Day One, Year One: Best New Stories and Poems, 2014

by Carmen Johnson

  When he first came on to replace our old supervisor—a tall, soft-spoken man who referred to himself simply as Number 8—Dic made a huge deal about his name. He told us that his full name is Ricard without an h, so he figured he had to lose a letter in the nickname version in order for there to be balance in the universe. It seemed reasonable enough at the time, but then one day during a break, Donald said, “Wait—isn’t Dic without a k like a dick without the end part?” We laughed and laughed and laughed until it was time to go back to work, and ever since then we’ve come up with new jokes about Dic’s dick every day.

  “What did the critics say about the movie based on Dic’s dick?” I ask Donald.

  “I don’t know. What?” he says.

  “It was okay, but it ended kind of abruptly.”

  “That’s good,” says Donald, without laughing.

  We hear the bathroom door swing open, followed by an abrasive clacking sound, like a horse walking on tin hooves. Donald and I turn to see the blurry outline of Francis coming our way.

  “Why do your feet sound so loud?” I ask.

  Francis sighs, like he can’t believe I asked that, and says, “Umm, cleats? For the new Feet-Planted Policy, duh!”

  Francis looks like he either has bags under his eyes and thick eyebrows or he wears horn-rimmed glasses. Most people would say it’s probably the bags and eyebrows, because why would anyone bother with glasses if their vision is going to be blurry anyway? And sure, that makes sense, but sometimes I still have the urge to punch him square in the face and see if anything falls off just to be sure. I’ll admit, I’m not a big fan of Francis. He takes things too seriously, and he never joins in on coming up with theories about the product, or jokes about Dic’s dick. He just sighs and talks down to us like he’s some sort of genius.

  “Most people would be satisfied just standing more firmly than before,” he says, pouring a cup of coffee, “but not me. I’m being double careful, so I don’t end up down there like Steve.”

  “Did someone up there say Steve?” Steve says from somewhere far below us. My back tenses up, and I look at Donald. His blurry outline has gone rigid as well. Francis drops his mug, which shatters loudly on the cement floor, and runs clacking to go find Dic. All the noise draws attention from the other coffee stations, and by the time Dic shows up, he has to push through a crowd just to get to the edge of the chasm. He calls down to Steve and asks him if he can see any way to get up.

  “No, I can’t see anything,” Steve says. His voice sounds strained, like he’s yelling as loud as he can, but up here, we can only just barely hear him. “It’s pretty much pitch-black down here.”

  “Okay,” says Dic, and I can swear he says, “Good,” under his breath, but I can’t be sure.

  In the meeting room, Sandy puts a box on the table and takes out what appear to be several bright shapes.

  “I’m excited to tell you all about a new initiative we have here at the factory,” she says. Nobody ever refers to the factory by its name, not even those who presumably know it. “It’s called the Sandwiches for Steve program. As many of you have probably heard, one of our coworkers, Steve, was swallowed up by the chasm that runs through our facility. Well, just because he’s lost to the world doesn’t mean he’s lost his appetite! That’s why we’re going to be assigning each worker a day of the week and a meal: breakfast, lunch, or dinner. On that day, it is your responsibility to prepare Steve a sandwich for that meal. At various times throughout the day we will throw these sandwiches into the chasm, along with a water bottle that the factory has been generous enough to pay for, using money out of the holiday party budget.”

  I think about asking why we have a holiday party budget if we never have a holiday party, but like always in these meetings, I stay quiet. Someone else asks if we have to always make sandwiches for Steve or if we can prepare something else.

  “We say a sandwich because it’s one of the most catchable meals there is, as long as you wrap it in tinfoil,” Sandy explains. “It’s harder to catch soup, for example, unless it’s in a really good container, but even with that, it could still hit a rock or something and crack open, and then you’re out a good container and Steve’s out a meal and potentially covered in soup in a place that doesn’t have any napkins.”

  “Some hot soup on his head would serve him right for dancing during an earthquake!” someone shouts, inspiring a rumble of agreement from others. Dic, seated next to Sandy, quiets everyone down.

  “Easy, guys,” he says. “Sandy, why don’t you tell us what all this stuff is for.”

  Sandy explains that the shapes on the table are craft materials, in case we want to include any notes or handmade greeting cards with the inaugural sandwich. “Although,” she adds, “that’s more of a thought-that-counts sort of thing. Between your vision-impaired handwriting and the total darkness of the chasm, the likelihood of Steve being able to read anything you write is pretty slim.”

  A few people forget their sandwich on their assigned day, a few people throw theirs wrong by accident, and a few people throw soup into the chasm out of spite, but for the most part the Sandwiches for Steve program gets off to a great start. Me? I love it. Or it’s not so much that I love the program as I love making food for other people, because it reminds me of when I used to come home and cook dinner for Tiffany.

  Tiffany is the last girl I dated, and the only one I’ve been able to keep things going with for more than a few days since starting at the factory. Tiffany suffered from a fear of being looked at. She enjoyed company and conversation but panicked whenever someone turned a pair of eyes on her. She had an oversized poncho and a catcher’s mask that was custom-fitted on the inside with a two-way mirror that provided some protection for when she went to parties. But the outfit was hot and uncomfortable and put people off. As a result, she spent most of her time at home, keeping herself from feeling alone by carrying on conversations with photographs and filling all her empty chairs with tennis rackets wearing sunglasses. She probably wouldn’t have spoken to me at all had it not been for the eyedrops.

  We met when I was riding the bus home at midday after being let out early due to the conveyer belt overheating. I took the seat next to her and asked if she wouldn’t mind telling me when we were getting close to my stop on account of my vision being not the greatest. That was all it took. Something like electricity pulsed through her blurry outline, and she just started talking and talking and talking, not even stopping to take a breath until we were long past where I was supposed to get off. Later, she told me it was like a dream come true, being able to speak to a real person who couldn’t see her. She said it was like being behind a privacy curtain.

  When I lived with Tiffany, the Essential Blink felt even more essential than ever. If it came before I arrived home, that meant at least the quick glimpse of her I got would be in focus before she ran and hid. If it hadn’t come yet, then she registered as little more than a large eye floater as she made her escape. These days are different. There’s no one else at home, and I don’t have all that much worthwhile stuff to actually look at, so the Essential Blink is pretty much just like any other blink, except it’s easier to read labels afterward.

  I’m thinking about this while making my sandwich at night—just one for me, since tomorrow’s not my day to throw one to Steve—when I get a wild idea. What if the eyedrops don’t last a set number of hours after all? What if they last a set number of blinks? And the Essential Blink isn’t just the blink that happens when they wear off, it’s what makes them wear off, like it’s the final blink you need to fulfill the eyedrops’ predetermined blink quota for the day? I consider saving this theory and pitching it to Donald at our first coffee break the next day, but then I decide, no. In the name of spontaneity and excitement, I will test it myself. I will burn through a day’s worth of blinks before lunch.

  As soon as I get onto the floor the next morning, I start blinking rapidly and keep it going for a half hour. Then I start to feel a bit wooz
y. The strobe effect on top of the blurry vision makes me light-headed, and I struggle to stay on my feet. My grip on the product is limp and clammy. A few times I stumble forward and bump my thigh hard on the broken conveyer belt. A bruise will form; I can feel it, but it doesn’t deter me. On the contrary, I double down on my resolve and try to blink even quicker than before. That’s when I feel something creeping up my throat. I quickly hand off the product that I’m holding and vomit behind my box of Rod Things.

  “You okay?” asks Harris. Harris is the guy who hands me the Cylindrical Things. He either has a mustache or some sort of terrible upper lip infection.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” I say, getting back in line. “Just one of those liquidy coughs.”

  “It sounded like a soda can exploding,” Harris says, “but a little thicker, so maybe like a can of breakfast drink.” I assure Harris that everything is okay, and we go back to work, but only for a few minutes before the whistle blows and we get an unscheduled coffee break. I go to the bathroom, swish some water around in my mouth. I consider locking the door and picking up where I left off with the blinking in there, but just the thought makes me shiver and gag, so I decide to give up on the experiment and head to my coffee station. On my way there, I pass Webster, still at his post, having a heated discussion with Dic.

  “I don’t care how your arm feels,” Dic hisses. “We have to keep this stuff moving.”

  “I’m not built for this,” Webster says. His voice is so deep that I feel it in my chest, even when he whispers. “I can’t shot-put for eight hours, five days a week. When we were training for the Olympics, we had to shot-put seven, maybe ten things max, then we’d get a few days off for our arms to recover.”

  “Well, I guess it’s a real shame you didn’t qualify for the Olympics then, huh?” Dic replies coldly.

  At the coffee station, Francis and Donald fill me in on what they’ve heard from the people around them in the line: Something’s wrong with Webster. He’s been going slow all morning, and the product’s really piling up. This coffee break is so that he can get back on track.

  “Yeah, I heard him talking to Dic about that,” I say.

  “Speaking of Dic,” Donald says, and then he launches into a new joke about Dic’s dick. Dic is in Uganda, and he’s looking for a motel. He goes into one and asks if they have any rooms with king beds. The desk guy says no; they only have single beds. Also, the motel doesn’t accept money. Dic will have to pay in candy wrappers or by poking himself with knitting needles.

  Donald stops halfway through. “Oh, wait,” he says. “Now that I think about it, the word I was going to use to describe Dic’s dick doesn’t mean what I thought it did, so it won’t make any sense.” Then he gets quiet and sullen.

  It’s not the first time Donald’s had to abandon ship on a joke about Dic’s dick due to a vocabulary issue, so I know the best thing to do is just leave him alone, which means either talking to Francis or not talking at all. So the three of us sip our coffee, not talking at all. I turn and watch Webster work, by which I mean I watch the Webster-sized cloud swirl at the edge of the chasm. It’s true what Francis and Donald heard. Something seems wrong. His grunts sound more strained than usual, and a few times I hear a clank at the other side of the chasm before the guy calls, “Product secured”—like Webster threw it just a little short of his man.

  And then there comes a heave that is way off. The swirl, the grunt—it’s all just terrible. A few extra seconds later someone calls, “Product secured.” But it’s not the normal guy. It’s Steve.

  “So you can’t see anything, right?” shouts Dic into the chasm.

  “Nope,” Steve calls back up. There isn’t a crowd this time, because Dic wouldn’t allow one, but with our coffee station’s location, we hear it all.

  “What about him holding it?” Sandy says, standing next to Dic. “He’s going to have it in his hands a long time. If he’s a creative-thinking type, he might start to draw conclusions.”

  “Are you much of a creative thinker, Steve?” Dic calls down.

  “I don’t know,” Steve yells. “I never took any creativity tests.”

  “Well, that’s a good sign,” says Sandy. Dic says something in agreement, but he doesn’t sound happy about any of this, which makes sense. A factory worker whose eyedrops are long worn off is at this moment holding a half-finished product he’s not allowed to know about.

  Just behind Dic and Sandy, Webster sits on the ground, suffering through flashbacks from the time he didn’t make the Olympics. “I’m sorry, coach,” he says to no one. “Give me one more shot, coach. I can clear it, I swear.”

  They give us another half day, but again, I don’t leave until someone makes me. I just hang out by my coffee station, thinking of what it must be like to be Steve right now, holding the half-finished product, feeling it up all day long, finding its every nook and cranny. Suddenly, I don’t feel so lucky for not dancing after all. Objectively speaking, being out of the chasm is better than being in it, but imagine the conclusions a creative thinker like me could draw in Steve’s position. All that time with nothing to do but touch the product? Just fantasizing about it is enough to make me giddy for the rest of the day, and through the night too, and I’m still feeling it the next morning when they search our lunch boxes and give us our eyedrops but then usher us into the meeting room instead of onto the factory floor.

  “We just wanted to bring everyone together to thank you for your participation in the Sandwiches for Steve program,” says Sandy. “The people from the corporate office even gave us a little letter.” She holds up what looks like a nondescript white square. “It says, ‘On behalf of the entire company, we issue this formal and official thanks for providing sandwiches to a coworker in need. Because of your generosity, said coworker did not starve to death, which is something you should all feel the utmost pride in. As the Sandwiches for Steve program is now coming to its conclusion, you may once again resume packing only as much food as you require and no more. Thank you. Sincerely, The Corporate Office.’ Isn’t that such a nice letter? And it’s printed on some very nice paper too. Here, I’ll pass it around.”

  Everyone mumbles that Sandy’s right, the paper does feel nice, but I don’t mumble along, not even when it gets all the way down the table to me. Something seems wrong here. “Why are we concluding Sandwiches for Steve?” I ask without raising my hand.

  Sandy starts to answer with something about confidential information, but Dic cuts her off. “It’s pretty simple, actually,” he says. “As of last night, Steve no longer works for us. I was looking through our files, and it appears he was too busy fooling around somewhere between here and the middle of the earth to sign the form acknowledging that he read and understood the Official Feet-Planted Policy, and as I’m sure you’re all well aware, refusal to comply with new policies is an offense that can result in termination.”

  “But he still has to eat,” I say. A few faces turn toward me. I can’t tell if they’re giving me nasty looks or not. I keep talking. “He’s stuck down there in the chasm. He can’t make sandwiches himself.”

  “I’m glad you said that,” Dic says, “because it reminds me that I’ve got some exciting news. The chasm is going away! I talked to the construction people this morning and hammered out the final details. They’re coming in this weekend to fill the whole thing in. And once we’ve got that squared away, we’ll get the conveyer belt up and running again.”

  Everyone mumbles approvingly, except me again. “What about Steve?” I ask. “Are you going to fill it in with him in it?”

  “What Steve does from here on out is really up to him,” Dic says. “Honestly, he’s lucky that we haven’t called the police for trespassing.”

  I have more concerns, but something about the sternness of Dic’s voice tells me it’s time to shut up, so I do.

  Someone else asks how we’re going to get the product over the chasm for the time being. Dic says that Webster, who has recovered both physically and e
motionally from yesterday’s incident, will continue in his role. But to keep him from burning out again, he’ll throw only every other product. Those that he doesn’t throw, Dic tells us, will be launched across the chasm using a modified T-shirt cannon that should be delivered sometime before lunch.

  For the rest of the day, I’m quiet. I don’t even talk about the product or make jokes about Dic’s dick during my coffee breaks. I just think about Steve and feel bad, and then I think about the last time I felt this bad, which was the day I woke up and Tiffany wasn’t there anymore.

  When she agreed to move in with me, part of the deal was that I had to put some money toward a sewing machine and a few rolls of fabric. She didn’t tell me what she wanted it for, but the first day I came home after buying it, I saw that she’d made a curtain. I thought that was nice, considering the curtains I had were ratty and stained. By the next day she’d made another, and another the day after that too, and another and another and another, until the curtains outnumbered the windows by five to one. But they weren’t for the windows. Tiffany hung them from the ceiling, turning the apartment into a maze, so she’d have more places to hide. “Now, we can be in the same room together without all the attempts at eye contact,” she told me. “I did this for us.”

  It sounded sweet when she said it, but the truth was I hated those curtains. It became a chore to get from one end of the apartment to another. I wiped my hands on my pants constantly, because I could never find the sink, and once, late at night, after trying and failing to locate the toilet for nearly a half hour, I urinated into a spare garbage bag, tied it up, and hid it on the fire escape until the next morning. Still, I never said a bad word about those curtains. I never cut any holes or tore any down. I considered them to be like the coffee at work: not great, but good enough to keep things going.

  Except, things didn’t keep going. I woke up one morning and found nothing but a note on Tiffany’s side of the bed. She wrote that she had begun to feel my eyes through the fabric. She said it made sense, that given all the time they spent underutilized during the day, my eyes probably had all sorts of energy stored up to see through things other eyes couldn’t. “So I need to go now,” she wrote, “but thanks for being so understanding.”