“Okay, that sounds fine,” he drones as if he were under deep hypnosis. I need to get out of the office. I instinctively make my way to Phil’s desk before I remember he’s still on his month-long honeymoon in Hawaii. I decide to head over to Sunshine Valley. Crossing the street, I ponder some way to sabotage the plumbing in the handicapped washroom to render it permanently inoperable. Barry’s need to justify the handicapped washroom has nothing to do with affirmative action, but rather with Barry having a nice private place to take a dump. I foresee myself having to babysit Wolfgang. I’m angry and it’s only been thirty minutes.
On autopilot, I’ve wandered into Stanzas. I skim the titles on the “New and Hot” table. My book is absent, though the manager had put my extra copies there after my signing. I casually saunter over to the Science Fiction section. All five copies sit on the bottom shelf, their spines facing out. A lot of the other books have their covers facing out. I quickly rearrange the books so the cover of mine faces outwards. I grab three of the books and march them back to the “Hot” table and remove six copies of The Gargoyle 2, stashing these on the shelf below. Shameful I know. It’s reverse shoplifting, but still thrilling and dirty. Pleased with my own handiwork, I continue on to the food court to get myself lunch.
Now seated next to the faux waterfall, I eat my sandwich as I gaze out upon the shoppers of Sunshine Valley. There’s Freddy Fruitcake and the scooter lady in her bathrobe passing each other, as I’m quite sure they do several times daily. And here I am observing them, again. I’m the Jane Goodall of Sunshine Valley. When will it change? How many more years will I sit here? I could use a drink.
I envision myself dying, a sudden heart attack perhaps – what else? The headstone reads Colin MacDonald, Sunshine Valley will never forget you. RIP. It’s softly raining and the staff of The Shawarma Pit are there, as well as Freddy Fruitcake, the old lady (but in a black bathrobe), the ladies from First Choice, the manager from Stanzas, all my MRC coworkers wearing bunny slippers, and a little crying Sammy who’s asking her mom why her dad spent so much time at the mall. It’s a humorous but horrifying image. I need to write a book that has the words “New York Times Bestseller” stamped across its cover. I need stickers: “Hugo Winner,” “Sophie’s Choice,” “GG Winner,” “Nebula Winner,” “Oprah’s Book Club.”
Crossing back to my building, I dread the thought of having to sit with Wolfgang and coach him. My shoulders relax as I round the corner into my quad and see he hasn’t returned from lunch. Then ZAP, as if I’d jabbed my finger into an electrical socket, I hear his voice from behind me: “Oh, Colin, great you’re back, do you want to continue?” All my internal strings pull tight. I smile and say, “Whenever you’re ready.”
An hour later, Wolfgang freezes up again right in the middle of an explanation of file layouts. I tell him that I’m going to the washroom, not caring if he understands.
Looking at the walls of the handicapped washroom, I wish Crazy Larry were here with his sledgehammer. I stare into the mirror and think about my epitaph: Here lies Colin MacDonald, dead by attrition.
Hungry Hole: Chapter 18
Ryan answered the door. The man standing before him didn’t look like a plumber. He looked more like Columbo, dressed in a trench coat and slacks.
The man looked down at his notebook, and then looked up at Ryan.
“Are you Mr. Ryan Smith?”
“Yes.”
“I’m Detective Chris Farms,” he announced, holding up a badge. ”I’m investigating the disappearance of Barry Rodriguez.”
“Don’t know him,” said Ryan, feeling sweat form across his brow.
“Here’s his picture, do you mind taking a look?” he asked, holding up the photo.
“Nope, never seen him before,” lied Ryan.
“Mr. Rodriguez was a plumber. Has a plumber come by your house in the last week or so?”
“No, there have been no plumbers here.”
“Well the reason I’m asking you, Mr. Smith, is because Mr. Rodriguez always keeps a log of his jobs. He did a job last Tuesday only five blocks from here.”
“Well did you check with them?”
“I did. Mr. Rodriguez went and fixed a toilet. Then he left. His next stop was here at 1:15.”
“That’s strange,” said Ryan.
“Yes, it is, Mr. Smith, especially after you told me that you’ve had no plumbers come here. Why would Mr. Rodriguez have you down for,” he pauses and looks down at his notebook, ”a leaking basement pipe?”
“It was my wife. She must have called him.”
“Oh, your wife, I see. Is she in?”
“No, she’s at work. That’s right, now that you mention it, the other day she did say something about getting a leaky pipe in the basement fixed.”
“So you do remember a plumber coming here?”
“I wasn’t here at the time. Gillian must have let him in.”
“Can you give me your wife’s number at work?”
“Ah, sure.”
“Would you mind if I came in and took a look at the pipe he fixed?”
“Ah, no, follow me.”
Detective Farms followed Ryan down into the basement.
* * *
When Ryan came back upstairs carrying the bloodied notebook, the doorbell rang again. He hid the notebook behind a vase in the hallway.
When Ryan opened the door, a big man with dirty jeans and shirt and a tool belt around his waist stood there.
“You must be the main course, I mean, you must be the plumber?”
“Leaking pipe?”
“Follow me, it’s in the basement.”
Earth Day: Operation Spring Clean
I’ve had a month of Wolfgang and my sanity is fractured. I grab the small stapler off Dan’s desk and head into the handicapped washroom. After wrapping it up in a wad of paper towel, I drop it in the toilet, and then proceed to take the most satisfying dump of my life. I wipe using an excessive amount of tissue, then flush. My semi-mummified turd slowly circles the bowl waiting in vain for watery suction that never comes. The water rises to the lip of the seat. I know that this act of sabotage is passive-aggressive and immature. However, it’s now my mission to never let Barry shit in here again. I wash my hands and head out to the elevator to join the rest of my section who are waiting outside for Earth Day: Operation Spring Clean.
Approximately twenty-five people are in Barry’s section. They’re all grouped around the large brown dumpster at the back of the building. Line’s smoking and looks pissed off. Barry is there wearing his smiley-face tie and handing out garbage bags and rubber gloves, the kind that medical personnel use. Carla’s decked out in a gas mask, goggles, and a one-piece white plastic suit with yellow rubber gloves. She’s either ready for a biohazard recovery squad or a grow-op bust. Barry announces, holding up a bathroom scale, that there will be a prize given out for the most interesting item found and for the most garbage collected by weight.
“Yes, Colin, what is it?” asks Barry as he sees the puzzled look upon my face.
“Well, if I pick up a car battery and let’s say Jill here picks up thirty pop cans, she’ll have picked up more garbage but I’ll still have the bigger weigh-in. See what I’m saying?” The crowd awaits Barry’s response with an eager thirst to see him falter. Barry isn’t all that popular; in fact, he’s strongly disliked. He rubs his chin and ogles the scales. I’m not sure whether he’s trying to understand what I’ve just told him or whether in fact he does understand and is trying to formulate a response that will not make himself look like an asshole.
His head cranes up and he says, “Good point, Colin. I guess we’ll just have to eyeball then.”
“How about recycling?” asks Jill.
“What about it?” fires back Barry with a thin tone of irritation.
“Well surely we ar
en’t going to put recyclable materials such as pop bottles and cans in the same bag as garbage, are we?” asks Jill, her chipper Refrigerator Committee voice resounding in everyone’s ears.
I can almost see Barry’s mind twisting. He takes a deep breath and pauses. “That’s why we’re going to divide into two groups. Half will pick up trash and half will pick up recycling. As a matter of fact, find a partner and decide who’s going to do trash and who’s going to do recycling.”
People quickly head twist, frantically looking for the least painful coupling option available. Before I can get away, Wolfgang’s at my side. “Howdy partner, do you want to be the garbage guy or the recycling guy?” he asks me happily.
“I don’t care,” I tell him.
“Okay, you’re garbage then,” he says with a chuckle.
We all fan out, two by two, moving through the maze of cars in the parking lot behind our building, strolling toward the grassy bike path. I pick up a cigarette butt (probably Line’s) and immediately have a desire to go out and buy a pack of smokes. We make our way over to the other side of the bike path. A ten-foot fence and a small hill lead down to the Transitway, where only city buses are allowed to travel. Wolfgang and I are walking along the fence when he spots a woman’s red high-heeled shoe lying in the grass on the other side. “It’s mine, it’s mine,” he squeaks excitedly. Before I can talk him out of such insanity, I watch his pudgy little hedgehog frame scramble up the fence, presumably in an attempt to win Barry’s coveted most-interesting-piece-of-garbage prize. He’s going to kill himself I think. Good. At the top he looks rather worried, straddling the fence as if he were sitting on a giant rodeo bull, the gate about to open. As he swings his other leg over I hear the sound of ripping fabric. He’s managed to snag one pant leg on a wire and is flailing about, desperately trying to free himself.
“Help Colin!” he screams, but it’s too late. He loses his grip trying to unhook himself. He falls with one pant leg still firmly attached to the fence. His pants rip apart at the seam of his crotch. The result of such action cartwheels Wolfgang down the side of the fence where he lands with a scream and a mighty thud. Several people come running over, joining me. We watch Wolfgang rolling around on the ground, clutching his ankle.
“Are you all right?” I ask as the pant leg flutters in the wind above us, a windsock or perhaps a new flag to represent Earth Day.
“I think I might have broken it,” he whines.
“Well at least you got the shoe,” I say, trying to make him feel better. With those words and his eye still firmly on the prize, he bolts up and scours around for it. He sees it and reaches out for it. He freezes just before he’s about to grab it. His hand recoils. “There’s something inside it,” he whimpers. “I think it’s a finger.”
I turn to Barry, who has wandered over. “Well,” I say smiling, “I think we’ve found our winner.”
I tell Wolfgang not to touch it and then call 911 on my cell to notify them of our gruesome little discovery. Grabbing hold of the fence, Wolfgang manages to pull himself to a standing position on his one good leg, exposing half of his light blue briefs and his bare leg with a watermelon-sized ankle. Staring at the finger within the shoe, Wolfgang announces he’s going to be sick. This announcement is immediately followed by projectile vomit, followed by a chorus of ewws from the crowd.
The police show up and immediately cut a large hole in the fence to free Wolfgang and to get in to examine “the finger.” Soon four more police cruisers and a media van descend upon our environmental merrymaking. The whole back parking lot is declared a crime scene and yellow police tape is put up to cordon off the area. All the garbage and recycling that we’ve collected is seized as evidence. They take statements from Wolfgang, Barry and me, as well as a few others who saw Wolfgang’s accident.
They call an ambulance for Wolfgang. I ask if I can tag along. Wolfgang seems touched that I would stay with him until he finds out that I really only want a ride because I’ve got to go to the ultrasound clinic which is only a few blocks away from the hospital. I call Sarah and tell her not to bother picking me up, that I’ll meet her there. After the wedding in Montreal, Sarah became pregnant. She’s just past six weeks, so we have an appointment to see if everything looks right with the fetal pole, which is the size of a grain of rice. Just before the door to the ambulance shuts, Wolfgang asks Barry, who is still standing outside looking rather dazed, what does he get for a prize?
“A free month in the water cooler club,” answers Barry cheerfully. Wolfgang seems surprisingly happy with that. Maybe he hit his head. A month in the water cooler club is worth five dollars.
I give Wolfgang my cell number and tell him to give me a ring if he needs a pick-up later. Yeah the guy drives me nuts, but it’s not really his fault, he has ADD. The ultrasound clinic is located on the fifth floor of a busy building that strangely has only one tiny elevator. There is a six-person line to ride up, which is the max it can hold. I have to wait until it comes back a second time. When I open the door to the ultrasound office, I see Sammy playing with Mr. Honey on a little kid’s table in the corner of the large waiting room. She doesn’t see me come in, so I quietly make my way over to Sarah, who is catching up on the latest fashion news in Cosmo, and take a seat beside her. “Hi,” I whisper softly.
“Hi there,” she says. We both look over at Sammy who seems to be lost in a world of make-believe.
“She’s so cute,” I say. “I can’t believe she’s ours.”
“Can you believe we’re going to have another one?”
“No, it’s crazy.” I’m never going to be able to quit my job, I think.
Sammy looks over and sees me. She runs, arms wide, screaming “Daaaaadddddyyy!” I bend down to swoop her up. We squeeze each other tightly. You can’t buy this love, but I can’t keep going to work to pay for it. “Mommy has a baby in her tummy,” Sammy says, patting her own tummy.
“That’s right, we’re going to see the baby. But right now the baby is very small.”
“Tiny one?” Sammy asks or says, for I’m not sure if it’s a question or merely a statement.
“It’s small now, but it’s going to get big like you.”
One of the ultrasound technicians calls us in. The room is dark and probably creepy if you’re two years old. Sammy’s clutching Mr. Honey tightly. Sarah lies back on the table, lifts her shirt and lowers her pants to expose her lower abdomen. The technician squirts a translucent blue gel on Sarah’s belly. “What doing?” asks Sammy.
“They put that on so the machine can see the baby,” I say, not really understanding what the blue gel does either, but I presume my guess must be close.
“Actually, in your case, Mr. MacDonald,” says the technician, “it’s to see the babies.”
“Pardon?” Did I hear that right?
“Babies. See here,” she says, pointing to the two dots on the screen. “You and your wife are going to have twins.”
Hungry Hole: Chapter 20
Ryan lay fully dressed, shoes still on, atop the neatly made bed. He imagined lying in a coffin. He could hear it all the way up here, breathing. It was beckoning him. He could feel its hunger in his bones, in his heart. Every once in a while he thought he heard Gillian call out to him.
DING DONG.
Ryan got up and went to the window. Two cop cars were parked on the street. He knew what he had to do. He walked downstairs, down the hallway to the basement door. He went down the stairs and stood at the edge of the hole.
He jumped.
Nine months later…
Cube Squared
Sarah threw up every day for six months straight before her appetite returned. During this period, we purchased a three-bedroom house and a minivan in order to accommodate our expanding brood, which we found out was to include a baby girl and baby boy. For a moment I thought we should name the babies Brian and Sandy
after Brian Mulroney and the sandy blonde Sports Illustrated girl, but then thought better of it. I suggested Kurt for the boy after Kurt Vonnegut. Also my publisher is Kurt. Sarah went with it. She wanted Alexandra for a girl and I happily agreed. But we call her Alex. Sounds like we have three boys: Sammy, Kurt and Alex. Sarah had a C-section. Three weeks later, her incision became infected and she ended back up in the hospital for two days. Otherwise, it’s been smooth; no baby blues this time around. My mother’s been very helpful: cleaning our house, doing laundry, paying extra attention to Sammy to help her adjust now that she has to share the limelight.
I’m back in the office after being away for almost eight weeks. A Kafka character would look joyful compared to me. I love my kids too much to commit suicide, but I’m only an inch away from keeping a bottle in my desk drawer. There are over a thousand emails to go through. I spend a good part of the morning just deleting garbage Bruce has sent me, mostly statistical comparisons between programs. Dan waltzes in at quarter after eleven expressing his great joy at having me back; apparently Bruce has been riding his ass about everything. Dan was off last Thursday and Friday because of all the stress Bruce has been putting him under. Wasting no time in bringing me up to speed, Dan spends thirty minutes providing me with an overview of his sufferings of the past eight weeks. I’m tempted to share some of mine, but Phil shows up to announce it’s time to get the fuck out of Dodge. Dan realizes instantly that the conversation, or should I say his monologue, is now over. Phil doesn’t understand how I put up with it; I’m not sure I understand either.
Biting into my shawarma sandwich, my mouth explodes in flavours of garlic, succulent chicken, pickled turnip, onion and hot peppers. I haven’t had a shawarma in over a month. I realize that aside from Phil’s company, this is the only thing I’ve missed about work, if you could call this “work.” After we eat we go to Stanzas and check on my book. There are now only four copies. In all probability somebody I know bought one, though I hold out hope it was a stranger. Phil does the honours and rearranges the books so my cover faces outwards. He’s great.
The Cube People Page 17