Richard Lange - Dead Boys - Stories

Louise lifts the magazine she’s reading so there’s room for the tray on the table. It takes a minute to get everything arranged to her liking, and then she says, “There’s a quiz in here that tells you how long you’re going to live.”

“I don’t believe in that stuff,” I reply, unwrapping my McMuffin.

“It’s not a horoscope; it’s a series of health-related questions. You can’t not believe in it.”

“Then what I mean is, I don’t care.”

“Do you smoke? No.”

“I’m not cooperating.”

“It’s not like I can’t answer them all for you. Do you exercise? If so, how often?”

“Louise, who says I’m ever going to die?”

She puts down the magazine and opens her juice. “Forget it,” she says.

My coffee steams up my glasses. I wait for them to clear so I can read the newspaper. There’s an article about an earthquake in India. They interview the guy in charge of burning the bodies. “There will be many more ghosts after this,” he says. “But I won’t be afraid. I have met ghosts so many times by now that I think I’m one of them.”

Louise’s cell phone rings. It’s her boss, the one I think she’s fucking. A UPS guy comes in, and a real, live sailor. The girl with the silver tooth takes a break. She walks outside and sits on the curb, poking at something with the toe of her shoe. I had a dream last night that they brought back an old TV show, and it made everybody happy.

YOU CAN SMELL the ocean at the airport, and seagulls plunder the trash. When you take off, you can look down and watch the waves crawl toward the shore. They seem like they’re barely moving from up that high. Louise is jittery. Maybe it’s the coffee. Her hand shakes when she twists the rearview mirror down to check her hair. She complains that my driving makes her nauseous. We fight the way people do in movies, always coming close but never landing a blow.

The streetlights go out as I pull up to the terminal. For an instant everything is hot pink. I pop the trunk and help Louise with her bag. She fits everything she needs into a single carry-on. That’s one of the things I love about her: She’s so practical despite her neuroses.

“Good-bye, husband,” she says.

“Good-bye, wife.”

A quick kiss, and she’s off. I watch her until she’s out of sight — my own ritual. I’m losing her. She slipped through my fingers somehow.

I TOOK MY cock out in the elevator once, coming back from lunch, just to do it. I unzipped my pants as soon as the doors closed and let it dangle until the bell rang for my floor. If the receptionist had looked up, she might have caught me getting myself together.

The corporate structure here is labyrinthian. They always reorganize when someone new gets to the top. My team is currently part of the production department. For the past two months we’ve been coordinating the development of a print campaign for a new brand of yogurt. There’s the team leader, then me, then three facilitators. They used to be called assistants.

The facilitators sit in cubicles outside my office. There’s talk that they’re going to move everyone into cubicles, to improve communication. I’ll quit if that happens. You can hear your neighbors sighing in those things, you can smell their perfume. If they catch a cold, you’re going to get it. People sneak up on you.

The company leases the entire tenth floor. My window faces north, floor to ceiling. In the winter I close the door, turn my chair around, and watch the storms blow in. When Malibu burns, I can see that, too. I once hired a guy who quit after two weeks. “I don’t know how you hack being in this box all day,” he said. He left to spend more time painting. You can’t rely on rich kids.

This morning I received a memo from the personnel department, regarding one of the VPs, Kress. His wife died, and he’s been out of the office for a month. The memo relayed his request that nobody mention his loss when he returns. We are not to hug him, console him, or otherwise say or do anything out of the ordinary. He would appreciate this very much.

One of the facilitators pokes her head in, Heidi, a skinny girl with moles.

“Donna will be late.”

“You’re kidding,” I reply, flatly.

Donna is our team leader. She’s often late. Her children are her excuse. No one questions it. This one’s sick, that one’s got the shits.

“She asked me to tell you.”

“Bless her heart.”

“Can you initial these layouts?”

If Donna goes, I have a feeling they’ll skip me and promote Heidi. She comes in early and stays past six; I air out my dick in the elevator. Her hair is a strange color, and I saw her crying in her car after the Christmas party. Someone said she’s religious.

The phone rings. It’s Adam, from accounting.

“What’s up with that Kress memo? What a narcissist.”

Adam keeps porno in his desk drawer. He smokes dope in the stairwell. We aren’t exactly friends — I wouldn’t loan him money, and he wouldn’t ask — but we cut each other some slack.

“Let’s go in on a wreath,” I say. “Have it waiting for him.”

“Know what I mean?”

“This place.”

“Your old lady’s gone, right? We’ll have dinner.”

Two years ago Adam ran over a jogger and killed her. The woman darted in front of his Explorer, and there was nothing he could do. Even the cops said so. This was before we met. Someone who knew him then told me he wasn’t the same person afterward. One night while we were drinking, I asked Adam about that. “Of course it changed me,” he said. “I’d been waiting all my life for an excuse to fuck up.”

LOUISE SHOPS OFF a list, but I like to freestyle. When she’s out of town, I buy Whatever I want: sardines, Ruffles and onion dip, pot pies, quarts of Olde English “800.” They’re getting ready for St. Patrick’s Day at the store. Lots of cardboard shamrocks and leprechauns. If you believe the supermarket, we’re always celebrating something.

Only two checkstands are open, and both have long lines. I pick up the Enquirer . The woman behind me bumps me with her cart. I ignore her. She bumps me again. “Listen,” I say. She grimaces apologetically, all of her teeth showing. People often think I’m angry when I’m not. Something about me is too hard.

The days are getting longer. There’s still an orange glow in the west when I leave the store. A hippie asks me to sign a petition. I refuse, but I try to be nice about it. Moths circle the lights in the parking lot, heroic in their single-mindedness.

A YEAR OR so ago I had a problem with earthquakes. The big one seemed to be imminent. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t swallow. My health insurance would have covered a shrink, but there was no way I wanted those kinds of claims floating around. I paid for it out of my own pocket.

She was nice enough, and I liked her office. The lighting or the furniture or something was very relaxing. Pretty good for a random pick out of the yellow pages. I told her that I felt something cataclysmic was about to happen, and this was keeping me awake nights.

“Do you see yourself as being in danger, or others?” she asked.

“I just want to get rid of the insomnia,” I said. “I have to work.”

She set me up with weekly appointments and a prescription for Xanax. I never returned, though; I didn’t want to answer any questions. Her receptionist called once or twice, but I pretended to be someone else and said I was out of the country. Louise was traveling a lot then. I went through the pills in a couple of weeks. Three of those and a beer — what a tremendous buzz. In the end there was no earthquake and nobody got hurt. That was good, I guess.

SOMEWHERE BETWEEN THE restaurant and the titty bar, Adam tells me he’s going to kill himself. He’s driving because he’s less drunk than I am. First he gets quiet, then he says, “I’m never happy. I want to die.” We’re on Sunset Boulevard. Dreams have come true on this very street.