Couch

by Benjamin Parzybok

Thom repressed a chuckle. “Excellent. I can always use a subconscious advocate. Your dream mention my salary?”

  “Well, you don’t have to get a job. That’s why I said you should take a couple of days off.”

  The phone rang, and Thom picked it up. He heard a click on the other end.

  “Hang up?” Tree said.

  “I guess so.”

  “Somebody’s keeping tabs on us.”

  “Oh?” Thom experienced a quick wave of full-body itchiness, and he jerked to scratch several places at once. What the hell was the kid talking about? His brain couldn’t seem to come up with any reasonable response, and he began to long for some kind of computer project, something logical and solitary and problem-solving intensive, something that worked, something he could create, his own digital Garden of Eden to craft. Something without the strange unpredictability of human interaction. Surely God was a programmer, fleeing his own creation after he’d introduced code that spawned its own bugs: humans.

  “I saw those sculptures on the back of the couch,” he said, hoping to change the subject. “Really something. You should try to do something with that.”

  “I have pretty clear dreams, and sometimes they sort of come true,” Tree said.

  Thom wasn’t sure what to say, so he pushed on. “You could take those down to Saturday Market. I’m sure you could sell them. Get a little stand.” That’s what God needed, Thom realized suddenly. He should have created himself a quality-assurance department first thing. There were a lot of programmatical errors in human nature that could have been worked out.

  “I dreamed you wouldn’t have to worry about getting a job, so I’d hate for you to have to waste a lot more time looking for one, you know?”

  “What did you dream?” Thom sighed.

  “Oh, I don’t really like to talk about them.”

  Thom blinked. “Pie smells great,” he said finally. “I’m going to do some work for a while. How’s Erik’s job search coming, by the way? Any word from him?”

  “He doesn’t need to find a job either, actually.”

  Thom nodded. Of course, he thought.

  Somehow the smell of the pie baking was stronger in Thom’s room than in the kitchen, as if the smell had intensified into a presence, looming over him. His mouth watering, he opened his laptop. There were two emails from prospective employers that weren’t hiring. He weighed the threat of human interaction against eating a piece of pie and went back to the kitchen.

  “Smells really good.”

  “It’s done. Want me to cut you a piece?”

  “Sure, sure, yes.” Thom considered his reaction to Tree’s dreams. So he had dreams he thought came true, or he had dreams that came true and he doesn’t like to talk about them. That’s okay. Thom’s ex-girlfriend had been an amateur I Ching diviner, and when Thom had done something contrary to what her reading had recommended she’d get irritated with him. Sure it was possible to dream about the future, Thom tried to make himself believe momentarily, and then felt himself losing the effort.

  Tree set a gorgeous, steaming plate of pie in front of him.

  “Beautiful,” Thom said. “Where did you learn to cook?”

  “I grew up on a commune. We all had to take turns at the chores. There were a few people with strict eating habits.”

  Thom nodded. Suddenly anxious not to hear anything else about the commune, but he nevertheless felt compelled to ask, “What type of commune?”

  “The usual sort.” Tree turned away.

  Thom saw the back of Tree’s neck redden. He felt certain the kid preferred that he not pursue the subject, and he wondered if it’d been some sort of cult.

  “So what else can you tell me about this dream?”

  Tree turned and beamed at him, his voice the tone of happy announcements. “I think we’re going on a journey together.”

  This wasn’t speculation. This was conviction. “Really?” Thom’s stomach bubbled up hotly from the center of the Earth, and he excused himself to the bathroom. On the way there, Erik burst through the front door. Thom noticed that he had a full mustache again.

  “Hide me, you’ve got to hide me. I’m not here. I am not here.”

  “You’re not here?” Thom burping the last half of the question.

  “You don’t even know me. You’ve never even seen me.”

  “I’ve never even seen you,” Thom repeated gratefully and continued to the bathroom. With the door closed safely behind him, Thom looked in the mirror, raised his eyebrows at the racket that was continuing outside the bathroom, and proceeded to create some gaseous racket inside the bathroom. How did the guy grow hair so quickly? Thom barely shaved more than once a week, and Erik had grown a full mustache in two days.

  There was a fierce shout, and a noise Thom felt could safely qualify as a yelp. He searched his face for something to pinch and stared into his pupils as the sound rose outside. He thought he should see what was happening.

  Erik was backed up against a wall in the living room by a gentleman holding a pocket knife to his throat. The man was in his forties, wore a tightly fitted outdoor-style shirt, and seemed to have the upper hand. In the doorway a young woman vacillated between outrage and infatuation for Erik. Thom took a stride across the living room and grabbed the man’s hand until the knife fell to the floor and the man cried out.

  Erik picked up the knife, leapt back, and yelled, “We take them!”

  “We’re not taking anybody,” Thom said. He held his arm out so Erik would stay back. The man eyed Thom and backed toward the doorway. “What’s going on here, Erik?”

  “Don’t listen to him,” said the woman in the doorway.

  The man rubbed his wrist. “Let’s just forget the whole thing, Sherry,” he said.

  Thom turned to Erik, who shrugged.

  “Sounds like we’re forgetting the whole thing,” Erik said. “I’m willing to do that. Let bygones be bygones. Let them who is without sin throw the first stone.” Erik kept the knife raised.

  “Cast the first stone. It’s cast the first stone. Somehow I doubt this is about martyrdom.” Thom looked back toward Sherry and tried to appear upstanding, which took the form of a smile and better posture.

  Sherry closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, they were rimmed with the beginning of tears.

  “On Monday I met him on the street and he seemed nice and we had coffee and talked for a long time and then he, well, we made some plans and I thought he was nice and I didn’t know the city so it was nice to meet somebody nice.” Sherry inhaled just shy of a sob and looked up at the older man. “Like maybe we would go see this theater performance that he’d heard about and we made plans for where to meet and I gave him money for the tickets because what else am I going to do while I’m here and he never showed up,” Sherry said in a hurried exhale. “Then we saw him on the street and I’d already told Dad about it and when we saw him he ran and we followed him and then Dad and he got in a fight and . . . then you got here.”

  “Ah.” Thom wished he was back in the bathroom.

  Tree appeared, looking sleepy. For a minute Thom feared that Tree was going to wave at him, like a mother waves at her child onstage in his first play.

  Thom sighed. “Erik?”

  “I meant to go buy the tickets, but I got . . . I meant to go buy the tickets.”

  “I’d still like to see the theater thing,” offered Sherry hesitantly. She leaned against the door frame, one foot toe first to the floor. She smiled at Erik, and Erik waved back. She was probably no more than seventeen, maybe an honors student, Thom thought. She’d tried to do something with her makeup, under the influence of the city, that her clothes and hair couldn’t keep up with.

  “Not with him you won’t,” said her father.

  “Alright, how about giving the knife back, Erik,” said Thom. He swallowed twice. “With the money.”

  “I don’t have the money,” Erik said, not moving.

  “I have some money,” said Tree. Everyone
stared at Tree as he went to his room and returned a minute later with a small stack of bills. Tree took the knife from Erik’s hand and handed the knife to Sherry’s father and the money to Sherry.

  “Thank you. We won’t trouble you any further,” Sherry’s father said and shot a dark look at Erik.

  After the door closed, the three roommates held their places for a moment. A frame frozen in time, the transition between outside conflict and inside conflict. Actors repositioning, new arguments and explanations boiling up. Tree and Thom turned to Erik.

  “I meant to buy the tickets.”

  “I believe you,” Tree said.

  Erik studied Tree for a moment and then continued with confidence. “And they were sold out. But when I went to look for her, I couldn’t find her.”

  Tree nodded, and Thom didn’t say anything.

  “Is the mustache supposed to be a disguise?” Thom finally asked.

  “What?” Erik rubbed his forefinger like a jigsaw across the fur on his upper lip.

  “That’s a real mustache then?”

  “It grows kind of fast.”

  Thom nodded again, turned to Tree. “And how much money did you give her.”

  “Fifty-eight dollars.”

  “How did you know how much?”

  Tree looked startled. “I don’t know, I just did.” He blushed brightly.

  “Were you involved in this, Tree?”

  “Yeah! How did you know? What’s up with that?” Erik stepped forward, taking the opportunity to turn the focus. “I’m not the paranoid type, but I’m pretty sure, no no no, I’m positive I didn’t mention it.”

  “I, I think I dreamed it.”

  Thom let out a great roaring rumble of gas and both roommates turned toward him, polite, startled smiles on their faces. Had he said something? they seemed to be asking.

  “Oh man, was that real!”

  “I have a stomach—”

  “You just came in and grabbed the knife from that sucker, just like that. You were amazing. You had them so handled!”

  Thom felt so immediately grateful that Erik wasn’t talking about his flatulence that he allowed himself to laugh in relief.

  “And then you grabbed the knife from me,” Erik said. “I didn’t know who was going to stab who!”

  “And I knew how much money to give her,” Tree said, trying out a laugh.

  Erik frowned. “I still think that’s spooky. But I do appreciate the loan. You know I’m good for it, right?”

  Tree nodded.

  “Alright then, let’s go have some pie and beer,” Thom said.

  “We should team up,” Erik said excitedly. “All three of us. We should make some kind of a team.”

  “I think you mean gang,” Thom said.

  “Hey, I’m not talking about illegal stuff.” He turned, trapping Thom just outside of the kitchen. “I’m talking about some kind of enterprise.”

  “That’s a spaceship, right?” Thom joked to no apparent effect.

  “I’m talking about a business venture. With your brawn—and brains—and my, you know—seriously! Think about it.”

  “Tree wants to join.” Thom finally pushed through the bottleneck of Erik into the kitchen. “He’s got a plan.”

  “Oh . . . ,” Tree said and stared at the floor.

  If you were to squint from the roof of the apartment building midway up the West Hills, with Portland proper below, you could almost, with practice and a shifting of scale, morph the scattered buildings into the teepees of the people who’d inhabited the riverside some five hundred years ago, at the same time an explorer from Spain was rediscovering Cuba, the land their forefathers had discovered eighty thousand years prior. Or at least that was the legend. Men had been absentmindedly discovering land they’d already traversed, built civilizations upon, fucked and cried on for as long as there had been men.

  Among the teepees below, a society pulsed, children were fed, art was made. There was a hierarchy, and at the bottom of it were the unchosen who huddled together and wondered what purpose they were intended for.

  By Friday, it was fairly clear to Thom that going out into the world was negative. He preferred to traverse and re-traverse the small follies he already knew his way around—the loose shower knob, the stubborn toilet, the web of lies that kept his mother proud of him, the other two unchosen. A certain emotional neutrality was reached in the apartment. Occasionally that neutrality passed into positive ground—laughing about knife encounters, eating popcorn in front of the TV, drinking beer in the kitchen. And sometimes it passed into the negative—knife encounters, for example. But a makeshift brotherhood emerged. Thom spent the day doing as Tree had recommended: not looking for work. He spent the day on the couch.

  Erik decided he certainly wasn’t going out into the world. This was his second trick in one week that had gone awry and now he feared simply stepping through the front door. Outside he was a wanted man; inside he was comfortable enough. Bored, but comfortable.

  There were many little mysteries in the apartment that worried Tree: the drapes across from his room that always closed when he glanced over, the phone without a caller, the older man who stationed himself on the front stoop, watching them come and go, and the large couch that lulled him to sleep.

  The couch wasn’t free until late afternoon, after Thom had moved to his room and Erik had sated himself on bad television. Tree removed all his wirework and pulled off the cushions. Something about this couch, he thought. There was a nagging in his mind, a leftover fleck of dream or a mishandled scrap of intuition, nothing more than a reminder that the couch was an item that required some kind of attention. He tucked his hands down into the crevasses, squeezed the cushions, put his ear to it. He tentatively touched his tongue to the armrest and recoiled from the smell of Erik’s BO. He tipped the couch onto its back. The underside revealed little. The uneven and haphazard stitching led him to guess it was handmade, or at least had once been repaired. However he tried, he couldn’t pry the backing off, and the thread used for the stitching was incredibly strong, resisting even a knife. Finally he loosened a seam and opened up a gap so that he could see into the intestines of the couch.

  The couch sighed—there was no other way to describe it. A faint smell spilled out: spines of old books, flowers past prime, the smell of things so long dead that only a nasal whisper remained. Tree realized he’d fallen back. Had he fainted? He leaned forward, but the gap had closed and the couch again smelled like a couch ought to smell.

  The disaster came late on Sunday night. Erik was asleep on the couch and Thom and Tree were in their rooms, but the apartment above thumped with activity. An inebriated romantic encounter between a gymnast and a horse jockey had gotten a bit too creative. A table next to a waterbed was upturned. A lit candle from the table rolled next to the bed, catching a small pile of newspapers, dirty laundry, and a book of matches on fire. The fire licked at the underside of the waterbed, burning a hole that drowned the small fire. Fate lent a push, however, and several powerful pneumatic jostlings by the pair atop the waterbed opened the hole wider and pushed the water out with great throbbing force until the couple noticed they were sinking. By the time they had their wits about them, half the bed had leaked onto the floor. They ran for towels—which were useless against the massive flood of water—then gathered a meager collection of pots and pans that could not hold the gallons still flowing from the bed in biblical proportions.

  Erik woke startled and flailing from a dream in which a horse had been pissing on him. He leapt from the couch and flipped on the light switch to see their apartment turned into a waterfall. Frantic pounding footsteps sounded from the apartment above. Water bowed the sheetrock in the center of the ceiling and had broken through the plaster. The green shag rug had taken on the appearance of a swamp.

  “Tree! Thom! Ho-lee shit!”

  He ran down the hallway, pounded his fists on his roommates’ doors and yelled, “Wake the hell up, goddamnit!” He gathered all the t
owels out of the bathroom. In the living room, he let the towels drop as he realized he didn’t have the faintest idea what he was going to do with them. Thom appeared in the hallway, his eyes wide as searchlights, and Tree appeared a moment later.

  “What, what did you do?” Thom said, staring over Erik’s shoulder at the wreckage of the living room.

  “I didn’t do anything!”

  “Wow,” Tree said, “this is really . . . really.” He tapped his temple with his forefinger repeatedly.

  A rapid, angry banging came from the door. Erik sloshed across to open it and found that the swollen rug had sealed the door shut. He put his foot against the wall, his hands firmly around the doorknob, and pulled with all his might. His hands slipped and he landed on his back in the swamp water. He got up and managed to yank the door open a crack, letting water into the hallway. A very stout, enraged woman shook her fists and yelled at him to Turn his goddamn water off, he was sinking them back to the fucking Stone Age!

  “It’s upstairs, upstairs!” he said breathlessly and pointed at the ruined ceiling. She pounded off, presumably toward the upstairs.

  “Power cords!” Thom yelled.

  Tree jumped in the air like a stung fish, curving and turning, and landed on his back on the edge of the television, hurling it to the floor and pulling its power cord from out of the socket, stopping the electricity from surging through the water.

  “Holy shit!” Erik waded toward Tree to help him up.

  “I’m looking for more power cords,” Thom yelled and rushed around the apartment, a great spray of water leaping up from each footfall. He unplugged two more and saw that the downpour was beginning to slow.

  Tree was laid out on his back on the couch, slow drips landing on his knees, lip, and sternum. Erik was angrily sloshing around.

  “How you doing, Tree?” asked Thom.

  “Nothing is broken, I think. I don’t feel great though.”