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This story
was originally published in 2003 in a magazine called Bridge.
The fiction editor over there was kind enough to nominate it for a Pushcart
Prize but it didn't win anything not even special mention. That's okay
though because a while before that I read it at a place called Junno's
way downtown on the west side in NY, it was the Monday after Mother's
Day 2003 and it ended up being one of the best nights of my life, I'll
tell you about it sometime if I ever see you. Hope you like it.
NATIONAL LANDMARK
1
It was cold
in the office and all the women were beautiful. There was one in particular,
a sales assistant from the seventy-third floor, who sent my heart racing.
I knew her only through elevator rides. She was tall with long black
hair, wore tight clothes, ornate fake nails, and snapped her gum incessantly.
It was true love. I began timing my comings and goings according to
what I could glean of her schedule, hoping to see her in the cafeteria
or the elevator or down in the lobby, walking out for the night. She
once stood in line behind me at the sandwich machine. I took an unnecessarily
long time navigating the touch screen. I glanced casually behind me
at careful intervals, always looking away before we made eye contact.
I was very cool. But inside I was a screaming mess.
2
And we were
so high up that on rainy days the building vanished into the clouds,
the only thing visible through the windows a shroud of thick silver
mist. On clear days the cityscape below stretched forever into the distance,
so absurdly small it appeared to be constructed of toys.
3
O'Leary sat
in the cubicle next to mine. We were situated at the far end of the
office, away from all the action. For several months we said nothing
to one another except good morning and good night. Then one day, for
reasons that were unclear, I wandered into his cubicle and spilled the
beans about the girl from the seventy-third floor. "This is the
real news," I said. "With her, it's a forever kind of thing."
He in turn told me of the various women he found attractive and, as
a bonus, his hatred for Wilford, his immediate superior, a short man
who had once aspired to be a stand-up comedian. Thereafter we were pals.
4
Her name was
Jasmine and she frequently worked past five. Her birthday was in May
and she was three years younger than me. She loved caramel Frappucinos
from the Starbucks counter in the cafeteria. She had first cousins in
Tuscany. She was single and lived with her sister and used Pantene Pro-V
shampoo. Her father was dead or dying.
I learned
all these things in the elevator.
5
For a long
moment the only sound was water rushing through hidden pipes. This was
the men's room, where I frequently sought clarity, where I now sat in
the farthest stall, awaiting release. I closed my eyes and recalled
a high school homecoming dance, one I had attended after eating Hostess
cupcakes sprinkled with marijuana, in a car on a deserted country road,
Led Zeppelin IV roaring from the stereo.
My reverie
was broken by the sound of toilet paper being furiously, almost violently,
unrolled, followed by the repeated flushing of a toilet, a sequence
that continued uninterrupted for several minutes. At first I was amused.
That person is using a comical amount of toilet paper, I thought. And
then, That person seems to be using too much toilet paper. And finally,
That person is distracting me with his excessive toilet paper use.
The urge disappeared
and I left the stall, pausing after washing my hands to see if this
man would cease his action. He didn't. He kept unrolling the toilet
paper and flushing the toilet, unrolling and flushing, unrolling and
flushing.
"O'Leary,"
I said moments later, "let me tell you about this strange thing
that just happened in the men's room."
I told him.
"Interesting,"
O'Leary said, rubbing his chin. He had moved to the chair next to my
desk.
"Have
you heard this guy before?" I said.
"Me?
No, never. Then again, I don't go here."
"What
do you mean you don't go here?"
"I don't
do that here." He lowered his voice. "Number two."
"Ah-ha.
Where do you do it?"
"At home,
where I'm comfortable."
"You've
never gone in the men's room?"
"I tried
once, in an emergency. But the janitor came in with his cart.
He started
banging around, jabbing a broom under the stall door at my feet."
"Well,
at any rate, keep an eye out for this fellow. I mean, an ear out."
"Will
do," he said.
My computer
emitted a cheerful bling!, signaling an e-mail reminder from
Ginny, my boss, about the new fund meeting. Like many in the office,
Ginny took pleasure in color-coding her e-mails. This one was marked
red, for high importance. At three o'clock I went into the conference
room and joined the other members of my team. An hour passed, during
which I contemplated my notepad. It had my name, the firm's name, my
position there, my desk telephone extension, and my e-mail address embossed
at the top. I thought again of high school, how in those days I had
never considered the possibility of owning such a notepad, yet here
it was before me.
"Forsythe?
Any thoughts?" It was Ginny, blinking expectantly.
"A few,"
I admitted.
6
A woman came
to my cubicle and told me the story of the bombing, which had become
as ingrained in office folklore as a reputed interracial love affair
between two vice-presidents a decade earlier. I was attracted to her
- she wore a short skirt and a white button-down shirt with yellow stains
under the arms - but had forgotten her name. She told me that Zimmer,
who was wheelchair-bound and who no longer worked for the company, had
to be carried down fifty flights of stairs. She went on: "A few
weeks later I came by with a police escort to get some files. It was
a wild scene. My desk was exactly the way I had left it, untouched,
half a moldy bagel on a napkin, a banana peel, papers spread out like
I'd only just gone to the bathroom or something. Eerie. When they finally
let us back in, we got complimentary T-shirts and coffee cups."
She also mentioned that when the made-for-television movie was broadcast,
she recognized certain elements of herself in one of the female leads.
"Coincidence?" she said, shrugging her shoulders. "I
think not."
7
Then there
was the time I was researching testicular cancer on the Internet. Some
of my co-workers stopped by and I closed the browser window and turned
quickly in my swivel chair. "Hello, buddies."
They told
me of a cake and ice cream party in the legal department, to celebrate
either a birthday or anniversary or wedding shower or baby shower or
someone leaving the firm for graduate school or a similar position elsewhere.
A female voice
remarked, "Forsythe, you don't look so hot."
Another voice
agreed. "Yeah, you look a little wan."
Still another
voice posed the question: "Who says wan?"
"Oh,
you know, just the usual encroaching dread. Nothing a little cake and
ice cream won't cure," I said, and clapped my shaking hands together.
When I attempted to stand, my knees buckled and I fell forward into
darkness. I awoke in the legal department conference room, amid a raucous
rendition of "For He's Jolly Good Fellow." Gaining clarity,
I realized it was being sung to a woman. She smiled with apparent delight
and made no effort to wipe the streaming tears from her cheeks. I looked
down. In my lap was a plate of cake, with the word Happy on top,
written in sparkly blue frosting.
8
The waking
dream continued. The clock in my telephone console said 9:03. I looked
again a year later and it said the same thing. I wanted to reply in
the negative when the horrid Southern woman came by selling cookbooks
made by autistic children, but the word that spilled out was an emphatic
yes. "Here," I said, presenting her with a fistful of cash.
"Take all of it. Take everything I have."
I found myself
contemplating intercourse with Jasmine as the hours of my life receded,
flew, into the distant past.
9
"O'Leary,"
I said, out of breath. I had sprinted from the men's room back to my
cubicle. "He's in there. He's doing it."
O'Leary stood,
produced a comb from his pocket and slicked back his hair. "What's
this?" he said.
"The
guy I was telling you about, from the men's room, unrolling the toilet
paper and flushing the toilet, that guy. It's happening right now. Go
check it out and report back to me."
O'Leary was
gone for ten minutes. He returned looking stunned. "So it's true,"
he said.
"Did
you find out who it was?"
"No.
I waited by the sinks but he never came out. I could only linger for
so long without feeling stupid. It was exactly as you described. He
stood in the stall, unrolling and flushing."
"Whoa."
I held up a hand. "You say he wasn't wiping, he was standing?"
"That's
what I'm saying."
"You're
sure about this?"
"I'm
positive. For a minute, there was no one in there except us. I peeked
under the stall from a safe distance. His shoes were facing forward."
"Did
you recognize the shoes?"
O'Leary clicked
his tongue, shook his head a few times. He sighed. "No. No, I didn't."
I pulled him
close and whispered, "We need to approach this with utmost discretion."
"Agreed."
Twenty minutes
later, unable to devote my full attention to the Hollywood gossip column
I was reading online, I raced back to the men's room and threw open
the stall doors until I discovered the one he had been using. I stepped
back in mild shock. Toilet paper filled the bowl, piled high above the
seat, spilled out in unbroken strands over the sides. It was strewn
around the handle, and it covered the floor. Who was this madman? At
lunch I walked the streets with my headphones blaring, slowly formulating
a sting operation.
10
A rumor began
circulating, confirmed by the Wall Street Journal and USA
Today, that the boom times were coming to an end. Computers were
not the thing anymore and fewer of the nation's whites were getting
rich. Doris Rivington, the department head, called a meeting to rally
the troops. "First of all," Doris said, her tongue darting
rapidly over her pink-painted lips between sentences, "I wouldn't
count on a holiday bonus this year. Second, there will almost certainly
be layoffs in the days or weeks or months ahead. At this point it's
impossible to predict who or when, but make no mistake, some or all
of you will soon come to know the true meaning of the word disappointment.
Third, until further notice, we will cease having birthday celebrations
on an individual basis. We will instead celebrate birthdays by blocks
of months. Next week, for instance, there will be a brief gathering
here in the conference room for those you whose birthdays fall between
January and July. And instead of the cupcakes from the bakery we all
enjoy, M&Ms and bottles of cold Poland Spring water will be served.
These are dark days for the market, for the industry, and for our firm.
To ensure a higher probability of weathering the storm, stick to the
script, keep your head down, and keep working." She demonstrated
by lowering her head and pantomiming fingers on a keyboard. She smiled.
"Like that. See? Thank you for your attention and have a pleasant
afternoon."
11
Meanwhile
I ran Internet searches on former girlfriends and on myself. To my chagrin,
the searches under my name retrieved nothing but random genealogy data
going back to the Civil War. Just to be certain I called my mother and
asked if any of our relatives had been Confederate soldiers. She laughed,
said no, and told me of her recent experiments with the George Foreman
Grill. "The testimonials are true," she said. "It really
works." After hanging up, I tried again, using a different search
engine. This time I clicked painstakingly through all ninety-two pages
of results. Nothing. According to the best available technology, I simply
didn't exist.
12
What had happened
to the immediate past? Why did I only enjoy things in retrospect? Why
did I scream the first time I kissed a girl? Did my real father truly
love me? Why, despite a near-lifelong awareness of the dangers, did
I continue to have unprotected sex? Was a lingering death lurking in
my testicles, or was I to be struck down suddenly, without warning?
Had Jasmine ever noticed me before? If so, did she find me handsome?
Did other women find me handsome? Was my mother lying when she told
me I was handsome?
13
Several people
congregated in the copy room and reminisced gaily about the bombing.
Hortense, who had been the floor's fire warden at the time, got a kick
out of describing the nervous breakdown she'd had in the hallway. "I
predicted death for everyone," she said, choking back giggles.
Sylvia, a lifer, who'd been demoted several times but still made more
money than all of us, described her unwillingness to leave her desk.
"The stairwells were clogged with smoke, and there were people
crying everywhere, so I sat in my office and waited for the elevators
to come back on. I was halfway through my in-box when my brother called
and begged me to leave. Phooey, I told him, the office hasn't been this
quiet in years!" Wilford, the failed comedian, spoke wistfully
of having been out sick that day, and of wishing ever since that he
had been there. "What I wouldn't give to go back in time and see
Hortense in the grip of a wild death fear." He did an impression
of Hortense praying for her life, and the group erupted with laughter.
"Wilford should be on Letterman. Don't you all agree?" Hortense
screamed, struggling to breathe. I was making copies of an e-mail I'd
received from an ex-girlfriend, describing me as a good kisser but a
terrible lover. Hortense reached out and touched my shoulder. "Forsythe,
tell us. Where were you when the bomb went off?"
14
"What's
your problem, Kazanski?" I said.
O'Leary replied:
"You're everybody's problem, Maverick. Every time you go up in
the air, you're unsafe. I don't like you because you're dangerous."
"That's
right," I snapped. "Ice. Man. I am dangerous."
He bit through
the air so hard I heard his teeth click. Then we went back to work.
15
The elevator
doors parted and standing before me was Jasmine, snapping her gum, talking
to a friend. I hesitated, almost turned around. I wasn't in the mood
to try and be cool; my recent 401(k) statement, coupled with a negative
review I'd read of the newest summer blockbuster we all were anticipating,
had me in a funk. At the last second I stepped in. The doors closed
and the car began its descent and Jasmine said to her friend, "What
was that one book? The one where it's two guys in Depression times and
one of them is retarded? And the retarded guy is, like, obsessed with
bunny rabbits?"
I fought a
reflexive urge to raise my hand for a chance to answer. The friend hesitated,
then said, "Of Mice and Men?"
"Yeah.
Of Mice and Men. That was, like, the only book I read in high
school. It was kinda funny, though. I liked it. What were those two
guys‚ names, the main characters? Lenny and, Lenny and, who was
the other guy?"
"Squiggy,"
the friend said, and they shared a laugh. "No, I don't know. I
forget the other guy."
George!
my mind screamed. George!
"Lenny
and, shit, what was it?" Jasmine said. She wore a sleeveless sweater
that revealed the deeply tanned arms I had fantasized many times about
kissing.
Say it!
It's so easy! Just say George!
By now I was
sweating. I retreated into the corner of the elevator, made a fist and
punched myself lightly in the temple.
"Oh well,"
she said. "Anyway, that's who Hollis and Peterson remind me of.
Lenny and that other guy. The brains and the retard."
"Hey,
you're right," the friend said. Again they laughed. The elevator
jolted to a stop and several more people got on, overwhelming me with
various late-afternoon smells: body odor, coffee breath, fading perfume,
dry scalp. I lost fifteen seconds of my life examining the dandruff
on the suit shoulders of the fellow in front of me. One flake was the
size of my pinky fingernail. The elevator stopped and everyone walked
out except me. I rode back to the seventieth floor and returned to my
cubicle.
"O'Leary,
I missed my window. I blew it. All I had to do was say George and I
could have died happy."
"I know
the feeling," he said.
For penance
I moved my chair away and did twenty-five push-ups, vowing each time
my chin touched the floor that when I saw her next I'd say something.
16
The markets
were in a free fall. Sylvia refreshed her computer screen every ten
seconds to monitor the company's plummeting stock price. She wept openly
in the halls and sent hourly e-mail updates, each coded red, apprising
us of how much money she'd lost. I clicked Reply All and forwarded a
humorous list of reasons why beer was better than women. Doris Rivington
strolled by my desk and handed me a piece of paper. It was my ex-girlfriend's
e-mail, the one I'd been photocopying.
"Forsythe,
you're skating on thin ice," she said. "Remember, when the
axe falls, no one is safe."
"Not
even you?"
"Well,
I'm pretty much safe."
The office
buzzed with rumors of layoffs, that they were to begin any day, any
hour, any second. No one knew anything concrete and everyone was in
a state of panic. At last Wilford called an impromptu meeting. When
we walked into the conference room, he was standing next to a life-sized
cardboard cutout of Austin Powers. "These are uncertain times,"
he said, "but let us not forget how to laugh. My wife picked this
up for me at Spencer's Gifts. There's a motion sensor device in the
back here that allows it to talk." He reached for a switch, waved
his hand, and suddenly the room filled with catchphrases. Wilford joined
in, presenting a series of his own Austin Powers impressions. "Yeah,
baby," he echoed. "Very shagadelic."
Hortense fell
on the floor laughing. "Really," she called up from under
the conference table, "this guy should be on Letterman. Are we
all in agreement on that?"
Once he'd
composed himself, Wilford said, "By the way, has everyone met Nora,
the new intern?" He pointed, adding: "I'm very attracted to
her."
Nora was a
peach, all right: blue eyes, blond hair, purposeful business-major gaze.
I recognized her immediately from the elevator. I looked at her until
she acknowledged me, then licked my lips in a sensual manner. She stared
back, impassive. Later I walked by her desk and introduced myself. She
was drinking hot chocolate from a mug emblazoned with Greek sorority
letters. "I'm a project manager," I said, though this wasn't
strictly true. In fact, it was entirely false. "And just so you
know, that guy from the book, his name is George."
"What
are you talking about?" she said.
"Oops,"
I said, undoing the top three buttons of my shirt. "Never mind."
Nora stood
up. "Excuse me, but I have a meeting with Wilford."
From my desk,
I could hear their conversation, Wilford saying, "This is a tough
business, Nora. Don't be afraid to use everything you've got to get
a foot in the door, and I mean everything, wink, wink. I don't care
how good your resume looks, when going into an interview, why not really
show off your, your, your assets, if you know what I'm saying."
Pause.
"Do
you know what I'm saying?"
17
In my fantasies,
Jasmine wore thong underwear and entreated me in a baby-talk voice to
play rough with her. So I threw her onto her stomach, pulled her up
on her knees. But there were also the tender times, nights of pizza
and a video, or sharing our dreams for the future as a late-summer thunderstorm
gathered in the distance. My favorite thing, though, was to get up early
on Sunday mornings, have a big breakfast, then take aimless drives upstate
in the car I didn't own with the woman who didn't know me, who had never
even heard my name.
18
The guy from
the men's room was up to his old tricks. This time he was in the stall
next to mine, and the unrolling was so intense that it shook the wall
between us. I looked at his shoes. They were shiny black leather with
a squared-off toe, possibly Banana Republic, and could have belonged
to any number of the firm's male employees. My concentration shattered,
I stood, sighed heavily, threw open the door and pretended to leave,
a series of actions that temporarily silenced him. When he started up
again, I slipped into another stall, sat down without undoing my pants,
and waited. As the minutes passed, I wondered who was more insane, this
fellow in the other stall, or me, his pursuer, sitting three toilets
away. Finally he stopped. He waited another few minutes, and then exited.
I heard him at the sinks, cranking on a soap dispenser, and it was with
fearful anticipation that I emerged from my hiding place. I could tell
by the look on his face that I had taken him by surprise. We stood for
a while at opposing rows of sinks, scrubbing our hands as if going into
surgery, casting accusatory glances at the other's reflection. He was
of average height, with dark hair, nondescript and mousy. Last year,
if I remembered correctly, he'd come by to ask O'Leary if he wanted
in on the March Madness pool. O'Leary declined, and the guy didn't ask
me. Now he dried his hands with a forced insouciance and gave me a final
withering glance as he walked out the door. Before I left I peeked into
his stall and saw that both toilet paper rolls had been used down to
the cardboard. As sheer ruinous spectacle, it was so remarkable that
I urged O'Leary to go take a look. When he returned I revealed the perpetrator's
identity.
"The
March Madness guy?" O'Leary said.
"The
March Madness guy. Let's think about this, O'Leary. How does one get
this fucked up?"
O'Leary mulled
over theories until he struck upon one he really liked. "Perhaps
he was molested as a child, abused by a favorite uncle, told that if
he revealed anything to his parents they would hate him. The pain and
feelings of shame were sublimated years ago and reveal themselves now
in a severe obsessive-compulsive disorder whereby he can't leave the
bathroom until he feels thoroughly cleansed."
Hearing it
in those terms made the thrill of my successful detective work feel
somewhat hollow.
19
What was that
tiny white speck in the back of my throat? Why did I cry when I saw
the Volkswagen commercial with teenagers driving beneath the stars on
a beautiful and deserted road? Why had strange, renegade hairs begun
sprouting on the unlikely surfaces of my body? Why, when achieving masturbatory
climax, did I sometimes envision the sullen face of Kurt Cobain? And
in the end, the very end, stepping into the ether, does god embrace
those, like me, who have spent a lifetime withholding belief?
20
The first
round of layoffs hit our department, affecting only a handful of secretaries.
Doris Rivington sent a mass e-mail urging us not to feel sorry for them
since they had all received the requisite two weeks‚ pay. She closed
with a warning: "There will be more." I clicked Reply All
and forwarded a novelty image I'd received of a female athlete raising
an enormous phallic trophy to her puckered lips. Seconds later my phone
rang. It was Doris. "Forsythe, could I see you in my office, please."
I did a breath
check and went over. Doris had gone to grade school with Geraldine Ferraro
and her office was plastered with photos of the two of them together.
Nevertheless, Doris often broadcast her own deeply conservative views
in ridiculing the failed vice-presidential campaign of her childhood
friend. "But I do love Gerry," she'd say at the end of these
rants. "In spite of it all." She gestured for me to have a
seat, and I waited for fifteen minutes while she finished up a phone
call.
She hung up
and said, "Sorry, my sister in Aspen. Now, where were we?"
"Your
sister in Aspen," I replied.
"Right.
Forsythe, let me get to the point. These e-mails you've been sending
are wildly inappropriate. Personally, I'd like to see you jettisoned,
but Ginny assures me you're doing good work on the new fund video."
Here she engaged in more frantic lip licking and I had to look away
to keep from staring. It was not true, incidentally, that I'd been doing
good work on the new fund video. I'd been assigned the project weeks
ago but had not yet started. I made a mental note to send Ginny a Blue
Mountain electronic greeting card as a token of thanks. Doris continued:
"So as a kind of compromise, I've signed you up for mandatory e-mail
sensitivity training, to be held all day tomorrow in room 223. Failure
to show up for any reason would not be advantageous to your career with
the firm."
I left, feeling
shaken to my very essence. Confrontations of a corporate nature unsettled
me. They resembled nothing my life had prepared me for, despite the
successful run of Forsythe Industries, a mock company I'd founded one
semester in high school business class.
The following
morning I reported to room 223 ten minutes early and was astonished
to see Jasmine sitting at one of the tables. All the seats around her
were taken, so I sauntered to the front of the room and wrote my name
on the dry-erase board by way of introduction. I caught her yawning
and added an exclamation point.
FORSYTHE!
The instructor
came in then, a stout fellow with a beard and yarmulke. He offered a
series of PowerPoint presentations illustrating the similarities and
distinctions between e-mail, postcards, and skywriting.
At the break
I followed Jasmine into the coffee room and watched her spread cream
cheese on a mini-bagel. I grabbed two handfuls of mini-muffins and leaned
against the juice dispensers. As soon as she looked at me I began sweating.
All the muffins slipped from my wet palms and onto the floor.
"Yes!
Ha! Presto-change-o!" I said as a droplet of sweat fell from the
end of my nose. There was something I wanted to tell her that wasn't
quite accessible, and the more I struggled to remember it, the more
heavily I perspired.
"Are
you all right?" she said.
"Who,
me?"
"Yeah,
you don't look so good."
I touched
my fingers to my forehead and they came away glistening. I knew large
salt-lined stains were spreading beneath my arms. I panicked, ran away
without saying another word. For the rest of class I stared forlornly
at the back of Jasmine's beautiful head. We were dismissed at 3:30,
and I was so depressed I wandered back to my cubicle instead of cutting
out of work early.
"O'Leary,"
I sobbed. "Help me."
O'Leary came
over and gave me a look of sympathy. He said, "It's not your flying,
it's your attitude. You may not like the guys you're flying with, they
may not like you. But whose side are you on anyway?"
The question
haunted me for the remainder of the afternoon.
21
It had been
a frenzied morning, culminating in a presentation by Nora the intern.
Wilford had personally hustled everyone into the conference room, since
her remarks would be based on some meaningless task he'd assigned her.
Nora was a pro, I'll admit, ice water in the veins. She started with
a joke, rarely consulted her notes and never stuttered, paused or lost
her place. During the tepid applause, Wilford walked over and placed
his arm around her waist, an obvious erection bulging in his khakis.
We all pointed and laughed and Wilford tried pressing it down. When
it wouldn't depart he fled the room with a mischievous smirk on his
face.
22
A voice came
on the loudspeaker to announce the fire drill. The alarm rang and we
all congregated in the hallway near the elevator and traded anecdotes
about our commutes. Wilford took out a notebook and began editing some
new amusing office banter he'd been writing. O'Leary did push-ups, three
sets of fifteen. I noticed someone I'd never seen before, an Asian woman
with enormous breasts. "Are you new here?" I whispered. No
answer. "Look, just so you know, I'm not one of those weirdos with
an Asian fetish."
"I don't
care. I'm seeing someone," she said.
"Me too,"
I replied. "Her name is Jasmine."
"Not
Jasmine who works for Hollis on the seventy-third floor? I know Jasmine.
That's great. How long have the two of you been together?"
"Excuse
me," I said and quickly stepped away.
Doris punched
the numbers on her cell phone and said, "Gerry, darling, it's me."
Sylvia lifted her skirt in a solitary, half-hearted strip tease, revealing
a faded Mickey Mouse tattoo high on the inside of her fleshy thigh.
Hortense cackled, poked me in the ribs, raised her coffee cup. It said
I Survived the Bombing and All I Got Was This Lousy Mug. "This
kills me," she said. "This mug should be on Letterman. Are
you with me on that, Forsythe? Huh? Huh?"
The revolt
began quietly, a lone female voice announcing a need to check her e-mail.
Soon the hallway was deserted except for the building's fire marshal,
the Asian woman and me.
"Any
questions?" the fire marshal asked once he'd reeled off his memorized
lecture. Bored senseless, we shook our heads, and were dismissed.
As we left
I approached her. "It seems we got off on the wrong foot back there.
Let's start over. I'm Forsythe."
"Please,
Forsythe," she said, "stop sidling."
23
Let's start
over. These words crystallized the gnawing sense I had that the
dream was eroding. Or else they provided the perfect tagline for the
new fund video. I typed them onto my computer screen and stared, trying
to decide.
24
He was coming
right at me, the toilet paper guy. I stopped him by gently placing a
hand on his chest. "You," he whispered.
I leaned closer.
"I don't want to make a big scene, I just want to know why."
Tears shot
from his eyes.
"It's
a waste of our natural resources," I reminded him. "All those
trees." He tried maneuvering around me but I got him in a half-nelson
and took him swiftly to the floor. "Go easy, now," I said.
"There's a good lad."
His body shuddered
with sobs. "Nothing matters," he cried.
"That's
not true," I said, though I'd been struggling against a similar
life philosophy on and off since my high school days. After a brief,
ineffectual wresting match, we fell back against the wall in two exhausted
heaps. "I'm Forsythe," I said, extending a hand.
"Watley."
We spent the
next few minutes catching our breath, listening to a fax machine buzz
in the next room. Watley clapped his hands together. "Well, back
to work."
"Just
one more thing. Why didn't you ask if I wanted in on the March Madness
pool? You asked O'Leary, you asked everyone else. Why not me? What's
wrong with me?"
"That's
a long story," he said, turning on his heels. I trailed him down
the hallway, through the legal department, past the drinking fountain,
until he disappeared into the men's room.
25
"You!"
O'Leary said after I'd relayed the incident. "You are still dangerous.
But you can be my wingman any time."
"Bullshit," I said, winking behind my mirrored aviator sunglasses.
"You can be mine."
26
Alone in the
elevator with Jasmine. She was drinking a Frappucino from the Starbucks
counter. "Nice day out there," I said.
"I wouldn't
know. There's no windows in my cube."
"Right.
Me either." I cursed myself silently. "So anyway, what's your
address? Where do you live?" She gave me a disapproving glance
and I waved the questions away. "Just kidding."
Whistling
"Pomp and Circumstance" as a decoy, I moved behind her discreetly
and stared at her ass. Words alone cannot do justice to its magnificent
proportions. I was on the verge of losing my mind when it hit me, the
thing I'd wanted to tell her all these weeks.
"George!"
I said, perhaps more loudly than was appropriate.
She jumped,
turned around.
I was smiling.
I lowered my voice and continued. "George is a character in Of
Mice and Men, the one whose name you couldn't remember the other
day when you were talking to your friend."
Her face betrayed
no hint of recognition. "The other day?"
"The
other week, the other year, last month, the important thing is that
now you know his name."
"Is this
your floor?" she said. We had reached seventy without my realizing
it. Jasmine was pressing the Door Open button with her free hand.
"Look,"
I said, falling to my knees. "I'm in love with you. I swear to
God, I've changed, I'm different."
She finished
the last of her Frappucino, slurped around the bottom of the plastic
cup. I was reaching into my pants pocket, fumbling for the diamond engagement
ring I'd purchased at lunch, when the elevator doors closed, separating
us forever.
27
Tensions heightened
as the code-red e-mails, sexual harassment lawsuits, and layoff innuendoes
persisted, and the occasional late-afternoon rally was not enough to
prevent the dream I was having - the office and finally the building
itself - from dissolving all around me. A prolonged series of nightmares
followed, from which I woke up screaming, and when I opened my eyes
I saw a broad patch of cobalt-blue sky, singed at the corners, curling
forward to reveal the flames, the fire that raged beneath, the world
blowing away in a terrific god-sized cloud. For the next several hours
I walked the streets, dazed and alone, pausing only long enough to answer
a ringing payphone. It was Doris Rivington, speaking, I assumed, from
the confines of her luxurious uptown bunker. "Thank god the executives
are safe," she said, and I could hear her tongue slapping at the
receiver as I hung up. I stripped down to my wifebeater undershirt,
and continued my journey. Within minutes I was hopelessly, irreversibly,
lost.
Copyright © 2006
by Bryan Charles
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