CHAPTER 17
THE GUYS AND I got to talking a little about old Vegas; various details they’d heard and read about over the years. Jack happened to know a little about those underground channels where some of the homeless supposedly lived.
“So they built these giant flood channels in the 1980’s,” he said. “Even then, people ended up living down there. Hundreds, I heard. Lost all their money at the tables and ended up with no place to go. There’s gotta be plenty of ‘em down there now; there’s sure a lot more people that got kicked out than you see on the street.”
“You ever been down there?” I asked.
“I’ve seen where they get in,” Jack said. “Over by where the depot meets the highway there. Off to the right, by the scarp there, kinda cut out from the hillside. That’s where they get in. Goes all the way under the old strip, across town, right down under where the plant is.”
“When the hell does it flood around here?” Ronnie said. “The raindrops turn to steam when they land.”
“Oh, it does. Not often, but the ground’s too stiff to soak it all up, so when it decides to, it’ll flood you right under.”
“Who’d have thunk it?” said Dan.
“So what happens to the people down there if the channels flood?” I asked.
“Shit if I know,” Jack said. “They learn to swim in a hurry.”
“Screw that,” said Ronnie.
“But the rent is free, and I hear it’s a whole lot cooler in the summer. Tell you what, if they kick me out of here, that’s probably where you’ll find me next. Beats getting hassled by the street cops.” He snapped his tape and hit DONE.
“Hundreds, huh?” Dan said.
“That was back in Vegas days. There’s gotta be a thousand now.”
“How would you know?” said Ronnie.
“There’s just gotta be. How many guys you seen kicked out of here already?”
“Good amount.”
“There ya go.”
“Wouldn’t you rather leave?” I asked. “I mean if you lost your job at Everything? I’d rather give it another go than go live underground.”
“That’s pride talking,” said Jack. “You know what they say. Pride goes before a great fall.”
Dan chuckled. “A cliché goes before a great barf.”
There were plenty of peculiarities about the city to talk about, some likely bullshit, but others pretty well-established facts. No one seemed to think the discrepancy between the supposed amount of employees and the amount of apartments in the hive was as strange as I did, however. I’d bring up the oddity from time to time, but it earned mostly disinterested shrugs. From the very beginning, since I’d seen that winding line of people waiting in front of Admittance, it had seemed amazing to me that a place could take all these people in, day after day, day and night. Maybe it was my own self-loathing, the fact that I felt so good-for-nothing in the first place, that surprised me to see so many people being given a second chance like I had. Tough as it was, it was a real, viable, second chance. If so many of them were leaving Enterprise, where were they going? What were they doing? Following their dreams?
I remember my dreams when I was young. The days of novelty, before the whole enchilada fell apart. I’d always let my imagination get the best of me; they actually encouraged that kind of thing when I was a kid. Back when they lectured you about things like “maximizing your potential.” Back when they still used phrases like “the American dream.”
I dreamed of being rich. Not rich in the way you’d think, but rich on a kid-level. I could’ve gotten away with forty, fifty grand a year, that was rich. I’d have my own little place, eat TV dinners, watch TV, drink beer, and enjoy myself without worrying about paying the bills. How hard could that be? Getting to this level of richness seemed a perfectly attainable goal.
It was attainable. Only just as soon as I got there, it no longer seemed so dreamy. Neither did the shitty little apartment with the shitty little TV. It seemed like the minute I cashed my first fully-vested check, Amy showed up in her little shorts and halter top. I never asked for her, never looked for her. Never yearned for that kind of life, to be honest; I’m just a solitary type of guy. Which is why I never would have expected kids to join the mix, but yeah, they showed up too.
I loved them all, just never expected that kind of thing to happen to me, especially without asking for it in the first place. Never expected to be counted on, leaned upon so heavily. Fed upon, until there was nothing left for them to do but move onto a different host.
“What do you guys think about fate?” I asked.
The three of them looked at me like I had spontaneously grown a mustache.
“Huh?” asked Jack.
“The things that happen to you in life. Are they always your fault, or could it all be your destiny?”
We were all silent for a moment.
“You been smoking pot?” said Jack.
CHAPTER 18
AT HOME, it was time for a double-cheese Kraft dinner, my latest poor-man’s pleasure. A box of pasta and a stick of butter later, I sat in my swivel chair like a wet bag of flour, flipping through a good chapter of Moby Dick. By dark, I realized I hadn’t heard from Dan yet. I opened the closet and knocked at the wall. Dark behind the curtain. When he didn’t answer, I knocked again. I pulled the curtain aside. His closet door was closed. I checked my watch. It was past curfew now and no sign of him.
I sat back in my chair, no longer in the mood to read. What the hell was he up to? I wasn’t worried about him getting caught out there—Dan knew what he was doing—but it was unlike him not to be back by now. Plus, I was a little disappointed that I had to wait for my beer.
Dammit, Dan, you’ve made a lab rat out of me.
I watched TV and waited for him awhile, but it seemed like he was having one hell of a night somewhere else. My eyelids were growing heavy. I swung my feet up on the bed and lay back. It was time to turn in.
Man, whatever Dan is up to, he’s gonna be a bag of shit at work tomorrow.
But Dan wasn’t around in the morning either. I knocked for him, but his door was still locked. Had he come home at all? I thought maybe he was up and having breakfast without me, but when I got down to the cafeteria, he wasn’t there either. Normally I’d have grabbed something to eat, but I didn’t have much of an appetite. Something was wrong. Where the hell was my friend?
When I got to work, he wasn’t there either. My stomach sank when I saw the empty spot across the line.
“You guys seen Dan?” I asked.
Jack and Ronnie both shook their heads. “Looks like the party boy’s a little shagged out today. They pay attention to that shit, you know. Callouts. They count ‘em.”
“Too many callouts and they’ll put you on the chopping block,” Ronnie said.
“He didn’t call out, he wasn’t in his room to begin with.”
“Wasn’t in his room?” asked Jack. “Where’d he go?”
I shook my head. “Thought he might be out doing something last night, but he never came back.”
Jack and Ronnie looked dumbly at each other.
“Crazy asshole,” Jack said. “Maybe he’s been hangin’ out with old Dave.”
CHAPTER 19
I HURRIED HOME after work. He’d be there when I got back, I told myself. I was worried for nothing. Dan’s a grown man, a crafty one at that; he knows what he’s doing. He knows how to get around, he knows how to handle himself. I was just being stupid, I told myself.
But I wasn’t sure. Another part of me knew how Dan was, that he’d let me know if he was going to pull a stunt like that. Wouldn’t he?
Maybe not. Maybe I was overreacting. Maybe he’d think I was ridiculous for being so overly concerned. What was I supposed to be anyway, his babysitter?
But still, I wasn’t sure.
My stomach was tight as I went upstairs and made my way to my room. I thought about knocking on Dan’s front door, but decided it wasn’t worth it to make the rac
ket. I unlocked my door and went inside.
Dark from between the slats of Dan’s closet door. The knob on the inside would open the door even if it was locked, which I was sure it was. I stood looking at the doorknob, dreading what I’d find on the other side. I took a deep breath and turned it.
Dan’s room was exactly as it was the last time I’d seen it. Including his suitcase, which sat open on his floor, still with most of his clothes.
My stomach sank like a bag of sand. Dan was gone, but his stuff was still here. It was worse than I’d thought. What had happened to him? If he’d been fired, he would’ve come back to get his stuff wouldn’t he? Maybe not; maybe he was so upset with everything, he’d decided to make a completely fresh start. Maybe he hadn’t the heart to tell me he was leaving. Maybe he’d been embarrassed.
Maybe that’s all it was...
Then I saw the go-bag.
No, I thought. There was no way.
I picked up the bag. It was unzipped, and neatly inserted inside was the paper-clipped manuscript he’d been working on. Flushtor on top. There was a chance he’d leave his ratty clothes behind. There was also a chance—although I wouldn’t expect it of him—that he’d leave town in shame without telling anyone. Maybe—and there was only an infinitesimal chance, but maybe—he’d even leave his go-bag behind. But leave his manuscript? Never. Not a chance in hell. Whatever had happened to Dan, it was clearly worse than I’d thought.
My face flushed with pressure. I picked up Dan’s go-bag and took it back to my room and slammed the closet door. I didn’t care how much noise it made.
“Dammit, Dan, what the hell did you get yourself into?”
I huffed for a minute, then sat back down on the bed. Had they grabbed him at night? Had it been like he’d said; had he become a liability? Were the guards he bribed into him for too much? Had they somehow made him disappear? Had he run for his life?
Had he ended up underground?
In the channels?
Or underground...
I took out the manuscript and sat on the little bed with the stack of papers in my lap. Now and then, a ghostly feeling like I was holding a dead man’s hand. They couldn’t really have... Could they?
CHAPTER 20
YOU KNOW YOU’VE SEEN YOUR BEST YEARS when your own life has entered it’s final act.
The climax of my own story was the wife and kids leaving. Boring and melodramatic, I know, but not everyone’s life is a fast-paced thriller. There’s a reason we read stories, you know. Because life is essentially boring. It’s exciting to join Captain Ahab on the Pequod. It’s exciting to become little Stevie for awhile, gleaning secret knowledge from a talking toilet bowl. That kind of stuff doesn't happen everyday.
Even considering the bleakness in which I ran off to Enterprise, there was a spark of excitement in starting over again. Starting from a diminished level, but a new level nonetheless. I allowed this feeling that I was back at step one, but with a much sturdier place to push off. That there was nowhere to go now but up.
It was only rationalization. The idea behind Enterprise, behind Everything Inc., wasn’t to be a more forgiving ledge on the climb to success, but a safe ledge to keep you where you were. Try climbing, and you’ll slide safely back down the wall, like the sand on an overflowing sand castle. Make a few bucks, and they’ll get taxed right out of your pocket. Get up on your feet, and they’ll knock you back down. It’s just the way it was. It was the only way a place like this could work.
So what was the end-game, I found myself asking, laying there on my undersized bed; just too small to get comfortable. The grey bar shadows stretched long over the stiff bedsheets, like three damning slashes through the early morning sunlight. What was the end-game? When did it end? How did it end?
Death, that’s how.
All paths pointed to the same end.
I’d always pictured success as a kind of routine. Work, come home, loosen the tie, hang up the hat. It seems like a good idea when you picture it, but when you’re there, it’s different. When you’re truly stuck on a ledge, no matter how wide, how comfortable, you can suddenly understand why people behave so strangely. The chances they take, the addiction to conflict. The tendency to make bad decisions, if only for the sake of making a decision. Why they move all the time, sell their houses and buy new ones. Leave their hometowns, only to come back eventually. Leave steady, good jobs for lower-paying, more interesting ones. Leave stable relationships, vote in crazy presidents, buy convertibles, do drugs—all these things. Because whether up or down, people want to move.
They want change, good or bad. They need to succeed or fail; whichever one may not matter as much as I thought. They’re two sides of the same coin. It’s idleness that’s the problem. Idleness is like floating comfortably into oblivion. And we’re all floating into oblivion; all paths point there, but I’m human, like everyone else. I’m supposed to be doing it kicking and screaming. I’ll get there regardless, same as everyone else will. But I’m not supposed to do it like this. The end-game isn’t what’s important. It’s the game that’s important.
And maybe the game wasn’t over. Maybe the climax hadn’t really happened yet.
The familiar sound of boots came clumping down the hall. Several sets of boots. They came to a slow, then stopped. Right before my door. By Dan’s door.
I don’t know why it hadn’t occurred to me until that very moment; maybe because I’d been emotional about Dan, maybe because I’d been so deep in consideration, but it struck me like a lightning bolt: if Dan was truly gone, they’d eventually need to enter his room. And when they looked into the closet, they’d see the door Dan had cut there, and they’d know I was involved. Whatever had happened to Dan, whatever they’d done to him, they’d probably do to me too.
I sat up sharply in bed, listening carefully. The second my fears were confirmed, the very moment I heard the key enter Dan’s doorknob, I was up and grabbing for my own doorknob. I had to get out of there, fast. But as I was standing there waiting for the boots to clump their way into Dan’s apartment, I remembered the go-bag, and tiptoed back to get it. And as I heard the door close behind the officers, I opened my own door and turned headed left down the long hall.
Remembering the fire escape map, I took the stairwell furthest from the entrance, and with the go-bag slung over my shoulder, I walked hurriedly down the steps until I got to the ground floor. Too jolted with adrenaline to worry about it, I shouldered my way out the emergency exit, setting off the fire alarm in the process. I didn’t look back.
CHAPTER 21
THE STREETS OF ENTERPRISE were busy with employees on their way to work. Trying to appear inconspicuous, I blended in, keeping my eyes forward, Dan's go-bag at my side like a lunch-bucket, nothing unusual here, folks. Only I wasn't on my way to work. I knew the minute I punched in, I'd be a sitting duck. My heart still pounding from the hasty escape, my mind still swimming, I knew I had a decision to make. What next? No time to think about what I was walking away from, not now. All I needed to think about was my next move.
I broke off from the westward crowd and headed east, out of the residential district. I fell in behind a group headed toward Enterprise Station.
We passed by the same street corners and vendors I saw that night Dan and I took the bus to Admittance. I remembered seeing Dave that night, wondering how the hell he ended up homeless in Enterprise, wondering how a guy could blow his second chance like that. Yet here I was.
It had always been in the back of my mind; the fact that I ran like a coward. There was no hiding from it after the lights went off; it wasn't the world that chased me out, it was me who ducked and ran. And here I was, hightailing it out of here the same way I came. The same way I ran out of California.
I tried to shake it out of my mind. My next move, that was all I needed to know. What was done was done. I needed to get out of here.
I unzipped Dan's go-bag and rifled through some of the compartments. I needed money for the train; if I u
sed my account, they'd surely send out an alert for me.
His lock-gun. Multi-tools. Survival stuff. I stuck my fingers in a small zipped pouch and found what was certainly a tube of rolled-up bills. Bingo. Guiltily, I put them in my pocket and zipped up the bag. It was as though Dan were still looking after me, even after what they'd done to him. The idea of pocketing the bills left me slightly nauseated.
Following the crowd on the way to Enterprise station, the thoughts snuck back into my mind: the waste it had been to come here. I'd gotten a second chance, and I'd blown it. I'd earned a friend, and I'd lost him. Yet another idle month in my life with nothing to show for it in the end. The idea that ultimately, I had lost.
My stomach soured. My legs began to go weary. There was no putting it out of my mind. It was all coming to a head. I came here a failure, I was leaving a greater failure. I was finished. Truly, now. Finished.
At the corner of Enterprise Station and Everything Boulevard, I paused. Everyone as they were, walking along, minding their own business. Lost in their little lives. The futility of it all hung on my shoulders like a lead vest. I was paralyzed.
The thoughts bounced off the walls of my skull like a bullet to scramble my brain. People walking unto their deaths. A man in his bodega, leaning on the heel of his hand. A bird pecking at a bit of garbage, flying away, apropos of nothing. Like everything there was, apropos of nothing. The thought arrived like an electric shock and left just as quickly: there was nothing left to live for. The novelty had drained completely.
A quiet courtroom battle was taking place in my mind as I stood there at the corner, people filing by, moving around me like riverwater around a stone. I'd lost everything, the precious and the broken alike; there was no reason to lift a finger, no reason to breathe, let alone move forward, if not to restore an atom of dignity to the empty husk of Paul Harper. I'd been broken to begin with. How many lumps could a man take?
Everything Inc.: The Precious and the Broken Page 6
