Fishbowl (5 page)

The owner nodded that of course it was okay—“Garth, you are one of our best customers.” And with that he handed Garth a package that had been wrapped in brown paper and then stuffed into an unmarked black plastic bag. His special order had come in that morning.

Garth was so excited he ran into the alley and squeezed the package, not daring to unwrap it to look at the contents. The package was the size of a phone book and yielded a bit when Garth squeezed it. The paper it was wrapped in crackled, and the plastic bag that held the package whispered sweetly as air escaped. Garth sprinted up the alley to the street, a huge grin on his face. He spent the short walk back to the site working on containing his excitement, repressing the urge to jump or run while fist-pumping. He had calmed his emotions by the time he saw the chain-link cage, reconstructing his hard facade of manual laborer machismo. He wolfed down his lunch in the remaining fifteen minutes, and by the time the break was over, Garth was his regular stony self and the package was safely tucked behind his dusty lunch box in his locker at the site office.

The afternoon crept by, and Garth couldn’t keep his mind off the package. When he saw it in the store, he asked the clerk to double-wrap it and bag it. He was hesitant at first to bring it onto the site. He could have gone to pick it up after the final whistle blew, but the thought of waiting until after work to go pick it up was unbearable. He just wants to go home straight from the site with it, ride the elevator to his twenty-fifth-floor apartment, and hear the lock click as his door closes. The anticipation is so sweet and so unbearable he’s torn between going home early to open the package and savoring the mounting temptation to do so.

All afternoon, Danny drones on. He points out the occasional hot woman walking by. Garth agrees some of them are attractive. For others, he wonders if Danny’s putting on a show. Garth doesn’t say much; he just grunts when Danny needs a prompt, which is rare. Danny’s voice runs like the machinery in the background. It’s a constant noise that, with time, Garth’s mind has become desensitized to.

When the day ends, Garth goes to his locker, grabs his lunch box and the black plastic bag. The guys are talking casually, making plans to go get some beers and a burger at the nearby pub. It’s all he can do not to sprint from the site, run blindly through the traffic on Roxy to the Seville, rocket up to his apartment, and slam and lock the door behind him, hugging the package to his heaving, winded chest, leaning back against the door, ready to explode with excitement.

Instead, he nods when someone tells him a joke he doesn’t listen to and casually packs his safety vest and ear protection into his backpack like he’s got no other plans. He says bye to the guys and no, sorry, can’t go for beers tonight, got stuff to do, wave, wave, punch shoulder, and work on a contained walk toward the Seville. As he turns from waving, he bumps into her, the woman Danny pointed out, the woman in the summer dress and the kohl eyes on the other side of the fence. The perfect woman brushes into his side as she steps out of the drugstore.

“Sorry,” she mumbles and stops in her tracks.

“It’s okay.” Garth smiles, overly conscious of his bulk, his belly, his hairy arms, his hairy chest, his hairy butt, his musty after-work smell, his greasy skin and sweaty hair, his apelike stature, his pendulous penis, his broad shoulders, his generally threatening manliness that he wishes were less … less … obvious at times like this.

In the span of his awkward self-assessment, Garth and the woman stand, staring at each other. Garth closes his eyes, again her image is imprinted behind his eyelids, and then he carries on toward the Seville. He squeezes the package to his chest. His heart pounds, about to burst.

This is going to be a magical evening.

And this time he can’t suppress a quickly shuffling step. He doesn’t wait for the light at the corner and crosses through traffic. He can’t wait.

8

In Which Claire the Shut-In Receives a Mysterious Buzz from the Front Door

Claire’s apartment is immaculate. The late-afternoon sun shines through the eighth-floor window and streams in the balcony door, causing the whole apartment to glow like a celestial beacon of cleanliness. The stainless steel espresso machine on the kitchen counter is blinding. The tile backsplash reflects every bit of the daylight’s intensity, becoming a second sun itself. In this brutal assault of light, not a blip of dust or a stray curly hair can be seen on any flat surface, not even under the couch or coffee table should one deign to look.

Claire hates those television shows about people who never leave their homes. They gather newspapers into swelling stacks and pile unwashed cans into tin mountains behind the stained easy chair. She had to stop watching because their dirty little paths that cut through the piles of plastic bags and old computer components made her furious. Not all shut-ins are like that.

No, Claire thinks, not “shut-ins.” Technically, “agoraphobics,” but she prefers the term “aggressively introverted individuals.”

Those people on television, Claire thinks as she peels the cellophane wrapper off a sanitized, single-use plastic drinking cup, their places with the soup cans stacked on the counter and dirty dishes heaped in the sink, are the products of unhealthy minds. She pours bottled water into her cup, drinks, and places both the cup and bottle into the recycling bin. Claire opens a sanitizing hand wipe and swabs her palms, cleans between her fingers, and then dabs the backs of her hands.

Claire hasn’t always been aggressively introverted. As a little girl, she rode her bike in suburban streets with the neighbor kids. She picked gravel from her scraped knees and dug up worms in the backyard. When she was older, she walked to school with friends and played on the playground during recess. In her early twenties, she attended the crowded lecture theaters and study halls of the local college. On Friday nights, she went to the sweaty, gyrating clubs with her friends and drank vodka slimes from spotted old-fashioned glasses. Occasionally, she would take a guy home, and if that was the case, they would almost always get it on. Once, after last call, she even wandered the bar, drinking the dregs from glasses and bottles left behind on the counters and tables. That night, she had been cripplingly inebriated. If asked, Claire would unconvincingly deny ever doing such a thing. If pressed, she would claim she doesn’t remember doing that, which the look on her face would suggest might be true.

Then, in her late twenties, with her friends pairing off and breeding, disappearing from her life under the hefty obligations of children and mortgages, she began to think she really wasn’t having that much fun. She started looking back at her childhood and youth and could only feel a vacuous space for people where a warm feeling of lifelong friendship and camaraderie should have swelled. If those bonds were so easy to break, if years of friendship could wither so easily, she didn’t need them.

Claire stopped leaving her apartment.

Her apartment has two phone lines, one with a number that only her mother knows and the other a dedicated line for work. She orders her groceries online and has them delivered to her door. She watches movies and television series on the computer. She reads books downloaded from the Internet. Sometimes, for nostalgia’s sake, she’ll order a paperback or purchase a record and have it shipped to the apartment. She finds it easier not to leave the four walls. She prefers her ceiling to the sky and her floor to the ground.

The sun goes up and the sun goes down and Claire is happy. She has a safe bubble, a bright sunny apartment overlooking Roxy, where the bustle of humanity passes by, close enough for her to feel included, but not so close to need to be involved. She truly feels happy, more so than she can ever remember.

Still, needing to pay the bills, Claire finds it necessary to work. She does so in a great job, which she loves. It fulfills her minimal social needs, and she can telecommute. Her employer pays all her work expenses and even reimburses her for the space she uses for her home office. Living in a one-bedroom apartment, Claire has her computer and phone set up at the island in the kitchen.

Claire stands at the window, her hands on her hips, and watches traffic go by outside for a moment before returning to the island. She sits on her stool and glances at the computer, nine minutes left in her shift. The work line rings, and Claire taps a button to activate her hands-free earpiece.

“Hello?” Claire says. “And to whom am I speaking?”

A pause.

“Jason?” Claire continues, “Your name doesn’t matter anymore, Jason. I’m going to call you Pig because that’s what you are. Now … tell me how fucking hard your cock is and where you want to put it.” She nods to herself. Claire checks the clock, eight minutes until shift change. “Shut up, Pig. All you are to me is a hot pole to ride hard.”

Eight minutes. Fast, but by no means a record. That’s why they charge more for the first minute of phone time.

I can do this, she thinks, and then … quiche for supper!

Claire is glad she didn’t get the evening shift. Friday evenings are the busiest. She thinks it’s odd that one night out of the week should be busier than any other when phone sex is involved, but it is. Friday always is. Perhaps it’s the societal repression of urges for an entire week, a dam filling, swelling after a rainstorm, and needing to normalize its levels. Maybe it’s just an urge for a natural stress relief. So many people calling in, getting off the hook, wanting to be humiliated, humiliating themselves, and then going out the next morning to brunch with their parents or to garage sales in search of secondhand clothes for their kids.

Friday nights are about lonely, slutty, filthy depravity for many, but for Claire they are about quiche. Her mother’s recipe. The trick is using sparkling mineral water to make the dough. For some reason the crust turns out fluffier and less oily. Claire likes to think it’s all the tiny bubbles that make it so but knows it’s more likely to be some chemistry thing. Even if she had to work the Friday evening shift, she would make quiche.

Claire checks the clock, seven minutes left until she can log out.

“You’re a mouthy little bitch, Pig. I think I’m going to have to stuff your mouth with my dirty panties to shut you up and then spank your ass red raw to punish you. Maybe I’m going to have to strap one on and drill you. Would you like that? Maybe I’ll just rip open your—”

The phone rings.

Claire blinks.

It’s the other phone. The one that shouldn’t be ringing.

Pig’s huffing is claustrophobia-inducing, grotesque, and close in her ear canal. His damp exhalations seemingly pant directly into her brain. She shivers.

The phone rings again.

Only her mother knows that number, and she only calls on Sunday mornings.

Claire’s heart races.

“Hey, Jason, something just came up. I have to go,” Claire says into the headset without taking her eyes off her personal phone. Watching for it to ring, terrified for it to ring. “I don’t know … Finish yourself off for once,” she says and hangs up.

Claire flinches when it rings again.

Something’s wrong. Is Mom okay? Who else could it be, really?

Her arm shoots out, and she brings the phone to her ear and listens. Street noises come through the receiver. A car horn travels through the phone at the same time she hears it from her window. Someone is in front of the building, eight floors below, waiting at the intercom in the late-afternoon light. The building’s shadow would be drawn out, casting a deep-blue shade on the sidewalk where the caller stands, waiting for her to say something.

“Hello?” she says, her voice trembling involuntarily.

There’s the muffled sound of movement, quick movement. The voice on the other end growls, “Gotcha, kiddo.” A pained and piercing scream comes over the line, followed by the static of a violent motion, like the sound of a fast punch.

The line goes dead.

Claire doesn’t move. After several moments, the steady dial tone against her ear turns to a consistent beep. A bang comes from the hallway. Claire starts, slams the receiver into its cradle, and then dashes to check that her apartment door is locked. It is. It’s never unlocked. She takes a deep breath and peers through the spy hole. There’s nothing but the fish-eye tunnel of the lonely hallway stretching out from her door.

Satisfied the door is secure, she rushes to the window and looks down on the street. She’s so desperate to see the front door that she almost touches the glass. She recoils from it as if it’s fire. People bustle by on Roxy below, and Claire realizes any one of them could have made the call.

She cranes to see the front door, but because of the angle, she can’t. She wishes she could go out onto the balcony. From there she would be able to lean over and see who’s waiting for her.

9

In Which Homeschooled Herman Finds the Consciousness That He Recently Misplaced

Sometimes, other kids make fun of Herman. He knows it’s because he’s smaller and smarter than the rest of them. He has been bumped ahead two grades in the last three years. He knows it’s because he wears glasses and has little interest in physical activities like playing dodgeball during recess or football after school.

He also knows it’s because he once told the other kids he can time travel and that the experience is nothing like it is in the movies. It doesn’t involve flashing lights from the sky, a fusion-powered DeLorean, or slingshotting a spaceship around the sun. It happens in the brain, through a dimensionally unhinged consciousness. It’s more a jumble of disorienting and confusing fragments than the present’s clarity. Sometimes he sees the future, but mostly he sees the past. In hindsight, telling the other kids this was definitely a mistake.

It’s not that the other kids are specifically making fun of Herman, as he often rationalizes; they are making fun of some of the things he says and does. The person he is at the core is not being ridiculed; it’s the person they perceive him to be. Every time he says or does something weird, it’s that specific thing they react to, not to Herman himself. Herman’s self-aware enough to know that the hairbreadth distinction between the two is a coping mechanism.