by Ben Marcus
Not that he would, or ever could, know, and a Theory of the Ideal Mate was too unbearably something something to pursue. At a certain point, any blood-filled mate with the power of speech would do, but the whole thing was a pipe dream anyway. They were getting coffee at the same time and that was it. Years ago, Juney would have said to him, Thomas, the sun hasn’t come up on that idea yet. And tucked far back into her smile would be the panic that was soon to permanently seize her mouth. As for the colleague, the sheer monolith of courtship had yet to be scaled, and Thomas understood with a shudder that what courtship mostly entailed these days (throughout known history, perhaps) was the grueling scrutiny of an endless parade of her friends—all of them spoiled somehow, if not by outright poison poured over their faces so their flesh appeared melted and stank of fruit, then spoiled internally, rotted out, and primed to hate anyone who meant to cuddle and leak with their friend. No doubt the colleague’s friends festered in a world of private jokes, finished one another’s sentences, and turned every courtship into a game of…He tried to think of a game involving rifles and children and the race to build coffins. If these friends excelled at something, it was at deliriously liking one another despite all good sense. Just as the world gazed coldly at the moronia steaming off these people, they would close ranks and love one another more fiercely. They would test Thomas’s sense of humor, his resilience, his irritability quotient—off the freaking charts, Colleague!—and his basic endurance for the most, well, for actually any conversation, because to talk to any of them even beyond the brutality of a shared “hello” would feel like, it would feel…Thomas was too tired to call up the specific form of torture—and the notion of producing a metaphor for himself seemed suddenly ludicrous—but he finally saw himself crushed under an iron slab, able to breathe just enough to panic and worry and panic and then finally to die of fear. He’d not survive such a gauntlet, and he could think of far better ways to feel like utter shit than to waddle up to a bar and drag his face through a range of barely acceptable gestures with a group of her friends, who may as well have worked over his groin with a hammer and saw.
It would not be a good day for such an examination anyway, even if he had time to go home and change after work. That morning, Thomas had risked the pants that showed everything, darted khakis that could siphon a single drop of pee from his weeping, cold appendage and bloom a fist-sized stain on the fabric before he’d even returned to the seat where he could hide his crotch. Perfect wicking material, his pants. The sweetest feature of his cubicle was that it hid what he called his little horrible from the medical scrutiny that was the basic sensory currency at his employ. The true meaning of cubicle: No one can see your crotch. He’d already wadded a parcel of tissue over the offending eye during one of his fourteen trips to the bathroom, but that, too, had ultimately proxied a haze of dampness that was already bordered—to anyone who cared to look—in a ring of what appeared to be salt. A tide line had seized his pants, and it was a puzzling development. Was there salt in urine? Or, more likely, had something in his urine cocktailed with the laundry detergent used to clean his khakis? Thomas himself crotch gazed mostly to avoid eye contact, a type of connection hugely misunderstood and, to his mind, misused. But crotch gazing brought in important evidence, and why wouldn’t the others in the office have their scopes trained on his? What a time to be at large in the office and waiting for a big-and-tall woman to beverage up before he could even get his own drink and vanish.
A salutation with the colleague’s name seemed the best move. But throughout his six years at the lab, Thomas had been told this woman’s name so many times that in its place all he could summon was a dull sound in his head, chuff chuff chuff, like bone being scraped with a knife. He could recall the circumstances each time he had been told her name—where he had been standing, who had told him her name, and how he had summoned his face into a gesture of interest until it ached with fatigue, an effort that occupied him so totally that he failed to do the one thing that mattered during the transaction—commit this woman’s name to memory. What was the name in biology for species that exhibited reverse, or was it perverse, learning? Thomas couldn’t remember. Something something. A four-legged, hot-bellied creature that took the wrong cues and constantly impaled itself, raped by bears, subject to night weeping. Reversely deducing, was some language Thomas remembered about the thing. But the colleague’s name wouldn’t come to him now, just the sound of a body being carved to pieces. He thought he could produce this sound with his mouth if she cheated her face his way, cough it at her, now that she was at the fixings table, and she would have to appreciate how he had renamed her abstractly, a pure word that had never been spoken before. But actually the colleague would have to do no such thing except possibly pretend, as politely as she could, that this hovering man, breathing on her—whose penis, she knew (how could she not?), was abnormally cold, was so preposterously cold in the tip—she would have to pretend that he had not lost control of his body in such close proximity to hers. His sound for this colleague would be beautiful, but it would probably only seem to her as though Thomas had failed to sneeze, or had shat, perhaps, a little. And then he would be marked, and her pity and scorn and indifference—the holy trinity!—would take him back to those great old days with June, before she started getting so tired, when romance consisted of a series of stuttered apologies, parsed out over the course of an agonizing day, breaking her down until a sort of exhausted indifference set in that would allow sex, sometimes, to occur.
The colleague smiled to herself as she performed an inscrutable modification to her drink. Sugar, milk, straws, little sticks. Something that looked like a rubber eraser, waved over the drink? Part of the coffee poured out into the sink when the taste caused her mouth to winch. Renewed administrations, careful sips, exaggerated grimaces and frowns. The colleague responded to her own actions with some kind of overstated mouth semaphore—for whose benefit Thomas didn’t know, since she had yet to even stand and face him, fat Thomas the sadness machine, Mr. Thomas Last Name with the blankety blank, Thomas Fuckinstein with a cold Mr. Horrible.
Thomas cheated himself into her sight line. Oh it was a neat little shuffle, icebreaker number 49. He offered up his eye contact, but the colleague still seemed facially averse. She was perhaps one of those people said to be in dialogue with herself, preoccupied, super-focused, in deep parallel, enjoying her own company (something only unbearable people are encouraged to do, when no one else is capable of being near them), smugly demonstrating that she was a society unto herself and did not need a mottled, fat, overdressed, pee-soaked coworker like Thomas to chorus with because the two of them happened to be getting coffee at the same time. What so stymied Thomas was that the colleague was hoarding the moment, playing his role for him, leaving him to wobble blandly behind her and pretend that he was not eavesdropping on—or even aware of—an encounter he had every right to take part in. The colleague had effectively split in two and Thomas had become the third wheel. The anthropology on this seemed doomed to him. Everyone else in the world may as well die, since I’ve got this encounter covered. Ladies and Gentlemen, now playing the part of Thomas: the Colleague! Apparently long ago a contract had been struck (he pictured her proud, bearded father, young and strong, with one of those oversized European wallets stitched to his T-shirt) that compelled her to participate facially in the smallest endeavors. He saw her accepting this responsibility without agony, signing her name, believing that she had this one licked. Oh my God, the world is so easy! I can so beautifully do that!
Soon Thomas would be getting his own coffee, and he’d probably throw out his back pressing down the lever on the coffee thermos. He could possibly stage his own performance to demonstrate his parallel version of grotesque self-sufficiency. If the colleague wanted to destroy him with her publicly antic solitude, he could huddle with himself and confer over a mock issue, to demonstrate how athletically committed he was to being by himself, since solitude was a sport, at least as the
colleague practiced it. He could weigh a scenario, for instance—this suggested a possible physical expression—shrugging, hunching, balancing the scales—and would show anyone looking at him—Sully!—that he was so absorbed by his own issues—Look at Thomas! He’s lost in thought!—that he had unknowingly begun to dramatize the pros and cons of an argument whose details were elusive to outsiders but clearly important.
Except who really did this but a character in a play—oh you sad fakers, or that moron—the Shrugger, was he called?—who showed up now and then in one of Thomas’s son’s cartoons. Burned into the screen. A fucking television ghost. This had led the boy—miracle that he even spoke—for a time to say nothing but “I don’t know” for weeks, even when you said Good Morning to him and Good Night and I Love You and Please Stay Out of the Road. It was always “I Don’t Know” that he responded with, a small lad in food-stained pajamas, and he spoke it quietly and with so much calm certainty that it was hard not to believe him and hard not to think that this small boy had somehow cornered the market on the perfect response.
Careful, William.
I don’t know.
Good morning, cutey.
I don’t know.
Thomas finally decided that if you had to settle on a single phrase and broadcast it in the home until the people around you succumbed and cried uncle, or just cried, not that June could really cry, then this one would do fine. His son didn’t know, and that made two of them.
The colleague probably knew, he thought, looking at her. Of course she did. She knew and she knew and she knew, and then some. She knew with enough knowing to burn, and God help you if you’re not her, because speaking of cornering the market, she’s cornered the market on this. What is that like? he wondered. What is it really like? Can you tell me, Colleague? Can you tell me what you know?
It was a thousand years later, and it seemed that a terrible snow had fallen and already melted in the Moors. Creatures had been born and flourished and died and now turned to dust, the last traces of which you could just see if you squinted at the very fine air that seemed to be slowing down around Thomas, and then the colleague wheeled around with her coffee and walked right at him.
Thomas looked quickly away, to where there might have been trees growing, the branches stretching out and shading him with little splashes of shadow. In the end, what a pretty place this was. He saw a fine path the sun could take as it rose and set, and the people could crawl from their bloody holes right past his feet and drag themselves over to the watering pool, to drink or die there.
The colleague’s face—where had he seen it before?—looked so fresh and young and her skin was radiant, as if no one had ever beat her in the head until she wept herself to sleep. She had made it through, one of the few, and here she was to rescue him! A little thrill started to bloom in his chest. Why wouldn’t everyone want to be poisoned by this sweet air? The dust around Thomas was thickening into a swirl, and he was sure glad it wasn’t him sauntering over with such speed and purpose toward the scary man waiting in line. Can’t go through him, can’t go around him, must go over him: the name of a game his father used to play with him. Oh to be me right now, for a little while longer. Birds clustered up from everywhere, it seemed, and he marveled that the colleague could still make such a brave show of things.
Thomas braced himself as she approached, but the colleague was all easy smiles and there was no avoiding this one.
“Hi, Thomas, what’s up?”
Of course she knew his name. Of course she did. She bent her head into her cup, sipping and looking up at him as if nothing, nothing, nothing.
There was a luscious chemical in this moment; he felt it in his blood like a great seizing itch. A man would die if he felt like this for too long. A man would die. He stood his ground and watched the colleague’s face start to register him as he failed to speak. The face can’t hide what it knows! he wanted to say. For all of your power, your face is showing me what you think!
It was true. She was struggling desperately to appear relaxed as she stood in front of him and he didn’t respond—while I stand here melting—but her eyebrows were worrying their way down and she seemed ever so glad that she could shield her mouth in the mug. That very same mug. No matter what we’ve been through, it is a mug that I truly love.
Her whole face should be bottled, studied, sold. This was a fine mix of feelings: concern tweaked too hard, a game attempt—learned perhaps in an acting class—to show concern, since she must know that she was obliged to show concern here—this man was not speaking, and oh, those trees—but she had never been so consciously pressed to exhibit such a shattering dose of concern, probably, and how did one really even do that without getting a shit-crazed angelic look going? This was a woman who was scared out of her mind looking at him.
Maybe it was the air of the Moors that had found its way inside him, because he was filling up with a great ballooning warmth, and this dear woman was offering her face to him, such a fine and well-fashioned face. What did one really ever do with faces? Something was required now, something really special. It was too awful to think that he would not be allowed to take this face home for his very own, to hold it up and gaze at it whenever he felt sad or tired. How good it would feel to cuddle up against this woman, to feel the warmth of that skin and maybe the soft, sweet wind from her mouth that could puff some of the terrible dust away from him. There are small bits of them, those people who have gone before us, blowing over me. Madame, can you help me? Could she perhaps be invited to assist here, to shield him with the wind that only her mouth could make? Could it truly hurt to ask, and to ask as a creature new to this world, having crawled free of the trees, new and needing everything she alone could provide?
He pushed out his lower lip and opened his eyes wide and sweet for the capture. He would give her his best and most innocent face.
“Tommy wants cah-weeg to hold him.”
There, he’d said it.
Her face went big and long and open. It seemed that she was trying to swallow.
“What?” She lifted her cheeks into a question, and Thomas thought it must feel good to want to know something as badly as that. If only he could speak for her now, to say what she was too afraid to say.
Mommy needs you to answer now, honey. Please tell me what’s wrong.
It was dark and it was cold and the face looking at him so sweetly, glowing at him, had the most splendid mouth. Too many trees, well, this was what happened, wasn’t it: The air turned solid and dark and you couldn’t see or do much of anything. He liked trees, of course, they had their place in the world, but this didn’t seem right. Trees should be a comfort, not a problem. Whose idea was this, really? June would be quite upset, quite upset indeed. He’d need to get to her and be sure she was okay. Had he left her somewhere safe?
He rather knew this woman looking down on him, smiling, and, he thought, with time he could come to love her, and this would be okay. Would she be taking him home, now?
Thomas was on his back now, and the shade of the great trees felt wonderful.
“Ho dmee. Pweese,” he said to the woman. “Pweese ho dmee.”
There was a cup of water on his desk and a damp cloth in Thomas’s hand. The cloth was pressed to his head, and his head felt exquisitely nice. The hand holding the cloth was his very own and it was really a fine hand that you could not complain about. Everything was in order. He was sitting. He was safe. He was holding quite a pleasant damp cloth and he couldn’t recall his forehead ever feeling better than now, with this nubby wet washcloth pressed against it. Smuggle it home. Oh, you must. He had not thought to press a cool cloth to his head all the time, even if it was awkward to hold it there while walking. He had not thought that he could do this, but really he could, why not, what was stopping him? It felt delicious and perfect. Thomas wondered if the others were on to this. What a first-rate discovery, really. It was sad to think this cloth would dry out someday and begin to chafe and disturb his head. But that
was dark thinking. No more of that for me, he thought. This is my time, my time to enjoy. These aren’t even small pleasures. They are the largest kind there are.
The building thumped, and a hoarse cry—from deep inside a bag, was it?—sounded. He steadied his cup of water. Oh it could have been anything. Offices make sounds, don’t they, and what did he even know about the immense workings of a building like this? Someone must have run the chart on this and checked it out. Of course they had. Clearly it was not for him to worry about. Oh for more of this bait not taken. Where would they store it now that he couldn’t be fooled?
Thomas would ride the day out. If he heard something he’d say nothing. He’d do only the fair work on his desk. At five he’d shed the Crawford bibbing in the changing room and slip on his coat and hat. A glass of water would be nice. Perhaps some more water to splash on his face and wake him up for his journey. It’d be good to get home. When the doors shooshed open he’d be swept into the street with the rest of them and he’d tuck into the wind, lean hard against it, and start the long walk back. See you, he’d say, to anyone listening.
With luck, his boy will be waiting at the door when he comes home and Thomas will gather him up and take him inside for his dinner and bath. Tonight he’ll sit with the boy over food at the low wooden table he’d once built. There’ll be the usual chores and the materials to be readied for tomorrow’s trip to work. Everything in the house just so, the surfaces sponged clean with soap, and he’ll certainly be sure to remember to lock the door tonight.