Peter Liu - Watering Heaven

I don’t exist either , I wrote back. No one hears me and I don’t hear anyone else.

symbolic deafness and muteness dont count.

How do you know I’m not really mute or deaf? I wrote. You can’t hear me and you can never tell if I’ve heard anything you said. I wondered if that last line would provoke her but I decided to give it to her anyway.

She laughed soundlessly. thats true… why are you here?

I thought about it, thought about it for a good long time.

I’m here because I can no longer hear myself. I can’t hear anything. Everything’s so distant and alien… but I’m hoping I can remember my voice by listening to others.

any luck so far?

I sighed and shook my head. All I hear are echoes that faded a long time ago.

She held my hand again. at least you can hear the echoes, she wrote with her other hand.

I gripped her fingers. Then in a moment of inspiration, reached across and kissed her softly. Her lips felt like dead peaches. She was shocked; her eyes dilated wide. She broke out into an awkward smile, her fingers nervously tap-dancing across my face. A few minutes later, her guardian arrived.

Tomorrow? I wrote.

She nodded.

When I returned the next day, she wasn’t there. I searched several more days for her. But she was nowhere in sight.

Maybe, like she said, she’d finally vanished.

IX.

Unfortunately, my essence too was just a shard, a sublimation of everything I’d wanted.

It was evening and I found a hidden area in a park where I could sleep. I guess it was possible for me to find a home again, possible for me to try to get a job — to try and live a ‘worthy’ life. I remembered one night shortly after my wife left me, I was sitting in front of my computer surfing the web. There was a mosquito flying around, which I tried to crush with my hands. I walked to my bathroom, and on the way back, noticed a dead butterfly on the floor. I picked it up and realized it was actually just a leaf cut into pieces. For no explicable reason, I smashed the wall and threw my CDs and DVDs and flung plates at the glass table my ex-wife had purchased. Death was the normal end for everyone: there, and only there, would my search for normalcy end.

I.

I didn’t realize you could get fired for mistaking a really masculine female manager for a man. I said, “Mr. Blah and blah, can I possibly blah and blah?”

She replied, “Excuse me, did you just say mister to me?”

“Yeah, why?”

“I’m a woman, that’s why.”

I swear it was a perfectly innocent mistake. But that’s not the way she decided to take it. Two hours later, HR called me in and told me my employment was being terminated. Twelve years of sleepless service, working around the clock to analyze esoteric graphs while kissing ass, and some college grad fresh out of school got me fired

My wife didn’t empathize. She was off sleeping with some guy she’d met at church. My daughter didn’t want to speak to me since she was going through the teenage phase where it wasn’t cool to talk with her parents. All my buddies were on leashes at home, no longer allowed out of the house without advance notice. I popped some popcorn and searched the Internet for job listings. Then thought about how tenuous and flimsy even the closest of relationships could be. One misspoken word, one misplaced gesture, a drunken outburst or a shy quiescence, then the closest bond shattering like a box of broken light bulbs.

I sent my resume to twenty companies. Got calls back from eleven of them.

All the interviews went well. The typical questions revolved around the extent of my experience, what my skills were, what I enjoyed doing, miscellaneous bits of info like whether I played softball. I’d been to a million of these since I’d lost my job and I felt more comfortable there than I did talking to my own wife. The nuances of a game subject to the inquiries of the slave master, a firm, a corporation, a meandering salesmen, trial by majority decision, conviction by a few proper friends, the morning stink of mints several notches too strong.

There was the morning arrival, a woman from HR called to the lobby. She would wear a pristine business suit, smiling with gestures practiced every morning in the mirror, firm handshake, nice to meet you, the smell of dry cleaned carpets pervading. Would you like coffee or an espresso? Do you like it with sugar? The ambassador coaxing through intimated sexuality and a professional servility that wreaked an awakening havoc on an otherwise unsuspecting body. A conference room and an oak table, monitors for teleconferencing on the wall. Streams of managers and directors and supervisors pouring through. Names remembered as quickly as they were forgotten. Assessing who really had authority and who was just a figurehead. A vigorous greeting, a bright expression, avoiding negativity in general while crafting a politically savvy answer to both humor and impress.

When I got a phone call from one of the most prestigious firms in the country, I was thrilled. A buddy of mine had a sister with a friend whose wife had a nephew that worked there. He was the one who’d turned in my resume.

“The job is so yours,” he said. “The guy who has the position is a total freak they’re gonna fire. My boss saw your resume and thought you’d be perfect. The interview is just a formality. Remember to ask for the number you wanted.”

I thanked him profusely.

The next morning, the interview went more smoothly than I could have imagined. The CEO of the company was the first to meet me.

“So what do we need to do to convince you to come?” he asked.

And from there, we talked about everything but work. Thirty minutes later, the lady from HR had to remind him that his allotted time was over. He left five minutes later, at which point another manager entered. The day went seamlessly. They weren’t asking questions about me. They were asking when I could start. After my last scheduled meeting ended at 4:30, the manager said, “I’ll go let Gena in HR know we’re done… I really hope you decide to join us.”

I was grinning. Not only was I getting a pretty big pay spike, but I felt I was going to finally get the respect I deserved. I was so excited, I was even tempted to call my wife. As I flirted with the thought, another manager came in the door.

“Hi,” I said, smiling, putting out my hand to shake his.

He took a seat, ignoring my hand, then said, “My entire family got into a car accident and died this morning. My wife, my two kids, and my brother are dead.”

I stared at him, startled. “I’m sorry to hear that,” I said.

“No you’re not,” he snapped, then tapped his pen on the desk while looking over my resume. “So I take it you’re the guy they’re hiring to replace me?”

“I hadn’t heard anything about that, but…”

“Spare me the fake sympathy. Two weeks ago, my grandpa got gored to death by a pack of bulls. A week before that, my older sister died of breast cancer. Let me ask you something — what is the meaning of life?”

“Excuse me?”

“What is the meaning of life?”

“I… I don’t know. I haven’t… I haven’t really considered it in a while.”

“Why’s that?”

“Uhh… the question just hasn’t come up.”

“You’re saying you haven’t even thought about the purpose of your existence?”

“Should I have?” I wasn’t sure what his tactic was. Was he trying to see how I handled pressure?

“You don’t think it’s important that you figure out why you’re living and why you do the things you do?”