I tried to think positive. I had to believe there was something I was good at that maybe nobody else was. I took a quick inventory: music arts sports, nope nope nope. Academic achievement, back in the day, better not go there. Big financial success, still coming up craps.
It was getting to me, and I felt, no lie, pretty dismal. Maybe that’s why I let Steph talk me into going out after work. Happy hour, she said. I didn’t think I could get all the way to happy, but crawling into a big glass of alcohol sounded like just the thing.
Of course Steph acted like it was a date. I saw that right away. She steered us into this fancy place, little tables, low lights, a piano playing lush cocktail music. She probably wanted to be able to brag to her girlfriends about it. And here I’d been thinking sports bar.
Never mind. I made the best of it. I paid for our expensive drinks and watched Steph wiggle around in her chair trying to see if anybody she knew was there. “Nice place,” I said, being totally sarcastic, but of course she didn’t get it. “Very uptown.”
“Oh yeah, it’s great.” She babbled on for awhile and I smiled and nodded. Steph is one of those girls who dresses kind of slutty but really, it’s just a fashion thing. There were times when she pushed the envelope for business clothes, and today was one of them. She had on a corset-type top, and I guess there was a jacket over it for the office, but now that was gone and we had the tits-on-a-plate effect. Who was I to complain about that, it’s not like I find the view offensive or anything. But that’s our Steph. Always trying a little too hard.
We talked about work for a while. Exciting. I hit the bottom of my glass. I started shifting my weight around, getting ready to pick up and leave, but before I could, Steph’s waving money at the waitress and we have two more drinks. “Oh relax, Mattie. You aren’t some old fossil who objects to women paying for things, are you?”
“No,” I said truthfully. “I just don’t want to get too sauced and spend tomorrow at my desk with Apache mouth.”
She hit me on the arm. “You are seriously the funniest guy I know.”
“Thanks.” My elbow had cracked against the table where she shoved me and I was trying to rub it without her noticing.
“Deirdre’s always saying how funny you are. Deirdre in the processing department,” she prompted me, because I was drawing a blank.
“Oh, Deirdre,” I said, still not knowing who the hell she was talking about.
“She thinks you’re hot.” A pause, where I guess I was supposed to react, but nothing came to me. “So what do you think of her?”
“Honestly, she never crosses my mind.”
Steph sat back, looking pleased. I guess there was some kind of girl war going on that I wasn’t aware of. Whatever.
I got up to go to the john and when I got back, there was silverware on the table, and napkins folded into shapes, and a couple of plates. “I got some appetizers,” Steph said. “In case you were hungry.”
I see where we’re headed here, down your basic slippery slope, but I decide to play along with it, at least for a little while. Be Steph’s trophy date. In her mind, I mean. It wasn’t like I had other big plans for the night. And I have to say, my bad mood was long gone. She bought the appetizers and I bought the next round of drinks. Then she wanted some ice cream drink with a stupid name and I bought that for her too.
“Bottoms up!” she said. “Arrr!” We were talking pirate talk.
“Gold doubloons for your pantaloons.” I don’t know where I came up with that one. It started her off on a championship giggle fit. I was afraid she’d squeeze herself right out of her top.
Here’s where things start to get fuzzy. I guess we had some more drinks, and since we were having such a good time, we decided to leave the fancy bar and go somewhere more pirate-like. I threw a bunch of money on the table. It was probably enough, and anyway I’m sure they were glad to get rid of us by then. We staggered out on the sidewalk and the world was a hilarious place.
Steph said she lived just a few streets over and we could chill there, she had stuff to drink. I didn’t mind the idea of not spending more money and besides, I was losing altitude fast. I wasn’t sure I could make it all the way home just yet. Of course I should have seen a big crane arm swinging my way. Should have felt that ladder rocking. What can I say, I was drunk? I mean I was, but so is every other poor slob who ends up standing in front of a judge.
Steph’s place was okay. She liked Ikea. She liked stuffed animals. Do I have to say anything else? She had a roommate but the roommate wasn’t around. Right away I had to excuse myself to the restroom and that was a little weird, being in this girl bathroom with makeup and worse spread all over it. I came out and flopped on the sofa and Steph brought me a beer I didn’t much want by then, and she sat down next to me. It’s not like there was a big choice of places to sit, but I was reminded that I didn’t really know Steph all that well. She’d put on some music and I nodded off listening to it.
I woke up because Steph was wedged right under my arm and it was kind of uncomfortable. I tried to work my arm free and she must have misunderstood the gesture, because she started nudging up against me, kissing my neck.
Now I’m getting actively concerned. I patted her head, pat pat pat. Friendly, not encouraging. I was embarrassed for her. Girls shouldn’t come on like that. “Hey matey,” I said in my cheeriest voice. “I have to be shoving off.”
“Naaww.” She wasn’t as drunk as she was making herself out to be. Don’t ask me how I knew that, but I did. “You gotta stay an be a pirate.”
“Not a good idea,” I said, in a burst of brilliant thinking. I was trying not to panic. I made a sudden move, designed to detach Steph from my neck, where I swear, she was trying to give me a hickey. I knocked her off balance and she slid all the way off the sofa and landed bump on her ass.
What she did then was grab on to my knees. “Whoa,” I said, keeping it all light and easy, just two old pirates messing around. Avast. Shiver me timbers.
I’d like to say, before I knew it she was giving me a blow job, but who’s going to believe that. Here’s the truth: I froze. Like when people see a train or a charging lion coming straight at them and they can’t move to save themselves? Something like that. I just couldn’t fathom it at first, why she was pulling at my belt and zipper.
Am I saying she raped me? No, but pretty close, and if you’re thinking heh, heh, bet you enjoyed it once she got going, yes and no. For one thing I seriously had to pee again by then, ask me how good that felt. And then there was the whole bizarre, bad dream part of it, I’m in some place where I’ve never been, and the music’s too loud, and there’s this girl pumping away between my legs where I never expected her to be, did I say bad dream? Christ, it was a nightmare.
It just kept getting worse and worse. I grabbed her shoulders and tried to pry her loose, but she was on a mission, and I was actually afraid she might hurt me, you know, do serious, sexual-function damage if I made a wrong move. By now I had to piss so bad I was practically crying, there was no getting around that to any successful conclusion, she was going to keep going until my dick fell off. Which is why, when my cell phone rang, I answered it.
The phone was in my jacket pocket. I didn’t think about it. I didn’t even look to see who it was. “Hello?”
It was this guy I know, though it took me a while to realize who it was. He said, “Hey, Matthew! What up?”
“Not much.” Trying to sound, what, nonchalant.
“Yeah, same old same old.”
“You know it.”
“Talk to Daniels lately?”
“No, what about him?”
All this time Steph was keeping on with the chore, like she wasn’t going to let a little thing like a third-party conversation stop her, but the guy on the phone was still talking, telling me a story about the other guy, and every so often I said “Uh huh,” or “Sure,” and finally she stopped abusing me, thank God. I kept my eyes on the ceiling, but I could feel her sitting back and
watching me.
“Mattie,” she said. “What are you doing?”
“Really,” I said into the phone. “No shit.”
Steph got up and ran into her bedroom and slammed the door. I have to admit, I stayed on the phone a little while longer, then I have to admit the first thing I did was duck walk into the john, my fly still open, and thanked God I’d lived long enough to take a piss.
I straightened myself up as best I could. I was trying not to look at all the crap in the bathroom. I’m not one of those people who go through medicine cabinets; honestly, I’d rather not know people’s private business. But I couldn’t help noticing this huge tube with For Facial Use on it. I turned it over and it was hair remover, which gave me all these unpleasant thoughts like, maybe she was really a wolverine or something.
When I came out I could hear Steph in her bedroom, crying. I knocked on the door. “Hey, Steph?”
“Oh God.”
“Steph, I should probably get going.”
“I’m going to kill myself!” She was still blubbering and her nose was all stuffed up: Ib going to kill byself.
“Come on,” I said. “Don’t talk like that.”
“You hate me!”
“No, come on. I don’t hate you. I think you’re a really nice girl.”
She didn’t say anything else, just more of the blubbering, pretty loud now. I didn’t think the door was locked. Maybe she wanted me to go in there. But I didn’t see how that was going to make anything better in the long run. “Hey,” I said, practically shouting to make myself heard. “Take care of yourself. You’re a peach. See you tomorrow.”
I don’t even know what time it was, pretty late, because the streets were all dark and quiet. I got myself home and pulled the covers over my head and I slept like a baby. Woke up feeling not as bad as I might have expected, aside from a little souvenir dick soreness. But at least I woke up alone.
Of course I was a little nervous about seeing Steph at work. I decided the best course would be to act like nothing had happened. Be absolutely normal, and pretty soon things would be normal again.
Except Steph wasn’t there. Usually she was at her desk all bright and shiny early. I guess she needed a little time to pull herself together. I didn’t seriously think she’d killed herself or anything. Girls are always saying things like that to get attention, and anyway, she had a roommate.
Meanwhile, I had a new worry. There was an email waiting for me. The group leader wanted to see me at my earliest convenience, which would be now.
I started toting up all the things they could hang me for. Nothing big, but they didn’t need big once they had it in for you. Hell, they didn’t even need real.
I chewed some peppermint gum in case there was any stink on me. No use putting it off. I set out on the death march that led to the group leader’s office. She had an actual office with a door, probably so no one could hear your screams. You had to go through a long corridor to get there, lit with the same godawful fluorescent lights, except these were half-burned out and making fire hazard noises. Somebody was headed toward me coming the other way, but because of the freaky lights I didn’t recognize Brian until he was really close.
“Hey man,” I said. “What’s going on in there?” Because he couldn’t have come from anywhere else.
He muttered something and I swear he tried to walk right past me, but I wouldn’t let him. “Hey,” I said again. “Talk to me.”
Brian just stared at, I was going to say, his shoes, except I just then noticed he was barefoot. “Man, what did they do to you?”
“Nothing,” he said. He could have used a shave. “Look, no offense, I have to get back to work.”
I just stood there watching him. The door behind me opened. “Matthew?” the group leader said in her happy voice, like it was time for milk and cookies.
I put on a smile and marched inside. The group leader was sitting behind her desk, and Brickhouse, the old horror, was there too, looking like a toad in a business suit. There was a window behind them but they had it all covered over with curtains. Now that was just sad. “Good morning, Matthew,” the group leader said. “We’re conducting some training exercises and we hoped you’d help us out.”
Like I had any choice. “Sure. Happy to help.” They waved me to a chair facing them and I sat. Still smiling. The important thing was not to show fear.
The group leader said, “If we could ask you to watch the screen.” She was wearing a giant pink dress. I mean, we’re talking tent.
I hadn’t noticed the computer setup a little to one side. I hitched my chair toward it.
“We’re going to show you a series of images and we’d like you to indicate a response to them, positive or negative, by moving either forward or back.”
Well okay. That didn’t sound so hard. There was a keyboard and a joystick. I gave it a few test moves. Things started off easy. Pictures of kittens, daisies, chocolate chip cookies, forward. Dead fish, car wreck, nuclear holocaust, back. Brickhouse still hadn’t said anything, just watched me out of the corner of his puffy toad eyes. He creeped me out. I couldn’t believe they were spending time on something so simpleminded, but then, this was the same outfit that had us play rock, paper, scissors as a leadership exercise. Sunset on the beach, good. Starving African children, bad.
The screen went blank and I eased off the joystick. The group leader said, “Thank you. Now that we’ve established a baseline, we can move on. We’re interested, Matthew, in questions of incentive and motivation. That is, how they optimize, or hinder, employee performance. For this next series, the goal is to complete the course as quickly as possible. Are you ready?”
I said that I was. The screen brightened and one of those highway scenes appeared, like a video game or in driver’s ed. There was little red car, that was me, idling at the start of the track. Then it started moving. I set a good speed, steering wide around the curves. A duck with her ducklings was crossing the road and I slowed down. Then a lady pushing a baby carriage jumped into the lane and it took some fancy braking to get past her. Other cars cut me off and I had to hang back. A clanging railroad signal made me stop entirely and wait.
Over the computer’s sound effects, its zooming and squealing, I heard Brickhouse talking to the group leader. “… average . . . already knew . . . rather limited.”
Oh yeah? Talk about incentive. Hatred coursed through my blood like gasoline. They wanted fast, I’d give them fast. I bore down on the joystick with a heavy hand. I sideswiped a school bus. I mowed down a puppy. I took on a speeding semi and forced him off the road. Pedestrians threw up their hands and vanished beneath my wheels.
Sweat was flying from me. My hands shook. My teeth were bared and I wouldn’t have been surprised to find some kind of virtual bug stuck in them. I mean, I was into it. I was almost disappointed when the road ended at a big red Stop sign. It seemed a little anticlimactic.
The computer sounds ceased, and the screen went blank. The room was silent. Then the group leader said, “Thank you, Matthew. Give us a moment, please.”
I was still breathing hard. My upper lip twitched. Of course it had been part of their plan, pushing me to some kind of edge. Everything was part of one big experiment, which was still going on. I should have seen it from the start. This was how they ran things. These people just like screwing with you. You had to put up with so much shit to get your food pellet.
Brickhouse raised his evil head and blinked at me. “Room for improvement, Matthew. Definitely room for improvement.”
I nodded. It wasn’t like I expected them to say anything positive.
“We’re going to be doing some belt tightening, Matthew. It’s come down to that. Tough times call for tough choices.”
Here it came. From out of nowhere I remembered something I’d read once, that if you were going to have your head cut off, you should relax your neck muscles so it wouldn’t hurt so much. I don’t remember how you were supposed to do that.
Brickhouse
said, “And as one component of our decision-making process, we’re soliciting peer reviews. Entirely confidential. We expect your absolute candor.” Brickhouse stopped and fixed me with one of his favorite nasty looks that he probably practiced in a mirror. After you saw it a few dozen times, your sphincter didn’t automatically clench. “Tell us what we need to know about Brian.”
That was when it all started to make beautiful sense to me. The thing I was so good at, my special skill. I was a genius at self-preservation. I would do whatever it took. I guess they knew that now. I had my eyes on the prize, which was me. You could even say I was a triumph of natural selection.
And so I made a point of hesitating, and looking reluctant, like the truth was being dragged out of me in spite of myself. I said, “Actually, I’ve been a little worried about Brian.”
Afterward, I walked back to my work area. Steph still hadn’t come in. Brian wasn’t anywhere either. I did another lap around the place, just to make sure. I knew I was going to have to say something to him and I wanted to get it over with. But it looked like that was going to be put off until tomorrow, or maybe never.
I stopped at the window. The construction guys were going at it, all busy-looking, as industrious as hell. Another week or so and they’d be up to where we could wave. I wasn’t envious of them anymore. Let them knock themselves out. Let them die a bug’s death. Once they were through, it would be people like me moving in, drinking our coffee, sitting in the nice chairs, taking advantage of everything they’d built for us.
I went out for my lunch break, and on the way back I decided to call my old girlfriend, the one who didn’t like me very much. I was full of confidence. I knew exactly how to get things right between us, make it work out the way I wanted.
The phone rang and rang. “Who’s this?” she demanded, once she finally picked up.
“It’s me,” I said. “Mr. Rat.”
Little Brown Bird
The people across the alley were spending their Saturday morning sitting in the bed of their pickup truck. The man, the woman, the three children—it was difficult to think of them as a family—had emerged from their squat little house and climbed into the truck more than an hour ago. And there they had stayed, as if this were a new amusement, the truck itself a destination. Their backyard was scattered with toys, with tricycles, wagons, and plastic items in ugly, cartoon colors: a playhouse, an oversized baseball bat, a basketball hoop on a stand, different broken-looking odds and ends of games. But these had been abandoned in place when the children lost interest in them. Beate thought that the truck was probably a better idea, if only because it was more durable. From time to time the two youngest children stood up and stamped on the truck bed, making satisfying metal noises, or ran from side to side, trailing their hands along the rails. She couldn’t hear anything they were saying from her second-floor window. What did such people say among themselves? She had no power to imagine them.
Do Not Deny Me Page 7