“Lulu there?” he asks, rubber necking to the hair salon as he sits down.
“Haven’t seen her yet.”
“Hey, is that one new?” he asks, referring to a young blonde woman with an almost indecently short, black miniskirt.
“Yeah, I think so. Looks pretty hot.”
“Fucking right on. I need my haircut anyway. It’s a friggin’ mop.”
“Phil, you hardly have a mop, it’s a crewcut.”
“Bullshit, I need a haircut. How’s Sarah, you guys pregnant yet?”
“Sarah has PCOS and has been on this Metformin drug to help regulate her blood sugar. The idea is that she will start to ovulate normally. It’s been six months now and still no luck. We’re going back to see Dr. King next week to see what the next step is. Sarah’s depressed. She keeps talking about adopting a little girl from China, but I keep trying to tell her to keep her hopes up and not give up. Adoption’s bloody expensive. Over twenty grand if you want a kid from China and it takes three years.”
“Holy shit,” says Phil as he shovels a garlic-covered potato into his mouth.
“Yeah, crazy eh?”
“Fuck, do you at least get to pick the kid yourself, or is it random?”
“Pretty sure it’s random.”
“Christ, so you could get a real ugly one then?”
“Dude, that’s not very nice. Sarah and I, if we ever do manage to have kids, well they just might be the ugliest kids in the world.”
“You and Sarah, ugly kids, I don’t think so. The only ugliness would be coming from you, so I think the kid would have a pretty good chance. Hey, look there, it’s Freddy Fruitcake,” says Phil, pointing to a man who’s slowly walking down the mall carrying a flashlight.
Phil’s coined the name “Freddy Fruitcake” only because Freddy is obviously mentally ill. Freddy snakes detective-like through the mall armed with a flashlight and attired in his standard uniform of neon green pants and orange baggy sweater. Freddy and the Sunshine Valley Mall were partially my inspiration for The Cube People. I always envisioned the cube, this supercomputer, to resemble this food court, a giant glowing brain with a beehive of drone workers, coming and going – happy cube people in their idealistic society, eating the same thing repeatedly.
“Phil, why do we eat at The Shawarma Pit almost every day?”
“Dude,” he muffles, taking a swig of his drink and washing back the food, “the food is the bomb and the girl at the cash is smoking. But you know this already, so why are you asking? You’re thinking about determinism again aren’t you?”
“Maybe,” I say, always amazed at how intuitive Phil can be.
“Shit man, I told you, it will unfold as it will, so you should focus on the here and now. If you sit around thinking about how it is you’re thinking all the time, well life is just going to pass you by, man. Live it as if it means something and you will find happiness.”
“Phil, have I told you recently that you’re one awesome dude?”
“Shit man, I know that. Now I just have to convince the new little hottie at First Choice of that fact and life will be grand.”
We finish our lunch and head to First Choice so Phil can make a hair appointment for 4:30. He flirts heavily with the new girl. When we get back to the office my project leader and immediate supervisor, Bruce, is exiting my quad. Bruce is a micro-manager, a nitpicker – typical red-tape government. I always feel compelled to tell him, just let me do my job for Christ’s sake and quit all the nonsense. “Hey Colin, hate to be a pest, but can you resubmit your timesheet for last week, you used code 855 when it should be 856 for the two-hour meeting on Wednesday.”
“Sure thing Bruce, right away.”
“I’m going to have estimates for you soon.”
“Sounds good.”
“Oh yeah, I’m supposed to remind everyone that photocopying should be held to a bare minimum. Also, try not to print anything if you can.”
I think of Bruce as not responsible for his actions, like Freddy Fruitcake. They have no choice. Bruce can’t help being Bruce. I correct my electronic timesheet and hit submit. I smile and think I can’t help the fact that I hate my job.
Bacon Phat Editions
PO Box 4550
Fredericton, NB
E4B 7Q7
June 15, 2006
Dear Mr. MacDonald:
Thank you for your submission. Unfortunately, we are looking for titles that are edgier, riskier. The Cube People is just not alternative enough for us.
We have recycled your manuscript as you indicated was your preference in your letter.
Best of luck.
Sincerely,
Jim Phat
Hungry Hole: Chapter 2
A week later Ryan went back down to the basement to get out his bicycle for the first spring ride. The crack in the floor was now an indentation about the size of a basketball. It looked like part of the foundation had collapsed into the ground.
“Shit, look at that,” said Ryan aloud.
He got down on his knees and felt the concrete to see if it was wet, to see if there was some sort of leak. It was their first house. They’d been living here just shy of a year. The home inspector had said that the people who’d built this house had built it to last. The roof, wiring, plumbing, foundation were all sound. Even still, during the first few months of home ownership, every time it rained, Ryan found himself in the attic checking for leaks and in the basement checking for flooding. After a while he’d stopped. Gillian was a calming influence. You worry too much, relax, she would tell him, it’s all going to be okay. Relax, yeah right, look at this hole, thought Ryan.
Within an hour he was back from Home Depot with cement. He mixed it according to the clerk’s instructions and then filled the hole.
Two blocks into the bike ride he noticed a construction site. A massive lot of expensive row houses were going up. Men in hardhats were working on the foundation. Ryan stopped his bicycle.
“Excuse me sir,” said Ryan to a man wearing a white hat, whom Ryan assumed was the foreman.
“Yeah, what can I do for you?” asked the man, slightly adjusting his hat as he approached.
“Um, I just have a quick question for you, do you have a minute?”
“I’ll try sir, but you’ll have to make it quick.”
“Well I bought a home just two blocks from here and a hole has formed in my basement floor.”
“Uh huh,” said the man, who didn’t seem surprised at all.
“Well I just wanted to know if that kind of thing is common?”
“Well mister, let me tell you something, this whole area is built on clay. The houses around this area are slowly sinking. What we did with these houses is drop down titanium rods until we hit bedrock, a couple hundred feet. Now in your case, sounds like an air pocket, something way down probably shifted, up rises the air, down goes your floor. Still, not very common, but I’ve seen all sorts of crazy shit. Nothing much surprises me. Hopefully your whole house doesn’t shift. If it does, you’ll need my help. Here’s my card,” said the man, pulling one from his plaid jacket pocket.
“Thanks,” said Ryan taking the card. “Hopefully I won’t need to call.”
The man smiled. “Yeah, ’cause it’ll be expensive if you see me. Got to get back,” he said and wandered back toward the construction site, yelling at another man to move some pipes to the other side of the house.
When Ryan came back from his ride, he studied the outside of his house from across the street. It looked straight to him. Inside the house he went over to one of Gillian’s decorative glass vases and pulled out one of the dark blue marbles used to ground the artificial flowers in place. He placed it on the kitchen floor. Nothing. He rolled up the living room carpet and placed the marble there. Nothing. He went upstairs to the bathro
om. Nothing. The marble didn’t roll. The house was, from what Ryan could tell, perfectly level. A slight sense of ease came over him. At least the house wasn’t sinking. He descended into the basement to check how the cement was drying. As quickly as the ease had come, it left and was replaced with a sense of dread.
The hole was back and bigger than before.
Bring on the Free Babies
Dan usually saunters in sometime between ten and noon. Today he showed up at eleven and announced he would be leaving after lunch for a root canal.
“Jesus, Colin, the pain is unbelievable. I woke up last night around three and popped two Advils. It didn’t take the bite off at all. Awful.”
“Doesn’t sound fun.”
“God, you wouldn’t believe it. Tell me, do I look swollen to you? Here on this side,” he asks, swivelling his head back and forth so I can compare the size of his fatty jowls to one another.
“They look the same to me.”
“Jesus, really, this side feels all swollen, like I’ve been stung by a bee or something.”
“No, looks good. Hey, I have some questions about the change package you left in my in-basket the other day. You know, the changes you wanted me to make to Program 25.”
“Oh yeah, did you finish it already?” he asks, massaging his apparently engorged cheek.
“No Dan, I haven’t started it yet. I don’t understand what you want me to do. It says to update the CT table, but that table is called from a different program.”
“Oh, I just copied the specs. I guess I forgot to change the table name. It’s pretty much the same as the other program, just add a few lines here and drop a few lines there. Not a big change. It shouldn’t take very long at all.”
“I don’t care if it’s big or little, I need to know what you’re asking me to change. It’s due on Friday.”
“No reason to panic, Colin, I’ll just give you the functional requirements and then you can understand what I’m talking about.”
“Okay, let’s get this straight, you want me to review the functional requirements, then fix the programmer’s specs to match, right?”
“Well yeah, not a big change, it’s pretty obvious when you’re looking at it.”
“But that’s your job,” I tell him. Dan looks hurt, as if I just told him to go fuck himself, which is really what I want to say.
“Gee whiz, Colin, it’s not a big change. I’d do it right now, but I have to go across to the mall and pick up a prescription for my back before I go to the dentist. Everything hurts.”
“I’ll do it for you Dan,” I mumble.
“Oh thanks, Colin. If you have any problems, just let me know and I’ll be glad to help,” he says smiling.
I know I should have more backbone when it comes to these kinds of things. The problem is if I wait for Dan to do it, it won’t get done until after it’s due, or just beforehand, if at all. I’ll end up having to do it anyway. I don’t need the stress. So I do it.
As I’m working the phone rings. It’s Sarah. She’ll be picking me up in thirty minutes for our fertility appointment with Dr. King. This will be our third appointment with him. My sperm results, by the way, were fantastic. I have nine times the motility of the average man. Queue the John Williams’ Superman music please. A lot of people with PCOS tend to be big, fat. Some sort of insulin resistance. I don’t really understand it completely, but basically it’s very easy to gain weight. Sarah has large breasts, a bit of a gut, and a flat bum, but I wouldn’t classify her as fat. Anyway, Dr. King suggested she lose a few pounds and prescribed her Metformin to help balance out the insulin sugar levels.
She’s now lost ten pounds and has worked herself up from one Metformin pill a day to three, but she’s still not ovulating. She’s hoping that Dr. King will put her on some sort of fertility drug to get things moving, but she doesn’t have a lot of hope these days. At night before bed she has been reading The Lost Daughters of China, a book about all the little girls being dropped off on doorsteps because of China’s one child policy. There are thousands of little Chinese girls waiting to be adopted. Sarah thinks about them crying, wanting their mommy.
I go downstairs past the security guard and wait by the front entrance. When I see our desert-sand Corolla round the corner, I step out and wave. I get in. Sarah is crying. “What’s wrong baby?”
“I just want to get pregnant,” she blubbers.
“Well that’s what we’re working on baby.”
“The Metformin gives me gas. I think this is fucking hopeless. Why don’t we just get a girl from China?”
“Listen, babe, a girl from China is twenty thousand dollars. Making one of our own is free,” I plead.
“I don’t care about the goddamn money, I want a baby. I want us to be a family.”
“Right. Let’s go see Dr. King and see what he has to say, okay?” I suggest as I softly stroke her shoulder.
Her bottom lip quivers and she wipes her eyes with a crumpled napkin from the glove compartment. “Okay,” she agrees, driving away.
Dr. King’s office is actually located at the Civic Campus of the Ottawa Hospital. In true hospital fashion, parking is limited, inconvenient and overpriced. You’d figure a place that catered to the sick and elderly would have a slightly more liberal parking philosophy. We corkscrew up to the top of a parking garage that has been under renovation forever. Six months ago they were working on it and they’ve made zero progress since that time. We walk down five flights of stairs, cross over to the adjacent building and take the elevator up to the sixth floor. We let the nurse know we’re there and she tells us to take a seat down the hall. Today there is no one else in the waiting area. I look out the window and see our car parked on the roof of the next building.
A very pregnant lady waddles by. I watch Sarah’s eyes lock onto her belly, as a cat would when it sees a mouse. Then I think about those women who are occasionally found splayed open like grade ten science frogs, their babies cut out. I imagine Sarah with her arm around the neck of the woman who just walked by, Sarah with some sort of Halloween knife in the other hand. Before I let the gruesome image go to where it is going, I give my head a shake.
Dr. King appears with his file folder. “Mr. and Mrs. MacDonald.” We both stand up and follow him into his office. One wall is covered in thank-you cards with pictures of babies. He appears to have helped hundreds of patients, but he couldn’t have been doing this all that long because he looks like Doogie Howser. He flips through Sarah’s medical folder and looks at her recent blood tests. “So, still not ovulating, eh? Well okay then. We’re going to try something else to get you to ovulate, Clomid.”
Sarah smiles at this news and squeezes my knee. I can tell she’s ecstatic. When I think of fertility drugs, I immediately think of twins, triplets, a full house. I imagine myself in a glass house where the public pays admission to see Sarah, me and our eight kids, the only way we can afford to feed all these babies. A wall of strangers’ faces leering, pressed up against the glass, pointing and laughing as I run back and forth from one screaming child to the next. I give my head a shake. Different thoughts float in and out of my brain as Dr. King is talking. Twenty thousand is a lot of money to get a kid from China. I have a fear of flying. What did I do with the parking stub?
Sarah listens closely to Dr. King’s explanation of how the drug works, its possible side effects, and when we should be having sex on the drug. Days 11 to 22 are the days we are to have, as Dr. King puts it, lots and lots of sex. “Try to do it every day, although every second day is good, too. Lots and lots of sex.” I smile at this. Sarah removes her hand from my knee.
“How about twins, is there a high risk of twins on this drug?” I demand.
“Five to ten percent higher chance of having multiples.”
I’m partially relieved to hear this, but I’m not completely satisfied. Mayb
e Ty Pennington and the design team from Extreme Makeover Home Edition TV show will come and rescue my ten-person family from the circus-freak-show glass house? “Multiple,” I say aloud. The word comes out of my mouth like a burp, and I feel as if I should excuse myself.
“Twins would be okay,” Sarah says. My eyes dart quickly back and forth between Dr. King and Sarah, waiting for him to say, actually twins would be awful, you don’t want twins. However, nothing comes; they just stare back with inquisitive looks on their faces. Finally Dr. King asks, “You don’t want twins, Colin, do you?”
“Uhhmm, no, I mean, I don’t know, I guess so,” I sputter.
“No worries, the odds are pretty low and you don’t have any twins in either family, so it’s not probable, but you never know. Try not to worry about it.”
“Right, no worries,” I say.
Dr. King gives Sarah a prescription for Clomid and goes over the dates again with her. He also gives her a requisition for a blood test to make sure that she isn’t pregnant before she starts taking the drug, which is completely unnecessary, but he has to make sure. I guess he doesn’t want to be sued for malpractice.
As we’re leaving, Dr. King reminds us, “Days 11 to 22, lots and lots of sex.”
Sarah clutches onto my arm as we walk back toward the elevator. “What do you think? Do you think it will work?” she asks.
“I don’t know, baby, I hope so. We’ll give it our best shot.”
“If it doesn’t work I want to get a little girl from China.”
“Okay, don’t you worry, Dr. King says he hasn’t failed yet at getting someone pregnant that he believes he can. He believes in us.”
“That’s ’cause he’s only twelve years old,” Sarah jests.
I laugh.
We take the elevator down to the first floor and I sit in yet another waiting room while Sarah does her blood test. I flip through an issue of Today’s Parent and wonder what kind of father I’ll be. A smiling glossy baby in a diaper stares up at me from the pages. What if the kid doesn’t love me? What if I don’t love the kid? Well my old man is a drunk and he dumped my mother and me when I was ten and I still love him. I presume that I’ll do better than he did – not much of a stretch.
The Cube People Page 3
