Andrew Ervin - Burning Down George Orwell's House

He was going to do it. Of course he was going to do it. Fuck. He would deal with the personal ramifications later. He took out his phone and texted Bud:

I’M IN.

Even if he did hate himself for the rest of his life, there would be plenty of time to deal with that and plenty of scotch to help him do so.

Bud wrote back right away:

I KNOW

Ray powered off his phone and went home. The apartment smelled like old coffee. His face stared back at him from the metal door of the refrigerator. It had a million questions. What is it you want? Where are you going? It was insane — he had just received an enormous promotion and yet it was the worst day of his professional career. He filled a rocks glass with ice, covered the cubes with his first scotch of the afternoon, and stirred it with a finger, which he sucked dry.

TUESDAY AFTERNOON ANNOUNCED ITSELF with an excess of sunlight and another bad dream about some hooded figure hammering hot iron nails into his eyelids. An idea had come to him in the night so he texted Bud on his way out the door:

HELP ME COMMIT GRAND LARCENY. COME OVER TMW NIGHT. BRING JUMPER CABLES.

It wasn’t really stealing, but Bud was more likely to help if he thought there was something illegal involved. The response came right away:

HELLZ YES

In the sunlit coffee shop, serenaded by world music so goddamn redemptive it bordered on torture, Ray inched forward in line. Since moving to the neighborhood he had come in every morning on his way to work and had never seen the same barista twice. A gargantuan child strapped into a stroller behind him kicked at him while its mother negotiated on the phone with a series of unwilling nannies and babysitters. By her fifth call, she pleaded and tripled her usual payout, but to no avail. Zithers and harps and a chorus of ethereal female voices conspired in Icelandic or Welsh or Hindi to beat him into more senseless consumption. Steam hissed from a machine behind the counter as if the whole place was about to explode and take a city block with it. It would have felt so good to turn around and kick that little fucker right back. His pre-ordered coffee waited for him to get to the front of the line.

He sat in the front windows, the shop’s sunniest spot. The table teetered and threatened to spill his drink. He removed his favorite, disintegrating white oxford and draped it over his chair. His T-shirt said OIL HOGG in dripping letters. He was halfway through his coffee when one of Helen’s colleagues from the Department of English walked in. He had met Dr. Walter Pentode at any number of department functions. He looked out of breath. The man sweated even on the most blustery days of winter, and on a day like this one the stains on his shirt looked like deflated basketballs tucked in his armpits. The sunlight made his freckled head glisten beneath his comb-over. A scholar of Victorian literature, Pentode insisted upon speaking in air quotes in order to maintain a winking distance from the world beyond his fleshy borders and to avoid intellectual commitments of any kind. He came from old money and was said to be worth millions. He was also counted among the nation’s foremost experts on operetta librettos. He kept an apartment in Vienna and as a matter of routine flew around the globe for the sake of attending his prissy concerts. He oozed stable mediocrity; academia was a hobby that suited him perfectly. He squeezed past a few tables and joined the end of the line with a huff.

Ray didn’t want to be spotted so he ducked his head and turned his chair to face the window, but a shadow fell over the table. Pentode loomed above, holding a grasso-sized iced chocolate-malt coffee and a trio of crumbling selections from the dessert case. Ray’s table was one of the few with an unoccupied chair.

“Hello, Raymond. Fancy seeing you here. Do you mind if I sit?”

“I—”

“I’m so sorry I’m late!” Flora said. She maneuvered herself around Pentode, then dropped her messenger bag onto the floor and flopped onto the chair. She had on a red hoodie and matching sweatpants. She had appeared just in time and read the scene perfectly.

Ray smiled at Pentode. “I’m terribly sorry, but this is my colleague Flora. We’re holding an important business meeting right now.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Flora said. She had a habit of wearing multiple men’s colognes at once, which she would rub on from magazine samples. Pentode’s mouth twitched, sending wave-like ripples through his jowls. “And later, we’re going to Ray’s apartment to have consensual sex.”

Pentode dropped his coffee, splattering the sneakers at the surrounding tables with syrupy goo. People stopped mid-sentence to stare. Ray’s white shirt took the brunt of the blast. Pentode stammered something incomprehensible through his bacon-greased lips.

“She’s … she’s only joking, Dr. Pentode, I assure you. Tell him you’re only joking.”

Pentode stared down at the stains on his boat shoes. His mouth continued to open and close like that of a puffer fish about to be rendered into fugu.

“I’m only joking,” Flora said. She raised her arms to high-five Ray over the table. “It won’t be consensual at all!” she yelled. “Woo, yeah!”

“That’s … that’s terribly inappropriate,” Ray said. He covered his mouth with his fingers, but a small laugh leaked out. It wasn’t funny, but he couldn’t help it. Pentode turned and left a trail of coffee-colored footprints. Flora, fake pouting, dropped her arms. She had been out of line, but laughter rattled in Ray’s lungs. “Holy shit,” he said. He couldn’t breathe. He laughed because he could, and he kept laughing because he couldn’t help it. Pentode’s version of events wouldn’t go over very well with Helen. “And aren’t you supposed to be at work?”

“Aren’t you?” Flora asked. “I snuck out to go to the gym.”

“I’m glad you’re here — I’d actually like to talk to you about your future.”

“My future? That sounds serious.”

“I’m building a team for a new project, and I want to bring you on full time.”

“That’s very sweet, but I have other plans. I’ve decided to quit. As soon as I can save up some money, I’m leaving the country. I want to open a battered women’s shelter/art gallery in the slums of Caracas, maybe start a non-profit to hand out reusable feminine hygiene products to impoverished girls. Not to be rude, but I don’t want any more part of your corporate death culture.”

“I respect that more than you probably realize, but can we at least talk about it?”

“I’ll hear you out, but trust me — I’m going to say no. Let’s get dinner tonight.”

“Dinner?”

“Yes, it’s the meal that happens in the nighttime. I’ll meet you at your place at seven.”

“My place? Are we really going to have consens—?”

“No. You asked me to hear you out and I will. I just want to see what you’re like in your native habitat. Text me the address.” She stood and when she picked up her backpack Ray caught himself involuntarily looking down the scissored-wide collar of her sweatshirt. She had nothing on underneath. “I need some caffeine,” she said. “See you at seven.” With the line now gone, she stepped straight up to the counter. A little cloud of cologne lingered behind. The letters on the seat of her sweatpants advertised the sorority Alpha Sigma Sigma. Flora stood at the condiments bar, where she poured half of her coffee into the garbage and refilled it with soymilk and four packets of brown sugar. Ray waved to her on her way out the door, but she looked straight through him. Bovine splotches covered his shirt and they appeared permanent. He wrung some coffee onto the floor and stopped at the dry cleaner’s on his way home.