Sims watched the movers horse the grand piano out the front door and onto their truck. He looked around the now-empty shop, noticing that even the gold-leaf lettering, YOUR LAST BREATH, INC., had been carefully removed from the front door.
“What are you doing in here?”
Startled out of his reverie, Sims turned around. “Who are you?” he asked the short, unpleasant-looking man who had challenged him from the doorway.
“My name is Jones and I own this building,” the man responded. His manner softened somewhat. “Are you interested in leasing this space?”
“No,” Sims replied, “I’m a reporter with the Chronicle,” or, more accurately, I used to be, he thought but of course did not say, “and I’m trying to locate the tenants who just moved out of this space. I wonder if you could provide me with their forwarding address?”
“I think you’ve made some sort of mistake,” Jones replied. “This space has been unoccupied for the past two or three months.”
“No,” Sims replied, shaking his head for emphasis. “There’s been a tenant in here for at least the past couple of weeks, some sort of business run by a man and woman named Laszlo and Clarissa.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jones said, looking around the small space. “I bought this building four weeks ago and I can assure you that it was vacant then—in fact, that was one of the conditions of closing. I live in Denver, and shortly after the closing I fired the local real estate company that had been managing the three other buildings I own here in the Bay Area. This is the first chance I’ve had to get out here to hire another one to get this space leased.”
“But I tell you that Laszlo and Clarissa just moved out,” Sims insisted, his voice becoming shrill with agitation. “In fact, the piano movers were here picking up the piano not five minutes ago.”
Jones looked at Sims much as one might look at a man suspected of being mentally deranged. “I think you should leave now,” he finally said, speaking slowly and calmly.
“But—”
“Or I will have to call the police,” Jones interrupted, pointedly taking his cell phone from its holster at his belt and flipping it open.
• • •
Nobody could say, with any certainty, when the little shop just a block off Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills first opened for business. The space had been vacant for some time, something about a bankruptcy involving the absentee owners of the building, and then, one day, a passerby noticed the rather understated gold-leaf lettering on the front door: your last breath, inc. That and the marmalade cat sleeping in the front window.
Roger Sims simply could not imagine a place where cats own businesses and death can (for a price) be put off for the span of a single breath. A place where, ironically, things could be exactly as they seem, and easy explanations seldom tell the whole story. In his zealous determination to get to the bottom of what was going on in the little shop on Union Street, Sims chose the easy explanation, the only one all his experience told him was possible. Unfortunately, as we have seen, experience does not always prepare us for the truly unexpected, and as Sims focused all his attention on Laszlo and Clarissa, he failed to recognize that the heart of the story all along was the marmalade cat known as Grace, even as she was leading him, step by step, into the Twilight Zone.
Submitted for your consideration: A man, a boss, who uses the shield of his family whenever he has to do an unpleasant task. What happens to such a man if that family disappears? Who will he be, how will he act, how does he justify himself? More important, what happens if his family comes back and he’s already forgotten who he is?
P
aul, could you come in here a minute?”
Bob had spoken, as Bob always spoke, in a casual, friendly tone. But this particular request was pitched slightly higher than usual. Paul wasn’t the only one who caught the shrillness. Elena’s head snapped up from her work, and Jack appeared to lose his train of thought, pausing in midspiel to catch Paul’s eye.
Paul walked into Bob’s office. There were only a half-dozen offices on this floor, and some of the managers at Bob’s level had to settle for cubicles. But Bob had an office. An office with a credenza, which had always fascinated Paul, as it was unlike anything else on the fourth floor, indeed in all of Brighton Technologies, as far as Paul knew. The credenza looked expensive—real wood, highly polished, possibly cherry or stained to mimic cherry—and was ludicrously out of place amid Brighton’s futuristic decor, all metal and glass. Rumor had it that Bob had commissioned the piece upon his promotion, perhaps having figured out that this behemoth would make it that much harder to remove him from his coveted rectangle.
The credenza held a few books that Bob wanted people to think were important to him, books that would establish a side to his personality not on display in the office. Poetry by Wallace Stevens and Ezra Pound, A Brief History of Time, by Stephen Hawking, a coffee-table book that had been published in conjunction with a PBS documentary about World War II. Paul, who had been an English major, didn’t think Bob had actually read any Stevens, much less Pound. Oh, Bob dropped a poetic allusion here or there, but it was always an obvious chestnut, something everyone knew. “Into the Valley of Death rode the five hundred.” Or, “Once upon a midnight dreary.” And even these familiar lines never seemed to have anything to do with the moment at hand.
The books, however, didn’t even take up a shelf. Most of the credenza was filled with plaques and trophies and photos of Bob’s family—his wife, Mona, and the twins, Diane and Dennis, known among Bob’s staff as Dumb and Dumber. Which wasn’t kind, or even accurate, but when you come to believe that a pair of eleven-year-olds you’ve never met somehow controls your life—
Bob was saying something about the last quarter’s results.
“—Down eleven percent in our sector. Me, I told the big bosses that we just have to take this hit, that things will pick up again, and we’ll want to have our best people in place when they do—”
No, Paul thought. No. Dear fucking God, please no. I’m closing next week on my new condo. “I’m a good worker.”
“Well, as I said, it’s not my choice. The big bosses—they don’t know the people on the ground, not like I do, what they see is numbers, figures on a ledger. Your salary is higher than most of the people on my team—”
“Because you’ve given me so many merit raises.”
“I know.” Bob had an accent that his staff was forever trying to place, quite unlike anything heard here in this corner of the Southwest, where they were used to hearing everything. His O sounds were wavering bits of air, smoke rings blown by a teenager. He put Rs in words that didn’t have them, removed them from words that usually relied on them. Elena said it was a mid-Atlantic accent, Jack insisted it was Baltimore or Washington, D.C., and Aimee, Bob’s assistant, said she had Googled him and found his mother in a Delaware suburb. Bob swore he was from Philadelphia, the Main Line, even.
“You know that I’m getting canned because I’ve done such good work that I’ve gotten raises that make me highly paid enough to be a target?”
“Yeah. Ironic, huh?”
Paul thought about this and decided that Bob, for once, was correct about something being ironic. Paul was the highest-paid person on staff because he had been here the longest, performed well, and been given steady merit raises. He also was a year away from being fully vested in Brighton’s pension plan. That had probably made him a target, too.
“Paul, you know this isn’t my idea.” Bob looked gutted. But then, he always did when this moment came. The staff sometimes wondered among themselves if Bob were literally spineless, strung like a venetian blind, nothing but a ropy piece of tissue holding the disks in place. His shoulders were narrow and hunched, and while his gut wasn’t large, he couldn’t have sucked it in on a bet.
“If I could keep this from happening—” Bob shook his head.
“You could. Tell them to take—” Paul started to name names, decided he was
better than that. “Someone else. Tell them I’m valuable, that they’ll want someone as fast as me when the clients come back. And they will come back, Bob.”
“I wish I could fight these guys,” Bob said. “But Diane and Dennis—they start middle school next year and there’s all these things they need to do, extracurriculars and the like, that cost money. And you know I’m the—”
Sole provider.
“—Only breadwinner—”
Close enough. Paul would have to remember to tell Jack that Bob had changed it up, introduced a little variety into the speech. Then he realized that he was hearing the speech firsthand, that he would be describing it to his colleagues and friends as he packed up his desk.
“My wife, even when she did work, she worked in retail, on the lowest rungs of the ladder, it’s not like we can live off that, and I don’t have to tell you that my college funds took a hit, we are so far behind the eight ball now that I keep dropping hints about how community college isn’t such a bad deal, if you don’t know exactly what you want to do with your life.” Bob laughed at the absurdity of this, the notion that his children, whom he considered gifted, would actually have to go to community college. “Anyway, if I was in a position to stand up to these guys, I would. But I’m not, and it wouldn’t matter. They’re going to do what they want. I wish I could save you, but I can’t. They’d just fire me, too, and then I wouldn’t be here to protect the others.”
Protect them from whom? From you? You’ve just explained that you can’t—or won’t—protect anyone.
Bob stood up. “Look, if there’s anything I can do for you—”
Paul had a fleeting memory of a movie, a guy who said something clever in this situation, like, “You could go fuck yourself,” or, “Please drop dead,” only better, more elegant and cheerful, delivered with true élan. He probably wouldn’t figure it out for hours, and after many beers. The wit of the staircase, as the French called it.
Instead, he found himself saying, “When do I need to be out?”
“End of this week, although you’ll get the full two weeks’ severance after that. They don’t like employees with proprietary information to stay on. Hey, they wanted me to lock you out of the computer and have security guards escort you out of the building today. I stood up for you, buddy.”
“Oh.” Yeah, you’re a real stand-up guy, Bob. A tower of Jell-O.
“I’m really sorry about this, Paul. But at least it’s just you, no one else is counting on you. Not that that’s why you were chosen,” Bob added quickly, probably realizing that it would be actionable to fire someone for the simple fact of not having a wife and child. “I mean, you’re lucky, you can move on a dime if you have to, pull up stakes. I love my wife and kids, but in dreams begin nightmares.”
“In dreams begin responsibilities,” Paul corrected, surprised not so much by Bob’s almost-apt allusion to Yeats, a poet he had never before referenced, but the Freudian slip. Of course, Bob probably knew the quote from the Delmore Schwartz story, as most people did, and the title was probably all he knew. Still, it was telling. Was Bob miserable? There would be some comfort, small to be sure, if the life that Bob defended as his reason for being a jerk was making him miserable.
“Right, that’s what I said.”
“No—” Paul stopped himself. He wasn’t going to waste another minute speaking with Bob, this poetry poseur, a man who used books like wallpaper, who knew the title of everything and the meaning of nothing. One day he would be a paltry thing, as Yeats himself would have it, a stick. A stick who was still using the excuse of his wife and children and, by then, his grandchildren, to compromise whatever integrity he had, assuming he’d ever had any. No, Paul was going to go tell Elena and Jack what had happened and then go for a three-hour lunch at Carrabas, drink thirty-seven margaritas, give or take, and put the bill on his final expense account. What could they do, fire him?
Late that afternoon, Bob went for a little spin around the office, taking the temperature of the room. Paul had never come back from lunch, but the others were there, working late to make up for the long, probably boozy lunch with their now ex-colleague. Awful to say, but letting someone go was good for productivity, at least short-term. One of the big bosses claimed he used to like to fire someone his first week on a new job, just to set the tone. “Come to a new place, drop one son of a bitch as a warning, and the others fall into line fast.” Bob wasn’t like that, though. Bob hated firing people. He popped a Prilosec, washed it down with Diet Coke, moved from desk to desk, checking in. People were courteous, but a little clipped. Paul had been popular with his colleagues.
“Someone had to go,” Bob told Jack, the staff alpha dog. “That wasn’t my call, and it wasn’t my choice. Could have been two people. I bargained them down to one.”
“This department’s been decimated,” Jack said. “We can’t afford to lose anyone, especially someone who works as hard as Paul.”
“I know,” Bob said. “That’s what I told them.”
“And Paul was good at what he did,” Elena put in. “Meanwhile, there are others who aren’t pulling their weight.” She glanced across the room, toward Frank’s desk, but he wasn’t there. Not even a firing could scare Frank into staying late.
“Let’s not get into personalities, Elena. That’s not professional.”
“Oh, but it is professional to hire someone with no experience in the field because his father was the big boss’s college roommate? Jesus, Bob, grow a pair. I’ve got a six-month-old niece with bigger balls than you.”
Elena had always prided herself on talking blunt, like a guy.
“Look, Elena, I don’t like how things are done around here, either, sometimes. But what can I do, I have—”
“A wife and two kids,” Jack said.
“Well, I do. What would you have me do?”
“The right thing, just once,” Elena said. “Not the politically feasible thing. The right thing. You’re so worried about your kids? What about the example you’re setting for them, carrying out orders?”
“Not carrying out orders,” Jack said musingly. “That’s more Klink, don’t you think? Our guy, Bob, he’s more Schultz than Klink. He sees nussing, he knows nussing.”
It wasn’t the first time that the German officers of Hogan’s Heroes had been invoked in Bob’s presence.
“Paul always said you were Klink and Schultz,” Elena said. “Two Nazis, two Nazis in one! You live in fear of the big bosses, but you’re also inept, pretending to be out of the loop. Me, I’d peg you as Ugarte in Casablanca. ‘You detest me, don’t you, Rick?’ ” Elena did a horrible Peter Lorre imitation.
“You got kids, Elena?” Bob asked. He knew the answer.
“No, but—”
“Well, wait until you do to lecture me on being a parent. You are over the line. You know nothing about being a parent, about what it does to you.”
“I’m a parent,” Jack said. “I’m also somebody’s son. And I know I wouldn’t want my father to do sleazy things in my name. Or my wife’s name. I wouldn’t want someone I presumably love to make me a bad person.”
“It’s how things are. I can’t do anything about their decisions, anyway. Would you rather work in Phil’s section? He’s a ruthless SOB.”
“Yes,” Elena said. “But he doesn’t expect to be forgiven when he summarily executes someone. Doesn’t want to be forgiven, in fact. You pull the trigger, then beg everyone to be your buddy.”
“They told me that I had to let Paul go. I could have fallen on my sword, but all that would have meant is that I would have been another guy out there, looking for a job in this economy. I gotta do what’s right for my family.”
Jack’s phone rang and Elena was distracted by the flashing light on her BlackBerry. Tomorrow, they would be happy that it wasn’t them. Heck, they were probably happy now and feeling guilty about their relief, which was why they were picking on him. Tomorrow, everything would be fine. Better, perhaps, now that the ax had fallen.
And if the big bosses told him to lose another person on his team—well, then Elena would regret that comment about growing a pair.
Bob woke up late, much later than usual. How had he failed to hear the alarm, the fury of the morning preparations? Why had Mona let him sleep? The kids had a god-awful early bus to school, six forty-five or something like that, and Mona didn’t mind if he slept through the chaos of getting them out of the house. But she usually put on another pot of coffee about seven thirty, and if the aroma didn’t wake him, she would stick her head in the bedroom door, call his name.
He went downstairs. No coffee? Mona must have something at the school today. It looked like there hadn’t been time for breakfast; the only thing in the sink was the old-fashioned glass from which he had sipped several slugs of bourbon last night while watching ESPN, revisiting the conversation with Jack and Ellen, and thinking of other things he should have explained. He didn’t mind that they didn’t get it, but being thought of as a bad guy—that really hurt.
The refrigerator was pretty sparse—orange juice, a few bottles of beer, a pint of half-and-half past its sell date. He sniffed—no, he wouldn’t risk it. And they were out of coffee beans, too, down to the Folgers. What was up with Mona? Maybe she had just run out to the grocery store. He was careful never to wonder aloud just what she did with her days, but the fact was, she didn’t work. Okay, okay, she didn’t work outside the home—and while he knew there was a lot of chauffeuring, that the kids’ appointments forced her day into odd fragments, stranding her at athletic practices and lessons, it still seemed to him that his wife should be able to get to the grocery store in a timely fashion. And to pick up a little. The house wasn’t dirty, exactly, but it had a neglected look, more noticeable in the morning light than it had been last evening. There were stacks of newspapers in the family room off the kitchen, several splayed books lying around, something that Mona normally detested. It was one of the many small tensions between them: he read several books at once, mostly histories and spy thrillers, and Mona went behind him, snapping them shut, so he had to find his place again. Well, good for her, for finally letting go of such a petty complaint. Now if she could just surrender the seven thousand others, realize how good she had it.
Twilight Zone Anthology Page 31