by Taylor Grand
He perused my professional resume, glanced over to size me up, and firmly smoothed the paper out on the surface of his immaculate desk.
“I see you’re a writer. Film…or TV?”
I winced a little. In Los Angeles, writers are assumed to be solely interested in film or television. Mention you’re a novelist at an L.A. cocktail party, and people stare at you like you have a second penis—sticking out of your forehead.
“Neither.” I maintained a pleasant tone. “I’m a novelist.”
Mills smiled thinly. “Oh. Well, some of our finest employees are in the arts. We recruit a lot of…your type.”
I wasn’t sure if he was intentionally trying to insult me, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt.
The interview crawled along like a police interrogation. Beneath Mills’ plastered-on grin, it became obvious that he had a general disdain for creative types. I suspected that he was a frustrated artist himself; the city was teeming with them.
He droned on about confidentiality agreements, time sheets, holiday overtime and a laundry list of company policies. I tried to remain focused, but the lifelessness in his voice nearly put me to sleep.
Finally, he said: “Congratulations. You’re part of the family now.”
I refocused my attention on the man with the lackluster face. And then I noticed it. Something so subtle I hadn’t perceived it before.
It was his eyes.
They looked…dead.
****
Mills called me a few hours later at home and I spoke with him through a fog of relief and anxiety. I had a fair amount of experience as a temp employee, and knew it was a daily crapshoot. One day you would land a pleasant gig in a luxurious office, and the next you’d find yourself slaving away in a rat’s nest under the rule of the Anti-Christ.
“Good news,” Mills said. “You’re scheduled for a five-day assignment at Capital-Co., starting tomorrow; one of our biggest clients; a real estate capital investment firm.” He informed me that Capital-Co. had topped America’s Most Admired Companies list in Fortune magazine and that their hourly rate was higher than industry standard. They even supplied free bagels on Mondays and Fridays.
I shared the good news with Megan, and she was relieved, to say the least. She showed her appreciation in bed that night. Normally, I slept like a baby afterward, but all I could think about was finishing the manuscript I’d started.
Despite having to get up early the next day for my temp assignment, I stayed up late reading The Infected. I was desperate to know what happened to Jonathan, particularly as I neared the end of the handwritten section of the manuscript, the point at which my grandfather had stopped writing—and my father had taken over.
Jonathan toils away for another year at Grayston, working his way up from the mailroom into an entry-level lob in the accounts department. With his father’s accumulating medical bills, it becomes clear that his dreams of returning to college are moving farther and farther away.
His father has become a withered shell of a man, loose, bloodless folds of skin draped over his brittle frame. One night, not long before he dies, he confides in Jonathan. In between rasping breaths, he tells him that Bernice—Jonathan’s mother—is a lying whore and has been cheating on him.
Jonathan is appalled at the accusation. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he exclaims. “When would she have time? She’s your caretaker all day long.”
His father gives a wretched laugh, raw with physical and emotional pain. “My caretaker? That whore disappears for hours with no explanation, smelling of cheap men’s cologne whenever she comes back.”
Jonathan refuses to listen, unable to believe his mother capable of such a thing.
His father dies a week later.
When Jonathan feels that the appropriate amount of grieving has passed, he asks his mother when she plans to go back to the factory work she did before his father took ill. He’s eager to re-enter college as a full-time architectural student, but knows that it will be impossible if he’s also the family’s single source of income.
His mother tells him that she’s too depressed to work and begs for more time to adjust to life without his father.
Jonathan accepts this and bides his time in the hope that he can get his architectural degree through night school, even though it will take him at least twice as long to do it.
However, when one of Jonathan’s friends spots his mother out on the town a few weeks later, being publicly affectionate with another man, he realizes that she’s already “adjusted” just fine. He confronts her about it the next day. She flatly denies it.
And as he stares into his mother’s eyes, he realizes that she is completely indifferent to his hopes and dreams. For the first time, he notices the deadness of her eyes; and to his growing horror, realizes that the infected can be anyone—even those you love most.
My grandfather’s handwritten prose ended there.
I sat there immobile, processing the last chapter for quite some time. And like a jigsaw puzzle, pieces of my family’s past began to drop into place. I remembered how my father spoke of my grandmother with such distaste. How she’d run off in the middle of the night when he was ten years old; left town to be with a traveling salesman who made more money than my grandfather ever could.
She never contacted them again.
My grandfather’s life was laid bare before me in the manuscript, thinly disguised as a piece of fiction. I suddenly recalled my own mother telling me that John Carter Sr.’s lack of education had kept him stuck in a low-level supervisory position his entire career.
I knew then that my grandfather had died of shattered dreams and a broken heart; he hadn’t completed the manuscript for The Infected, because he had become one of them.
I flipped back to the foreboding words that he’d written alongside the margin of the manuscript earlier, and a shiver seized me as I read it again.
Life imitating art…or the reverse? The longer I stay at Hudson and Weiss, the more I find myself struggling to separate the two. I’m beginning to think that the people I work with may be infected, and writing this novel is the only thing keeping me alive…
I slept terribly all night. In my dreams, my grandfather’s pale, gnarled hands grasped at me through a writhing tapestry of darkness, and countless dead eyes peered out at me.
****
Sleep-deprived and groggy, I stepped into the lobby of the Capital-Co. building the next morning in my best work clothes. As I scanned the lobby, the austere, fluorescent lighting seemed to drain everything rather than illuminate it and the drab office furnishings and generic décor blended into a functional, but dreary landscape.
I stepped up to an imposing reception desk and tried to catch the attention of the middle-aged woman answering the phones. Her skin looked nearly as gray as the corporate logo on the wall.
She spoke into her earpiece with a hollow voice, “Thank you for calling Capital-Co., how may I direct your call?” She repeated this over and over with the same cadence. Finally, after a momentary lapse in calls, she glanced at me.
“Yes?”
I gave my best it’s my first day, so I’m trying to make a good impression smile and said, “I’m from the Tempting Agency. I was told to report to a…Denny Augustine?”
The phone lit up again, attracting the gray woman’s attention. “File room,” she said on automatic. “Take the elevator to the basement…follow it to the end.”
She returned to the phone calls and her broken-record greetings. The dead sound of her voice haunted me all the way to the basement.
Exiting the elevator, I felt as if I’d just stepped into the bowels of the earth. The automatic door closed behind me with a ting and the silence that followed pressed in from all sides.
I wound my way through the innards of the building until I reached a cavernous room. I was startled by an imp of a man staring at me, standing directly in the center of the room with his hands clasped behind his back.
I wondered how
long he’d been standing there.
“Hello…” the imp said. “Welcome to the file room.”
Denny Augustine was a deadly serious little man. He’d spent the last fourteen years working deep in the innards of Capital Co.; and he smelled as musty as the mountains of files that surrounded us.
I was fatigued, but did my best to focus on his detailed explanation of the filing system. A dizzying swarm of words buzzed inside my head as the imp lectured me on the proper filing of tax compliance forms, K-1s, P&Ls, Audits, Investor Reports and an endless array of real estate financials.
I stifled a scream of delight when my lunchtime reprieve arrived like a governor’s pardon at an execution.
During lunch I sat in a corner of the kitchen on the 18th floor (which had the best view of the city) and continued reading The Infected. I did my best to ignore the odd looks I elicited from everyone who passed by. Apparently, the act of sitting down and enjoying a lunch break was an alien concept for Capital Co. employees.
As I continued to read the manuscript, the first thing I noticed was that my father had adopted my grandfather’s voice quite well.
It was mere days after my confrontation with Mother that I came to understand the depths of her callousness. When I arrived home that Friday evening, I discovered a handwritten note from her on the refrigerator. With a scant fifty-nine words, she forever changed the course of my life and how I would view the world.
Jonathan,
I have found someone to take care of me, and have sold both the house and the family car, as I have no need for either. You are a legal adult now, thus I am placing your siblings in your care. I trust you’ll look after them in my absence, as I can no longer administer their needs.
Mother
I stopped reading for a moment and stared out the window. My father had taken the tragedy of his mother leaving him and integrated it into the novel. It made perfect sense—an obvious continuation of the manuscript.
My lunch hour seemed to fly by in seconds, and I soon found myself back in the dungeon disguised as a file room.
I spent the next few hours trying to get to know Denny Augustine, but he was as impenetrable as the seemingly countless files that filled the room. I noticed a travel poster for the Greek islands half-hidden behind some file folders on his desk. It caught my eye, because it was the only thing in the entire room with a modicum of color.
“I love the Greek Islands,” I said, gesturing toward the image of Greece.
Denny looked at me, then the poster. It offered a breathtaking view of mountainous islands that seemed to climb straight out of the Aegean Sea. Denny stared at it with puzzlement, as if seeing it for the first time.
“Forgot that was there…” he said trailing off as he gently pulled the thumbtacks from the poster. And then an afterthought, “…a lifetime ago.”
He folded it up carefully, and for a moment I thought he was planning to take it home. But then he shoved it into a recycling bin.
We spent the rest of the afternoon filing in silence.
When I returned home that night, I lied to Megan and told her that the temp job was great and quickly changed the subject. No good would come from complaining about it. After all, I would only be there for a week.
After dinner I cleaned the dishes, gave Megan a peck on the cheek, and hurried to my desk in the makeshift office in the guest bedroom (the bedroom I’d soon be giving up to our newborn). I was anxious to continue reading.
The next few chapters of The Infected took a darker, more fantastical direction. This wasn’t a great surprise, as my father’s work leaned toward dystopian science fiction.
In the novel, Jonathan is forced into the unlikely role of parent to his younger siblings: 11 year-old Stephanie and 14 year-old Paul. Between the pressure of taking care of his grieving brother and sister and working for a company that eats away at his soul, alcohol seems to be the only effective balm.
One night while working late, he hears an eerie shuffling noise echoing somewhere within the lonely halls of Grayston. He gets up from his desk to investigate, and staggers; intoxicated from his regular nipping at the whiskey he keeps hidden in the bottom drawer of his desk.
A movement catches his eye—a dark figure shuffles past. Startled, Jonathan almost falls again, unsteady on his feet.
“Evening,” Jonathan calls out, but there is no response.
He follows the lumbering figure down the hall: a large man in a dark suit moving toward a set of double doors that lead to the finance department.
Intrigued, Jonathan continues after him, but his wobbly legs cause him to stumble. The man hears this and turns, just as Jonathan hides behind a pillar, his back pressed against the wall.
After what feels like a lifetime of waiting, he hears the double doors being unlocked. Cautiously, he peeks out with one eye. The broad shouldered man shambles inside a large and brightly illuminated room; beyond the door are rows upon rows of men and women, hunched over their desks like the shanghaied crew of an ocean-going vessel. Several of them move in unison, as if controlled by some sort of corporate hive-mind.
A handful of dark-suited men pace between the rows, like slave ship captains lording over their shackled crews.
As the door slowly begins to close, one of the nameless employees glances up from his work: a featureless man with vague holes where his eyes, nose and mouth should be.
Glancing around the section of the room that he can see, Jonathan realizes that everyone inside looks like an unfinished mannequin.
He has to stifle a scream as the door closes with a resounding click. He begins to run. And he doesn’t stop running until he’s safely in his car and screeching out of the parking lot.
At home, Jonathan stares into the bathroom mirror, scared sober. He tells himself that his mind is playing tricks on him. It isn’t the first time he’s seen something dark and twisted at the bottom of a whiskey bottle.
He tells himself that the office is always hectic near the end of the fiscal quarter, and that the faceless drones he saw were really just a bunch of accounting employees working late—garden variety bean counters, burning the midnight oil to get their yearly numbers in order.
But another voice in his head tells him something different. Jonathan suddenly recalls the words of his college buddy, Brian Cort, who said: I’m talking about dehumanization like we never imagined back in school. That company won’t be satisfied until they’ve sucked your soul dry.”
He shudders, realizing that his friend was being neither ironic nor metaphorical.
Jonathan gazes at his reflection, studies it with growing apprehension—and tells himself that the bland face staring back is just his imagination…
The next page of the manuscript was blank.
That was it—end of story. Just one more thing to add to my dad’s long of list of unfinished business.
I went back through his detailed story notes. It was obvious he had intended to complete his father’s novel. But nothing explained why he had stopped writing. Writer’s block? Life’s distractions? Or was it something more sinister?
I suddenly recalled the look on his face the day he’d caught me trying to open the footlocker; the fear in his eyes. I’d never been able to wrap my head around that.
Maybe I’d misinterpreted it. After all, I’d only been eight years old at the time. This was before my dad’s only novel had been published, so perhaps he’d been ashamed of the large stack of unfinished work inside, a footlocker brimming with failure. That certainly fit his profile. Dad always seemed embarrassed that he wasn’t more prolific, his responses always awkward when anyone asked him if he was going to write another book.
He had tried, of course. Tried and failed many times. But like his father before him, Robert Carter Jr. had finally resigned himself to a life of quiet desperation.
Determination gripped me. I wanted to honor the ghosts of my father and grandfather by finishing the manuscript. And yet, this wasn’t a completely selfless act. It was
a salable story, the kind of novel that could put me back on the map. And it already had a built-in marketing hook: a novel co-written by three generations of writers.
I flipped back to my grandfather’s prophetic handwritten message, scrawled in the margin. He seemed to believe that writing the manuscript would somehow keep him from becoming infected. And deep down, I suppose I believed that finishing the manuscript would save me too.
A boyhood memory appeared like an unwanted guest. It was the day my mother and I showed up unannounced at my father’s workplace—as a surprise for his birthday. The dreary lighting and gray walls had struck me, and I was reminded of prison scenes I’d seen on TV. My dad sat slumped over a stack of paperwork, and there seemed to be a terrible sadness about him. It had made me want to cry, just seeing him like that.
When he spotted me walking toward him, his face lit up with all the love there was in the world. He jumped up and hugged me for so long that I finally got embarrassed and pulled away.
I still regret that.
After our visit, he hinted several times that we could visit him anytime. But I didn’t want to go back to that awful place, couldn’t bear the thought seeing him like that again.
Thirty years later, after he’d spent the better part of his life reviewing and processing an endless stream of internal forms and reports for a shipping company, he was downsized just six months short of retirement.
He took his own life not long after.
Angered, I slammed the leather-bound manuscript on my desk and went to bed, curling up next to Megan and placing my hand gently across her swollen belly. That night I had wretched dreams, inexorably drawn toward that veil of shadows where thousands of vacant eyes stared like glass marbles out at me. Leathery hands grabbed my arms; it was my grandfather again, trying to drag me down into his darkness.
As I struggled to break free, something bit into my leg—ripping my flesh open.
I looked down to see a blood spattered face gazing up at me. A man with dead eyes.