The Towers of Babylon

by Michelle Kaeser

  When he turns back to his computer, she starts to sift through the piles of glossy brides and grooms on his desk, looking for any of his old journalism photographs. There was once a series on a garment factory collapse in Bangladesh. A nightmarish episode. Even after massive cracks were found in the building’s foundation, workers were kept inside, forced to stitch together clothes for popular labels—Joe Fresh, Benetton, Walmart—until the place collapsed on their heads. In one particularly wrenching shot, an elderly woman stares at the rubble not with anguish or concern, but with pure exhaustion, such a distilled emptiness in her expression that looking at her made Louise feel sick for a week.

  Where is that photograph? Where are any of his old photographs? They should all be here. On this desk. In these drawers. She wrenches open a drawer and out spills a stream of beaming brides, falling all over the magenta carpet.

  Elliott spins around in his chair. “Hey! What’s wrong with you? Why are you so squirrely?”

  “I’m not.” But her quaking hands make it hard to gather up the brides.

  “Louie, you need a vacation. I keep telling you.”

  “I can’t get time off work,” she says. “I call in sick too much.”

  “Yeah, because you need a vacation.” Elliott swivels back and forth in his chair, watching her clean up. “Mr. Fang was telling me about a nice place he stayed at in Costa Rica. Might be fun? I’ve got that destination wedding there in the fall.”

  Louise crawls under the desk to retrieve a last wayward bride. “Why are you always talking to Mr. Fang?” she asks.

  “What?”

  “Or to Mrs. Eisenberg? Or to Marguerite? Or Dennis? Or any of the neighbours?”

  “I’m being friendly. What’s wrong with you?

  “It’s suspicious! These people aren’t that interesting.” She sets all the photographs back on the desk and slouches against the wall, kicking her legs out in front of her. Then she pulls out her half-smoked joint, relights it, takes a deep draw, and offers it to Elliott, who considers for a moment before accepting.

  “Here’s something interesting from Mr. Fang,” he says. “You know that little rundown grey house? That backs onto the school? Sold for 1.1 million.”

  “So what?”

  Elliott drags a hand through his thick hair. “So it’s time to sell, Lou. It’s time we moved out of here.”

  “No. No, I don’t agree.” She takes back the joint. It’s only been three years since they bought the house from her father, after he moved to a small condo way out in the west end, something that better complemented his new snowbird lifestyle. He offered them the house at a generous price, relieved not to have the trouble of cleaning out over thirty-years’ worth of accumulated crap. Except for a few pieces of furniture that he took to the new condo, he left them the house as is, as it always was.

  “Look at you.” Elliott waves a hand up and down her body. “You’re miserable.”

  “Yeah, but not because of this house.”

  “No? We need to get out of this … this … suburban purgatory.”

  “This isn’t the suburbs. This is Toronto proper. Says so on our mailing address.”

  “Don Mills is not the city. It’s not downtown. Let’s go live among the people.”

  “Among the people? Elliott. Do you even hear yourself?”

  Downtown living might kill her. Even Don Mills is experiencing a devastating population boom. New condos keep materializing, bringing with them more noise, more traffic, more commerce, more people. It’s a disaster.

  “This isn’t healthy, us living here like this,” Elliott says, gently kicking the sole of her foot. “It’s like being in one of those ghost towns, where everything is left frozen in time. It’s like Chernobyl, and you’re one of those old babushkas still rattling around the place even though everyone else is long gone. Christ, it’s still 1989 in this house.”

  Louise runs her hand over the faded pink carpet, she looks at the kaleidoscope-patterned wallpaper, peeling near the ceiling. “I’ll think about it,” she says, just to get out of this conversation.

  “Good. Now … where’s my chicken?”

  She flips him off, but he grabs hold of her extended finger and touches it to his lips. “Hey, hey, kidding. Come here.” He draws her near, and she yields, immediately, hoping that he’ll continue to kiss her, touch her … fuck her? But as quickly as he pulls her in, he pushes her away. “Just gimme a few more minutes to finish up,” he says and pats her ass out of the office.

  “1986,” she says at the door.

  “What?”

  “Chernobyl happened in ’86. And you know what Chernobyl is now? An animal sanctuary. The animals have all come back, because it turns out that nuclear fallout is much less hazardous than an actual human population. Chernobyl is a haven.”

  4

  DEEP INTO THE night, Louise roams the house, drifting from room to room, quiet as a ghost. She hasn’t slept straight through till morning in weeks. Every night, she’s awakened by some new discomfort—a pain in her left side, in her chest, her neck, her throat, her teeth. Not even the pot keeps her asleep.

  On her millionth pass through the living room, her eye catches a gilded shimmer from the oak wall unit. Peering at the shelves crammed full of books, she spots the small volume with gold lettering on its spine: a pocket bible. Louise doesn’t recognize it, but it must have been here for decades. Whose was it? There’s Catholicism on her father’s side, a splash of Protestantism on Mother Mai’s, but these made only a commercial appearance in her life—Christmas presents, Easter brunches. Did a visiting relative once leave this behind? Or maybe it was gifted to one of her parents by a proselytizing street zealot. It might have arrived as part of a bulk garage sale purchase. Mai liked to hit up the street sales for books at basement prices. A quarter a piece. A dime. There are still boxes and boxes of trashy old novels in the basement. Mai liked to read fiction. So Louise likes it much less.

  She pulls the small bible from the shelf and passes a palm over the hard maroon cover, which hangs limply from the frayed remains of its binding. Settling down on the leather couch, she flicks on the reading lamp and gives it a shot. Maybe it’ll put her to sleep.

  5

  TODAY LOUISE’S ATTITUDE is on a rare upswing. Already Friday! She’s able to keep herself composed for most of the morning commute. There are only a few moments when the workday dread resurfaces with a searing thrust. When she first cruises onto the highway, for example, it makes an appearance, prompting a brief daydream of being rescued from all this interminable drudgery right here, right now, by a swift, merciful collision with a telephone pole. But that passes.

  On the short walk from the parking garage to the office, Louise runs the gauntlet of obtrusive commerce. The electric advertising, the video billboards, the neon storefronts, the loud panhandlers ready to sell, the tittering tourists eager to buy. And up ahead, a block from her office tower, is UpTick Media’s home billboard, currently featuring a giant glass of very icy iced tea with a cartoonish bird hovering beside it. The bright bird is the mascot of Zing!® Iced Tea, one of her company’s top clients, the first of their clients to venture bravely into the realm of audio billboards.

  As she approaches the tower, her steps are slowed by an instinctive self-preservation mechanism. But she pushes on bravely, one foot in front of the other, and then—there it is!—a sudden bouncy voice saying:

  “Hot day? How about a cool iced tea? Zing!”

  “Hot day? How about a cool iced tea? Zing!”

  The voice comes out of nowhere, as though it’s been injected straight into her head. Despite knowing the source, despite the endless meetings about how directional sound technology works, despite this being the fourth day that the speakers are up and running, it still jolts her each time she steps through the sound beam. It stops her dead in the middle of the sidewalk.

  “Hot day? How about a cool iced tea? Zing!”

  She stares up at the billboard and tries to spot the speaker
s, but they’re well disguised. So she drags herself onward and within a few steps the sound disappears. There’s some minimal spillover for a foot or two … then nothing, like it never happened. Except that she suddenly wants an iced tea.

  6

  THE MORNING BRINGS bad news. Very bad news. It’s Team Building Day. Shit.

  This is much worse than another meeting about the audio billboards and the forever discussions about what hip and edgy approach to take to market them. Louise must have repressed it (reasonable), but now the shock of a day filled with chart paper and acronyms and magic markers and games and an upbeat facilitator has her clutching the edge of her desk in panic.

  “You forgot about it?” says Jerry, who sits across from her, already working his way through a bag of morning candy. All day long she listens to his crunching and chewing. He hits up the vending machine three times daily, like clockwork. She’s charted his trips: 9:15am, a bag of candy; 1:00pm, chips or pretzels; 3:45pm, a chocolate bar. She had to use his keyboard once. It was covered in Cheeto dusting; her fingers were orange for the rest of the day. “How could you forget about it?” he says. “It’s practically a day off.”

  “I don’t know,” says Louise, digging her fingertips into her desk. “I must have been too excited.”

  The kitchen is a-bustle with office drones grabbing coffee and snacks before they are all condemned to Meeting Room 2. The counter and sink are littered with dirty mugs and yesterday’s dishes, because these people are animals. Only one clean mug remains in the cupboard. On it, a pug with a Santa hat and the caption: Feliz Navidog. This was Neil’s—a gag gift, because Neil had no cheery feelings toward either Christmas or dogs, a contrarian stance that Louise appreciated.

  Neil was one of her favourite office mates—quiet, reasonable, and a little bit funny: a unicorn. But Neil is gone. He took sick leave at the start of the year (cancer, what else?), a diagnosis which came out of left field for the otherwise fit man in his early forties. The prognosis seemed hopeful at first, but reports trickling into the office turned increasingly grim, so Louise was not surprised when the final report arrived a few weeks ago, announcing that he had succumbed, leaving behind two small children and this pug mug. The office drones seemed to take it hard for a day or two, with tearful sessions and disbelieving headshakes, but they’ve bounced back. Louise, though, finds it hard not to interpret this as an omen: she’s next.

  She takes a tentative taste of the slop in the coffee pot. Bad. Really bad and bitter. She searches the fridge for milk, maybe cream, anything to mask the burnt, gas-station flavour. A carton of milk on the bottom shelf … smells okay. She chances it, adds a healthy splash to her mug and returns the milk to its place, next to a sad-looking ham and cheese sandwich marked Stephanie. The name is written on a piece of bright red paper with the Zing!® Iced Tea logo plastered across the top. These notepads are everywhere, popping up like an invasive species: one on top of the fridge, another on Louise’s desk, on everyone’s desk, because Zing!® Iced Tea sent over a mountain of swag to celebrate the launch of the audio campaign.

  When Louise arrives at Meeting Room 2, which for some reason always smells like decay, as though a litter of rats is forever decomposing in the drywall, she finds the laminate tables arranged into three big clusters. The room is full-up with staff, twenty-five people from across all departments. At a table near the front, Rob, her department head, is waving to the open seat beside him. He’s been guarding the spot with his navy blazer, which he once confided—with revolting pride—was bespoke. No surprise he’s saved the seat. Rob emails her regularly throughout the day with “goofy” (vaguely sexual) videos or listicles he is “just sure” she’ll get a kick out of. He messages her outside of work, “just to chat.” He likes to proclaim within earshot that “mixed-race girls are the hottest.” He jumps at the chance to offer her a ride home on those rare occasions that she feels obligated to drag herself out for happy hour drinks. Then there’s that one time, at the Christmas party, when he asked her how old she was when she lost her virginity. She’d ask him to cool it with this trend, but then he’d be offended, then angry, then spiteful, which would have workplace consequences. She’d ask Stephanie from HR to talk to him about it, but Stephanie from HR is an incompetent lunatic.

  “Hey slow dog,” he whispers, tapping at his shiny silver Tissot wristwatch. “You’re cutting it close, huh?” But he’s smiling, then nudging her side with his elbow. Always very liberal with the physical contact.

  “Hasn’t even started yet,” she says.

  “Gonna be a long day, huh?” He gives her a bored look, like isn’t this lame, but Louise knows that Team Building Day is one of his favourite days of the year. A chance to show off for the office dweebs.

  “Nice work on the ABPP report, by the way. I took a look at it last night. A few things we’ll need to go over … maybe we can touch base at the break? Or over lunch?”

  Louise is spared a response, because just then, Stephanie from HR calls: “Good morning, everybody. Good morning.” She claps her hands several times to rally attention. “I’m so glad we’re having this session today! We really need this one, don’t we, guys? I know we’re all still struggling with recent … um … personnel setbacks … but this is just the thing we need to lift our spirits!”

  In her bumbling, desperately cheerful way, Stephanie introduces the day’s facilitator: the middle-aged, box-dyed blonde woman who’s been trotting around the front of the room, next to the easel with the chart paper. A fist-sized gold necklace hangs at her jugular notch. Her name is Barbara Mills. And she couldn’t be happier to be here with them all today.

  After the merry-go-round of introductions, Barbara Mills explains the day’s first exercise. “You’ll like this one!” she says and starts to weave a path around the tables, carrying three fat manila envelopes. “As you may have noticed, you’re already separated into three groups. Now I’m giving each group one of these envelopes. Inside you’ll find a jigsaw puzzle.” She deposits an envelope in front of Louise with a bizarrely encouraging smile. “First group to assemble their puzzle wins. Simple enough, right?” Barbara nods at each group, then lets her expression turn mischievous. “But you’ll discover a few wrinkles as you go. Sound good?”

  “Uh … quick question,” says Keith from IT, whom Louise has long suspected is on the spectrum. He shoots his arm up exactly vertically, his fingers locked firmly together. “Do we all have the same puzzle?”

  “That’s one of the things you’ll have to figure out,” says Barbara with a coy smile.

  “Follow-up question.” He keeps his hand in the air. “If the puzzles are different, are they all at the same difficulty level?”

  “Again, that’s for you to discover.”

  “The reason I ask is because the group sizes are uneven. Our group and Rob’s group, we’re both down a member. Frank’s group has an extra person. That’s not fair.”

  “If it helps, I think I count as two people these days,” says Nicky with a proud rub of her expansive belly.

  Keith stares at the belly with a stern frown. “But your foetus can’t help us with the jigsaw puzzle.”

  “I know that, Keith.” Nicky sighs, forcing patience. “It was a joke—”

  “And besides, it still wouldn’t be fair for Rob’s group.”

  “Why are you calling it Rob’s group?” asks Mia. “You keep saying Rob’s group, like he’s our leader.”

  “I don’t mind being Team Leader,” interjects Rob as he turns on a politician’s smile. “I’ll throw my hat in the ring.”

  “Oh … were we supposed to appoint team leaders? I think I missed that.”

  “Piggy-backing on Keith’s question,” says Frank of the unfairly advantaged team, “should someone from our group sit out to make things more even?”

  “No, that won’t—” Barbara says, flitting nervously toward their table, her huge necklace thumping against her chest.

  “I don’t mind sitting out,” volunteers Tracy. �
�I’m terrible at puzzles anyway.”

  “Oh, thanks Tracy. Thanks for being a team player. We don’t want to win because of an unfair advantage.”

  “What makes you think you’ll win, Frank?”

  “Always do.”

  “I don’t think anybody should sit out,” says Stephanie. “This is a team building exercise.”

  “Do we know what pictures these puzzles are of? Did I miss that part too?”

  “I’m not sure. I think that’s part of the challenge?”

  “Picking up on what the group is saying, it sounds like everyone just wants the game to be fair.” Rob is up on his feet, taking full command of the room. “Barbara? Can you ensure that the most difficult puzzle goes to Frank’s group? That might allay some of the concerns we’ve been hearing.”

  “It’s not Frank’s group either.”

  “But we haven’t established that any of the puzzles are more difficult,” says Keith. “That was the point of my question and she—” he flings an arm in Barbara’s direction—“hasn’t answered it yet.”

  “Okay everybody, I appreciate all this enthusiasm and engagement,” says Barbara, her plastered smile showing some cracks. “Why don’t we go ahead and get started and see how it goes. I can assure you the puzzles are all equally difficult.”

  “Oh, good, okay. I’ll sit out then?” says Tracy.

  “No, nobody sits out.”

  “So … to clarify …”

  Ten minutes later, when things have been sorted to nobody’s satisfaction, the task begins. It’s all mumbles and whispers until Rob, leader that he is, decides to get things going with a bout of assertive hollering: “Okay, okay, I got a corner piece. Who’s got edge pieces? We need edge pieces! Over here!”

  Louise recognizes the colour schemes on the pieces laid out on the table: three of UpTick’s current billboards. Bright red (Zing!), turquoise-and-blue (Euphoria Shampoo), and silver (Hiromi Electronics). Ah-ha, a wrinkle: the puzzle pieces are all mixed up among the groups. They’ll have to negotiate with each other to complete this task. When her phone vibrates in her pocket (thank god!) and she excuses herself, Rob and Mia are so engrossed in their argument over strategy that they don’t even notice her leave.