Joshua Ferris - Then We Came to the End

“Jim,” he said.

LARRY HAD FINALLY MANAGED to coax Amber into the server closet on sixty, which felt more like a walk-in refrigerator. The small room was bright, well insulated, and maintained at a steady temperature so the elaborate machines didn’t overheat. Larry and Amber went to the back and hid behind the black metal shelving that supported the hardware, while Larry tried to calm her hyperventilating tears by saying, “Shh.” “Shh,” he kept saying, as she clung to him in their contorted, half-fallen position in the far corner behind the massive wire coils spilling from the well-spaced servers humming like fans on their shelves. “Shh,” he said, as she buried her face into his chest and wept as soundlessly as she possibly could, heaving in his arms with her great waves of irrepressible fear, until his T-shirt had soaked up so many of her tears that he felt them cooling on his skin in the intemperate air. “Shh,” he said, even as a malignant, hopeful thought crept over him, as sinister and troll-like as an evil wish in a fairy tale doomed to end badly: rather than killing them, maybe Tom Mota was actually saving Larry’s life by traumatizing Amber so thoroughly that she would have a miscarriage. Wouldn’t that be a great turn of events. Because if the trauma wasn’t sufficient to rid them of the problem at hand, and if she fell on the wrong divide of the debate, which seemed more and more likely as the days progressed — to put it plainly, if that baby didn’t disappear, Larry Novotny might as well throw open the door and holler at Tom wherever he may be to please come spray them with automatic fire because his life was over. Over. His wife had given birth to a child herself just a little over a year ago, and their marriage was too fragile, too young, too troubled already to withstand the revelation of an infidelity, even a little workday one that had meant nothing, Susanna, swear to god it meant nothing. “Shh,” he kept saying, as he grew more and more angry with Amber and her crying. She was always concentrating on crises happening elsewhere, while paying little attention to the one growing and dividing, dividing and growing within her very body, the body of the woman he had once desperately desired but now had come to mildly hate, the woman he held in his arms as she wept and trembled like a child but as only an adult can tremble, fully aware of the possibilities of violence and death. “Shh,” he said, when what he wanted to say was, “Listen, I really need you to tell me once and for all that you’re having this abortion.” Because if she wanted to avoid carnage and annihilation, if she cared a whit about limiting the destruction, she would do something about those cells activating and organs maturing right there inside of her — otherwise his marriage was in bloody fucking tatters. “Shh,” he said, and this time he added, “Amber, shh. Why are you so hysterical?” She lifted her head off his chest and looked at him. The raw rims of her nose were bright red and her pale cheeks were wet and puffy. “Because I’m scared,” she whispered breathlessly between sobs. “But we don’t even know that he’s out there.” “I’m not scared for me, ” she said. “Can we please stop talking?” But he didn’t want to stop talking. “Who are you scared for?” he asked, with a creeping concern. “Me?” he suggested. “Are you scared for me?” She put her head back on his chest and resumed trembling. “Lynn Mason?” he asked. She wouldn’t reply. He went down the list. Was it Marcia? Benny? Joe Pope? How could any of them be the cause of such emotion?

And then the scales fell from his eyes. The day she had decided to keep the baby had come and gone and he had not known it. Hers were the tears of a mother, her fear a mother’s fear.

TOM WALKED INTO CARL GARBEDIAN’S OFFICE without so much as a knock and sat down across from him. He stared at Carl without saying a word, relishing with a smug smile the confused expression on Carl’s face at the sudden sight of a clown, resolving to say nothing until he spoke. Carl looked, and then looked closer. “Tom?” he said.

“You guessed it,” said Tom.

Carl leaned back warily in his chair and reconnoitered the full scope of Tom’s appearance with a skeptical and hesitant eye. “Tom, why are you dressed like that?” he asked with a quiet temerity.

“Carl, of all people, I would think that you would see the humor in this,” Tom said. “Why aren’t you laughing? Why aren’t you shitting your pants with laughter right now?”

If Carl was tempted right then to shit his pants, the cause was probably not laughter.

“Don’t you think this is funny?” asked Tom. “I come back here dressed as a clown! It’s my homecoming, and look at me! I would think you would think this was funny, Carl.”

Carl managed to make something like a smile and agreed with Tom that it was funny. “It’s just the meds,” he added, by way of explaining the delayed hilarity. “They tend to even me out.”

Tom looked away in perfect disappointment. He turned back and asked, with a petulant and exasperated tone, “Doesn’t anybody have a sense of humor around here?” He was offended once again by our failures of character. “‘TOM, THAT YOU, TOM? YOU COME TO BLOW US ALL AWAY IN A CLOWN OUTFIT, TOM?’ Is that all I get from you guys? Why do you see me dressed like this and take it so goddamn seriously?”

“Because clowns are kind of scary, I guess,” Carl ventured. “To me, at least. And especially when you don’t know why somebody would be dressed up like one.”

“Well, maybe I got me a job as a clown,” said Tom, widening his eyes so their whites really popped amid all that red makeup. “Ever think of that?”

“Is it true?” asked Carl hopefully.

He wanted to call his wife. From the moment the clown came in and sat down Carl knew something was wrong and wanted the opportunity to speak to Marilynn one last time. She was so good. She had the hardest job. She had loved him very much.

Tom situated his backpack on the chair next to him and leaned forward, interlocking his fingers and placing his folded hands on the edge of Carl’s desk. “Let me ask you a serious question, Carl, and you be honest with me, okay? You tell me the truth. You fucks thought I was coming back here for target practice, didn’t you? Honestly — everybody was predicting it, weren’t they?”

Weirded-out, and reluctant to say just about anything, Carl didn’t know the prudent answer.

“Just answer the question, Carl. It’s a simple question.”

“Well,” Carl began, “a few people —”

“I knew it!” cried Tom, jolting out of his chair and looming over Carl’s desk. “I fucking knew it!” He was pointing at Carl as if Carl were the spokesman for all the fucks in the world.

“You didn’t let me finish,” said Carl.

“You fucks actually thought I was coming back here to blow people to bits,” said Tom, shaking his orange curls in grave, exaggerated disappointment and violently tapping Carl’s desk three times. “Unbelievable.”

“Why are you back here, Tom — isn’t that a fair question? And why the clown outfit?”

Tom sat back down again and struck a less aggressive perch on his seat. Carl was grateful for it. Since walking in, Tom seemed to be right up in his face. “I’ll tell you why I’m back here,” he said. “I came to ask Joe Pope to lunch, that’s why. That’s right — Joe. But then this other idea came to me, and it sort of took on a life of its own. So now I’m dressed like a clown. Why? I’ll tell you why I’m dressed like a clown,” he said, reaching over and unzipping his backpack, from which he removed his gun.

Carl wheeled back hastily, all the way to the credenza, and hoisted his clammy palms in the air. “Hey, Tom,” he said, just as tears sprang instinctively to his eyes.