“No. I can't.”
“No, you can't. So...I was so afraid of it happening again. I didn't trust myself. But my poems are such a part of me. The only part of me that matters. Well, except for my love of you. It's certainly not my job at BytesTech. So I knew eventually you'd want to read something. I decided, ever since Peggy, that I wouldn't, couldn't risk bearing my soul again. Until I was published. Until the industry had decided I was worth it. I love you so much, Gretchen, so I didn't want, don't want, my poetry to tear us apart. I will never let anyone see it. Until it's out there on the bookshelves.”
He appealed to her with the look of a puppy destined to be put down the next day.
“Yak yak yak, yadda-yadda-yadda, blah blah blah,” Gretchen wanted to roar at him, with a little talking hand flapping in his face. She had dried her tears. She was hugging herself and glaring at him, not knowing where to go from there. But it didn't seem forward. Did she believe him? Did Peggy exist? Or was she another spin on Gordon Ramsay making Beef Stroganoff? The Higgs Boson announced on Christmas Day?
There was silence. Outside, a police siren roared as a patrol car zoomed down the street. Maxim's jodhpurs squelched against the sofa cushion. She saw now they were leather.
He must have sensed he wasn't penetrating her newly-donned armor, for his mouth suddenly grew grim. There was a change in his eyes. He slowly shook his head. With regret. His pants squeaked as he stood up.
“I didn't want to do this. But...” He disappeared into their bedroom.
Gretchen sat staring at the gloves on the wooden floor. She watched a fly buzz around one of the thumbs. She was drained. She wondered what surprise he would spring on her. What didn't he want to do? Murder her?
She heard the clanking before he surfaced from the room, and her heart fell, and sudden shame welled within her at the sound. It was the clink of nickels against dimes. Her uniform. He knew. Knew her shameful little secret! She was frozen with horror.
He stood at the threshold, one hand clutching the jeans jacket, the other her micro-skirt and the stupid cap. He took slow steps towards her.
“Oceanic?” he asked, peering at her, eyebrows arched, accusation mixed with a pity she couldn't stomach. “Have they given their uniforms an overhaul? Looks more like an underhaul. Ever since I've been with you, it's been Brazil this, Rome that, I've just flown in from Dubai, from Casablanca, oh you should see the sunset at Pataya, the markets of Estonia. But that's not true, is it Gretchen? I checked out Nickel and Dime's,” he sneered as he said the name and jiggled the damning proof, coins jangling, “flight map. More like the auto shops of Whiskegee, the power plants of Tulsa, the sunrise over the barbed wire of the halfway houses of Ypsilanti. I think, no, I know that's where you've really been. And the details you feed me! Fed me! I felt I was there with you, in all the wonderful capitals of the world. I was...enthralled. Little did I know, you must've been busy on TripAdvisor, Wikipedia, I don't know what.”
“Stop! Stop!” Gretchen wailed, her hands clamped to her ears. The tears had begun to flow again. She tried to claw at the uniform, now dangling incriminatingly before her, but he tossed it on the floor.
“You see, I understand little white lies. Yes, I've made some myself, when I can't remember which celebrity chef makes what or exactly how many light years away Andromeda is. But not great big black whopping ones, that go on for month after month, detail after detail. Talk about living a lie! Misrepresenting yourself!”
“Damn you! Damn you!!”
But he was gone again, back into the bedroom, and she heard him fumbling with some metal, heard some clicks. She tensed. He glided back out, brandishing the little black notebook with hands that trembled. His face was dark, and his voice trembled.
“I only lied about one stupid poem. And I got some details wrong. But I can speak a bit of Chinese, really, and other languages as well, and I know all about physics and astronomy. And I've got the poems, my poems, in here! They really exist! The results of my blood, sweat and tears! Your trips to Rome and Brazil and wherever don't exist! They never existed! Your entire life with me has been the lie. The lie to me! How do you think I feel? I found your uniform a few days after I moved in. I somehow always knew something was wrong when you told me about the Metro in Moscow six months ago. It didn't ring true. I kept waiting, waiting for you to tell me. But you never did. Oh, I understand why you lied to me. You wanted to sex up your life for me. Who wouldn't want to? Who would want to admit to working for horrible Nickel and Dime? If I worked there, I'd say I worked at McDonalds. That's more respectable. So I can understand. Why can't you?”
She sniffled. Her head banged. She was consumed with shame. He was right. She was worse. Much worse. Talk about a pathological liar! She started to fear...fear... That he would leave her. Leave her to a dark, lonely life of slaving away for pennies an hour. The surly passengers, yelling up at her, the scouring of the seats as the seconds of the 25-minute turnarounds spun by, Dennis' sneer... Trudging up the stairs to an empty shell of an apartment devoid of everything that made life worth living.
He sat down beside her again. He placed the notebook by the champagne bottle, which was now damp with droplets of condensation. Gone was his condemnation. He reached out and ran his fingers through her red curls.
“But,” he said tenderly, “I'll tell you one thing that is not a lie.”
She tensed. She wanted to beg his forgiveness and throw her arms around his wiry shoulders. She treasured every sprightly roll of his poet-fingers through her hair, fearing they might be the last.
“W-what?” Gretchen croaked miserably, fearfully.
He took a deep breath. Eyes reddened with tears, voice croaking, he whispered, barely audibly, “My love for you.”
She burst into grateful tears and buried her head into his chest.
“I don't know if you feel the same,” he said as she gripped him tight and hugged him just like, she noticed, she expected him to fly away any moment. Now she understood. “Do you want me to go?”
“No! No!” Gretchen sobbed. She was begging. “Stay with me forever! Please, Maximus! I'd be lost without you! You're the only good thing in this horrible, miserable life of mine!”
The tears and the kissing were over. And the sex on the squawking sofa. They vowed to start anew, no lies between them. Gretchen didn't feel she had the right, but she forced herself to ask if there was anything else he wanted to tell her, some other little secret he was keeping hidden. Maximus said no. He had the grace not to ask her the same question. Of course he didn't. He was sensitive. Just one of the many, many things she had loved about him.
He had an instant coffee. She had wanted a camomile tea with lemon and honey, and while she was standing at the kitchen counter waiting for the teabag to stew, Maximus pulled out a pack of Marlboros, lit one up and started smoking right there in the middle of the living room! She had to hide her shock from him. She knew now how precious his presence, he was in her life.
Yes, she was shocked he would do it, but really, there was no horror of the actual smoke. So much of Gretchen's life had been spent in Ireland, where it seemed all her relatives, from almost the youngest to definitely the oldest, had puffed away on 'fags,' as they called them (yes, they really did call them that). There were many times during her teen summer visits when it had proved difficult to find her cousins in a pub because of the permanent haze of cigarette smoke. And evenings spent in her aunt and uncle's living room, their 'sitting room,' when Gretchen could barely make out what show was on the TV because of the clouds of smoke in which she was surrounded, and her struggle to come to terms with the harmless chatter around her that sounded like anything but to her American ears: her uncle Paddy: “I'm gagging for to get me lips wrapped round a fag. I'm clean out, but.” Her aunt Fionnuala: “Aye, I'm desperate for one and all.” “Do ye think any of the wanes—” children “—might have some hidden in them rooms of theirs?” “Aye. I forgot to tell ye. Yesterday I caught wer Padraig in the back garden with some fa
gs of his own.” “He's too young for them, but! Only ten years of age!” “Aye, that's what I told him and all. What can ye do, but? If the wanes wants fags, they'll get their hands on them somehow, so they will.” “Call him down now for to share some of his fags with us.”
And at the tail end of the Troubles, there had been street riots little schoolgirl Gretchen had had to skirt around on her way home, clutching an alcohol-soaked to her nose because of the tear gas. And she suspected tear gas was worse for your lungs than cigarette smoke. But that had been then, and this was now, and even in Ireland smoking was banned in public places, and the tear gas had long gone. And this was the anti-smoking US. It wasn't the done thing. And in her apartment? Her inner sanctum?! Without asking? Maximus could only be doing it, she imagined, to get a rise out of her.
“W-when did you start smoking? You know,” Gretchen coughed, fake-coughed, as if she hadn't an ounce of Irish blood in her, “it'll kill you. And me. It's a nasty habit.”
Maximus smiled up at her. “So is lying about your job.” Seeing her face, he apologized. “Only joking. No, it was getting stressful at work, and on the breaks, the other guys were doing it, and one day I asked to borrow one. Well, pay for one. I guess they're expensive. No, now I know they're expensive. It looked like the cigarettes were calming them down. Sure, I know all about the health risks, but that one I borrowed, well...I just couldn't stop. Don't worry, I'll never smoke inside again. I know it's not the done thing nowadays. But you must admit you put me through the ringer. I was a bundle of nerves. Still am. I just need to calm my nerves.”
He took a few puffs as Gretchen stared in disgust and repulsion at the cloud of smoke invading their living space. He made a face and seemed repentant.
“Okay, enough of that.” He ground the half-cigarette out in the coffee mug. It reminded her of Derry and her aunt and uncle again. “Sorry, honeypot. I'll never do it again.”
She hoped she could believe him. She sat beside him, hands wrapped around her mug of tea. She stared down in disgust at his mug, wondering how long she would have to scrub it to remove the tobacco and ash. She looked at the champagne, still on the table.
“Oh,” she said, “didn't you want to tell me something? You sent me that text. God, it seems like days ago. It looks like you want to celebrate?”
She nodded at the bottle.
“Wow, yeah! You'll never believe it! It's the Best. Thing. Ever!” His face lit up like a teenybopper in the front row of a One Direction concert (before they split up, of course). “How could I have forgotten?! Well, I know how, but...ok, it's in the past. Where it will remain.”
He leaped up from the sofa. Gretchen yelped as scalding tea sprayed over her thumbs. He grappled the champagne bottle, grinning manically, tore off the foil and twisted the little metal thing. He positioned his thumb under the cork.
“Better than New Year's Eve at the Burj Khalifa! If either of us had ever been...!” She didn't know if his grin was a little dig or genuine.
“Glasses!” Gretchen leaped up, ran to the kitchenette and rummaged through the cabinet. Mags and Shirl had left champagne glasses aplenty. The girls had been afraid they would break in their luggage. Gretchen found two and set them on the table, expectant. What excitement was Maximus about to reveal?
“Woo hooo!” he wailed, shaking the bottle and popping the cork. It cracked on the ceiling, and they were drenched in champagne.
Gretchen held up the glasses, giggling, as Maximus poured.
“Come on! I know you love suspense, but it's killing me! What are we celebrating?”
“Cheers! Skol! Saude! And just for you, Slainte!” He winked. “Gaelic.”
They clinked and gulped down.
“I, my dear, am free!”
Her grin was fixed and her eyes quizzical.
“What do you mean?”
“BytesTech just had a major reshuffling and...I've been let go! Made redundant! Laid off! Ya-hooooo!” He threw the remainder of his glass down his throat. “It's so fantastic! Just what I'd been hoping for!”
He snuggled next to her, and planted kisses on her suddenly parched neck. Now her eyes were perplexed. Paralyzed. She gently pried his lips from her flesh and asked him tensely, “And what's so good about that? What about the bills? What about...about...?”
“Oh,” he waved her off, his face still beaming. “I'll get unemployment. It's only a percentage of my salary, but it will tide me over. Tide us over. And it goes on for-ehhhh-ver! Cheers, Obama!”
He drank to the health of the president.
“I still don't understand...” Gretchen said weakly. Her champagne went on fizzing, undrunk. Her mind was calculating furiously. The rent. The cable. The electric. The gas. The internet. The phone. On one and two thirds of a salary, or whatever unemployment would give him.
“Isn't it obvious, honeypot?”
“Not to me, no.”
He held up the little black book and shook it triumphantly into her face.
“Now I have all the time in the world to work on my real work, my true calling. My poetry! And the US government will be paying me for it!”
“But shouldn't you look for—”
“It's the opportunity of a lifetime! What every artist hopes for! A benefactor! Like Leonardo and the Medicis! Only mine is the New York State Department of Labor! Ohhh, I can work at my own pace! Sit in the Room of Dreams and write an entire tome! Send it out to agents and...get published! Yes, like your friend Thaddeus Floughty! There'll be no need for you to be embarrassed on the subway ever again! Your boyfriend's poems, my poems, will be there, for all the city to read! Out there, for all the world to read!”
He tried to fill her glass, she put her hand over it, he shrugged and filled his own again.
“To us!” he toasted.
There was a half-hearted chink.
An hour later, Maximus was passed out, snoring, on the bed (he had tried to get her to swing dance with him, then do the Macarena. He had ended up doing both himself and breaking the champagne glasses). Even with his brain addled with drink, he had found the sobriety required to grab his notebook and lock it away. No eyes, not even Gretchen's, would be allowed to see the fruits of his labor until they were complete.
Gretchen, feeling like a thief, a spy, a Judas, tiptoed into the bathroom with her phone and shut the door. Not wanting to see herself in the mirror, she leaned her back against the sink. She asked Google for the phone number for BytesTech. Maximus had told her, because they worked for companies all over the world, the office was basically open 24/7. She got the number. She dialed it. She pressed Call.
“BytesTech,” said a machine, “Please press one for blah blah, two for blah blah...seven for Human Resources—”
Gretchen's sweaty palm strangled the phone as she listened to a muzaked version of Celine Dion's “Power of Love.” She was his lady, he was her man. Good for you, Celine, Gretchen snapped in her mind with irritation.
“Human Resources!”
“Hi,” Gretchen whispered down the line. Her voice echoed on the tiles. “I hope you can help me. My name's Gretchen Barnett, and my boyfriend was recently...well, I think he was recently laid off by your company. I wanted to know if this was really true. And if so, why.”
“I'm afraid I can't give you that information,” said the woman on the other line.
“But—!”
“One moment.” She heard what sounded like a door closing, and then the woman whispered down the line, “But I will. I'm only giving you this information because these assholes didn't give me a Christmas bonus. Cheapskates! Who do you want me to look up?”
Gretchen was grateful to this faceless partner in crime across the line.
“Erm, Maximus Voo.” She felt stupid saying the name.
There was a silence that seemed startled and then, “Oh, you mean...” The woman caught herself and laughed, her voice friendly and warm, “I don't even need to look it up. He was definitely not fired. He quit. Sadly.”
Just as
Gretchen had suspected. Feared. Her breathing was heavy as she forced the words out of her mouth, “Quit? But, why?”
“You know...Maximus! You're his girlfriend, after all. I don't have to explain him to you. He felt a higher calling. The work was getting him down. He left to pursue his dream of writing poetry.” On her dime! The woman was babbling on happily but Gretchen couldn't hear, “...was always a ray of sunshine to the office. This drab office. We'll definitely miss him. You've got yourself a great catch there.”
“Thanks,” Gretchen snapped. “You've been very helpful.”
“No problem at all, dear. Have fun with Maximus! I wish I could've!”
“H-have a nice day.”
Gretchen hung up. She slumped against the toilet tank, drained.
CHAPTER SEVEN NOW
ROZ HAD SLEPT LATE. Gretchen suspected a hangover. Had Roz changed, as Gretchen really had? Had she stayed in her room drinking, or had she gone out to Goose Goose? Gretchen would never know; she'd spent the night with Dennis and two other crew members in a trailer park hotel in North Dakota. Well, she would know, if she asked. And if Roz told her the truth, which Gretchen could never count on.
When she had gotten home, Gretchen saw that Roz had been busy. The Phantom Defiler had been captured for posterity while napping on the edge of Roz's frilly pink pillow, and now he was blown up to 8” x 10”. That cadaverish face stared up at Gretchen from stack after stack of glossy posters, color, that rose from the kitchen table like mini-skyscrapers. Gretchen struggled to find a spot to place her tea mug. Being caught napping was better, she supposed, than in flagrante; those would have been even more mortifying to display to the world at large. But she still didn't want to do it. It wasn't right. She was a different Gretchen now.
Emergency Exit (The Irish Lottery Series Book 6) Page 9
