Carmiel Banasky - The Suicide of Claire Bishop

“I don’t want to see here what happened at your old job,” he says.

Mr. Fox doesn’t understand that my last employer and I simply had different priorities and I was fired for doing too beautiful of a job. I was a network setup technician, and I can’t help it if the most aesthetically pleasing connection topologies aren’t the most efficient. I once linked up a partial mesh to a distributed bus network, all within the macro topology of a ring network! Arranging a conversation between computers is as delicate as any social interaction. There are always at least three players, never two, even if that third player is an Ethernet hub or an ex-girlfriend or a baby between a married couple or, say, an illness that both expands and distorts communication.

I nudge Mr. Fox’s wastebasket with my toe. It’s filled with empty cans of mandarin oranges, which he eats every day at his desk. I want to ask if he believes in God like Dan and Jules. But he’s not the same kind of Jewish.

Mr. Fox also knows the system is irrational. The problem is that the patterns are not really patterns. Which, in and of itself, is a pattern. As a hive we follow trends, but if you zoom in on the micro level we’re unpredictable, erratic. What sense does it make for a person to one day want pants that are comfortable and roomy and then wear tapered things that pull at the ankles? To want a little yappy lap dog and then a Labrador Retriever? There is little logic behind our consumption. I search out patterns that are not there.

Mr. Fox picks up a pair of scissors from his desk. Opening and closing them, steel scraping steel. They’re big and industrial. He looks at them, hungry; he runs his hand over them.

So that’s how I’ll die. That’s how they would have me killed. At the bitter, shining end of Mr. Fox’s office scissors.

“I’ve had a lot on my mind,” I say. “I’ll try harder.”

He puts the scissors down, smiles. “That’s all I want to hear. Let’s see what you have by the end of the day.”

Looking at him, I think of a zebra being chased by a lion, the kind of quick scene you’d catch flipping past the Discovery channel, but I’m not sure which animal he’s supposed to be. Mr. Fox is sometimes afraid I can read his mind.

• speak to someone when my listeners start interrupting

• make a list or catalogue in your head of real things around you

• hum or sing quietly to yourself or listen to music

• count your breath

• repeat a mantra to yourself: I AM OKAY, I AM SAFE, I AM A GOOD PERSON

• read out loud

• do a task that requires your full attention such as housework, reading, busywork

• change your environment, if inside go outside, change rooms, if outdoors take a walk

• use an earplug in one ear, then take it out

Sometimes, Dear Listeners, you have been mean to me. I keep this list in my drawer for those moments. But it’s not that simple: music listens to me instead of me to it. I wonder what people like me thought about before technology. What were they scared of before radios and speakers and computers could eavesdrop in?

But I haven’t heard from you in a while. I wonder where you are now. I wonder about you a lot. For instance, are you omniscient? Do you have an all-encompassing calendar for a brain? Some people, I know, would call you a part of me, but it’s more complicated than all that.

I’m unsupervised most of the day, and that’s when I make things. I write lists and construct shrines. I drew a visual list of the organs in my body and called it “Ten things I hate about myself.” It made me think about what I actually hate about myself. And I make shrines for my brain. Two of them side by side, right and left. And a third shrine to be placed between the two hemispheres, for the disease inside.

Or I see how few clicks it takes to move from one site on data mining to one about Nicolette, only following hyperlinks. I start small, browsing sites that could be considered relevant to my job, the newest software, consumer reviews. Which lead me to technological design, graphic design, industrial design, industrial art, site-specific art and, finally, Nicolette.

Last week I graphed out my first meetings with Nicolette. She always seemed to appear out of nowhere, like she truly hadn’t existed before. There were so many first meetings — the hospital, the car lots, my apartment, another time in line for standing-room-only opera tickets. Normally, when you first meet and learn about a person, it’s like the way you learn to see a painting — all the information is available from the very first sighting, but the significance and interconnections only become apparent by registering the data over time. First meeting a person is an influx of this data (i.e. how she wrinkles her nose, her favorite band, childhood traumas). But the rate of new data acquisition about a person is a limit approaching infinity towards zero data-influx.

But in charting Nicolette, you’ll find that her line doesn’t decrease and level off at all. Every time we met I learned it all new! Starting and staying at maximum data influx.

But Mr. Fox found the chart and I had to convince him “Nicolette” was a scenario. None of that today.

But none of that today. Mr. Fox watches me through his office window. It is rare, and almost comforting, to not have to convince myself that no one is actually watching me.

The card the Hasidim gave me is tucked into the corner of my monitor. Google says the gallery is in Chelsea, a good walk from work. I compose an email:

Dear Nicolette, I am just checking in. I hope you are all right. Gimme a call .

Dear Nicolette, I’m sure you’re fine, of course you are, because there’s no reason you wouldn’t be, but just in case

Dear Nicolette, please know I’m here for you. You know where to reach me. But if not, here is my number and address .

Where is she? I used to be able to time-travel by conjuring her body. But now I no longer feel her. Maybe she’s in India. Or Israel or Home Depot or the moon. If I’m right, clap twice. I try to think straight into her mind. All I find is an ocean empty of her.

She never texted back or answered my calls. I tried her six times — five if one doesn’t count the number four, which I don’t sometimes. But whatever art is hanging in Chelsea has to be a clue as to what happened to her that day. A clue leading me (to me to me to me) to her.

There’s the breath from the AC coating the office; there’s the secret calendar of naked girls in the men’s bathroom; there’s the powder soap dispenser and fingers that smell like powder soap clacking away at keyboards; there are the keyboards clicking like hundreds of watches all going at different times.

Lunch by myself in the break room is as quick as I can slurp my cup-of-noodles. Food with more hyphens than nutritional value.

I spend the rest of my forty-five minutes, like any genuine loser, hiding in the bathroom. It’s quiet in here except for some people fighting somewhere about their marriage. I can hear them through the vents. I’ve spread my pills out on the little metal shelf attached to the mirror above the sink. One pill twice daily, by mouth, 5mg apiece. I’ll have to refill my prescription soon. Without even looking, I know there are sixteen pills left. I’ve been thinking about that number a lot, and I’ve been thinking even more about cutting back. I’ve been feeling good. Really good. Last month, the doctor said that eventually I could lower my dosage, that we’d talk about it, but I haven’t seen him since. I’m one of the lucky ones, he says. I’ve taken to the medication and have been doing well for eight months mostly symptom-free. Really well.

I might drop all my pills down the drain right now, because accidents happen. In the mirror, the pills are doubled. All lined up in salute, they spell ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ. I pluck one from the middle and pop it. Now they spell: ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.