Stephen Florida

by Habash, Gabe

  I get my hand raised and start toward the exit. In the direction of the Garnes section, I yell, “I waited months for this and this boner is the best you can do?”

  When you get older, I guess you learn the importance of flowers and good food and old friends. That’s called settling down. But I don’t need to be old to know that to look back and realize you didn’t push yourself for something you loved is the greatest regret you can have. I can already sense what that’d feel like. I suppose I would marry her, and we would be honored to be the other’s widow. Someday she will help slip on my socks while I sit on the edge of the bed with calcified hips. A lifetime and at the end, guaranteed silent trips to hospitals, hoping for the best over and over. I try to get a reaction out of Mrs. Fink so I blow a kiss in her direction, but she’s very far away and she has her hand over her mouth, like something’s upset her. “Louise! I put your murderous husband in jail!” I yell, but the buzzer screams over the entire gymnasium, inciting the next match.

  Just this once it’ll be something great, something that starts to be remembered right after it happens.

  There is no real Stephen Florida. I am only a giant collection of gas and light and will.

  AT THE LAST MINUTE, because I want it to go well, or maybe because I know it won’t, I stop in the bathroom in the middle of the hall and put a red flower-print Kleenex in my nice shirt pocket, a makeshift pocket square. Tidying up my outfit. I’ve never had a pocket square before! I dab my face with some cold water. I don’t want to be here, but I walked all the way over. Then I go into the office of Dr. Cynthia Barnes for our appointed meeting, much of which I forget as soon as it happens.

  “I’m not taking any drugs. Just so we’re clear.”

  “It’s not within my bounds to prescribe you any. I’ve been looking forward to our conversation. I think we can help each other out.”

  “I’m not sure I like this. This is a very nice office.”

  “That’s O.K., that’s not uncommon. You’re a wrestler?” She gently touches her own pristine, delicate ear, which is like a seashell. The kind the crab picks first.

  “I mean, that’s not super hard to figure that out. Sorry, that was rude. So you know all about me?”

  “I know what you chose to put on the diagnostic paperwork.”

  “I don’t even remember what I wrote on that thing.”

  “First, can you put your suicide in perspective for me? How strong is your urge?”

  “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “In your paperwork you indicated suicidal thoughts. As in, would you carry a metal pole in a lightning storm? Ride in a shaky prop plane? Minor cutting?”

  As though on a postcard, I can picture the pistol in the silt and marl at the bottom of Egg. “You don’t sound like a psychiatrist.”

  “I’m not, I’m a psychologist.”

  One could conclude from her alternatingly receptive and poking demeanor that she gets pleasure from controlling the tone and direction of her conversations in this room, and probably also outside it. If she weren’t so smart and pretty and perceptive, I’d say she was a cactus of a woman.

  “Fine. What are your thoughts on Wilhelm Fliess?”

  “Do you feel angry at other people?”

  “I don’t feel much for most people. What are your thoughts on Wilhelm Fliess?”

  “Why not?”

  “Don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe I’m one of those bored psychopaths. I just don’t feel like I have much in common with other people.”

  “Why not?”

  “Most people, I think, don’t work hard enough.” I work harder for this one thing than almost anyone works in their life. I work harder than a therapist, and almost say so, but my manners are improving. “I have little pity for anyone. Actually, I have pity for the poets. The poets have it rough.”

  “Is wrestling your only outlet?”

  I picture outlet as a tremendous gutter pipe at the back of a nuclear plant, dumping out gallons of waste every minute. “No.”

  “What’s the worst thing you can think of?”

  I think about it for a second. “Alzheimer’s.”

  “And is suicide something you think about because it would prevent Alzheimer’s from ever happening to you?”

  “Well, I’d rather be dead than not be able to remember things, if that’s what you mean. If you forget everything, you’re not really you, are you?”

  “I want you to do me a favor and take this. I prepared it for our meeting today. It’s a case study of someone who showed similar tendencies as you. I want you to read it and tell me if you see yourself in it. Here.”

  “The last thing I want to do right now is read this stupid paper.”

  “Why did you say earlier that you wouldn’t take any medicine?”

  “Taking medicine is like lying.”

  “Why?”

  “It tricks you into thinking things are fine, when you can see with your own eyes when you’re off the medicine that things aren’t fine.”

  “Have you been getting enough magnesium in your diet?”

  “Why does everyone keep asking me that!”

  “All right, no need to make this a shouting match. That’s it, please sit back down. Are you calm?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let’s try a game. Close your eyes.”

  “O.K.”

  “How many buttons are on my jacket?”

  “One hundred and fourteen.”

  “I can see you’re not taking this very seriously.”

  “What?”

  She looks right at my pocket square. “You know what I’m talking about, this mocking attitude. There’s a napkin in your shirt.”

  “But I’m not mocking! I dressed up!”

  “I’m not upset. Don’t worry about hurting my feelings. You could never do that. I think what this is, it comes from the same place that enjoys being challenged. Maybe you don’t find this challenging. You like to be challenged?”

  “Well—”

  “When an obvious obstacle is not in your way, you go find one and put it there.”

  “Well—”

  “I’ve seen this before. Some people need to be challenged. It’s not a bad thing.”

  “O.K. But I’m not retarded, I’ve read about psychology. I know I, sort of, need competition because it’s a way to disprove my lack of selfness.”

  “In the end, what it breeds is a life of expectation. Yes?”

  “Man, you are really giving me the fifth degree.”

  “Yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mm. What are you going to do after you graduate?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Have you been to the career center?”

  “I’m going tomorrow.”

  “That’s great, but I’m going to go ahead and make an appointment at the career center for you for later today. You need to get your life going. I think it will help you to get going right away. Right now.”

  “Oh, I don’t know—”

  “I’ve seen your kind before, if you’d take a look at this case study, you’d see that your problems are not once-in-a-lifetime, that you’re not alone, that many people before you have fixed exactly what you’re struggling with. Take this paper with you. I want you to go home and read it, then I want you to look at yourself in the mirror. Then I want you to read it again, and then look at yourself in the mirror a second time.”

  Her jacket has six buttons. “You know, you really are a wet blanket.” I take the paper.

  She looks into my face, as if deciding whether to let this go a certain direction. “Someone called me that once before.”

  “Oh yeah? What happened?”

  “It was the only time I threw a drink in someone’s face.”

  In the time it takes me to walk down the long hallway, she’s apparently buzzed in ahead of me, because as I pass by, her assistant at the front desk says, “Mr. Florida, I’ve just spoken with the career center. I have the following time
arranged for you there.” He hands me a slip of paper. “In the meantime, Dr. Barnes would very much like to make a second appointment, she feels strongly you have more to discuss.” But I’m already at the door, and he’s repeating my name over my shoulder.

  SAME SHIRT, SAME TIE for the career center meeting. A middle-aged woman lets me into her office. I sit down and smile with all my teeth out because they keep putting me in front of witnesses to assess me, keep telling me to play a record, but they only want to hear one record and so I put that on for them.

  “I hope first names are good for you. Gina,” she says.

  She pops open a can of Fresca (it’s nine thirty in the morning). A scuba noise as she drinks from it. There’s a picture on her desk, facing the invisible line between us, of her and her man indoors on a couch in identical white hats with a little blue button on top.

  “I like your tie.”

  Her office is decorated more or less with the same uniqueness that actually amounts to blandness. I stare into the open mouth of the soda can. We will now have a sustained discourse.

  “So, what can I do for you?”

  “Well, I was hoping you could help me.”

  “With what, exactly?”

  “Um …”

  “Say no more, the deluxe package. I’ve seen your type before, it’s O.K. Is that your transcript?”

  I hand it over. She tilts her head back, pouring the Fresca in, the whole time looking down her nose and reading my report. She finishes both at the same time. “I see you’re on track with a liberal arts degree. That’s good. Lots of options. What do you think you might like to do?”

  “I’m not really sure.”

  “No problem.” She drops the can in the garbage and then leans over and goes through a drawer on her side of the desk. “What we like to do in this situation is show this sheet. It’s a list of potential career tracks. The whole initial appeal of liberal arts is it gives you all these choices.” She slides a piece of paper across the desk. “What I want you to do is put a mark next to all the professions you find interesting.”

  I do. When I’m done, the paper looks like this:

  REAL ESTATE

  X TRAINING SPECIALIST

  LEGISLATIVE ASSISTANT

  PUBLIC RELATIONS

  JOURNALISM

  NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONAL DIRECTOR

  ENTRY-LEVEL MANAGEMENT PERSONNEL

  RECRUITER

  HUMAN RELATIONS OFFICER

  MINISTER

  POLICY ANALYST

  GENEALOGY STUDIES

  POLITICIAN

  RECEPTION

  ADVERTISING ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE

  MEDICAL COMMUNICATIONS TRAINER

  URBAN PLANNER

  LOBBYIST

  GRANT WRITER

  SPEECH WRITER

  POLICY ANALYST

  ANCHORPERSON

  X HOTEL MANAGEMENT

  X MUSEUM MANAGEMENT

  X ARCHIVIST

  “Policy analyst is on here twice,” I say.

  “I know,” she says, snatching the paper. “Let’s see what we’ve got. Why don’t you tell me about why you marked the ones you did.”

  “Can I see?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, in terms of training specialist, I feel like I am a good leader at things. I have been a wrestler here at Oregsburg for four years now and believe I lead with my examples. I am good with details because I pay attention to them. I think I would be an asset to any company in keeping their own employees in line, and making sure it’s a tight ship.”

  “O.K., and what about these other ones?”

  “Hotel management and museum management, I just like hotels and museums. I have been to the Petrusse Art Museum numerous times. I recognize the value of art and would be interested in preserving it.”

  “And this last one, archivist?”

  “Isn’t that just like a librarian? I have spent a lot of time in the library here, furthering my studies. But I’ve also been in there even when I had no assignments! As with art, I believe books are to be preserved.”

  “I’m glad you have a positive forward outlook on possible careers, Stephen, it’s very good. I can put some feelers out for you. But I’m going to be honest. Your grades are not going to be of real help to you. I’ve been doing this for twenty-four years and believe me, I’ve seen your type before. It’s nothing to be worried about. I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. My nephew Shane works up in the oil fields, have you thought about that for a career? I can give him a call and he can show you around. We could start there. You have some options, I just want you to explore and find the best one for you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Look, I know being a roughneck probably isn’t—”

  “No, it sounds nice, thank you.”

  “There are a hell of a lot of positives.”

  “O.K., thank you.”

  NEPHEW SHANE DRIVES VERY FAST. While he diddles with the stick, I mentally fill out the North Regional 133 bracket, which I copied down before leaving and stuck in my non–Mary Beth shoe. He lights a cigarette and tosses the pack onto the dash, next to a green glove and two socks. For most of the three-hour drive, we’ve been under a silence he insisted on. He turned the radio to the country station and the whole time, his hand has either been down his pants or holding a cigarette. Somewhere west of Stanley on Route 2, I stopped recognizing what I saw out the window.

  “The foremost thing I want to stress to you has real importance. You can make a lot of money.”

  “How much?” The fields here are not like regular Oregsburg fields, they don’t appear to have a function. Some are full of gravel. But then I see: a sign for residential development in one plot, and then another, and then in the next one what looks like a house for phantoms. A grand building uterus, rectangle holes for future windows, blowing Tyvek.

  “You work twelve-hour shifts. Two weeks on, one week off. Plus you get a daily living allowance if you’re living in a Junette camp, which I am. I could buy anything I wanted. I’ll put it this way: I could buy antiques. I could buy a Japanese sword. The work’s not going to slow down for a long time, either. You know that much about oil?”

  “I saw the James Dean movie as a kid.”

  “You have a lot of testosterone running around here, a lot of competition. You find your friends, you know, but there’s not so much compassion. Lots of weapons. If it’s late and you’re in a bar, you can expect a fight, cops are already waiting outside for it to get going.” Shane turns down the radio, which is playing Dolly Parton. We pass through a town far larger than Aiken, with restaurants and bars, lights, general stores, and three different car dealerships. “Lots of strippers. Guys show up to work with red eyes from when they got pepper-sprayed the night before. They deserved it. You have people sleeping in their cars, people not careful with exhaust fumes and closed spaces, it was twenty-four below the other night, if you’re, you know, doing the trick where you turn the heat on and off to save it up, you can fall asleep and forget to turn it off again. A lot of greedy people, bad things are going to happen. People are bad at giving up. A lot of the time they don’t do it early enough. But a lot of the guys come up here for three, four, five months, trying to save some money up, get back on their feet. Then there are guys who are up here for good. People end up in a new situation, they don’t act like themselves. People are animals. Men, really, is who I mean.”

  Then the derricks appear. Dozens of them. Across the white fields the heads of the pump jacks nod slowly, the cranes rotate. Stacks of steel pipe. Perpetual gas flares.

  I can’t wait to get to Kenosha. I’ve never met a real genius before, that’s where I’ll get a chance to wrestle at least a few of them. That’s a gift and I’m lucky.

  I have wondered dozens of times whether I have a special skill at turning the people I come across in my life into ghosts, into glass, temporary figures. I wonder sometimes if that’s my backup talent. Maybe someday one of them will l
ook me up.

  “We’re close,” he assures me, and we stop at a gas station. While he fills the tank, I stretch my legs. I walk to the edge of the pavement and stare off at the neighboring field, four rigs in scattered positions, termite mud tunnels below. Two white trucks pass each other on the road. Snow keeps coming down on my head. Behind the rigs and their holes, I see the willful, inarticulate loneliness. It leans its head around the edge to see if you’ve spotted it. Every time you turn to face an oil field, you feel something was just there a moment ago but has evaporated.

  Where the pavement becomes snow, there’s a Honda parked with a dog, a German shepherd, leashed around the door handle. The dog picks his head off the ground, snow and dirt on his chin, and sits up but doesn’t bark as I approach the fender. The backseat is cluttered all the way to the roof with junk, bits of a life or two, things you’d find at a garage sale, boxes. Both of the front seats are reclined all the way back. On the driver’s side is a man and next to him is a pregnant woman, and both of them are asleep.

  “You ready?” I turn around. Shane’s carrying two huge bags, walking from the station store. “Toilet paper’s on sale, ninety-six rolls.” He jams them between us inside the truck. “This much, even if it’s on sale you can’t help looking like a cretin. Hey, can I ask you a question? How do you feel about your ears? Like is that something you’re self-conscious about or is it dust in the wind?”

  I look over the top of the toilet paper at Shane. “Dust in the wind,” I say. He nods, turns, and stares straight ahead, and when he blinks, his eyes stay shut for long periods of time.

  “Your aunt was a big help to me. At the college.”

  “Oh yeah? What’s your major?”

  “Liberal arts.”

  “That’s the one with all the choices?”

  “Yeah. She helped me narrow it down.”

  I want to get the whole story out of him, about how often she sends lost students to spend time with her nephew, the one who’s straightened his life out, who’s saving up thousands of dollars for no clear reason in exchange for being alone.

  “Have you spoken with her about other students?”