On the drive over, my thoughts went between Reinhaus and Carly, from disaster to catastrophe. My life was a full-on disastrophe. At about the fifth traffic light before Cogbill’s, I had a flash of: screw that job, followed by: and who-needs-her-anyway? This was great—I was free now. Free to do whatever. Free to date whoever I wanted. That job blew chunks anyway. I hated it. But the feeling of triumph lasted about one-and-a-half traffic lights. Then life was back to complete and utter suckage. I got stuck behind someone trying to make a left into the Shop’n’Save and beat on the horn. “Piece of shit motherfucker!” I screamed.
I pictured myself swinging a sledge hammer into Reinhaus’s face.
It felt good.
It felt great.
Then the dumb-ass in front of me hit his brakes for no reason. I slammed on the horn again.
“Fucking loser! God!”
I had gone through about seventeen emotional peaks and valleys since I’d left my apartment. A crisp bourbon and ginger ale was calling my name, loudly. But I had to fight it. These were the moments when you had to fight it the most. So there I was heading into a bar. Smart move, Jarvis Henders, smart move.
6
Ben ordered a large platter of cheese sticks but I couldn’t even look at them. I could barely even acknowledge they were there. They smelled like burnt socks.
“That sucks, man,” he said, salting the cheese sticks.
“Yep.” I took a swig of my artificial beer and wished it were real. Ben’s shirt had even more Western stitching than the one he wore last time, big wide loops of white thread twirling across the plaid. Snaps instead of buttons. It was really starting to piss me off. I just thanked God he didn’t have a red bandana tied around his neck. That might have been a deal breaker on the hanging out.
“Fuckin’ lawyers, man,” he said. “They should all be put—what’s that joke about the fifty thousand lawyers at the bottom of the ocean?”
“I got that job because I want to be a lawyer, Tex.”
Ben shook his head and took a swig of his real beer. “And what happened with Carly, now?”
“Yeah, the fight.”
Talking about it made me sick. Made it real. I told him quickly about the fight, or whatever it was. How she called me a sucky weirdo and stormed out. How she slammed the door. How I’ve been attempting to resuscitate negotiations. Ben’s eyes were darting all over the place. He was looking at the waitress’s ass, at one of the TVs, at the wall. In a way, though, it didn’t bother me because I didn’t want to talk about any of it. So I started speculating on why Baltimore’s two main pro sports teams were named after birds. The Orioles and the Ravens. No idea. One thing was sure, though—the Ravens were the only team in the NFL named for a poem.
“That we know of, anyway.”
“At least it’s a scary poem,” Ben said.
Then I remembered again that my whole life had just bottomed out. It wasn’t real. We drank our beers and sat there in silence. I pictured a gallon-sized glass of Jim Beam on the rocks. A whole row of them. I could knock them back like a production line and not have to worry about all this shit for a while.
I sat there watching Ben eat cheese sticks and I made a decision.
“You know what?”
“What?”
“From now on, man, things are going to be great and not suck.”
“Um…that’s cool.”
“I’m making the big change from suckiness to greatness.”
“Killer, dude,” Ben said. “Cheers. Hey, I almost forgot. We just had to fire this guy for cussing out the customers.”
“So? Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“No, I mean I’ve totally got a spot open for you at the call center.”
“Call center? I don’t know, man...”
“What?”
“Don’tcha think maybe I’m a little over-qualified?”
“Nobody’s over-qualified for getting a paycheck, Hoss.”
“What is up with you and this cowboy thing?”
“Whadda you mean?”
“I mean calling me ‘Hoss’ and the outfit.”
“It’s not an outfit,” he said, slamming his beer bottle down on the bar. The suds came oozing to the top. “At least I’ve got a sense of style.”
“Sorry to have to break this to you, but that style went out in the—” My brain couldn’t send the words to my mouth in time. Fucking zinger clog again.
Ben flipped me off. I double flipped him off. I looked down at my sea-foam green polo shirt and beige khakis I had put on in lieu of the rotten sweat pants. Okay, maybe a little preppie, but at least I wasn’t pretending to be a ranch hand. I was who I was, and maybe that person was an unemployed weirdo loser who sucked, but at least I had my own identity, whatever the fuck it was.
“Sorry, man,” Ben said. “I know you’re having a shitty day.”
“It’s cool.”
After that we didn’t say much, each of us staring off into our own corners of space. I didn’t have the energy to be mad at Ben. I was tripping. There was no way I lost my job and my girlfriend all in the same day. No way it was real. I wanted to laugh and cry and vomit and celebrate and kill myself all at the same time. Then do it all again.
On the drive home, I was really feeling the roller coaster thing: one minute bleeding naked emotion and the next, frozen with disbelief, shaking my head. I was about to freaking implode. I got home and called Carly and got the busy signal again. I don’t know how she made her cell phone do that. I threw my phone against the wall and the battery popped out. I made coffee and drank it and went to bed.
Could not sleep. All I could think about were the people who had unceremoniously ruined my life. It’s just the truth: human beings are horrible people. So screw Reinhaus. Screw Carly. Screw Motorcar. Screw all of ’em. I finally fell asleep, wishing for that meteorite to show up. A big one. Texas-sized. Then the world could start over again with a fresh batch of pathetic losers.
Everything is great. Everything is extremely great. Absolutely nothing sucks whatsoever. I repeated this over and over to myself as I woke up, waiting to benefit from my optimism, which never came. My head sludged back into the pillow. Sounded like such a good philosophy, too. So easy to follow: Everything is just fucking so great. Embrace it. Live it. Feel it. I shook my head. My thoughts hurt. My stomach felt gross, and there weren’t even any cheese sticks crammed in there. I could feel the purple-black death cloud of nuclear winter pressing on me, pushing down on my neck until every centimeter of my being was poisoned with deadness and hate. My life was a screaming invisible train wreck times a thousand. I realized that this must’ve been how people felt when they killed themselves. Good morning.
Everything is real, real great.
Even though I got to sleep in as late as I wanted, I was totally exhausted. I made coffee. The day turned into a day of nothing that blurred into itself—I called Carly and got a busy signal, I went and got a paper but then didn’t look for a job. I swilled gallons of coffee and iced tea, took a couple long naps, didn’t bother to eat much or shower. And that day blurred into another day of pretty much the same thing. And still there was zero from Carly. The busy signal was gone, but I stopped leaving messages because I didn’t know what to say. I would just wait for the beep and hesitate and then hang up. I texted her: hey. call me. I called her at work and they said she wasn’t there. On the third day of groggy nothing, I did have one accomplishment—I paid rent with a cash advance on my credit card. I had enough money in my checking account to pay it, but I wanted to play it safe.
My days were spent deep in a shell-shocked nothing zone choked with a toxic medicine fog. Everything was shutting down and the hell fumes were creeping in and enveloping my world. My head felt like a giant honey-glazed Easter ham. I didn’t even care about the job thing anymore, I just wanted to know why Carly cut me off like that. But to win her back I was going to have to get another job first. A real vicious cycle. I guess I always knew deep down that
she was an ice queen, but this was by far the most brutal display of her freezing royal powers yet. I wanted to melt her. I wanted a damn steak.
I drove by her apartment, but I was too chicken to stop. I’d give myself eight or ten chances, sometimes driving by fast, the next time slow, up around the corner and doing a u-turn in the Baptist church parking lot. But I never got up the courage to go to her door.
One day I woke up from one of my naps and just said fuck it and went by the realty company where she worked. It was at an office park that looked just like the one where I had my paralegal job. I never thought I’d feel emotional about an office park, but being in this place really made the getting fired thing hit home again. The imaginary letters that spelled “LOOZER” pulsated on my forehead. For some reason though, I wasn’t as nervous as when I went by her house. I walked around in circles in the parking deck for only about twenty minutes before I went in.
The receptionist wasn’t Carly. It was Fiona. I’d met her at the Christmas party. She was nice to me then. Now her eyes and lips tightened as soon as she recognized me.
“Carly…around?”
“It’s her day off.”
“She doesn’t normally have Thursdays off.”
“Well, you don’t normally come in here, do you?”
Damn, I thought—everybody’s a Zing Master but me. I wanted to say something. Something good.
“If she’s back there? I’d really like to see…talk to her.”
“She isn’t here,” Fiona snapped.
Somebody was coming down the hallway, not Carly, but a dude. A big, tall dude. “Fine,” I said. “Whatever.” I tried to slam the door on my way out, but it had one of those hydraulic things on top to slow it down and it wouldn’t slam. I looked back at Fiona and she was picking up the phone. Was she calling the cops? I didn’t wait around to find out.
That night, I finally got my balls together and went to Carly’s apartment. I knew she was in there because her car was outside, but she wouldn’t answer when I knocked. She wouldn’t answer when I pounded. I knew she could hear me calling her.
“Carly, please!” Pound, pound, pound, pound. “Just please talk to me!” Pound, pound, pound, pound. “Ahhh!” Kicking the door didn’t seem to have any effect either.
I walked away completely deflated, like a sack of wet fertilizer glumping in on itself. Couldn’t we just go out for one last thing of meat?
Then, when she finally called, I missed it. I was out buying more coffee and I’d left my phone charging at home. It’s just as well, though, because the message she left was like a knife in the face:
“Hey. Do I have to get a restraining order on you? Leave me the fuck alone.” Click.
The floor shot up through the bottom of my stomach and it was not a good feeling. I tried to shake it off, tossing my head back and forth like a wet dog shaking off its coat.
Fuck being depressed.
Fuck this.
Fine, Carly, I will never call you again.
No problem.
I sat on the edge of my bed and shut my eyes. I pictured myself screaming in Carly’s face. No problem! We’re up on a high rooftop somewhere, close to the edge. I grab her by the shoulders and shake her—Loser, huh? Weirdo, huh?—and I throw her off. She doesn’t scream, because in fantasies, things aren’t always that realistic. She doesn’t scream because she knows she’s wrong and she deserves to be thrown off a roof. I don’t go look over the edge. I turn and walk away, ready to move on with my life.
I throw her off a cliff.
I throw her off a plane.
I throw her down fifty flights of cement steps.
And every time after I throw her off of something I just turn and walk away to get a healthy fresh start. I feel alive for once.
No problem.
7
The shirt collar was digging into my neck like a saw. It was way too hot to be wearing a suit but Ben said I had to. He met me in the lobby. He was a little too happy to see me.
“Great to have you here, man,” he said.
“Thanks.”
We shook hands. It was a very professional handshake. He led me through a series of narrow hallways. The walls looked like they were made of painted cardboard. We went into a giant room with a sea of cubicles. The chatter of voices sounded fake, like a piped-in Hollywood sound effect.
“Wow,” I said. “This is huge. You’re in charge of all this?”
“No. Just my sector.”
“How many sectors are there?”
He didn’t answer. I followed him back to a little tiny glassed-in office. Glassed-in with plexi-glass. All it had was a modular desk, a chair and a guest chair. We sat down. Ben looked weird without his cowboy gear on. Wasn’t used to seeing him all business casual.
“So,” I said, “who all am I meeting with today?”
“Just me, myself and I, good buddy.”
“Just you?”
“Well, normally you’d meet with Marguerite the HR lady, but she’s still on vacation.”
“You mean I got dressed up in a suit and came all the way down here just meet with you? We could have done this at Cogbill’s.”
“No, you had to come in for an interview. It’s required. We don’t just hire people off the street.”
“But you’re the only one who knows I’m here.”
“Not true. They know you’re here. Believe me, they know.”
“Okay, fine.” I loosened my tie a little. Yet another bad case of hot neck.
Ben looked at me with disapproval. “So, Jarvis,” he said, “tell me: what interests you in a career in customer service?”
“Are you kidding me?”
“Come on, man.”
“You already know the answer. I need a damn job!”
“Look—I have to ask you this stuff. It’s just a formality.”
“All right, um…yeah. Well, you know I…love people.”
“Can you elaborate on that a bit?”
I shrugged. “That’s pretty much it. Love people. I love the shit out of them.”
“Mmm…”
“So…customer service? And me? A perfect match.”
“Okay, great.” He actually seemed to be taking me seriously. I looked out onto the great floor of cubicles. It was calmer, more orderly than I had imagined it. And beige. So very beige.
“I can probably get you a cubicle that’s not too far from a window.”
“I don’t want any special treatment.”
“That’s the spirit.”
“Was that a test?”
“I’d have to move Annie anyway, and you don’t want to piss her off.”
“No. I don’t want to piss Annie off.”
I noticed how sharp the edges were everywhere. The edge of Ben’s desk, the aluminum door frame, even the edge of his computer monitor looked sharp. It was a palace of razors.
“By the way, Hoss, you look good in that suit.”
“So when do I start?”
“You have to come back in and meet Marguerite first. She gets back from her cruise on the seventeenth.”
“Okay. Marguerite. I’ll bring my A-game to that one. You wanna grab some cheese sticks later?”
“Sure, man.”
“So, let me ask you this. Is there room for advancement here? I could work circles around these punks.”
“Easy, now. Let’s get you hired first.”
“Maybe they’ll give me a sector to manage.”
“The job isn’t easy. You have to deal with all kinds of people and stay very…even. We’ve got a great staff right now. Willie, who sits on the far side by the break room? He’s been here five years, going on six.”
“Wow—five whole years.”
“Yup.”
“Sounds like a lifetime.”
Ben just looked at me.
“So,” I said, “how’s the coffee here? Is it free?”
On the drive home I dreamed about getting into the most comfortable clothes I owned. But when I g
ot there I felt like I didn’t deserve to be comfortable, so I flopped down on the couch in the suit. I would’ve felt a lot better if I could’ve just killed everybody—thrown Carly off a cliff or skyscraper, mangled Reinhaus with a lawnmower, nuked Motorcar. At least I had the job thing squared away. Eh, whoopdee shit—a call center. And I didn’t even have the job for sure. They still had to do my background check and get the “thumbs-up from HR” as Ben put it. Happy Thumbs-off Day.
Before I even knew what was happening, my face was all scrunched up. I was fucking crying. It erupted out of nowhere. I stuffed my face down into the couch cushion and scream-cried. It all came out. Cried until my face hurt. I felt like such a mega-pussy. Weirdo. LOOZER. I wanted to die as soon as possible. I lay there in a pile feeling sorry for myself for about an hour.
I got up off the couch and opened the blinds. The sky was overcast, and the gray light coming in actually made the room more gloomy instead of brighter. I took a deep breath and said fuck this: it’s finally time to make things great and not suck. I heard my upstairs neighbor walking around, rushing around real fast. Then I heard a fire truck going by with its siren blaring full force. There was an oversized fly buzzing around in my kitchenette, celebrating its insect existence, looking for some bacteria to chow down on—the world was alive, godammit! It was breathing and buzzing and singing and screaming, right? Things had to be great. I took another deep, nourishing breath of dusty oxygen, changed into shorts and a tee-shirt, grabbed my car keys and headed to the Zoom Thru for some fucking snacks.
The thought of buying beer sparked across my mind—just a six-pack. Since it was time to celebrate the declaration of my depression being over. But I held strong. I bit my lip and just bought a bag of ice for more iced tea. I got a bag of cheese doodles and started in on them in the car on the way back. When I got home, I was exhausted. I felt like shit. I slumped on the couch and thought about how everything totally and completely super-sucked. My fingers and lips were orange with that disgusting fake cheese doodle cheese. I just wanted to curl up into a tiny ball of nothing and disappear into space. I didn’t even have the energy to fantasize about killing Carly and Reinhaus and Motorcar. There was no joy in it like usual.
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