In the Electric Eden

by Nick Arvin

  11:35 a.m.: People are leaving for lunch. Angie has been asking some questions about the book I gave her and I have tried to explain about measurement systems and control points and the difference between a process engineer and a product engineer. About the work of design and manufacture at a major consumer products corporation. But interruptions arise. Engineers stop at my desk to make inquires. E-mail arrives marked “urgent.” I must run off to look at this or that problem in the labs. Angie accepts these interruptions with admirable patience. At one point she starts to fidget and I cannot talk to her immediately so I hand her my laser pointer and tell her she is not to point it at anyone’s eyes under any circumstances. She dances the red dot around on the ceiling. Then she digs out of my desk a couple of magnifying lenses and a piece of shiny aluminum sheet metal and manipulates the laser beam with these in various optical configurations.

  There comes a moment when I want to make a phone call and feel at my belt for my cell phone and then remember.

  11:43 a.m.: I look at the desk phone. It is still on “hold.” A small red LED glows to indicate this.

  Is it possible I am wrong about what goes on in Roberts’s office at lunch?

  Roberts pursues department finances rigorously. I see the way my coworkers glance at that closed office door and the way they look at me but they could all be wrong. This (sex) would be just the sort of misunderstanding that would induce people around here to circulate silly rumors and give me embarrassing looks.

  At any rate Laura and Roberts surely would not do such a thing on this day. Not while Angie is in the office. I was tremendously foolish to plant the phone in Roberts’s office. What if it is discovered? Sometimes when I am emotional I do things that are obviously dumb. As soon as I realize I am doing such a thing it becomes inconceivable to me and I shut it down. But sometimes the thing is already done. Then I must address myself to the consequences.

  I glance at Angie and she is staring at me. I realize I have wasted two or three minutes in transfixion on the “hold” light. I wink at Angie and pick up the phone. Click off “hold.”

  The grunting and gasping coming through the line seems incredibly loud—even as reproduced by the tiny cheap speaker in this phone. I wonder at the amount and type of sound insulation some unknown architectural engineer must have surrounded that office with in order to successfully block the noise of such caterwauling. It is a horrible sound.

  With the intention of recording this for evidence I look for my answering machine. Then remember I have no answering machine. We switched from answering machines to voice mail more than a year ago. I am not thinking clearly at all today. I try to remember if there is some way to make the voice mail system record this. I look in a desk drawer for the voice mail instruction booklet. I try another drawer. Did I throw it away?

  Behind me Angie says: “What’s going on?”

  Perhaps I appear tense. I try to relax my shoulders and reform the expression of my face. I look at Angie. An idea arises. I say: “Mom wants you in Mr. Roberts’s office. It’s just down the aisle there and to the right. Number 4131. Why don’t you run over there?”

  Angie looks in the direction I am pointing but hesitates. I say: “Go on.”

  She says: “Okay.” She clambers off her chair and walks away.

  I press the phone hard against my ear. The huffing continues and I listen for interruption. A knock. Gasps of confusion and the stumbling about of hurried dressing.

  11:47 a.m.: There has been no knock. No interruption of the ongoing copulation. I feel worried. I stand. The aisle is empty and the door to Roberts’s office is closed. The cubicles are empty. Everyone has gone to lunch. I call: “Angie!”

  No answer. I drop the phone and move down the aisle. I begin to jog. I go up and down the aisles between cubicles and duck into several to peer under desks. An engineer eating in his cubicle stares. I ignore him but stop to ask the next engineer I come across if he has seen a little girl. He shrugs without turning from his computer.

  11:49 a.m.: I am becoming alarmed. I stand on a desk to get an overhead view of the room. The room seems incredibly large and my child is a very small person. She is not anywhere in sight.

  And suddenly I know where she is. Angie would not disobey me. They forgot to lock the door and she walked right in. They did not hear her and she is standing to one side quietly observing. Angie is capable of that.

  I sprint to Roberts’s office. I stop. I hear: The buzz of fluorescent lights. The whir of a distant laser printer. The hiss of cooling fans spinning inside computers. A couple of people talking loudly into their phones.

  I put my hand on the doorknob and apply torque. It turns. Not locked.

  I throw the door open.

  Naked legs. Shirts. (When you really look at sex it’s nothing more than a kinetic interaction of bodies. Piston and cylinder. Tongue and groove. Tab A and Slot B. Bolt and nut. Hydraulic cylinders. Stamping presses.)

  The door crashes against the wall. Laura gasps. They have their shirts on and are naked from the waist down except that Roberts has his socks on. And his tie. His tie: I actually double check this. With these new twelve-way adjustable chairs the seat back can be leaned all the way to horizontal and the arms dropped down out of the way. Laura is on top. Roberts curses. While they struggle to get up the chair rolls out from beneath them and Roberts falls to the ground. Laura is crouching to cover herself and feeling on the floor for her panties and staring as if she does not recognize me.

  I advance. I say: “You people.” Roberts’s face appears from behind his desk and he seems confused because his smile is on.

  I seize a heavy stapler off a nearby file cabinet and hurl it at him. But miss. It hits the wall near the ceiling. Roberts does not flinch and perhaps does not even realize he was its target. The stapler clatters and spews staples across the floor. Roberts’s smile switches off and he says in a loud whisper: “Derek! Keep it down. Please.” He appears to be having trouble with his pants. Snagged on something. I have already realized that throwing things will solve nothing and I have stopped. Roberts says: “Close the door for godsake.”

  I close the door. Then I wonder why I have done this. I say: “You people. Do you have any idea how many articles and subsections of company policy you are violating?” Roberts has freed his pants and is putting them on. Laura appears to be finding it difficult to get her panties on without revealing herself. I say: “Moreover there are the moral considerations. The immoral considerations. Look at what you are doing. Look at yourselves.”

  Roberts says: “Derek. Shut up.”

  I say: “I work hard and have always worked hard for this company and my dedication to this company has been un-swerving. But I find my loyalty to the company compromised by your individual actions. As my superior I hope you feel upon you the full weight of what you have done.”

  Roberts has his pants on now. He stands and glares at me. Threatening. Rivulets of sweat on his forehead. Laura has turned to face the wall and button her pants. She has given up on the panties and they lie on the floor. I say: “Laura? Do you do this to hurt me? Then you have succeeded.” None of this appears to have an impact on anyone. I say: “Laura—the man wears his tie while having sex. This cannot be what you want.”

  Roberts glances down at his tie and Laura looks at him and there’s a quiet. What is it I want out of these two? Their embarrassment?

  Yes. I want their shame. Then I want them to vanish from the face of the earth so that I can go on undisturbed with my work and with my daughter.

  And Laura’s thoughts have somehow arrived at an identical point—she says: “Where is Angie?” as I wonder the same.

  How can I have forgotten Angie? It never fails when I am under great duress: my thoughts become scattered and stupid. How can I have forgotten my daughter? I hurriedly peer around the file cabinets. Under the conference table in the middle of the room. Laura takes a step toward me and says: “Where is she?”

  Could she be under Roberts’s desk
? I lean across it and the situation is such that Roberts perhaps thinks I am lunging at him. He grabs me and wraps his arm around my neck and squeezes. A “headlock.” I can barely breath. My vision clouds. I scratch at his arm and struggle and things I cannot see are being knocked off Roberts’s desk and crashing on the floor. I flail. I kick chairs over. Laura is screaming: “Stop it!” She pries at Roberts’s arm with one hand and her other hand presses against my face and her finger is in my eye. Roberts loosens his grip and she pushes us apart. I slide back. Rub at my throat. Straighten my shoulders. Once again Roberts and I stand on opposite sides of his desk. My eye is watering and I cannot see from it.

  Roberts says: “Back off.” This is unnecessary. I am backed off.

  I say: “She’s not under the desk?”

  Laura says: “No!”

  I say: “Why didn’t you two have the door locked? How do you know someone didn’t come in?”

  Roberts looks at Laura. “I thought you locked the door.”

  Laura shrugs. “I guess I was in a hurry.”

  Roberts’s smile switches on.

  I interrupt: “I thought Angie was in here. No one should have to see this.” Suddenly it strikes me that it perhaps was not the right thing to do: to try to send my child into this room when they were doing what they were doing. I feel a surge of shame.

  Laura is looking at me with her eyebrows all bunched up. She says: “You lost Angie?”

  I lie: “She just wandered off.”

  We all together start toward the door but I am the first one there. Once again I throw it wide. And there like a prize for us—though we surely do not deserve anything of the kind—is Angie. She stands just outside the doorway and beside her is an office chair that she has modified and I jump back because she has the seatback cocked like the sling of a catapult and loaded on it in the compartments of a plastic desk organizer are the small hard ammunition of several computer mouse tracking balls while projecting from the cushion are a dozen or more bristling pens and pencils. And taped to an arm of the chair is my laser pointer serving as a kind of targeting device. Its red dot glows on Roberts’s stomach. Angie has a string in her hand which is tied to a lever under the seat of the chair. She looks very composed and professional in her trousers and button-down shirt. She might be about to make a presentation on low-cost manufacturing strategies or rapid prototyping technologies.

  Laura says: “Honey—what do you think you are doing?”

  Angie pulls her string. The chair back snaps forward. The massed array of weaponry flops ahead about two feet and drops to the floor with a clatter muted by the ubiquitous gray short-pile carpeting.

  Laura sighs. Angie gazes with a puzzled expression at the items on the floor. Roberts says: “Well.” He straightens his tie. He sees the red dot on his belly and steps out of its way.

  Laura says: “Now you’ve made a mess. Why did you do that?” Angie does not answer. Laura shakes her head. “Honey—you’re going to have to pick up all these things.”

  For several seconds Angie stands looking at the floor but not moving. I fear she might cry. Laura says: “Angie. Please.” Slowly Angie crouches and begins to gather things. Behind me I hear Roberts right one of the chairs I kicked over in our struggle. I pick up a mouse ball that has rolled to my feet. An engineer passing in the aisle peers at us curiously. Laura is saying to me: “This is the kind of thing I’ve been telling you about.” But at the same time Roberts says: “Hey. What is this?”

  I remember the cell phone.

  I say: “Angie. Never mind that. Let’s go.”

  I start for the doorway. Laura says: “Where are you going? She’s got to learn to clean up her messes.” From behind her comes the tearing noise of duct tape ripping away.

  I push the chair/catapult out of my way and take Angie’s hand to pull her upright. I say: “Come along dear.”

  I glance back and Roberts has his smile on. He asks: “Is this yours? Derek?”

  We are walking away. Laura says: “Derek.”

  Roberts says: “Derek!”

  Angie and I move steadily away. They do not follow. I suspect they fear making a public scene. It would not help Roberts’s career. Or Laura’s.

  12:12 p.m.: Angie says: “Dad. You’re crying.”

  “I’ve got something in my eye.” It is my left eye. The one that was poked. I have to close that eye in order to see my watch.

  12:33 p.m.: Angie and I have been walking the halls. My vision has cleared up. We have passed: Machine shops. Audio testing labs. Fatigue testing facilities. Manufacturing simulations. The cubicle clusters of various small departments. Teleconferencing rooms with stadium-style seating. Loading docks. Storage areas. It would not be easy to find us if we were being searched for. I do not know if we are.

  Angie is trudging heavily and strands of her neatly pulledback hair have come undone and drift airily about her head. She let go of my hand some time ago.

  I will most likely be fired. I have no proof of what was going on between Roberts and Laura. Even though everyone knew of it. They however have my cell phone taped to the bottom of a chair in Roberts’s office and dialed into the phone on my desk. He is my boss. I will most likely be fired.

  I look at Angie and I am struck by a lurch of awful feeling: might she have slipped into Roberts’s office and out again before I got there? I say: “You didn’t go right to the office like I told you. Did you?”

  She glances at me. I cannot read her expression. I say: “Did you?”

  She does not answer.

  I have a terrible feeling. I begin: “The act of sexual intercourse between a man and a woman—”

  Angie interrupts: “Sometimes I hate Mom.”

  I stop and gather myself. I frown. “Well. You don’t really hate Mom. She loves you.”

  “Maybe. I guess.” Angie glowers at the floor. “But I hate Herb.”

  “Who?”

  “Herb.”

  “Herb?” It takes me a few seconds to substitute “Herb” into the correct equation. “You mean Herb Roberts.”

  “He came to the house once. Mom thought I was asleep but I wasn’t. They were talking and I was listening and I don’t like him.”

  “Well. That’s fine. You don’t have to like everyone.” I look at her. “But you have to be polite toward them. Even if you don’t like them. People are not perfect. People make mistakes. People are unpredictable. Nonetheless you must respect them and you cannot fling office supplies at them because you don’t like them.”

  Softly she says: “I’m sorry.”

  “You really shouldn’t have done that with the chair. Someone could have been hurt.”

  “I know.”

  “One of the things we have to do when we invent something is think about how to use it responsibly.”

  She nods. But then she scowls. “I don’t know why it didn’t work. It should have worked.”

  I know how she feels. I hate it when things don’t work. I say: “That’s why we build prototypes and test them. We experiment. I can show you the process sometime.”

  “Okay.”

  I am trying to be stern but I am feeling proud of her. Not because she attempted a catapult assault on Roberts. Not only because of that. But because she’s such an incredibly inventive and clever girl.

  She says: “I’m tired.”

  “We will be there soon.” But I have no idea where we are going. I feel we should do something together. But what? What is there to do besides work? What?

  When I had my girl and my work and my wife I had all I needed. The great equation seemed perfectly balanced.

  12:40 p.m.: Angie and I have found the storeroom where all the old office chairs are being kept until the corporate bureaucracy decides how to dispose of them. The room is about the size of the library at Angie’s school with a smooth concrete floor and concrete walls painted white and lit by overhead fluorescent lights. The floor space is entirely covered by uniform ranks of worn office chairs and dozens more have been t
hrown in to lie across the precise rows at awkward angles or stand upside down with their casters in the air. For several minutes Angie has been quiet. Suddenly she turns and says to me: “Dad—Mom didn’t really want to see me, did she?”

  I hesitate. “I guess not.”

  “Why did you say she did?”

  “I’m sorry.” This is all I can think of to say.

  “Was it an experiment?”

  “It was a mistake. I’m sorry.” My vision blurs again. It is both eyes now. I think: I am a terrible father. I am an awful failure. “Can you forgive your father for making a mistake?”

  She gazes at me but says nothing. I can see she is considering. She understands this is a grave question. Quietly I meet her gaze. Blinking rapidly. At last she says: “Yes. But you must not do it again.”

  “I promise to try.”

  “Okay. So long as you really try.”

  “I will really try.”

  “Okay.”

  I say: “You don’t hate me?”

  “Not ever.”

  I feel relieved. I feel happy. My vision clears.

  Angie is looking at the chairs. After a minute she says: “You could catapult a lot of stuff at once.”

  “These old ones didn’t have the variable tension recline feature.” I press on the nearest one to show her.

  “They don’t have the springy back.”

  “That’s right. They don’t have the springy back feature.”

  “Is that why they’re being taken away?”

  “Kind of.”

  Angie sits in one. “It feels okay.”

  “I suppose they’re really not bad. But people want the new thing. People want the springy back feature.”

  “I feel bad for these.”

  “Don’t. The chairs don’t care about anything.”

  “I know.”

  “They’re inanimate.”

  Angie says: “I know.” She spins the chair she is seated in and then climbs into the next. She keeps climbing and crawling over the rows of chair backs like low fences. I hope—desperately hope—that she will be all right in spite of me and in spite of everything I have done and everything I do not understand.