“What, you don’t find me attractive?”
“Jesus Sarah, no, I’m just tired. We’ve had sex every day for the last four days. It’s just hard to turn on just like that.”
“Nothing is hard here. We used to make love four times a day.”
“That was seven years ago.”
“So? Why aren’t you getting hard?”
“Maybe because you’re yelling at me?”
“Can you please hurry up and get hard, I have to work in the morning.”
I play with my dick for a while. I try not to be angry. I think about the tight jeans of the attractive girl I saw on the bus. Marvin responds well to this image.
“Okay, I’m ready,” I say.
“Okay, stick it in.” I get it in, but I’m not all that hard. After a few strokes I firm up. I pump away forever.
“Are you almost done? I’m getting sore down there,” Sarah says, or rather orders, the agitation in her voice evident.
I think about the ass on the bus. I think about Mrs. Dunbar, her tits. I cum.
I roll off.
“Goodnight,” she says turning out the light, spinning around and putting her feet up against the wall.
Day 16
Sarah whispers a dirty story in my ear on the couch about her and another woman engaging in lesbian acts. Marvin loves it. We make love on the couch.
Day 17
I suggest a change of position, so we go at it doggy style. Sarah seems to love this. It works well for me too.
Day 18
Sarah had to leave work early again because she thought she was going to pass out. I suggest that we skip a day if she isn’t feeling well, that the doctor said that we could. She tells me that Day 18 is critical for ovulation, that we have to do it. This have to business is killing me. The rebel in me doesn’t want to have sex if he is ordered to.
“Look, I know you’re finding this difficult too, so I went to the 7-Eleven and got you this,” she says, passing me a copy of Swank magazine. A young blonde woman sucking on her own breast adorns the cover. Marvin sits up and pays close attention. It’s not every day that your wife buys you porn and encourages you to read it. I believe she partly enjoys it, too, but I know she’d never admit to this. “Let’s sit and read it together,” she says, patting the couch beside her.
So I do.
“Wouldn’t you love to fuck her?” she asks as she grabs my crotch.
Marvin’s a little freaked out, but very excited. The next thing I know we’re butt naked, going at it, two savages on the living room floor.
I roll off of Sarah, dripping in sweat. She scoots over to the wall and puts her legs up. “You did good, baby,” she tells me.
“Thanks,” I say, too tired to move.
Day 19
“Do you think this is going to work?” she asks.
“I hope so,” I pant.
“You almost done?”
“Yep, just give me another second. Argh.”
I roll off. Sarah moves into the vertical upside-down bicycle position.
Day 20
“Jesus, I thought you’d never finish.”
“Me too,” I groan.
“Just two more days, baby.”
Day 21
We go to the sex shop and get inspired. She ties me up nice and tight. It’s glorious.
Day 22
After work tonight, there’s a farewell at the bar for Marc, a database guy who’s heading off to PEI to work in another division. I tag along. Marc’s a nice guy and I could use a beer. When I get home I’m a little drunk. Sarah’s mood smells like it’s in poor health.
“We have to have sex you know.”
“Yeah, so?”
“When you drink you never cum, you take forever. God, you stink, how many pints did you have?”
“Four,” I answer, telling her the truth.
“I want you to fuck me.”
“Okay, let’s go.”
Marvin surprisingly springs into action. Things are going smoothly, but then after grinding away for ten minutes, I worry that I won’t finish. I try to think sexy thoughts, Mrs. Dunbar’s sweater, the nude witch on the broomstick… I involuntary flash to my grandmother’s tits – yuck!
“Can you hurry up, please?”
“Relax, I’m trying.”
“If you didn’t drink so much, it wouldn’t be a problem.”
Marvin sags a little. I think about the glossy pages of Swank. I’m trying to focus on the girl-on-girl action when I become aware of Sarah’s finger penetrating my asshole, stimulating the prostrate. Marvin can’t take more than a few seconds of this before he erupts.
“Thank you,” says Sarah, “try not to drink when we’re supposed to be fucking.” She spins around and puts her feet on the wall.
We go back to see Dr. King. It turns out that Sarah hadn’t even ovulated. He ups her dose of Clomid and says that we will have to try again. “Remember, Days 11 to 22, lots and lots of sex.”
The Paperless Office
From: Bruce Michaels
Date: 2006/07/08 PM 7:47:55 EDT
To: Colin MacDonald
Subject: Re: Photocopier Madness
Colin:
I understand your frustration with the photocopier; however change is never easy. Our world is changing at a rapid and sometimes frightening pace. The threat of global warming is upon us. That is why by 2012, we hope to reach the goal of “Paperless Office.” Imagine Colin, a paperless office. No more filing cabinets, no more losing things, no more clutter. The trees would no longer be afraid. By 2012, the Ministry of Revenue Collection will be leading the world with our sustainable development. Our vision, our solution to the global-warming problem: Paperless Office. This is why Barry and the rest of the management team have taken the first and crucial step in trying to reduce the amount of photocopying on the floor. In the near future there are plans to eliminate all but one printer, and eventually eliminate it completely.
Your suggestion for online forms to replace 811s, 822s, etc. is a good one. I will be bringing up this suggestion with Barry and the management team at our next weekly meeting. Your suggestion shows thinking “outside the box” and I have made note of this for your next performance review. Good job Colin!
There will be more information coming out about “Paperless Office 2012.” Remember, change is difficult, but it’s easier if you think about it as not staying the same.
Thanks, Bruce
PS I left you a “Paperless Office 2012” pamphlet in your in-basket.
Part of me is laughing, and part of me is seething. Sure enough, I look over and there’s the piece of paper Bruce left me about a paperless office. I grab it, without even so much as a glance, and throw it into my recycling bin. It appears that Carla is actually moving away from the paperless office. Usually she has nothing on her desk except for her hand sanitizer and occasionally an 810 or 811 and a pen. However, I’ve noticed in the past few weeks she no longer puts her pen directly on her desk; she puts it on a piece of clean white paper. I guess she just can’t keep the desk clean enough.
Dan has probably killed more trees than Dutch elm disease. His desk is covered in paper, sedimentary layers of government forms and tabloid magazines. Dan looks up from Entertainment Weekly and catches me staring at his desk. I’m doomed. “Hi Colin, working hard or hardly working?” he asks, laughing.
I’m not sure how to respond to something so inane and unfunny, so I ask him, just to be polite, “How’s the tooth?” And as soon as the words leave my lips I know, but it’s too late. I’ve dropped something fragile, my sanity. I watch it fall in slow motion, about to shatter into little pieces. Dan opens his mouth.
“Oh God Colin, it was horrible. The dentist had to fill two teeth. He said that he’d never seen an infection that bad in tw
enty years of practice. He told me I was very lucky I didn’t have to lose the teeth. He worked on me for over an hour. And do you know what the kicker was, Colin?”
“No,” I say, not wanting to answer.
“I was allergic to the antibiotics. I ended up in emergency covered in hives, having trouble breathing. They gave me different stuff, but the Tylenol-3 I was taking gave me terrible constipation and it ripped my hemorrhoids to shreds.”
I wave my hands in front of my body and say, “No, no, no, too much information.”
Although Dan laughs at my reaction, it seems to spur him on. “I tell you Colin, I had to see the doctor about my hemorrhoids after because the pain was so great. I had to get a cream with a steroid in it to settle things down. Oh God, the burning and itching was intense I tell you.”
“Jesus Dan,” I say, but he keeps going, telling me next about his bad back, his slipped disc. For the next half hour he talks about how he’s going to acupuncture for his crooked foot, and the physiotherapy he had to go through last fall for his rotator cuff.
“I’m a mess, Colin.”
“Sounds like it. Look I gotta hop,” I tell him, leaving our quad, not sure of my destination, only of my escape.
I walk out and see a plumber putting a sign on the men’s washroom door, Out of Order. “Busted pipe, you’ll have to use the handicapped washroom or go to a different floor,” he tells me.
“Actually, I’m just walking by.” I do a loop around the floor, walking aimlessly. I think about Sarah. The fertility treatment has been extremely difficult for her. I hope she ovulated after this second round of treatment. I can’t go through a third round of 11 to 22. I walk over to the Sunshine Valley Mall to grab a coffee and give her a call to see how she’s doing. I realize I’ve left my cellphone on my desk, but there is no way I’m going back for it. Of course when I get to the mall, both pay phones are being used. I go get my coffee first. When I get back, the same people are still on the pay phones. The young girl in the Hannah Montana T-shirt seems to be chatting with a girlfriend. Shouldn’t she have a cellphone? I’m one to talk. The business man seems to be dictating instructions to his secretary. They’re both babbling strong.
Finally after another five minutes, the business guy gets off. Both the phone handle and earpiece are warm. I think of Carla and the prime breeding ground for bacterial growth that I’m holding. I fish for quarters and dial.
“Sarah MacDonald.”
“Hi, it’s me.”
“Why aren’t you calling from your desk or the cell?” she asks.
“Walked to the mall, forgot the cell on my desk. I needed a break. The place is driving me nutso. How ya doing, baby?”
“Remember how I was having that weird feeling on Day 25?”
“Yeah.”
“Well I think it could be implantation in the uterus.”
“Really?”
“Do me a favour, go to the pharmacy and pick me up a pregnancy test.”
“Really?” I say excited.
“I’m not sure; don’t get your hopes up.”
As I walk to the pharmacy, my mind is popping and flashing, like I’m flipping channels on the TV. The noise of the shoppers and the shopping-mall lighting contribute to my disorganized thoughts. I could be a dad. I might have fathered a child. As I pass through the turnstile I read a headline from the newspaper stand: “Man Dies in Head-on Collision.” We’ll need to get an infant car seat. How much do they cost?
I find the aisle with the pregnancy tests and decide to go with the generic pharmacy brand, a two-for-one pack. If it’s negative, I figure we can use the second test next month if we need to. If she is pregnant, I know that she’ll want another test to double check.
As I pay for the kit, I make sure to smile that extra little bit, so the clerk knows that I’m hoping for a positive result, rather than the poor bastard who’s hoping for a negative one so he doesn’t have to head off to the Morgentaler clinic. The clerk puts the kit into the bag after scanning it. She doesn’t even look at it. I stop smiling so hard.
I walk back to my building. As I approach the main door, I see Line arguing with a man transporting twenty large boxes on a flatbed dolly.
“Listen lady, I just drop the stuff off. This is what the order says. I’m just doing my job.”
“What’s up?” I ask Line.
“I ordered one box of each colour of file folder, but it says I ordered one flat of each colour. He showed me the form, and it’s true. I checked the wrong box. But why would anyone want a flat of file folders. You figure common sense, no?”
“This is the government, Line.”
“True,” she says taking a long haul off her menthol smoke.
“How many colours are there?”
“Ten,” she laughs.
I catch the guy with the flatbed and ride up with him in the elevator. “That’s a lot of file folders.”
“You’re telling me, Mack,” says the guy.
I follow the guy out of curiosity, just to see it with my own eyes. We pass by Crazy Larry who is standing up as per usual, but instead of looking out the window he’s looking at us coming down the hallway.
“Hi buddy,” says the delivery guy to Crazy Larry.
“Hi,” Crazy Larry says, really slowly like he is stoned.
“What’s his problem?” the delivery guy whispers to me after we pass.
“He’s crazy.”
“Yeah, no shit.”
When we arrive at the business centre, I can barely believe my eyes. The length of one wall, about sixteen feet, is already covered in boxes, four boxes high, two rows deep. The delivery guy unloads, making a third row. “Wow,” I say.
“Yeah,” the guy says. “Got three more flats still in the truck.” I look at all the boxes of file folders in disbelief.
I go back to my desk and I hear Dan telling the exact same story he told me about his tooth and the rest of his medical adventures to somebody three cubicles down. I glance over and notice the memo on Paperless Office 2012 in my recycle bin. I pick it out, march back to the coffee room and tape it to the wall above the hundreds of boxes of file folders.
Hungry Hole: Chapter 6
For a week now, Ryan had been going from pet store to pet store buying rabbits. One at a time at first, then later two at a time as he grew tired of making multiple trips. The hole seemed to enjoy the rabbits. It would retreat a bit, fill up. Two rabbits would make it shrink a lot. But after a few days, it didn’t seem to make any difference. It was hungry; it wanted more.
Ryan had just tossed another rabbit in the hole when he heard the doorbell ring. He went upstairs and opened the door. It was Bill from next door. “I know you have Spike,” he said.
“What?” replied Ryan, thinking to himself that there was no way Bill could know.
“I can hear him barking. I listened at your basement window and I heard him barking.”
“No you didn’t,” said Ryan, but just as he said that he heard the unmistakable growl of Spike coming from the open basement door.
“I’m getting my dog,” said Bill, pushing Ryan out of the way.
The barking grew louder as Ryan followed Bill toward the basement door and down the stairs. “You son of a bitch, I’m going to call the cops on you,” yelled Bill as he ran.
Ryan didn’t say anything. He just followed, curious to see if there was an actual dog there, or whether the hole was playing a game, luring Bill in. When Ryan got to the bottom, Bill was standing by the edge yelling, “Spike, I’m here boy.” He spun around to Ryan. “You son of a bitch, you get my dog out of that hole!” screamed Bill, pointing down. Ryan was about to explain that there was no dog, at least he didn’t think there was, when the earth under Bill’s feet gave away.
“Aaahhhh!” Bill yelled as he dropped into the hole, but
he managed to catch the edge with one hand. Flailing away, he grabbed the ledge with the other hand. Bill was now dangling by his fingertips. For a second, Ryan stood frozen. He thought about stepping on Bill’s fingers, thought about feeding him to the hole. But quickly his mind cleared. He grabbed Bill’s arm and said, “Don’t worry, I have you.”
“You son of a bitch, when I get out of here you’re a dead man!”
“Relax, give me your arm. Grab on so I can pull you out.”
When Bill let go of the edge and grabbed Ryan’s hand, that’s when they both heard it. It made the sound that water makes coming down a garden hose when you turn on the tap, except louder. It shot up out of the darkness, a purplish red tongue-like tentacle, wrapping itself around Bill’s left leg.
“Aaahhhh!” Bill screamed again. “What the fuck is it? Get it off!“
I don’t know, just hold on,” Ryan said. Ryan saw the tentacle twist and contract. Ryan didn’t have a chance to save him. Bill was ripped away in a flash.
Ryan heard one last scream before a small fountain of blood shot up out of the darkness dowsing him in a fine spray. He sat there frozen. There were no longer any dog sounds coming from the hole, but instead a noise that sounded vaguely like chewing. He slowly backed away on his hands and knees until he reached the foot of the stairs. Shaking, he stood up and walked upstairs to clean off the blood.
Two months later…
Estimates
I wake up to the now familiar sound of Sarah retching in the toilet. I stop in the doorway of the washroom on my way to the kitchen. She’s on her knees, holding her hair up so it doesn’t dangle into the toilet. Her back ripples and her neck extends forward. Her mouth opens, but nothing comes out but a sick groan. She reminds me of a cat trying to cough up a hairball. “You okay?”
She nods.
“Do you want me to make you a coffee?”
She shakes her head no.
“Tea and melba toast?”
The Cube People Page 6
