by Richard Cox
And then, stillness.
Silence.
I am alone.
Or am I?
SEVENTEEN
The kitchen seems different now. Larger. Emptier. A coffee mug stands next to the sink, the name of Gloria’s employer tattooed to its midsection. Stuck to the refrigerator are little notes, reminders scrawled in her elliptical handwriting, each one an accusation. On the surface a yellow Post-it note might say “Eggs. Potatoes. Rib eye steaks,” but if you listen carefully you can hear a different message, something like But you love yourself more, Thomas.
They all cry out to me. And not in unison, either, but individually, out of time with each other, so that it’s a cacophony, a crawling wall of sound.
It makes me think of the second fraternity party, the one where Eric Lampton played. Apparently Jack didn’t care much for the music, because he mostly left his girlfriend to listen on her own. I don’t know where he was. Playing drinking games, watching baseball, who knows what? All I knew is I had her to myself.
“I love this music,” she yelled to me at one point. “It’s so spacey, like it came from another world.”
“You just like men who play guitar.”
“I do,” she said and winked at me. “You should learn to play.”
In fact after our conversation on ICQ, I had found an old acoustic guitar at a pawn shop. I was already deep into learning CAGED, which is a system of guitar chords. But I didn’t tell her that.
After the music was over she went inside to find Jack. I located a table outside littered with rum and vodka bottles and poured myself another drink. A strong one. It didn’t seem to make sense that she would enjoy the concert with me, her arms brushing against mine, her eyes glowing, reflecting the blue stage lights, and then go inside to find him. I wandered into a field across the street from the fraternity house. There was a playground that looked like it was no longer maintained…probably because it was across the street from a fraternity house. I sat in one of the swings and looked up at the sky. I wondered what the hell I was doing. I drank my drink. Jupiter was just in view above the horizon. I don’t know how long I sat there, but eventually I heard footsteps approach and then her lilting, musical voice.
“Whatcha looking at?”
Gloria sat in the swing next to me.
“Jupiter,” I said. “King of the gods.”
“My mom is into astrology. She lives her life by charts, the moon and the planets, which sign is where, who is in retrograde and whatever. When I was a kid I thought it was all real. But it drove my dad so batshit crazy that he bought a telescope and taught me about real astronomy.”
“You like astronomy?”
“Well, I’m not an expert. But I still like to stargaze. How about you?”
“In the winter I sometimes drive outside of town where it’s darker. You can see Andromeda with a pair of binoculars if you know where to look.”
“I like to stargaze after it snows,” Gloria says. “The sky seems so bright.”
“You honestly stargaze? By yourself?”
“You don’t believe me?”
“It just doesn’t seem like a very girly thing to do.”
“Well, sometimes I’m not very girly.”
I made a show of looking her up and down.
“You could have fooled me.”
She laughed at that, and then her smile disappeared.
“I have to go soon.”
Her face was close to mine, inches away. She glanced down at my lips and back up to my eyes. I knew she wanted me to kiss her. It wasn’t the right thing to do and yet it was. I was an instant away from leaning into her. She opened her mouth…and started talking.
“I want to thank you,” she said.
“For what?”
“For respecting my relationship.”
I’ve never claimed to understand women, then or now, but sometimes their behavior is so peculiar it makes me think even they don’t understand it.
“Of course,” I said. It seemed like a stupid thing to say. I felt stupid. I wondered if I should ignore her words and just act. I almost did. But then I thought, if I act now, too early, I might lose her forever. So I didn’t.
“Well,” she said. “I have to go. I had a good time tonight.”
She put her hand on mine and squeezed, then stood up and walked away.
Sort of like she just walked out of our house.
Does Gloria keep running away, or do I keep chasing her? I can hardly believe she’s gone. It doesn’t seem real. I’m more inclined to believe she left for work like every day and will be home at the normal time and we’ll do normal things.
I walk back into the study and sit down in front of the computer. The game is running, and my indicators are…well, whatever, right? Who cares? Is the success of my ant civilization even relevant at this point? Does God really judge Himself by our happiness? Is He trying to set the high score among all his God friends?
I don’t think happiness determines the success of God’s Project Earth. Because if it does, he is failing miserably. How many people do you know who are truly happy? Single people want to be married. Married people wish they were single. We want to have children, and then we bemoan the lack of free time we once had…back when we were longing for children. Your golf game is never quite good enough. You hate your job. Your team never wins the Super Bowl, or if they did it was twenty-five years ago. Maybe you make good money, but the things you buy whet your appetite for more. They whet your wife’s appetite for more. She wants you to work harder and make more money, but she also wishes you spent more time with her. You buy buy buy but it’s never quite enough, and even if you chose to give everything away and live a simple life, people would think you had lost your mind.
My head is buzzing like a fluorescent light, droning, electric. My entire body feels ill, like someone replaced the blood in my veins with cyanide. I’m not hearing numbers in my head and I’m not hearing music. I’m sitting here in my t-shirt and shorts, suddenly without a wife or a job.
The terrible thing is I have no idea what I’m supposed to do next. This entire time I’ve been reacting to strange events that happened to me, but right now nothing is happening. I’m just sitting here and my whole life is fucked up and there is nothing on the agenda.
What I usually do when I have free time is work on my screenplay. Which I guess at this point is all I have left in the world. If you don’t remember, it’s about a guy running from the FBI. These two federal agents mistakenly believe he’s at the center of a plot to destroy America’s electronic infrastructure, and—
Wait.
I see a picture in my mind, a brief flash of two men in a brown Ford sedan. I saw them recently. Yesterday, on the way home after I left work. They were wearing Stetson hats, both of them.
The driver is the guy I saw, or thought I saw, looking into my house. But I’ve seen him somewhere even before that. Both of them. I don’t know where but for some reason I feel like I’ve been writing about it in my screenplay.
Something is about to click, some memory, something. Do you ever get that feeling when you are close to remembering something important, but you can’t quite see it?
Maybe if I read through the screenplay it will remind me. Maybe that’s why I’ve lost everything, so I can finish the screenplay and discover its true meaning. My true meaning.
I grab the mouse and minimize the Ant Farm game. When the desktop appears I click on Microsoft Word, but as soon as I do, my computer makes a strange buzzing sound deep in its rectangular bowels. Like a fan came loose and chopped into something metallic. The monitor image freezes for a moment, then goes black, and I hear a click as the computer shuts down and restarts.
While it reboots I realize how physically miserable I am. Every cell in my body cries out in hangover pain. Intestinal gas traces a serpentine path through my gut, and every once in a while a foul parcel of it bleeds into the room with me. In the bottom of my left foot a few nerves tingle. I pull that f
oot onto the chair with me and examine the skin there. It’s a little thicker than the skin elsewhere on my body, slightly rippled, and there is something below the surface. Something small and hard. When I push on it, it hurts.
I often have this memory, this vague memory, of a time when my mother was sewing something by hand as she sat in the living room recliner. I was maybe ten years old. There was a needle lying in the carpet, hidden among the curls of ’70s shag, and I stepped on it. Which really hurt. My mother, however, wasn’t concerned. She told me to just Pull it out, you big baby. Or something to that effect. My mother was mildly drunk a lot of the time. Maybe she was that day, or maybe the needle incident didn’t happen at all. Unlike other childhood memories, this one doesn’t feel completely legitimate. It’s not solid the way most of them are. Either way, there is definitely something in my foot, because the harder I push on it the more it hurts. It sits just below the skin, not close enough to dig it out with a knife, but certainly close enough to feel it with the tip of my finger. Maybe it’s a piece of sewing needle. Maybe it’s a tracking device. I’m almost tempted to get a knife and some alcohol and try to dig it out, but then my computer beeps. I look up at the screen and it says this:
Fixed disk error
Then a bunch of numbers begin to pour across the screen, like 314159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510582097494459230781640 and then the screen goes blank.
Blank.
You know how, when you encounter some really bad news, specifically news of the self-inflicted variety, you try to deny the situation completely? There’s absolutely no way you could be so stupid, right? The news can’t really be that bad. Obviously there is some way to make everything right.
I can’t remember the last time I made a backup copy of my screenplay. It’s been at least two weeks, maybe more.
To make matters worse, that backup was saved on a USB flash drive, but I ran that little doohickey through the washer and dryer last week and that was the end of that.
As I’m sure you can imagine, the first thing I do is try to reboot the stupid computer a second time. But when I press the power button nothing happens. I press it again and still nothing. The computer won’t even turn on now.
I knew. I fucking knew it. As soon as I saw that error message I knew I was going to lose a bunch of work. That grinding was the sound of violent, mechanical death.
In fact, I don’t know if I have another recent copy of the screenplay at all.
Oh, how easy it is to forget that all those hours, all that struggling was really just a bunch of ones and zeroes encoded onto a magnetic disk. Just information, fragile information that probably took up no more space on the hard drive than the head of a—
Wait. Something smells funny. Something smells like electricity, like melting plastic. I see movement in my peripheral vision, and fear strikes inside me—is it the man in the hat? But then I realize the movement is smoke.
The inside of my computer is smoking.
Smoking.
What the hell do I do? I can’t throw water on it. The only thing I can think of is to take the cover off and see what’s wrong inside, but as soon as I touch the metal frame it shocks the shit out of me.
“Goddamn it!”
I stand there like an idiot, hands at my side, and the computer still smokes. Finally I think to grab the power cord and jerk it out of the back of the tower. I touch the frame again, tentatively, with the back of my hand, and this time there is no shock. When I jerk the cover off, what I see inside is a disaster.
The wires are a convoluted, melted mess. Half the expansion cards are black. I’ve never seen anything like it…I don’t even know how it could have happened. It’s a digital holocaust. It’s looks like the damn thing was struck by lightning.
The screenplay is gone. Hours, weeks, months of my life lost.
You remember what I said in the beginning about coincidences? This is exactly what I was talking about. What’s the likelihood that I would be fired from my job one day, and the very next day my personal computer would be destroyed by some kind of freak power surge/short/who knows what?
Of course it isn’t coincidence at all. It’s all part of the big game, whatever the game really is. The one where everyone in the world is out to get me. Including my wife. Who just left me. Who is gone.
I need a drink. I don’t care what time it is.
So I pour one or two or whatever.
After a while I remember there might be a copy of the screenplay on my computer at work. I know I’ve emailed it to myself there before. The file must surely be stored in my inbox somewhere. I have no choice but go to work and ask William if I can retrieve it.
On the way to the office I roll down the windows and open the sunroof. It’s a beautiful day, sharp colors and cool, fresh air. Early November bliss. At the freeway light, while I wait for the red orb to become a green arrow, an old white Cadillac convertible pulls up beside me. The top is down, and two dudes are sitting in the front seats. The passenger is dark skinned and kind of heavy—swarthy, really—while the driver is gaunt, almost skeletal. He’s wearing some kind of soft-brimmed hat and big sunglasses. When he sees me looking at him, he pulls off his sunglasses in dramatic,
exaggerated fashion and bares his teeth at me. His eyes are bloodshot, wild. The irises are nearly eclipsed by his pupils. I stare at him, unable to wrench my eyes away, and watch as he takes a swig of alcohol from what looks like a bottle of tequila. My hand idly drifts to my own drink, tucked safely in the center console cup holder. A double shot of rum and a splash of diet root beer. I pull it to my lips and suck in a swallow, then another. The gaunt fellow’s sneer turns into a smile. The light turns green. He speeds away.
I’ve seen that man before, that car. I don’t know from where. He’s very different from the man in the church bathroom, he’s not the man in the Stetson hat, but somehow he’s just as familiar. I saw him on the highway somewhere near Barstow. I don’t even know where Barstow is, but that’s where I saw him.
Images of Gloria strobe through my mind and I blot them out. Chase them away. I can’t deal with all these things at once. When I have the screenplay in my hands again, I can move on to the next problem.
A little while later I pull into the parking lot at work. At first I drive straight toward the front entrance, where the receptionist sits, but then I realize I’m very, very drunk. There’s a good chance the receptionist will notice. If that happens, she might call security instead of William, and either way I probably won’t get into the building. But you might remember the back door, the one I normally use, closes slowly. All I have to do is sit in my car and wait for someone to enter the building, and I can follow them inside. Then I could conceivably walk right into the office, get my files, and leave. Even if I run into someone, as long as it isn’t William or some other manager, they probably won’t even know I’m not supposed to be there.
I drive to the back entrance, but instead of my normal spot out in the boonies, I park against an open curb near the door. This way I can quickly get out to follow someone. I turn off the engine and sit for a moment while the engine cools. Take another drink or two of my cocktail. It’s almost gone but I have supplies in the backseat in case I need a refill. You can never have enough liquid courage, you know?
It doesn’t take long for someone to show up. After about five minutes (or so it seems) a girl in a black Jeep Liberty rolls up and parks in one of the front parking spots. There’s a Roxy sticker in the back window. The girl is slender and dark-skinned and has brown hair and is wearing big, fashionable sunglasses. She steps out of the car and hurries toward the doors, so fast I realize I have to go right now if I want to catch her.
But when I step out of the car, my balance isn’t so good. I feel like my eyes are orbiting my brain like a planet orbits the sun. My hands find the cool, metal surface of the car. I want to stand there and collect my thoughts, but if I do she’s going to reach the door before I even start walking.
Across the asphalt, toward the sidewalk, I nimbly step over the curb and make my way to the doors, and all the while my heart beats like a snare drum in my head. That’s right, my head. That’s where it’s beating. The girl is wearing expensive jeans that compliment her butt. Her heels click on the sidewalk. I’m about twenty feet away when she reaches the first set of doors, and that’s when I remember there are security cameras in the parking lot. I forgot about that. If he’s smart, William will have alerted the security guards to watch for me on those cameras. But still I walk, maintaining a good pace, at least four miles per hour.
“Warning! Warning 47!”
I whip around, quickly, and nearly fall over. What the hell was that? It sounded like a drill sergeant barking through a megaphone, which is impossible, which means I must be hearing things again. Which isn’t really surprising since I am shithammered right now.
The girl is through the glass doors and I can see she’s holding her purse up to the card reader.
I lurch toward the doors. The girl is through the second set, the doors that lock, and the one she opened is slowly closing. I finally reach the foyer and pull open the first door, reaching the second set just before the door clicks shut.
Holy shit I made it!
And then I’m in the office. It’s only been one day but it still feels like I haven’t been here in months. Maybe years. Somehow it smells both musty and antiseptic. I can hear the clickety-clack of a computer keyboard. Someone on the phone. I’ve never been to work drunk before.
I stumble down the cubicle hallway, running my hand along the gray fabric wall for balance and support. The first corner is just ahead, and I watch for William over the wall as I approach. But he’s not very tall. I might not see him.
And then I’m around the corner. Someone is headed right towards me, but it’s not William. It’s the guy who runs our Intranet, Scott. He’s kind of short, completely bald, and wears glasses so small they could be spectacles. The lenses are thick. Scott is brilliant and the most positive man you will ever meet in your life.
