Vincent and Alice and Alice Read online

  I followed them through the living room and up a carpeted staircase and down a dim hallway with ascending school year portraits. Each room had a leather couch or leather chair like it was a requirement. A table at the end of the hallway held green candles, a mason jar full of pennies, and a picture of an elderly woman presenting a plate of spaghetti.

  “Probably changed from when you lived here,” said the mother who wore coffee-stained sweatpants and an Under Armour sweatshirt the color of dried blood.

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “There’s a lot of leather.”

  My childhood bedroom was now a room for Family Guy memorabilia. A home is only walls, it doesn’t matter how many years of your life you put into the space, it will eventually just become something else by someone else. But my childhood was in those walls. Too bad a house can’t remember you. The mother said, leaning in the doorframe, that if you added up everything in the room it would be worth fifty thousand dollars, maybe more depending on the buyer.

  “That’s amazing,” I said, and touched a doll of Stewie Griffin that was reclining in a mini leather chair.

  Behind her, I could see her children in the hallway, watching us.

  “No one will admit it,” she continued, palm-packing Marlboros, “but Family Guy is better than The Simpsons.”

  As I’m driving Rudy is sticking his head out the window with his blood-tongue hanging loose, drool streaming backwards into an SUV with the wipers on. He either doesn’t care what anyone thinks, or he doesn’t know how he looks so he can’t care. Who was it that said animals have no interior life, that they can’t recognize their own image in a mirror? How is that even provable? Either way, I wish I was more like Rudy.

  I park the car. Neighbors spend hours blowing leaves from one house to another and telling their dogs to stop barking, who for years, don’t stop barking. Cars get dirty so you have to clean them. Looking around, carrying Rudy in my arms until we reach the grass, this is what I see. I need to be more positive. Move into my future. But sometimes people just sit outside and watch traffic.

  Two men in the baseball field are scratching lottery tickets as their kids wrestle under the monkey bars. I throw a tennis ball that Rudy runs toward, then right past, his head turning like the ball is stuck in the sky.

  I have to carry him to the car he’s so exhausted. I did a little running too. I’m so out of shape. I should start jogging like everyone else. Just run around the neighborhood until I can’t think anymore.

  I get in the back seat with Rudy on my lap snoring, a wet puddle from his mouth to my pants. He trembles, sprinting through the dream of what just happened, and I’m falling asleep too, the sun warm on our faces. Some people don’t like dreams because they say they aren’t real – those people shouldn’t exist.

  At home my boss calls again. He’s never called me on the weekend before. He says for the Dorian Blood meeting to fast beforehand, no food after midnight tomorrow, get at least six hours of sleep, and don’t do anything to, “compromise my normal routine come Monday morning.”

  I ignore how weird the request is, and instead look at Rudy in the kitchen who slobbers-up a half-gallon water dish then waddles to the corner and vomits.

  “Okay,” I finally respond.

  “You’ll be working here again like before, that’s all I have right now,” says my boss. “It’s another program funded by the State.”

  “Same cubicle?”

  “Steve put in a request for it, which I denied. See you Monday.”

  A rush of excitement comes over me knowing I’m going back to the Zone. Now if I can just get my life on track, no more Alice thoughts, I can relax and head towards retirement. Reaching ten years is so close then just two more decades, but then what? Alice has a massage license, a degree in biology, references from a dozen cafes and restaurants, a yoga certification, and works for a nonprofit, RISSE, helping refugees. One location is right around the corner from my apartment. Sometimes on my way to the grocery store she’d be on the front lawn kicking a beach ball with kids who had survived bombs from their own government.

  Rudy sleeps the rest of the night. I can’t sleep, my mind piecing together what Dorian Blood looks like, what the meeting is about, where my life is going.

  JUNE 4

  This veterinarian smells like weed. The adoption package includes a vet consultation but the bill, whatever it may be, is my responsibility. With the help of an assistant who appears incredibly young, maybe the veterinarian’s son, they draw blood from Rudy’s tickscarred leg. When the vet places both hands on Rudy’s sides and squeezes, moving from chest to pelvis, going, “Huuummm…huuummm…huuummm” Rudy coughs.

  “Does that mean something?” I ask, concerned.

  “Not necessarily,” answers the assistant standing off to the side.

  “Sounded like a man’s cough.”

  “That’s funny,” says the vet, now looking at me but with his hands still around Rudy’s ribs. “You ever see that Seinfeld episode?”

  Compared to yesterday, Rudy looks worse under the lab lights. His fur is greasy and more gray than brown, his eyes droopy, his tail dangling between his legs like he has no control over it, like a strip of worn felt pinned on. With every trying-to-get-comfortable movement his black nails click against the metal table.

  “I love TV,” says the assistant, looking at his phone.

  The vet puts on magnifying glasses, similar to what a dentist wears, and inspects Rudy’s teeth and gums. He peers in, then pivots his head toward me while holding Rudy’s jaw. “His tongue always like this?” The lenses in his glasses are rainbow-colored, and when he moves under the lights they become gasoline spills. The length of his pants, like the assistants, are about six inches too short.

  “Yeah,” I answer. “Always bleeding.”

  Rudy receives two shots which he has no reaction to. When they stick a thermometer in his ass he yawns.

  “Good doggie,” says the vet rubbing one floppy ear and peering at the thermometer that he holds up to the ceiling light.

  “We’ll know more when we test his blood,” the assistant says confidently.

  “But is he okay?”

  “We’ll call later,” says the assistant.

  “Should I be worried?”

  “Please check-out with Sheryl,” says the assistant.

  In preparation for Dorian Blood I decide to buy matching pants, a dress shirt, tie, underwear, and socks. It’s embarrassing that our culture is just to always be consuming, but a new outfit is what Alice did for me when I had something big coming up, like my last art show, or my 30th birthday party. I’ve never had friends really. But if your wife works with refugees who like to party, and you put them in an already crowded bar and they sing you happy birthday it feels like the whole world is with you.

  I pull into the parking lot, leave Rudy in the car with the window open slightly, and walk toward the mall. I figure I can get everything in less than ten minutes. I have a vision: to go with my blue suit, some navy plaid socks, blue shirt, blue tie. What I refer to, amusing myself, as The Iceman.

  A good trick in 9-to-5 living is to always be amusing yourself. Most people don’t agree with this style of living. Alice was tired of it. One time, after watching television for hours where we didn’t talk, I leaped from the couch and announced that I was Leg Wobble Man. My legs became a blur. I pleaded, “Come on, be Leg Wobble Man with me.” Alice went into the bedroom, shut the door, and I didn’t see her until the following morning, in the kitchen scooping coffee into the filter. I probably could have pulled Leg Wobble Man off when we were dating, not married for eight years.

  The days severed me slowly from the person I loved. Dramatic, but it’s true. I couldn’t win against all those days transforming me from someone she cared about to someone she couldn’t breathe with. Still, I sometimes think if she had been Leg Wobble Man with me it would have saved our marriage.

  But there was this one time where she did something similar to Leg Wobble Man. We were eating
dinner at her parent’s house when she got into a fight with her father about the confederate flag. Residents had been putting them up more often, nailing them to trees, but still, nothing like what I see now. And what Alice did, as her father preached State rights with an embarrassing flourish of hand gestures, was gyrate her body from her seat at the head of the table. She moved into a mocking breakdance, fists rhythmically punching the air. No one said a word, and Alice didn’t stop dancing until her father had left the room.

  I miss that version of Alice. I read in a magazine that if you don’t see the person you love for thirty consecutive days they disintegrate. I haven’t seen Alice in one hundred and seventy eight days. That means all through space she is suspended bone dust, floating arteries, unraveling veins.

  But I still see her as I put together my Iceman outfit, judging my choices outside the changing room, saying, “The shirt is too big, spend more and buy something you actually like.”

  The reason I don’t have things in my apartment is because they reminded me of her. I crammed the grassy space between curb and sidewalk with hand-painted side tables, pastel-colored yoga mats, a fifty-pound juicer, health tonics in little amber jars, faded Anthropologie comforters, a dwarf-sized Buddha statue with a chipped nose, black beads, piles of self-help books bookmarked with pieces of paper containing inspirational quotes. Ten minutes later, a couple in a truck with confederate flag bumper stickers picked through everything before finally deciding to take it all. “God bless!” said the woman in the passenger seat, waving enthusiastically as they drove away.

  I’m leaving the cool mall air and into the sick heat of the day. So far this summer has been nothing but constant storms. One hour it’s clear and hot, the next rolling-in thunder clouds. I hate the local news, but according to them we’re going to break a record.

  Walking into the parking lot, a miniature lake of rippling waves is next to my car on the pavement directly under the back window. I can’t explain it, but that’s what it looks like in this blinding sunshine. Why did I park so far away? I guess I just don’t care about a close spot at the mall. The back window appears a shade darker compared to the other windows. Maybe it’s the light in the sky, a cloud passing over. I half-jog. I don’t see Rudy.

  It’s not a miniature lake of rippling waves – the back window appeared a shade darker because its been smashed out. My feet crunch onto a circle of broken glass. I open the door. Where Rudy should be, on the back seat drooling, looking up at me with his blood-tongue hanging out, a note states there’s a special place for people like me. If there’s any karma in this world, the note continues, my fate will be to remain in a hot car with the windows sealed for eternity. At the margin in bold red marker it says 85 degrees translates to 119 degrees. Drive yourself straight to hell, ends the note.

  I drive home with the back window a gaping mouth of jagged clear teeth. A driver honks, in my periphery I can see him waving, but I look forward gripping the wheel. People in A-ville are real heroes. It’s not even that hot out. I wasn’t in the mall for that long. I left the window open.

  My phone rings. I answer by hitting speaker and tossing it onto the passenger seat. It’s the veterinarian who sounds like he’s holding in smoke.

  “Hey there. Kidney failure,” he says, then exhales through, “without proper meds Ralph has two weeks.”

  “Rudy,” I correct him.

  “That’s it.”

  With Elderly’s help we tape flyers to the mall entrances asking for Rudy’s return, his medical condition exemplified by skull and crossbones clipart. I didn’t have a picture of Rudy, so I drew one. On Elderly’s urging, I offer a cash reward. The designing, printing, driving, putting them up, takes less than two hours. I put the last flyer on a corvette parked diagonally across two spots.

  Elderly, while driving home with all the windows down (he said he wants to achieve a cross breeze) tells me a man living alone dies ten years earlier than a man married. I thank him for his help. He says he appreciates the cans I’ve been putting next to his car and drumbeats the dashboard. We have a good relationship but I feel sick.

  I turn my alarm off and start a pot of coffee just before sunrise. Outside my window, a squirrel in a tree is eating a congealed slice of pizza. Tomorrow I’m going to meet Dorian Blood.

  JUNE 5

  Before walking to work I check on Elderly, who is asleep with Millionaire draped over his chest. The car’s interior is mostly trash, a weedwacker wet with grass clippings rests across the back seat. When Elderly is feeling good he likes to trim the edges around the park and nearby abandoned properties. Two homes are on my block. Millionaire, strapped to his waist with a rope-belt, helps him. In the front passenger seat are two Rudy fliers and on top of them a gold cross on a silver chain. On a torn piece of paper he’s written I’m religious now and taped it with what looks like peanut-butter to the glovebox.

  I own a car and walk to work. My coworkers think my throat will be slashed for walking two miles, through what they consider a violent neighborhood splattered in graffiti, but it’s just poor people.

  Back on floor fourteen, everyone says in chilling unison, “Welcome back, Vincent.” Hung on the outside of my corner cubicle wall is a banner: “Welcome back, Vincent!”

  On the snacking table is a box of donuts and I’m allowed first pick. Nothing has changed since the podium incident. The copier is jammed, the plastic plants are gigantic, it smells like Windex, and Francesca has thumbtacked a sign on the wall – Clean Me After You Use Me – with a blurry picture of the breakroom microwave.

  “Thank you,” I say, “it’s nice to be back.”

  The Zone has a huge computer monitor, comically large for the work I do, that’s new. Then the typical stuff – pinned memos to the cubicle walls, filing cabinets, ceramic pen holder, IBM printer, uncomfortable blue office chair, phone directory that needs updating, too much gray desk space, and a thick area rug weaved in black and brown square design purchased by Alice. What hasn’t changed is that I can still hear my coworkers, and they can’t see me.

  Once, before working from home when I was in the Zone, Emily brought her daughter in and afterward Michelle said, “Little bitch doesn’t know what life will do to her.” At the time I thought that was a really tough thing to say about a seven-year-old, but after Alice left me I kind of understood. Even Michelle has her moments.

  Today she’s telling us that a pig can have an orgasm for thirty minutes. I ignore the conversation and instead log into my employee account with five hundred emails. None of them matter because here if you don’t do a specific job it just flows to the next person. Because I have to click on them individually it takes ten minutes to do my deleting. Then I’m done with my work. I have nothing to do until my meeting.

  Eventually, he came to hate his creation. His name was Robert Propst, which is the perfect name for someone who would design the first cubicle. His 1960s blueprint allowed workers a comfortable space to work in, and for the first time ever, privacy. But once the companies figured out they could shrink the cubicles to save money, and add more workers to increase profits, and shorten the walls so the supervisors could spy, that was the end of the dream. Years after his design was implemented he visited an office like mine and stood in the entranceway, turning his chin over the expanse of cubicle walls, bald heads and hairdos on rounded shoulders, everyone able to hear everyone else breathing. “This is monolithic insanity,” Robert Propst said to the proud supervisor beside him. “I’ve created something that hurts people.”

  I’m pacing just outside my boss’s office near the water cooler. Dad said being early shows respect but he was wrong. I arrived forty five minutes early to the dentist once and the receptionist said while photocopying my insurance card (best dental in the country, diamond level) “Did you know being early is just as inconvenient as being late?” Alice said it was true. Being early throws people off their track. They love routine. It’s why everything they do, important or not, is on a schedule and screen.


  “Vincent, get in here,” says my boss.

  This boss is not the person who hired me. I was hired by the new Leaders at the time because I was a creative type who could write press releases. Then the old Leaders regained power through the elections and rehired the old employees back, like Steve and Michelle, but for some reason I wasn’t let go. I am one of a handful, from hundreds, who weren’t fired. That’s why working in the Zone is so special and odd – I have the most secluded spot and my boss and the higher-ups and Leaders working across the street in the Dome don’t know what to do with me.

  The Dorian Blood meeting is on floor twenty, which I didn’t know was in use. My boss says it was empty for years, formerly used by lawyers during the 2012 coup, a complicated story involving multiple back-stabbings, an affair between two opposing Leaders, and a smashed electrical box resulting in an office blackout. I ask for more details and my boss shakes his head. “I don’t know much,” he says. “As usual, I’m just the messenger.”

  This only makes the Dorian Blood meeting more eerie because it’s not my boss in control but a Leader I’ve never met. This is how the world works now. Entire rooms of people you’ll never meet are making decisions about your life.

  He says Dorian Blood is the head of a new work productivity program, and that he feels guilty because of what happened at the annual picnic. He was asked what employee fits a certain profile and supplied my name. A ten percent raise included in participating in the program will drastically affect the percentage of my retirement, he says while grinning, and I can’t help but smile too.

  “Good luck,” he says.

  “Thank you.”

  “One more thing.”

  “Absolutely,” I say in my professional voice.

  “Francesca’s birthday.”

  If there’s any future consistent with the now, it’s an office birthday, the same as the previous, continuing forever inside an endless streak of office buildings. When a birthday is planned everyone who doesn’t have a birthday contributes. You sign your name next to a responsibility and this sheet travels from desk-to-desk in an unmarked manila folder. Because I’m the last to see the list I’m responsible for the most difficult task, the cupcakes.