Lost Signals (43 page)

The pop and hiss of a bad recording filled the air and I pressed my hands over my ears. God it was loud. Shouting in Chinese. Whatever he was saying was sure to upset somebody.

I grinned and tasted blood when my nose sprung a leak. “Fuck you, Vera.” A red spray left my mouth with the curse.

I staggered towards the door and stepped out into the deafening cacophony of a hundred speakers in the trees. Snow flakes danced like agitated electrons and pine boughs shed their white mantles with the muffled
whumpf
of distant explosions.

The wind plucked the joint from my mouth and I held onto the doorframe. I hoped I wouldn’t get shot before the last track played.

Track ten
 
: “The President of the United States”.

Armageddon baby, can you dig it
 
?

When I was
a younger man, I preferred to work the graveyard shift because I slept easier during the day. But in my current line of work, graveyard’s not an option. My shift starts around noon, when I wake up, turn on my modem and log in with the web host. I make sure the camera is centered on my backdrop—a poster of a snowy mountaintop—and get into costume. Minutes later, I hear a ping and the image of a cherub-faced boy, maybe three years old, fills my computer screen.

I clear my throat and say, “Ho, ho, ho.” In an instant, the boy is beaming and clapping his hands. The children always recognize the beard. What’s scary is that they trust the person wearing it, and that fills the Lurking Man with dark notions. This is why SantaCam.com is so popular. A kid can talk to St. Nick without having to sit on his lap. Can you believe that people used to take their kids to the mall to do this
 
?

“Who’s this little boy
 
?” I say, and the kid squeaks something that sounds like “Greg.” My left hand is hidden inside a pocket. The children only see my right hand. The left one would scare them off. “What would you like for Christmas, Greg
 
?”

He just smiles, unable to talk, so I say, “Would you like a pony
 
?”

A man’s voice comes from off-screen. “Go on, tell Santa what you want,” but the kid just stares like I’m a celebrity, which, in a way, I guess I am.

“How about an Xbox
 
?” I say to Greg.

The father coughs. “Or how about a new toy truck
 
?”

I count the syllables in that question.
Or how about a new toy truck
 
?
Eight. Round numbers are nice. But eight is not as nice as ten. Odd numbers are out of the question. Odd numbers make me feel as if the Earth is listing to one side. “How about a flatscreen TV
 
?” I say.

The child claps his hands over his head. He says, “flatscreen,” except it sounds like “flap skween.”

The father’s fat, balding head appears on my computer. He’s sitting too close to the webcam. “Greg, Santa doesn’t make televisions. He makes toys. Why don’t you tell him what
toys
you want
 
?”

Twenty-two syllables. Not bad. Twenty-two times five is a hundred-ten, which feels nice. It loosens the knot in my gut a little. “Technically, Greg,” I say, “Santa doesn’t make
any
toys. The elves build everything.”

The child laughs.

“That’s a good one,” the father says. “Santa’s a real comedian.”

Twelve syllables. Twelve times twelve is a hundred-forty-four. Not divisible by ten, but still interesting. “In Santa’s workshop, we can make anything. Even a flatscreen.”

“Flap skween,” Greg says with a laugh. “Flap skween. Flap skween.”

The father says, “What were those toys we talked about before
 
?”

Finally, a ten, and I feel less anxious.

“Ho, ho, ho,” I say. “Santa will bring you a flatscreen Christmas Eve.”

“Maybe,” the father says. “All right, tell Santa bye-bye.”

“Flap skween.”

“Ho, ho, ho. Merry Christmas.”

The screen goes blank as the webcam disconnects.

***

After a few hours, I need a cigarette so bad I’m shaking. I step outside, and my neighbor Dave is there, sucking an American Spirit down to the nub. “Busy day
 
?”

“Like a salt mine,” I say. “You got a light
 
?”

Dave takes out a Zippo and lights my cigarette. He looks me over and throws up a smirk. “You’re looking a little scruffy today. Lose your razor
 
?”

“What
 
?” I ask, and then remember that I’m still wearing the fake white Santa beard. I pull it down beneath my chin.

“You do a lot of drugs as a kid
 
?” Dave asks.

“A little. Why
 
?”

“No reason,” he says with a laugh.

I hold the cigarette with my left hand. The burning stick is wedged between the first and second fingers—the only ones left besides the thumb, the doctors couldn’t save the other two. I take a deep drag and hold it in until my lungs burn. I tell Dave about the first time I did acid, but don’t tell him about the Lurking Man. How do you talk about the parasite that hijacks your thoughts
 
? The man who says the most vile things, who shows me videos of things that haven’t happened, of me doing horrible things. Instead, I ramble on about other things.

“If you ask me,” I say, my cigarette crackling down to the filter. “Your head’s screwed on right so long as you can tell the difference between sight and perception. No matter how many chemicals you put in your body. Don’t you think
 
?”

Dave doesn’t respond. I continue, “Sometimes I perceive things that aren’t really there. And that’s OK, because I know they’re not really there.”

Then I realize that Dave has gone back inside his apartment. How long have I been out here talking to myself
 
?

***

Dave once asked me if I ever sleep. He’s seen the blue glow of the television flickering in my window in the small hours of night. I tell him, yeah, the TV’s on, but only for background noise. It’s nice to have voices in the room other than my own. I can’t sleep through the night, and often wake to the pitch-black of solitude. The mind can go to bad places in the time it takes to reach the remote.

“That would drive me crazy,” Dave told me, “all that racket.”

What troubles me is the silence.

Funny thing about the Lurking Man
 
: He’s loudest in the dark. Throw on the light and he’s reduced to a whisper. Even the dimmest light is better than none. That, neighbor, is why I sleep with the TV on at night.

***

“What is your name
 
?” I ask the girl sitting on her mother’s lap.

She’s a tiny thing, like her mother, who can’t be more than twenty. Two butterfly clips contain her hair behind her ear, the velvety black of it coiled around her copper neck. I’m describing the mom. She is smiling, even more than her child, like it’s
her
first time talking to Santa. Eventually, the kid will go gaga for St. Nick, but at this age, it’s all for the parents.

“Her name’s Aiko.”

“What a beautiful name. Ho, ho, ho.”

The webcam is a knothole into other people’s lives. This is my way to live in the world without leaving my apartment. Aiko’s house is cozy and warm. There is a red-brick fireplace, a wine glass on a wooden countertop and a dog bed in the corner.

“Is this your first Christmas
 
?” I ask.

“Her second,” says the mom.

I add up the photographs nailed to the living room wall and it’s a perfect ten. The house is an unbearable white. A cream-tile kitchen is in the background, with a stove, an oven, a dishwasher. I imagine myself there, making eggs Florentine for breakfast on a lazy Sunday. The computer monitor catches the glint of the mother’s wedding ring, and I imagine how the matching band would feel on my finger.

Except the ring finger on my left hand is gone. I cut it off.

The mother bounces the kid on her knee. “Can you say hello to Santa
 
?”

Instead, Aiko starts screaming. I should be focusing on the kid, but can’t take my eyes off the mom. She is so happy. It’s a look I can’t replicate. She is wearing a yellow top, and she’s soft and smooth around the edges.

“What’s
your
name
 
?” I ask the mother, but I don’t think she hears me.

“Aiko, can you say bear
 
?” she says, and I start growling to impress the mom. I stand and wave my arms like a bear, but this only disturbs the child. I realize my left hand is showing, and I quickly pull it down and stuff it into a pocket.

“Ho, ho, ho.”

“Maybe we’ll try again later,” the woman says as she slips a pacifier into Aiko’s mouth. The child spits it out. She won’t stop crying.

“Don’t go. Just tell Santa what you want. Merry Christmas. What’s your name, Mom
 
? Aiko, what’s Mommy’s name
 
?”

The connection is cut, and I decide that’s enough work for today.

***

When I told my neighbor Dave how the TV thing works, he asked me what shows I liked to watch. Sitcoms, cartoons, I told him, but
always
reruns. He asked why, and I told him it’s the certainty that I like. A rerun can only end one way, and that’s the way it’s always ended. People can only say the things they’ve always said. There are no variables, no risks. In a world of chaos, reruns are safe harbors where we are in control of our universe. We know everything before it happens, and we laugh not because we’re surprised, but because we knew it all along.

***

I’m shaken up by my session with Aiko, a name that I’ve transferred from the child to the mother. Aiko. My beloved. A beauty like her deserves a name, and if she wouldn’t share it with me, it’s mine to create. I think of her ivory house. I think of her pearl-white life. And then I think of mine.

I shut down my computer and take off the beard and scratch my itchy face. That beard is a killer. I work for SantaCam four weeks in December, and by the end of it my neck is as red as the Santa suit. I look at the poster behind me. It’s a mountaintop, probably in Colorado or Canada, places I’ve never been, but it’s good enough, I suppose. I’ve checked out the other SantaCam actors, and some go all out
 
: actual Christmas trees for backdrops, plastic reindeer. One guy turned his den into a wonderland, and another put felt antlers on his Boston terrier. Me, I put up a poster, but it’s better than nothing. If not for that, the kids would see an efficiency apartment long overdue for a cleaning.

What do kids know of loneliness
 
? Enough. They may not understand it, but they recognize it when they see it. Maybe the poster itself is a giveaway—or maybe just the fact that a forty-year-old man would dress up in a costume and talk to children over the Internet for money. No wonder that kid was crying. Nobody wants to meet a sad Santa.

***

I realize after I take off the Santa suit that I have no clean clothes to change into. Washday passed without notice, and every piece of clothing I own is smelling up the linen basket. It’s got to be ten below outside, and all I’ve got for clean clothes is a pair of Hawaiian shorts and an undershirt. How am I going to walk to the laundromat dressed like that
 
? I realize the Santa suit is the warmest, cleanest thing I own. I put it back on, except for the beard, of course, and carry my linen basket outside. I pass Dave on my way out of the apartment.

“Don’t forget to check your list twice,” he says.

Asshole.

During the two-block walk to the laundromat I imagine what I could have said to Dave. Or better yet, what I should have done. I should have dropped the basket and kicked him in the side of the knee. Right at the joint. The fucker would drop in the snow, howling in pain, and I’d calmly pick up my basket and walk away.

When you have anxiety, the whole world is a weapon. Chain-link, loose rocks, subway platforms. Everywhere, I see the thousand ways I could be the victim of a killing or mutilation—or worse, the ways in which I could be the perpetrator. At the laundromat, I imagine shoving an elderly man into the dryer and loading it up with quarters. A small child could easily fit inside the turbo washer. Maybe two. The violence that could be wrought with laundry detergent and wire clothes hangers is particularly gruesome, and in a pinch, you could just fill the slop sink with water and hold someone’s face under.

These are the movies the Lurking Man shows me that I don’t want to see. The worst thing is that once seen, I can’t forget them. They keep replaying, and all I can do is watch. Imagine the worst thing you can think of—pounding a hammer against your own forearm, or gutting a loved one—and now imagine thinking about that all day. Maybe then you’d understand.

***

It’s officially evening when I get back from the laundromat. I check the mail
 
: two overdue credit card bills and a check from Anomie Inc., the company that runs SantaCam.com. They pay me fifteen cents a minute, which works out to nine bucks an hour. Except, I don’t get paid for every minute I’m logged into the Web host—only the times I’m actually connected with a customer. Some days I’ll be logged in for eight hours, but only get paid for two.