Indecision: A Novel Page 7

Rick nodded his head. “But are you sure you need a full week?”

  “Well see the ceremony is in Quito. That’s in Ecuador. But first you have to fly through Bogotá. I could show you a map online. Anyway they have a very humid climate down there, so it’s important that we get there by next week. At the latest.”

  “So the funeral—I take it that’s what you mean by the ceremony—the funeral’s in Quito?”

  “He was very close to the land down there.”

  “And what did your uncle do in Quito, Dwight?”

  “Middle management,” I said.

  “And what did he manage there?”

  “It was a medium-sized concern. Import/export. Obviously we weren’t that close. But still I’m pretty bereft, all the more since now I’ll never get to know him.”

  By now Rick’s scattered previous suspicions had fused into a hard point of skepticism, a look of real forensic dubiousness.

  “What did your uncle die of, Dwight? If you don’t mind my . . .”

  “Um . . . We’re kind of keeping that under wraps.” Things, having gone unplanned, were also going badly. The awkward scene aggrandized itself into a representative instance of my flawed approach to life, and as Rick folded his arms and stared at me I felt Natasha slipping out of reach like a dream-discovered formula fumbled from your mind the moment you wake up.

  Suddenly a strategy emerged from my distress. “You know, Rick”—I met his eyes—“I feel I can be honest with you. I mean, you’re my manager. You watch over me. My uncle had been sick for a long time with . . .” I sniffled without even planning to. “With abulia. It’s been a real embarrassment for the entire family.”

  Rick granted me my week.

  “Hello and thank you for calling the Dwight Resolution Center. This is Problem speaking.” Over the next two days I delivered correct and incorrect versions of these statements over and over again into my headset. Pfizer was completely the same as before, but contrasted with the upcoming novelty of travel, now much more so. In fact now that I was allowed to leave, I finally began to feel sick of the place. Between calls I stared into my cubicle’s gray carpety divider and saw a wilderness of tedium there, and all day long, as I swiveled back and forth on my chair, I sipped cold coffee that seemed to come from some primordial pot brewed and scalded long ago.

  At one point I tried to keep boredom at bay by making my first ever subversive remark to a user. “Sounds-like-you- may-be-having-a-bit- of-a-problem-with-the- Sherman-antitrust-processor- but-I-think-we-can-fix-it- in-a-jiffy—” Thus I alluded quasisubliminally to the antitrust act that Microsoft was in the business of flouting in order to foist its inferior product all over the world. At the same time I recognized that if Windows didn’t suck so much I wouldn’t have a job.

  “I’m sorry?” said the middle-aged male voice, no regional markers. “Would you mind saying that again?”

  Then I began actually to help the guy. People upstairs generally seemed humbled by software failure, or else they may have heard a note of doom in my young man’s allegedly tech-savvy voice, unaware that—not even up to speed on Java—I was getting surpassed in my own right. But for now nothing more difficult was required of me than to lead the user through a step of six keystrokes to get his vital document to return from the false oblivion it had landed in. Then he thanked me, whoever he was, and I made a report and sent it to the database called UTOPIA. It wasn’t really very utopian, being a repository of every problem any user had ever had.

  Wednesday passed in this way, then half of Thursday. Thursday at lunch I walked down to Times Square where there was a Belgian frites shop whose product I admired. Then I walked back to Pfizer wondering if flying off to meet some hardly-known person in a foreign country was really the ideal decision-making procedure. (I had booked my ticket online but still had four hours left to back out.) If it turned out that Natasha was everything I hoped and dreamed and was into, then what would she want with me? And if she wasn’t, then what would I want with her? And why even ask these age-old questions that must have had all the nutrition chewed out of them long ago? I fed the mayonnaise-limp frites into my teeth one by one, and when I returned to my cubicle I deliberately spilled a little leftover mayo into the cracks of my keyboard, just in order to make the corporate world a little more soiled and grimy, more in need of being replaced for a week by a trip, however ill-advised or well-considered, down to Ecuador.

  “ ’Sup?” Wanda asked me when she got back from lunch herself.

  “Wanda, I have a question.”

  “You know I got an answer.”

  “You notice how all the users—”

  “The losers?”

  “—yeah, how they sound so guilty on the phone? It’s weird. It’s like they’re ashamed of themselves that the software doesn’t work.”

  “Damn straight they’re ashamed. These are businesspeople people. They believe in Darwin, baby, and the computer. They can’t use a computer, they feel like they got no business bein alive.”

  Rick appeared out of nowhere and said, “How’s it going, people?”—his way of telling us to get back to work

  “It’s going very well, thank you,” Wanda very crisply said. “How are you this afternoon, Rick?”

  It wasn’t long after a suspicious and disgruntled Rick had wandered away that the fatal email popped into my inbox, addressed from CEO William Starboard to CFO George Bailwater. I’d hardly started reading the document—many, many numbers, and big ones, were involved—when I heard Rick saying my name as his quick little steps approached from behind. Pressing CTRL A and CTRL C, I sent the thing to my clipboard and turned around with an innocent expression.

  “Dwight, were you just sent a document?”

  “I was. I started reading it but it didn’t seem meant for my eyes. Should we delete the file together?”

  He watched me delete it. I said, “What you don’t know can’t hurt you, right?” Sometimes I couldn’t make out the tone of my voice.

  Rick looked peevish. “Dwight, I’m sorry about this uncle of yours—”

  “No, it’s okay, no one is very sorry. My uncle was avuncular, I admit. But that was really it. He had no other characteristics. He was just this kind of mediocre, redundant, blank sort of dude. Then they let him know he was dead.” Tears of suppressed laughter or misplaced grief sprang into my eyes while, on the other side of our divider, Wanda began to laugh out loud.

  “What is going on here? Story hour is over, people. Just—”

  “Okay,” I said as Wanda in similar tones of quick submission also said, “Okay.”

  And in order to elude suspicion, I decided to wait until the next day before retrieving the document from my clipboard.

  SIX

  I came up from the subway in low-buildinged Brooklyn, into the breeze-soothed air of an irresolute spring evening with Venus, aka the evening star, hanging out over New Jersey. I was on my way to meet Vaneetha at Cambodian Cuisine. Later on we could take in a movie if she didn’t hate me by then for having chosen to go to Ecuador to see another woman, an aspect of the trip I was debating whether or not to bring up.

  Soon I was undeniably within sight of the restaurant. I instructed myself to tell the truth to Vaneetha, because she would never buy it that I was going without any reason or Spanish to spend ten days in Ecuador by myself. Maybe I could just request that she not feel threatened by Natasha. After all I did feel vaguely committed to her (Vaneetha), and possibly I wouldn’t so much as touch Natasha even if she (Natasha) encouraged me to. Or else I could just leave the facts bare, letting Vaneetha take offense and dump me. Or maybe I could somehow imply by a rare suave tone of voice that I was only behaving in the way of all sophisticated people who always leave all their romantico-sexual arrangements undefined. Moreover, presenting this third option casually, as a matter of course, might force or otherwise encourage semisnobbish Vaneetha to go along.

  Vaneetha was standing outside the restaurant. She was wearing a gray cotton skirt and one of those
short-sleeved button-down white shirts inside of which her breasts strained to be released like Superman inside of Clark Kent. And slung around her shoulder was this shiny green handbag whose contents, at this point in the possibly expiring relationship, I could more or less guess.

  We kissed, then walked hand in hand into the restaurant for our date with destiny.

  The one hundred and twelve menu alternatives made my head swim. People on dates often went to restaurants—and suddenly this seemed so misguided of them. It seemed like really terrible mental training for love to go to restaurants where they hand you a menu, because the personality of a person would seem to show in its indivisibility every sign of being more of a prix fixe deal. For instance I was always thinking to myself that I liked Vaneetha’s affectionality, but didn’t care for the clinginess, and that I liked her sophistication, but wished she’d be more crude, like she was some list I could pick from. . . .

  “What’s good here?” she asked.

  I’d read my horoscope that morning and learned today’s lucky number. So I said, “55 I could recommend. The Chicken Ahmok?” And with still more self-assurance I ordered us two copies of the largest available beer.

  Then I reached across the table to hold Vaneetha’s hand, and gazed profoundly into the bright wet surface of her anxious eyes. Whenever it seemed like Vaneetha sensed, correctly, that my affection for her was flagging, I was always at pains to demonstrate how wrong she was.

  “Is something going on,” she asked. “Or are you just being Dwight?”

  “I think maybe we should just take a second to look kind of longingly into one another’s eyes.” I hoped she would see in my face, and remember once I’d wronged her—if that’s how she would consider it—that I felt nothing but tenderness for her urbane, semiopaque and, come to think of it, somewhat deer- or antelope-like person.

  Another favorite and inexcusable method of relationship management was always to accuse the woman in question of doing exactly whatever you suspected yourself of doing, and I was on the verge of asking Vaneetha whether she hadn’t been avoiding me lately when a phone rang, close to us—almost in us—and I jumped. Vaneetha fished it out of her bag and looked at it, smirking. “It’s you ringing. It’s Chambers St.”

  She handed me the device and I passed it back like a hot potato.

  “If you want I’ll answer. But you’re here. Surely it’s not for me.”

  The phone kept up its panicky sounds of abandonment and distress while fellow diners glared.

  “It can’t be for me,” I whispered. “It’s from me. There must be some mistake.”

  Vaneetha rolled her eyes and went out to field the call. After a few seconds she beckoned at me from the sidewalk. Oh I did like being beckoned by her—but not this time.

  Into the phone I was like, “Hello and thank you for—or, no, this is Dwight.”

  “What’d you do, Dwight?” It was Sanch calling. “You did something bad, man. You’re in big trouble.”

  “I hate being in trouble.” It reminded me of being a kid—which reminded me of being in a family.

  “You know some guy named Rick?” Sanch was enjoying himself. “Who might be your manager? Because he’s called like four times. He insisted we track you down. Finally I figured, right, Vaneetha.”

  Vaneetha took pen and paper from her bag and allowed me to write down Rick’s cell number on the improvised drafting table of her nice Pilates-strong back. What was or (if the word was plural) were Pilates anyway? Goodbye back, I patted her between the shoulder blades. Possibly goodbye.

  When I reached Rick he shouted, “Christ, Dwight, where the fuck have you been? Don’t you own a cell phone?”

  I knew what had happened. I knew it was all over. I knew I had nothing to lose. “Hey, Rick, man? Dude? I don’t think so much profanity is appropriate when you’re asking me, during this extremely difficult time for me and my family . . .”

  Vaneetha raised up her eyebrows and smiled at me. She looked tolerant, skeptical, and amused.

  “Coming in late,” Rick was saying, “I could let that slide. But listen here you lying little—the theft of private documents is a class-one felony.”

  “Yeah well—” I couldn’t think of any very tart riposte just yet. “Well you and everyone else can tell it to the judge. Because here I am right now with an attractive female muckraker who’s hungryfor a scoop. And I’m revealing to her in every filthy detail whatever was mentioned in that document that I was felon enough to steal.”

  “You better not, you—”

  “Done. Done. Already done.” But I was feeling some sharp regret at my negligence: how could I have stolen important corporate secrets and failed to look at them, and also, to be frank, failed even to steal them? Now I said, “Imagine the enormous liability! The share prices tanking! The horrible gloating competitors!”

  “Don’t you dare come to work tomorrow, Dwight. We’ll send you your shit in a box! I hope you understand, you—”

  “Make sure you include the pocket watch.” I couldn’t think of any possession of mine being at work besides a pretty thoroughly stained coffee mug. “You better include the watch, which is like an heirloom from my dead uncle. And that I’ll otherwise sue in small-claims to get back.” Wow, lying—you could really get on a roll.

  Rick was still screaming when I pushed END.

  “What uncle?” Vaneetha asked. “Which watch? Were you just now fired?”

  “Um, yes. I was just now fired. From Pfizer. Wow. Pfired! So I’m pfucked!” But the p was silent so no one laughed but me. I looked at Vaneetha. “Don’t worry about my uncle. He doesn’t exist. So he’s fine.”

  We went back inside to our expectant steaming dishes. Losing my job had evidently given me an appetite for even this wobbling Khmer Jell-O of a chicken I had ordered. “Chicken Ahmok!” I dug in.

  I explained to Vaneetha what I had done and not done with the scandalous document. Meanwhile I realized that Rick, by firing me, had placed a very heavy burden on the Abulinix, which now I would need not for deciding the simple binary issue of Pfizer or not, but for the vastly more complicated problem of where else to work—and at what? If only I’d actually read the document, and been able to secure some renown and maybe even a career as this corporate whistle-blower. . . .

  “I suppose,” Vaneetha said, “we should get extremely drunk?”

  “Yeah. I think that’s what you do. When you’re fired. Yeah . . . But like I said, we were getting outsourced anyway. Where the fuck is Mumbai anyway? I never heard of it.”

  “Bombay. Mumbai. You know that. It’s simply the older name.”

  We raised our classes to toast. “To Mumbai!” I said at the same moment she said “Bombay!” Then in order to accommodate each other we switched names and like two polite people trying to let each other pass in a hallway, we wrongfooted ourselves again.

  Half an hour later we were leaving an excessively large tip and deciding to skip the movies. Arm in arm and jostling each other between tongue-heavy pit stops of affection, we walked down the dark cool streets toward Carroll Gardens. “Well you’re free,” Vaneetha kept saying. It sounded wistful. Maybe she was afraid my freedom wouldn’t stop at unemployment. Or maybe she feared that as my savings dwindled and I didn’t find work I wouldn’t be able to go out to dinner anymore, or otherwise keep up the false illusion of our salary parity. I wondered how committed she was anyway to socioeconomically-based assortative mating, or dating.

  “I am pfree,” I said, “but also pfucked.” And it had stopped being funny.

  I imagined handing out at the reunion an itemized list of life-sized excuses: 1) Child of divorce. 2) Fired for an act of conscience. 3) Duties as Form Agent overwhelmed me. Maybe then my Formmates would take pity on me and the vaunted old-boy network would kick into action. I certainly hoped our country wasn’t yet the meritocracy it was pledged to be. “Thank God Bush is in office.”

  Vaneetha ignored me, kissing me, while this sullen corporate hipster passed to on
e side. “Get a room.”

  I yelled out our extenuating circumstances. “I’m unemployed! She’s an immigrant! You shit-sucking Republican fuckwad!”

  Vaneetha clamped shut my mouth with her fingers, then lips. In this way, if delayed somewhat by occasional mutual crotch-grabbing, pretty soon we were passing the Smith St. subway stop. As on other nights, a certain homeless black guy rattled his cup of spare change at us. “What,” he asked, smiling but without too many teeth, “is the very finest nation in this world?”

  The correct answer was donation. But Vaneetha and I enjoyed one-upping one another with wrong or random answers. “Uzbekistan?” she’d ask or I’d be like, “Uruguay?”

  That night Vaneetha said: “I know, Ecuador!”

  I choked on my own identical answer and dropped some change into the cup without a word.

  Vaneetha squeezed my hand as we walked away. “What’s the matter there?”

  “I was going to say Ecuador.”

  “Always have a backup. I do—always. Come on.” She led me away towards her apartment, where we burst through the door, disrobed our way through the living room, and collapsed into her queen-sized bed. And what happened there all felt very good, in the medial forebrain bundle, where I experienced pleasure, but not quite so much in the conscience. I couldn’t believe I still hadn’t said anything about the trip. Worse yet, I could totally believe it.

  Afterwards I got up and went to look at all the pictures marshaled on the dresser. In years past she hadn’t been so pretty, so Manhattanized, and had allowed lots of pictures to be taken of her with her not-so-cool college friends, many of them also foreign students. Whereas now she was this incredibly put-together person—who right at this instant was probably getting an eyeful of my incredibly hairy ass. It occurred to me that Vaneetha’s and my relative values on the love market weren’t necessarily always going to be equal—that right now I might even be selling high, and she low. Good time to get out, then.

  “It’s probably time to ask what you see in me,” I said.