The unanticipated stretch of uninterrupted think-time had unexpectedly come in handy. The Day, she had already determined, must begin with a clean slate. As a tester she knew that pre-conditions must include a known initial state. Each test must setup and tear down everything in its environment. So too The Day begins without any waxy buildup left over from previous days. That meant a thorough scrubbing and sorting. There would be no dirty dishes, no unmade beds, no laundry needing to be washed. A day that did not begin with these conditions was not, and could not be, The Day, by definition.
The Day begins with a proper ramping up, preparing and fueling the engine. Typically this included bathing, brushing teeth and breakfast, all of that sort of thing. In Zoey's Day, those activities occupied a set amount of time. Their schedule had not changed since her initial forays into Daily Planning. She had also added certain types of thinking to those times. It was appropriate to consider news items, for example, during breakfast. It was not allowed to think of them in the shower. There is a time and place for everything, after all. At one time she had permitted herself to giggle at the notion that, if to everything there is a season (as the Bible says), than to everything there are forbidden seasons as well. At the brushing of the teeth, decisions can be made about apparel.
The Day's morning continued with a plan. Each day should have its own plan and not rely on a previous day's tasks. Nor should The Day's plan be considered on any other day but The Day itself. Planning began during the breakfast cleanup routine, while washing dishes and putting them away. The plan, in order to be highly effective (as she had once read somewhere), had to start with the end in mind. First things first, in this case, meant Last Things First. What was the purpose of The Day? What was the Expected Result? It could be many things. It could mean, professionally, a certain number of test cases defined, or executed, or revisited, or documented. It could mean a new task altogether. If she had no project, it could mean scouting for one. These were principles. The actual The Day which lived in her mind remained curiously open to change. She had left herself some breathing room. Before and After Work were fairly rigidly defined, but the Work portion of The Day itself was allowed to vary. In this way, she hoped the project would not get stale.
It entertained her enough. The drive held steady and the first rays of dawn began to appear above the highway. She told herself that this day could not be The Day. Her routine was shot. Here she was driving across three states and staying up all night. There was a lot of waxy buildup going on! She would not shower as usual, nor groom as usual, nor breakfast as usual - nothing would be usual about this day. Approaching her destination she had to make decisions. Should she turn off first at Spring Hill Lake and scout for a coffee shop, or stay on the road and wait until Wetford a little further on down the road? Should she go directly to Ledman Storage and Pickup, or wait until later in the morning? She had forgotten their hours. Suddenly nothing was making sense. Her mind had enjoyed the long drive but her body was giving out, and having its effect throughout. She began to notice that she was becoming incapable of rational thought. Everything began to seem difficult. The exit signs posted notices of restaurants and gas and probably she and her car both needed these. It was hard to decide.
She was too groggy to make proper choices. She noted that the tank was not yet empty and decided to drive straight there. Her map-voice told her what to do and she obeyed, paying no attention to the scenery, such as it was. Wetford, dreary year-round, held nothing of interest to see. It was a city such as cities had become in that time; predictable, laconic, expanding without a plan and leaving the old stuff behind to fend for itself. It was residential here, commercial there, strip malls where you'd expect them, high rises too. It might have appeared straight out of a failing urban design student's half-assed diorama of anytown, anywhere. The train tracks rode along the riverbank and it was here, among the other decaying remnants of a formerly industrial lifestyle, that Ledman Storage and Pickup held its ground. A tall brick structure sporting all blown out windows, it had a parking lot with well-faded stripes and a loading dock feauturing a corrugated ramp.
Zoey pulled into the lot close to the lime green door with its old worn-out sign that must have said something at one time but was no longer legible. She climbed out of the car and walked over the gravel toward it. The door was closed, and locked. There were no other cars around, and no other people in sight. It was seven in the morning and for a few moments she just stood there, wondering what she should do. Thoughts scattered through her sleepy head. Coffee would be a good idea. Something to eat, but now that she was there, she didn't want to get lost or take any chances. She glanced around, half-hoping to see something tempting that might change her mind, but there was nothing in sight but other buildings similarly situated, rotting and forlorn. An abandoned railway station. A half-torn-down steel-girded armory. A shack with a sign declaring "Gary's Plastic Place.” Here she was, so here she'd stay, at least until someone, anyone showed up. And that, she concluded, was that. She returned to her car, sat down behind the wheel, and tried very hard to stay awake.
Ten
Zoey noted it was precisely seven seventeen when the white pickup truck pulled into the lot next to her car. Two gentlemen emerged and, without even a glance in her direction, headed for the door. The taller one pulled out a key and opened it just enough to slip inside, letting the door close behind them. Zoey had followed them but reached the door only in time to find the door shut and locked once more. She knocked. No one answered. She knocked harder. No response. She shook her head. Maybe she was imagining things. Looking back, she saw the white truck was still there. She turned back to the door and banged on it again. This time she spoke up.
"Hello? Hello? Is anybody there?"
“This is ridiculous,” she thought, as the door remained as it was and she could hear no sounds from within. I know they went inside. I know they're in there. Why won't they open the door? What do I have to do? The problem seemed insoluble. After more knocking and talking, she decided to walk around the building one time. Maybe there was another entrance. Maybe they were outside somewhere around back. They weren't. After circling one time she was convinced there was no other way in or out beside the front door and the giant loading dock gate beside it. Zoey sat down on the edge of the ramp and suddenly felt like crying. The situation was hopeless and absurd.
Fortunately, a delivery truck pulled in and backed down the ramp to the dock. The driver hopped out and she waved a friendly greeting to Zoey.
"They won't open the door,” Zoey blurted out.
"No problem,” the driver said as she swung around and heaved open the gate, pulling it up and letting it coast all the way. She jumped up onto the ledge and shouted into the warehouse.
"Yo, Junior! You around?"
"Right there,” a voice came out from the dark, and moments later the taller one appeared at the loading dock with a dolly and started helping the driver unload a stack of boxes. Zoey had come around to the side of the dock and stood there on the ramp looking up at Junior and the driver.
"Excuse me,” she volunteered, but the two were too busy working to reply.
"Excuse me,” she repeated after a minute or so. This time the driver looked down at her and asked,
"What can we do for you, honey?"
"I'm looking for a package,” Zoey said, and both the driver and Junior laughed.
"You come to the right place,” Junior said. "Packages we got. You want this one?" he asked her, pointing to one on the top of his hand-cart.
"No, no,” Zoey said, "A particular one. I'm looking for a package that was scanned here two days ago and hasn't showed up anywhere since."
"Oh,” Junior scowled. "You got to wait for the boss lady for something like that."
"The boss lady?" the driver said, looking toward him.
"Leonora,” Junior told her. "She's in charge now."
"Oh right, her,” the driver replied with a shrug. "But I don’t need her. You can sign
,” she said as she held out a device to Junior and he grabbed it, scribbled his autograph with the special pen attached, and handed it back to her. The driver pulled down the door on the back of her truck, hopped off the dock and came back around to the side.
"Good luck with that,” she said to Zoey as she squeezed past her and jumped into the driver's seat.
"Thank you,” Zoey replied. She barely had time to get out of the way before the driver started up the truck and roared off. Choking from the fumes, she turned back to the dock to see Junior starting to bring down the gate again.
"Wait" she shouted, "I need to ask you"
"Got to wait for the boss lady,” he told her again, and slammed the gate down hard.
"But" Zoey started to say, too late. There was nothing she could do. Wait for another truck to show up, I guess, she thought, or else the mythical boss lady. She trudged back to her car where it least it was almost comfortable.
'I am in control', she told herself. 'I am totally and completely in control', but she wasn't even fooling herself very well this time.'
Eleven
Leonora reached down and gently patted the thing in her pouch. She felt its reassuring heat warming her belly and connecting her to something she had never known before. It was funny, as in strange. She felt different, but no different, the same but not the same, as if she'd changed without changing, grown without growing. I'm an idiot, she told herself with a smile, and she knew the change had begun the moment she had taken the thing out of its package and held it in her hand. It spoke without making a sound. She knew what it wanted, or thought that she did. To go home. Please.
"Don't you worry, little guy,” she'd told it out loud, "I'm going to take you home. Everything is going to be all right, just you wait and see." She had placed the gadget in her overalls pouch and there it remained the rest of the day and into the night. After closing up the warehouse she walked back to her apartment and had a feeling she was lighter than air. The whole afternoon she had felt like she was waking up inside of a dream. The building seemed roomier, vast, as if she had shrunk like an Alice in Wonderland. How had she never noticed how the shelving loomed like skyscrapers to the roof, how the stacks of boxes barely held each other together to keep them all from toppling? It was no accident those cardboard towers held their ground. They helped each other with invisible bonds. She had never considered the inner life of a package before, how it sailed across the planet without need of wind or navigation. Millions of them in transit, scurrying about, arriving and departing, opening their lids, recycling. Recipients happy to see them unless they were merely going about their business making sure the boxes would get where they needed to go. Those people were servants to the objects riding inside of their vehicles, like ancient tribal queens in hand-borne carriages.
Identified, marked and stamped, each according to its individual priority, destinations all known, the procession continued around the clock, "twenty four seven" as they liked to say in those days. Sitting there at her desk by the door and the dock, Leonora had stared around in wonder, knowing on the one hand, yeah, she was stoned off her ass, and on the other hand, warming up like she was simmering on a stove. Junior and Rolando had never seen her so quiet, and agreed she must have been smoking some heavy shit, and it was just like her to be holding it back. They tried dropping some hints but she wasn't picking up on it. She offered them some of the usual stuff and they took it, but muttered darkly about people hoarding the goods and the bad karma that came from doing like that. She heard it, but like everything else that anybody said during that day, it went in one ear and got lost inside there.
She had never thought much about Junior and Rolando. They were guys she worked with. She'd worked with lots of guys. Most of the time they talked their crazy secret language, proving to themselves and to each other that they'd been around and knew a thing or two. They had their set of facts, their religious beliefs about players and teams and the magic formulas predicting the outcomes of rituals and events. With Junior it was all about what he called 'the key statistic'. Regarding football, it was "third down conversions.” You could pretty much guarantee any game result based upon that fact. With baseball it was something he called O.B.P.. Rolando's skeleton keys to life were based on entirely different premises. He sought out inner clues. He'd collected a host of superstitions revolving around such arcane occurrences as the number of times you'd seen a tiger-striped cat between Sunday dawn and Thursday noon. He had known a man who'd ferreted out the secret of defying gravity and was able to become weightless at will. He also had a list of uncommon things to be afraid of such as yellow bottle caps, flat stones, and wind-borne rust. He didn't call it "fear,” though. It was "reasonable precautions.”
That afternoon and into the evening, Leonora began to understand these things for the first time, or at least had the feeling she could. Maybe it wasn't just the random babblings of a couple of morons, as she'd previously thought. If she opened her mind just a little, the possibilities could be entertaining. She was getting the idea that if you lined up a series of facts, any facts, you could find a pattern among them. She wasn't used to thinking this way. It almost hurt. A few times she had to stop and rub her eyes and scratch her head. She even wondered, what was in that dope? But she knew it was the same old shit she'd been getting from her buddy Drea. It couldn't be that. Was it that carnitas burrito? But she didn't feel sick. She felt good. Real good. She even bounced up the steps to her apartment, imagining weightlessness. She was smiling when she opened the door and felt the first shock of being a stranger in her own mind.
"This place is a fucking pigsty,” she blurted out.
"So what?" she thought. "It's home.”
"So what?" she asked herself again. "So what? Are you a person or an animal?"
"Whatever,” she replied in her brain. "A person IS an animal. What'd you think you were? A rock? A sack of gas?"
"Clean it up,” was the response in her mind. "Clean it the fuck up now. This is no way to live,” and before she knew it, she was in the kitchen, hauling some trash bags out of a drawer and throwing things into them; all the wrappings, all the scraps, loose paper, bits of plastic, pull tabs, empty beer cans. She was opening the windows. She was sweeping the floor. She was pulling the blankets off the floor, and she was working harder at all this than she ever remembered working at anything before. Somehow it was suddenly imperative that the place should be spotless, as if some very important person was coming over any minute now and would judge her eternal damnation based on the state of the rooms.
She forgot to light up as she usually did first thing on getting home after work. It didn't even occur to her. Those days were gone. That was the old Leonora. She was not that person anymore. After straightening and neatening and hauling the garbage down to the incinerator chute, she had stepped out to the Pay'n'Pay and bought some cleaning supplies, then hurried home to continue her chores. She scrubbed out the bathtub and the sinks, mopped up the floors, wiped down the table and the chairs, dusted and swept, and cleaned everything twice, then again. It took her all night, but somehow she didn't need to eat or even sleep. She was buzzing. She did a load of laundry at the corner laundromat. She threw away her cigarettes and dumped her booze down the toilet, all the time thinking, this is no way to start, this is no way to go. In order to get it straight, you have to start out straight. You can't make a plan when you're all loaded down. Clean it up. Clean it up, and then we'll find out where we are.
She could have sub-let the place by morning for twice what she was paying in rent. That's how clean the apartment became. At five o'clock she came to a stop and looking around, was finally satisfied. Now I can plan, she said to herself, and to plan, to plan right, you have to start from the end. This was where she got stuck for a while. All she could think of was the need to have a plan. She didn't know what for, or why it was important, just that she needed to have one. Any would do. It could be a plan for a meal, or a plan for a fate. Either one seemed equally as sensibl
e, a plan for the day, or a plan for the rest of her life. She thought there was really no difference. You're only alive now, after all. Today is the day that you are, so if your plan for the moment is aligned with the life that you want then the one is the same as the other.
She sat and she thought, and she thought and she sat. It's Friday, she said to herself. I'm due in the warehouse by eight. Then I work until five. And then I come home. I usually smoke three or four joints and a half a pack of Camels. I'll have a few beers, some nachos, a slim jim or two. I'll hang out with Drea or maybe with Bobby and Alice down at The Stick. Is this really my plan? Is this really my life? I could go somewhere else, she realized. Fuck, if a package can do it, then why can't a person? I could stick some old label on my ass and ship myself off to wherever. She smiled. I was supposed to be going to San Francisco, she said to herself, and it didn't seem strange, though she'd never once thought it before in her life. Yeah, Frisco, why not? And then she remembered that Green Bay was better than San Francisco. And so that, in the end, was the plan, and here she was now, on a bus, heading north, and feeling that comforting warmth spreading out from her belly to beyond.
Twelve
Kandhi was not surprised when they tried to jerk her around at the rental car office as well. It had been one of those nights, now turned into one of those days. She had the receipt on her UPD to prove she'd ordered a sedan, and still they tried to stick her with a ridiculous economy car.
"I'm not driving across your God-forsaken state in a God-damn economy car,” she told the stubborn gal at the U-Pick-It desk. "I want the sedan. I ordered the sedan and I want the sedan."
"So sorry,” the bespectacled clerk replied, not at all sorry in the least. "We're all out of sedans."
Ledman Pickup (All Geeked Up) Page 4