Fragile

by Chris Katsaropoulos

  He sits for a moment at the chair by the desk and picks up one of his loafers, about to slip it on, but he decides that it’s too early to go down for dinner. Within the gentle hush of the air conditioning, between the worn pile of the tan Dacron carpeting and the granulated white moonscape of the acoustic ceiling tiles, there is nothing left inside the frigid crypt-like space of this room but him and his failed ambitions. A thought invades the smooth emptiness the television has forged within his skull: You will never make a difference.

  He will never fulfill his childhood ambitions. All those things he dreamed he would do are gone; they have been worn away by years of doing what he was told he should do, by listening to the voices that told him, one by one, over and over, to do the right thing, to tow the line and do what’s expected of him.

  He takes a deep breath of the chilled air and leans his head back, staring at the ceiling. His life floats there above him like a sinuous, gently twisting tape measure, the years ticked off from one to sixty-five across the tapered, faintly glowing surface of this object he has unwittingly fashioned. It seems to have an ebb and flow to it, as if it’s being nudged along by a current in a stream, and he realizes that the rightmost end of the tape is narrowing to a blurred tip that must be the future: wavering, dim and indistinct, as opposed to the bright shining surface on the other end of the spectrum, where his hopes and dreams shone like the sun.

  Then, from this image of despair, a vision of an expense account dinner appears, enticing him with the prospect of a beer and a steak at the hotel restaurant. This is what his life has been reduced to now: the momentary pleasures of eating, sleeping, and ingesting pre-packaged mass entertainment. Go ahead, a voice inside him says, you deserve it. You worked hard today, traveled all the way from Spokane to wherever it is you are now. The line at the airport check-in counter was long, the line at the security checkpoint even longer. They made him take out his laptop and take off his shoes. Even subjected him to the indignities of the probing metal wand and the pat-down search after his loose change triggered the x-ray alarm. The customer he met with this morning was unconvinced—no, the model 2006ZX server doesn’t have the capacity we need to manage the entire food processing plant we’re bringing on line in six months, and the new model 2007YZ is at least fifty thousand over the competitor’s comparable. They wouldn’t listen to reason, didn’t try to work with him as he showed them how they could make it work with a simple upgrade to the 2006ZX. He left them the specs, promised a call back tomorrow, checked the box off his to-do list, and dropped the rental car at the airport.

  But some yearning remnant of that glowing bright end of the tape measure, some indistinct notion of his own immortality hidden away in a compartment deep within him makes him open his briefcase and pull out the pad of drawing paper and a mechanical pencil he bought last week at the art supply house near the university campus in the city where he lives. The blank sheet of paper feels rough in his hands as he slowly, carefully tears it from the pad. He places it on the desk and sets the pad aside, the empty white sheet staring up at him, challenging him to make the first move.

  It has been at least ten years since he last attempted to draw. He reads blueprints for his job on occasion, when he’s looking at plans for a plant or office park where a server he has sold is going to be installed, but they are highly technical schematics that show the details of the network cabling for large industrial factories, huge boxes of steel and pre-fab concrete slabs where grape jelly or precision electronic circuit boards or jet aircraft engines will be manufactured. He knows how to read these schematics, but the pinpoint of light that shines within him, a remnant of his earliest ideas about himself, still seeks something beyond this transactional application of his talent. The first mark on the page is the most difficult, the act of prime commitment that will introduce a definite direction to the work. Yet the bulk of the form he imagines has set itself before him, hovers in the near foreground, somewhere between his brow and the lamp on the desk, and takes him, by the pure act of willful envisioning, outside himself, outside the deep regrets and fears that have haunted him. The form establishes itself as two smoothly curving arcs, and that is the essential problem of perspective that must resolve itself in his mind before pencil can be put to paper: the building occupies one quadrant of the circle that is the central plaza of the small Midwestern city where he was born. He must see it from a particular vantage point and then translate that view into a certain shallowness of arc that is less than the degree you would see if the building were viewed from directly above or directly in front.

  A plinking of raindrops on the windows behind the drawn shades gives him a rhythm to work to, gathers force and becomes a solid undercurrent of rushing water. Yes, he thinks, remembering. The viewpoint should be from the steps that lead down from the monument that occupies the center of the circular plaza. That is where the viewer would stand: not at the top of the steps where the tall plinth of the monument rises, but midway down so the perspective can take in the entire building, the full ninety degrees of arc, from Kendall Street all the way around to Jefferson, each end of it surmounted by a fantastic and elaborate cupola.

  He closes his eyes and lets himself see it. Hovering before him in the darkness, a shallow arc, the essence of the form. His eyes open and he places pencil to paper. With one effortless sweep of his forearm he traces the line across the virginal page, lightly delineating the pure and uncorrupted loveliness of it. In an instant the line is finished, the page is cleaved in two. He has done it.

  He stands and walks to the window. He tugs the heavy curtains aside and stares through beads of water at the lights of the cars inching their way along the street below, the headlights coming at us, careful girls, hold my hand before we cross the street. Wait now, wait until this car goes by.”

  The cars parked along here make it hard to see. Where do so many cars come from? They should park in the garages by the alley, but they’re lazy and don’t want to pull all the way around back. The tinkling of the bell the vegetable man rings, he rolls his truck down the street the opposite way. It must be Friday, a broad twinkling of the bell calling us to the truck, gears grinding down to slow and pull up at the curb.

  “Hold onto my hands girls, while we cross. We look both ways.”

  “Evening Amelia.”

  “Hello Tassie, how have you been keeping?” Out here in her bathrobe and a pair of beat up sneakers; I must look like I just came from church or a funeral. Flecks of sunlight striking her black hair, she dyes it darker than coal.

  “Who you got there?”

  “This is Jenny, and this one’s Zoe. Babysitting for a good friend of mine.”

  The Mexicans are out and the blacks too, all of them ambling out. If we go a little faster we can get there before it’s a line. Five years ago, there wasn’t a single Mexican on the block. Fifteen years ago not a single black, but things must change, always things must change. Now look, it says Fruteria Los Compadres on the truck. The vegetable man rings the broad bell twinkling, parks it and hops around to the back.

  “Buenas noches, mi amigos y amigas. Vienes comprar mi excelentes productos del campo. Manzanas, tomates, melónes a la venta.”

  The words roll off his tongue like a song.

  “What are you buying tonight, Amelia?”

  Tassie cut in front, she had to get there first. The littlest one holds on tighter. All these strangers and the smells, green beans with a crisp dry smell of the dirt in the fields, and the peaches too ripe it seems. The full round smell of ripe peaches, they waited too long on those. Now the other man comes to help, Miguel is his name. I cannot speak a word, but he smiles and pointing there, there, he knows. A handful of beans in the metal scale hanging from the back of the truck, he nods and puts another handful on the scale, slides them in the bag, then the oldest girl takes the melon, not too big to carry his portfolio down to the lobby and look for the restaurant on the other side of the trickling slate-backed fountain, the Atrium Lounge or some n
ame such as that, they did a nice job with the porterhouse the last time he was here.

  Even though it’s a hotel restaurant, the plump blond waitress gives him a squinty look when he tells her he wants a table for one, as if what he has asked for is an impossibility. She swivels her head around, scanning the half-empty room with its cherry paneling and wall sconces that each generate a surprisingly dim cone of light, then brings her eyes back to him, still trying to decide whether to show him to a seat.

  “Do you have a reservation?”

  “Do I need one?”

  “We generally recommend it,” she says, as if reading from a cue card, “especially after six.”

  A familiar and unwelcome sensation crowds its way into his head, coalescing into a lingering thought: I don’t belong here. Even though he has inhabited this earth for sixty-five years and for most of the past forty has earned a salary that places him in the top ninety-five percent of wage-earners on the planet, the feeling that he doesn’t really deserve to be here still haunts him. Ever since he can remember, a persistent sense of displacement has trailed him wherever he goes, as if he is mistakenly living someone else’s life. As if he should be somewhere else, doing something else.

  “There are open tables,” he points out, his voice rising, defensively stating the obvious.

  “I know, sir,” the waitress says, “but we have a party of thirteen coming at seven, as well as several four-tops.” She gives the word sir a special emphasis that manages to convey her annoyance with him.

  “Well, okay then. I suppose there are other restaurants nearby.” Defeated, he turns to take his leave, though he typically tries to stay inside the hotel as much as possible on these business trips, rarely venturing outside into the nameless cities he visits. He plans his next move, the elevator ride back to the room to get a sports coat and an umbrella, walking in the rain in search of a decent place to eat. The waitress consults a laminated map of the restaurant’s tables, then reaches a decision. With a deft slight twitch of her hand, she marks an X through one of the tables with a black magic marker.

  “Here,” she says, jerking her head towards the back of the room. “I can give you number three.” She bolts in the direction of a large aquarium that’s embedded into one of the woodpaneled walls. He thinks of the rain again and the prospect of the porterhouse he remembers from last time and follows her. The table she leads him to is off by itself, wedged into a space between the aquarium and the swinging double doors to the kitchen. She tosses one of the thick leather-bound menus onto the table in front of the chair that faces the kitchen doors, but he sits in the other chair instead, the one with a view of the murky aquarium.

  “Soup of the day is seafood gumbo. My name is Maggie,” she says, back on track with her pre-rehearsed script. “Leo will be your server tonight.”

  He settles into his chair and watches Maggie waddle away, anticipating the sharp bitterness of a cold beer. A waiter swoops around the corner and bangs his forearm into the metal door with such force that the door whipsaws three times on its hinges after he’s disappeared into the kitchen. Soon, another waiter zips by, holding aloft a circular tray loaded with steaks and the humped, steaming back of a bright red lobster.

  The jaunty classical tune starts chiming on Tris’s cell phone. He quickly flips it open to stop the noise. The blinking message on the screen reveals the name and number of the caller who launched the snippet of symphony:

  LAURA HOLLOWAY 415-555-9256

  The brief message, a tiny electronic packet transmitted across hundreds of miles and laden with a wealth of conflicted meanings and emotions, scrolls across the screen and winks out of existence before returning again, number by number, on the left side. Tris hesitates for an instant, then presses IGNORE. Like magic, the music stops, the name goes away, at least for a while. Then, as if to demonstrate that he cannot shirk his responsibilities quite so easily, the phone chimes again. He makes a mental note to download a new ring tune—this one has proven to be quite annoying. He flips the phone open anticipating another call from Laura, an immediate response to his rebuke, but it’s Hal Pope from Integrated Logistics, the customer he flicked away earlier by not answering the phone. It’s past 9 p.m. on the east coast—this must really be trouble. Tris grits his teeth and presses TALK.

  “Tris Holloway.”

  “Yes, Tris. I’ve been trying to reach you.”

  “Hal,” he says with forced enthusiasm. “Kinda late out there.”

  “We got a major problem,” Hal says, and proceeds to explain in excruciating detail the technical flaw in the mid-range server Tris sold him several months ago that has prevented it from coming on line properly and has subsequently transformed Integrated’s refrigerated warehouse in New Jersey into a vast cavern piled high with rapidly defrosting frozen foods.

  “I’m certainly aware of the ramifications,” Tris says, using the biggest, most neutral, concern-filled word he can come up with.

  “This is ten million dollars of product on the line—what are you going to do about it?”

  “Well Hal,” he says, mind racing through an algorithm of emergency phone calls he can place to various technical support staff at his company, “I’ll get my tech guys in touch with your facility manager within the next thirty minutes.”

  “Too late! My ass is toast if you don’t have someone out here on site in the next fifteen minutes. I’ve been trying to reach you all night—why don’t you answer your goddamn phone?”

  That’s a very good question, he thinks, eyes scanning the menu, wishing he had the green-bottled beer and the steak already in front of him. His eyes search the room, looking for help to come from somewhere—Leo the waiter perhaps—someone, anyone to get him out of this life of talking people into buying things that he has sullenly trudged through for the past forty-five years. Maggie the hostess is leading her large crowd of anticipated diners to their preferable spot in the center of the restaurant, the excited high notes of their laughter rising above the clink of silverware and glasses as tables are shoved together to accommodate them. A quick, furtive movement in the aquarium catches his eye: there, in the corner, something moved.

  At first glance the large dim box seems to be devoid of life, the murky water filtered with bubbles from a hidden pump, glowing with a yellowish light from a lamp that’s been latched onto the top rim of the tank. In the lower corners of the tank are two complementary piles of brown that he first assumed were merely accumulated filth. This is where the movement came from. An abrupt, precise wave of a tentacle that stirs a swirl of water and registers the objects squashed into the corners of the tank as lobsters—stacked in a seething, swarming pile of legs and beaks, pincers and eye stalks and fluttering tails that curl and uncurl as one of the creatures struggles to extract itself from the slumbering mound of its brethren. Hal Pope and his warehouse of spoiling food seem very far away now. Tris’s thoughts are locked on the brown speckled creature making its way across the floor of the aquarium towards the stack of lobsters on the opposite side, wondering what is going through the tiny brain of this animal, what makes it do what it’s doing? Then, suddenly, a bare arm thrusts itself into the tank and reaches for the fellow who singled himself out by emerging from the pile, the hand missing once as he scrabbles away, but catching him with a second swipe, lifting the poor fellow up and out of the water, the limp, segmented carapace of his tail dripping as he’s hoisted to his doom.

  “Listen, Hal,” Tris says, his voice coming from some other compartment of his being, the area he has come to think of as ‘auto-pilot,’ the part of him that sends the e-mail and checks the voice mail and files the expense report spreadsheets once a week. “I’ll get my best guy on it—Teddy Kucic. You met him when we did the installation a few weeks ago.” And now the vague promise turns into a lie. “I’m sure I can have him reach you in no time.”

  Maggie is just as busy as she said she would be. Now she’s seating a family of four at a table directly in front of him who look for all the
world as if they’re here on vacation, the two small children, a boy and a girl, clutching souvenirs the parents bought them at the local museum or zoo or theme park. The father is solicitous of his wife and his two young children, making sure they have what they need—he reaches over to another table and hands the boy a roll of silverware wrapped in a linen napkin. It’s clear that this is a special occasion for the family, having steak at a fancy restaurant. Tris’s heart swells to think of the planning discussions that must have gone into this choice, the wife perhaps questioning whether it’s too much money to spend on a meal the children might not even enjoy, the father insisting that they deserve to eat at least one meal in some place other than a fast-food joint—it will expand the kids’ horizons—Tris knows, he can picture every last detail, he has been in these same situations before, two children of his own, raised and sent to college and gone now, leaving him with only memories of long-ago moments such as these. Hal’s tiny voice is saying something to Tris from very far away. Instead of listening to him, Tris watches the back of the little girl’s head as she tries to read the menu, her hair parted very precisely down the back of her head, her mother for all the wanting must have taken the time to comb the hair out very carefully as she got the girls ready to come here. The part divides her head into two perfect halves, a line down the back of her head where I can see the pretty pink scalp, the pig tails braided out to either side as she bends her head down. The other one with her hair in curls that dip down over her eyes while she eats the melon.