Close Encounters

by Jen Michalski

“What did you do to get stuck in the interspace?” I ask as we set to work filling out the forms. Everyone has a history here, so there is no shame in asking.

  “I was on the junk,” he answers, and I nod. Unfortunately, Smoot will continue to be on the junk unless he gets through Perg or finds a way, through interspace, to get into someone else. Fortunately, I have no physical wounds or grievances to plague me. It’s just the burning of my conscience, continually, in my gut that has finally turned me here. That and the futility of clawing out my phantom stomach.

  “I didn’t want to hurt nobody,” Smoot continues. “I had a job for a while but got laid off, and nobody wanted to hire me ‘cause I’m a con. I just needed money for the junk, you know. I shot him, the guy at the convenience store, but I didn’t want to kill him.”

  He lights a cigarette with shaking hands and hands me the pen to fill out his forms. I wonder whether it’s because of the shaking or because perhaps he’s illiterate. I read the blanks out to him, and he answers: name, sex, race, date of birth, date of death, and so on.

  “Some big nigger stuck me in the pen,” he continues after a long drag. “He said he didn’t like no scrawny ugly junkies. Got me right after breakfast in the shower room. I still feel that knife when I breathe. When he comes over here I’ll get his ugly ass good, that’s for sure.”

  “No you won’t.” I pat his back. “That’s why you here. You’ll be long gone out of Perg when he comes. I doubt he’ll do Perg anyway. Not for the first few years. Everyone’s hard-headed about it.”

  “Even you?” He looks at me with surprise, as if forgetting we all have histories, as if we’re all stubborn. As if we weren’t all human.

  “Higgins?” I see Patty poke her head out of her office.

  “Listen.” I stand up. “Wait for me here, and I’ll help you with the paperwork once I’m finished, OK?”

  Patty holds the door open for me with a big smile. Part of me wants to fuck up again just so that I can see Patty again in another few months, another year, another five years if I could stomach it. But I can’t. She sits at her desk and runs through my file silently as I take in her office. Its walls are decorated with the mandated institutional posters that spout the usual slogans, such as WHERE WOULD WE BE WITHOUT SECOND CHANCES? along with calendars listing the various support groups. I play with a smooth paperweight on her desk.

  “So, Mr. Higgins, this is your first time?” She looks up. I smile and nod. “Very good. I see you’ve been eligible for the past six years?”

  “I was stubborn.”

  “Aren’t we all?” She laughed. “It’s what makes us human. But deciding to make a change after six years is just as wonderful as making a change after six minutes. Eternal peace is the same for everyone, Mr. Higgins.”

  “Call me Patrick, please. And yes, I couldn’t take it anymore.”

  “Some people think that makes them weak.” She takes a sip of her coffee, and I feel my stomach rumble. “What’s really weak is not being able to admit your mistakes. You’re a bigger man than they are, Mr. Higgins. Don’t let them fool you out there in interspace.”

  “Thanks for your encouragement, Patty, but I think I won’t need it. I know you get a lot of stragglers, undecided, but I’m the real thing. I’m not getting stuck on that plane for the rest of my life.”

  “Of course, Mr. Higgins. I know.” She glances at my file again. “So why don’t you tell me what happened?”

  I was so much younger when it all started that it’s hard to think of now, even as I have spent the past six years of my death trying to avoid it, trying to pretend that I did not die, that I could move among my human brethren and pretend I was still living. Of course, Patty has heard it all, and she doesn’t flinch as I relate the details. She takes notes and asks me to clarify some areas, and that is it. She prints out my forms that I am to fill out and shakes my hand, welcoming me to Perg.

  “Can I ask you a personal question?” I stand, folding my papers carefully.

  “You’re not supposed to, but everyone does. You want to know what I did, right?”

  “No—well, yes. But how long do you stay? I mean, how do you get to be a counselor? Are you here forever?”

  “I’m not really at liberty to say, Mr. Higgins,” she smiles, and I know the rules. There’s always the danger of one of us getting attached to Patty and not wanting to move forward with the program and, as such, counselors are discouraged from personalizing themselves to the residents.

  “Well, maybe if Perg didn’t use such pretty counselors, we wouldn’t have any questions,” I wink.

  “But maybe that’s part of your test, Mr. Higgins.” She opens the door and returns me to the room of the indifferent. Back in the vending room the two black men with cell phone troubles have joined Smoot. One’s construction boots, which were so stylish on earth, are perched on the table atop Smoot’s paperwork.

  “What are you doing?” I question with exasperation. Smoot cowers in his chair as one, wearing a red bandana on his head, stands up.

  “Whatchou doin’ dog? This ain’t none of your business, is it?” “I’m helping this gentleman with his paperwork, so it is my business.”

  “This gentleman, this gentleman,” he sneers. “He looks like a sack of shit to me.”

  “Well, we’re not real interested in your opinions around here. Just your penance.”

  “Are you for fucking real, man?” He stands up in my face. “Do you know who the motherfuck you’re talking to?”

  “Another sinner?”

  “You need to step down, motherfucker.” He pushes at me.

  “What are you going to do, kill a dead man?” I laugh, balancing myself against the table.

  “What the motherfuck are you talkin’ about?”

  “We’re dead, genius.”

  “Hey, fuck you, man. I don’t need to sit around in this crib all day with this psychobabble shit.”

  He nods to his friend who, on the way of removing his boots off the table to stand up, rips one of Smoot’s papers. The brothers laugh and walk languidly to the exit. Outside is darkness, punctuated by a scream or the howl of wind, in the vortex of interspace. In the distance a light flickers here or there, and that’s where all of us would flock to, if we were out there, lost and spiraling about with the others. Bandana boy steps away from the door in shock.

  “What the fuck is goin’ on here?” He touches his hand to his bloodstained shirt, to the gunshot that probably killed him, and looks at his friend, whose eyes flit about the room like a caged animal.

  “Maybe you ought to wait to talk to Patty.” I smile. “She’ll be able to help you. I promise.”

  Bandana boy opens the door again and looks outside, trying to make sense of it all, his mouth hanging open so far I’m convinced he’ll begin to drool. The other tries to dial out on his cell phone again, calling for his momma uselessly into the mouthpiece. Smoot stands up and, in a flash, pushes Bandana boy out into interspace.

  “Holy shit, man, what the fuck you doing?” His friend rushes to the door and looks out. “Dog? Where are you, man? I’m coming for you, man.”

  Bandana’s friend, motivated more by fear of being alone than by bravado, sticks his foot timidly out the door before turning to Smoot.

  “I ought to make you do it, motherfucker.” He grabs Smoot by the shoulders and drags him to the door. What he doesn’t know is that Smoot has already been delegated to interspace through his previous action, that security will descend upon us any minute to escort him out. Is it a sin to withhold this information from the brother? Technically, I’m here to worry about myself, not the mistakes of others. Faster than I can decide, however, he flings Smoot into the void. I hear Smoot’s cry briefly before it becomes enmeshed in the others, a white noise that peaks sporadically. The security guards come and take our brother gently by the arms.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” one of them says. “But you’re going to have to leave now.”

  “I’m not going out there, no fucking
way.” He struggles against them, but it is futile. I need another cup of coffee.

  It’s late in the day when Patty comes out to get her own coffee. I have thrown up blood in the bathroom and completed half my forms, my thoughts wavering between Smoot and my own family. I was a young father then, all of twenty-three and not able to hold much of a job, partly through my lack of education and partly through my bull-headed arrogance. Jillie had just given birth to Cobb, unplanned, and I had taken a job at a slaughterhouse to try and do the right thing. Eighteen-hour days with blood and chicken feathers sticking to my face as I dismembered chicken and received orders from a Hispanic man to whom I clearly felt superior. It was just too much for me, so young and wanting to enjoy a youth that had evaporated so quickly. I had gotten home at four in the morning and just wanted to sleep when Jillie chewed me out for not getting the formula from the convenience store, and I just snapped. Took a carving knife from the kitchen, pulled her head back and slit her neck open like a stick of butter. Then I held a pillow over Cobb until he was still.

  I didn’t mean it, I know. I just wanted an escape. If they could have receded some other way from my life, so be it, but what happened happened. I was on the run for a long time, pulling off robberies and stuff. Even lived a few years in Tulsa with a woman and a fake identity. Then I got caught and stayed in the pen for twelve years. Got out, got stomach cancer, and overdosed. I didn’t mean it, I know. I was just trying to get some sleep.

  “It’ll be OK,” Patty says from the vending machine when she notices my half-filled forms. “You’re making the right decision, Mr. Higgins. Once you get through Perg, encounter your demons, eternal life will be yours.”

  “You’ll still be here, Patty, watching us all move on while you’re stuck here. That doesn’t seem quite fair.” I light a cigarette from Smoot’s pack.

  “Fair? I don’t know,” she laughs, then takes a sip of coffee. “Some people, no matter how sorry they are, may never renew eternal. Sometimes Perg is all we get. But Perg isn’t so bad—the benefits are pretty good, actually.”

  She turns to leave and I remember her suddenly, remember her from the Kentucky

  Department of Corrections when I was out there. Patty O’Dell, the first female serial killer to be executed in Kentucky. The Devil’s Executioner, she called herself, killing women whom she deemed immoral. I was a killer on earth too, granted, but I always felt my crime was one of passion—passionate dislike of a situation causing temporary insanity. But to decide who gets to live and die, that was always too heavy for me. Still is. I watch Patty walk back toward her office. She pats sweatshirt lady on the shoulder and tells her to follow her in. Regardless of what Patty says, anybody who has to counsel that woman has got to be a saint.

  THE DISAPPEARERS

  THE MEETING HAD BEEN UNREMARKABLE in every way to David thus far except for the matter of Bob Fuller’s hand. There had been the status reports of new products pending, who was marketing them, and where; there was the capacity issue of their old server and how long it would take for the new one to be integrated; there was general talk about how things were shaping up for the next quarter. All of these things were manageable, and David’s careful handwriting mapped out his thoughts on the blue-lined notepaper, on top of which the company logo was embossed. However, it was the matter of Bob’s hand that was occupying David’s thoughts primarily, although it was not any specific characteristic about Bob Fuller’s hand that disconcerted him so. It was the fact that it wasn’t there.

  Rather, it was more transparent than missing, a fuzzy, shimmering ghost that left David wondering whether the whole aberration was a trick of light and nothing more. He watched as Bob grasped the edge of his meeting notes, the crisp white edge of the paper visible through the soft, velvety flesh, and searched his mind for a way to inconspicuously touch Bob’s hand, to feel its permanence, to assure himself that what he was seeing was in fact caused in some way by some illusion and not by the visual evidence before him, that it had disappeared.

  Unfortunately, Bob was across the meeting table, diagonally positioned from David. A simple mindless pen tap or wide-arcing paper shuffle from David would not suffice. He would have to wait until after the meeting. But how then? David was not normally in the habit of touching other men’s hands. A careless brush in the elevator or hallway? Perhaps, David reasoned, since Bob entered the meeting with his right hand, as far as he could tell, chances were that he would leave with it.

  Of course, what may or may not have made the episode a tad more incredulous and ironic to David was the fact that David was a staunch realist: what late-thirties vice president of technology solutions wasn’t? For David, only seeing was believing; the problem was, of course, in this instance, that David didn’t believe what he saw. Additionally, he didn’t believe in apparitions, precognition, Döppelgangers, shamanistic insanity, and he certainly didn’t believe in disappearing hands in the middle of executive management meetings. At any rate, if such a fantastical event were to occur, David reasoned, why would it occur to a rather-ordinary, middle management non-player like Bob Fuller, whose attendance at these weekly sessions was more formality than anything else? Bob wasn’t expected to contribute anything of significance, and whether by lowered expectations or dwindled creative resources, he didn’t. Of course, Bob wore the standing invitation to the planning session like a badge of honor. It always seemed as if those who did the least to deserve something always carried on the mightiest at its bestowance. If Bob had worked a quarter of the hours David himself did, or contributed a thimbleful of his wisdom…

  “David.” Bruce, executive vice president of operations, tapped his Parker black marble pen that David had secretly coveted on occasion. “I haven’t heard your thoughts on this strategy.”

  “I’m sorry, Bruce.” David leaned back, stretching his shoulders in order to get a better view of Bob Fuller’s hand. “Can you run that by me again? The strategy?”

  “You mean the entire strategy, David?” Bruce’s jowls shook in a characteristic manner of annoyance, an action that had always amused David secretly, in so far as it was usually reserved for associates like Bob Fuller. “Would you like me to start the meeting over again for your benefit?”

  “No, no—the strategy.” David attempted to construct from memory bits and pieces of discussion. He glanced up at Bob’s hand, which was now scratching Bob’s chin, a chin visible through Bob’s hand. “Would you excuse me for a minute?”

  In the bathroom David splashed his face with water while staring at himself in the mirror. As far as he could tell, he was still all there. He pulled his Brooks Brothers hounds tooth shirttail out of his pants and looked at his stomach, full of dark wavy hairs branching outward from the middle. He rolled up his shirtsleeve to expose a muscular, white arm, which was anchored by a stainless-steel Citizen watch. Were his arms always that blindingly white? When was the last time he had gotten out in the sun?

  “Little hot for you, David?” Graham from marketing forced a laugh at David’s disarray as he entered the men’s room.

  “I feel…a little itchy. Wanted to make sure it wasn’t a rash or something.” He quickly put his clothing in order and returned to the meeting, which was adjourning. Bob Fuller held his day planner close to his breast with his faded hand.

  “You snoozing back there, David?” Bob chuckled, taking the opportunity to rub shoulders with David. “You’re usually right on top of this stuff.”

  “Actually, I had this itch that was driving me crazy.” David scratched the back of his neck. Normally he couldn’t stand to be in Bob’s presence for more than a few moments, but Bob’s starved need for attention presented him with the opportunity to get to the bottom of this peculiar fucking business. “Just wanted to make sure I didn’t have poison ivy or something. Say, Bob, is that your college ring? I don’t know whether I’ve ever see it.”

  “What do you mean, you haven’t seen it? I’ve only been wearing every day since I started working here thirty years ago
. It’s from University of Rochester. I was a business major.”

  David watched carefully as Bob began to remove the ring. “You don’t have to take it off. I can look at it right here.”

  He slowly brought his fingers to the ring, making sure to touch the Bob’s finger as he turned it slowly. The skin, the tissues, and bone felt solid enough. He closed his eyes and opened them again slowly. There was no change in its appearance or, rather, its disappearance.

  “Well, that’s a real nice, ring, Bob. I’m sorry I didn’t notice it sooner,” David said. This much was true; although he focused like a laser on the dealings of his job, his finances, he really didn’t notice many things. Of course, he noticed Bob’s hand, but who wouldn’t?

  “Scott, have you ever seen Bob’s ring?” David nodded toward Bob’s hand. Scott from Sales, who was making his way out of the meeting room, gave a quick glance at Bob’s hand and smirked.

  “Why? Is there naked woman on it or something?” He glanced quickly at Bob’s hand without any noticeable reaction to the fuzzy digits.

  “Piss off,” Bob pretended to sock Scott as he walked off.

  “So when are you going to give me your thoughts about the strategy, David?” Bruce had caught up with David. “Don’t think leaving in the middle of a meeting gets you off the hook.”

  “Sorry, Bruce—I mean it. Can I tell you tomorrow? To be honest, I just don’t feel very well. I’ll finish up the forecasts at home tonight, and we can get together first thing tomorrow, if that’s all right with you.”

  “Well, David, if you feel bad, you feel bad, what can I do?” Bruce turned and headed back toward his office. “Let’s go over them in my office at eight.”

  “You got it.” David nodded and glanced around for Bob, who had since departed. Rubbing the back of his neck, he grabbed his briefcase and laptop off the desk in his office and found himself suddenly in the parking lot with no real memory of how he got there. He wondered, rather frantically, whether anything like this ever happened in the history of mankind. Chances were, however, he’d come back to work tomorrow and everything would be fine. He hadn’t been sleeping well; to be honest, when had he ever? It was probably taking its toll. He’d often kidded with Sara they may as well have a baby now since he was up all night, anyway.