The Futility Experts

by Margaret Broucek

  “That’s fucked up.”

  When they got onto the highway, Tim said, “Hey, what’s the song that’s, like—” He sang in falsetto, “When I grow up, I’ll be stable. When I grow up, I’ll turn the tables.”

  “Really?” Miles asked. “Where’d you hear that?”

  “Do you know it, or don’t you?”

  “There’s an app that tells you what a song is if it hears it.”

  “You got it? Turn it on.” Once Miles had his phone positioned, Tim sang the chorus again, tapping a beat on the steering wheel.

  Then Miles studied the screen. “No, I guess it has to be the actual band playing. I can look up the words, though.”

  Tim shook his head. “God, we’re dumbbells, aren’t we?”

  The rain had turned heavy again. “Why do you want to know this song?” Miles asked.

  “I don’t know.” Tim got into the leftmost lane and floored it. “It’s the music for my ideal self.” He found that he was looking forward to seeing the guys. “You remember Finn, Sandy, and Hal? My old crew? Bunch of gorillas. Once we took a full concert grand up the stairs of the statehouse like it was a box spring. You know the statehouse stairs?”

  “Garbage.” Miles grinned at him.

  “Huh?”

  “That’s the band name, Garbage.”

  # # #

  Tim had to whip water from his face with his hands before he could make out where the guys were sitting. “Hang out at the bar and order a Coke,” he told Miles.

  “This’d be a great day to move a piano,” he shouted as he approached the old goons in the booth. Jesus, they looked horrible! Finn could barely lift his hand in greeting. He’d lost all color, and one end of his unbuckled belt had flopped down over his thigh. Sandy looked like he’d eaten himself. And Hal was unshaven and glassy-eyed, nervously sliding the salt and pepper shakers around like in a shell game. “You guys look like shit!”

  “So don’t you,” Finn rasped. “Buy us a round, will ya?”

  “What the hell happened to you guys? You couldn’t move a girl’s tea set!”

  “Screw you.” Finn flipped him off.

  Sandy pleaded, “You’re hurtin’ his feelin’s, Timmy.”

  “Well, shit, guys, I can’t hire you. What’re you doing for work?”

  “Sandy’s bartending over at the Office,” Hal said to the shakers.

  “Free drinks,” said Finn.

  “That explains it.” Tim waved them off and went to the bar to get four beers. He studied himself in the mirror behind the bottles while the bartender poured. A little jowly, but his hair looked healthy, still ablaze. When he returned, he slid in next to Hal and reviewed their mottled faces, their lopsided postures. “Is this it, guys? Is this the end of your lives?”

  “You don’t look like Adonis, Tim,” Sandy assessed him over the top of his glasses.

  “Yet. I’m working on it. You know what our big problem is? Mostly? Testosterone. You’ve lost a lot of your natural testosterone.”

  “You ever hear about the woman whose doctor prescribed her testosterone?” Sandy asked. “She told him it was helping her condition, but she was starting to grow hair in new places. ‘Well, the benefits outweigh the side effects,’ he told her, ‘and a little hair won’t hurt you. Where’s it growing?’ And she looks at him and says, ‘On my balls!’”

  “Ha! Good one,” said Finn.

  “You know, I’m taking testosterone,” Tim told them. “It clears your head, revs it all up again.”

  “Your insurance pay for that?” Sandy had something white and crusty around his lips.

  “Yep, well, with a copay.”

  “Don’t let your wife accidently come in contact, she’ll grow more than balls, that Mona. She’ll have herself a decent-size willy.” Hal held a salt shaker horizontal and jiggled it to stand in for the wife’s new member.

  “Screw you. You know why I wanted it? I want to look ahead in my life and see something coming that I actually welcome. I want to be delighted to get out of bed.”

  “I’m delighted to get out of bed ‘cause my wife’s still in it!” Finn grinned around the table.

  “See? See what we joke about? It’s pathetic! I’m turning back the clock. I ran a mile this morning. Have any of you ever run a mile?”

  “Oh, sure, I have,” said Finn.

  “When did you ever run a mile?”

  “I was just gonna make another wife joke.”

  “Well, don’t! Take yourself seriously!”

  “You know, you can’t move a piano anymore either, Tim,” Sandy said, again with the over-glasses appraisal.

  “Not this instant, but soon I can.”

  “Well, don’t talk about us.”

  “Look, I’m just at the beginning, but I’m at least trying. You guys make me realize why all this is so important.”

  “How’s Miles doin’?” Finn nodded over to the boy.

  “Miles is—I don’t know, Miles is Miles. He has no drive. He’s not a leader.”

  “Jesus, Tim, why does everyone have to be all gung ho?”

  “I got an answer for you: one life. That’s it! Some guys our age are with a beautiful young woman down in Mexico or someplace. They’ve still got it. The only real impediments to having a truly wonderful life are fear and laziness.” He followed Finn’s eyes over to Miles, who had his head buried in his arms on the bar top. “I’ll have to find another crew for Friday.”

  “Hell, yeah,” Hal said. “Them days are over.”

  # # #

  On the way home, Tim asked Miles, “You interested in hanging out with George and a bunch of his friends doing good works for the town?”

  Miles didn’t look up from his phone. “I don’t understand the question.”

  “George is worried about you.”

  “What’s his deal? Why’s he always trying to hang around after his lesson?”

  “Why do you think?”

  “Huh? I don’t know. Lonely, I guess.”

  “He’s okay to you, though? He hasn’t done anything creepy or anything?”

  “No. But I’d rather work at the Olive Garden. And that’s not saying much. Look, I got Grandma’s book.” He held up his phone.

  “Delete it! I mean it, Miles. She should never have sent that to you. It’s her very personal life.”

  “I’m reading it.” The boy pressed himself against the passenger door, as far away as he could get from Tim, and opened the file.

  # # #

  Almost texting time. Tim had his cell on the kitchen table, next to the curling and dog-eared Into the Lion’s Mouth. Tim’s hero from that book, the sniper—he also sometimes felt deflated, defeated. Tim remembered one spot he had underlined and he looked for it again.

  I often felt the outsider. The Ascars routinely went AWOL for a time and even when there, they were on their cells or smoking hash. The Americans weren’t much better, with their video games and lack of discipline. It was like we were making a movie about war, with breaks between takes.

  Rusty texted Blondie that the thing he missed most over there was a sandwich. A real sandwich with thick bread and mayo squirting out the sides. She wrote that she’d make him one every day in Mexico. Oh, how she loved the look of that property listing he’d sent her! They could run around in shorts and bare feet. They could position their bed to watch the sunset. She was going to start saving the money from her dog-walking business.

  I got a dog you can walk.

  Says the lonely creep.

  I love wiener dogs. So cute.

  Hell, no, Great Dane.

  Tim popped another one of Blondie’s brownies into his mouth. He would grind the rest down in the disposal before Mona could see them. He’d told his wife he was expecting tuning tools from someone on eBay, so the package had not been a big item of interest.

  How’s Ur friend in hospital?

  Don’t know. Haven’t heard. Cn you resend the video? So beautiful. Crushed me.

  Sure!!!! Sending anything
you want!

  Love Garbage. My favorite.

  When Tim heard the front door open and keys landing on the credenza, he came out from the kitchen. “I leave enough space for you?” he asked.

  “Yes, very nice,” Vinnie said.

  “Good, you wanna make a little money? I have a piano-moving job.”

  “Dear God, a piano?”

  “It’s easy with enough guys. Two hours, tops, this Friday evening, and I can pay you a hundred.”

  “Fine. Maybe it’ll be my new profession. Today a customer said to me, ‘How can you not know if the cheesecake is gluten-free?’ She kept saying, ‘This is the Cheesecake Factory! This is the Cheesecake Factory!’ like I don’t fucking know where I am? I said, ‘Okay, so what will happen, lady? Are you gonna die? Are you gonna croak from a gluten? Tim, what am I now, a chemist? Should I know all of the properties of all of the world’s food items, for fuck sake?”

  “Why are you back there? What happened to Temptation’s Fate and all that?”

  “Well, I used to know a man who came into the restaurant all the time and I think he is the one I am supposed to be with. So at first I was just eating there as a customer every day, but I couldn’t afford to do that. Anyway, now he’s not coming in. Which I guess I shoulda known. It was a long time ago.” He ran the zipper down and up his jacket a few times before pulling out of it in frustration.

  “Don’t you know anything about him? Where he works?”

  “We didn’t talk a lot.” He took a hanger out of the front closet and fitted it into the shoulders of the jacket. Tim watched him bite down on the hanger’s hook, zip up the garment, and then smooth it down with his hands before clearing a large space into which to put it.

  “Can you get Miles a job there?” They both looked over at the boy, who was moving his lips in and out while staring at the video game.

  “Miles!” Tim shouted, and the kid looked at them out of the corner of his eye.

  “Yeah?”

  “Tonight’s the night I play your game.”

  # # #

  When Tim sat cross-legged next to his son, he felt powerful for the first time in a long time. He could feel his thigh muscles straining against his jeans. Even his hands on the controller appeared veiny and strong. The TRT’s results were worth the roar in his ears.

  “I thought we were going to do Destiny,” Tim said, seeing a cratered moonscape on the screen.

  “Destiny’s dead. Destiny blows compared to Red Horizon. Want to create your own avatar or play as me?”

  “You got decent weapons?”

  “Yeah. Duh. What you see here, this is my outpost.”

  “Creepy.”

  “Everything’s made from refuse left by the creatures who used to live here. We don’t know much about them yet, but they appear to all be dead or they left. That’s my dog, Simba. He notices things. That’s what he’s good for. Here’s my room.”

  “What’s the sign say?”

  “Nice, right? I love the blue swoop on the bottom. Found it in a junk pile. We don’t know how to translate all of their symbols, but the second character means female. There’s a document with all known translations. I made this whole structure we’re in right now. Took me three weeks, mostly just to get enough tin. And see those big fans up there? Those operate on a pulley system.”

  “That’s cool.”

  “I didn’t have enough electrical wiring, so only the first one is electrified. Then it powers the rest. See the bands?”

  “Sure.”

  “The rubber was hard to source. That’s Marie there.”

  “So Marie’s fake.”

  “No, that’s her avatar.”

  “Who are you fighting?”

  “Bots. They can repair themselves and build more of themselves and shit. They may have been the demise of their creators.”

  “I want to shoot them, Miles.”

  “Okay, let’s wake Marie and head out. Marie’s the fifth-top destroyer in this game.”

  Outside the settlement, the road passed the rubble and ruins of places similar to the bombed-out war zones Tim saw on television. They had no transportation, so they kept snug to walls wherever possible. The bots moved fluidly, like living creatures, and shot projectiles right out of their limbs. Marie saved Tim on several occasions, and Tim saved her once, he thought. The bots began reattaching their pieces as soon as they were hit, making the whole exercise, the whole game, futile. Still, Tim found that his reflexes were lightning-quick. It was clear he was as ready as he’d ever be.

  DAVIS

  When Davis awoke again at five a.m., he realized that his wife had been out of bed for hours. He descended the stairs, listening for her. From the direction of the kitchen he heard the light raining of her fingers on a keyboard.

  “Why are you up so early?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “Couldn’t sleep. Up since three.”

  “Are you shopping?” He tried to make out what was on her computer screen as he crossed to the refrigerator.

  “Looking up some possible vacation spots. Wouldn’t it be nice to go someplace warm this winter, now that we can afford it?”

  The day before, Davis had announced that he’d inherited fifty-nine thousand dollars from his aunt. He said ten thousand of that could go to helping Megan move and getting her set up in California. He’d been grateful that Jenny hadn’t suggested other purchases, because he thought they might need the rest of the money to see him through a period of unemployment.

  He took a gallon of milk from the fridge. “Let’s not book anything yet. Wait till I hear about tenure. Why couldn’t you sleep?”

  “Nerves or something.”

  “You must have picked up on my anxiety.”

  “It can be my own anxiety, I think.”

  “Why? The kids? I thought the Good Behavior Game had solved all your problems.” Jenny was employing a behavior-management program in her classroom, which put kids into teams, and any individual’s bad behavior counted as points against his or her team, possibly preventing them all from winning a prize.

  “The kids are fine,” she sighed.

  “Well, I get being frustrated with the administration. Now we’re in the same boat. I actually think Lindstrom has turned the whole group against me. Had my vote come up last year, I’d be in.” He selected a box of corn flakes from a cabinet and shook some into his blue bowl.

  “I don’t know about that. We haven’t been invited to their parties in quite a few years.”

  “Yeah, but that’s Megan. That’s from her kicking Brian’s son’s teeth out. And I know we haven’t been invited to the adults-only parties either, but it’s still the shock of the teeth thing, I think.” He set the milk back down without pouring it onto his cereal and opened his laptop as he sat on a stool. More pronouncements from Pope Francis in the news. “Did you hear the Pope says evolution’s A-OK? The Big Bang actually happened? Now what will you tell the kids?”

  Jenny had always followed her conservative parish priest as far as what science “facts” to teach. Now Davis knew she was worried she’d have to tell the children that she’d made some mistakes. She shut off the desktop computer and rose, already dressed for work.

  “You look nice,” Davis said. She basically wore the same five outfits every week due to their limited finances, but her Tuesday skirt never failed to move him, the way it hugged her hips.

  “You always say that when I wear this skirt.”

  “I’ll stop immediately,” he said, returning to the news.

  # # #

  Davis had decided to do the interview in his office at the college. He did a little rearranging in there so that the photograph hanging directly behind him was the big one of the okapi—another wonderful cryptid, a relative of the giraffe, with zebra-striped legs. Students began gathering in the hall when they saw the lights and the video camera being set up. A production assistant for the news program stood in the doorway and shushed all passers-by just before they began shooting,
since closing the door would have made the room a sauna.

  The newsman was the one from the six-o’clock news, and this made Davis so nervous he couldn’t lower his eyebrows. Then he forgot to listen to the actual question at the end of the intro, so he simply began speaking: “Let’s start with my area of specialty as a cryptozoologist. The term brings together three Greek words: kryptos, which means hidden; zoon, which means animal, and logos, which means discourse. So it’s the study of hidden animals. And when we think—”

  “Hang on a second,” the cameraman said. “What’s that? Somebody crying?”

  They all listened.

  “Yes, that’s someone in Dr. Lindstrom’s office next door,” Davis said. It sounded like Megan.

  “Can we knock on the wall?” the newsman asked Davis. “Do you mind?”

  “I think she’ll stop soon,” Davis said. And in a matter of a few seconds, she did. Likely some frustration over a grade, he figured.

  “Okay, let’s start again, Professor. Tell us about your hypothesis.”

  “Well, in the fieldwork of cryptozoology, we rely heavily on eyewitness accounts, and there were several descriptions by people who had seen the Glenwood animal that just weren’t consistent with any dog. The way it moved. The sounds it made.” Davis then cleared his throat and made a sort of growling moo that went up in pitch at the end. Then he bared his teeth and did some high chitter-chatter. “And then I saw a photo of an animal with standing rounded ears”—he balled up his hands and placed them on his head—“set fairly wide apart, like so. And then that bone-crushing jaw”—he shook his head in wonder—“it made me recall the very real presence of hyenas in the North American fossil record, and I had to come to that conclusion.”

  “I think she started up again in the middle of that,” the sound recordist said.

  Yes, he’d heard it, the sobbing. Davis gripped the edge of his desk and felt ready to hurl it over and march into Lindstrom’s office to see what the situation was.

  “Let’s get this one more time, Professor,” the newscaster said. “And I loved the animal sounds. Be sure to do those again. Then I’m going to ask you about the test results, and don’t forget to mention that you’ll give us an exclusive when they come in.”