Set This House in Order

by Matt Ruff

  “I’ve got no problem doing Arnie a legitimate favor,” Rudy said at one point, “but I’m not running a warehouse for hot property here. I don’t need that kind of heartache.”

  “Hey,” Julie Sivik said, putting her hand on Rudy’s arm. “That stuff is not stolen. Not really stolen, anyway…”

  “Uh-huh,” said Rudy. “That’s not the impression I got from Arnie.” Pulling his arm away, he got up off his stool and turned towards the workroom. Mouse ducked back out of the doorway.

  “It’s down in the basement,” Rudy said, entering the workroom and making for a set of stairs in the back. “Arnie told me to keep it out of sight, which is a funny request for something that’s not really stolen.”

  “Rudy…” Julie Sivik said. She tried to follow him, but he stopped her at the head of the stairs.

  “Just wait up here,” he said. “I’ll bring it to you.”

  Mouse bent over the worktable, pretending to focus on the PC in front of her. She grabbed a tool at random—a tiny screwdriver with a red plastic handle—and used it to poke at the inside of the open case.

  “Hi,” Julie Sivik said, from two feet away. Mouse squeaked and threw the screwdriver in the air.

  “Whoah!” said Julie. “Whoah, hey, don’t be so jumpy!…”

  Mouse pressed a hand to her chest. “I…I thought you were over there,” she said, gesturing towards the stairs.

  “I was,” Julie said. She offered her hand to shake. “I’m Julie Sivik. And you are…?”

  “Penny. Penny Driver.”

  “Mouse,” Julie said, hand back at her side. “That’s a cute nickname. Kind of suits you. So, what’s wrong with it?”

  “With my nickname?”

  “With the computer you’re fixing.”

  “Oh,” Mouse said. “It…it’s broken.”

  “I see,” said Julie. “I guess that would explain why you’re fixing it, huh? But how is it broken?”

  “I…don’t really know yet. I just started on it.”

  “Uh-huh,” Julie said. She glanced inside the PC’s open case. “So tell me something, Mouse: do you always pull the power supply out of a computer before you know what’s wrong with it?”

  “Tell me something, you nosy cunt,” Maledicta snapped. “Do you always fucking interrogate people when they’ve got work to do?”

  “The power supply,” Mouse stammered. “The power supply is…it’s part of the problem, but I had to take it out to, to see what else is wrong. So it’s still, I’m not really sure yet…” She paused, noticing how the color had drained from Julie’s face. “Is something the matter?”

  Rudy came back up the stairs, lugging a cardboard box with U.S. ARMY SURPLUS stenciled on its side. “Here,” he said, thrusting the box at Julie. She moved quickly to take it from him.

  “Thanks, Rudy. I really appreciate this…”

  “Yeah, yeah…you two introduce yourselves?” Rudy asked, with a nod to Mouse.

  “Uh, yeah,” Julie said. “We were just getting acquainted…Mouse says you keep her pretty busy.”

  Rudy chuckled. “She keeps herself pretty busy. Hardest worker I ever hired.”

  “Really…Does she just do hardware, or can she debug code, too?”

  “Why?”

  “No reason. Just curious…”

  “Don’t get any ideas,” Rudy warned. “I have a hard enough time replacing mediocre assistants.”

  “Ideas?” Julie beamed an innocent smile at him; but Rudy, past flirting now, answered her with a scowl. “All right,” he said, “I think it’s time you and your not-stolen property hit the road.”

  “On my way,” said Julie. “See you around, Mouse…” She walked out, and Rudy followed her, pulling the door shut behind him. Mouse turned up the radio and got back to work.

  The rest of the afternoon passed in no time.

  Mouse didn’t go home after work that day; instead, as instructed by her list, she went over to the Elliott Bay Book Company. She found an empty table in the bookstore’s basement café and got a cup of Earl Grey tea. While the teabag steeped, she set up a laptop computer on the table. The laptop had been in Mouse’s possession for some time, though she couldn’t have said exactly how long, or where it had come from in the first place. But she didn’t worry about that now—just switched it on and started up Microsoft Word.

  As the program was loading, Mouse glanced at the clock on the café wall; it was 6:25. The next time she looked up, the clock read 7:13, and Julie Sivik was standing beside her again.

  “—anybody home?” Julie passed a hand in front of Mouse’s eyes. “Mouse?”

  Mouse reached out hurriedly to fold down the laptop’s screen. She got a brief glimpse of the file she’d been working on—the title bar said “Thread.doc”—before it dropped out of view. Only after the laptop’s latch clicked did she look directly at Julie.

  “Hello,” Mouse said.

  “Hello,” said Julie, eyeing the laptop. “I’m interrupting again, aren’t I?”

  Mouse didn’t answer, just stared, waiting for Julie to state her business. After a moment, Julie said: “Well listen, first off, I wanted to apologize for being so nosy today at the shop…”

  “Nosy?”

  “Yeah…you seemed kind of upset by my questions.”

  Mouse shook her head. She remembered being uncomfortable, but not upset.

  “Well,” said Julie. “Well anyway, I did want to apologize, and also—”

  “How did you find me here?”

  “My car broke down,” Julie explained. “Triple A’s got it at a garage right now, a few blocks from here. Supposed to be ready by eight o’clock. I came in here to kill some time; finding you was just good luck.” She smiled.

  “Anyway,” Julie continued, “I really don’t want to be a pest, but seeing as I have run into you, I’m still wondering about that last question I asked at Rudy’s.”

  “About the power supply?” Mouse chewed her lip nervously; though she knew she’d finished repairing the broken PC sometime after Julie’s visit—the machine’s owner had picked it up just before closing—she still had no idea what had been wrong with it.

  “Power supply…?” Julie said, then shook her head. “No. No, not that. The question I asked Rudy, about whether you did any work debugging code.” To Mouse’s blank stare: “You know, code? Software code?”

  “Oh,” said Mouse. “I—”

  “See, here’s the thing,” Julie said. She reached for Mouse’s laptop; Mouse started to protest, but Julie was only moving it aside, making room on the table for a laptop of her own. She grabbed a chair and sat down, sliding in so close that her knee and Mouse’s were touching. “The thing is,” Julie continued, “I’ve got this software company, and we’ve been working on this virtual-reality project for a couple years now. And my lead programmer, Dennis, he’s a really sharp guy, but lately he’s just not getting things done fast enough. So the past few months I’ve been thinking about bringing in somebody new, to sort of light a fire under Dennis’s ass.”

  Julie tapped on her laptop’s keyboard, opening a window on the screen that filled with a scroll of letters, numbers, and symbols. Software code, Mouse guessed, though it might as well have been Chinese. “This is part of the source code for one of our program modules,” Julie explained. “Or rather, it was part of the source code—this version of the software turned out to have a bug in it. Nothing complicated; it only took Dennis a few minutes to track down and fix, once he got around to it. But I kept this copy of the original code to use as a sort of test for potential employees…” She looked expectantly at Mouse.

  Mouse shook her head. She opened her mouth, intending to say that she was sorry if she had somehow given Julie the wrong impression, but she wasn’t looking for a second job, and besides—

  Her chair slid back abruptly from the table. Julie didn’t seem to notice: she was leaning forward now, studying the laptop’s screen.

  “Huh,” Julie said, rubbing her chin. “I do
n’t think this is the same fix Dennis came up with…” She dug through a sheaf of papers that lay on the table, pulling out one page and comparing it with what was on the screen. “No, it isn’t the same.” She extracted a second page from the pile. “Shit…I think your solution might be better…It’s simpler, anyway…” Julie put the pages back down, and turned to Mouse with a look of new respect. “So how happy are you, working for Rudy?”

  Mouse shrugged, not sure how to answer that question. She worked for Rudy so she could pay her bills, and because it was on the list; what did being happy have to do with it?

  “It can’t be a very interesting job,” Julie suggested. “Sitting in that back room all day, replacing bad circuit cards…”

  “I don’t mind it.”

  “You should let me tell you more about my company,” Julie said. She waved a hand at Mouse’s empty cup. “Why don’t I get you some more tea, and we’ll chat?”

  “I don’t really like tea,” said Mouse.

  “Oh-kay…something else to drink, then? A beer, maybe, or a glass of wine?”

  “Wine,” said Mouse. “Some red wine would be OK.”

  —and she was home, in her apartment kitchen, the clock above the stove reading 11:55. She had a bad headache and she was starving. After a quick stop at the refrigerator—she found a slab of turkey roast and a brick of cheddar cheese and devoured them both standing up, chasing them with half a carton of milk—Mouse staggered into bed, too tired even to check her list to make sure she’d completed all her chores.

  The next day at work, Rudy started treating her differently. Not right away; when Mouse first came into the shop he said good morning the same as he always did. But after she came back from lunch (she didn’t remember going out), Rudy seemed tense, and that evening he didn’t reply when she wished him good night.

  That was Tuesday; and every day after that, Rudy’s mood seemed to get worse. On Wednesday morning he yelled at her for the first time ever, complaining that the workroom was “a complete mess” and that “I’ll never be able to find anything back here, the way you’ve let it go.”

  “What are you looking for?” asked Mouse, alarmed. “I’ll help you find it.” But this offer of assistance only seemed to anger Rudy further; he told her to have the workroom straightened out by closing time Friday and stalked out.

  On Friday, the moment she’d been dreading for eight months finally arrived. It happened as Mouse was preparing to leave. As ordered, she’d straightened up the workroom; she’d also finished the last two pending repair jobs. “All done,” she announced, coming out front shortly before six.

  Rudy, who sat reading a copy of The Drifters with a sullen expression on his face, wouldn’t acknowledge her.

  “OK, then,” Mouse said. “If there’s nothing else you need me to do today…”

  No response.

  “OK,” Mouse said. “I’ll be going, then. I’ll see you on Monday, Rudy.”

  Her hand was on the door when Rudy said: “No you won’t.”

  Mouse turned around. Rudy was glaring at her over the top of his book. “I won’t?” Mouse said.

  “No,” said Rudy. “Don’t you remember?” He snorted. “Hell, maybe you don’t. Maybe the ‘numbing boredom’ of working for me numbed your memory, too.” He set down his book and took a deep breath. “I’ve got something to say to you before you go. If you don’t like your job, whatever the reason, that’s fine—I don’t want anybody working here against their will. But you’ve got no right to shit on me personally. Maybe this place is just ‘a hole in the wall,’ but I’ve got pride in it just the same—I worked for it, I built it up, I kept it going for years without any help from anybody, and you’ve got no right to shit on that. It may not be much, but it’s more than you’ve got, as far as I can tell…”

  Mouse felt her lower lip quivering. She wanted to cry; she wanted to beg Rudy’s forgiveness for whatever she’d done. But she was terrified that if she did either of those things, made any sound or interrupted Rudy in any way, he’d come out from behind the counter and start hitting her. So she stayed mute and still by the door, while Rudy continued to berate her. He went on for a long time.

  “…so that’s it,” he concluded, when his rage was finally spent. By this point his eyes were rimmed with red, as if he too were on the verge of crying. “That’s all I’ve got to say to you. Now get the hell out of my shop.”

  “Rudy…” Mouse tried to say, but the word came out as a meaningless twitter. Then Rudy stood up, shoving his stool back with a loud screech, and Mouse bolted.

  She ran from the Quick Fix so swiftly that she was all the way to her car before the tears started. She slid into the driver’s seat, slapped down the door locks, and then hunched over the steering wheel blubbering for almost twenty minutes. She kept hoping she would lose time, lose this moment, this day, and so find herself beyond it. But time stayed with her, and eventually the crying fit tapered off. She drove home.

  A red light blinked in the darkness of her apartment as she let herself in: there was a message on her answering machine. After switching on the living-room lights, Mouse hit the playback button, and heard Julie Sivik’s voice: “Hey Mouse! It’s Friday afternoon, around four, and I’m calling to confirm that we’re all set for Monday…”

  The top of the stand on which the answering machine rested was glass-inlaid wood; as the message continued—with Julie expressing concern about how Rudy had “taken the news”—Mouse caught sight of her reflection in the glass. Holding her own gaze, Mouse wondered: What have you done?

  But even though she already knew she was crazy, she didn’t dare ask that question aloud.

  6

  Today’s list includes a set of directions for finding the Reality Factory, but even so, and even going there directly without stopping off home, Mouse arrives several minutes late. Distracted by a tailgating semi-truck, she misses the turnoff for Autumn Creek and is forced to backtrack from the next exit; and having found her way into the town, she doesn’t recognize the Factory at first. Across 2nd bridge, quarter mile beyond on left side, the directions read, but during a phone conversation over the weekend, Julie Sivik described the Factory as being “just a little rundown,” so Mouse is not expecting a ruin. She drives right past it, and goes another mile down the road before realizing her mistake.

  “Oh God,” Mouse exclaims as she drives in the Factory gate, having backtracked once more. The property isn’t just rundown; it looks abandoned. But there is an old Cadillac with new bodywork parked on the lot, and Mouse remembers Julie mentioning on the phone that her car was a fixed-up Caddy. So this really must be it: this is where she works now. Mouse parks her Buick just inside the gate, pointed outward, ready for a quick getaway. And even though she is late, she sits for a moment after shutting off the engine, gathering her courage before stepping out.

  Enter main building through side door, the directions read. The main building must be the long, low warehouse-like structure at the center of the lot. Mouse walks around it to the left (a mountain of old tires enclosed by a chain-link fence blocks passage on the right), turning frequently to check that nothing is creeping towards her out of the thickets of weeds and bushes that encircle the property. At the door she pauses to adjust her sweater; she tugs at both the collar and the hem, making sure it covers the tank top completely.

  The wording of the directions implies that she should let herself in, but Mouse knocks anyway. No one answers. Reluctantly she tries the doorknob, which turns easily. She opens the door and steps inside.

  Oh God. The building is just a shell, concrete walls and a patchwork roof sheltering a collection of…tents?

  “This is the place,” a woman’s voice calls to her. Mouse squeaks. “Sorry, sorry,” the voice apologizes, and Mouse sees that it isn’t a woman after all: the voice belongs to a boyish-looking man with a tousle of sandy hair. He darts towards her with startling swiftness, and Mouse, frightened, backs up against the door.

  Mouse is reli
eved when Julie Sivik appears. But her relief is short-lived: Julie tells the boyish man to call Mouse by her nickname, and another man—a fat, ugly man, like a chubby troll—pops out of a nearby tent shouting “Hi, Mouse!” He too darts towards her, his speed belying his size, and engulfs her hand in a damp doughy two-fisted grip.

  Mouse is overwhelmed. The morning starts to fragment, bits of time dropping out, shuddering the smooth flow of events. “Let’s go try out the system,” Julie says, and they walk towards a big tent at one end of the building: Julie and Mouse, the boyish man, the fat man, and a third man, a skinny glum guy who doesn’t talk. Mouse feels as though she ought to know the men’s names by now, but she doesn’t.

  Julie holds open the tent flap for her, elbowing aside the troll, who is attempting to perform the same service. Mouse enters; she has a brief impression of the tent’s interior, a musty, mildewy smelling space filled with all sorts of electronic equipment.

  —and then she is standing in the middle of the tent with the three nameless men staring at her while Julie tries to pull her sweater off—

  —and something heavy is being forced down over her head, covering her eyes—

  —and she is caught up in a hallucination of a giant checkerboard floating in space. A fluorescent ghost glides towards her over the surface of black and white squares, and the voice of the troll speaks in her ear, commanding her to dance.

  Too much. Too much. Mouse disappears. Drone comes, Drone who does what she is told and feels nothing. “Dance, Mouse,” the troll says, and Drone rocks obediently from side to side. Then the music changes—Drone is not even aware of the music until it changes, but it changes—and Loins takes over, recognizing a song she loves. Loins actually enjoys dancing; it was she who went out last night to the Rain Dancers roadhouse, she who met up with George Lamb, the stranger, and agreed to follow him home. She would have fucked him, too, but by the time they got to George’s trailer, she’d realized it wasn’t going to be any fun, so she pushed that chore off on Drone.