by Jeff Gomez
After Gary says this, he ashes on the ground and then looks up to the sky.
“We grew to be friends. Over time, I mean. But at first, yeah.” Mark laughs. “I avoided you.”
“And you’re still doing it.”
Mark looks from the sky to Gary.
“I’ve been trying to get in touch with you for years, Mark. I sent emails. I got your address from your dad. You never replied.”
“I’m sorry. I just didn’t want to get into everything again. I was tired of explaining everything.”
“Yeah, but did you explain it?” He takes another drag. “Because you never explained it to me.”
“Gary, come on. Let’s not do this. I can’t, really. That was a long time ago.”
Gary laughs.
“In a galaxy far, far away.” He throws the cigarette into the street and heads over to the Chrysler. “See you tomorrow,” he says.
4: As We Go Up, We Go Down
“How was your weekend?”
Charles looks up and sees Brooks. A coffee cup in his left hand says #1 DAD. On his right wrist is a huge silver watch. Charles just got off the elevator.
“Oh, hey.” Charles didn’t think anyone would be in this early. Glancing at his own watch, he sees it’s just past seven-thirty. “What are you doing here?”
Brooks takes a slow sip of his coffee, looks around.
“I like to get in early. Get a bit of work done before everyone else comes in.”
Charles looks around the office, trying to see if Brooks is the only one there. All the lights are off except for Brooks’s office and the break room.
“I’d better get back to it,” Brooks says. “I’m trying to respond to all of my weekend emails before the conference call at nine.”
“Good luck.”
Charles watches as Brooks retreats down the hallway, disappearing into his office. Charles goes into his own office. He puts down his bag and takes out his laptop. He sits down at his desk, rethinking the plan he’d come up with yesterday. He’d wanted to get into the office early to dig up some dirt on Dylan, when he didn’t think anyone else would be here.
“Hey, Brooks!”
When Charles calls out his voice echoes throughout the empty floor. Brooks appears in the doorway.
“Could you do me a favor? I sent something to be printed on the fourteenth floor. Could you go grab it for me?”
“Why don’t you just print it down here?”
Brooks nods to where the printer sits down the hall, sandwiched in a cluster of cubicles that nobody wants to occupy since the printer’s old and loud and runs all day.
“I—it’s just.” Charles can’t think of an excuse. Finally, he says, “I need color copies, and that shitty one we have only does black and white.”
“Are you sure?” Brooks turns and looks down the hallway. “Because I could swear that—”
“I mean—I know it does color copies. I tried that. On Friday.” Charles forces a laugh. “And there were yellow spots everywhere. I think it needs more toner. So I sent it upstairs. Could you go get them for me?”
“But, you’re—”
“Someone called me when I was in the car and I told them to call me in the office in ten minutes and, well, it’s almost been ten minutes.”
Charles can tell that Brooks doesn’t quite believe what he’s saying, but he’s still too new at Trust to question him.
“Oh—okay, yeah. Sure. Give me a few minutes and I’ll go get them.”
“Thanks, man. I appreciate it.”
Brooks disappears from the doorway. Charles hears him walk down the hallway and press the button for the elevator. Charles opens his laptop, finds a presentation at random, and sends it to the color printer up on fourteen. The elevator arrives. Charles peeks out his door, making sure Brooks gets on. After Brooks disappears behind the closing doors, Charles sprints down the hallway.
Dylan and Charles have almost the exact same office—desk, credenza, three low filing cabinets under two windows that have a view of the parking lot. There’s also a round table in the corner with three chairs.
Charles stands behind Dylan’s desk. There’s not much on it except a manila folder marked INVOICES and his schedule for the week, which Sharon must have printed out for him on Friday.
Charles quickly goes through Dylan’s desk, opening and closing drawers. All he finds are two Mont Blanc pens, a bottle of cologne, and a few expensive chocolate bars. Charles is breathing heavily, sweat forming on his forehead. He goes through the cabinets, finding nothing but company stationery along with envelopes and return address labels, the word TRUST staring back at him from each pile. Turning to the credenza, he sees a photo of Dylan from Disneyworld. Dylan’s posing with his two sons. Charles has met them on a few occasions—the summer barbecue, the holiday party, O’Brien’s birthday in a backroom at Nolan’s.
Knowing he doesn’t have much time before Brooks gets back, Charles moves to the filing cabinets. He begins quickly flipping through the various plastic tabs, trying to find something incriminating. As his fingers rifle through the files, he mutters under his breath, “Come on, come on, come on.”
Something beeps. At first he thinks it’s the elevator—Brooks, maybe, already back—but then Charles realizes it’s his phone. It’s a text from Grace.
Maddie has a bit of a fever :-( Am going to stay home with her. Text me on the way home. May need you to pick up some medicine. Love you. Grace
Charles left the house so early this morning, neither his wife nor his daughter had been awake. Hoping to be the first one at the office, he snuck out of the house before seven.
He quickly texts her back.
Sorry to hear. Thanks for handling. Love you both. Will check back in a bit.
A second later Grace writes back with a row of hearts and a picture of Maddie on the couch in her My Little Pony pajamas. Her nose is red and her normally sparkling eyes look dull and glassy.
She’s why I’m doing this. It’s for Maddie. And for Grace. For a better life for both of them.
Charles shoves the phone back into his pocket and returns to the filing cabinets. He quickly pulls out entire folders labeled EXPENSES, BOARD MEETING, and 2012 SALES CONFERENCE. Just as he tucks them under his arm, he hears the ping of the elevator.
Charles quickly jumps into the hallway and walks back to his own office as fast as he can without running. Behind him, he hears Brooks. By the time Charles throws the files onto his desk, and leaps into his chair, he’s out of breath. Looking up, he sees Brooks in the doorway. He has the presentation in his hand.
“Your printouts.”
Charles reaches out. His chest is heaving back and forth. “Thanks.”
After handing over the presentation, Brooks leans against the doorway. “That must have been some phone call.”
Before Charles can say anything the elevator pings again. Charles and Brooks turn their heads toward the sound. Voices begin to fill the office, the first waves of workers showing up for a new week.
Brooks sighs. “Well, there goes my whole day.”
Randy’s been on the computer all morning looking for work, eyes scanning job descriptions and clicking links. It’s been four hours and he has nothing to show for it except dry eyes and a sprained thumb. It’s all he did yesterday, too. But there’s nothing out there. At least, nothing that looks promising. He’s been submitting online applications all over town, at dozens of places—it’s easy to do; you just upload your résumé and cut and paste a cover letter—but no one’s gotten back to him. He’s applied for temp work, three telemarketing jobs, and the night shift working security at the mall. The response has been silence. He’s not even getting calls for jobs he’d never want.
He looks at his résumé, thinking maybe he left a few digits out of the phone number, or messed up his email address. It wouldn’t be the first time. To his surprise he sees that they’re both correct. He delves a little deeper.
As he reads over the dozen jobs he’s had o
ver the years, he winces. His eyes focus on a restaurant he worked at a few years ago.
That was a nice place. The tips were good. If I’d just kept my mouth shut, I could have been assistant manager by now.
Most of the jobs are ones that he left voluntarily. Getting fired the other day was only the second time that’s happened to him. Most times Randy just quits, feeling slighted or pissed off about some small thing. He left the record store because he felt the owner had bad taste in music. He quit the bakery because he hated getting up early. He worked in a bank for a while as a teller—it was probably the best job he’s ever had, even though he had to wear chinos and a tie—but he left after four months because the bank was located in a crowded strip mall and he had to park two blocks away. The manager even offered to transfer him to another branch, but Randy refused since they were all too far from Kitty—too far for Randy to drive. At the bottom of his résumé, under “Education” all it says is HIGH SCHOOL. Under “Special Skills” it says NONE.
He closes his laptop and looks around for his clock, but still can’t find it. He grabs his phone. 11:17. He skipped breakfast and now is looking forward to lunch. But he doesn’t have any food in the house.
He sees the printout of the Bottlecap ticket on his desk. Since he doesn’t have a printer, he had to ask Cody to print it out for him. Cody wasn’t happy about it.
“If you have money to spend on concerts,” he’d lectured, “then you’d better have money for the rent.”
What kills Randy is that it’s true. He can’t afford the concert. He doesn’t even know why he’s going. Dinner the other night with Charles was a disaster. The rich, uptight prick looked down on him the entire night. The only good thing about it was that Randy had managed to talk his way out of a DUI.
He shakes his head. Charles had been his first real friend. They were close in high school, college, and after. They’d been through so much, and now there’s nothing. When they shook hands on Saturday, it was like meeting him for the first time. And he didn’t particularly like him. If he’d passed Charles on the street, and didn’t know who he was, Randy would think he’s just another yuppie douchebag. And yet that used to be his best friend.
Randy stares at the receipt for the concert. Now it’ll be two meals he’ll have to miss. If he stretched it, that $18.50 could have bought him groceries for a week. Now he has less than twenty bucks in his checking account. But that money’s already spent since he’s going to need gas soon to drive to some interviews, not to mention he’d better get that old suit of his dry-cleaned. Staring down at his bulging belly, he doubts it still fits.
Randy slowly reaches for his phone and dials.
“Mom?”
“Randall, my goodness!” The voice is scratchy but excited. She has to take gulps of air as she speaks, all those years of smoking closing off almost all of her lungs. “How are you?”
“I’m good, Mom. How are—are you good?”
“I’m fine Randall, just fine. I’m on the porch. Can you hear the birds? Your father just bought us cordless phones.”
His mom’s always at least one technology behind. Now that the whole world has mobile phones, she’s finally segued to cordless.
“That’s great, Mom. Hey, listen. Could you—could I borrow some money?” Randy says this fast, as if the sentence were like ripping off a Band-Aid.
“But, but I—what about your job, Randall? At the book shop?”
“I lost it, Mom. Last week.”
“Oh, Randall. Not again.”
Disappointment in her voice. Randy’s heard it plenty of times.
“Yes, Mom. Again. I’m sorry. I made a mistake. Okay, a few mistakes. And now I just need a little bit, a little something, until I can get a new job. I promise—”
“Your father—”
“—that it won’t happen again—”
“—made me swear to not keeping giving you—”
“—you’ll see, Mom.”
“—more money. Why, it must have been thousands now over the years, Randall.”
His head’s in his hands. The whole room goes black.
“I know, Mom. I know.”
“And, well, it’s just not that easy, Randall. You must know that. I mean …” she loses her train of thought, or can’t find the words. Either way, when there’s silence on her end he hears birds. It must be sunny in Richmond. It’s cloudy in Kitty. “I just don’t have it to give.”
“Okay, Mom. I just thought you’d—I don’t know, Mom.”
“Look at your brother, Randall. He’s got his own business now. Two locations, even. Maybe you could ask him to—”
Randy hangs up the phone. A minute later his phone buzzes. He turns it off.
For a few seconds, he just sits there. The house is strangely quiet. He gets up from the desk and leaves his bedroom. There’s no one in the kitchen or the living room. Randy tiptoes to both Hunter and Cody’s doors and, behind each of them, he can hear typing and music playing at a low volume. Randy suspects they’re avoiding him, though he doesn’t know why.
I bought Hunter more quinoa and got Cody coffee that had a picture of Africa on it. What more do they want me to do?
He looks across the kitchen and sees the clock on the microwave. 11:24. Still too early for lunch. Randy’s heading back to his room when he spots a wallet sitting on an end table in the living room. It’s black and thin. Randy’s not sure who it belongs to, Cody or Hunter.
Randy tries to stop, to turn around and go back to his room, but somehow—something’s pushing him—he moves forward. He bends at the waist, his movements slow and deliberate. He tries to stop, to scream, to draw some sort of attention to himself so he won’t do what he’s about to do. But he does it anyway.
He grabs the wallet, lifts it up, and opens it. The first bill he sees is a fifty. The bill disappears, reappearing in his hand, just like magic. The wallet is returned to the table. As Randy walks slowly his room, his eyes fill with tears for the second time in three days.
Mark pulls up to the practice space and parks. The Chrysler from the other day is parked across the street. When he enters the room through the double doors, he sees Gary strumming away frantically on an electric guitar and screaming into a microphone. The sound is loud and distorted. The only words Mark can make out are “fuck,” “yeah,” and “badass.”
When the song’s over, Gary turns and notices Mark. When the feedback dissipates, he says, “That’s a song for one of my new bands. What do you think?”
“I think you’re in your forties and you shouldn’t be making music like that.”
“What’s your problem? I’m just having fun.” Gary unstraps the electric guitar and turns off the amp. “Speaking of which, I brought you one of these. It’s my new record.”
He pulls a cassette out of his back pocket and hands it to Mark. The cover looks like a vintage Polaroid of a beach sunset, with STUBBORN BUBBLES written against the sky in someone’s shaky handwriting. Mark opens the cover and pulls out the insert. The edges are uneven, cut by hand. The cassette’s a gray Maxwell with SIDE A written in Sharpie on one side and SIDE B on the other.
“Some guy dubbing these in his bedroom, one at a time,” Mark says. “That’s what passes for a record label these days?”
“Not in the traditional sense, but it gets us out there.”
“If by ‘out there’ you mean 1993, then well done.”
“Don’t be an asshole, okay?” Gary nods to what Mark’s carrying in his hand. “That your acoustic? Good, let’s rehearse for the in-store.”
As Gary grabs a beat-up Yamaha from a stand and gives it a few strums, Mark hops onto one of two barstools sitting in front of the drums. Gary climbs onto the other.
“You know, Mark, before we get started, I just have to ask.” Gary’s looking at the guitar while he speaks, tuning it up. “Do you ever think about it?”
“Think about what?”
“Los Angeles. The deal. How our lives would have been different if
…”
“If what?”
Gary looks up.
“If you hadn’t walked away.”
Mark shifts uneasily on the barstool.
“No.”
“Really?” Gary laughs. “I don’t see how you can’t since—” But he stops.
“Since what?”
“Well, it’s just—it’s not like you’re such a hotshot in Manhattan. I checked.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I Googled you. You design book covers. That’s it. There’s no other mention of you anywhere. No Facebook. No Twitter. You barely exist. Sure, there’re a few things about Bottlecap, from way back in the day, but nothing from now.”
“That doesn’t mean I don’t exist, or that I’m not happy. It just means I’m doing my own thing.” Mark strums the guitar. It’s out of tune. “What, you think because I didn’t become a rock star I’m hiding out and crying myself to sleep every night?”
Gary digs around in his pockets for a cigarette. He finds one. Lighting it, he says, “Basically.”
“That’s your dream, Gary. Not mine.” Mark motions around the room, to all of the gear. “And if you want to keep hanging on to it, go right ahead.”
“Damn straight, Mark. Damn fucking straight.” An edge creeps into Gary’s voice. “Do you know how many times I’ve had to watch some shitty band make it bigger than we ever did? I have to open up for them all the time. These fucking kids. I could blow them off the stage any night of the week, but they’re the ones on tour. The ones with the record deal. And I’m opening for them. It’s not fair. It should have been me. It should have been us.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way, Gary. But that’s just the way things worked out.”
“No, Mark.” Gary points at him with his cigarette. “That’s the way things are because you fucked us over.”
“Don’t give me that. Don’t you remember when you wanted to quit the band?”
“What? When?”
“Here, in Kitty. Right before we got the deal. You wanted out and I pulled you back in.”
“Why are you bringing that up?”
“Because if it wasn’t for me none of that would have happened in the first place. The deal. LA. You guys were pretty comfortable there for a while. Videos. Tours. So don’t complain now. You guys were fine.”