As Phyllis complained about me to Amber, I fondled the gem, the take-anywhere wish, in my pocket. We three sat in a conference room, at a conference table where I, from a mostly upright position, either paid attention to or completely fabricated the words around me.
Below production goals. Not catching on. Unreceptive to feedback.
"Unserious about meetings. Bored. Sickened by Phyllis and the memento mori of her paradoxical makeup strategy."
"Greg, that is not appropriate," Amber snapped, with a loudness and tone encroaching on personal anger.
I looked up at the ceiling. "I don’t recall formulating. An otherwise. Argument."
Phyllis, the battered wife of peroxide and UV rays, dramatically sighed. "We need someone who will mesh. Who will consider the team."
My gaze returned to conversation level. "And I need someone who doesn’t aggressively point at me when she’s upset. You, you, you. Pointing, pointing, pointing. Like you’re tough. Like we’re going to fight. Am I...am I behind the real object? Are you pointing at an ex-husband--"
"Greg--"
"Anyway, in cooking, sometimes you can add, but you can’t take away. Water into flour, for example. And with respecting a fellow human, it’s the opposite. You can take away, but you can’t add. Phyllis, every time you point, I lose respect for you. You have pointed your way below zero--"
"Greg," Amber said, "this meeting counts as a verbal warning about your job performance. In four weeks, we will reconvene to assess your improvement."
"In four weeks, you will have the same amount of control over me as you do now."
"Noted."
Phyllis got up to leave. "Thank you, Amber."
"Greg, stay," Amber said. "Another issue remains unaddressed."
My brain began thumbing through the Deck of Likely Wrongs. I wondered, with a tinge of excitement, if any accusation could surprise me. If Unattended Greg would be held to account for his decreasingly covert shenanigans.
"According to witnesses, you have been telling people that Tonya should commit suicide. That you want her to commit suicide."
This problem’s origin crystallized immediately. I knew. I started my next move.
"Easy fix."
"What do you mean?"
I was already at the door. "I can remediate this goddamn lie. Do you sincerely expect me to answer questions about something I didn’t say?"
"You need to sign this--"
Leaving Amber before she could adjourn the meeting poured Pop Rocks into my heart, tingled my face with a first-ever joy.
"Hey, Paul. I’m buying you lunch today. And driving."
"Alright," Paul said, locking his computer. He pushed out his chair then stood up--jacket already on--with the eagerness of a man much too happy when other people opened their wallets for him.
"Um, no offense, but...are you saving for a different car?"
Paul the Passenger had a question about the current mode of transportation.
"After today, I’ll never drive again. I can fly now."
"Repairs have to cost more than the vehicle’s worth."
"I’ve been practicing my axes of flight. Starting, stopping. Controlling my acceleration and velocity."
Paul required a few seconds to respond. "Can we get baked sandwiches?"
"Sure, sure. That’s a good idea."
On our way back from buying sandwiches, Paul stuck his arm out the car window, dipping and arcing his hand as though petting an invisible dragon. I resisted swerving at mailboxes as I drove us to a city park.
"You need to tell Amber that you said Tonya should kill herself. I’m getting blamed for it."
A picnic table hosted my big confrontation. We sat opposite each other.
He shrugged. "I don’t remember saying that."
"So, I imagined you saying that?"
Instead of opening the food bag to distribute the respective contents, I dragged it, slowly, as if it contained the weight of a sunken galleon, toward me across the table, sustaining unbroken eye contact with Paul the entire time. When he reached for the bag, I sped its travel beyond his reach.
"So, I imagined you saying that?"
"Give me my food, Greg."
I got up, walked several feet away from the table, bag in hand. "Come take it. If you want this turkey and bacon fucking sandwich, come take it from me. Or admit what you said."
"Drive me back to work."
"There’s no third option. Not one of your choosing. The real third option involves you getting gravely hurt."
"Fourth option," Paul said, running. He shrank into the refuge of farther away.
"Huh."
I ate my sandwich. I ate his sandwich. I drank his bottled water.
My car caught up to Paul in a residential, old-growth neighborhood. His flight on foot appeared in shambles; vital pieces, like urgency and upkeep, had fallen off the effort. His eyes, that sweat-covered wince, implored me to leave him alone, to stop judging him for being exhausted. I slowed the car.
"I’ll give you a ride. Just promise me you’ll confess what you did."
Paul began to trot.
I parked the car, jogged after him. Passed him on the sidewalk. His untucked office shirt looked like the victim of a drive-by squirt gun barrage.
"You shouldn’t have left your jacket in the car. It gets pretty cold up there."
"What is wrong with you--"
I grabbed Paul underneath his armpits then carried him into the sky. Or at least a thousand feet closer to it. My hands, suffocating in man-made dampness, wanted to scream.
"Greg. Greg. Greg! I’m sorry."
"I won’t drop you. But I will go higher. To the Kármán line..."
Poor Paul. He had met, personally knew, the only man in history who could fly. And then, during the dreamlike experience of penetrating Heaven without mechanical aid, that man threatened to freeze him to death.
"If you put me back--"
"Wait. Did you just apologize?"
"Yes. I’m sorry. Please put me down. I can talk to Amber."
"You’re not curious about how I can fly?"
We descended.
"Well, um, compared to surviving the situation, that seemed...not as critical. And also, the thing itself, flying, out-interests? Is, um, more important than the explanation. Yes, I’m curious."
"Alright, I’m going to set you down in that tree. Then we’ll climb down."
Paul, leaves in his hair, sweat cloudbursting from his brow, navigated the tree back to Earth. We got back into my car.
"My fuckin’ ears and heart, man. Fuck. I can’t tell anyone, can I?"
"Nobody will believe you."
"You ate my sandwich."
"Terms went unsatisfied prior to any seizure."
I drove, contemplating the ramifications of what had just occurred. Paul talked on a flip phone.
"Yes. Can you transfer me to Amber? This is Paul. Yeah, sure. Hello? Yeah. I quit. Today. Because I prefer to not work there. Because that sentence should be enough. Okay. Okay. But may I clarify something? I want Tonya to kill herself. Your witness--and how this happened bewilders me--confused my extra manly, edict-from-the-gods voice with Greg’s not-any-of-that voice. The insult has driven me to resignation."
He closed the phone without a farewell.
"Paul--"
"I’d rather starve, raking at my belly in a death’s door delirium, than let Amber decide anything for me."
"Dang."
"Obviously, working there is precious to you. You preserved it, congratulations."
I refrained from caving in his head with a backfist. From spiraling a cupholder penny through his neck.
"Earning money is precious to me."
"Okay, fair. Can we get my car?"
"Yeah, no problem."
"So...what’s it like? Did you freak out?"
The ready answer, "no," conveyed a stick figure. Which Paul deserved. But I deserved a blood and guts mural.
"I feel...centered. In the core of who I am, it’s now calm and untroubled. When you blink, when you gulp water, when you...experience anything ordinary, do your emotions manifest with more vigor than would be expected from mundane, between-the-moments minutiae?"
"No, Greg."
"Have you ever felt not like yourself? Beyond the sum of your genetics and environment and microbiome, that the ‘you’ inside you is off or unsettled?"
"Yeah."
"I merely assumed the normalcy, the homeostasis originally meant for me. I feel relieved, like the universe has restored equilibrium by adding back that which never should have been absent. I don’t feel ‘off’ anymore. Everything I’m supposed to do now...I might be able to show you."
I drove. Paul talked on a flip phone.
"Yeah. Phyllis. Greg is sick. He won’t be in after lunch. Because when the forceful diarrhea shot from his butt hole, toilet water splashed while the sphincter was still open, so his butt drank the water, and now he’s going to the emergency room. Because the water came from a public toilet. Okay. Well, you’re not a fuckin’ doctor."
I parked a block away from Ruth’s house.
"If I see a particular person, we’re going in. If not, we’ll buy more food. We’ll buy more food either way."
Through the front window, I saw the gut, the beluga melon, covered but unmistakable on the couch in the living room. He wore a pink polo shirt and khaki shorts.
"Is that a criminal? Do you fight fuckin’ crime?"
I opened the door.
Emilio, heavy set with spiked hair, handsomeness buried beneath cheek and chin-fat meringue, watched TV.
"Leave before I call the police."
Ruth, the eidolon advertising my failure, emerged from the hallway in a flannel top and yoga pants. Did we really kiss and hold each other? Laugh? I recognized the person but not the memory. That wasn’t the girl who had tolerated my camping-chairs-instead-of-furniture phase. Or my alprazolam phase. Or my stacks-of-trading-cards/be-careful/I’m-going-to-sell-those phase...
Emilio, more quickly than I expected, charged at me. I grabbed his shirt then tripped him while pivoting a half-circle. He stumbled, fell on his back.
I referenced Paul. "That guy is here to watch. I promise he won’t participate. If you run, if you scream, if you do more than silently spectate--"
Ruth grabbed the telephone handset, began to dial.
I pulled the cord from out of the wall jack.
"Emilio, plug it back in. He won’t really hurt us. He’s incapable, remember?"
Ruth’s beau stood up. I chose to interpret that as a new challenge.
"Rematch, big boy. Come on. Don’t call the cops. Fight me."
Peripheral zone movement. Ruth went for the door.
So I ripped Emilio’s shirt down the middle before yanking it off him. Then did the same, faster than a shrew’s heartbeat, to his shorts. And boxers.
"Just. Like. Before. But we are missing...something."
I held his throat. Ruth stayed, paid attention.
"We need your cock to be hard. Emilio! We are duplicating previous conditions. So, get hard. Achieve an erection."
"Greg...don’t," Ruth said, mistaken that a condescending tone paired with a brusque delivery would help the situation.
Red-faced and trembling, Hefty Play Rapist had been yanking on my wrist to free his throat.
"The sequel. Now. With your penis raised up proudly."
Paul spoke. "Hey, maybe we should--"
"I promised! That the guy! Would not! Participate!"
I wrestled Emilio to all fours, controlled him by the nape. "I see my error. He needs to pluck apart the effigy of consent. That arouses you, right? Well, I can provide that."
I knelt behind him--pants still on--then humped his bare ass, a two-handed choke preventing his escape. His neck was a bundle of half-chewed then spat-out marshmallows. My hands wanted to puke.
"Ruth. Call the police. Tell them what I’m doing. Let’s put our names in the permanent record."
I kept going, thrusting my chinos into his backside. "Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Fight me. Or I could do this for real. Hey. Hey, tell me. In your lowest moment on the playground, away from teachers and supervision, friendless and rejected with your feelings torn apart by the cruel ingenuity of children, because your parents overfed you until fat absumed everything, did you predict me? When the blob in the midst of healthy averages provoked a tribal, kill-the-invader response, did you know that life could be worse?" I had leaned in, put my mouth close to his ear, ensured my voice would burn a hole into his brain.
"You will never fuck her again. Any time you try, you will think about me doing this. She will think about me doing this. You’ll have flashbacks about my fingers and my breath and...uh-oh. Am I getting hard? Emilio, do you feel that?"
My final pelvic thrust threw him forward, crashed him into a foot stool, which broke into pieces. The carpet burn must have been severe. Ruth crouched, attempting to shield his prostrate nakedness. He was oven-roasted pork belly. A sack of bones and blubber too ashamed to resume its motility.
"Go comfort him," I told her. "Tell him he’s as much a man as he was. Tell him Greg didn’t ruin anything. Ha!"
The silence after my laugh dropped a poison egg on the room, hatching an eternal, joy-killing miasma.
"I hate you," Ruth said, glaring at me, her beautiful eyes bailing water with every blink.
"Refractory slowdown aside, I can, whenever I want, jerk off to the memory of you sucking my dick."
I motioned for Paul to follow me out of the house.
As we neared the car, he pointed at my crotch.
"I’m not judging, because you can kill everyone, but did you...did you?"
"That’s sweat. From him. Get in the car."
Creak-creak. Slam-slam.
"Dude. That was really fuckin’ awkward."
"How do you think I feel? I’ll have to boil my hands to clear off the odor."
"Yeah, but you chose to touch him."
"Yeah, but a thing I don’t like still happened. Am I disqualified from mentioning it?"
"No. Of course not," Paul said, his inflection hinting at more.
"Yes?"
"So, in theory, you believe that was okay."
"No, none of that was okay. It was wrong. It was bad. And it will probably cause them lifelong pain. In theory."
Paul’s concession came with a nod. He pulled out his knife, flipped out the blade.
"Hey, can I try something?"
"Where?"
"Hold out your arm."
He stabbed, sliced at my forearm. Convinced of my durability, he re-pocketed the knife.
"Baked sandwiches?" I offered.
"Just drop me off at the car. I gotta see if my uncle can still hire me."
"Hey, about that--"
"I’ll be fine. I have my degree. No offense, but I should be making a lot more money than the old office paid."
Chapter Twelve