I’d promised myself that I’d see to the uniform.
Who walks around looking like this?
Time passes.
By the slack hours of the afternoon, I’m still prone upon the floor, in a kind of narcosis. I stare at my space. At its walls, its ceiling. An extension cord slithers around me along the floor. A whiteboard stands to the side of the room, waiting to be written on, side by side with a chair. Here is my desk. I survey my apartment, and I begin to feel my energy begin to return. The place now has the aspect of an apparatus, waiting for deployment to its appointed task. Knowing that everything is being prepared—that even now I am readying myself for such intense mental labor—is galvanizing. It is, in some ways, more exciting than the prospect of the project itself. I feel like a writer with a newly sharpened pencil. I resolve to not be discouraged through the long and arduous process. I will consider today to be the preamble—next, on to the next chapter.
Which is what, exactly? Some company perhaps.
“Zimzim? Tea Boy?” I yell.
But he’s gone. I look out the window and see my own lit room. It’s become nighttime, and Tea Boy must have gone back home by now—home to wherever Tea Boys live; a home replete with long, inscrutable silences and pale pink uniforms.
So, I venture out for a night walk. Down the steps past the empty reception and out. With everything else vacant and murky, I’m drawn to the lonely light in the entrance of the Pleasure Center, and eventually I find my way to the cantina, where I find Dennis Royal sitting alone at the unattended bar, stirring some ice in a glass with another small straw. “Ah, Percy. Pull up a pew. Can I offer you anything?” he asks, holding up his glass at an angle and swirling it up to full chime.
“No—thank you.”
“Ah, right. Abstemious, are we?”
“Keeping my head clear so I can work.”
“And how is the project kicking off, pray tell? Entrails propitious?”
“It is. They are. I mean: it’s fine.”
“Is it. Are they.”
“Yes, well, if you must know, I haven’t quite begun yet, actually. That is, I am not sure whether I have begun or not.”
“No judgments from me. From me, least of anyone.”
“I’m not worried. Give me a few weeks and I’ll have it all wrapped up.”
“So you keep saying, Percy. Admirably optimistic of you. But you’d be the first. You really should adjust your expectations.”
“Couldn’t I be the exception? Perhaps I’m less of a fellow, and more of a—”
“Visitor?”
“If you like.”
He smells of hair cream, tobacco.
“What are you doing here so late, Dennis?” I ask, moving away from the topic at hand.
“I’m just attempting to exhibit a little of the proper Institute spirit. Fraternizing with the local population, so I popped over to see what I could see, and it turns out everyone has gone to bed. Tant pis.” He brushes his lapels, picks a napkin up from the table, looks at it as if wondering why he has done so, then puts it down again. “And, I was just leaving. Unless—”
Perhaps this is one of those colonies where the residents spend more time socializing than working. I feel a knot developing in my thinking about my project, as yet un-begun, and don’t wish this knot to tighten further. Pale Dennis, sensing my doubts, is already getting up and moving toward the door. “So that’s that, sorted. Glad to hear everything is coming along. Best of luck.”
And adds, with a wink: “chum.”
And out he goes.
He was rude, I think.
Or I was.
I suddenly want Dennis’s company back now, despite his abrasiveness, and wonder if the first person one meets, in a foreign setting, is always important, in some way or other, their actual qualities notwithstanding.
“Wait, Mr. Royal—”
But the door is already shut.
* * *
—
I leave not long after he does, and find myself heading down to the basement levels, walking through the cool, shadowed hallways, down the scissored stairs to the wave pool: that massive basin of seawater, sloshed by below-ground, hydraulic servos. The doors are unlocked, so I let myself in, find a light and turn it on. Kerchunk. Another monumental space, the size of a parade ground, or public park. It is completely abandoned. I walk back and forth on the strand for a while watching the waves come in and in and in. A mockery of tides. I strip down on the sand, not bothering to use the men’s changing area, and wade into the surf, jumping as I encounter the smaller rises. I work my way out, slowly past my depth, and continue swimming until I am in the middle of the tank, far from shore. The container surges to and fro. The waves rise, again and again—rise and curl around me. I rise up with them, in them, and fall only to rise again. I feel unburdened of my materiality, uncoupled from the ground. I can think here. I close my eyes and hear the unvarying thuds of the crashing waves upon the strand, the strand which bears the scars of rakes—a strand which is raked, every morning and afternoon, by a crew of workers, workers trained over here at birth to maintain indoor beaches. The beach-raking caste. The caste of the sand-rake. They have their own flavor of jumpsuit—green. There’s one of them now, a jumpsuit. It is a man, with one of those small pikes used to spear garbage. I hadn’t seen him arrive. He’s a speck on the shore, no more than a sandpiper, from where I sink and swell out in the surf, in the middle of the space. I swim in a little, to get a better look. He hasn’t noticed me, I think. The waves are smaller and more restrained the closer in I swim. The water doesn’t seem to be refrigerated anymore—not warm exactly, but not quite cool either. The man is definitely alone. His bright green jumpsuit the only color on a dark canvas. (A broad brushstroke of black for the water, a similar stroke of deep brown for the wall behind it, and a little dab of green.) He looks up finally and sees me. And continues cleaning, poking at the beach, spearing it. Now I swim forward a little. And further forward. The entire contents of the tank pushing at my back. I can see his eyes more clearly now, before he looks down.
I wonder if I were to come ashore if he would kill me with his pick. He could. I could perish out here in the Freehold. I could be no one once again. No one and nothing. It would be just like disappearing. He would stab me, maybe repeatedly. The first few thrusts would amaze: more from shock than pain probably. Then it would hurt. Then it wouldn’t anymore. After, he’d gather me up, and trundle me into his bin, kick some sand over the blood—my blood—off to the incinerator…
A wave launches itself at me from an oblique angle, and I get an earful of brine. The waves are increasing in strength. Has a dial been turned up? Has the worker ratcheted up a little storm for me to founder in? I concentrate on treading water again while the man on the shore continues in his labors.
I could kill him too, of course, I think, idly. If I were to kill him would it even, would anyone…No one would care. Or notice. The locals don’t have identity booklets, so who would know? This thought does not constitute an inclination, exactly. Killing the local is nothing more than a velleity, surfing the foamy, bubbling scum on the surface of my thoughts. But he has turned now, and heads toward the exit and the maintenance sheds beyond, dragging a bin behind him. His bin. The bin leaves two identical tracks trailing behind it in the wet sand, wavering, off, over a rise and out. Whatever.
I never would, of course. But I can’t help but feel a little disappointed in all of it. Furthermore, the whole thing reminds me of something. A déjà vu. A local killed on a beach. As if the fantasy were a mere replica of someone else’s. An unsatisfactory copy. The wrong copy. Too bad, I think, it is all just too bad.
And with this, the episode is complete.
* * *
—
(Though, I will add, as a kind of epilogue or addendum, that the sounds have come back again tonight. Th
ose sounds. I was jolted from my sleep just now. I was sure it was that cry. Now I hear it again. Another skirmish. Wait. There. No? Listen. Don’t you hear the noise?)
7
The noise of a chair, grinding across the gravel.
A man is dragging it over to the shade of a palm about twenty yards away from me, where he drops it with a flourish, and sits.
I assume he is one of us, given the color of his uniform. His skinny legs, knock-kneed; his frame twisted to one side. He is bent toward a small, spiral-bound notebook which rests on his thigh. His back is to me, but his assuming this awkward, warped posture means that though he can’t see me, I can make out his face fairly well.
He’s writing. He pauses to stare at his work, before looking away from it, blank-eyed—as if in a down-cycle. Now he comes alive again to resume writing. Now his eyes go dead again. I spy on him through several of these “on/off” sequences, these all-or-nothing phases.
It’s peaceful out here: the sounds of the sprinklers of course, but also birdsong. It can’t be real, the birdsong, but still. The filtered sun. The perky air. And the endless lawns…
A new sound, as the man tears a sheet from his notebook and crumples it. He unfolds an arm languidly, his hand flopping at the wrist, then his fingers open, until the wad of paper falls to the ground beneath him.
It was as if he had produced the trash like a register’s receipt, or a printout; or as if he had shat it out. He looks at his notepad again, and slaps it shut, unfolds himself from the chair, stretches vaguely, and begins walking away toward the pool area and out of the recently meticulous grove.
The nerve. The fucking nerve.
“Hey,” I say. “Hey.” But he keeps walking.
“Hello,” I call again, getting up myself, and walking behind him. “You there.”
Seeing me over his shoulder, he turns to face me.
He is in his late twenties, pasty. The sun out here could do his sallow complexion a world of good.
“Yeah?”
“You dropped something,” pointing to the spot. The ball of paper sits there, oblivious.
“Who are you, again?” he asks.
“Who am I?”
“Yeah. Who are you?”
“Percy Frobisher.”
“You the Groundskeeper here?”
“I just thought you dropped something you might need—”
“Nope.”
“It just seems sad, with everything so pristine—”
He moves a bit toward me, sticks out a finger and pokes it at my chest. “You have something here. Look. You’ve soiled yourself.”
My stain.
He sniggers, gives me one more finger-jab for good measure, and strides away.
I notice that some of the other fellows are watching, including the Woman-Whose-Face-and-Hands-Are-Covered-in-Yarn, the Architect, up on a balcony, and I see my foreign-eyed Mysterious Woman too, observing the scene from her umbrellaed deck chair.
“How rude,” I say, performatively, to no one, and now there’s nothing left but for me to return to the man’s empty chair, move it aside, pick up the loosened ball of paper, and shove it in my pocket.
The park is once again perfect, though my heart rate has gone up.
I root for a tablet in my other pocket and swallow it dry.
Move along, folks, nothing to see here…when my device abruptly pings.
Time for my two o’clock.
* * *
—
“Please have a seat, Mr. Frobisher.”
She is all business.
“Ready to begin?”
My first official one-on-one counseling session with Miss Fairfax, and there is a glass of water on the table, directly between us. I reach for it, before realizing that it is actually the feeding trough for one of those plastic, brightly colored, stylized, insatiable birds; a desk toy. It lazily dips its blue top-hatted head repeatedly into the glass, over and over. I watch it keep time, binding our conversation metronomically.
I sit, and she sits, and she crosses her legs, and I cross mine, and she leans forward with a little stretching creak.
“Ready to begin?” she repeats with a bit more force. “Okay then, Percy—there are several programs that the Institute is able to offer to our fellows, each of which is custom-designed by our in-house team of administrators to best assist you with your project.”
Another little creak. The language of her body, as spoken by the chair.
“These services may be taken advantage of when and as often as is desired. They consist of several types of therapy, the application of which should encourage creativity.”
I watch with interest as her lips dilate and contract. And whenever she moves, the room receives a little imbual of perfume and so I now notice the air, which comes at us through two louvered vents, one near the floor behind Miss Fairfax, and another over our heads. (There may be one behind me as well.) I can feel the currents from one vent, softly brushing my exposed ankles, while the overhead vent plays gently with the top-lying hairs of my head. Some kind of suggestive influence is being exerted, alchemized by the combination of woman and space—by the woman in the space. I look at Miss Fairfax, her eyes, her crossed legs; her calves pressed against one another in that double-bind only women can make, and that lithe and comely knot of her body. Parts of her, framed by this “confluence room,” are now so captivating, the office becomes an externalized erogenous zone, and everything she touches or looks upon effects a direct referent in my own body, which delights to this contact. So the more she speaks, the more the room seems filled with areas of interest. My eyes sweep over its curves, and explore its cracks and corners. Miss Fairfax runs her hand across her desk, as if dusting it. There is a small invagination on the desk’s surface, where a stylus could stand upright, and her fingers ripple over this now-empty nub. Once, twice. Just then, the vesicles and tendons of the room contract briefly.
“Percy, are you with me?”
“Sorry, sorry. Yes.”
“Our first program is entitled Personal Efficiency Management, and it is focused primarily on psychic, emotional, and physical well-being. After the administration of a basic Personality Inventory, assistance is proffered in the form of daily meditations, talk therapy sessions, Group (of course), and a regimen of exercise.”
I feel the ribbing on the arms of my seat, which is made out of some kind of Naugahyde. I rub them slowly with the pads of my fingers, to determine their degree of resistance.
“The second coaching program offered is called Organizational Management, and it comprises exactly what you think it would. We help with organizing your project: timetables, spreadsheets, to-do lists, etc.
“The third coaching program is called Feedback, which is technically part of the ‘reinforcement’ program, and which provides the fellows with the option to receive constant, real-time analysis and judgment concerning a project’s wrong turns, impediments, faulty tone, any other foundational inadequacies.”
The stylish wall coverings of the office are made of perforated leather. Our “confluence room” seems to have pores. I wonder if the room’s skin sweats, if it releases gasses, or expels liquid. I apply continuous pressure on the walls with my gaze. There are exposed pipes on the ceiling, one of which runs down a corner, at which point it brusquely penetrates the floor. The wall-to-wall carpet absorbs the thrust of the pipe, and seemingly grows like a virulent moss around its girth; some of the pile is leaning in toward it, in anticipatory pleasure. Meanwhile the insatiable bird on her desk continues to nod his head up and down, up and down—seemingly faster and faster….
“Of course, there is more to the Feedback program: much more. We provide all kinds of feedback to our fellows. Even certain forms of exclusively negative feedback may be opted for. We’ve found this program to be unusually effective. Many fellows
find the harsher manner of critiques to be quite…Excuse me, but this is all for your benefit, not mine.”
“Yes, I apologize, please go on.”
“Now—there are varying levels of criticism, each calibrated exactly to the participant. We gather analytics from each fellow upon their arrival. Yours are, let’s see, right here.”
Projecting from her device is a complex and colorful array of data, a dashboard of tools, listing and categorizing all my creative proclivities in a series of compu-glyphs, each in a unique and impossible shape. “You seem at home with a high level of self-directed negativity.”
“Yes, that is true,” I stammer, finding my voice, “I am highly self-critical, but again, perhaps not so much at the beginning.” I think back to her comment from our initial meeting, what was it: “Beginnings need nurturing”? and I remind her of this, repeat it back to her verbatim.
“Hmm…” she says. Smiles. “Touché. Well, cases such as yours, then, we would wait to initiate this program until the final stage, the final rungs of the Ladder. And, for sure, there are all manner of intensities here, that can be ratcheted up or down. But you can opt out entirely also. Instead of critique, we can always follow a well-modulated increase or attenuation of rewards. How does that sound?”
“Fine, I suppose.”
Has the lighting changed? The contents of the room, all of its membranes, and buttresses, extrusions and infiltrations shine, and everything looks dewy. The whole timbre of the atmosphere is resonant.
“Would you like a full listing of the services sent over to you?” she asks.
“That sounds agreeable.”
“Great. It’s already done.”
“Thank you, Miss Fairfax.”
“And we will expect regular updates from you.”
“Of course, of course.”
“Any missed benchmarks will result in demerits.”
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