Cold Plate Special

by Rob Widdicombe

  I filled the boxes up with my working files and grabbed a rolling cart from the mailroom. I rolled the files, three boxes’ worth, back to the freight elevator area and dumped them out into a super-can that was sitting there. Let them sort it all out, if they even find the crap before the trash gets dumped. I was surprised no one had been assigned to watch me or escort me out of the place. I left without making eye contact with anyone. Screw them. I wasn’t going to pay for jack. They could keep my last paycheck for the Citizen Search bill and round out the rest from Reinhaus’ millions. I was gonna need my credit card for living expenses. Damn.

  I threw the magnifying glass and picture into the back seat of my car. I left the cheese crackers behind for the next sucker. I started up the engine and thought about what a lying slimeball Reinhaus was. I hope he remembers what he did to me when he and his secretary were roasting in the molten pits of hell. I was pretty sure she was the one who put the boxes by my cube. Like she was being all helpful, but she was actually rubbing it in. I hope she realized she was going down to the hot place for that.

  Holy shit—I can’t believe I just got fucking fired!

  Fuck!

  I headed out of the beige corporate office park forever and peeled out onto the service road. I pictured Reinhaus’ flesh melting off his bones in one of Satan’s high-tech torture ovens. He and Motorcar could sit there holding hands while they burned. I pulled out onto the main road really, really wanting a beer.

  Or three.

  Or fifty.

  There was a nice hot wind blowing through the car, enough to dry any sweat before it started. Some cool a/c would have been nice, but I had the stripped down version of the ’96 Hyundai. Aside from the bottom of my stomach being twisted up into wet knots and the nuclear winter rolling in over my head, I actually felt kind of relieved. I was finally free of that beige hole.

  To get beer or not to get beer, that was my dilemma. I tried to smell the big blue sky. I just needed some caffeine. I got fired right before my mid-after-lunch coffee break. Life is so effing unfair. A fired, recovering alcoholic and I couldn’t even have one final afternoon jolt of free coffee. That coffee sucked anyway. I’ll never have to drink that swill again, I said to myself. Never. I was so much better off now. Much, much better off.

  5

  I stopped at the Zoom Thru on the way home and something pulled me toward the beer cooler. A powerful electro-magnetic force commonly known as the ripping desire to get wasted. It was hard-wired into my nervous system. I walked by the cool glass doors and visualized myself picking out a few six-packs. It was too damn hot for coffee anyway, right? And getting fired was a special occasion, right? But I knew if I did it the lights would come down again. And I’d be breaking another chain of sobriety I’d built: twenty-two months, three weeks and five days since my last drink. It would make the day a double doomsday that I would never forget—the day I got fired and my legal career took a hard kick to the nuts and I couldn’t handle it. It would have been so common. So obvious. So I kept on going.

  I poured myself a nasty cup of overcooked gas station coffee. That’s about when it started repeating in my head: I can’t believe I got fucking fired. Over a dumb website. What a lame-ass thing to get fired for. I should have gone out in flames of wild glory, busting all the crooked lawyers there. Gotten some smoking hot dirt on them and then run a complex blackmailing scam or something. But getting fired for going on Citizen Search? Okay, so Debbie Danniger is now Debbie Huddleston. That’s great for her—she doesn’t have to put up with people calling her Debbie Danger anymore, but was it worth my future? I’ll always think of her as Debbie Danger anyway, so what difference does it make if she’s Mrs. Huddleston now? Who gives a fuck!

  I can’t believe I got fired.

  The reality was really hitting me. I felt the white hot panic of disaster pressing against my chest like a steel weight. Fuck, shit, damn! Yeah, that job was painfully boring, but what did I have now, the thrill of unemployment? I just can’t believe I just got fired. Oh my god! Give me boring back! I love beige!

  The coffee went straight to my stomach like a bad oil spill infecting a landscape of rotting wetlands. Cup was drained by the time I got halfway home, though. I really wanted to just die. My teeth were vibrating. The only other time I’d ever gotten myself fired from a job was for drinking, sort of. I showed up for work at a summer landscaping job with liquor on my breath from the night before. The boss was this ball-busting religious dude who accused me of drinking before work. I don’t deny that I’m an alcoholic, but that didn’t mean I got up at the butt-crack of dawn and started doing shots. Of course, it didn’t help that I backed the truck up over two brand new, three-hundred dollar professional-grade weed eaters. Anyway, that was just a summer job when I was in college. This shit now was real. The paralegal gig was supposed to be my ticket to the big time, William & Mary, UVA or Tulane. I aspired to the lifestyle of the Southern lawyer. I loved the idea of the South with its tranquil pace and lush trees and humid summer afternoons. I was going to be a modern-day Atticus Finch, kicking back on my wrap-around porch, issuing toxically witty barbs over non-alcoholic mint juleps. Now I was fucked. I needed at least a year at a good firm to put on my law school application, and one that would give me a stellar reference. I only made it five months at Reinhaus, Thompkins and Watts.

  I can’t believe I got fucking fired.

  I could feel the tattoo forming on my forehead in bright red letters: LOOZER.

  I pulled into my parking lot. I wished I’d had another cup of that boiling sludge coffee to throw in Reinhaus’s face. I could shoot it through a fire hose and burn his whole family. No, not his family, they didn’t do anything. Just him, but I would use like three fire hoses of boiling hot coffee at once.

  My apartment was oddly bright inside. Wasn’t used to being home so early in the afternoon. It reminded me that I had just gotten fired. Sharp sunbeams were shooting in through the living room window, illuminating gazillions of suspended dust particles. I threw my keys down on the table and put my sunglasses back on. I felt like an imaginary version of myself, suspended in mid-air like one of the dust particles.

  I just can’t believe I got fucking fired.

  I made a super strong instant iced tea and chugged it down and made another one. Even stronger. It was almost black. I put on some Billy Joel and started smoking one of Carly’s menthol cigarettes. Menthols to me were just cough medicine sticks, but Carly had left them lying around and I was feeling zany, really flirting with the edge here. I blew the smoke out into the sunbeam and watched the dust particles go crazy. Free entertainment. God, was I screwed.

  I tried not to think about getting fired. I took a shower and put on some almost-clean cut-off sweat pants and an old tee-shirt. I went into the kitchen and opened the freezer door and stuck my head in and took a few deep breaths. This always made me feel better. I started doing it the first time I quit drinking. When I was jonesing for a vodka tonic or a sudsy brew, I’d go and stick my head in the freezer and take a few deep breaths. Like someone smacking you in the face but it didn’t hurt as bad.

  The afternoon dwindled away in a swirl of Billy Joel albums and lethal instant iced teas. I commemorated the passing of five o’clock by sticking my head in the freezer again. Not too long after that, Carly came over. She let herself in right while I was doing this warped dance to Movin’ Out. She scared me and I screamed for a second. Her mouth was moving but I couldn’t hear over the music, so I went to turn it down.

  “Hold on,” I said.

  “What is with you?”

  Carly was on her way home from work. She popped in like that every once in a while. I suspected it was so she could catch me beating off or something. She was wearing one of her receptionist’s outfits—high skirt, low-cut top. She had her powers and she used them.

  “You scared the shit out of me.” I forced a chuckle. Then I went over to kiss her but she stuck out her cheek with a cold formality. I stepped back and looked at he
r. She didn’t know I’d been fired yet and she already looked mad, the skin on her forehead creasing up.

  “What?” she said.

  “Nothing. What?”

  She sniffed the air. “What are you doing smoking?”

  “Nothing. I mean…I guess I’m kind of celebrating.”

  “Celebrating what?”

  I smacked my thigh and said: “Well, I quit my job today. Yeah. And let me tell you—”

  “What!”

  “—it feels good.”

  “Jarvis, you did not! Why!” She threw her purse down on the couch, hard. It made a slapping sound. “Oh my god.”

  “I don’t have to take that shit off of anybody,” I said, waving my hand when I said ‘anybody’ like I was swatting at gnats.

  “And you’re celebrating this?”

  “Well, not really, I mean…kind of. I guess.”

  “What happened?” she demanded.

  “I got into it with one of the partners about this whole stupid...I just...dude, he is such an asshole.”

  “What did he do to be such an asshole?”

  “Well, for starters, he got all uptight just because I went...I spent too much time on this program, and—”

  “What program?”

  “This subscription database thing. All I did was…it accidentally ran their bill up a little. And when I offered to pay it all back, I mean, completely all the fuck back, he was like, hello—I am Captain Psycho Boy now. So I mean, I’m not taking that bullshit off any-bod-y, right? I know who I am.” I swatted at the squadron of imaginary gnats again.

  “Are you fucking kidding me? You quit over that?”

  “Yeah, no. I mean…” I shook my head. “It’s hard to explain.”

  She read me. Not like a book but like a cocktail napkin with some notes scribbled on it. I was a terrible liar. I needed to work on that.

  “Jarvis. Did you quit or get fired?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “That wasn’t a ‘not-exactly’ question.”

  “Okay,” I said. “It was kind of…I dunno…mutual, I guess? You should be the damn lawyer.”

  “I’m not the one trying to get into fucking law school, you idiot!”

  “I know, I know.”

  “God—you suck!”

  All the energy drained out of my body in a millisecond.

  Carly lit a cigarette and blew the smoke out real hard. Everything in her world was pretty much divisible into one of two extreme categories: “great” or “sucks.” Didn’t matter if it was a bagel or a ballet. She did have a lesser-used, third category: “weird,” that she saved for things she didn’t understand, like the cowboy phase Ben was going through or art. So at least she didn’t think I was weird. But once she decided that something or someone sucked, it was really hard to convince her otherwise.

  “I can’t believe it,” she said.

  “I know. Me either.”

  “Were you looking at porn?”

  “No, baby, of course not. It’s called Citizen Search. You look people up on it.”

  “What people?”

  “Just…people. I was bored. On my lunch hour and stuff.”

  “Who were you looking up?”

  “I don’t know. People from high school. Old girlfriends, that one professor who—”

  “Old girlfriends! You just lost job because you’re obsessed with old girlfriends?” Now she was really pissed.

  “No, no. I’m sorry. I was just bored. Come on.”

  “Come on, what? Bored? I guess you’re going to be really fucking bored with no job, huh?”

  I felt like a little kid getting yelled at by my mom for breaking a crystal vase. I shrugged my shoulders and then dropped into a sulk.

  “If I wanted to date a loser,” she said, “I would have stayed with Ron.”

  “I thought he owned his own marketing company.”

  “Well, he’s doing a lot better than you are at this point, that’s for sure.” She looked me over and shook her head. “You are so weird.”

  That was it. The silence was heavier than a corpse swinging from a low-rent ceiling fixture. I had no idea what to say. I sucked and I was weird. I had just gotten the double death sentence. She grabbed her purse from the couch.

  “Where are you going?” I said.

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Come on, Carly—”

  “Jarvis, I can’t do this. You’re just going to…how can you do something so stupid? Stupid enough to get fired for, ruin your future and all your goals—and then sit around here like you’re celebrating? What is wrong with you?”

  “Well, it’s a…I was trying to put a positive spin on it. I don’t know.”

  “That’s all you can say—I don’t know?”

  “I guess. I mean…”

  She put out her cigarette and put her fingers on her temples. “Oh my God—you suck!”

  “I know.”

  She slammed the door with perfect timing. For a second I thought I should go after her and say please-baby-no-wait-I’m-sorry and all that stuff, but I didn’t. I just stood there. I felt like I was falling through the floor. I’ll text her later, I decided. Or I’ll call her and talk her into loving me again. She’ll realize that I’m great and don’t suck. She just needs some time to cool down. We’ll work it out. Everything will work itself out. No problem. I am not suck-weird. I’m amazing and awesome. Her vision is just clouded right now. Yeah—her vision is clouded.

  God, I wanted a drink.

  I started pacing the apartment thinking: this isn’t happening. It felt like anvils were being launched into my guts from all sides. I was pacing faster and faster, caffeine screaming through my veins. I decided to go after her. I ran outside with no shoes on, but her car was already gone. I went back in and stuck my head in the freezer for a minute, but it didn’t make me feel better. I fidgeted and paced and sat down and turned on the TV but then turned it off right away. I stuck my head in the freezer again and took a deep breath, but it didn’t do anything again.

  This isn’t the fuck happening.

  I sat on the couch for a while with my head in my hands, telling myself how much none of this was happening. Then I called Ben.

  “Dude,” I said. “I am having the official worst day of my life.”

  “Can’t be worse than the one I had. Another run-in with Frank. Bitch has it out for me.”

  “Well, check this out—I got fired today and I’m pretty sure Carly just broke up with me.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “I’m totally serious.”

  “You need an injury in there too, like a broken arm or something.” He laughed.

  “Dude,” I said as darkly as possible.

  “Are you for real?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “What’s wrong?” Ben asked.

  “I just told you. Jesus.”

  “Damn.”

  “Cogbill’s later? I gotta get out of here for a while.”

  We made plans to meet at eight. I tried to shake the feeling that my best friend was a clueless moron. I had bigger problems than that. I spread out on the couch and wished a meteorite would come crashing through the ceiling and put my lights out for good. No such luck. Then I called Carly. She didn’t answer. At first I left simple messages: “It’s me. Call me back.”

  I texted her. I called her. On the third or fourth voicemail I got apologetic: “I’m sorry for what happened, baby. Please call me back. We can’t just end it like this. Please. I’ll buy you a steak?”

  How was I going to afford steaks now, though? I went to go stick my head in the freezer, but I punched the refrigerator door instead. Some of the magnets came flying off. Guess I was getting a little emotional. Carly was the only girlfriend I’d been able to hold onto for more than five months. And with her high-polish ceramic skin and slinky bedroom eyelashes, and oh lord—that tight swimmer’s body—she was someone I was proud to have as my girlfriend. Someone I could go into Cogbill’s
with and people would say: Damn, Jarvis sure has a hot girlfriend. He is not a faggot by any reasonable estimation. Now it was gonna be me and Ben going in there and everybody’d go back to thinking I was just some corporate douche in a puce polo shirt. And now an unemployed one. The loss was really starting to bite. Carly was the one pushing me to do all these great things: become a kick-ass attorney and purchase a fleet of personal sailboats. Each perfect baby of ours was going to get its own perfect custom fucking sailboat. I had it all planned out!

  This isn’t happening.

  I can’t believe I got fired.

  I can’t believe Carly just dumped my ass.

  I called her again. She didn’t answer so I texted her. My neck was getting hot and itchy. I scratched but it just made it hotter. I left another message. I figured I’d try the assertive approach on this one: “If you don’t call me back soon, I don’t know what I’m gonna do. Call me back. Okay, bye.”

  Soon her phone was just making a busy signal. And so was my brain. Or rather the hysterical train wreck that had become my brain.

  This really, really isn’t anywhere near really happening.

  I realized I was pacing after I started pacing again. All over the tan-beige carpet. My stomach felt like pure toxic rot and my head like some kind of broken free-twirling death gyro. A broken bobble-head doll on PCP. And the hot neck thing—what was up with that? But I kept on scratching and rubbing it. With all my other problems, I really didn’t need a case of hot neck. Now I really wanted a drink. I made some iced tea instead, with five tablespoons of instant tea, then six, then seven, until it was as black as my outlook. I chugged it down. It burned my throat. Time to go to the bar.