The Egg Code

by Mike Heppner

  Giving up on the bartender, Gray unrolled the five-dollar bill and set it on the counter. “And then what?”

  Olden tucked his hair behind his ears. The bartender looked up, stubbed out her cigarette and walked over to the beer pulls.

  “Well, this is all just speaking hypothetically,” he said, shrugging, “but I’m working on a little project that you might find interesting.”

  “What project?”

  Olden didn’t answer, just smiled as the bartender filled two pint glasses with expensive bock. She set the drinks in front of the men and shook her head, rejecting their money.

  Olden tasted his beer. “Remember this name,” he said, nudging the woman’s hand with his glass. Her fingers curled around his palm.

  “What name’s that, honey?” she asked.

  Olden lingered, then took his hand back. “The Egg Code,” he said.

  She wrinkled her nose, puzzling it out. “Egg Code, let’s see . . .” Looking up at the ceiling, she tapped a ballpoint pen against her throat. “That’s amaretto . . . and Drambuie . . .”

  “No.” He raised his half-empty pint glass, toasting the girl. “That’s not it at all,” he said.

  Coming Together

  It was still early when they left the bar, so they followed the crowd to a nearby theater, where free shows played from nine to eleven. The the-ater was small, and the floor rose at such a steep angle that you could put your feet on the seat in front of you without bending your knees. It reminded Olden of a lecture hall, or maybe a dissection room: white and clean, camera trained on a splayed lizard. Tonight the stage was bare, with only a few mirrors running along the back wall. Gray shifted in the darkness, making the whole row of connected seats shake on a spring. Olden breathed into his hand. Not so bad. A few beers, an hour drive and he’d be all set to work until morning. The city made him nervous—too many people, too many schedules to coordinate. Out in the sticks, he could make his own hours. An easy lifestyle. In the city, he saw the proof of his own wildness. Every multiplex, every three-story strip mall revealed his basic inability to get with the program. The women were nice, and they all seemed to like him, but overall he preferred his solitude. Even Gray was starting to get on his nerves.

  But then the dance began, and something changed. An instant reversal, for as soon as Olden saw the girl, he wanted only to look at her, to watch her body move. She danced in the center of the troupe, a leader of sorts; the other performers gave her space when she needed it, space to shine and rock. The music was loud, an electronic mix, and it boomed from speaker to speaker—a bit more, really, than this crowd expected. The people in the front row covered their ears and crossed their legs and smiled tolerantly, waiting for it to end. The choreography slashed in violent thrusts across the stage. The women were more daring than the men, and they threw themselves down from the scaffolding, striking the ground with a terrible force. The first thing Olden noticed about the girl was her hair—pigtails, an innocent touch, so out of place in the midst of this awful rite. She was small, barely five feet tall. Fat, grinning cheeks, pale, pockmarked skin, pitted across the forehead. Her eyebrows were thick and dark, and they joined at the bridge of her nose, her eyes hidden in cinch-folds of happy wrinkles. But it was her body that Olden watched, for it amazed him—the violence inside, the strange contrast between the sweet face and the angry gestures. Her body was a super piston, machine-made, ultra-efficient in the way it reached and tore and swatted. Flat feet banged the boards, bent legs stepping with leaden effort, then flexing to kick the air. He admired the way she’d trained herself, knowing that his own body could never do those things. This was a skill, a secret that she knew and he didn’t, and in that secret he saw another life, years of dreams and discipline, an ambition similar to his own except in the course it took, and he respected her for this, respected her for being so good at one thing. As her hips swiveled in a wide bop, he thought about the work involved, the complex terminology, the words used to describe this and that, words unfamiliar to him but a part of her daily routine, common to the point of habit (like checksums and sequence numbers, only not . . . not quite). He wanted to stay there, to learn more. Onstage, the dancers divided, came back, bowed quickly. Olden clapped, staring at the girl.

  “I don’t think that’s going to help my hangover,” Gray said, rubbing his temples as the lights came up and the audience moved toward the exits, embarrassed by the incongruence between their own lives and the big-ness on the stage. Stepping over the back of his chair, he hurdled the rows, lifting one leg, then the other.

  Olden stayed in his seat, thinking. An elderly couple slowed the traffic, clotting the aisle with their tiny waddle. A teenager made a gun finger with his right hand, held it up to the back of the old man’s head and pulled the trigger. Olden waited for the crowd to pass, then met Gray out in the lobby. A circular sofa surrounded a steel post in the center of the room. Gray was in the middle of saying something sarcastic about an advertisement hanging over the concession stand. Olden tuned the words out, hearing only the cadence of sounds, the jesting rise and fall.

  “Let’s stay,” he said, finding a space on the circular sofa between two heaps of children’s coats. “I want to meet the dancers.”

  Gray slid his hands into his pockets as he paced around the sofa. “Tiny clothes,” he muttered, inspecting the jackets, the lightweight windbreakers, yellow and red. He seemed to be pitching ideas to himself, searching for an angle, a satirical point-of-attack. “The shelf life is ridiculous. Six months and it’s no good. This is part of the psychology. In this way, we will train you to buy, to become dependent upon the consumer culture. We, meaning corporate America. Fashion! Today, tomorrow and the next day. That’s what the third-world countries know that we don’t. The children go naked. The children go naked, and once they’re sixteen years old, they get a little tunic and they’re all set. HA HA! No more buying.”

  A group of kids ran into the lobby, screaming, swirling their fists, each clutching the same neon doodad—a free souvenir, evidently. A few tired adults followed behind—mussed hair, coats dragging, the worn-out remnants of parental authority.

  Olden stood up and stepped out of the way, watching the swarm of children, their munchkin bodies darting in chaotic directions. He wondered about the underlying principle behind all of this apparently random activity. If child A equals child B. His father would know. Peering down the corridor, he saw a few of the performers mingling with the parents, answering their questions in an even, professional tone, poised like representatives for some worldwide youth organization. The girl with the pigtails was standing with her arms around two of the men. In her street clothes, she seemed even further removed from himself, a real woman instead of a prop, instead of a two-dimensional phantasm, a woman who owned more than one pair of shoes, more than one shirt, a fully accessorized human being, a complex and remote other. There she was. He wanted her to be not-perfect. He would love her more for these imperfections. Weird habits. Things to apologize for. Oh, Christa always does that. Christa—where did that come from? Generic dream-girl. No, don’t think of her that way. Keep the name open. Only truth, only true things. Let her come to you. Stay empty. Start with nothing.

  “I saw you!” The girl was pointing at Olden, who just stood there, marked, unable to move. Kissing each of her partners once on the cheek, she kicked her nylon gym bag down the hallway until it came to a stop against the foot of the sofa. “You were sitting up front,” she said, hoisting the bag.

  “You can see from onstage?” he asked, liking her voice, liking it all so far.

  “Not too good.” She reached between her legs and pulled out a wedgie. “With the long hair, though.”

  “Oh, yeah, right.” Olden touched his hair, suddenly remembering it, finding it strange for some reason. His hair. She’d noticed his hair. Why not?

  “I like it when guys do that. With the hair. It looks sexy.”

  He smiled, she smiled. The whole thing was real nice. Looking ove
r her head, he nodded at the two male dancers, who stood leaning against each other with their arms folded—sizing him up, sure. Well, fine. Guilty until proven innocent. Not a problem. Olden saluted and they waved back. H . . . i.

  “You must be real tired, after all that,” he said.

  “Not too.” She shifted the bag, working her arms through the wide straps.

  “I really liked the show.”

  “Oh, thanks.”

  “You want to have a drink with me?”

  “Oh, sure, yeah, let’s go.”

  The girl waved goodbye to her partners. One of them said, “Scarlet, gimme your cigarettes.” Scarlet, then? Olden tested the name out in his head, trying a variety of pitches—the bored purl, the sexy shout. Hi, Scarlet. Let me ask Scarlet. Scarlet, where’s my wallet? Sure, Scarlet. Scarlet’s not here, can I take a message?

  Passing the vestibule, they saw Gray standing by the entrance, watching the children pile onto a short yellow bus. A chaperone manned the door, scooping the air with his left hand, moving the kids along.

  Olden nudged his friend in the gut. “Come on,” he said, his arm now around Scarlet’s waist. They looked good like that. A nice height ratio. Him and her. “We’re going back to the bars.”

  “Okay,” Gray stammered. His tongue felt pasty, his brain slow to react. Shaking his head to clear the fog, he followed Olden and Scarlet out into the chilly night. “I can do that,” he said, keeping a few steps behind.

  The Meet Market was a dreadful place: club tunes and boys and girls writhing on spiral staircases like in a television dance show. The three of them waited in line, then took a booth by the front door, where the music wasn’t quite so loud. Olden and Scarlet sat together arm-in-arm while Gray stayed on the other side, stirring his vodka with a bright red straw. Yellow foam leaked from a big rip in the upholstery, and he picked at it until finally the fabric caught and the seam split along the edge. Embarrassed, he covered the hole with his jacket.

  “Cheap place anyway,” he muttered, chugging his vodka down to the ice. “Adds to the effect. Graffiti on the tables, probably done by a professional, some hired hand—oh, make it look authentic, use real curse words, ‘Jimmy loves Cathy’ and the whole bit, signed by the artist, collect all five, lookit, this one’s different than the other but it’s all bullshit, HA HA!”

  Scarlet rubbed Olden’s thigh under the table, but talked mostly to Gray, cupping her hand around her mouth, almost burning her chin on the hot orange of her cigarette. “I think graffiti is cruel,” she said, dragging on the filter, making the ash go bright. “When they do that to trees. Or even if it’s plastic. Then that’s just as wrong, because you’re still killing a living thing.”

  Gray wadded up a napkin and dropped it into his empty glass. “Ah, but by that same logic, what about this table?”

  Scarlet looked down at the nondescript slab of wood. Already she’d lost track of the argument. She wanted to talk about something else. Cars. Magic spells. “It’s kind of a cruddy table,” she shrugged.

  “Why are we talking about this?” Olden asked, his own little contribution. Scarlet laughed and touched his cheek.

  “Let’s drop it then, baby.” A curl of smoke hovered between her lips, not moving, maintaining its wave-shape. Putting her hand back under the table, she looked at Gray and said, “Oh! Do you like baseball?”

  Gray stared for a moment. “Wait,” he said. “I still haven’t made my point yet.”

  “Oh, about the . . .” She blunted her cigarette in the tray and coughed without covering her mouth—a loud, phlegmy hack. “Well. What?”

  Gray looked at Olden, his eyebrows bobbing over the ridge of his glasses. “Can I make my point?”

  “Sure, make your point, Gray,” Olden said, keeping an eye on the crowd.

  Gray moistened his lips. “Look . . . all I’m saying is . . . people spend way too much time talking about . . . things that . . . don’t necessarily have anything to do . . . with anything.”

  “Right.” Scarlet, trying to be nice, smiled and lit up another cigarette.

  “You know?”

  “Oh, totally.”

  “And the problem with that is . . .” Gray slowly tipped forward, his mouth wide open, trying to sneak up on the next word, to take it between his teeth. “I completely forgot what I was going to say.”

  They stared out at the growing crowd, feeling trapped inside their little booth by the bodies and the noise. A group of young guys—all dressed in nice slacks like men in a pants commercial—stood right next to them, talking about a pornographic movie; it was impossible not to hear the graphic details, what she did and then what he did to her. Olden was embarrassed, mostly for Scarlet’s sake, though if he knew her better maybe he wouldn’t have felt that way. Slowly, a new feeling came over him, and he imagined his left arm as a giant bird’s wing, draped protectively around her shoulder. Over the past three years, he’d conditioned himself against this sort of thing. One name—Gloria—stood for all the other women in Olden’s life. Now he wasn’t so sure.

  Gray stood, jangling his keys. “Got to run.”

  “No,” Scarlet said, but she offered her hand anyway, letting him go.

  “Sure.” He waited for the expected line, the speech about driving home drunk, but neither Olden nor the woman said a word, so he added, a bit maliciously, “You two lovebirds.”

  The couple moved closer together, thanking him for his endorsement. Turning, he waved over his shoulder. On his way out the door, he saw a woman standing in the entryway, trying to take an octopus costume off over her head. Foam tentacles waggled on strands of fishing line. A circle of people stood nearby, watching apprehensively. Gray approached the woman and said, “Do you need a hand?” but she didn’t respond, so he crouched down and peered inside the eyeholes, blowholes, whatever you call ’em, and he repeated, “Do you want me to pull?” but she just sniffled and told him to go away.

  So, home again. Gray moved his car to avoid getting a ticket, then walked the six blocks back to his downtown apartment. A stack of take-out menus and Christian literature made a slippery mess on the entryway floor. A squashed roach decorated a tiled mosaic near the elevator—big guy, with distinct entrails like rodent guts, not just an amorphous jelly but something that looked like a stomach, something that looked like a heart. The elevator bucked up to the third floor. Each floor in Gray’s building had its own strange smell. His was pesticide. He leaned into the door with his key, missing the lock a few times before finally getting it right. Taking his shoes off, he followed his long floppy socks into the kitchen, where he downed a jar of pickled mushrooms and drank a beer. He looked at his reflection in the dark window and burped at it. The light on the answering machine blinked a constant rhythm, six messages for someone named Francis, each more desperate and ominous than the last. Gray stripped down to his boxer shorts and turned on his computer. The OS went through its usual sing-songy introduction as he bobbed in his seat, trying to stay awake. He wondered if he could do it tonight. Shut out the distractions, the other crap. Well, writing. A bit of a game. Just put the words down. Make something up. But lately everything that Gray made up sounded like bad copy, the same insincere nonsense he wrote every day, nine to six, the adman’s curse, meaning nothing, believing nothing, pushing other people’s products, and no room for yourself anymore. The margins between day and night were hazy; no longer could he compartmentalize, keep the BS on one side. Now it was all BS, even his own work, the big three pages per month, chapter one, chapter one, chapter one, every word of it as empty and unfelt as selling potato chips or fire insurance or—this week—orthopedic shoes. Still, in his mind he saw the character, the situation. He saw the story he wanted to tell. Then he felt ashamed for wanting to tell anything, embarrassed by his own arrogance, his vague dreams of greatness, the banality of it all; yes, even his own ambition was banal. Just do your job and shut up about it. Nothing wrong with that. But there was everything wrong with that, for he hated it, all the stupid co
mmercials, the dip-shitty thirty-second spots, hated the whole idea of it—most of all, he hated himself for being good at it. And the less he cared, the better he was. Here’s Gray at work, designing citywide billboard campaigns, million-dollar affairs, half-drunk, half-asleep, half-looking at the page while half-jerking-off under the drafting table. For this he was rewarded. When would it end? Probably never. Promoted endlessly, up and up, ever closer to that great grave in the sky.

  The phone rang. He stumbled into the kitchen and picked up just as the answering machine began to kick in. His heart banged against his chest. The usual fear. Late-night phone calls. No bad news, just the terror of the sudden noise, the secret voice on the other end.

  “Francis?”

  Gray cleared his throat, going for an effect. “N-no, this isn’t Francis.”

  The voice jumped over a tiny hurdle. Tears. An intense situation— but someone else’s. “Who’s this?”

  “This is Francis’s friend.” Gray looked at the fuse box, the scuff marks over the baseboard, the calendar on the wall. “Rick.”

  “Rick, I don’t know you, but could you please tell Francis to call his mother as soon as he gets in.”

  “Let me get a pen.” Gray didn’t move, just kept looking at the calendar, searching for a random date. The ninth. Gets its own box.

  “His father’s in the hospital.”

  “I’m writing it down.”

  “No, he’s got the number.” The voice faded, speaking to someone else. In the background, he could hear an institutional din—a busy hallway, PA announcements, a man sobbing violently. The woman returned, less frantic now, already on to the next thing. “I’ve got to go.”

  Gray listened for the click, then hung up the phone, went back to the computer and wrote: Francis hated his name. Hated the ambiguity of— is he a boy? or a girl? Ah, maybe, he thought, closing his eyes, but when he woke up it was six a.m. and the computer had gone to sleep, dropped the file, forgotten already, a new noise on the streets, loud trucks in the courtyard and early cops shouting, “Move the junk!”