“What’s so good about that?” I asked.
“They’re self-sufficient. What plant would you be?”
“I think I’d be a dandelion.”
“Why?”
“So I could be free.”
“You don’t feel free?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “It’d be nice to float on wind, flutter all over the place. But it’s a stupid dream. None of us can really be free.”
“Also, if there’s no wind, dandelions can’t fly,” she said.
“What?”
“They depend on wind currents and if it takes them someplace they don’t want to go, they still gotta go.”
I stared at her. “I guess so.”
“Do you think there’s such a thing as free love?” she asked.
“Every love has a cost,” I replied.
“Isn’t love supposed to be unconditional?”
“I don’t know.”
“I just broke up with my boyfriend about a month ago,” she said. “I thought we were in love. He told me he was part of a royal family but his parents were murdered. I thought I could help him out so I let him live at my place, paid for his bills, took care of him financially and mentally. He’s a genius, you know, one of the most artistic people I knew. Everything should have been great.”
“It wasn’t?”
“I hired a PI and found out his parents were middle class retirees living in West Virginia. He’d conned a string of rich women into taking care of him. He ran up a debt of more than $120,000 on my cards, really screwed me over.”
I wasn’t sure what to say, and a distant acquaintance called me at that moment. “Sorry, I gotta take this.” Walked out to the lobby. “Thank God you called,” I said. “If you could text me in seven minutes—send a blank if you want—I’ll buy dinner anywhere you want.”
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“I met up with someone who’s really weirding me out and your call just saved me.”
He laughed. “I’ll send you ten texts just to make it seem real serious.”
“Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
I returned to the table and told June, “I’m sorry, I gotta get going soon. Emergency at work.”
“This late?”
“Yeah, it’s crazy, huh?”
I took a seat, sipped on my wine.
“What did you want to become when you were a kid?” she asked.
“I don’t remember,” I said.
“Do you feel you have a lot to do with your life?”
“I think so. I… well, I make good money now. I’m a manager for a software firm that specializes in security applications, and it’s all right.”
“Do you remember what you told me a long time ago?” she asked.
“No, what?”
“You said you didn’t care about money or fame. You just didn’t wanna be like your father.”
“Did I say that?”
“Yep, and you said you just wanted to be able to tell your stories through your computer programs and test videogames every day.”
I stared at her, stunned, not that she remembered, but that I hadn’t.
“How do you remember this?” I asked.
“You’re probably gonna laugh at me for what I’m about to tell you.”
“What?”
“I had the biggest crush on you,” she confessed.
“You’re kidding?”
“No. I always wanted to tell you but I… I never got the chance. In high school, you were so focused on your studies, I knew you’d never be interested in a girl like me… I used to…” She giggled. “I’m gonna sound so stupid now so I’ll stop.”
“No no, go ahead.”
She blushed. “The main reason I got in touch with you was, I just remembered how brave you were in high school. Everyone used to tease you, call you names behind your back.” They did? “But you didn’t care… After my UFO run-in, I started telling people, and they all turned against me, made fun of me. No one wanted to be my friend anymore and I’ve been so miserable… and lonely… I saw you online and I remembered how strong you were. I knew if I contacted you, you’d be different, you’d underst–”
My phone beeped, a text message. It kept on beeping even though I tried to turn it off.
“Looks like work needs you,” she said.
“They can wait.”
“No no no, go ahead, I don’t wanna keep you.”
“You’re not keeping me,” I said.
“You don’t need to be polite. Go ahead.”
“But–”
“Byron, go do your thing, I understand it’s an emergency. I appreciate you just coming out for dinner.”
I stared at her, genuinely penitent. “I’m sorry about this.”
“Don’t be,” she said.
I took out my wallet. “How much do I owe?””
“I got this.”
“What?”
“Seriously, I got it,” she said.
“Okay, then let me buy the next one. When can we meet again?”
“How about I give you a call?” she suggested.
“I… I’ll take you to the best Italian restaurant in LA. Next time, okay?”
“We’ll see.”
“Promise me. I wanna finish our conversation.”
She hesitated. “Let’s play it by ear.”
There was something plaintive in her eyes. It felt like the first time I’d really seen her and I was lost in her again. I wished I hadn’t been so hasty; I should have stayed and listened instead of being so impatient.
“It was really good seeing you,” I said.
“You probably just think I’m crazy, huh?”
“We’re all crazy deep down,” I replied. “See you later, June.”
II.
I headed home, unable to sleep, thrilled by the sudden revelation June Guan had liked me too. Four in the morning, still just the irritation of yawns. I’d been suffering insomnia for the last few days.
Around 7 a.m., I headed into the office, frustrated and sore. There was a curt email from Barry, my manager. Come see me as soon as you get in.
It was two hours before he got in.
Barry was a bitter engineer who lived in the glory days of a past that didn’t really exist. He let his jaw wander, and it hung loosely like a bulldog with a protruding mouth. He had a big belly he liked to pet, deploring his heavy stature and insisting that he had to watch his weight.
“Did you want to talk about something?” I asked him.
“No no, forget it, it’s nothing,” he muttered.
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
I went back to my desk but sensed something was wrong and went to talk to a buddy of mine.
“Barry was pissed you left early last night,” he told me.
“Early? I left at 6,” I replied.
“Yeah, but he was pissed. I think he has a stick up his ass about you. He went on this big rant about how lazy you are and how you barely do any work.”
“He didn’t say anything this morning,” I said.
“I’d just forget it. You know Barry. Always making a big deal and never following through.”
Of course, as the day proceeded, several other people stopped by, mentioning Barry’s tirade against me.
I finally went to confront him. “Where do I stand at work?”
“I think you’re doing a great job,” he responded. Then stared emptily at me as though sincerely puzzled. “Why do you ask?”
For the following week, I stayed late even though I had no work.
My mind kept on wandering back to June. I called her several times, left messages. No reply. I checked my email ten times every minute. There was a company wide update on several promotions as well as a note on new execs that had joined.
“We’re excited, no—thrilled—that Ayumi joins us from MetDefenses. She brings four years of experience on the…”
According to a Google search, she was four years
younger than me, with an expected signing bonus of a million.
Two weeks passed and June still hadn’t called.
I called her cell once again. A click, someone finally picking up.
“Can I speak to June?”
“Who is this?” a male voice asked.
“An old friend. Who’s this?”
“I’m her brother, Stan.”
“Oh, hi Stan. Is your sister around?”
“You haven’t heard the news?” he asked.
“What news?”
“She committed suicide earlier this week.”
I was stunned. “W-why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you know her well?”
“Not really well,” I answered. “I had dinner with her two weeks ago.”
“What did she talk about?”
I fumbled through general descriptions of what she’d said.
“You’re one of the few friends she had,” he said. “I’m so glad you called. She’d been having lots of problems lately.”
“Problems?”
“She used to cut herself all the time, but she stopped after college. I think she got back into it after breaking up with her ex… I don’t know if this is too much to impose, but would you mind speaking at the funeral?”
“I don’t know if I knew her that well.”
“It’s okay. I know it’ll mean a lot to her. She… she just…” And he broke into tears, sobbing uncontrollably. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“It’s okay… I’ll do it.”
“Thank you.”
We hung up.
I stood motionless, my eyes losing their focus.
It was about midnight when I headed home. I microwaved a burrito, set out the proper appliances, gripped my knife, sliced at the right angle. Took a bite and spat it out: it tasted awful. When I lay back in bed, my stomach churned, so I turned over to the side. I saw a gigantic spider crawling up the wall, with its spindly limbs and its oval-shaped body. It bobbed ever so slightly, freezing as I got closer.
I grabbed a roll of toilet paper, went to try to crush it. It instinctively leaped under my bed. I peered under but couldn’t spot it anywhere. Grabbed a flashlight and shined it below. The odd play in the reflections made my beam a more vermilion hue of yellow. I swung the lights back and forth but couldn’t see anything. I got back into bed, thinking about spiders and their eight eyes and whether multiple vision caused them ambiguities we could never comprehend.
III.
The grassy knoll and the required valet parking at the cemetery did little to clear my head. The cemetery smelled rotten: fertilizer, decomposition. It was like a barracks for corpses, a phalanx of gravestones strategically placed on the hills.
When her brother had said she only had a few friends, I thought he might be referring to a handful. As it was, it was him, myself, and her mother.
“Should we wait for others to arrive?” I asked.
“This is it,” Stan answered. “Everyone else was too busy to come.”
Stan was dark, as though his skin had been broiled, with wiry arms and disheveled hair. Her mother was Chinese, short, and brisk. She had a staunch upper frame and continuously bit her lip, wiping her eyes with a handkerchief.
The funeral workers helped with the labor of burying the casket. Stan and her mother didn’t have much to say, holding each other in mourning. A priest finally arrived, read a few verses, looked my way.
I cleared my throat, rubbed lint off my suit. “June was special; she was unique; she was… she was witty. I met her when she was fifteen and…” I rambled on, not sure what I was saying.
“Are you all right?” Stan asked. “You’re mumbling.”
“Sorry.”
I stared at the grave, mumbled on for a few minutes before concluding, “I think that’s about it.”
Her mother said, “Thank you.”
Afterwards, we headed for the parking lot.
“You wanna maybe grab lunch or something?” I asked Stan.
“I gotta get back to work. We’re in major crunch.”
“What do you do?” I asked.
“I’m a game tester for the eighth sequel to the Revolutionary War game. Let’s do lunch another time.”
He gave me his number, then trotted away with his mother while I went back to the grave.
I grimaced, staring at the dirt, the sundered blades of grass. Why’d you do it? I gazed up into the sky. Maybe you faked your death? Are you aboard some alien ship looking down on us? If there are higher beings, what are they like? I blinked several times, rubbing my hair. I know it’s late, but… but… I clenched my fists, wishing I hadn’t been such an ass at our dinner. You were trying to tell me something and I was just being stupid…
I was so exasperated with myself, I wanted to take a bat and swing it at my torso, rip out my intestines. Anything to get that gnawing hammer of remorse out of me.
I deserve it, I know.
I stared up at the sky again.
“C’mon UFOs, where are you? You guys have special powers, right? You need her for your experiments… Bring her back, please bring her back. If you—if you give her life again, you can use my body for all the experiments you want. Anything you wanna do, you can? Okay? Please, please. She doesn’t deserve this…”
“Who are you talking to?”
I turned and saw one of the workers.
I shook my head, said “Sorry,” and shuffled away quietly.
IV.
I didn’t feel like going into work so I headed home to get some sleep. To my irritation, I saw there were two spiders rather than one. Having seen enough death for a day, I decided to spare the pair. I got a paper towel, cupped one quickly in my palms.
“Don’t try to fight me,” I warned as I ran outside my apartment. I placed it far away among a set of trees. When I went back in, the second had vanished. I turned on the television and watched a news documentary about a massacre taking place in Africa. Went to bed to try to sleep, failed. Couldn’t get June out of my mind.
In the morning, I headed into work early. There was an email from Barry.
Come see me as soon as you get in.
Two hours later, he arrived.
“Did you want to talk about something?” I asked him.
“No no, forget it, it’s nothing,” he muttered.
I went back to my desk. Barry came by a few minutes later and asked, “Can we talk?”
“Sure, what’s up?” I asked.
“Um… I don’t know quite how to put this to you. But, where were you yesterday?”
“Remember I called and said I had to go to a funeral?”
“Oh yeah… Okay, sorry. Totally cool. Understood.”
I found a co-worker and asked if he’d heard anything.
“He was complaining that you’re always taking days off.”
“But I had to go to a funeral,” I protested.
“He didn’t know about it.”
I got a phone call from Helen, a manager over in the compatibility division. Despite the fact that she had three kids and was nearly double my age, she looked younger than me, energetic, sprightly, always wearing tight jeans as she heaved around old computers.
“I know how picky you are about food so I got us lunch reservations at Karmatica,” she said. “I’ve also invited Jerry and Tina.” Both VPs in the company.
I wondered what it was going to be about.
The restaurant was swank, a French Italian place with the lunch prix fixe menu set at $122.86. Cilantro-roasted shrimp, osetra caviar crowned with seared scallop and a lemongrass infusion, tartare or foie gras? It was a delectable heaven.
Helen said, “You know there’s been some organizational shifts happening. We were wondering how you’d feel about transferring over to compatibility. I’d love to have you on board and you’d be bringing your expertise to our team. I wanted Jerry and Tina to meet you too because they’re going to be overseeing the department.”
“
Byron, we’re really excited about all the new developments we’re going to be introducing,” Tina said with her blazing red hair and her pristine Colgate smile. “SolTech is all about talent and creativity. We feel the company has been so bogged down in the amplification of existing technologies, it hasn’t really had the chance to get back to its roots: innovation. We want you to be part of this new team because we only want the best of the best.”
Four waiters brought four plates, simultaneously placing the dishes before us. Helen, Tina, and Jerry used their tiny knives to cut their scallops into tiny slivers and used their tiny forks to take tiny bites of caviar. I grabbed my own scallop with my fingers, shoved it into my mouth, and swallowed it whole. They stared at me, surprised. When the steak arrived, I ripped it apart with my bare hands, chewing savagely with my mouth wide open.
“Byron is such a food snob, he eats with his fingers,” Helen joked, trying to bring levity to the lunch.
Tina and Jerry simpered. “I guess that’s the new chic, eh?”
I nodded while dipping my finger in the sauce and licking the remains directly off the plate.
On Friday, I got called to Barry’s office. A representative from HR was with him, a young Asian girl ten years younger than me. “I’m glad you came. We wanted to talk with you,” she said.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“When a company of our size has a bad year, we have to make cutbacks. It’s inevitable and an unfortunate aspect of a…”
“Can you get to your point?” I asked, cutting her off.
“Even though we feel you’ve been a valuable member of our company and a very important asset, we have to let you go.”
“I thought I was being transferred to compatibility.”
“That didn’t work out, sorry,” she informed me.
“Meanwhile, you’re hiring all new executives and paying them millions?”
“Excuse me?”
I laughed angrily. “What kind of compensation package do you have?”
“Two months automatic, one week for every year you’ve been here, an additional two weeks if you agree to sign a contract promising not to bring legal action against us.”
“Okay.”
“Do you want to go over our reasons?”
“Just give me my money.”
I stormed out without my belongings. Headed for my car. Hit the alarm, no response. My battery was dead. I gripped my key, flung it at the flower garden our environmental committee had recently planted. Pacing back and forth, I knew I should have been more thoughtful, not so stupid at that lunch. My key had fallen on top of a cactus, ‘self-sufficient’ despite its artificial inception. I hit the alarm again. With what little juice was left, it unlocked my car, and I sped away.
Watering Heaven Page 8