Joshua Ferris - Then We Came to the End

She hung up the phone. “Her operation was scheduled for nine,” she said. “The doctor was prepped and waiting. They called her at home, they called her at work. The nurse sounded irritated. She wanted to know when I wanted to reschedule.”

The Thing to Do and the Place to Be

THE NIGHT BEFORE THE OPERATION she has no association dinners to go to, no awards ceremonies, no networking functions. A plan comes to her impromptu in the back of the cab as she steps in and instructs the driver to take the Inner Drive. She envisions her sofa, her two cats, something good ordered in, and a bottle of wine she’s been saving. They ask you not to eat anything twelve hours before, but honestly, that’s unreasonable, isn’t it — your last chance at a normal meal for how long?

She brought no work home with her, not tonight, because work would not be an appropriate way to spend the evening. Yet whenever she’s without it, even for the duration of a cab ride, she starts to feel anxious. Luckily it’s a short ride. She pays the cabbie and steps out in front of some serious real estate. She lives in the top-floor condo overlooking the winding coastal edge of Lake Michigan.

The doorman stands at his post in the lobby; they exchange greetings and she heads up the elevator. Inside the condominium, she slips off one heel while hanging her keys on the hook. She slips off the other one, and with two heels in one hand, walks down the hall to where her pajamas await. Getting into pajamas — now that’s appropriate. Here is a good place to be, she tells herself, right here in this apartment, and getting into her pink hospital scrubs and jersey zip-up — that’s the right thing to be doing.

At the kitchen table she pours herself a glass of wine. She reflects on the day, it can’t be helped. Chris Yop broke down when she delivered the news. If Martin were here, she’d say to him, A grown man crying! Would you do that? Of course you wouldn’t! Let me tell you something, I think I’ve grown immune to the emotion involved. His crying? It didn’t faze me one bit. You want to know when I feel something? It’s the person who says to me, Lynn, you’ve been terrific to work for, and I understand you’re just doing what you have to do — that’s who I feel sorry for. Those people kill me. A grown man crying? Uh, no. And listen to this! An hour later, he shows up for a meeting. I come in, he’s sitting in my office. I just fired him, he’s sitting in my office. I said to him, Chris, you have to leave. God knows I can’t have them sticking around!

Wait — did she just say that last part out loud? A hazard of living alone. One of the cats is looking at her from the floor. Or is it just a look of hunger? She reminds herself — Martin’s not actually here, Lynn. “But you are, aren’t you, Friday,” she says, bending to scruff up the cat’s black coat. The cat bow-backs and asks for more. “Yes, you are,” she says, “and so am I, and so who needs him?” She straightens up and takes another sip of wine. Look at all of the chairs! A total of four chairs at the kitchen table! Why do I need four chairs? It’s important that she not second-guess anything, now that she’s home. She’s home, she’s in for good. Stop thinking, stop thinking, stop thinking.

She wonders where Martin is. Is he at work? What time is it? Six-forty-five, of course he’s at work. Stop thinking. He’ll be at work for hours. Stop it. Lynn Mason, on the other hand, knocked off early today. Two very important new business pitches, absolutely crucial to the agency’s future, and strategies for both still need to be worked out with the account people, but Lynn left the office at a reasonable hour, to come home to her cats, to spend the evening before her operation in a relaxing manner, unwinding with a little television, going to bed early and getting a good night’s sleep. What could be better, more desirable than that? Don’t think about Martin. And if she’s tempted, remember — it’s Martin at work. Just a man at his desk, grumpy, nasty with the day’s odors, engaged in some dull legal matter. Consider how undesirable his company would be right now. How could she want that, with all she’s got going on right here — the Chinese food on its way, and so many chairs to choose from.

The doorman calls up from the lobby. Her delivery has arrived. Thank god, send him up. If he’s cute, she’s going to seduce him. No joke. It’s done, it’s decided. Think she has time to play games tonight? No, if he’s in the least way cute, she’s going down on him in the hallway. Well, not in the hallway. Why don’t you come inside? Will you shut the door for me, please? Delivery boys must dream of this. Maybe choose different pajamas? The pink scrubs and zip-up — not very mistress-of-the-night. She needs a robe, nothing underneath. Because it all sounds like a joke until you understand that someone has to be the last one to hold her breast in his mouth — tonight’s it — and she’d really rather it not be Martin.

But he comes and goes. Young Asian, has his charms, but she loses the nerve. She takes the food over to the couch. The initial comfort of a seat on the sofa — yes, this is the right place to be, right here, and turning on the TV the right thing to be doing. She eats her dinner and drinks her wine while watching an episode of The Simpsons, and a half hour later her conviction is still nearly intact.

On her third glass of wine, she repeats it to herself: Here is a good place to be, right here, and this thing the right thing to be. . wonder what Martin’s doing? He’s working. Lynn, you know this. He’ll be there for hours. Think about something else. Wonder. . wonder what movies are playing. She likes to see a movie when she has the time. Always better to see them with someone, though. Alone, there is that awkward ten minutes between the time you arrive and the time they dim the lights for the previews when against all reason you believe everyone in the theater is staring at you because you are a woman alone at the movies. It’s probably a good thing she’s here on the sofa, rather than waiting self-consciously for a movie to begin. This is the right place to be. Unless the alternative was a movie theater with Martin.

Television isn’t working out. She turns it off, gets up, makes the cold transition from carpet to tile — but what is there in the kitchen for someone looking to indulge? No food for twelve hours my ass. This could be it. Let’s see — some freezer-burned ice cream. What’s in the cupboard? A third of a bag of mini marshmallows. For the life of her she can’t remember buying those. She’s not interested in any of it — though when she turns her attention to cleaning the bedroom closet, she does take the ice cream with her. It’s a spoon-bender. What compels her to do that, to clean? She stabs at the tub after every new pile of mess she drags from the closet out into the tidy room. It will be nice, she thinks, to have a nice clean closet during my recovery.

Fifteen minutes later she does not want to be cleaning the closet. On this night of all nights, cleaning the closet? Does she have such a deficient imagination, that’s all she can come up with? Imagine if one night in a lifetime were looked upon as a scientist might look upon it, or some other life form studying our species, and from that one night, the worth of the entire life were derived. Well, she’d rather hers not be evaluated by the TV she’s watched or the closet she hasn’t cleaned. Besides, that goddamn ice cream requires a pickax. Abandoning everything, she returns to the kitchen and finishes the bottle of wine.

MARTIN IS FORTY-FIVE and has never been married. His parents divorced when he was young and he never forgave the institution for any of its false comforts. He goes on and on about it, until finally she tells him, “Okay, I got it the first eight hundred times, you’re not the marrying type.” Still, he needed someone to go to Maui with. His firm kept a luxury box at Wrigley, there wasn’t a restaurant in the city he couldn’t afford — he wasn’t about to sit in them alone. He needed companionship, he needed sex. But perhaps that paints too one-sided a portrait of Martin. He could have dated only younger women, girls practically, paralegals and secretaries without a brain in their heads, attracted to his partnership, his money, the broad chest under his starched shirts. Instead he was with her, someone his own age, someone whose professional achievements he respected. And last August, he spent a week in Florida, an entire week in Cocoa Beach, taking her old dad around. Eating at five-thirty, speaking loud so he could hear — the whole routine. He never complained. That was something, wasn’t it — giving of his vacation time, meeting her family? And once in a while, he would show up with flowers, he would come up behind her and kiss her neck, and that would be enough to look past the birthday he forgot, or the dates he’d have to cancer because of work.