by Daphne Lamb
“But you have water,” I said. “You have Friends. The show. And the actual kind it looks like.”
“The world has a way of disposing of things that it doesn’t need anymore,” he said. “You let the universe deal with such silly things.”
I nodded. “You’re right,” I said. “You’re right in a weird way that I never thought about.”
“We have to give up the ways of thinking that we’ve gotten used to,” he said. He stared me down with his big eyes. “Now tell me. What can we do for you?”
I thought for a moment. “I would absolutely love a shower,” I said. “And a working toilet.”
He smiled. “Then you shall have one.”
He led me toward one of the RVs, where I bristled with excitement over having the first real shower in weeks. But there was a slight damper on it as I looked around at the rest of the group, which was only about thirty people. They had strange reddish markings on their face and vacant looks in their eyes.
“Smells great,” I said. “What’s for dinner?”
No one responded, so I kept moving on.
I pointed to the tribe cooking and setting out place settings for everyone.
“So nice to see civilization surviving,” I said.
“Sweetheart,” Darren said. “You are welcome to water and bread, but the rest is not for you.”
I nodded and allowed myself to be pushed inside the RV with a clean fluffy towel that had a green stripe and the Holiday Inn logo.
* * *
Later that night I crept back to the house, food and bottles of water in hand. I entered the back door quietly shutting it behind me before I noticed in the darkness there were two silhouettes sitting at the dilapidated kitchen table.
I was startled, jumped and dropped a bottle.
“Who is that?” I squinted, trying to identify the figures.
There was a deep sigh. “Ideally,” said Robert’s voice. “We would have switched on the light when you entered. It would have made a more dramatic presentation.”
“You can’t be dramatic without candles,” Bruce said. “Couldn’t find any, but whatever.”
“For what?” I asked.
“You broke your promise that you weren’t going to go out alone,” he said.
“I never promised,” I said. “You made your statement, and I never gave you a yes or no.”
“You can’t see this,” he said in the dark. “But I’m shaking a finger at you. Because what you’ve done is incredibly dangerous.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I went looking for drinkable water. And I found it.”
“Really?” Bruce’s voice broke out. “Is it Fiji or Voss? It better not be that Aquafina crap. That stuff hurts my teeth.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “When it’s offered, you don’t ask what’s on the label. And how does water hurt your teeth?”
“Wait,” Robert said. “Who offered it to you?”
“Why are we having this conversation in the dark?” I asked. “Can’t we at least sit in the living room or wait until morning?”
“Fine,” Robert said. “But as your employer—”
“Nope.” I shook my head. “If Mitchellwide doesn’t exist, then I am not your employee.”
“To keep you safe in all lands,” he said. “You can trust Mitchellwide hands. That’s just an ideal philosophy you should still be following!”
“Now is not the time to quote the company ad logo!” I said. “I did data entry and lied on my time card, so there’s no point in waving the corporate loyalty flag!”
“That’s disappointing to hear.” He stood, tripped over the fallen bottle, but recovered. “Son of a bitch!”
“Careful.”
“God, I miss electricity,” he said.
I set the rest of the things down. “I got a bag of chips,” I said. “The baked kind. Just for you.”
Bruce sighed heavily. “Who? Me or Robert?”
“You of course.”
“It’s late,” he said. “The last thing I wanted to do tonight was wait up, hoping you’d come back.” He stood, also tripped on the bottle. “Oh come on!”
His silhouette gained balance back by steadying himself on the doorway.
“Damn it,” he muttered, then disappeared into the living room. I listened to him fall into the makeshift bed. “Are you coming to bed or not?” he shouted.
I didn’t answer. I sat in the chair and rested my head on the table.
* * *
In the morning I woke up to find Debra face down in a bag of pretzels that I had snagged from the RV community.
“Did I fall asleep here?” I asked.
She lifted her head and stared at me hard. “You wouldn’t happen to have an extra pair of shoes, would you?”
I shook my head. “Sorry, I don’t,” I said. “I wish I did.”
She narrowed her eyes, but then sighed. “My feet are killing me. I don’t think I can go another day in those shoes.” Her voice became shaky as the tears welled up. “These were my favorites, but they’re killing my feet.”
“Maybe we can find some shoes somewhere.” I reached for the bag. “May I?”
She held the bag just out of my reach. “I’m used to being hungry, but I just couldn’t take it anymore.”
I held out my palm. “Can I have one?”
“Sorry,” she said. “I just ate this whole bag.”
“But I got them for us,” I said weakly.
“Next time get two.”
She stood, taking a long swig of water from the bottle. Robert entered.
“I hope you’ve thought long and hard about why you weren’t in bed,” he said to Debra sternly.
I snapped to. “That’s what she said!” I shouted. “That’s what she said!” I relaxed. “God that felt good to say.”
Debra raised her eyebrows at me. “Who’s she?”
I looked at Robert, but he stared at me with the same blank expression. “You guys have heard that joke, right? You hear something that could be vaguely sexual and say. ‘That’s what she said.’”
They were staring at me, and I felt both awkward in their judgment and thankful I had never pursued that career in standup comedy.
“Neither of you have heard that expression?” I asked.
They continued to stare at me in stony silence.
“You know that joke kills with the marketing department.”
Debra cleared her throat, got to her feet and went into a downward dog position. “No one talk to me while I’m one with the universe,” she said, taking deep breaths.
He rolled his eyes. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that. I meant to ask, who’s this group you saw?”
“They’re weird,” I said. “Almost culty. They sing, they have an odd language of feel good terms and they were really interested in my muscle tone. Or fat tone. Something like that. And I think the leader really wanted to meet the rest of you.”
“Who’s the leader?” he asked.
“Darren Warren,” I said. “He’s the art critic for the paper.”
“Wait,” Bruce said from the other room. He ran over and poked his head in. “Darren Warren?”
“Yes.”
“The Darren Warren?”
“Yes.”
He kicked the kitchen table and waved his arms in anger. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked. “We could’ve had a different conversation that would have led to me becoming best friends with Darren Warren.”
“Well, we just started talking about it.”
“These are things you should tell me right away,” he said. “You know how much I would give to just get in the room with that guy. He spelled my name wrong in a review of The Farnsworth Incident, and I never got the chance to explain it to him.”
“If it
helps,” I said, “he seems more excited about TV reruns these days. Besides, you never tried to explain that play to me.”
He rolled his eyes and stood. “God!” he yelled. “Why is everything such a joke with you?”
I was a little stunned at him, but I sucked in my breath. “I’m sorry,” I said. “That was wrong of me.”
He paced around the room in a cold silence.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I really am.”
He was still silent.
“I don’t know what I can do to convince you of that,” I said. “But we’re kind of living in a time where we probably need each other more than ever…”
He let his voice drop, then went into a heavy pause. “Or something.”
Debra popped her head in.
“I’ve figured out why you look so much better than the rest of us,” she said.
“Oh?”
Bruce stared me down.
She pointed a bony finger at me. “You had a shower, didn’t you?”
I swallowed hard. “Did the universe tell you that?”
“No,” she said. “Just felt I had to say something.” She turned on her heel, winced and hobbled out.
“I can’t believe you were going to hold that out on us too,” Bruce said. “The Verdell I used to know would’ve been more concerned about my interests. It’s like I don’t even know you anymore.”
“You have no idea,” I said. “The meaningless nothing conversations, the constant arguing. I had to see what else was out here.”
“And just leave us?” he asked. “Was that your plan?”
“If I wanted to leave,” I said. “So maybe.”
He folded his arms. “Great. So when do I get to meet Darren?”
I thought back to the weird calm of the RV site, the all too eagerness of his inclusion of myself and others.
“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s kind of strange over there…”
I let my voice trail off, uncertain of how to describe things. He stood back, folded his arms, self-satisfied.
“Fine, then. I’ve been giving this a lot of thought,” he said. “I think we need to break up.”
“Break up?” I asked. “Isn’t that going to be kind of awkward?”
“I think its just time we started seeing other people.”
“Who are you going to be seeing?” I asked, looking around. “Debra?”
She poked her head back in. “What?”
Bruce impatiently waved her away.
“We’ve really just been more friends than anything else this whole time,” he said.
“Debra?”
He sighed heavily. “No, still talking about us. We’ve been playing this charade for too long.”
“Three years?” I mused. “Maybe.”
“Let’s face it,” he said. “This whole situation has changed you.”
“It’s changed everyone,” I said. “Although I’ve noticed that you use me for networking a lot more than you used to.”
“Be serious,” he said.
“I am.” My tone seemed to take him by surprise. “I don’t know why I never noticed it before, but it’s true,” I said. “And if you want to make things really awkward for us, then go right ahead.”
“Then I’ll move out,” he said. “I’ll go find your new best friend, Darren, and you’ll have to sit on the outside, looking at us having all the fun, doing all of his fun projects. He’ll spell your name wrong, and I won’t defend you.”
He stomped over to the couch fort and scooped up his belongings.
“You’re welcome to date whoever you want,” he said. “Welcome.”
“That’s generous of you,” I said. “But I’m a little disturbed that that’s where your mind is going to in a time like this.”
He shoved his things into his backpack, made his way to the door and then suddenly stopped.
“Maybe Steve Harks is single,” I said. “I’m sure someone that eligible won’t be on the market for long.”
He turned around. His face had a gentler demeanor, a complete turnaround from just a second ago.
“Look,” he said. “I’m sorry. You’ve been such a great girlfriend, and I really want us to be friends. I know every couple who breaks up says that, but I really mean it. And if you need anything you can always come to me.”
I nodded. “You too,” I said. “I understand that your career is now coming first, above people and your survival in these tumultuous times.”
“I’m taking the pretzels. I think I deserve it.”
“You’ll have to see if Debra left you any,” I said.
“Son of—”
He stormed out of the house; let the door slam behind him.
Robert entered, chewing on the heel of the loaf of bread that I had pilfered.
“What’d I miss?”
I shook my head.
“Is he getting more pretzels?” he asked. “Because the sticks are better than the twisty kind.”
I let myself collapse onto the makeshift couch bed and closed my eyes.
Chapter 5
Know Your Surroundings
SO MANY THINGS had happened during the three years since Bruce and I started dating. I had watched him dabble in an unsuccessful open-mic career where he told jokes about online dating. We watched coverage of a presidential election where he picked a fight with my father over his view on tax breaks, and then he made the Boston marathon bombings about himself.
“How is this about you again?”
He’d watched the coverage on TV through misty eyes. “I could have been there at that time. That could have been me.”
“But you haven’t been back to Boston in two years. Were you supposed to be there?”
“Just forget it,” he’d said. “You clearly don’t get it.”
In those three years, he had also slept through every movie that I picked, never ate any of my cooking and always chose a Patriots games over time with me. I supposed I should have noticed the signs, but there we were in this moment in time and it was over. True, the days of us hanging out on his couch over the weekends and spending evenings with friends, well, his friends, were never coming back anyway, but it felt so unnatural to try to reconcile that my plans wouldn’t take into account of his.
“Are you okay?” Robert asked.
I looked up at him. He seemed genuinely concerned.
“There are bigger things wrong, I suppose,” I said.
He pulled out his textbook. “Know where I turn when I’m feeling down?”
“Not to the secrets of risk management.”
He made a pitying sound with his mouth, opening to a page in his book. “You’re missing out. Listen. The chances of achieving organizational objectives while protecting enterprise value will be maximized by having a clear grasp on business realities, understanding what ‘risk’ is, tying risk tolerance to performance, and deploying risk management above and beyond compliance activities.” He looked up and beamed. “Doesn’t that make you feel better?”
“I literally don’t know what any of that means or why it’s relevant,” I said.
“It’s comforting,” he said. “Truth is a valuable commodity. And so are quality girls like you. That’s what I get out of this.”
“I’m thirty-three and not a girl.” I smiled. “But thank you again.”
He nodded and then turned away.
I closed my eyes again and fell asleep.
I woke up and heard the slamming of the door a few hours later. I only opened my eyes slightly when I felt a heavy weight flop down onto the cushions next to me.
“Bruce?” I asked.
He laid there, back to me, but didn’t answer.
“Are you okay?”
More silence.
“If you’re awake,” I said.
“It’s really awkward to have you lay here next to me and not talk. Unless you’re having a change of heart.”
“Oh, we’re still broken up,” he muttered. “Don’t you worry about that.”
“Then why are you laying here?” I asked. “There are other rooms in this house—”
He rose. “Where am I going to go then?” he asked voice raised. “Debra just talks about the food she’s not eating, Priscilla cries all the time and your boss is just a walking TED talk!”
“Why are you yelling at me?” I asked. “You’re the one who wanted more options.”
“This is so typical you,” he said. “Just keep making it all about yourself.”
“That makes no sense,” I said.
I turned over when he didn’t answer me. Priscilla emerged out of the darkened corner of the room, completely startling me.
“What the hell, Iris!” I said. “How long have you been creeping in there?”
“I’m Priscilla,” she said.
“Sorry.”
“No, I’m sorry,” she said. “Everything seemed so private I felt weird about it.”
“Now it’s just awkward,” Bruce muttered.
“Priscilla, how come you’re not sleeping in your room?” I asked.
“I don’t like it,” she said. “There’s a weird smell.”
“Problem solved,” I said. “Bruce, sleep in Priscilla’s room.”
He muttered something I couldn’t understand.
“We should do another food run,” Priscilla said. “Everything is going to run out so quickly.”
“Well, I’m not doing it now,” I said. “I just came back, and it was weird and exhausting.”
She slumped down onto the floor. “I need something to do. I’m going crazy.”
“Let’s wait until the evening,” I said. “I’ll go with you then.”
“I can’t stay here much longer,” she said. “I want to claw the walls or something.”
Debra appeared in the doorway. “You’d probably really enjoy cleaning the bathrooms and bedrooms. Might make you feel a bit normal. You’ll have to wait until morning, of course.”
I slept for hours. When I woke up, there were candles lit and Bruce was in the kitchen playing cards with Debra and Robert. There was laughter and loud conversation as Robert finished an anecdote.