by Ian Mark
“Sugar, no cream?” I started brushing my teeth. I held the phone away from my mouth.
“Uh, cream, no sugar. What is that noise?” I spit out the toothpaste.
“Sorry, I was brushing my teeth. I’m late for work.” I pulled my shirt off. It had pit stains. I grabbed a different one and pulled it on.
“What do you do?” I grabbed my Obey hoodie.
“No no no, I can’t answer that.” I picked up my keys. Guess I wasn’t showering today.
“Why not?” She lowered her voice seductively. “Are you a spy?” I didn’t respond. “Hello?”
“Sorry, I was trying to figure out how a spy would answer that question.” She laughed. I liked her laugh, I decided. It came from her belly, not like a lot of other girls. She wasn’t afraid to sound silly. I began to create an image of her based on almost nothing, and subsequently started to fall in love with that idealized woman.
“So why won’t you answer?” She was intrigued. I hoped I sounded accessible.
“If I tell you now, we’ll have nothing to discuss over caramels.” I was only sort of kidding. Zoey laughed. We talked for a few more minutes about nothing. Eventually she said she had to go, she had gotten to her work. I didn’t ask her what she did. We said goodbye. A warm feeling had started in my chest and spread throughout my body. I snapped my fingers a few times.
At work that day, I looked for places to sit and eat caramels. I didn’t find many. My new assignment was to fix a fence on one of our many Farmville-like games. Apparently, sheep kept materializing on the wrong side of the fence and wreaking havoc. There was no way for users to shepherd them back through the fence because the fence had no holes in it. We were receiving a lot of complaints. I tried to picture the people who played these games, who got so frustrated at the transporting sheep that they would fill out a complaint and explain just how much gold they had lost. I was surprised none of them included the time they had wasted making their avatars chase little polygonal pixels in the shape of a sheep.
I opened the code. Yikes. It had very few comments and was poorly organized. I cursed whoever had written it and started combing through it, looking for the error. For once, I had an assignment that would take me all day.
Bob came over after lunch to make small talk and shoot the shit. We normally spent an hour or so discussing his feelings about the previous night’s Knicks game. I’d worked there for almost two years, and he still hadn’t grasped the fact that I wasn’t a Knicks fan, and I knew almost nothing about basketball. He lamented the inability of Carmelo to pass out of a double-team, and I cut him off.
“I actually really have to focus on this, Bob.” He seemed shocked. He straightened up and readjusted his fat red tie. It hung too far below his belt. His outfit, a white button-down and bland khakis, should have looked fine. But he had made just enough mistakes that combined to look ridiculous. In addition to wearing a tie that looked like it had been made for Drago, the buttons on his shirt were off by one and his fly was undone. He’d have been better off sticking to his usual stained polo.
“Course, I’m sorry, Zach, I should have asked.” He ran a hand through his thinning hair. He was frazzled, distracted by something. I sighed.
“Are you alright, Bob?” The question hung in the air as we looked at each other. He opened and closed his mouth. He considered confiding in me. “Something you want to talk about besides Carmelo?” What had gotten into him? Bob was normally the fake-happiest one in the office, calling out everyone’s name and having some sort of rapport with a majority of the office. Contrasted with me, who spoke to only a few people and knew even fewer names, he was a regular office-politician.
“Well, if you must know, I’m not that great.” He rested his arm on the edge of my cubicle. I turned away from my monitor and faced him. “Yanni and I have separated. She took the kids.” I gasped. Not dramatically, I was just surprised. Yanni and Bob had always been a strange couple, but a good couple. She was a quiet Chinese national who had moved here a year or so before she met Bob, a quiet American national who had never had a serious relationship before. I knew all this because Bob proceeded to tell me each of their life stories over the next hour while I alternated between trying to console him and attempting to extricate myself from the situation.
Eventually, he had pulled in another chair and was crying as he leaned on my shoulder. I awkwardly patted his bald spot while looking around for our boss. He was always around when I wanted to watch a video or duck out even earlier than normal, but when two of his employees spent an hour discussing marriage and crying, he was nowhere to be found.
Still, Bob’s story unsettled me. As I finally convinced him to wipe his eyes and call Yanni, I thought about how great they had seemed together. I always considered marriage the finish line. You find the woman you love, settle down, get married, and are happy for the rest of your life. But I realized while that middle-aged man cried his eyes out that marriage is really the beginning. It’s the start of a slog through babies, college funds, declining attractiveness, and money issues. There is no moment where the work is done. You have to fight for happiness your whole life. I leaned back in my wheelie-chair and looked at my monitor. The code I had been going through when Bob came over had been replaced by my screensaver. I had the one where you go through a never-ending maze, each turn leading to another set of choices. I wondered if I had the strength it took to be happy. My boss finally walked past and told me to get back to work. “I need that fence working by tomorrow.”
It occurred to me that I might actually have to stay late for once. I redoubled my efforts and found the issue. I checked the author of the game and saw my name. It depressed me how unmemorable my own work was that it took me hours to recognize it. I fixed Earlier Zach’s mistake. It seemed like that was all I had been doing recently.
Chapter 7
“So anti-humor is basically jokes that are funny because they aren’t funny. Most of the setups are classic setups to jokes, and the punchlines are just statements that aren’t funny.” Zoey sat across from me, twisting her light brown hair around her long fingers. She leaned forward, yet seemed disinterested. I’m losing her, I thought.
“Okay…” She picked up a caramel, examined it, and popped it in. Her teeth were white and straight. That was the first thing I had noticed when the waiter had led her over to my table. I had left really early, thinking it would take me awhile to get all the way out to the restaurant, which was in the Bronx. She had told me over the phone that it was the only place in the whole city where you could sit and eat caramels. It was completely empty. We were the only two people eating there, and I had counted at least four workers wearing the dark brown uniforms. I thought they were supposed to be caramel-colored, but really they were shit-colored. I had pointed that out when Zoey first sat down, and she had laughed. But she hadn’t laughed much since.
“Yeah, so one might go like this: ‘a man walks into a bar.’” I paused. Zoey looked down at her phone and up at me. Her green eyes flickered in the dim lighting of the restaurant. The decor was downright bizarre. How does one decorate a caramel place? Apparently with lots and lots of modern art. Or as I call it, Paint Splattered in Random Ways. Painting after painting hung on the walls. The windows at the front were almost completely covered by the comic sans letters spelling out the restaurant’s name. Chester’s Caramels, it said. It had been established long ago in 2012. I figured it would last at most another month or two.
“His alcoholism is crippling his family.” Zoey watched me. I wondered what features of mine she found notable. She didn’t laugh. Not even a polite chuckle. I waited.
“Oh, is that it?” she asked, genuinely confused. She ate another caramel. I had lost my appetite. Everything was going poorly. I wanted to rewind, to start the date over. It was ridiculous, I decided, the way dating in our society works. You get an hour or two to convince some stranger that you just might be soul-mates.
“Yes.” I admitted to my inabilities as a comic wit
h regret. The conversation lagged. I wanted to ask her questions about herself, but a sense of failure had filled my stomach. I pushed my plate away.
“Are you done? Sorry, I’ll hurry up.” She had almost half her caramels left. She signaled to the waiter, who had hung within ten feet of us the entire meal, and asked him for the check. He was in his late fifties, with a shock of gray hair and very wrinkled skin. He had been exceedingly kind throughout the meal. I wanted to hit him. I wondered if he was Chester.
“Do you think he’s Chester?” Zoey turned towards me conspiratorially. I laughed.
“I was just wondering that.” A spark. The whole meal had been one of sparks and misses. There was something between us, I felt it. Or something could grow between us. We just needed another chance.
Chester brought over the check. He handed it over to Zoey. I took it from her. She resisted, but I pulled it away, thinking she was kidding. She frowned. I paid in cash and got up. She stood as well. I took her beige coat off the coat rack next to her and held it out. She paused, then turned around and let me put the coat on her. I could smell her perfume on the back of her neck as I did so. It smells like lilacs, I thought. A voice in my head pointed out that I didn’t know what lilacs looked like, much less smelled like.
Outside, it was time to say our goodbyes. We had different trains to catch. I started to lean in for a hug, but stopped when she offered her hand. She wasn’t wearing nail polish.
“It was nice meeting you,” she said. Her voice was quiet. I hadn’t lived up to her expectations. She hadn’t lived up to mine, she was amazing in a way I hadn’t expected. I took her hand and shook it briefly.
“You too,” I said, unable to keep the sadness out of my voice.
“Are you alright?” She placed her hand on my arm. I considered the appropriate response. I barely knew this girl. This woman, I corrected myself. I noted again how tall she was, and was grateful that I was just a little taller. I could never date a woman taller than me. I had once, and I hated everything about it. Leaning up to kiss her, looking up to talk to her, the awkward angle it took to put my arm around her. I felt emasculated.
I knew the appropriate thing to do was to clear my throat and excuse myself. Explain that I was fine, that I had a nice time meeting her, and wait two or three days before calling her for another date. But I also knew that she would almost certainly decline if I did that.
In that moment of hesitation, I saw two paths diverging. One was me playing it safe, of waiting the requisite time and accepting rejection, of more nights spent preying on women with daddy issues, women with self-esteem issues, or girls with little experience. I saw the other path, a pitch, more like a plea, for another chance. An explanation of who I was and why I was. I found myself traversing the second path before I was even conscious of having made the choice.
“I just got out of a long-term relationship, and I haven’t done first dates in a while, and I was never really good at them anyways. So I realize that you probably don’t want to see me again, but I want to see you again. I think we have something here. If you give me another chance, if we could start over, have a date at an actual restaurant and eat actual food, maybe we could connect better. I just don’t want this to be our only interaction when my mother was so adamant about how great you were and…” I trailed off. I had said all of this in one breath and now caught up on my oxygen intake. Zoey regarded me with a wary smile. I could see her considering me. I wondered again how she saw me, how she described me to her friends. He had a big nose and his eyebrows were too close together. His medium length black hair made me think he was afraid to take chances. I heard her slamming me, telling everyone about her horrible blind date and the plea I had made.
“Ok.” She said it simply and with little trepidation.
“Okay? Okay what?” I was confused by her acquiescence. She brushed her hair out of her eyes. I shivered in the cold.
“Okay, we can have our second first date. And we can have it in a real restaurant.” I buttoned my peacoat. She took out her phone and scrolled through something. “Are you free this Friday?”
“Yes.” I didn’t bother to look in my phone. I would make time if I had too. “Can I ask why?”
“I don’t know. I guess it’s sweet how much you care. And I didn’t think this went as badly as you seem to have. The caramels were good. I think this place just might make it.” I nodded. She started to walk away. I almost didn’t catch what she said next. She tossed it over her shoulder like an afterthought.
“Besides, you’re cute.” I blushed. I hadn’t blushed since high school. What was wrong with me? I watched her walk away. She looked back after ten or fifteen feet, and she seemed to be a little red too. It was probably from the cold. She smiled at me, I waved casually. I headed off in the other direction.
I walked around for a while, thinking. I realized after a few miles that I had missed the subway and was lost. I watched a few kids playing basketball at a park. They were around eight years old. One of them dribbled around all the others. White teeth shined out from under his dark skin and red lips. His face was an expression of pure joy. He ran towards the hoop and tossed the ball up. It missed, but he grabbed the rebound as all the other kids chased him. He ran and tossed the ball from the same spot. It hit off the bottom of the rim and another kid grabbed it. He tried to dribble but bounced it off his foot. The first kid won the race to the ball and stood there, bouncing it calmly. A breeze blew through the park. The chain-link nets tinkled in the wind. He ran around three kids, then threw the ball up from the same spot. It went in. I kept walking. My phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Hi Zach. I was just calling to check in with you about Friday.” It was my mother. I was confused. For some reason I thought she was referring to Zoey. I pictured her round face, her upturned nose. God, she was too pretty for me.
“What? What’s Friday?” I racked my brain for what she was talking about. She chuckled uneasily.
“Don’t even joke like that. So, the movers and I should be getting into the city around--”
“Movers? What movers?” I remembered as I asked. My mother had decided she wanted to spend more time with me. No, that wasn’t it. Edward had gotten promoted, and they were moving into the city so that he would have a shorter commute. I heard a sharp intake of breath as my mother prepared to chew me out.
“Zach-”
“Just kidding! Okay, I’ll stop that joke. When are you getting in?” I had found the subway stop. I stood outside and searched for the quickest end to this conversation.
“Good, I was beginning to worry you hadn’t been reading my emails. We’ll be there around one or so, and I was hoping you could help me get settled in.” I heard a door slam on the other end. Edward must have just gotten home. My mother laughed as he embraced her. I hoped that was what he was doing. I didn’t want to picture anything else. I thought of my dad.
“Why can’t Eddie do it?” I rubbed my nose with the back of my hand and felt a booger on it. I looked around and flicked it onto the ground.
“He has to work. And don’t call him Eddie.” I kicked the grated divider between the stairs down to the trains and the sidewalk.
“I have work too.”
“Yeah, but can’t you leave whenever? That’s what you always say.” I made a mental note to stop telling her anything related to my schedule.
“Okay, fine, I’ll be there. I really have to go now, I’m about to get on the subway.”
She told me the address and that she loved me. I said goodbye and hung up. The address was disturbingly close to my apartment. I rubbed my temples. I could feel a headache coming on.
I got very little work done that week. The dual specter of Zoey and my mother hung over me all week. I passed the time consoling Bob as his marriage fell apart while rating the songs in my iTunes. By Friday, I was up to U2 and Bob was hiring a divorce attorney. “It’s a beautiful day,” I told him. He didn’t respond.
At around 2:00, I zippe
d up my Space Jam hoodie and headed over to the address my mother had given me. She was nowhere to be found. I leaned against the building and took out a cigarette. I reached into the pocket of my sweatshirt for my lighter and couldn’t find it. I patted my front and back pockets and didn’t have one either. I surveyed the people walking by, wondering which of them smoked. None of them looked foolish enough to spend ten dollars a day on killing themselves. I asked a big bald guy walking past if he had a lighter.
“Quit smoking a year ago. It’s been 380 days since my last cigarette.” He puffed out his chest and looked at my cigarette like a fat kid eyeing a Big Mac. He walked quickly away.
“Mazel tov,” I said to the retreating figure. He was wearing white pants and a white flowing shirt. He looked like a sailor. I imagined him eating spinach with his wife and identical kids while they all glared at people outside smoking cigarettes.
I stood there with the unlit cigarette in my mouth. I thought it might be a sign from God that I should quit smoking. Then I remembered I didn’t believe in God or signs. I looked around a little more desperately now. I saw two kids on the other side of the street. Freshman, I assumed, from the way they nervously looked around while passing a poorly crafted joint back and forth. I looked left and crossed the street. One of them saw me coming and gestured for the other one to throw down the joint. He did not. He was clearly the leader of the two, wearing a black peacoat and corduroy pants. He had a large head with a closely trimmed buzz-cut. I addressed him, ignoring his thinner, meeker counterpart.
“Either of you guys got a light?” I pointed to my cigarette. Alpha looked me over and said, “Brian, you wanna give him the lighter.” Beta did as he was told. I looked at him while I lit my cigarette. He wore a blue puffy coat. It was unzipped and beneath it he was wearing a black shirt with a batman symbol on it. His shoes were neon-green. Fucking hipster, I thought. The flame kept going out before I could light my cigarette. I hunched over and cupped my hand around the lighter and the cigarette. I leaned down and finally managed to light it. I handed the lighter to Beta and turned around.