his mother’s phone calls. “Things are going great, mom,” he said.

  “Are you working hard?” she asked.

  “Not too hard,” he said.

  “What?” Her voice travelled up an octave.

  “I mean, I am working hard, but not too hard to burn myself out.” He corrected himself quickly. The lectures about work ethic from his mother and his Uncle had bored him since he was a child. He remembered his father and Uncle sitting at the table sipping beer. His Uncle was trying to get his father to work for him at the store. His father was saying he was happy where he was. His Uncle quoted salaries and prospects for retirement. His father smiled self-consciously and tolerating the ramblings of his brother-in-law. Tom’s mother nodding in agreement as her husband struggled to hold his composure. “But I’m happy where I am.” His father spread his arms wide in supplication.

  “What the hell does happy have to do with it?” He remembered his mother or his Uncle saying.

  And now, in that same tone of voice over the phone, his mother said, “Tom, this opportunity you have, you shouldn’t waste it.”

  “Mom, I know.”

  “Your Uncle went to bat for you getting you that in with Walter. Now don’t blow it like you’ve done everything else.”

  “Mom, what the hell?”

  “I’m just saying, that’s all,” she was saying, “and please don’t swear.”

  “Sorry,” Tom said, reverting to a child. There was a long pause in the conversation.

  “How is Edith?” his mother asked.

  “Eddy? She’s fine,” he said and glanced around the room. Was Eddy even here? Then he saw her curled on the couch, half-hidden by a small throw pillow. Her hair thrown over her thin face, watching an aquatic documentary on the television with the sound down. “
Mom says hello.” He said to her. She waved one arm in the air, her bony fingers floating above her eyes. “Hello.” She gurgled back.

  “She says hello,” Tom said to his mother.

  “Is she working?” his mother asked.

  “Yes, she’s eating,” Tom replied. Eddy looked over sharply and mouthed the words: what the hell?

  “I said, is she working?”

  “Oh, yes, she’s working,” Tom said. From her corner, Eddy shook her head. “What?” he asked her.

  “Pardon?”

  “I was talking to Eddy.” Tom said, and then to Eddy: “you’re not working?”

  “Volunteering,” Eddy mumbled, and then turned up the television a bit, signaling that her part of the conversation was through.

  “You’re volunteering at the pool? I thought it was a job job.” Tom asked Eddy, but she was engrossed in the Jellyfish on the television. Tom could hear the narrator telling the audience about the dangers of these transparent creatures. Briefly, in Tom’s mind, he imagined Eddy in the pool with one. Would they be able to spot each other in the water? Would the fish mistake her for an eel and avoid her?

  “Tom?” his mother said, “Are you still there?”

  “I guess so,” Tom said. In his mind, however, he was calculating the rent and the groceries (which were minimal, but still) the cable television, the gas, the lights, the heat. With no income from Eddy, would his portion cover it? There was a draw on pay that he would have to make up. How many policies had he sold so far? Two? Both to himself. That would bring in some cash but maybe not enough. Could he sell more before the end of the month? Slowly he felt the hoax begin to unravel itself. The curtain pulled back to reveal the wizard as a short, overweight, balding, insecure man. The little boy stepping forward and crying out: “the emperor is naked, Ma!” The Grammy award stripped away from those singers, what was the name? Phony Baloney?

  “So, work is going fine?” his mother asked.

  “Work is going fantastic!” he lied. “I got a busy week ahead and some great prospects, so things should work out fine.”