Come As You Are

by Steven Ramirez

  “Oh.”

  As the skittery kid feigned attention, his hands deliberately disarranged the bags on the tray table. He craned his neck, looking for the flight attendant, hoping maybe he could switch seats with someone before they took off.

  “Anyway,” Jerry said, “this guy was the nicest person you’d ever want to meet. Loved his wife, kind to animals. All that. But he was agitated a lot of the time. Something ate at him, and nobody could figure out what it was. He seemed to want to do something.”

  “Like what?”

  The kid was now making alternating rows of nuts and Goldfish. He was careful to make the Goldfish all point in the same direction. Any damaged items were quickly consumed.

  “Well, he never said. But it kind of had to do with his job. You know, his life. I guess you could say he was dissatisfied. He’d always been a middle achiever. Average grades in school, average athletic skills, average dreams.”

  “So, an American.”

  Jerry chuckled. “Yeah, but this kind of thing had been going on for years. The middle job, the middle house in the housing tract.”

  “Was his wife average, too?”

  “Actually, she was very sweet. And pretty. High school graduate, though.”

  “There you go.”

  “But the one thing this guy—let’s call him ‘Willie’—the one thing Willie excelled at was neatness. He was a neat freak. Once a week, he rearranged his furniture, attempting in a limited feng shui kind of way to copy the rooms he’d seen in Architectural Digest.

  “His garage was a shrine to orderliness right down to the last little jelly jar of wood screws. His car was immaculate, too. He had had the seats covered in clear plastic.”

  “I hate wood screws,” the kid said.

  Jerry told him all about Willie, his meager hopes and dreams, his fears. He talked about Willie’s father who died under mysterious circumstances at the age of forty-three. And about his mother who had dominated both their lives to an unhealthy degree.

  The flight attendant brought more merlot and beer. Then Jerry got to the part where he was invited over to Willie’s house for dinner.

  “Willie wanted everything to be perfect. He refused to let his wife go to the grocery store and went himself. Even cooked the meal. He cleaned the house, washed the windows, and lit a fire.

  “Everything was nearly picture perfect. Except the dog kept slinking away from the fireplace. I guess it was too hot for her.”

  “How was the chow?”

  “Terrible. Poor Willie couldn’t cook to save his life. But we all made nice and told him how wonderful it all was. I think he knew better. After that night, I didn’t see him for a long time. I was doing a lot of traveling back then. We sort of lost touch.

  “Then one day, I got an invitation in the mail. It was from Willie. He wanted to have me over for dinner. He promised it would be flawless this time, and practically ordered me to come.

  “Part of me wanted to, but I had to teach a seminar that weekend. So I sent an email thanking him and promising to take his wife and him out to dinner sometime soon.”

  “Did he, like, freak out?”

  “No. He sent me a very nice card to say that he and his wife were very much looking forward to dinner. The weird thing is, the note was written in that old-style calligraphy. You know, like they do on awards certificates? I didn’t even know Willie could draw.”

  “Maybe his wife did it, or some art school dude.”

  “The last night of my seminar, I got home very late—after eleven. There were five messages on my machine, all from Willie.

  “Each one sounded more...disturbed than the last. Something about having to see me urgently. I was about to erase the messages when the phone rang. I knew it was Willie.”

  “Oooooo-eeeeee-oooooooo!” the kid said, waggling his fingers.

  “He was so relieved I was home and pleaded with me to come over for just a minute. All I wanted was to go to bed, but he sounded so, I don’t know, helpless. So I decided to go.”

  Jerry paused and finished off his wine. The plane was taxiing down the runway now, getting in line for takeoff. The flight attendant took their trash and secured the tray tables. Jerry slipped his laptop under the seat.

  He rubbed his eyes and shuddered a little, remembering that awful night and what he found when he went into the house. One of the flight attendants was pantomiming the safety procedures as another delivered her over-rehearsed amplified monolog.

  “Please take a moment to find the emergency exit nearest you,” the PA voice said. The kid tentatively probed the clear plastic cover over the red exit door handle.

  Jerry braced himself. “When I got there, Willie answered the door, wearing a tuxedo. He was gibbering cheerfully about achievement of excellence or something and explaining that he’d finally managed to bring some kind of order to his life and just wanted me to see for myself so I wouldn’t think he was crazy.

  “I stepped into the house, and the first thing I smelled was Glade air freshener. Only it seemed like he had dumped a gallon of it into the air conditioning.

  “The walls and ceilings had been freshly painted. There was new tile on the floor. I could see a warm fire in the living room. The dog was lying peacefully in front of it.

  “Willie kept giggling like a lunatic as he took me on a tour of the kitchen, den, and finally, the living room. What I saw in there made me want to scream.

  “The room actually sparkled. All of the old furniture had been replaced by new modern pieces. The stereo played quietly in the background—a Mozart string quartet, I think. Track lighting created these dramatic shadows. And expensive black-and-white photographs hung on the whitewashed walls.

  “Willie’s wife sat at one end of the sofa. She was wearing an elegant black evening dress and black satin pumps. One arm rested on the armrest. The other lay on her thigh, as if she were in repose. Her eyes begged me to stop this.

  “‘It’s perfect,’ Willie said. ‘Isn’t it perfect?’ As I came closer, I could see that both her arms had been lashed into place with very thin copper wire that was cutting into her skin.

  “She kept making these little groaning noises. I realized she couldn’t open her mouth. It was as if it had been glued shut with epoxy. Then, I looked at her feet. They had been nailed to the floor. The blood didn’t seem to bother Willie.

  “‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I gave her a local.’”

  They were in the air now, climbing to cruising altitude. Jerry ordered another drink, pulled out his laptop, and went back to work.

  The nervous kid stared out the window as objects on the ground became a soft, receding blur. As they gained altitude, the orderliness of the houses and the lawns and the streets seemed to please him, and he removed the protective plastic cover on the exit door.

  He wanted a closer look.

  Brown the Recluse

  Thursday. Brown returned home from the funeral exhausted and discovered his key no longer fit the lock. Thunder boomed outside as he tried jiggling the damned thing, pulling on the door and cursing. Frustrated, he trudged back down the overlit hallway to the elevator and hit the down button. He hoped the apartment manager was in.

  “Welcome back,” the moon-faced man said through teeth too big for his face. He reeked of lemon oil and wore a nameplate with the name “Wayne” on it.

  “My key doesn’t work.”

  “Yes, we’ve had to change everyone’s lock,” Wayne said in a voice that suggested some kind of cosmic good fortune. Brown longed for the old manager. “Didn’t you get the memo?”

  “Isn’t it obvious, if I had gotten the memo—” He decided not to pursue it. Anyway, this guy was deranged. “Can you just tell me what happened?”

  “It’s all in the memo,” Wayne said. His voice was too loud. Did the idiot think Brown was deaf? “Wait, I’ll get it for you.”

  He stepped away and, returning with a plain white envelope, presented it. As the manager watched, Brown unsealed it. Inside,
he saw a shiny brass key and the memo. When he turned to leave, Wayne said, “I’ll need the other key.”

  Irritated, Brown pried the key off his old scratched key ring and handed it over. Leaving the envelope and the memo on the desk, he thanked the hapless moron and returned to his apartment.

  As he entered carrying his bag, the first thing he noticed was how nothing whatsoever had changed. The apartment smelled musty. Outside, a hard rain was coming down. Fractured light fell like broken glass through curtains that were tan and immutable. Modest cloth furniture recoiled to the touch and stacks of books pleaded to be left alone. Brown didn’t mind any of it. He went into the kitchen and poured himself a glass of wine. Then, he checked the answering machine and noted the glowing green zero. As he turned away, he saw something skitter across the floor.

  He was certain it was a spider.

  To the best of his knowledge, Brown had never seen a spider in his apartment. His heart raced. He closed his eyes tightly and tried to picture the vicious thing in his mind. It was medium-sized, its body the size of a dime. And it was sort of a tannish brown. Was that bad? How could it have gotten in? He never opened the windows, not even in summer.

  He walked over to the laptop and, sitting at a small black-brown desk, searched the Internet. It didn’t take long for him to find a vivid color photo of a brown recluse spider. Next, pictures of morbid bite wounds. His stomach did a somersault, and he felt a rush of heat.

  Brown couldn’t think. He checked the windows in the kitchen and living room. All closed. Feeling ill suddenly, he hurried to the bathroom. The little he had eaten came up in one lurching thrust that sent a spray of acid water past his teeth and over his dry lips. Weak, he flushed the toilet, found his way to the sink, and drenched his face in cold water. As he dried himself with a fresh hand towel, he stared into the mirror and gasped at the reflection of the small window above the shower.

  It was open!

  The phone conversation with the apartment manager was neither pleasant nor coherent. Between cascades of crushing stomach cramps, Brown said he never left the windows open. Wayne insisted otherwise. No one had opened any windows—they had simply changed the front door lock—and also, he would greatly appreciate it if Brown didn’t yell at him. It was hopeless. Grabbing his stomach, he hung up.

  Clutching a flashlight, he carefully worked his way around the kitchen on his hands and knees. The brown recluse was also known as the violin spider, after the pattern on its back. If threatened, it would normally run away. And it usually only bit when tangled up in clothing or bedding. The resulting wound was painful but rarely fatal.

  Later when the phone rang, Brown thought about not answering, but it might have been the Chinese takeout driver lost again.

  “Hello?”

  “Are you okay, Dad?” It was his daughter in San Diego. She had driven him to the airport earlier. Was that today?

  “I’m fine.”

  “I’m so glad you came.” Her voice was the tremolo he recognized from when she was a little girl.

  He wanted to comfort her but didn’t know how. Women’s emotions were a mystery to him, and he wished he never had to deal with them. “I think your mother would have liked it.”

  “I’m sorry you couldn’t stay longer,” Grace said. “We had the guest bedroom made up.” He detected a hint of accusation.

  “Me, too. I couldn’t make it work.”

  “I understand. Thanks for coming down, though.”

  “Give the kids a kiss for me.” He always used that phrase, because he could never remember their names. He barely knew his daughter’s name. At Christmas, he sent them gift cards addressed to Grace.

  “I will.” This last response was followed by the long, painful silence of impossible distance.

  “Bye, Dad.”

  “Bye.”

  After he had hung up, Brown realized he couldn’t think of the reason he had gone to the funeral in the first place. Work was piling up and, though it was only a two-hour flight, getting through airport security was a pain in the ass. He and his ex-wife—Mary?—had been divorced for fifteen years. When he heard about her death, he had only a dim recollection of a middle-aged woman crying at the kitchen table in their old house as he lectured her sharply, a drink in one hand. He must’ve gone because of their daughter.

  The Chinese food was worse than usual. The only reason he didn’t switch restaurants was that they had been certified as never adding MSG. Maybe that was the problem. And they were close, which meant he could get his food quickly. Unless the driver got lost, which happened frequently.

  Brown had been unable to find any trace of the spider. It was after midnight by the time he had put away the packaged food and pots and pans in the kitchen, and the clothes, extra bedding, and boxes in his bedroom closet. Before going to bed, he changed the sheets and shook out the duvet outside in the hallway.

  The brown recluse preferred to stay hidden. Brown had heard stories of families who had lived for long periods with the spiders without ever having been bitten. The thought sickened him. He read for a while in bed and, when that didn’t distract him, he turned out the light, hoping that through some miracle he would be spared.

  Friday. It was pitch black and pouring rain when the alarm went off at five-thirty. Brown crawled out of bed feeling weak and dizzy. Sleep had eluded him and, when he finally did doze off sometime after four, he dreamed of his children. They were young and happy, playing and singing a hymn in a black pit alive with spiders. He was younger too. When he reached into the pit to rescue them, they shrieked, with swollen red eyes and ugly fangs, and they went on singing. Then, morning came. But the strangest thing about the dream was, there had been more than one girl, whereas in real life, Grace was an only child.

  Coughing up phlegm, he examined himself in the bathroom mirror and discovered a dark reddish swelling on his neck. He ran the hot water, soaked a washcloth, and applied it to the wound. His head in his hands, he sat on the toilet, moaning softly. “Shit!” he said, more afraid than he’d ever been.

  Brown left the garage and, as he pulled into traffic, he noticed the low apartment building next door covered in a blue-and-white plastic tent—something out of a circus for dead people. He imagined thousands of brown recluse spiders driven out by the poison and fleeing into his building. And he was convinced that son of a bitch Wayne had left the bathroom window open, hoping something ungodly would crawl through.

  Now he directed his loathing at the apartment owner who had ordered the fumigation and wished he could torture him. He imagined sinking giant meat hooks into his back and ripping away chunks of flesh and lung as the man begged for mercy. He wondered where a person could even buy meat hooks.

  As Brown examined the bite on his neck in the rearview mirror, someone blasted their horn. He realized he’d been sitting at the green light for who knew how long. Waving apologetically, he hit the gas and continued on in the dense rain. His neck was throbbing. He wondered how long before he could take something again for the pain.

  “You can get dressed,” the physician’s assistant said as she disposed of the needle and syringe. “At least you won’t get tetanus. You say you’re taking Ibuprofen?”

  “Yes…” She looked foreign, and Brown worried she might be a terrorist.

  “That’s fine. I’m also going to prescribe an antibiotic, to be safe. And you can take Benadryl for the swelling if you want.”

  He had buttoned his sleeves but waited to tuck in his shirt. The woman was at the door when she stopped and turned. He was afraid she might threaten him.

  “Keep an eye on the lesion,” she said. “If it doesn’t start closing up in a day or two, I want to see you again.”

  “Sure.”

  He was positive he would never again go to urgent care. When he was alone, it occurred to him he neither remembered the woman’s name nor what she looked like. Was forgetfulness one of the symptoms?

  As usual, Brown ate lunch at his desk. A Wall Street Journal lay u
ntouched next to his half-eaten sandwich. He thought about his apartment and got angry all over again. The idea of fumigation made his chest tighten. He could almost smell the pungent gas. If he did allow them in to treat the apartment, the stench would never leave—he was certain of it. The poison would scar his lungs, and he would eventually die of COPD.

  “I’ve got the marketing brief for you,” a voice said.

  Slowly, he raised his head and saw the hopeful, familiar face of a young woman whose name escaped him. She was a MBA intern who had been doing outstanding work for two or three months. She was especially adept at Microsoft Excel. He seemed to recall writing her a glowing recommendation.

  “Are you okay?” she said.

  “Just leave it. I’ll take a look at it after lunch.”

  “Right.” At the door, she turned to him. He thought he heard her say, “I hope everything is…”

  She couldn’t have been more than twenty-five. It was starting to come back to him. She had attended UW and had gotten her MBA from Pepperdine University in California. She was originally from Colorado. Her father was in commercial real estate. What the hell was her name?

  In the men’s room, Brown preferred to urinate alone, so he always went into a stall—usually the large handicapped one farthest away from the urinals. As he finished, he heard someone walk in talking urgently on a cell phone. He recognized the voice. It was…the analyst. Come on. He had worked with this guy for three years. They did a presentation together to the CMO last month. Or was it last spring? What was happening to his mind?

  From the sound of the conversation, he guessed the man was having some kind of family crisis. One of his kids? Did he even have children? He tried not to listen, but the analyst was speaking loudly, and his voice echoed. Then, it was quiet. He thought the man must have been urinating.

  Brown bolted from the stall and washed his hands. He wanted to get away before the analyst could finish. But he wasn’t fast enough. He noticed the wound on his neck had turned brown, the skin around it granulated—almost necrotic. He was sure he would need to see another damned doctor soon.