by Shane Jones
“Who is this?” I ask.
I should have seen this coming. He likes to call the flyers of anything with a reward. With his lifestyle, I don’t blame him. I’ve seen him tear a flyer for a missing cat from a telephone pole and later that same day pluck a flyer off a postal box for a missing turtle. Although I’m not sure how he would actually receive the money without the pet.
“Tom Ruddles,” says Elderly. “Says something about a cash reward? I require that first.”
He’s bent over and inside the open driver’s side window, and a young kid on the sidewalk with his arm extended is asking for his phone back. Behind the kid are three girls in high-waisted jeans, thumbing their phone’s glowing screens. The lawns behind them rise and ooze a strange darkness, the grass moving in the breeze.
Elderly walks around the back of his car and grabs one of the flyers off the passenger seat. The three girls point dramatically at the boy who takes one step forward before peering into the car. “You’re such a good boy, aren’t you a good boy, that’s right, you’re a good boy,” baby-talks Elderly, now walking back around the trunk and holding the flyer up to the boy.
“Tom,” I say, excitedly knocking on the window. “I’ll be right out with the money.”
“Cluck cluck,” goes Elderly, looking up at my apartment. “Busted.”
I put on the one pair of jeans I own, bought by Alice, and leave my apartment, which desperately needs to be vacuumed, there’s dirt everywhere. Did you know a new vacuum cleaner costs the same as a new dog?
Outside my apartment there’s a concrete staircase built into the hill, like all the houses on my block, and when Elderly sees me coming down, then crossing the street while waving at him, he throws the phone at the boy and jumps in his car. I’ve never seen him actually drive the Pontiac besides the occasional lucky burst to get to the other side of the street, so I’m not surprised when the engine doesn’t start, his head craned over the twisting key. I open the passenger door that makes a rusty hinge kind of sound, and I imagine it falling off, crumbling into red sand when I shut the door.
“Sorry, V,” he says dejected and leaning back. “You ever get bored and do something weird? That’s what I do with the flyers.”
“It was a good try,” I tell him.
“You think so?”
“Absolutely.”
I sit on the soft maroon-colored seat and consider severe work routine and ideal gates and a work program obsessed with increasing work productivity but tied to an individual’s happiness, this program I’m intrigued by because I have nothing else to be intrigued by. Maybe my office life really will improve, become something else entirely. I wonder if any of my coworkers will be in the PER program. Maybe Emily?
She wears purple everyday and her cubicle walls are covered with pictures of horses printed from the work printer. That’s how much she loves them. Emily seems so depressed – slumped shoulders, forced smile, calling her husband who doesn’t answer twice a day, too much sitting, too much cafeteria food – but on Friday she’s always insisting we can’t be unhappy on a Friday. But you can be unhappy on any day you want. Even a Saturday. This is a pretty innocuous thing, I know, Emily should be able to say whatever she wants, it’s not hurting anyone, but what makes it so sad, and what I relate to, I think, is knowing via Steve who remodeled her kitchen, that Emily never has weekend plans. Her body in her cubicle on Friday afternoon is her body on her couch come Saturday evening.
“E, I need to buy cupcakes,” I say, taking my car keys from my pocket. “Can I buy you dinner?”
The first time I met him he was installing handmade stop signs. Alice and I had finished moving the last of our belongings from the U-Haul when my brother-in-law dropped a table on the ramp. Hundreds of half inch glass cubes scattered down the street and toward Elderly who, glaring at us, gripped a wooden mallet.
“Sorry about that,” I said, extending my hand. “I’m Vincent. You live in that house?”
“I live in that car,” he said. “1995 Pontiac Bonneville. Best vehicle this country ever produced. And I own it.” He walked over and pressed the mallet against the window.
He wore blue gym shorts, no shirt, and his calves resembled torched pepperoni. From the neck up he was a hippie Santa Claus balding, a mad-man with wisps of white hair and a vacant stare. Still, there was something strangely handsome about him, in his scars – it felt like he had lived through some rich past experiences, had seen some real life shit, which I immediately admired.
“Nothing to apologize for the way these cars, too many cars in this world, drive down this street. Better they get a flat from the glass then kill the family dog,” said Elderly. “That’s what happens, you know. They drive too fast, they kill the family dog. Ends the family. You look surprised. But there’s no coming back from that, especially for a child. Politicians ignore me, that’s why I’m doing my own signs. They kill the family dog? You’re down, you’re done.”
The signs were torn Home Depot lawn bags, white house paint, and wooden stakes of various heights. Each one read SLOW DRIVE NOW FUCK. He had hammered them into the grassy space between curb and sidewalk down the entire block. They would be taken down later, violently, by a police officer with sleeve tattoos as the sun fell but the air didn’t cool – Elderly asleep in his car, myself questioning my new neighborhood from the front windows I couldn’t open.
On the drive to the 76 diner, an establishment with a thin metal statue of George Washington standing in a rowboat, Elderly rolls down his window, and finger counts every other house saying, “Poor people love the flag.”
I’ve always wondered about this, so I ask, “Where do they even buy them?”
“Buy them? They’ve had them in their family for generations. It means something to them.”
“Yeah? Like what?”
Elderly looks at me like I’m crazy. “That they aren’t poor.”
The 76 caters to the wizened on fixed incomes who enjoy huge portions for a low price. They consider this tremendous value because they can stretch their leftovers out over several meals, eating through the stomach cramps by envisioning money not spent. The air conditioning is either never on because the regulars have complained enough to keep it off, or it’s on chilling blast because other regulars have complained enough on the comment cards to keep it on. Tonight it’s on frozen blast. Brown cardigans, herringbone caps, black shawls, and pilling sweaters are everywhere.
In a corner booth, Elderly glances at the menu before clapping it shut and telling the waitress, at our table for the drink order, that he’ll have the clams casino.
“Turkey something,” I add.
“And two Bud heavies.”
Sitting across from Elderly, who is joyful and talkative now that he’s receiving a meal, downing his first beer in two gulps, I have nothing to talk to him about besides PER, which feels wrong because I also realize, watching him shimmy uncomfortably on the booth’s engulfing leather seat, that I know nothing about him as a person, even though I’ve seen him weekly, almost daily, for ten years. I’m not sure why I never took him out to eat before. I’ve given him food on occasion, typically on a holiday along with extra cans, but never out to eat. I’ve always assumed he was in Vietnam and not to bring it up.
“Clams have no head,” he says flippantly. “They’re just a flat heart cleaning the ocean.” He starts on his second beer. “Millions of clams stolen from the ocean only to go down a human throat until shat back.” He touches the hanging ceiling light, a Tiffany style knock-off with gold and avocado colors, and it sways. “Just because it’s there doesn’t mean you have to eat it,” he adds.
“But you just ordered clams,” I smirk. “It’s what you’re about to eat.”
“I ordered clams casino,” he says offended. “There’s a difference.”
“What difference?”
“Casino,” he replies.
“I had my meeting with Dorian Blood,” I say sipping water. “He runs a program called PER, stands for Patrol fo
r Everyday Repetition. Increases office productivity by showing the workers their ideal life. You believe what our taxes are paying for?”
“Yeah, sounds religious,” Elderly says drinking his third beer. The beer is served in short amber glasses, same as the water, and it’s difficult to gauge just how much he’s consuming, but who cares, he lives in a fucking car.
He becomes relaxed, shoulders slumped, voice deepening as he taps the rim of the glass. “These companies are always on the hunt for new ways to save money, especially if it’s taxpayer money, real nice for the Leaders who don’t have to do a thing but write the check. Been this way since the first office. Why do you think they came up with the cubicle? With technology I’m sure the possibilities are pretty endless. And cheap. And terrifying.” He smiles. “What will we be doing to each other in the year 2037?”
“The logo is a computer screen with a waterfall coming out of it.”
“I’ve seen that in Tehran,” he says, stacking the jelly packets into a miniature wall he immediately knocks down with a quick whack of his knife.
“You lived in Tehran?”
Elderly closes his eyes and rests his head on the table. The skin of his skull appears paper thin.
The warm plate of clams casino is slid across the table and bumps him awake. The waitress apologies but she meant to do it.
“In the late 70s I was in Syria for a few months, but Iran was my home while setting up the phone systems.” Elderly says this like it’s no big deal, spooning out clams covered in breadcrumbs, bacon, and chives. I don’t even know his actual name, age, if he’s been married or has kids. “That’s where they had that image you described, well, not exactly, but this very 70s screen with liquid pouring out. But it was the art style at the time, this combination of old world caves and sand and temples mixed with American pop art, very futuristic in Tehran. We messed it up. We messed up the future. Do you know anything about Tehran? Now it’s offices and God. Doesn’t matter your thoughts on the Shah, just the images of Tehran then, the blue and orange box cars, the bell bottoms and long black hair, the street sales with spices and sterling silver. I could go on. There’s never been a place so quickly accelerating into the future as the past so desperately clung on.”
He’s on his last clam and stops again, entering these moments where he realizes, I think, he’s saying too much, it’s not like him. Maybe he just wants me to keep buying drinks, he needs his past to come flowing from him.
So I order a hot fudge sundae and three more amber glasses of beer to the disdain of the waitress who believes, correctly, we are poor tippers.
“Alice worked at the refugee center on Johnston,” I say reluctantly. “She taught the refugees how to apply for a job. She’s doing something similar in Chicago. A bigger position. Maybe has the title of Director. I hate when people have titles.”
“Who?”
“My ex-wife.”
Elderly wipes his face with the back of his hand. “Why would she help people who don’t need it?”
Sitting near us are two old people who have been arguing since we arrived. They remind me of Alice and I when we couldn’t communicate if it wasn’t an argument. When you’re in love all language is interesting. Now there’s a dispute over what to leave for the tip. The woman says, “Just because you’re stupid doesn’t mean it’s my fault” and the man, running his finger down the receipt, placidly throws a hard candy no-look into her blouse.
“Because,” I say turning back to Elderly, “RISSE helps refugees in this country. They go because they want help.”
“That’s what I said,” he responds, holding up one grubby finger toward the annoyed waitress, then pointing literally down and into his empty glass with the same finger. “They don’t need your help, they just want it.”
The waitress slides me the check. Even with my order of three dozen cupcakes, the Freedom Cupcake which is a specialty here, it’s less than a hundred bucks. Elderly went to the bathroom, and now he’s walking back out, slipping his shirt over his head.
“I was employed by AT&T,” he continues, pleasantly surprised I’ve bought him another beer with cash – he slides into the booth, the cushion exhaling air. He takes a sip before pushing the glass towards me. “The phone systems were these headsets the employees wore and beeped when they completed quotas. Thinking back, this kind of office, so American, is what Iran really hated. I mean, not everyone, just the most passionate, which is what matters if you want a revolution. It wasn’t about a decline in morals or women running around showing tits or smoking opium to “Gold Dust Woman,” nah, it was the corporations creeping in, the profits connected to happiness. Didn’t help that the Shah looked like a Hollywood actor playing a CEO. Sounds so simple now but the beep worked as a Pavlov’s dog kind of thing, kind of putting the worker into a daze, I don’t know. I don’t know anything else. Just installed the wiring. Just these workers were proficient and left work happy, even if still in the daze. Anyway, the system was pulled after the revolution. People want freedom but they don’t know what to do with it, look what happened, look what’s happening here. I was gone after Nida was arrested. Hey-o I’m drunk.” His head flops forward, seemingly unhinged before springing back up.
“Nida?”
“My first wife,” he slurs, head swaying.
“You’re married?”
“Was.”
“What happened?”
“She was kidnapped by the Shah during a women’s protest.” He stops, and tears form in his wrinkled face as the boxes of cupcakes arrive by the waitress who doesn’t make eye-contact or say a word.
Outside, we pass an idling car with the old couple facing their windshield and screaming. The woman’s chin is frothed with her own spit. The man is shaking his head so fast that he has become smeared. Sometimes other people are hell. Sometimes it’s nice to have someone to argue with.
I drive Elderly back to his home, the 1995 Pontiac Bonneville, lit-up under a streetlamp.
I walk in the dark holding cupcakes for Francesca. Up the concrete steps and into my apartment to vacuum and consider my happiness.
JUNE 6
Shawl Lady is in the elevator again. Today her hair is dyed red, the only part visible because her face is wrapped tight with the shawl which extends downward to green flats. She shuffles over when I enter. “Good morning. Beautiful day out there.” I figure everything else in my life is becoming out-of-control so be friendly, be present. Again she turns and faces the wall, inches from it, until I exit on floor fourteen.
After settling into the Zone I realize I’ve forgotten the cupcakes. It’s not even nine and Emily says out loud, seemingly to no one that she can’t wait to eat. The cupcake party is at eleven. Emily repeats herself. The way people communicate from cubicles is they talk louder than usual while facing their computer and someone in a different cubicle responds. One time Steve said, “Spare ribs are the best” and no one responded. I don’t know why I remember such a thing, but I do. Same thing here happens to Emily.
I don’t have time to drive home so I’m going to ruin everyone’s day. I should get some work done before my orientation with Dorian at ten, but I have none, hooray. I delete two emails previously deleted, previously sent to the trash folder.
Finally, Steve says that he’s hungry too. He says that when the weather gets cooler he’ll bring in venison for everyone.
On floor twenty I’m greeted by the employees who were setting up cubicles the day before. Today I learn their names: Fang Lu and Billy Krol.
Fang Lu has black spikes for hair and wears rectangular black framed glasses with below patches of cheekbone acne. He’s young and surprisingly fit and well-dressed, probably has an entire closet of J. Crew. I can’t relate to him in the slightest. Billy Krol is taller with a thick trimmed beard, thinning hair, but also wears glasses and appears physically strong, like he played college rugby or just previously enjoyed being large. They seem to share the same wardrobe. I decide to like Billy Krol more and direct all my qu
estions his way.
I follow them to the two center cubicles in the room. Hanging loose on their wrists are the type of gold watch Dorian wore yesterday with the black tail attached to the back and dangling from the skin. I’m told to sit sideways, my arm resting on the desk of a recently cleaned cubicle that is lemon-scented and sticky.
“Try to relax,” says Billy Krol.
“This will be easy,” says Fang Lu.
My packet is reviewed by Fang Lu reading the Professional section and Billy Krol tackling the Personal. They are the perfect working halves in the program, skimming through my paperwork with admirable ease.
“Both parents deceased?” asks Billy Krol with no sense of compassion whatsoever, not glancing up from my paperwork.
“That’s right,” I answer.
“You still drive?”
“I usually walk to work.”
“Friends? Living with anyone? Staying in contact with exes?”
“No, completely alone.”
“Great,” says Fang Lu, initialing the bottom right corner of each page. “A perfect candidate. Fifteen day training will be a breeze. Then your gate.”
“Yeah?”
“Your ideal gate, what Dorian discussed.”
Billy Krol sticks an electrode to my left temple, then runs a white cord into his laptop on the other side of the desk on which my arm is resting. I can’t see the screen but it’s beeping. The laptop Fang Lu types on also beeps and neither him or Billy Krol look up.
Occasionally nodding at Fang Lu, Billy Krol types non-stop until he’s satisfied with whatever readout he gets. He rips off the electrode then does the opposite temple. The computer beeps louder as the internal fan clicks on. Billy Krol burps and excuses himself. I have so many reservations about this process that my head is spinning, but I can’t say no. I let them do whatever they want now so I can move forward later.
Deep into silent minutes where Fang Lu and Billy Krol complete paperwork and continue typing on their laptops, I ask what I have to do, exactly, for the program to be successful. I vaguely remember what Dorian said and what I read from the article, but I don’t have any specifics. I won’t get an answer, but I want to say something because the silence, only a beeping computer, is too awkward.