Tumbledown

by Robert Boswell

  “Hi, John,” Candler said. “It’s Thursday, actually.”

  Egri squeezed his eyes shut. “Okay, why won’t I approve your intern ship plan? Because it’ll work, that’s why, and then you’ll be fucked, my friend. See, if a man has one brilliant idea, he’s generally regarded as lucky. That’s what we thought about you and this evaluation hub. The lucky schmuck. But if a person has two brilliant ideas, hell, he’s considered actually fucking brilliant. Okay, the sheltered workshop put you in that category. All the puffers and huggers on the board agree that the Candler boychild is brilliant. That’s a good goddamn place to be, but here’s the reamer: if a man has three brilliant ideas, he’s screwed. They think he’s a motherfucking genius, and every ordinary thing he does thereafter looks like failure. What I’m saying is, ride out what you’ve done, and quit having ideas.”

  “That’s a definite no, then? Or are you just being colorful?”

  “Wait until you’re director and then pretend it’s Hao’s idea. Let him worry about being a genius. Now, how’s ’bout that liquid lunch?”

  “No can do.” Candler took perhaps his first full lungful of air since seeing the flyaway pole leap into the air. “I’ve got this thing called work, and because it’s Thursday, I have more work tomorrow, which means I don’t want to start drinking at noon today.” It was not Egri’s friendship or good humor that momentarily settled Candler but the outrageous futility of him—yet he had been a successful director for eight years, and was stepping down to take a corporate position that would make him rich.

  “If you quit having ideas,” Egri said, “you’re a shoo-in. Ideas make you controversial. Front-runners traditionally say nothing and kiss babies. Not babes, babies, though the board is crazy hipped on your getting married, correcting your only fault—this free-living lifestyle you got. Here’s some advice: think of the board as an actual two-by-four and understand where they want to stick it. They want to see the proper preliminary chains on you before they offer you their cuffs. That’s why I’ve decided to throw a party when your Dolly—”

  “Lolly.”

  “—arrives, so the board members can imagine the little Candlers you two’ll produce. It doesn’t hurt that she’s a knockout, assuming this photo is lifelike.” Egri yanked the picture from the desk.

  “I love her.”

  “Yeah, love,” Egri said, “it’s a swell golf cart but then you discover it won’t take you but to one hole.”

  “Give me that.” Candler took the photograph away. His chest rocked with the desire to confess his morning. “I could tell you something in confidence, couldn’t I?”

  “In confidence, sure. With confidence, forget it.” His eyes shifted to the door and back to Candler—a tell, a giveaway, a revelation, but Candler was too preoccupied to notice. Egri did not want to hear any secrets.

  “I’m serious,” Candler said.

  “Every man in love is serious. Science has proven that love is a toxin.” Egri offered him another dramatic face. “It’s released in the blood by the appendix, which is why thinking men have theirs removed. Want to see my scar?” He lifted the photo again and pretended to study it. “Now and then I try to revive the old blood with Cheryl the way a miser sticks dead batteries in the radio just to see if a miracle has transpired . . .” In Egri’s public demeanor, he spoke so softly people had to lean close to hear him. Most of the Center’s employees thought he was always that way, unless he was drinking. Candler knew better. When he drank, he could no longer hold in the insanely voluble person who hid in his professional manner. He was still talking. “I’d divorce Cheryl, but it’d be ugly, and I’d have to give up half her money. Does Lolly show some enthusiasm for it? Doesn’t matter whether she’s good in bed, that’s all in your stinking head anyway. It’s whether she shows some enthusiasm for it.”

  “Are you drunk?”

  “Not even halfway there,” he said, affronted, “which is why I came to sweep you away to a meeting of scotch and tongue.”

  “I’ve got work to do.”

  “What did you want to tell me?”

  “It’s about coming in this morning. I drove in early to check on a client—”

  “Yeah, you’re a good egg, boyo,” Egri said. “That’s the one big drawback to your candidacy. The board, those miserable numskulls, think it’s a bonus.” He offered an elaborate shrug and disappeared through the door without a good-bye.

  Candler heard Clay Hao speaking in the hallway, but Egri would only talk to Hao in his professional whisper, and Candler could not make out the words. Hao was the person to tell about the accident, but Egri’s visit made it awkward, even though Hao had been straightforward about the directorship. “You may be better suited to the job than I am.” He had a patchy, graying goatee minus the mustache, which Rainyday had labeled a Klingon. “You’re full of ideas and since you’ve begun putting the ideas into action, you’ve been not particularly gifted with the clients. I don’t mean to criticize. But right now you seem to prefer projects to counseling. In all likelihood, you’ll be a good administrator.”

  Despite the criticism, Candler had appreciated the reply. Hao was genuinely gifted with clients. The Barnstone was good with them, too, but she was no good at drawing boundaries or thinking like a professional. Bob Whitman was a processor with one eye on the clock and now one foot out the door. It was stupid for Candler to think he could talk to any of them. Until that fateful conversation with Egri in the fall, Candler had been studying to become a psychologist. He had started a special PhD program in Santa Barbara that required him to spend a weekend each month on campus. During the intervening weeks, he’d had a ton of reading and school work to complete. Despite all that, he had liked it. Egri, though, had convinced him to drop out.

  The Guillermo Mendez file was open on his desk. All that remained was the summary session, in which Candler would explain the tests that Mendez had taken and what the scores meant. Rainy-day called him the War Vet because he wore fatigues every day, but he wasn’t a veteran. He was still on active duty. Candler hadn’t particularly enjoyed working with him, but Mendez was a boy. He had enlisted in the army right out of high school and done two tours in Iraq. Recently, he had received word that he would be going back and that the army had extended the tour to fifteen months. He was paying for this evaluation himself, and Candler was not sure what he expected to get out of it. Mendez had no physical disability and no discernible mental ailment. His psychological make up was more difficult to measure. He regretted enlisting in the army, and he was furious with the military, the U.S. government, Iraqis, his father, women in general, and the able-bodied men who had not enlisted. In short, he was angry with everyone except his mother and a few buddies. He had done whatever Candler or the technicians asked of him, but he seemed always just a degree shy of boiling. Yet he had come to the eval hub for three days, and his Vesuvius never quite erupted.

  He appeared now in the doorway to Candler’s office, wearing his usual fatigues and usual scowl. The pink skin of his skull showed through dark, clipped bristles. Candler beckoned him in. They exchanged what passed for pleasantries, and then the War Vet demanded, “What do the tests say?”

  Candler proposed that they sit. The IQ tests indicated that the War Vet was college material, and the interest evals suggested a predilection for the arts. A battery of psychological exams showed that he was easily annoyed with others and self-hating; however, none of the scores put him at risk. They merely implied he was bad company. Beyond these core matters, Candler had information about his fine and gross motor skills, abstract reasoning skills, and so on. Everything was in the average or above average range. The War Vet didn’t have any great talents or glaring deficits. Usually this meant the client should simply pursue his interests. However, Mendez was committed to another year and a half of active duty.

  “Before we discuss your scores,” Candler said, “I’d like to know what you hope the results will say.”

/>   The War Vet colored and frowned. Candler feared he would finally see a display of the anger that floated just beneath the surface like a persistent snorkeler, but it turned out to be embarrassment showing in the War Vet’s face.

  “You want the long answer or the short?”

  “We’ve got time,” Candler replied.

  “The smaller deal first. I’d like to hear that I could go to college. I want to do something with computers and design stuff. Like art things. My parents, my friends, my teachers are not so supportive. I wasn’t the best student. Couldn’t see the point. Your tests say anything about that?”

  Actually, they did, Candler realized, though he hadn’t put it together yet. There was almost no chance he could do this kid justice in his current state. He merely nodded.

  “No one seems to think I’m capable of such stuff, like to be an artist you have to have the tap of an angel on your shoulder when you’re a toddler. Otherwise, you’re a sap to think it might be a way to spend your life.”

  “That’s one of the small matters?” Candler asked. “Sounds like a big one.”

  “Everything’s relative, no?” He launched into a story about a girlfriend who had once meant the world to him, and how one night in his bunk in Baghdad he had been unable to recall her middle name. “It’s Iris,” he said, “like your eyeball. I had to get out an old yearbook to find it. The weird thing is I don’t even know what time zone she’s living in these days. See what I’m getting at?”

  “Things that seem terribly important to you at one stage in your life may later seem inconsequential.”

  “Bingo.” He touched his finger to his nose. “I had it to do over again, I’d have a different line of attack for school. That’s not an option, so . . . Another small deal would be what the tests say about me being . . . about if it’s possible for me to get better, not so uptight, if I could be like I used to be. I’d like the tests to say that one day I could be happy and shit. Doesn’t have to be soon. I’m no pansy-ass, gotta have it now. Just a possibility down the road.”

  “That’s another small issue?”

  “There’s no guarantees, I know. I’m just hoping you’re not going to tell me my head’s screwed on so tight that the threads are permanently stripped.”

  “You want to hear my responses to these small matters, or you want to put the big issues on the table?”

  “Only one big thing,” the War Vet said, “and it can wait.”

  Candler displayed the results of the aptitude and interest tests, going over them category by category. It took a while. He was intentionally deliberate, not so much for the kid’s sake but for his own.

  “What’s the gist?” the War Vet asked.

  “You should do well in college if you can make yourself sit through the classes. A lot of them are dull and not what you care about but they’re required. My best guess—it might be premature for you to leap into it. As for your interests, there’s every reason to believe that you have a shot at being some sort of artist, particularly, it looks like, in graphic design, though people typically move away from their initial plans. I think you’d be better off in a specific art school where you’re less likely to get restless. Whether you could be a successful artist depends on artistic growth, luck, economic intangibles, a lot of fac—”

  “Fate,” he said. “I get fate. Jesus and Jonah, do I. But you’re saying I got a chance?”

  “Absolutely. You ought to be in individual art classes now, take the time to get some therapy, and then go to college.”

  The War Vet nodded, waited.

  “As for the possibility of achieving happiness, I’d say the obvious stumbling block is your anger. A lot of it is self-directed, which leads to depression.”

  “If you’re telling me to chuck the anger, I’ll kick its ass out the door.” It was Candler’s turn to wait. Rainyday buzzed to say another client had arrived. Candler acknowledged her and leaned back in his chair.

  “I guess we’re done then?” the War Vet said.

  “I’ll write a report and send it to you or to whomever you designate.” The War Vet stood and offered his hand but Candler shook his head. “We can take another minute or two.”

  Mendez dropped himself again into the chair. “The big thing?” He took a deep breath and exhaled through his teeth. “I’d like the report to say I can’t go back to Iraq, that I’m unfit one way or the other, psychologically, physically, mentally, karmically, any goddamn way possible. That’s the big thing, cause without it, the other stuff doesn’t matter.” He stood then. “I hate to keep people when I know they want me gone.”

  They shook hands.

  “I know it’s true,” the War Vet said. “I can’t go back and if I’m made to . . . I’m afraid I won’t get through it.” He rocked his head against his shoulders. “I thought maybe these tests’d tell me I’m right. Then maybe I’d have the courage to say no to those motherfuckers.”

  “That might mean prison.”

  He winced. “Not if the tests, you know . . .” He gave Candler a long look. “You’ll email me the report?”

  “I can do that.”

  “Thank you, sir.” And he was gone, the door thoughtlessly slammed.

  “No, you ugh-water, the song is called ‘Summer Wind,’ ” Maura said, “not that I was talking to you.”

  “If the wind can choose when it blows . . .” Rhine continued but she cut him off.

  “Shut the fuck up.” She glared, a mock glare, really, but it did the job. It was almost noon, and Crews had not come back. He must be mowing a football field. She was telling Mick about someone in her dorm playing the same song over and over, a dorky Frank Sinatra song, but Rhine couldn’t keep his nose out of it, and now Cecil Fresnay was upset.

  “She’s not talking to you, Cecil Something Something,” Mick said. “You’re doing just really fine. Good, fine work.”

  Cecil the human trout was on the verge of tears every five minutes. Maura had paid Cecil and Alonso at the hourly breaks. There shouldn’t have been enough left in the cash box to continue paying them, but Cecil hadn’t yet earned a dollar for the whole morning. He was hopelessly out of it. Crews had never been gone this long before, and she imagined him at the emergency room with a mowed-off foot in his pocket.

  Mick calmed Cecil down and put him back to molesting spider boxes. The job was different without Crews around. Everyone in the room felt it, Maura especially. A thrumming vibration rattled her bones, demanding she take advantage of his absence. It was stupid to waste opportunity, wasn’t it?

  “My mom’s car,” Cecil said, dropping the spider box in his hands. He picked it up. “My mom’s driving car is so big it can hold one mile of people.”

  “No car is that big,” Rhine said, “except maybe an army car.” His hands slowed as he pictured an impossibly long, light-green army truck, like the plastic toys he had played with as a boy; it had a square cab and a tent like covering for the enormous bed, with rows of benches along either side. It wouldn’t be called a truck bed if there were benches in it, he reasoned. “Is it a bed if there are benches?” he asked. The others looked at him as if he were nuts. He began explaining, which forced him to stop working. He couldn’t talk and work at the same time. A ringing phone in the empty office had ruined his last hour. He could not block out the sound, and with each ring he flinched with the desire to drop everything and answer it. He had tried twice, but the office was locked.

  Cecil picked up his elliptical, nonsensical monologue. “I was even born in California,” he announced.

  “You find out who was playing the Sinatra?” Mick asked.

  Maura nodded. “The house attendant or whatever they call him—the fucking guard. He’s trying to learn the words with his daughter. She’s in a talent contest. Though why any normal kid would choose to sing F. Sinatra is beyond me.”

  “ ’Tectives follow people,” Cecil continued, “and look for clues,
like if you have any fingerprints in those boxes.”

  “It’s detective, moron,” Maura said softly, almost to herself.

  “And they have cars with special powers.” His arms spread like wings, and he made a whooshing noise.

  “You’re an idiot,” Maura said as she dropped completed cartons into the transport box. Cecil kept flying, calling now for mission control. “You mean the control tower.”

  “You said the I-word.” Rhine pointed at her.

  That Rhine could not talk and work was one of the saving graces of the assembly line, but today he had done almost no work and a lot of talking. “Idiot, idiot, idiot,” Maura said. “Get back to work.”

  Rhine counted with his fingers. “That’s four I-words, total, Maura.” She did not reply but casually reached inside her purse, which was open on the assembly table. Her cell phone lay on top of the jumble.

  It took only a second to hit redial. The phone in the office rang again. Rhine set his carton down. “Can’t anyone hear the phone ringing?”

  “I don’t hear a thing,” Maura said. “Karly, you hear anything?” Karly was studying the carton in her hands with what looked like fascination, folding it so slowly you might think she had never seen a spider carton. When she got like this, she didn’t hear anybody.

  “Do you ever wonder,” Mick asked Maura, “what people like that hear in their heads? What it’s like to have thoughts and feelings that don’t make you . . . like us?”

  “People like what? Like Rhine or like Sinatra?”

  “The dorm attendant who’s got a daughter.”