"Moving right along," she said to Philip when he first sat down. It was the only thing she said directly to Philip during the course of his shift.
Ralph came into the room several times, snatched illegible orders from an ancient fax machine, and handed them to Monica without a word.
After work, Philip picked up his mail from the P.O. box at the apartment complex's main office.
Philip lay in bed and opened his mail. There was an advertisement for cut-rate computer software, a bill for utilities, and a package from his mother. She had sent a belated Christmas present.
"I hope you are well," his mother wrote, "and that all your self-destructive behavior is behind you."
The present, wrapped in cartoon cats, was a thin, hard-backed book whose title Philip had seen on recent bestseller lists. The book was entitled A Wind Through My Heart, and it was about a free-spirited woman (Leslie) who travels the Midwest selling cosmetics door-to-door. She meets a man (Mark) whose wife, a wealthy businesswoman, is away on a business trip. Mark and Leslie have a brief affair, making wild love, quoting the poetry of Rod McKuen, and recreating each other with eyeliner and lipstick. In the course of their affair, they utter lethal amounts of bad poetry. Leslie, breathless with lovemaking, says, "I am the wisp and the willow and all the perfumes and all the nostrils in the rain and the sun."
Mark replies, "And I am old movies and the popcorn you don't eat for fear of getting fat and wet, mushy kisses in the rain."
Their love is doomed, however. Mark's wife is about to return. He can't leave her; the whole town would say that he only married her for her money. That is, in fact, why he married her, but it would be cruel to make it known, and Mark is nothing if not sensitive.
So they part, Mark and Leslie, never to see each other again. They both drift about in post- romantic swoons until Leslie dies in her late seventies. Mark dies soon afterward, and his children discover that he has kept a diary, reeking strongly of perfume, and a picture of himself dressed as Marlene Dietrich. In the diary, he analyzes his old lover's poetry at great length and urges his children to make his love affair known to the world. The children, having as little sense of decorum as their father, do just this.
Philip closed the book. He felt dazed, disoriented. It was a thin book, perhaps thirty- five thousand words.
His mother had written, "It is good to see that literature is still being written in these cynical times. I'm sure you will enjoy this as much as I did."
Philip had enjoyed the book. He had laughed heartily, startled into outloud guffaws by certain inflated passages. But this, alas, was not the response the book was supposed to elicit.
Philip eyed his own manuscript, or rather the large box it rested in, and thought, not for the first time, that he was out of sync with his times. His book was probably half-a-million words and its vision was bleak.
The next day at work, during a late-night break, Philip told Al Bingham about A Wind Through My Heart.
Bingham, who looked unhappy and older, glared at Philip. "You want sympathy or what? You read some crappy little book, some emotional cheesecake, and you say, 'What is this? How come people are buying this?' I'll tell you why. Because they like it. People are getting dumber everyday. Television is shrinking the brain back to a streamlined, reptile model. Evolution has come to its senses and realized all the fancy bells and whistles just take up space. You didn't notice this was happening?"
One printer had quit that night and another had called in sick, so Bingham was snowed under with print jobs and consequently in a foul mood. Philip knew better than to argue with him. He went back to his computer terminal and sat down next to Monica. He typed for about fifteen minutes and then realized that Monica was staring at him. He turned and looked at her.
"I love you," Monica said.
Philip, who had been working diligently on a resume for a young man whose employment experience consisted of delivering pizzas and newspapers and who was seeking a mid-level position with a high-tech firm, blinked into Monica's dark, rapt gaze.
"I beg your pardon," Philip said.
Monica was leaning forward slightly, like a drunk about to vomit or confide some awful crime. "You heard me," she said. There were dark shadows under her eyes and her forehead was white and shiny and dotted with small, bright beads of perspiration.
Before Philip could reply, Monica returned to her terminal and began typing furiously. Without looking at Philip, she muttered, "There, I have said it. It's done."
Monica said nothing else to Philip the whole shift, and when he left, she did not look up.
The next day, Philip drove to Pelidyne and waited in the lobby for Amelia. The lobby was big, way beyond human scale, and Philip imagined tall, conical creatures from the cold reaches of space sliding on their pseudopods across the marble floor.
Dear God, not again.
Amelia came out of the elevator wearing a brown suit. She came walking briskly across the wide room with the preoccupied smile of a novice tightrope walker. New job, new shoes.
They ate at a nearby delicatessen. Amelia talked with great animation about her job, about the eccentricities of her boss, Mr. Grayson, about the confusion caused by the updating of a software program, and Thelma Karnes' outburst during the meeting on the upcoming office picnic.
Philip was unsettled by Amelia's regular use of the first person plural. "We had to decide whether or not it was worth it to make a concentrated effort with the Briggs account. We came-to the conclusion..."
"There is no 'we'!" Philip wanted to shout. Watch out! The landscape was littered with traumatized ex-team players, mice the cats enlisted for feline enterprises.
Slowly, during the course of the meal, Amelia shook the spell of Pelidyne.
Philip told her about Monica's declaration of love.
Amelia giggled, which was a legitimate response but which depressed Philip somehow.
He changed the subject. He asked about her sister.
Amelia said she hadn't been getting along with her sister. It wasn't her sister's fault. It was just time to move out.
"You could move in with me," Philip said.
"How's the novel coming along?" Amelia asked.
He dropped her off at Pelidyne and drove back to his apartment under grim, overcast skies.
He entered his apartment and emptied the pots and pans and put them back on the carpet in preparation for the approaching rainstorm. He called the apartment's management office.
"They still haven't fixed that leak?" a woman asked. She was sympathetic, but incapable of doing anything about the matter. Maintenance, like the government of a foreign country or the price of gasoline, was sadly beyond her human control. "Tomorrow is supposed to be sunny," she said, by way of consolation.
Philip hadn't expected anything to come of the call, and so was not disappointed. Indeed, disappointment would have required hope. The room had a dank, moldy smell these days, and the ceiling had bloomed with brown shapes suggestive of monstrous creatures and unholy alliances of peeling plaster and rotting flesh.
The damp accounted for a respiratory infection that afflicted Philip, causing his breathing to be labored. The thin notes that sounded in his chest would wake him out of a fitful slumber, terrified that what he heard was not of this earth.
He made himself work on his novel.
They reached the dark red sea and came down to the beach, as white and terrifying as typewriting paper. Masters reached down and scooped up a handful of sand.
“My God," he said. "Look."
"What is it?" Daphne asked, but the professor said nothing. She saw the horror in his eyes, and then discovered the same within her soul as the white pebbles and dust came into grim focus.
She looked upon teeth, a handful of bleached, shattered teeth, mixed with a rubble of bone shards and a fine, gray grit of blessedly unidentifiable origin. A vast, white arc of this material stretched out beneath their feet, and Daphne found herself thinking, quite against her will, of the sea it
self, and what might lie beneath it.
The writing cheered Philip up, and he found he was able to go to work despite the sure knowledge that Monica would be there, full of funereal love.
That night when he went down the hall to the vending machines, she followed him.
They stood watching the wheel lurch forward.
Without looking at Philip, Monica said, "If you was to try to kiss me, I wouldn't stop you."
"Well," Philip said. He got a Snickers and returned to his computer. He could feel Monica's eyes on him. He saw himself kissing her—the curse of an irrepressible imagination—and felt his body grow numb and cold, paralyzed with icy dread.
"See you," Monica said when he left that night.
12.
When Philip entered Ralph's office, Ralph hurriedly shoved the book (a massive, brown tome as battered and frayed as a seminarian's Bible) into a desk drawer. The book, Philip was certain, was the Necronomicon, that dark book of forbidden knowledge written by the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred. Ralph Pederson's expression, equal measures of guilt and diffidence, seemed to confirm this.
Philip's employer was looking particularly disheveled. He wore a tie, but it was loosened and tossed back over his shoulder. His eyes were red and every hair on his body, including his eyebrows, seemed to bristle. His suit coat lay on the floor, a brown, enervated off-the-rack garment that seemed destined for a soup line.
Ralph stood up. "I'm going to have to ask you to knock before you come in here," he said. "I try to maintain a casual atmosphere. I want my employees to feel they can come and talk to me whenever they have a problem, but knocking is a small courtesy."
Philip said that he had knocked.
"You are going to have to knock louder," Pederson said. "My hearing is not what it used to be. This is not a quiet profession I'm in. Printing presses are louder than a whisper. Not that I'm complaining. They are silent enough when there is no business. I'm grateful for the roar of the presses."
"Yes," Philip said.
"Well, what is it?"
Philip sat down. He was already doubting the impulse that had sent him to his boss' office. Why make an issue of it? No one else seemed to mind. Indeed, Philip suspected he was the only one who read the things.
"It's this," Philip said. "This motivational pamphlet."
Philip handed it to Ralph, who smiled and read the title out loud, "Loyalty Counts" and nodded his head. "Yes, that it does."
Ralph smiled and leaned forward on his elbows, shoulders hunched to indicate a listening mode.
"Well," Philip said, "I've just thought that whoever your vendor is for these pamphlets... well, he may have... the tone of these things has become increasingly shrill, and I am not sure that they are really serving a positive function anymore."
"Oh really?" Ralph Pederson's eyebrows lifted. “I haven't heard any other complaints."
Nobody else reads them, Philip wanted to say. But he didn't; he said, "Well, this one, for instance—"
Ralph interrupted. "You know, I believe strongly in these messages. They are brief, certainly. We are all busy here and no one has the time for lengthy tracts, but I think that an occasional thoughtful word can make all the difference. They don't give me these things for free, Philip. If I didn't think they had a morale- building effect, I wouldn't spend good money for them. I could take that money and throw myself a party, I guess, hire a couple of hookers, a case of beer, balloons, the whole works. But I spend that money on my employees, and, by and large, they are grateful, I think."
"Well," Philip said, "I appreciate that. But I'm not sure—"
Ralph interrupted. "Times are hard," he said. "The economy here is not what you are used to. You're from California, right?" "Ah, no. I'm from—"
"And I know you've got a wife, and she has got a right to be worried about your career, and—"
"I'm not married," Philip said.
Ralph waved this away with a scowl, as though it were an argument unworthy of Philip.
Ralph stood up and came around the desk. He put an arm around Philip's shoulder. "We've all got to work together or we'll all go under. It's as simple as that. I can't tell you how sick I am of being thought of as the villain. My God, I work long hours; I buy pizza for the whole crew when a little extra money turns up in the till, and I, for one, treasure and appreciate loyalty. I don't think loyalty is a joke, and I don't think it is any great inconvenience to ask you folks to spend just a minute thinking about the concept yourselves."
"It's not that," Philip said, "It's this. Listen."
He read the beginning of the motivational pamphlet:
How would you feel if, right after the wedding ceremony, your wife turned to you and said she was leaving you for the best man? If your answer is "discouraged" or "betrayed" then you can sympathize with the plight of many modern employers. For far too many employees, loyalty is a dead word. Employees are job-hopping at the first sign of adversity. If they aren't given a raise during their first month on the job, they are out the door. If the economy takes a turn for the worse and the boss asks everyone to be patient and hang in without a raise, all he gets is a lot of blank, cold stares. "Tough luck," Mr. Gimee says, "I'm out of here."
But if you think loyalty is dead and buried, you just might have another think coming. One disgruntled employee, let's call him Bob, quit his job when his employer, suffering heavy financial losses from real estate deals gone sour, was forced to cut employee salaries in order to meet the overhead. Bob left and found himself being interviewed by another employer. This employer said, "I see, Bob, that you have lots of experience, but I see that you have rarely worked at a job for over two years. I am afraid this sort of job-hopping is not what we are looking for. We suspect that you won't be happy here either, that the minute the going gets rough, you will be gone. Frankly, we are looking for people who have worked at one place for a very long time, and who are now seeking employment due to a layoff or the dissolution of their company. I wish I could hire you, but I can't. If you are fortunate enough to find an employer that will overlook this record of discontented drifting, I hope you will give him the loyalty he deserves. That's loyalty spelled L-O-Y-A-L-T-Y."
Philip stopped and tossed the pamphlet on the desk, resting his case. There was more, in the same vein, but surely the portion he had read was sufficient.
"Well?" Ralph said. "Are you suggesting that loyalty is spelled differently? Are you suggesting that it is an outmoded virtue, and that these pamphlets are old-fashioned or corny?"
"No, of course not," Philip said, wondering just what sort of mental aberration was responsible for this interview. "I am just not convinced that these pamphlets are really that positive. They seem to be weighted toward—"
"Phil, it's a hard world we live in. It's getting harder all the time. I guess there are some hard truths in these little pamphlets"—here Ralph picked the tract up and waved it between his thumb and index finger— "but we can't just stick our heads in the sand. No sir, we have to come to grips with the issues. I offer an honest wage for an honest hour, and I don't think it is too much to ask for a little goddam respect and loyalty because it is my goddam money that is paying the goddam salaries and there is not a goddam day goes by that I don't worry about letting everyone down. You see me in this office late at night. You think I am sitting in here reading goddam Penthouse magazine or snorting cocaine? I am in here working my ass off so that we don't go under. I'm doing it for all of you. Why hell, if anything, this pamphlet isn't strong enough. It doesn't talk about the kind of loyalty we employers have. It's a kind of loyalty that burns your guts out, I can tell you that. My doctor says I've got an ulcer that could win prizes."
Ralph ran a hand over his face, as though testing to see if his features were still intact and not irreparably distorted by emotion. He sighed. His shoulders sagged.
"I'm glad we had this talk," he said. "I think it has helped clear the air." Philip realized he was dismissed.
Philip returned to his computer te
rminal.
In all caps, on the screen, someone had typed, I'M NOT WEARING ANY UNDERWEAR
Philip turned and saw Monica, her ragged smile full of salacious intent. Philip cleared the screen.
He left work early, punching out without saying goodbye to Monica. It was raining hard and the highway was crisscrossed with small, treacherous rivers. Philip took an early exit—to avoid an accident, he thought. When he found himself on the street where Amelia was rooming with her sister, he realized his subconscious had plans of its own.
The lights were on in her house, so he pulled up to the curb and got out. He'd just say hi. Maybe she'd offer him a cup of coffee. It was a little after nine, not late really, and maybe he could talk to her about MicroMeg. They never talked about it, and—really—they had to.
Résumé With Monsters Page 8
