In the movies, people are always calling each other into their offices for “a word” that is suddenly—without any words—not “a word” at all, but in real life everything happens more slowly. You can’t cut, like in the movies, from one frame to the next, leaving out all the clumsy details. Even if you’re lucky and you manage to be suave and well behaved the whole time, there’s still all those slow seconds ticking by, the accompanying inner monologue that, thankfully, most movies have the prudence to cut. In real life, even desire is not even really desire, pure and simple, the way it is on the screen. It’s this mixed-up thing instead, which—if my experience with Greer is any indication—doesn’t even have to do with a particular person, or the situation at hand. It’s more just this…curiosity, about what’s going to happen next. A sort of sick, vertigo-provoking longing to induce the unexpected.
Maybe other people had an easier time of it. Greer, for example. She has this certain script that she follows, I bet, and can count on people, for the most part, to just sort of follow along.
But then I’d gone and asked for a rain check. Ha. You can bet I didn’t get it. Greer hardly spoke to me for six months after that, I remember, and made sure I felt like squirming whenever she was in the room. It’s hard not to start to slowly despise someone who makes you feel that way. I’m sure the feeling was mutual, but until Greer handed me Dr. Yaun’s card across the table I had never once thought about the possibility of losing my job.
I stood outside Greer’s office with Dr. Yaun’s card in my hand and it was clear as day to me, suddenly, how things would transpire. I wasn’t being sent to Dr. Yaun for “rehabilitation”; I was being let go. Greer had, no doubt, been waiting for the opportunity ever since I’d backed awkwardly out of her office three years ago after the world’s most humiliating handshake. She’d been biding her time, just waiting for me to show the least sign of weakness.
* * *
—
“Well, this has been a very worthwhile session,” Dr. Yaun informs me. Her voice surprises me. I’d been, more or less covertly, looking at my watch the whole time, but somehow hadn’t registered just how close we now are to the end of the session.
“I’ll see you next week, then?” Dr. Yaun asks. “Same time? Does that work for you?”
It’s a lot easier than I thought it would be to get up from the chair. Dr. Yaun gets up, too. She moves around the broad desk and offers me her hand. I take it and find that it is strangely cool. “I want you to remember, Tom,” she says, still shaking my hand, “you’re not alone. It may feel like you are,” she says, “but you’re not.”
Then she releases my hand, and flexes her own hand a little—an insignificant gesture that somehow seems to cancel out the small moment of professional intimacy we’ve shared. It is really just the slightest of movements, hardly discernible. But I notice. I have a sudden insight into what it would be like to go around the world like Regina, noticing everything. I can almost see the thoughts as they tick through the doctor’s mind: Some sympathy, now. Careful to keep it professional. Running a bit late; doesn’t matter. Make him feel—safe. First visit, and all that. Maybe that’s selling her a bit short. After all, she does seem—aside from that subtle, no-doubt-mostly-unconscious flex of the hand—genuinely sympathetic.
That’s the trouble with noticing everything. You never know if the things you notice are real or if they’re just things you make up in your head.
It’s better then, in a way, not to notice, I think. That way you don’t have to always be wondering.
“Do you have any hobbies?” Dr. Yaun asks. I look at her sort of blankly, and don’t immediately respond. This time, though, she doesn’t wait. Our time is up, after all. “You know, I always prescribe exercise,” she tells me. “Really. The research is pretty conclusive. In most cases, a little exercise does just as much good as an order of prescription medication.”
Somehow I am out the door. I’m standing in the lobby again. There’s an older woman in the chair I’d been sitting in an hour before, while I waited for my name to be called. She’s wearing sunglasses, carrying a red umbrella, and flipping through a magazine. The receptionist lifts her head. “We’ve got you scheduled for next week,” she assures me. “Have a nice day.”
Exercise. I wonder briefly if Greer told her to say that. But then I think: that’s ridiculous. “Do a little exercise and call me in the morning.” Like the doctor said, the evidence is in: pretty much anyone would prescribe it these days. And anyway, Greer isn’t looking to “help” me, is she? This isn’t a makeover. It’s a way of showing me the door.
How, I wonder, will I break it to Regina?
I think this as I’m heading down the short staircase to the glass lobby of the building and suddenly the stairs start to seem incredibly steep and narrow. It sounds crazy, I know it, but I can hardly see my way to the bottom anymore. I stand there, with my hand on the rail, breathing heavily—like an old man. There’s no way forward, I think. But then I think, no. That’s wrong. I’ve got it backwards somehow. There isn’t any way backward, but there is a way forward. And just like that, the stairs reassume their original form and dimensions, and I am permitted to descend.
I decide: I’ll just tell Regina what it’s absolutely necessary to tell. Which isn’t really all that much, come to think of it. Greer has certainly blown things out of proportion, sending me to Dr. Yaun. I’ll tell Regina that. But I’ll also say: “Maybe it’s for the best.” Talking to the doctor was actually sort of…fun, I’ll say. That’s not the right word, of course, but…well, it felt good—I’ll say—just to say anything at all, then to sit in silence for a little while. And maybe, after all, it’s time for me to be thinking about doing things a little differently, I’ll say. Yes, that’s the way to put it. I think this may be a wake-up call, I’ll say. I need a change; I hope you understand.
* * *
—
But Regina is not in when I get home. I go into the kitchen to fix myself a sandwich, but I haven’t even finished spreading the butter when I put down the knife, and return all the ingredients to the fridge. I go into the guest room and pull out my trainers from the back of the second closet—the one that’s filled with winter jackets and old cassette tapes; the things we never use. I put on the trainers, a T-shirt, and a pair of old soccer shorts, which I’ve only ever used as pyjamas, and head outside. I don’t even lock the door behind me when I go; I don’t want to have to carry the keys.
At first I feel good. I mean, really good. And I’m surprised because I haven’t been for a jog in—well, honestly, it must be about five years. It rained last night—quite a lot, actually; winter coming on. We’ll get a few good downpours and for a month or two daytime temperatures will hover at around sixty degrees. There’ll be a few nighttime frost warnings. By February it will be spring again, with highs in the eighties.
I head west, toward the river. I bet there’s still water in it, though it hasn’t rained since early morning. By suppertime it will have washed away, but there still should be some moving water now. I feel good and I can think of nothing better, nothing I’d rather be doing, than jogging down to the river to take a look at last night’s rain. But then, before I even get to the underpass, I’m out of breath, and overheating, with this awful pain in my chest. It occurs to me that I’m having a heart attack, but then I remember. This is just how exercise feels.
I slow down, but not to a walk. I’ve got to be able to make it to the river, at least. If I make it to the river, I tell myself, I can stop. I’ll walk back, I tell myself. Maybe even call a cab.
The underpass is cool and dark and I can hear the cars rushing overhead. On the other side, there’s another highway. I find myself hoping there’ll be a long line of traffic when I get there and I’ll have to stop and wait—nobody ever stops at a crosswalk around here. But when I get to the highway there’s not a single car in view: I have no choice but to keep going.
Now this is very definitely “the wrong side of the track
s.” There’s a couple of abandoned buildings and a chain-link fence surrounding an undeveloped double lot, functioning for the moment as a graveyard for used cars. A handwritten sign reads, Danny’s Resurrection Auto, but there doesn’t seem to be much resurrection going on. There’s no one around, except for a couple of neglected-looking dogs who bark disinterestedly as I pass. Closer to the river there’s a few family homes, with some more dogs in the yard. They race back and forth along the fence, yapping their heads off. I wonder what is going through their minds.
Now I’m really almost there. I can already see the turn, and from there it’s just a short half block to the river. But now I see that a line of fire trucks is backed up all along the road, almost to the turn. When I get closer, I see a crowd of people gathered by the river, along with some TV crews. I slow my pace a little, though this means I’m probably not technically jogging anymore. I see two men in yellow slickers on the opposite side of the river. There are five or six ropes floating downstream of them and they’re leaning their weight into them, bracing against the current, which is moving fast. When I reach the edge of the crowd, I stop. I’m breathing hard, and at first I just stand there, panting and looking around. I spot the woman from the doctor’s office a little farther downriver. The one with the sunglasses and the red umbrella. Yes, it’s definitely her. She’s got her umbrella open, even though it hasn’t rained in hours.
“Hey—” I say to the guy next to me. Like everyone else, he is looking straight ahead, without any readable expression. It feels a little odd at first to speak out loud, what with how quiet everyone is. “What’s going on?”
The guy half turns, but he doesn’t shift his eyes from the river. “They’re looking for someone,” he says. He has an accent. I don’t know where from. “A body,” he says.
Just as he says it, the orange ropes go taut and the men in the water sort of stagger. Then a stretcher is raised. And a body on the stretcher. It’s one of those things that even when you’re looking right at it you don’t see straight. There’s something sort of wobbly, uncertain…particularly about the body. It’s no further away from me than the men in yellow slickers or the emergency vehicles with their lights flashing, but it looks different somehow. Sort of abstract; bloated, I guess, after sitting in the water for so long.
But then again, the river has risen only overnight.
I stand and watch as the body is lowered onto the opposite bank and the men in yellow slickers scramble out of the river. After that, the emergency team swoops in and there’s nothing more to see. I stick around for a bit anyway. A lot of other people do, too, including the woman from the doctor’s office, who I catch sight of from time to time—just her red umbrella bobbing up and down among the crowd.
I wonder if she’s seen me, too—and if so, if she recognizes me. Or if anybody else does. I’m fairly incognito, dressed in soccer shorts and without my button-down shirt, but I glance around quickly—embarrassed, and for some reason ashamed.
It’s tremendously unlikely, of course, that even if anyone did notice me they would make a connection between myself and the dead man, because…Well, because there isn’t any. I tell myself this again and again, but my heart is racing; it’s a while before I can calm myself down.
I try to train my attention on what is happening on the other side of the river. I see the swarm of paramedics; they are moving quickly but somehow their motions appear too deliberate, slow. They are lifting something into the back of the ambulance, but it’s impossible to make out what. All I can see are the yellow slickers, the flashing lights of the vehicles, the television cameras trained on the scene.
Where’s the body? I wonder. What have they done with the body?
The sweat, which has drenched the front and back of my T-shirt, has cooled, and suddenly I feel terribly cold.
ONE DAY—LONG AFTER THE END OF THIS WORLD and into the beginning of the next—the director unlocked the gates to the first museum that had existed in nearly four thousand years, and the people streamed in.
It was a much better turnout than even she could have hoped—and she had been obliged from the start to be optimistic about the whole thing. Even when she had doubted the project, or her own involvement in it, she had done her best to hide it from everyone, including, whenever she reasonably could, from herself. One could not sink two marriages, all of one’s time and energy, and a good deal of one’s personal dignity into a single venture and not hope fervently it would come to something in the end. The night before the opening she had been particularly anxious, in large part due to the brief address she had been invited to deliver to the collection of archivists, historians, scholars, and local enthusiasts who had gathered in the museum foyer to help celebrate the occasion. She had sweated over the exact wording of her short speech for several weeks, rehearsing its “improvised” opening lines so many times and in so many various ways she began to suspect that when at last she opened her mouth she would be unable to utter anything at all.
When the time came, however, she had no choice but to smile through clenched teeth and bravely raise her glass.
“This,” she began, “this” (here she gestured with both a practised, sweeping gaze and her still-raised glass around the vast, and mostly empty, hall) “is what we’ve been waiting for. For the past thirty-seven centuries. For seven major civilizations to rise and fall. Waiting, consciously or unconsciously during all of that time, for the eventual establishment of…this very museum.”
A small laugh rippled through the audience; glasses, as well as a few appreciative voices, were raised. The director relaxed somewhat, drank, and allowed herself a brief, self-congratulatory smile. Then, bowing her head modestly, she continued from her notes.
“Because archival techniques have improved so dramatically, especially over the past several centuries,” the director read, “there is—as many of you have already observed—a distinct contrast between the quality of some of the oldest artifacts in the museum and those that were able to benefit from more advanced methods of preservation. This should not” (here the director looked up sharply from her notes) “be understood as a shortcoming of the museum’s collection, but just the opposite. I believe,” she said, “that certain variations in the quality of the museum’s artifacts will prove, in fact, to have valuable pedagogical applications, many of which we are not yet able to imagine. Not only will our visitors be able to consult a written record describing the approximate age and original location of each artifact, they will gain a tangible appreciation for the layers of time by immediately apprehending them. Where, that is,” the director continued, “more recent acquisitions might well be indistinguishable in terms of their physical quality and condition from the familiar objects with which we surround ourselves daily, the older objects will appear…well” (the director looked up once more, and shrugged. She hoped desperately that, with her next word, she would hit the right note), “old.”
She did. Once more, the audience laughed appreciatively. Relieved, the director continued, her voice—in proportion to her increased confidence—gaining energy and speed.
“It was nothing,” she said, “quite honestly, that we would have consciously dreamed up. In fact, every effort was made to reduce, even eliminate altogether from the artifacts we recovered, every trace of the passage of time. But I strongly believe that future generations will thank us for preserving not only these historical objects themselves, but the very history of their preservation.”
The audience applauded the director’s address, and everyone agreed that—regardless of the turnout the next day, or any other, which was far from assured—the director and the other museum staff could feel frankly proud.
“This is not the kind of thing,” said one attendee, for example, a few moments after the director had—raising her glass once more—concluded her remarks, “that is usually met with any sort of precisely measurable success—or, for that matter, failure. It’s more of a…what would you call it?” She gave a short laugh. “
I’d almost want,” she said, removing a toothpicked meatball from a passing tray, “to use the word faith.”
“Yes, isn’t it ironic,” a young archivist said, “that our job—of recording and preserving, so meticulously, the victories and failures of others—can, in itself, in no way be recorded or preserved? That we are left with nothing at all material in the end!”
“What’s this?” asked a linguist standing nearby. “Nothing material? Look around, my dear boy!”
The linguist’s words echoed loudly through the hall. It had been kept largely empty with the aim of offering the visitor, upon exit and entry, some—much needed—space for reflection. Only a few choice artifacts stood along the back walls at thoughtfully spaced intervals, gesturing in a general way to the rise and fall of at least several long-expired civilizations. Now there was a brief pause as everyone, heeding the linguist’s advice, looked around. After a few moments, their gazes had travelled (just as the museum’s architect had hoped) through the wide front windows toward the museum gates: two large—overwhelmingly material—towers in a state of semi-collapse, each having been carefully reconstructed in order to evoke its “original” state of demolition.
Someone laughed. “Well, quite right,” she said, proffering her glass to a passing waiter, who obediently filled it. “If it is not as obvious to our visitors tomorrow as it is to us tonight, then—” She took a swallow of wine.
“Blast it all!” someone else said, raising his own glass in the air.
“Yes, blast it all!” one or two others said, and everyone drank to that.
* * *
—
By the time the doors actually opened the next day, the line had snaked its way down the street and turned the first corner—a distance (as one of the ticket collectors noted) of nearly a quarter mile.
Tiger, Tiger Page 9
