Alix Ohlin - Babylon and Other Stories

From the moment I punched my time card the next morning, everything was chaos. All the techs were gathered in the hallways outside the labs, whispering chemical terms like crazy. I got to the front desk and all fifteen lines were blinking. I took a deep breath and dug in. “Dejun Enterprises, good morning. I'm sorry, Mr. Dejun is not in, would you like to leave a message? I'm sorry, I don't know anything about that. Dejun Enterprises, good morning.”

The next time I looked up it was ten o'clock. Mr. Dejun came thundering in, wearing a dark blue double-breasted suit with gold buttons.

“Don't talk to the press, young Aggie!” he said, grabbing a fistful of While You Were Out slips. “Don't let anyone here talk to the press, either. Just don't talk to them, whatever you do!”

“But I'm the receptionist,” I said. “I have to talk.”

“This is no time for secretarial humor,” said Mr. Dejun sternly. “Now listen, I'm out to everybody except my lawyer.”

“Dejun Enterprises, good morning,” I answered. All fifteen lines rang constantly. All the newspapers and radio stations and TV stations in town called. It was weird to talk to people I usually watched on TV at night. It wasn't just the press on the phone, though, it was people who'd driven through the area around the time the spill had taken place. I took down all their names and numbers. Pink messages piled up around me like leaves. My voice cracked and went dry. No one came to the front to see me, or talk ball, or tell me what was going on. For all I knew, I was the only one there.

“Listen,” a man on the phone said. “I have a young child who was exposed to this stuff. He's four years old, my son. Please, isn't there anything you can tell me?”

“Hold on, please,” I said. I picked up another line and hung up on the person to free it up, then called Sophia's extension and asked her what I should say to people with young children who'd been exposed.

“Take a message, for chrissake,” said Sophia.

I could hear her exhaling smoke. “But what about his kid?”

“Take a message,” she said, and I did.

“Is someone really going to call me back?” he asked.

“Of course they will,” I told him convincingly, knowing it was a lie. Then I took off the headset and walked outside and caught the bus home. There was no one at the house. I walked around the living room. I looked at the pictures on the mantel — my grandparents, my parents' wedding picture, me on vacation in L.A., me graduating from junior high school, me and Mom and Dad sitting on the living room couch. There were more pictures of me than of anything else. I picked up the phone and called work. Sophia answered, and I hung up. I went upstairs and crawled into bed.

I woke up at night and lay there for a while, trying to decide whether to just keep on sleeping. I could hear the rhythmic sounds of the ball game. I was hungry, so I went downstairs. Mr. Dejun was sitting on the couch in the TV room, watching the game with Mom. He was still wearing his navy blue suit, minus the tie and the jacket, which were folded neatly over one of the armchairs. He'd taken his shoes off and had his feet up on the table.

“Hi, Frank,” I said.

“Aggie,” said my mom. Sitting on the couch, Mr. Dejun came up to her shoulder, which was bare and pale. Ordinarily, by this time in the summer she'd have freckles there, from mornings spent outside gardening. But not this year. She was wearing a sundress and her eyes were shiny.

“I was worried about you, young Aggie,” said Mr. Dejun. “I thought I'd come by and see how you're doing.”

“Fantastic,” I said. I didn't think he was a very good liar, or would be a decent receptionist. I went into the kitchen and got a beer. I was sort of expecting someone to follow me in there, but nobody did. I went out the back door and sat on the steps, sipping my beer and looking at the stars. It was a nice, clear night. The phone rang, three times, so I sighed and got up. If there was one thing I couldn't stand hearing that summer, it was the sound of a ringing phone.

“Dejun Enterprises. I mean, hello. Shit.”

“Aggie, it's me,” said my dad.

I couldn't think of anything to say and so I didn't. Instead, I carried the phone back outside with me. “Ahoy, matey,” I finally said.

“What?”

“Never mind. How's Margaret?”

“How are you, Ag? Are you all right?”

“Who wants to know?” I said.

“I understand you're upset,” Dad said. “I understand you're mad. I'm sorry I haven't called. I've had some things to work out, do you know what I mean?”

There was silence on the line. I was listening for the game, trying to get the score and the inning, but couldn't hear it anymore. I drank some of my beer, gulping it noisily down my throat.

“Ag, sometimes adults and kids get the same sorts of feelings about their lives — you know, um, powerlessness, feeling trapped and that kind of thing.”

“Are you speaking hypothetically?” I said.

He took a deep breath and let it out. I imagined Margaret in the background, giving him big, encouraging nods with her big, wide head.

“What I mean is, sometimes adults don't know what to do, like kids don't always know what to do. Do you understand what I mean?”

I looked up. The stars blurred in my vision and I shook my head a little bit to clear it. “Sure I do,” I said. “I just have one question — who's the kid in this scenario, you or me?”

“You're so sarcastic,” he said in a soft voice. “You sound just like your mother.”

“It's not my fault,” I said.

“I know,” he said. “I know. Okay, listen.” Suddenly he was all business. “I hear you had a bad day at work. Do you want to talk about it?”

“Who told you that?”

“Your mother called and told me.”

“Oh,” I said. I didn't even know she knew how to get in touch with him. Tears slid down the receiver and collected in the base of it, cool against my cheek, sliding into the little holes.

“Ag, your mother knows, and I hope you know too, that I love you more than anything. That's one thing we see eye-to-eye on, and that'll never change, no matter what else happens.”

I felt like this was the worst thing I'd ever heard. The King of Kohlrabi was in my living room drinking a beer in his socks, and I had to talk to my dad on the phone with a lesbian who wasn't a lesbian listening in the background. Somewhere in the desert, green slime was oozing toward families as they slept. What else was happening all around me, all the time, and I couldn't do anything to stop it or even slow it down.

“Dad,” I told him, “Mom's inside watching baseball with Mr. Dejun.”

He said, “Oh? So how's the game?”

I sighed, and then the sigh turned into a hiccup.

“You like the Dodgers this year?” he asked.

“Their bullpen's a disaster,” I said.

“You've really been following? Aggie, there might be hope for you yet.”

“Maybe,” I said. “Are you coming back?”

“I don't know,” my dad said. “I just don't know.”

“Okay.” I stood up and looked at the night sky, the sound of cicadas throbbing around me. “I have to go now,” I said.

“Listen, Aggie, take down my number, okay? Take it down so you can call me whenever you want. Do you have a pen?”

“Sure,” I said. I didn't. But I closed my eyes and listened carefully to his voice in my ear, as if I were taking the most urgent message. As he told me the numbers I traced them, small and invisible, in the air in front of me, then let them go out into the night.

This is a preliminary report for a 65-year-old Caucasian man who entered complaining of shortness of breath.