by Richard Cox
“Thomas!” he cries.
I instinctively duck, like a convict running from the po-po. Scott’s smile falters a little.
“Hey, man,” he says, with what sounds like genuine concern. “Everything all right?”
My mouth opens to answer him, but I realize whatever comes out is going to be slurred. So I stop and collect myself. Proceed carefully.
“Everything’s cool. I’m off work today. Just came in to get some flies off my computer.”
To his credit, Scott’s facial expression doesn’t change, but I think he can tell I’m drunk. Plus I just said “flies” instead of “files.”
In my head I can hear a clock ticking. The doomsday clock. I don’t have much time before William walks by.
“Is it a screenplay?” he asks with a smile. “I had no idea you were so talented!”
I told you before I don’t talk about my screenwriting at work. I don’t know how the hell Scott knows. I guess Gloria told William and William told whoever the hell he felt like telling.
“Well, I don’t know about talented.”
“Sure you are. You sold a screenplay, right?”
Like I said, Scott is probably the nicest guy I’ve ever met. He’s asking these questions out of genuine interest. But I don’t have time for it right now.
“Sort of. I got an option. But it wasn’t ever make—made—into a film.”
“Well, that’s better than most people. Really awesome stuff.”
“Yeah, but I’m sort of in a hurry today. I safe—save—my files here at work in case something ever happens to my computer at home. And wouldn’t you know it, my harsh drive crashed today.”
Yeah, I know. I said “harsh drive.” I hate myself.
“Oh, man. I’m sorry. I bet you’re eager to get that backup file.”
“Yeah.”
“All right, man,” he says, and pats me on the arm. “Good luck with that.”
“Thanks, Scott.”
And that’s when I see it on his face. He just smelled alcohol…on my breath or from my pores, it doesn’t matter. As he walks away, he looks back over his shoulder at me. I make eye contact with him, looking for understanding in his eyes, but he doesn’t smile now. He’s disappointed, and Scott is rarely disappointed with anyone. Why the hell did I start drinking already? In the morning? I mean I know it’s because Gloria left, but Jesus Christ, I’m almost incapacitated. I’m an asshole.
As I turn around I feel like someone else is standing there, watching, but the cubicle hallway is still empty. I reach another corner and turn left. My cube is three down on the right.
And then I’m there.
I collapse into my chair. At least now I am out of sight. And if I made it this far, I might have a real chance to get my file and get out of here.
But when I grab the mouse to wake up the computer, nothing happens. I look at the power light and realize the computer is off. I never turn it off. Either the power went out or someone has been on my computer since I left, and there weren’t any thunderstorms last night. No reason for the power to have gone off.
So I turn the computer on. Wait for it to run through the boot sequence and start Windows.
This takes forever. Why? Why does it have to take so long?
As I wait, the alcohol in my brain causes reality to wax and wane. Consciousness drifts in and out like waves, and the intervening time could be minutes or hours. I imagine what Gloria might be doing right now. Sitting in her office…the door closed? Crying? Or is she in Jack’s office, pouring her heart out to him, revealing how miserable she has been all these months? Years?
Windows finally launches, and a moment later a dialog box pops up asking for my username and password. I key them in, more sure than ever this is going to work.
But instead of continuing into Windows, the computer returns this message:
The password is incorrect. Please retype your password. Letters in passwords must be typed using the correct case.
Dread settles over me, somehow cold and hot at the same time. I type my password again, hoping my drunk fingers might somehow have keyed in the letters wrong, but I know they didn’t.
Error message again.
The cooling fan in my computer hums. My hard disk whirs. Conversations from other cubicles float toward me, a few words here, a chuckle there. Footfalls and swooshing pants as someone walks by in the hallway behind me.
The synthetic smell of microwave popcorn.
The surreal and contrived florescent light.
And in my head, distantly, maybe I’m imagining it or maybe it’s real…a woman reciting numbers. Again.
5…8…2…0…9…pause…7…4…9…4…4…pause…5…9…2…3…0.
I see movement in my peripheral vision. When I look up, William is standing there.
“Thomas,” he says. His voice is strident. Urgent. Nervous.
“Hi, William.”
“I’m sorry, but you’re not allowed in the building any longer.”
When you’re really drunk, obstacles normally easy to overcome turn into vast, complex problems. Like how your brain works overdrive to keep your car in the correct lane, or how you can’t remember the code to your house alarm, even though you’ve successfully keyed it in thousands of times before.
Convincing William to let me copy personal files off my work computer would be difficult even if I were stone cold sober. As it is, I don’t know where to begin.
So I beg.
“Please,” I say. “My computer at home crashed. I losh—lost—some important files. But I have them backed up here. Can I please just copy those? After that you’ll never hear from me again.”
William is not a man who welcomes confrontation. This entire discussion has taken place well outside his comfort zone. But now his facial features relax and it seems—for a moment at least—like he might relent. Then he glances over his shoulder, as if someone is standing behind him, and when he looks back I know his heart has hardened.
“I’m sorry, Thomas. Any files saved on a work computer are the property of the company. In fact any intellectual property you have created on company equipment is legally owned by the company as well.”
Unless my alcohol-soaked brain is mistaken, I think William just told me that my screenplay, whether I could gain access to the file or not, is not my property. And I still (again) hear that British woman reciting numbers.
“I haven’t worked on it here,” I blurt. “I just saved it here in case of emergenshy, like right now.”
“I’m sorry,” William says. “We have no way to determine that. All we know is the file resides on that computer, which is property of the company.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it. You’re being intentionally shitty, William.”
“I’m sorry, Thomas.”
“Stop saying that!”
I try to stand up, but I don’t get my feet under me. For a moment I totter at a weird angle and then fall back into the chair. My face flushes hot.
“You’re being an ass.”
“Thomas, if you don’t—”
I stand up again, bracing myself against the desk this time to keep my balance.
“Don’t pull that profeshional horsheshit with me! You’ve been talking to my wife behind my back! You asshole!”
And right then the pressure of everything that has happened the past few days, especially that Gloria left, that my Junior is gone forever, is on top of me, like a monkey straddling my shoulders, beating on my head, crying into my ears, and the only way I can think to get rid of it and find some equilibrium is through brute force.
William’s birdlike, pasty features beg to be defiled in some way.
I lunge at him.
Then a flash of darkness, a burst of pain, and the next thing I know I’m on the carpet of my cubicle, looking up at the underside of my desk, at some kind of weird, white stain.
A head pops into view. It’s Geoff Nunn, our security director.
“Mr. Phillips,”
he says. “I’m here to escort you from the grounds. Are you able to stand up?”
My face feels flat. Hot and flat. I don’t really feel much pain at this point. I’m too self-medicated for that.
I nod.
He extends his hand, but I ignore it. I roll over and try to jump to my feet, and Geoff Nunn hits me in the back of the head again.
“Stop that!”
But when I look back at him, I realize I’m even farther under the desk. I guess I hit my head on it when I tried to stand up.
Geoff offers to help again, which I ignore again. I crawl out from underneath the desk and rise to my feet, swaying, and I would probably fall if not for a strong hand that grabs my elbow and steadies me.
“Let’s go, Mr. Phillips.”
William’s face is a frightened, strained blur as I am led past him. By now a small crowd lines the cubicle hallways, and a constellation of heads has popped up all over the building. Geoff walks me past this group of spectators, out the door and onto the sidewalk.
“You have two choices, Mr. Phillips. I can escort you completely off company property, or leave you to your own devices here. I would prefer to leave you here. But if you attempt to harm any property of the company or the vehicles of any employee who works here, I will have no choice but to take further action. I am well within my rights to do so. Have I made myself clear?”
I’m seeing stars, a kaleidoscope of colors.
“All I wanted was a file.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Phillips. I am asking you to leave now.”
“Okay,” I say. “I can manage from here.”
“Please be safe, Mr. Phillips. Do you have a cell phone? If so, I suggest you call a cab. You’re in no condition to drive.”
“I have a phone.”
“Good. Use it.”
Geoff disappears inside the building.
Once again, I am left alone.
I hate myself.
EIGHTEEN
I shuffle toward my car. When I’m finally inside, I collapse into the driver’s seat and rest for a bit. I must be drunker than I thought because I swear the sky looks orange, like the color at sundown, even though it must still be mid-morning. For a while I decide to close my eyes, and when I finally open them again, that white Cadillac is sliding by in slow motion, the gaunt, wild-eyed driver screaming silently at me. His eyes appear to have the silhouettes of bats in them. Following closely behind the Cadillac is a brown sedan, and through the windows I see two men in gray suits and Stetson hats. They look over at me. The one closest to me smiles. His teeth are long and sharp-looking, like wolves’ teeth.
We’ll get you, he says to me, though I can’t really hear him. His voice is in my head. Eventually we’ll get you.
And somehow I know he will.
Somehow I know I’m already dead.
NINETEEN
My eyes open, and for a split second I don’t know where I am or why I’m in my car. But it all comes back to me quickly, a motion blur of William and my screenplay and the melted entrails of my home computer. Gloria in the kitchen, crying, backing away from me, asking for a divorce.
I am overcome with grief, having lost my wife, having lost everything, and my eyes are beginning to fill up when someone knocks on my head. I hear it more than I feel it. Actually it’s not my head they’re hitting directly but the window upon which my head rests, and my first thought is that Gloria must have come back after all. I look around at her, unexpectedly and unabashedly grateful, tears in my eyes, and that’s when I see the person who I thought was my wife is actually Dick Stanton.
His eyes are trained on me and seem too big for his face. My head rests at a weird angle against the glass. I turn away, not wanting him to know I was about to cry, but he knocks on the window again. For a moment I think I might just ignore him, wait for him to leave, but that seems absurd. So instead I push the ignition button until the power comes on, and then roll down the window, hoping my eyes don’t betray me.
“Dude,” he says. “What’re you doing?”
“Um.”
“You were sleeping in your car,” he offers helpfully. “Or judging by the smell in there, I’d say you were passed out. Your eyes are all red.”
“Right,” I croak.
“What the hell is going on, man? Are you okay?”
“I’ve been better.”
This response is useless to him, and he just stands there looking at me. I’m so disappointed he isn’t Gloria that I can barely force myself to speak.
“I was fired yesterday. Today I wanted to get a copy of my screenplay from the work computer because my machine at home died. But William wouldn’t let me.”
“So what are you going to do now?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t look too good, man. You want to go for a drink and talk about it?”
He glances at the cup in my console and smiles again. I look at the clock on the dash and am astonished to see it’s after five o’clock. I can’t believe Geoff the security director allowed me to sit out here this long. How many people have walked by and looked at me?
My mouth is a litter box. It’s sandy and tastes like shit. I don’t really want to talk to Dick or anyone else for that matter, but what else am I going to do?
“Okay,” I say.
Dick suggests a bar near downtown, which is about a ten-minute drive on the freeway from here, and I agree.
“You okay to drive?” he asks.
“Yeah. I guess slept it off.”
He gives me another once-over, as if to convince himself I’m telling the truth. Then he says, “All right. Just follow me over there.”
TWENTY
Once we’ve sat down and ordered a couple of beers, I share with Dick the bullet-point version of my story: the morning at church, the termination of my employment, my subsequent obsession with the ant farm game, home computer failure, and my doomed attempt to get the screenplay file from my work computer. I leave out anything about Gloria. When I get to his part, where he spaces out in the cafeteria, Dick is incredulous.
“I spaced out?”
“I guess that’s what you would call it. You stopped talking and looked right past me, staring off into who knows where.”
“For how long?”
“I don’t know. Ten, fifteen seconds. Twenty?”
Or longer, I want to continue, but don’t, even though I couldn’t say with any certainty how much time passed while Dick sat there staring into space. The interval could have been measured in seconds, sure, but it could have been longer.
We’re at the wine bar, or rather sitting on the patio outside the bar. Nearest us, a couple of lawyers in dark suits laugh heartily at each other’s jokes; at another table, two skinny kids sporting spiked hair and vintage T-shirts talk in voices too low for me to hear. While I look at them, a girl saunters up. She seems vaguely Eastern European, maybe Slavic. Her hair is long and coarse and black, her eyebrows arched seductively. And while she seems to be blessed with a figure straight out of Playboy, her curves are hidden under a loose-fitting white tank top and a lacy white skirt that’s too big for her. She’s also wearing galoshes…black galoshes with white polka-dots and pink soles. You’d have to see it to believe it.
Dick says something I miss.
“What?”
He nods in the direction of the girl, who is making a ruckus with her friends.
“Not worth the trouble. Although all men, married or not, do have a break-even point.”
The girl is bent over the table, carrying on a conversation with one of the guys still sitting. From this angle her breasts push against the side of the tank top, making it clear they are full and round. The guy talking to her is wearing a green T-shirt with a drawing of a dinosaur on it. Underneath the dinosaur are printed the words “Never Forget.” I’m sure the view of the girl’s breasts is grand from where that guy is sitting, but to his credit his eyes remain fixed on hers.
“You mean the point where the reward b
ecomes equal to the risk?” I ask Dick.
“Exactly. And she is not yours.”
What Dick doesn’t know yet is my graph has been significantly altered by the events of this morning. With Gloria filing for divorce, certain variables must be recalculated to determine my new break-even point. And I have a feeling the girl in the polka-dot galoshes now occupies a favorable place on my graph.
“Anyway,” I tell him, “you spaced out.”
“Okay.”
“And then you asked me if I wanted to know how it works.”
“How what works?”
“The world.”
Again Dick just sits there, contemplating the story.
“Then you told me the truth is numbers. Lots and lots of numbers.”
“Well,” he chuckles, “I am a software developer, right?”
I’m not surprised Dick finds my story amusing, but his amusement nevertheless annoys me. Since I was fired and all.
“Then you told me about the Ant Farm software.”
“That I do remember,” Dick says. “And the reason I told you about the Ant Farm app is because it seemed like you were having a sort of existential crisis after what happened with the priest. About the gays and all. But man, I never expected you to…I mean, I’m really sorry for all this. I had no idea anything like this would happen.”
“Well, it’s not like it’s your fault. I’d already seen the man in the bathroom. All this was already happening. The game was just one part of it.”
“Sure, man. Sure.”
Dick’s condescension makes me want to punch him. But I don’t have anyone else to talk to, at least not anyone impartial. Normally for something like this I would call Sophia, and she’s probably wondering why I’ve been so quiet the past few days, but contacting her at this point is just going to complicate things. Sophia doesn’t always give me the best advice when it comes to my wife.
After a moment I continue my story with Dick, further detailing my experience with the Ant Farm game, the drinking, Gloria finding me passed out. I tell him about waking up in the middle of the night and taking the Ambien. I even try to explain the hallucinations to him, the chairs, and then, finally, reluctantly, I reveal that Gloria left me this morning and plans to file for divorce.