The Weight of Air

by David Poses

  Lyman talks like Mr. Howell from Gilligan’s Island. I hear the “h” in “white.” He runs his hand along the top of a chair as if smoothing the wood grain. “Fine.” He gets up and trudges toward the door. “Hire him. But no white space.”

  Kevin listens to Lyman descending the staircase. When the creaking stops, he says, “It’s okay if you want to think it over.”

  “Nothing to think about. I’m in.”

  We talk about a start date and how to find a place to live. Kevin recommends a realtor, saying I can stay in Workshops housing for as long as I need. He tells me about his wife, a filmmaker and occasional instructor at the Workshops, and says they moved here last year with their young sons to escape the rat race in California, where he worked as a marketing director at Silicon Graphics.

  “Funny. I used to own their stock.”

  “I’m happy you said ‘used to.’ It’s not worth the paper it’s printed on right now.”

  A girl around my age enters the room. Long brown hair, big brown eyes, perfectly shaped, perfectly proportioned breasts under a tight black tank top. She twirls her hair with her index finger and pulls it to her nose. I can smell the jasmine in her shampoo from across the room. What’s her story? Is there a reason to get in touch with her before I move?

  My heart pumps unicorns and lightning and magnets. I want to kiss her. I think she feels the same, when she momentarily glances at me. I’m here because of her. I’ll tell her the story of Ali someday, and she’ll think I’m crazy. And someday, she’ll tell the story to our kids.

  “This is David,” Kevin says. “Our new graphic designer. David, meet Andrea. She runs the photo program.”

  The fan in my hotel bathroom grinds like a jet engine with a bird trapped inside. I run the shower, squirt half a trial-size bottle of Paul Mitchell Awapuhi Shampoo on a washcloth, and place it where the water hits. I hope that by the time the housekeeper cleans the room, the awapuhi smell will have overpowered the Camels I’ve been chain-smoking since Stephanie dropped me off an hour ago.

  For dinner, I eat two stale bags of vending machine pretzels and a Nestle Crunch bar. Then I call my mother and break the news.

  “David, I’m thrilled for you. Thrilled, thrilled, thrilled.” She bombards me with questions. What’ll I do about a car? Where will I live? What’s Jane going to do in Camden?

  “She’s thrilled, right? She must be.”

  “She doesn’t know I got the job yet.”

  “I’m sure she’ll be thrilled. Don’t you think?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You think she won’t be thrilled?”

  “I’m sure she will be.”

  Mom offers to take me shopping for clothes or anything else I need for the move. Staring at J&R’s ad (“Power Macintosh G4s starting at $2,999.99. Add a professional-quality display monitor for only $1,299.99”), I tell her I don’t need anything.

  The plane slices through the cloud line, and Manhattan comes into view. I’m in the window seat, next to a middle-aged woman who spits a wad of gum into a napkin and tucks it into her seat-back pocket as we land. She takes forever getting her stuff out of the overhead compartment.

  New York says welcome home with a blast of frozen polluted air. I light a cigarette and get in the long taxi line. A guy in a reflective vest blows a whistle and waves drivers forward, his eyes absent of patience as tourists ask him for restaurant recommendations and Broadway musical opinions.

  “Keep it moving,” he says. “Keep it moving.”

  When it’s my turn, the guy in the vest asks where I’m going. I tell him, “Carroll Gardens.” A cab pulls up. Vest guy opens the door and says “Brooklyn” to the driver. I get in and close the door. We lurch forward.

  “Where in Brooklyn?”

  “Carroll Bushwick. I’m going to Bushwick.”

  At an ATM on Myrtle Avenue, I withdraw fifty dollars from the Chase account and tell myself it doesn’t count. The moped guys come. I snort a small hit in the bathroom and then swing by the office. Good thing I didn’t chuck the needles.

  Loretta is in the hall talking to Robert and Rog, the co-creative directors. They’re looking at me. I can’t hear what they’re saying because Dan and Amy are at the Foosball table, yelling about the Millennium Bug.

  “There’s no computer glitch,” he says. “It’s a ploy to sell bottled water.”

  My voicemail light is blinking. I play the message. Grant. Yesterday at 4:02 p.m. “Free at last, free at last. Hallelujah, free at last—and home girl came through.”

  Loretta approaches. “I thought you were out for the rest of the week.”

  “I am. Just picking up my Filofax.”

  “Ah. Well, since you’re here, got a minute?”

  I follow Loretta to her office, thinking she’s going to fire me. Before she closes the door, I give her two weeks’ notice.

  “Really? We were about to promote you and give you a raise.”

  “Really?”

  “When I showed Martin your book and told him you did all the graphics and wrote all the copy, he said, ‘Fast-track him before he goes somewhere else.’”

  “Shit.”

  “Yeah. Still want to quit?”

  I explain the situation with the Workshops. Loretta says she under stands and gives me a hug. She makes me promise to call if I ever move back. I return to my desk for a couple of needles, take the elevator to the fifth floor, and shoot up in the handicapped bathroom. It’s okay. There won’t be any heroin in Maine.

  Climbing the stairs, I hear a male voice with a Balkan accent booming from my apartment and Nina Simone’s cover of Bob Dylan’s “Tom Thumb’s Blues.” I open the door. Jane is on the couch next to a skinny guy with dark hair. Valon. She sighs in an I-just-laughed-really-hard way and takes a sip of wine. A girl with an unpronounceable Balkan-sounding name sits cross-legged on the floor. She says something in Bosnian.

  Jane says, “I feel bad for the animals—and I haven’t had meat since I was fifteen.”

  “Come on,” Valon says. “You never smell bacon cooking and think, Hmmm?”

  “I really don’t. At this point, I think it’d make me sick.”

  “That’s the problem with Americans. Don’t know how good you have it. When you’ve lived through war, you don’t take anything for granted.”

  Did I kill the party? I hold my sides as if I’m in pain. I want Jane to ask if I’m okay so I can tell her I feel sick, and when she offers to throw her friends out, I tell her not to. Then she’ll feel guilty and we won’t talk about it.

  I see the way Valon looks at Jane. The glint in his eye repulses and excites me. Maybe she’ll cheat on me with him and make this easier for me. I slip into the bedroom and close the door. I hear muted voices and laughter with increasing frequency.

  In the morning, Jane says, “I want to hear about Maine, but I have to get to work early.” For the first time since I’ve known her, I think she’s lying.

  When she leaves, I shoot up and unfold J&R’s ad and read the fine print at the bottom. “Purchase any Apple products by 12/31/99 and get low-interest financing. See store for details.” I call my mom and tell her about the computer and monitor I need to buy.

  “Could you give me and two large boxes a ride to Brooklyn?”

  “Sure thing, honey. I’ll leave right now.”

  At J&R, Larry punches numbers into a calculator and sticks it in my face. “My best price for the G4 and the monitor. The whole nine, out the door. Bam.”

  I nod. Larry hands me a clipboard with a J&R Music World credit application. As I fill it out, he tells my mom to get the car. He twists the small diamond stud in his left ear and runs a hand over his head—balding with a ponytail. When I finish the paperwork, he gives it to a manager and skips to the back of the sales floor. He returns a minute later with two giant boxes strapped to a hand truck.

  “Hold on,” the manager says. “You only qualified for $800.” He twirls a finger. Larry does an about-face. I start toward the door, my head
down as I work on a story to tell Kevin about my brand-new G4 and monitor getting destroyed during the move.

  Mom comes back. “What happened?”

  The manager tells her.

  “But he needs that computer. He just got a new job. In Maine.”

  “Unless one of yous wants to pay for the difference.”

  Welling up with tears, Mom takes off her red leather gloves and reaches into her pocketbook. Without asking how much, she gives the manager her AmEx.

  “Mom, you can’t—I’m supposed to buy that. It’s going to be like $5,000.”

  “This is what I’ve always said to you about being a parent. You kill for your kids.”

  Mom wipes her eyes and signs the sales slip without hesitation, spending money she doesn’t have, on equipment I lied about owning, to a guy who hired me to do a job I’m not qualified for, in a place I don’t deserve to live, probably with a girlfriend I can’t seem to break up with.

  Larry parks the hand truck at the front of the store. I lug the computer and monitor to Mom’s car, overwhelmed with gratitude and wracked with guilt. We drive away, commercials on the radio as we cross the Brooklyn Bridge, and Mom reminds me—again—that I remind her of her father. “David, you are one unbelievably smart, handsome, talented, creative guy.”

  A commercial for a car dealership ends. Rod Stewart’s “Forever Young” begins.

  “There are no coincidences,” Mom says, choked up. “Everything happens for a reason.”

  She raises the volume, not needing to say another word as her favorite song plays. One teary eye on the road, the other on me, she sings along.

  After Mom leaves, I call Grant at work. A woman answers. She says he’s not available. I ask to leave a message. She sniffles. I hear papers shuffling.

  “Uh, could you please tell him David called?”

  “I’m so sorry. He passed away on Wednesday night.” She hangs up.

  I run to the bathroom, dry heave into the sink, and splash water on my face. I bring my head up and force myself to look in the mirror.

  This, you fucking asshole. Take a long look and remember.

  I don’t want to be alone or in the apartment. I can’t think of anywhere to go or anyone to be with. I put on my headphones and go outside.

  Without thinking, I walk up Court Street and take the subway to Manhattan. I get out at Grand Central and walk up Second Avenue to the exclusive Vonnegut art gallery. The guy in the shop remembers me and the piece I was interested in.

  “Sorry,” he says, “sold it last week.” He points to other Bokonon quotes on the far wall. None are as applicable as the one about peculiar travel suggestions, but I stay and look. As I’m about to leave, the bell above the door jingles.

  An older man in a brown tweed overcoat and newsboy hat enters and greets the proprietor with a jovial wave. As if surprised, he says, “You’ve got a customer.”

  “This young man was interested in Peculiar Travel Suggestions, but it sold.”

  “Oh? That’s a real shame.”

  “He said he’s a writer—maybe you could give him some writerly advice instead?”

  Vonnegut scratches his chin and walks toward me. Looking me dead in the eye, he says, “Get yourself a whole mess of pennies and put ’em in your socks. You want to make sure you fill ’em real good so your feet are always on the ground.”

  part four

  2000

  thirty-two

  A month of smoke hangs in the air, trapped behind double-paned storm windows. My reflection appears in the glass—grim and sober. I step back and the view comes into focus: overcast sky, cars crunching down Sea Street, spraying compacted chunks of salty, sandy snow from the tires. Waves thrash in Camden Harbor.

  The phone is going to ring. Jane is going to say she cheated on me. I don’t know why I know or how I know, only that I know. I light another cigarette and pace the wide-pine floors.

  I revise and rehearse a breakup speech. Another hour passes. The sun explodes behind Mount Battie, an orange haze over the tree line. Streetlights flicker on. The phone finally rings.

  Jane is crying about last night. Half a dozen coworkers at a bar in Queens. Valon drove her home. “Baby,” she moans, “I made a bad mistake.”

  I don’t ask for details.

  “I’m so, so sorry.”

  I don’t respond.

  “Do you think you can ever forgive me?”

  “I think I need to think.”

  In the coming weeks, Jane will quit her job, pack everything in the apartment, reserve a U-Haul, and research places to work around Cam-den. She’ll call at every turn and ask if I’m sure. I’ll lie every time. “Yes. I want this to work.”

  She arrives at the house on the first Saturday in March, late afternoon. I meet her at the front door, my arms hanging at my sides as she hugs me.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I can’t do this.”

  Jane crumples to the floor and starts bawling. I stand over her and unload, my body vibrating with rage. “There’s no way Valon was the only one or it happened only once with him. Balkan boys are your forbidden fruit. Remember? I can’t trust you. I can’t even look at you.”

  “Baby . . . you’re scaring m-m-me.”

  “Good. Leave. I’m done.”

  “I . . . don’t have anywhere to . . . Where am I supposed to . . .”

  “You want me to figure that out? FUCK YOU.”

  Sweat pours down my face and my chest. I want—need—to destroy everything around me. I storm outside and throw a chair off the deck. I kick the side of the house and stomp up and down the driveway and stand in the road and light a cigarette. My sticky sweat starts to freeze. I hear Jane crying. I flick the cigarette and it breaks in half. I drop it and rake it with my heel. Wind carries bits of tobacco to a filthy snowbank.

  When I go back in, Jane is upstairs, sitting in the corner in the hall. Head bowed, holding herself, gulping breaths, choking on tears.

  “I called Kate,” she says, slow and quiet. “She’s coming from Bar Harbor.”

  “Fine. I’ll go.” I grab my keys and start down the stairs.

  “Wait.”

  “What.”

  “Can we talk?”

  I turn and face Jane’s moist red eyes. “There’s nothing to talk about.” I jump down the stairs and open the door.

  Jane howls, “I’m so fucking stupid. I ruined the best thing in my life.”

  Every cell in my body tight and twisted, I drive across the street to the boatyard. James in the tape deck. “Five-O.” I roll down the windows and breathe. I try to think about Andrea—traveling around Cuba with a friend since I moved to Camden. I want to imagine a future with her, but I’m stuck on the past. It takes all my energy not to go back and hold Jane.

  I remember this story she once told me. For months before her seventh birthday, she begged her parents for a Strawberry Shortcake bicycle. They said it was too expensive and couldn’t afford it, but she didn’t stop asking and prayed every night. She woke up on her birthday to a giant, gift-wrapped box. The bike wasn’t assembled. After two hours, her father, who can put anything together, started screaming and cursing. Her normally patient, soft-spoken mother started yelling at him. “Why did you spend so much on something so frivolous?” The bike was still in pieces when Jane went to bed that night. The next morning, it was gone. She didn’t ask where it went. No one said a word about it.

  A green Volvo pulls into my driveway and then backs out. I watch it disappear at the top of Sea Street. Then I go home, surprised to feel nothing—as if the relationship with Jane never happened. Or maybe I’m just numb.

  The day Andrea returns from Cuba, Kevin abruptly quits his job, and Lyman fires me during lunch in the crowded dining hall.

  “Your design is atrocious,” he says, raising his voice. “Uh-trocious. And I’m out of patience for it.” He keeps yelling. I half expect him to shoot a revolver at my feet and tell me to dance.

  Driving home, I think the universe
(for lack of a better description) is trying to send a message. “Careful what you wish for. We gave you a taste of good so you’d know what you’re missing when we yanked it away.”

  I get an idea for a story about the making of an amateur adaptation of Sartre’s No Exit. I scribble an outline of the story and the show within. Instead of a hotel, it takes place in a giant shopping mall. Instead of “hell is other people,” hope is the most brutal form of torture. Instead of a straight-up play, it’s a disco musical. Instead of No Exit, the director, a flamboyant, middle-aged elementary school music teacher, calls it Exit. I write character descriptions and backstories for the actors playing the characters. I hit a wall when I start to write the actual story. It’s a comedy. I don’t feel funny.

  Hundreds of miles from anyone or anything that might provide a modicum of comfort, I’m hard-pressed to imagine I’m not in hell. I hang towels over the curtainless windows and crawl into bed. As I try to think of my next move, the freedom is overwhelming and terrifying. I’m accountable to nothing and no one—for the first time ever.

  For three or four days, I subsist on graham crackers and Miles Davis mid-’70s doom funk era albums. Agharta, Get Up with It, On the Corner. Acidic street jams that don’t belong in the jazz section.

  After the graham crackers run out, I eat nothing for two days before dragging myself to the supermarket. I fill a basket with bread and Campbell’s tomato soup and cheddar cheese—and a dozen pints of vanilla ice cream to coat the acid in my stomach.

  In the checkout line, the guy ahead of me asks the cashier for two bottles of coffee-flavored brandy. He’s thirtyish—scruffy face, matted hair, dirt under his fingernails, a Leatherman strapped to the belt loops of his double-kneed work pants. In his cart, amid TV dinners and cases of Mountain Dew and blocks of Velveeta, two young boys beg for quarters to buy stickers from a vending machine.

  “What, you think I’m made of money?”

  A manager retrieves the bottles of brandy from a row of locked cabinets at the front of the store, the cashier puts them in a plastic bag, and the guy sticks it in the seat of the cart. After paying, he pushes the cart only two feet before the bag falls and the bottles break.