It felt so abrupt Tom’s feelings were inclined to be hurt. Yet he felt relief. Two birds with one stone. There were times when he didn’t want her around. He blamed it on stress. But there were times when he knew she didn’t want him around. But who was to go, he wondered. Tom to his mother’s? Not an option in Tom’s mind. Did Eddy even have parents?
“I’ll go to my mother’s,” she said. “I know you have a brother.”
He didn’t have a brother. Were they that out of touch? Did she have any siblings? He tried to conjure up a twig of her family tree through bits of conversation over the relatively long time they were together. She obviously knew nothing about him as well. “Well,” he said with finality, “I will help you pack up your stuff.”
“You can probably keep it or throw it away.” She nodded at the floor quizzically. “I’ll be staying with my mother.” Tom wished he remembered who her mother was. He was sure he had never met her. The word ‘mother’ was suddenly ominous for Tom, and he felt an urgent curiosity. But it was too late. They were through. Neither of them were that sad, Tom thought. It was strange because they were both sad most of the time. Yet the word mother. It reminded him that he would have to phone his mother. For all he knew, Eddy hadn’t meant the word ominously. Only Eddy would know how she meant the word mother to sound. And that would be left to Eddy.
“So where do we start?” she said.
“Start? To end things, you mean? Where do we start to end?”
“No,” she shook her head sadly, already emotionally detached. “With the insurance you need. Where do we begin?”
“Right, that.” Tom tried to stretch nonchalantly and reach for his briefcase. He did not want to tell her that he had already put all the papers in order and there were just a few things he needed from her. He pulled his case open and found the papers clipped together. He took his laptop out and plugged it in, smiling nervously at Eddy while he waited for it to boot. She sighed and looked away. He punched in his passwords and soon a calm blue screen prompted him to begin.
There was her full name, which he had to ask her to spell out. Date of birth, which he also had to ask, cringing as he did, but realizing by her quick answers she was not concerned that he did not remember when she was born. When the computer asked for her weight and Tom asked her for her weight the computer froze. “Full medical needed.” The prompt read, and Tom cleared his throat.
“Eddy?” he asked tentatively.
“What.”
“It says you need a medical to finish this application.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.” he lied. “Just procedure.”
“Tom, you know I hate going to the doctor.” She sat up in her chair.
Did he know this? “I’m sorry,” he offered.
“For fuck sakes.” She got up and headed to their bedroom, making Tom wonder for an instant where he was supposed to sleep. They had just broken up, hadn’t they? Should he sleep in the same room? Should he automatically know he was relegated to the couch?
“I’ll go first thing tomorrow. This weekend I’m gone,” she said over her shoulder.
“That’s great,” Tom replied and sensed vaguely that it may have been the wrong thing to say.
Chapter 10
Why couldn’t he, just once, jump into something with both feet and give 110%? He still found simple joy in what he always did. He still liked hockey. Not as much as some, who would paint their faces for games, but he watched for certain teams. He had a healthy appetite for sex, or masturbation at least. He hadn’t lost interest in food, but was by no means overweight (he weighed 70 kg). He slept well and was not lazy, nor was he cutthroat. It was like he was an amalgamation of polar opposite parents. Or a middle sibling. He didn’t have many friends, neither did Eddy. No real hobbies to speak of, so why couldn’t he become one of those career men like Wally? Why couldn’t he get interested in his work?
Still, there was this chapter in Travis Bunk’s book that kept at him. More of a concept the man spoke about in the meeting. Disturbing your clients. They don’t need facts and figures. They need to feel something. How could Tom do it when he didn’t feel much of anything himself? He needed empathy. He needed to first try to put himself in the other person’s shoes, and then scare the shit out of them. After all, he knew the fear and pain involved, his father was dead. Although he wouldn’t use his own experience. That was too close to home. When he tried to conjure up the grief at hearing his father was dead, he knew another emotion was just underneath, as fresh as when it happened. The feeling was relief. And then shame at the relief. And then anger at it all again and again. Anger at his father for being weak in the eyes of his brother and wife. Then hatred and anger at them. His Uncle for constantly ridiculing his father, his mother for taking his Uncle’s side. Until time and time again, he could watch the happiness and patience dissipate and his father would glaze over and shrink from the hot air.
So, he would usher these feelings away. His Uncle was not a bastard. Not totally. He loved his brother, and Tom watched him grieve. Tom watched his mother grieve as well. Still, at the funeral, he couldn’t help feeling he had watched them walk away with the look of relief. He projected on them his own taboo thought: “We are better off without him.” But didn’t that also include him? He could feel what his father must have felt sometimes. The time in the restaurant, where his father’s steak came back three times and father still paid for it. Tom heard them arguing on the drive home. And then Tom’s Uncle made a special trip over to the house that evening to tell his father off. “Those are spineless excuses, I don’t know what you are talking about, what grand scheme of what things?” He listened to his Uncle raise his voice in the living room. And their reasoning began to make sense in his mind. Why did his father let that man take his money? And why was he listening to this from his brother?
And Tom had tried to sort out some kind of emotion that wouldn’t cause him to run in the other direction. Bitterness and confusion, love and understanding. This one’s too hot; this one’s too cold. He thought a lot about his father, still. His mother didn’t talk about him much and his Uncle rarely had anything kind to say. Although, shortly after the funeral, he watched his mother and his Uncle get drunk together. His Uncle, teary eyed, proclaimed, “He wasn’t one of us at all. He was a saint. Like an angel.” And his mother sobbing. Later, “He was so pure and better than all of us. We didn’t deserve to have him at all.” And Tom was confused again. There was no one to speak with about his conflicting emotions. He had no one to help him with the puzzle, to sort all the edges first, and then start filling in the middle. Anyone with this experience of loving/hating someone who is irrevocably gone could help him see things in a different way. Or more clearly. A new set of eyes. Or a pair of glasses.
Rebecca had lost her husband. The memory of their conversation seemed to jump at him from nowhere and so quickly he had no context for it. If anyone would understand, she would.
He was sure he had scribbled her home number down somewhere; she had given it to him, hadn’t she? He finally found a 1-800 number on the back cover of a magazine and after dealing with an unfriendly operator who insisted on a credit card number (for identification purposes, Tom reasoned) he got her on the phone. “Rebecca?” He found himself out of breath, as though trying to find her number and call her had been a feat of tremendous endurance.
“Sure, it’s Rebecca.” The voice said, at first not sounding like the same woman at all. “Who is this?”
“Tom Ryder,” he said, and clarified, “from work.”
“Tom from work,” she said, the sound of recognition in her voice. “And you are calling me at home. So, I take it this isn’t business. Or is it?”
“Not business,” he said, “Well, not really.”
“Tell Rebecca all about it, sweetie,” she said, and if Tom heard the ironic term of endearment, he didn’t let on.
“I don’t think I’m getting it. I just can’t do it like Wally.”
&n
bsp; “Wally.”
“Yes, Walter... Russ,” Tom said. “You must talk to him sometimes?”
“Sure, Wally.” Rebecca laughed. “Good old Wally.”
“I think I’m failing.” He felt the tension ease from his back the same time the confession left his lips. At last, someone to tell, someone who would listen without judging. Someone he wouldn’t have to pretend in front of, who had no stake in his situation. To whom he had nothing to prove.
“Tell me all about it, sugar.” The voice whispered to him, and so he did. He told her about Eddy, or lack thereof. He told her about his Uncle and his mother. He told her vignettes on his father, keeping them cryptic enough for her not to form an opinion on the man, one way or the other. He told her about his job, how he did not feel capable.
“Everyone hates their job, dimples,” she interjected, “Do you think I enjoy talking to people all day about that sort of thing? It’s mostly men and they can’t think to talk about anything else. I get them what they want and then most of them don’t even say goodbye, just, click... that’s it.”
“I like talking to you.”
Long pause, “Well, you’re different sugar. The point is, like it or not, I gotta’ talk to them. It’s my job and I get paid for it. I do whatever it takes to get that phone call over with. I know what they need and what they want. I do everything to get them that as quick as possible.”
“Wow.”
“That’s right.” Her voice, excited, still whispered and sent tingles through Tom’s neck and back. She purred: “So what would, in your words, disturb those people into buying your stuff?”
“If they understood how easily it could happen, to have someone taken away from you so quickly,” Tom said, “like you and I know.”
“Yes.” So near a whisper it could have been a thought.
“If they only knew that awful feeling.”
“It could happen to anyone, at any time.”
It could. And if it did...
“What?”
“I said,” Tom said, “I knew you would help me see better.”
Help me look better. See?
“No problem, honey.” She laughed. “Are you sure there ain’t nothing else I can do for you tonight? I mean, it’s your money.”
“Pardon?”
“I’ll be Rebecca for you, honey...”
“I’m sorry?”
$$$
It was Rebecca that made it all so clear, he realized as he sat on the highway watching the billboard and the glasses fade in and out. She knew the business, and she seemed to like him. He could trust her to give him the real method. Not the textbook stuff they were trying to ram down his throat. The real secret. The key. Why hadn’t he thought of it before? Kidnap Joe and prove to his family that the product Tom had was so valuable. When Joe is returned safe, what a different appointment that will be.
Could he really do something that some, that most would consider psychotic? Kidnapping? Essentially for ransom if anyone were to catch him and put two and two together. But sometimes two and two made twenty-two, as his Uncle used to say. Some plans could take something simple and make it exponentially better. And this he knew, or hoped he knew; Joe and his family needed life insurance. Simple. They didn’t know it yet because they didn’t think about these things every day. Who does? What person would contemplate their death every day, every minute? No one. So, it was Tom’s job to not only make them aware that things like death happen every day, but more: they had to feel his passion if he had any. They had to be disturbed. It was obvious the spare tire analogy did not work for him, so he had to be creative. He had to create a situation that would blow the analogy out of the water. In fact, it was genius. Talk was just talk, he could talk until he was blue in the face, people just did not feel it in here. The reality of having her husband gone would become apparent if the man was actually gone. When Joe made his way home again, they would be clamoring for Tom’s number. The gnome through the window would be forgiven; they would understand what he had been trying to do for them.
They would let him through the back door this time, as the neighbors or close friends or relatives would. There would be wine in the middle of the table and two glasses (she didn’t drink), no need to rush into business right away. The twins asleep in their bed and Joe’s cell phone turned off, they would listen to Joe’s version of the kidnapping. Tears would well in three sets of eyes that evening, as the gratitude of just being alive welled and relieved their limited verbal expression.
As a capstone, Tom would present the documents to sign. Tom would be securing the safety of the man’s family, and Joe would sign with one hand trembling, holding the other on Tom’s shoulder. “I should have listened.” He would say, through a mouthful of raven feathers.
“It’s never too late.” Tom would assure him, and present them with...
What?
He had to study. He had to put the proposal together. Whole life with a mixture of investments, modest risk. Tom searched for a pen and paper. He had to map it out, the different scenarios, the different plans available, which investments were attached to which plan. He had to have it down on paper so he could not overlook any detail. It would be a perfect deal. First, he would break in through the back door. If there was a dog, Tom would feed it some sort meat or something with pills in it. Could you drug a dog that quickly? How long does it actually take? He would have to test something. Not Eddy. Where would he plant the pills, in food? He would have to perform the experiment on himself.
Tom took four or five sleeping pills (one dropped on the floor and Tom thought he found it, but it tasted like what could have been a smartie with the colour sucked off.) Then he drank three cups of Neo Citron. He balanced a saucer, ever so precariously, on the rubber buttons of a stopwatch resting on the table in front of him. When his head hit the saucer, the stopwatch would let him know how long it had taken. If he needed it to work sooner and longer, he would double the dosages. Except, wait. There was something about exponential power. He should triple it.
In less than ten minutes after the dosage, Tom’s mind wandered, and his tongue felt thick and hairy. The room alternated between bright illumination and dark and sinister shadows. He held his face in his hands and felt as though he were suffocating.
His forehead broke the plate and a tiny shard clung to his skin as he lifted his head. “Oww!” He said, fingering the gash in his head. “Shit.” He diagnosed further. Tom couldn’t read the stopwatch, the way it blurred in and out and loomed large in his memory, although he was looking right at it. He slumped to the floor trying to clean the broken plate. The cool of the linoleum left him there for what could have been hours. He did manage to weave down the hall to the bathroom. It was shock from there, mostly, that kept him awake long enough to remove the shard of plate from his head and put what he thought was a maxi-pad on the cut. This is how he woke up, sixteen hours later with a headache made exponentially worse because of either hangover or wounded head. There was a tampon taped to his forehead and a stopwatch that read 16:41:30...31...32... It had not stopped when it should have, rendering Tom’s experiment ruined. Except Tom had conceived the plan so quickly, executed it when he was under sedation, and slept so soundly he could not remember ever having made any such experiments and as such was at a loss to explain the cuts or the stopwatch.
Later, when he pieced the afternoon together he concluded that Joe Williams didn’t have a dog, anyway. They didn’t the last time he was there. Or did they? Forget the dog.
The plan needn’t be so complicated. Kids are always making a lot of noise. And that large woman, the one that reminded Tom of someone’s Uncle, would be at weight-watchers Thursday. Or was it Tuesday. Just walk up to the back door and knock loudly. He comes to the door, and Tom would say, I need a spare tire. And then... wham... no, that won’t work. How would you get that big fellow out the back door? And how hard did you really have to hit someone to knock them out for a long time? Tom had never seen anyone dragged around u
nconscious like they do on TV. Tom had trouble killing a mouse when the need arose. He and Eddy found a mouse half alive in a trap they set, and it fell to Tom to kill the creature. He took it out to the front steps with a hammer and tried to bash its head in with his own eyes closed. He missed and felt the ricochet on the cement shock his forearm and shoulder. He finally managed to kill it after several bashes, but by then the mouse had given up its struggle, no doubt hoping Tom’s aim would improve and end its suffering, and Tom cried a little. Cried for the mess on the steps, which Eddy had to clean, and for his own humanity. Could he actually hit another human being with a... what? Tire iron probably. It made sense. Hard enough? Would he squirm and blanch off last minute, causing necessity to strike not once, but two or even four times.
Fuck that, he decided. The man had to be coerced out of his house. Into his own truck. No, Tom’s vehicle parked a block away. The noise the truck made would surely cause Tom to lose his nerve. He nearly pissed his pants when it started up the time he was there for the appointment. Once in Tom’s vehicle, the trunk would be the best bet, Tom could drive the man to some locale away from town. Far enough away that the man would have to walk for hours perhaps, but not far enough away to make it dangerous. The man had to know where he was to make it home. Should he do up a ransom note to make it even more frightening? What would he say? How much would they be willing to part with? Not that Tom would ever take any ransom. The point was to disturb the family enough so that the next time they met with Tom they would be far more receptive to the idea of life insurance. After all, hadn’t the note said that Joe would be killed if they did not come up with X amount of dollars? Wouldn’t that bring his mortality close to home? Once he was reunited with his wife and children, wouldn’t they realize how close they came to losing him, and wouldn’t they focus more on their finances if he had been killed. Wouldn’t they see that it could happen anytime, to anyone?
It's Called Disturbing Page 11
