Vincent and Alice and Alice

by Shane Jones

  “And one more thing,” says my boss turning to his computer.

  “Of course.”

  “She likes the desserts from a diner. Is that even possible?”

  The professional me, continuing: “Anything is.”

  On my way to floor twenty I share the elevator with a woman in a black shawl. She’s not Alice level attractive, that’s impossible, but has that quality some posses who work in an office environment where they appear shockingly clean. I’m speaking in a way Alice would disapprove of. I could never look that clean because men need money to look that clean. “Nice shawl,” I say. Shawl Lady turns and faces the wall until the elevator stops at floor eighteen and she side steps out. With no one watching, I shrug.

  The elevator opens and I walk onto blue carpet and face a sign:

  PER / SUITE 2037 / BLOOD

  After using the wall phone outside a locked glass door, I’m greeted by two men with professional voices and professional smiles. They’re college age young with a combination of confidence and calmness I can’t relate to. Their gingham shirts are slim fit, their purple ties knitted, their fingernails attentively cared for, not bitten like mine. One says, “Nice to meet you” while vigorously shaking my hand, and I feel like I did that day at the podium, that at any minute the recessed ceiling lights could become the floor.

  The Iceman isn’t succeeding. But I follow the two men, maintaining some distance between, trying to calm myself down, unable to remember my mantra. My future is coming for me? My future is mine? As we enter an office space full of light, I’m thinking about Alice again.

  From her point of view the reason our marriage ended wasn’t because I couldn’t fulfill her sexually, but I stopped connecting. She said I wasn’t there with her mentally because I was either commuting to work, at work, coming home from work, or dead-eyed from having sat for eight hours at work. Sundays were spent preparing for work. I soon realized something that horrified me: I slept 9-to-5 and worked 9-to-5.

  Besides, she was so busy at RISSE, sometimes working twelve hour shifts, which I admired and made me look like I was accomplishing nothing. How can you compare teaching a Syrian refugee resume etiquette with printing a twenty foot banner: WELCOME TO THE EASTER EGGSTRAVAGANZA?

  Whatever she thought or still thinks, I was there, with her. Which I realize now was part of the problem, how, after giving up painting, I was stifling her and the marriage. I became too much of having nothing to do but Alice. That makes sense now. I was jealous of her work and it wasn’t fair. But I was there. I tried.

  I brought her dinner at the refugee center once, and in the common area everyone was kneeling on neon-blue rugs. There was a glass compass on the floor and Alice was next to it, praying. I didn’t say anything. It was so powerful with everyone submitting to what they thought God was that I couldn’t move.

  “A rattlesnake can live a year without eating.”

  I’m in a huge room outside a corner office with the two men now typing on their phones. The corner office door is open but no one is visible, only a voice coming from inside. My stomach growls this disgusting high-pitched bubbling that disappears in a whimper.

  “I’ve heard so many good things,” continues the voice.

  In office meetings you morph into a language and set of body movements if you’re aware of it or not, it doesn’t matter, but it’s not you in the meeting. Some people are better at this than others. They are built for the changing. I never speak in meetings, let the big dogs roam special, but years ago my boss caught me laughing. I was having “one of those days.” Everyone stopped talking and I said toward the window, “You know none of this matters.” I wasn’t trying to be difficult, it’s just sometimes you forget where you are and you say something real.

  “Vincent, come in.” An arm, most likely connected to the voice, is waving at me from the open door.

  The office I walk into contains a framed Ronald Reagan illustration leaning against a freshly painted white wall with stacked cardboard boxes around it, an oval shaped wooden desk with an open MacBook, and next to a set of large windows, sitting on the air conditioning unit, a shallow cardboard box with broken glass. It smells like cigarettes and mouthwash. There’s more, but this is what sticks out as I move into the space and take a seat across from Dorian Blood.

  I ask if he recently moved in.

  “Yes, about twenty minutes ago,” he says, looking into the larger office I just came from. “The reason I mentioned the rattlesnake not eating for a year is a metaphor for energy conservation, routine, and discipline. In case you were wondering.”

  His graying hair combed backwards contains gel. His skin is clear and unblemished around narrow pale-green eyes. White cables are tangled in a mess around his laptop. Maybe he really did just arrive, he’s not making it up. Outside, the two employees are unpacking cardboard boxes like the ones in here and filling two center cubicles with printers, telephones, black lamps, cords, manila folders, laptops, and glossy stacks of copy paper. The morning light is half-filtered by the blinds set at various uncaring levels, and I’m sitting in a chair across from a person named Dorian Blood.

  He could be thirty five or fifty, it’s hard to tell with the graying hair but tailored suit and youthful skin. And he’s thin, but fit from what I imagine is a habitual lunchtime walk and morning pushups. “Straight off the bat,” he says with his fingers making a peace sign. “What are the two biggest complaints about State workers?”

  I’m lightheaded from not eating and sweating. “That the work is dull and the jobs are a waste of taxpayers dollars.”

  He looks pleased as he settles back in his chair, a silver Cross pen seesawing between his fingers. “Couldn’t have said it better myself. Perfect, just perfect. I see why Frank picked you. Now, what if I told you I can change that.”

  Sometimes I do this thing where I stick my bottom lip out and nod. I did this a lot toward the end of the marriage, when Alice was packing her belongings in those shit-orange Home Depot boxes. She would say, “You’re bottom lipping me again” when I didn’t know how to respond to, “We don’t connect anymore.”

  And I bottom lip now with Dorian because I don’t know how to respond to the claim he can make office jobs exciting and worthwhile. My office isn’t necessary. You could erase my department and the world would continue without a glitch. I’m not just saying this. I know it.

  Because when there was a major shake-up in the Dome, the coup, I was given the position of Supervisor which I didn’t want. This was two years after I started and what I learned, having access to the office budget, is that we could be liquidated and nothing would change except saving half a million dollars. Another office, the printing warehouse uptown could easily do the work we were doing with the addition of interns (unpaid college seniors who are worked until cynical). But I didn’t say anything, because if I did I would have been firing myself.

  “Let me back up,” says Dorian. He loosens his tie, very similar to the blue one I’m wearing, and rolls up his sleeves revealing a gold watch with what appears to be a thin black wire dangling from the back, a charger, I can’t tell what exactly. “So this is the third state we’ve been to this year,” he says. “Sometimes I get carried away during the screening process because of the success we’ve been having. Increased worker productivity, improved quality of life, taxpayer savings. The program is technically and originally called Patrol for Everyday Repetition. PER, for short, is what we call it now. Follow?”

  “What?”

  “Vincent,” smiles Dorian. “We’re going to change your life.”

  I lean back in my chair attempting to give the impression that I’m not completely dumbfounded. I try and access the conference call version of myself but he’s not here. The air is suddenly difficult to breathe. I’ve never been one to adapt well to these situations, but I’ve lived in them for so much of my life. Maybe the coming years won’t be so dull, so hard, though, if Dorian Blood is telling the truth. But that’s impossible.

&nbs
p; “I follow,” I lie.

  “Are you lying?”

  “I’d like to hear more.”

  Dorian smiles and his teeth are so white they appear fake. “It requires training,” he continues, “but you shouldn’t have a problem. I’ve gone over your file.” He leans forward. “PER is a way of life, a routine and a process and a discipline in order to live a fulfilling existence while being a productive worker. This, you’re smart, means more money for citizens, more beach vacations, new cars, televisions, family gatherings, you know, things that make people happy. But the main goal is not only increased productivity, but bringing joy to the workplace. It’s something that has never been done before.”

  I imagine Elderly’s reaction when I tell him about this, his eyes widening to cartoonish width. I imagine his stunned expression, and, in this vision, I’m nodding at Dorian Blood and becoming increasingly interested.

  Dorian casually says, “Give us a chance and you’ll see what we’re about. Everyone successfully engaged has experienced a more pleasant, more positive, daily existence. No one deserves to get hired at a well paying job and a month later be depressed. Isn’t it sad how people stay in these jobs until retirement just because it’s a so-called good job?”

  “That’s true,” I say. “It is sad.”

  “PER alleviates that.”

  I let everything sink in and bottom lip some more. I don’t really have a choice. If I say no, I have to explain why I declined to my boss, which could jeopardize my position in the office, possibly sending me back home to work. No more Zone. No more increased retirement package. I could be sent back home forever, and there’s too much Alice still in there because Alice is impossible to erase. I said I wanted a future, and here it is, presenting itself.

  “Okay,” I say, not entirely convinced. “I’ll try it.”

  “Fantastic.” He slides a binder from a corner of the desk on his side, and across the desk to me. “Here’s the questionnaire and script for the blood test, to be done after you leave here. The process can be challenging, but Vincent, it’s going to change your perspective on everything.” He rubs his hands together. “Before you go, can I ask you a personal question?”

  “Sure,” I say, and my heart races, thinking of Alice, seeing her running down an endless hallway.

  “Are you happy?”

  On the shiny white binder is an illustration of a waterfall flowing out of a computer, the name PER below in delicate script entwined in black ink mist.

  “I’m not sure happiness is part of the deal,” I say, not looking up from the illustration that I’m touching with my finger.

  “The deal?”

  “You know,” I say turning my palms up on the binder. “In life?”

  “The answer a depressed person would give. No more conference calls. How does that sound? Pretty good?”

  I tell Dorian that conference calls are soul sucking vortexes and each one kills me a little more.

  “We’ve treated two hundred people, possibly more,” he continues, smiling. “The success rate is something I’m very proud of, probably talk too much about, but I’m sorry, it’s just what I do. You’ll still be working 9-to-5, but adjustments to your routine will take place and it won’t necessarily feel like you’re working 9-to-5. This will become clearer after the training. What’s important is that you are willing, which is how the other participants started.”

  “And they’re happy?”

  “The program showed them their ideal life, so I’d say so.”

  I flip through the binder with hundreds of questions typed on heavy paper, each page with the PER waterfall logo. “But what’s in this for you?”

  Dorian stands so I stand too, signaling the end of our meeting. He shakes my hand by pulling my arm toward his chest and says, “Vincent, your happiness is my reward.”

  At the LabCorp across the street I fill four vials of blood as dark clouds form a thunderstorm. A nurse whose hairline starts in the middle of her head says I have big veins while handing me a sugar cookie. Next to me is a pregnant woman reclined, flanked by two paramedics and a man, the father I presume, in a denim jacket with Bugs Bunny on the back. I take a huge bite from the cookie and it starts to rain.

  I walk home excited and lightheaded to complete the paperwork. People are running because it’s raining, and those waiting for the bus are crowded under the little metal station with red trim. I like those who just walk in the rain with no umbrella. There’s something spiritual about it even though I couldn’t tell why. I just think the slower a person walks in a downpour the better they are.

  On my way home I pass the refugee center. It recently had a fire. A third of the roof is black char exposing a room once used for cooking classes, where Alice showed me how to make babaghanoush. The front door is boarded up and graffiti under the windows, most likely something evil stated, has been covered with black paint in the shape of a ship’s hull.

  Back in my apartment, I sit on my bed and flip through the binder before grabbing my laptop. For all the questions in the binder there’s no explanation on what, exactly, I’m going to be doing. I type “Patrol for Everyday Repetition” “Dorian Blood” and “PER” into various combinations.

  It takes a while because the word Blood really throws things off. I’m shown numerous pictures of bleeding gums. Participants must be sworn not to publicly say a thing about PER, but eventually I find a crinkled article turned into a PDF, ten pages long, written by Kate Helms and Dorian Blood. It was published fifteen years ago in a sociology journal called SCATZ FORUM on the benefits of, get this, “extreme daily routine.”

  A majority of the text is blacked out. But there’s a chart with ascending numbers on one page, and on another page black rectangles labeled “Reality” and “Ideal Gate,” attached antenna-like to a floating head in a work cubicle. On another page there’s an illustration of a watch with a tail snaked around a wrist and a nearby potted plant with all surrounding text blacked out. The chart and pictures are childlike in their simplicity. On the last page is the waterfall logo. The caption beneath the mist says that, “PER activates the subconscious dream of life.”

  I have no idea what any of this means. I have no idea what I’ve gotten myself into. I am filled with panic and excitement and fear. I email the article to myself then slam the laptop shut.

  Shit. I forgot to order cupcakes for Francesca’s birthday. Immense drama in the office tomorrow. Fuck. During the divorce I forgot strawberry pie for Emily and for three days no one talked to me. No real loss, just hours of cubicle whispers I knew were about me. But I want to start fresh in these PER office days.

  The questionnaire is divided into two sections: Professional and Personal. Some sections have already been computer completed – thirty nine years old, a reliable worker for nine years, no political affiliation, less than a year removed from being vested in the retirement system. A page printed of a PowerPoint slide using a bamboo textured backdrop has a scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree:

  • You respond to e-mails and dislike a crowded inbox.

  • Your home environment could be described as minimal.

  • You are rarely distracted by fantasies and ideas.

  • Others do not influence your actions.

  • A book is preferable to a social event.

  • Real world objects are the focus of your dreams.

  • Your emotions control you more than you control them.

  • You often contemplate the reason for human existence.

  There’s more questions like this until the personal questions on height, weight, diet, and routine. The routine questions are detailed down to the exact minute inside a typical hour. For example, from 7 am to 8 am what minutes do I consume (the paper’s wording, not mine) brushing my teeth, showering, opening the refrigerator, checking my phone. There’s also a question, mostly a blank page with small text, with the dimensions of a typical one bedroom apartment as an empty box asking how many steps I take inside this hour w
here the steps are located, draw them if possible. Also, before bed, what minute if it can be accurately stated do I fall asleep on? I answer to the best of my ability. In my new life, I am honest. In my new life, I throw myself into the world of PER.

  I’m in bed re-reading the Blood article. I’ve completed the paperwork, agreeing not to discuss the program with anyone or post anything about it online. Outside it smells like thunder, a breeze coming from my bedroom window that’s open an inch. I feel a real sense of pride having completed the paperwork – exhausting for sure – but so much better than a conference call, which is what I think when my phone rings. Sometimes when I’m forced to look at a screen I want to throw up.

  “Hi there. Sorry to bother you so late sir,” says a shaky voice, “but I’ve found your dog.”

  I sit up and a bag of Doritos falls off the bed. My apartment has reached far beyond sad-bachelor level depressing, very little in here, such moody colors, dirty clothes everywhere, a permanent male stank. “Where is he?” When I speak, my voice echoes a little.

  “I found a flyer,” says the voice.

  “Can I ask whose calling?”

  In the background a car passes by.

  “You can.”

  Someone behind the voice is saying to hurry up.

  I walk to the front windows facing the street. There are three windows total and two don’t open because the landlord used bargain priced paint. This is something all landlords do, no exceptions. When there’s a sale they buy in bulk and use the same stuff forever. The basement here is littered with self-adhesive Spanish floor tiles, plastic plumbing fixtures, gallons of Fabuloso floor cleaner, and columns of paint cans customers outright rejected after they were mixed. I look out the window. Elderly is on the sidewalk, next to the Pontiac parked in its usual spot, holding a phone. Elderly doesn’t own a phone.