Cube Sleuth

  I quickly scrap that idea for one that makes more sense in terms of the life I’ve led for the past few years. I have a personality who hates me, can’t stand to see me happy: my self-destructive tendencies, personified. I sabotaged my relationship with Nancy by sleeping with Eve. I sabotaged my savings with poker and broke my own hand as punishment.

  Nancy is right: I don’t love myself. I won’t let myself be happy. I get uncomfortable when things are going well, just like Helen. I feel undeserving of good fortune and find ways to undermine the source of my joy. Being half of Not For Mixed Company gave me the greatest joy I’d felt in years. I felt fulfilled. I had a purpose in life, one I could be proud of. I hadn’t bonded with a friend the way I had with Ron since Owen left for L.A. If this saboteur personality wanted me to be miserable, killing Ron was the best way to do it.

  I don’t have any real history of violence, the exception being my own hand and Theo’s. But some part of me wanted to bash Theo’s skull in with that bat. Maybe the destructive personality has started to dominate my psyche and it’s only a matter of time before I become a prisoner in the back of my mind.

  Or, maybe I just had a recurring nightmare because I’m stressed.

  * * *

  The portrait parle on my most promising suspect to date, myself: Robert Domenic Pinker, male Caucasian, brown hair, hazel eyes, 27, 5′8″, 195 lbs.

  My first vehicle portrait parle with a VIN number: VIN: 2HGES13657H512330, license plate FWR8156, 2004 Honda, Civic, black.

  To prove to myself that I’m crazy, I decide to record every moment of my life for a week and then review the tapes. I set my video camera to night vision and put it on a tripod in my bedroom. Just in case, I put the camera as far away from the now-replaced ceiling tile as possible. I tape myself sleeping for seven nights to make sure I don’t go to sleep as Bobby Pinker and wake up a little later as Tyler Durden, ready to wreak havoc on the city.

  I put the camera next to my computer tower at work. The only person who notices it the entire week is Harry Brody. I tell him I’m charging it to film my cousin’s school play that night. Harry holds his hands up on either side of his wretched face, thumb and forefinger making an L, and says, “I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille.” He has a hearty laugh at his witty pop culture reference. My pity laugh sounds like a lawn mower engine as it shuts off.

  Since I can’t walk the halls pointing a video camera at my face, I hit play on a tape recorder in my pocket whenever I leave my cube so I can at least get the audio. I use the tape recorder for other public appearances: grocery shopping, visiting my parents, etc.

  I drive to and from work with the camera propped on a few books and tethered to the passenger seat with a bungee cord.

  I tear my apartment apart trying to find the bulletproof vest from my dream. Then I tear my car apart. I find zilch.

  Each night I hook my camera up to my TV and fast-forward through the day’s video while listening to the tape recorder. Other than seeing a third-person perspective of how boring and miserable my life is, there is nothing of interest. No sneaking out in the night to rouse rabbles. No talking in a strange voice or doing strange things. Actually, the strangest thing I do all week is record all of my actions.

  My attempt to prove that I’m crazy is proof in and of itself that I’m at least slightly off-kilter.

  * * *

  Suzanne calls me into her office for a closed-door meeting.

  Uh oh. They found out I was videotaping myself all last week. Cody told them I bugged his desk. They found out I leave an hour early when Keith is out of the office. They’ve monitored my computer and know I look at porn and I play poker for money on my lunch break. I’m fired.

  “I’m putting you in charge of the Health Care Practices Compilation.” Suzanne smiles, tapping her fingers together with excitement. This is a show of confidence in my abilities; she’s handing over the reins of our biggest compilation to me. I’m supposed to be elated.

  I’m not elated. This compilation is a huge undertaking, an albatross handed to one unlucky editor who’s in charge of it for four or five years before handing it off to the next poor sap. Including the leader, a team of three editors work on this monolith. I was on the team before, not as the leader, and even that was dreadful. This is a downtime destroyer.

  Suzanne keeps smiling. I eventually open my mouth. “Wow.” My painfully ambivalent tone doesn’t register with my supervisor.

  She tells me that I’ve proven my leadership abilities and organizational skills. She trusts my competence. She wants me to learn the subtleties of delegating authority, something I can only grasp through experience.

  I know before she tells me that Harry Brody will be on my team, because that will ensure that this project is a living hell. That fact that Cody is my other team member is only a mild surprise. So it’s me, a complete moron, and a guy who can’t stand me and could kill me with the flick of his wrist. Perfect.

  I leave this closed-door meeting carrying a stack of reports and last year’s edition of the compilation. The compilation is so big it’s broken into four volumes. I hold them down at my waist, and they reach to just under my chin. I say “OK, great! Thanks!” to Suzanne with my usual fake enthusiasm. In my mind, I always plan to say something subversive, edgy, or nonconformist. But what pops out is always some company-butt-boy platitude. That’s one reason I hate myself.

  Sitting in my cube staring at my massive workload, I wish I were crazy. I wish I had killed Ron. I’d probably be found not guilty by reason of insanity and get sent to a mental institution for the rest of my life. At least then I could spend all day in pajamas and a bathrobe playing Chinese checkers with a guy who thinks he’s Leif Erickson.

  Chapter 24

  It’s Raining Reality

  I wake up in the middle of the night to the cold feeling of wet feet. Springing up, I tear the sheets and covers off my bed with a groggy grunt. It started to rain while I was asleep, and the ceiling tile already looks like it’s in the end of its second trimester.

  Take fitted sheet off bed. Tilt bed away from drip. Place paper towel-lined bucket under leak. Make up futon. Leave irate message with landlord. Sleep on futon and curse day you were born. Repeat.

  When I settle down on the futon, I see that it’s almost 3:30. I have to be up at 8:30. Five hours of sleep will be enough for me, but that’s if I fall asleep in five minutes. It takes me an hour to fall asleep normally, and right now I’m way too worked up. I can taste bile.

  I see four a.m. on the clock before I drift off…

  CRASH! I vault up like a Murphy bed. Theo found me; he’s going to take a bat to my face. The killer thinks I’m getting too close; he’s going to hang me in my bathroom and make it look like a suicide.

  I wonder where I left my bat as I place my bare feet on the carpet. I see it leaning on the wall by the closet next to my bed.

  I take one step toward my bedroom and come face-to-not-face with the cause of my panic. Not Theo, not Ron’s killer. The ceiling tile. It finally burst from the weight of the water.

  Chunks of tile are scattered across my bed, the floor, my dresser. The carpet squishes under my bare feet. Foamy water bubbles between my toes. It’s like walking along the shore on a summer day. Only not.

  My mattress is ruined; a mud-colored stain like Gorbachev’s birthmark now covers two-thirds of its blue surface. The room reeks of mildew.

  I flip on my bedroom light and get a better look at the chasm in my ceiling. Apparently the drop ceiling covered older, wooden tiles. One of those wooden tiles fell off and burst through the sagging drop ceiling tile. Loose strips of wood with rusty nails jut out of the hole like fingers on an open hand. The “leak” is actually five or six leaks in the same spot.

  The bucket tipped over when the tile fell and spilled a gallon of dirt juice on the books I keep under my bed.

  I stand there, surveying the scene objectively, like a president getting a close look at a disaster area to determine how much aid
will be needed. It’s almost 6:00. The apartment and the world outside seem very still and quiet. Then I scream: ffffffuuuuuccccckkkkkkkkkkkk! I punch the bedroom door as hard as I can. Winding up for a second blow, I stop when I think of how much pain I would be in if I re-break my hand. Instead, I rip the door off its hinges, kicking it like the proverbial dead horse it is. My bare foot breaks through the wood and when I pull it out I have an ankle bracelet of splinters.

  I kneel on the sticky stinky carpet and start slapping the door with my open palm. Can’t break my hand that way, and it stings like a bitch. I stop my assault on this innocent wooden bystander when I hear a knock at my front door.

  My neighbor across the hall, a middle-aged woman who lives with her teenaged daughter, stands in the hall wearing a bathrobe that she is clutching closed at the neckline. “Everything OK?”

  Her tone and expression show me she has no concern for my wellbeing. I woke her up and this is her passive-aggressive way of complaining. My response is to step back and point to the hole in my bedroom ceiling.

  She leans in and squints. “Oh… Oh.”

  I nod before closing the door in her face.

  Another voicemail for my landlord, this one ending with my promise to call the Drexel Hill Health Inspector’s office if someone isn’t cleaning my bedroom by 10:00 a.m. I also call the handyman’s emergency pager. This is the fourth time I’ve called it while living here, and no one has ever called me back. Maybe calling it the emergency pager is meant to be ironic?

  I lie on my futon with my eyes closed, reciting song lyrics in my head to keep from thinking until my alarm goes off. For the first time in… ever, I don’t play snooze-tag for forty minutes. I can’t wait to get out of this shithole. I can’t say much about Paine-Skidder, but I can say this: it only rains there when you’re outside.

  * * *

  My cell phone rings as I trudge down the steps of my apartment building (the elevator is still broken). My landlord apologizes repeatedly on the phone and promises to send someone right over. I let him know that I want to be in a new apartment by dinnertime and that my new bed will be coming out of my rent. He says he will check into other apartments for me.

  The rain has stopped and the May sun looks like a lemon drop when I step outside. I glance at the time on my cell phone and realize I’m going to be early for the first time in…ever.

  I reassess my prediction of being early when I turn the corner and see my car. All of the windows have been smashed. All of the lights are smashed. The roof is dented in about a foot lower than it should be. The seats and floor are covered with broken glass and rainwater. It looks like a bowl of cereal for a giant robot.

  A note attached to the steering wheel says SEE YOU SOON. A migraine blooms instantly in my head like a burning flower. Sometimes a jolt of stress does this to me.

  I don’t even pretend for a moment that this is the killer’s handiwork. Even if it wasn’t clearly retaliation for what I did to Theo’s Mustang, I know the killer would never stick his head out like this. The killer’s genius is that he’s convinced everyone but me that he doesn’t exist. If he ever comes after me, no one will see it coming, including myself.

  Again, I stare objectively at the wreckage. This time my emotions release in the form of hysterical laughter. I always find it funny when I think my day can’t get any worse, and then it proves me wrong by getting so much worse I can’t remember what was bad about it in the first place. Life can be funny in a very unfunny way.

  I rip the note off the steering wheel and stuff it in my pocket. After calling the police, I snap a few pictures of the crime scene with my cell phone.

  I leave Suzanne a message about what happened, letting her know I won’t be in at all unless I get a rental car. I sit on my hood waiting for the cops.

  * * *

  “You can’t think of anyone who would do something like this?” The cop wears a you’re-full-of-shit expression.

  “No one. I mean it. I’m not the type to make enemies.” I’ve been lying so often lately that now the lies just roll off my tongue. “Have there been any vandalizings like this in the neighborhood?” I say vandalizings with a sour face, realizing it may not be a word.

  “Not at all. The last time I saw something like this, it was done by a wife who caught her husband in bed with the UPS guy.” The cop has a good laugh at that. Ah, the joys of homophobia.

  The cop takes down my story. He never says he’s sure that I know who did this, but he nudges the conversation in that direction whenever possible.

  He writes the report number on a piece of paper and hands it to me.

  “Any chance they’ll catch whoever did this?”

  He shakes his head. “Almost no chance, to be perfectly honest. I’d say absolutely no chance, but, you know, never say never. Something like this happens, you write a report, log it in the system, and it sits in there forever. Unless this happens to another car around here in the next few days, it won’t get a second look.”

  “Thanks for your honesty. I figured as much.”

  “Hopefully your insurance covers it.”

  * * *

  After taking pictures of my bedroom ceiling with my phone, I call my insurance company to file a report. I use the term vandalizings again with the insurance agent. The agent tells me someone will come out to look at my car the next day, that I should get a rental car and I’ll be reimbursed later.

  The handyman comes while I’m on the phone with the insurance company. He whistles, impressed by the damage.

  When I finish reporting my claim, I take pills for my headache, grab my keys and wallet, tell the handyman to lock up when he leaves, and begin my seventeen-block walk to the nearest rental car place.

  * * *

  I walk into Suzanne’s office two hours later, my shirt stained with sweat and my skin smelling like city streets.

  I show her the cell phone pictures of my car under the pretense of commiseration, but really I want to prove that I’m not lying about why I’m late. I’ve used up all of my lies with her.

  I was an hour late once and said I had a flat tire; I rubbed my hands on one of my tires until they were black before going into the building. I walked into Suzanne’s office, flashed my filthy hands, and said “I need to go wash these, just wanted to let you know I was here.”

  I’ve also called her with my head sticking out of my apartment window to pick up traffic sounds so she’d think I was stuck behind an accident and not still in my underwear because I overslept.

  Yes, I felt ridiculous doing these things, but I’d rather be ridiculous than unemployed.

  My brother emails me to make sure I can still babysit my nephew the next night. I let him know what happened to my apartment and car, but that I’ll be there. I have a brief panic attack about accidentally dropping the baby into the garbage disposal while it’s running or accidentally selling him into slavery.

  * * *

  I call Nancy that night to tell her about my awful day. We’ve been talking more and more. I think about her a lot, fantasize about her, idealize her into the perfect woman for me. I always thought this type of romanticizing is strictly reserved for women I’ve never been with: the unattainable or the unattained, the unscratched itch. Being able to do this with Nancy feels great.

  “Did you get your CDs? The stuff in your glove compartment? Your trunk?” Nancy asks the same questions my mom asked when I told her what happened.

  “Yep, yep, and yep. There wasn’t anything good in the trunk though.”

  “You should get mace or something.” Nancy is the only person I’ve told that Theo smashed my car.

  “I’m a guy. I’m not getting mace. Mace is for women.” Meanwhile, what I have thought about getting is a gun.

  “Mace is not just for women.”

  “Sure it is. You’ve never known a guy who had mace. Neither have I.”

  “That doesn’t mean there aren’t men who carry it.”

  “Should I get a rape whistle too?” />
  “What if he shoots you?”

  “If he was gonna shoot me, he would’ve done it when I was on his property wrecking his car.”

  “You think he’ll tell the police what you did to him?”

  “No, because then we’d both end up in jail after what he did today.”

  “You should come stay at my mom’s. He can’t find you here.” My mom also wanted me to stay with her, but only because she thought the mold in my apartment would make me sick and because she feared the “hooligans” might try and beat me up next time.

  “I appreciate that, but I’m not gonna hide from him. I’d have to come home at some point anyway.” I sit on my futon with my bat on my knees watching my bedroom ceiling drip, despite the rain having ended early this morning. Tarps cover my bed and dresser. Two buckets and a plastic trash can catch the water.

  I tell Nancy about the unbelievable face-to-face conversation I had with my landlord when I got home from work that day. He told me that there were more than a dozen tenants with leaks as bad as mine, so there were no more available apartments of equal value to move into. He could move me into a nicer apartment, but my rent would go up.

  I told him that I would pay what I was currently paying for the better place, but if he thought he was going to weasel more money out of me as a result of his neglect he was crazy, stupid, or both.

  My landlord grimaced. He said he couldn’t give me the apartment at my current rent, but could take fifty bucks off the rent for me.

  I reiterated that I wasn’t paying so much as an extra peso for his incompetence as a building manager.

  He nodded thoughtfully and offered this: I could live in my apartment rent-free for sixty days, and he would give me back my security deposit. That would cover my new bed and dresser and most of a deposit on an apartment elsewhere. I’d have sixty days to find a new apartment.

  I took the deal mostly because I had no other option. As much as I hated my shithole, it was at least a hundred and fifty-a-month cheaper than any other property in the area. And I didn’t have an extra hundred and fifty a month to spare.