Fugue State Page 13

  Four months in, he was nearing seventy-five entries. He was exhausted, ready to be through with his ninety over ninety and free of Cinchy for good. He was going door-to-door in an old neighborhood in Queens, no longer looking for nonagenarians so much as trying to buy driver’s licenses of deceased relatives who, if they had still been alive, would have been over ninety. It had been a good evening; he managed to get two for around twenty dollars each. He would photocopy them and then write up an entry or two himself on their behalf, if he could bear it.

  He knocked on a door and when it opened was surprised to see Bubber. The man was looking as run-down as ever, still fat, still pale. His hair, greased back earlier in the day, was still plastered down in places, beginning to sprout up in others. He was wearing a worn plaid robe over an undershirt and a paint-spattered set of trousers, a pair of filthy terry-cloth slippers.

  “Kossweiller,” he said. “I wondered when I’d see you again. Won’t you come in?”

  He turned around and shuffled back into the house, leaving the door ajar, as if there were no question but that Kossweiller would accept.

  Kossweiller followed him through his living room and to a rickety table in the kitchen. They both sat down. Bubber pushed the cup in front of him across to Kossweiller, filled it with tea, reached another cup off the counter beside for himself.

  “You’re still with Darbo?” asked Bubber.

  “Not exactly,” said Kossweiller.

  “Not exactly?” asked Bubber, his eyes lighting up slightly. “What do you mean by that?”

  “Ninety over ninety,” he said, and explained.

  “Did it say ‘Love from B’? That’s my doll,” said Bubber, smiling. “I send him one from time to time, just to keep him on his toes. It’s good to know this one actually was put to good use. What’s your ninety over ninety?”

  Kossweiller explained. “Four months already,” he said. “Two dozen names, then I’m free.”

  Bubber let go of his arm. “You won’t be free,” he said. “I know Darbo. He’ll twist the knife. He’ll figure some way to make it hurt more than you think.”

  “It hurts plenty this way,” said Kossweiller, and felt very depressed.

  “It’ll hurt more,” said Bubber.

  Bubber, he knew, was right: Cinchy, boss of the people, was endowed with an almost unabatable reservoir of sadism. Cinchy would let him go, perhaps would let him quit, but he would never be free.

  “What do I do?” Kossweiller asked.

  “There’s nothing to do, Koss,” Bubber said. “Just survive it best you can.”

  They sat for a moment mulling this over, Kossweiller moving his teacup around slightly so that the liquid swished in the cup. “I should go,” he finally said.

  “There’s something you should see first,” said Bubber.

  He took both teacups and shambled to the sink. He dumped and rinsed them, turned them upside down on the counter. He opened a cookie jar and removed from it a key on the end of a string. Taking Kossweiller by the arm, he led him down the hall, past a bedroom to a padlocked door.

  “My workroom,” said Bubber, as, one-handed, he worked the padlock open.

  The room inside was windowless, dark. Bubber drew him in, still keeping hold of his arm. “Ready?” he said, and flicked on the lights.

  Before them, on a makeshift shelf running the whole length of the wall, were a series of handmade dolls, just like the one Kossweiler had seen in Cinchy’s office, except in this case, they were stacked in twos, one doll affixed to another doll’s shoulders.

  “Ninety over ninety,” said Kossweiller.

  “Actually right now just eighty-five over eighty-five, but nearly there. Maybe that’s some consolation. Cinchy won’t know what hit him.”

  “It may kill him.”

  “We can always hope,” said Bubber.

  A month later, by cutting a few corners, Kossweiller had hit his own ninety over ninety. He had several hundred manuscript pages, all of them terrible—even the recipes led to practically inedible food—but it was there. Setting his teeth, he took the typescript to Cinchy.

  “Karswelder,” Cinchy said. “Back so soon? Can your servitude be over? All there?” Cinchy said. “All ninety of them, and all of them over age ninety?”

  “Yes,” said Kossweiller. “It’s done.”

  “Seems as though you’ve done it,” said Cinchy. “Seems you’re free to go.”

  Kossweiller headed toward the door, then stopped. “That’s it?” he said. “That’s the end?”

  “What else would there be?”

  “You’re not going to double-check?”

  “Why should I double-check, Karse? I trust you.”

  “You’re not going to burn the manuscript or humiliate me in some other way?”

  “Karse, Karse,” said Cinchy. “Trust me. The last thing I want to do is get rid of all the hard work you did. Just the opposite, my friend.”

  Kossweiller nodded. He left Cinchy’s office and started down the hall to his own office. Halfway there, he stopped, turned back.

  “What do you mean ‘just the opposite’?” he asked from Cinchy’s door.

  “Hmmm? You again, Koss?” said Cinchy, looking up from his desk. “Just what it sounded like. I’m going to publish the fucker.”

  “Really?”

  “Of course. And to show my appreciation, I’ll make sure that ‘Edited by Philip Kossweiller’ appears on both cover and spine. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if your name wasn’t in larger print than anything else. Back copy something like ‘Esteemed literary editor Philip Kossweiller’s personal choices for what’s best in literature for the older set,’ along with talk of a ‘personal quest,’ and whatnot. I’ll make sure that it gets reviewed everywhere. And I’ll save it for release until just the right moment.”

  “You wouldn’t,” said Kossweiller.

  “I would,” said Cinchy. “No dolls, Kossweiller!” he said, shouting now. “Never dolls! You should have remembered that.”

  Dazed, Kossweiller retreated. It was true, he thought. Cinchy had twisted the knife, and what was worse was it was a knife Kossweiller himself had given him.

  He slowly made his way back to his office. Anders was there outside, fiddling with the change in his pockets.

  “I hear you’re leaving us, Koss,” he said. “Sorry to see you go.”

  “You know already?”

  “Word gets around,” he said. “That and Cinchy called to give me the Verenson series. That doesn’t upset you, does it?”

  “No,” said Kossweiller, “you’re welcome to it.”

  Anders, perhaps feeling sentimental, perhaps trying only to put on a good front, attempted and bungled a hug, then left. Kossweiller found a box, began to pack up his desk. Cinchy, he knew, would wait until the worst possible moment to release the book, probably timing it to coincide with En Masse, if Kossweiller could ever find somewhere to publish it.

  But, he thought, there was something he could do in the meantime.

  He opened the bottom drawer and took out the doll. True, he had promised to burn the box, but Cinchy hadn’t said anything about the doll. Technically, he had kept his promise.

  He unpinned the note, “Love from B,” and wrote on the doll’s chest with permanent marker, 90/90. Then, hiding the doll in a #6 envelope, he carried it down the hall and knocked on Cinchy’s door.

  The door was open but Cinchy had stepped out. Am I the kind of person who does this? he wondered. And then thought, I have become the kind of person who does this. In a way, he told himself, it was a kindness, a first shock before Bubber’s larger, grimmer surprise, a warning to get ready. But he knew that this was not why he was doing it.

  He set the doll up on the desk against a paperweight. It sat there limply, staring blindly at the door.

  His desk was completely packed and he was already on the way to the elevator when he heard the scream. Despite himself, despite considering himself a literary man, he could not help but take gr
eat pleasure in the sound.

  Invisible Box

  In retrospect, it was easy for her to see it had been a mistake to have sex with a mime. At the time, though, she had been drunk enough that it seemed like a good idea. Sure, she had been a little surprised, once she had coaxed him upstairs, when he refused to speak, and even more surprised by his refusal to wipe off his face paint or shuck his beret, but, whatever, so what: it would give her a story to tell at parties.

  But, ever since, she’d had trouble sleeping. She could manage a fitful hour but then woke up, imagining him there again above her, naked save for his face paint and beret and white gloves. She watched as, straddling her, he carefully felt out an invisible box around them. He kept making gestures to remind her about the box, feeling it out again, steadying her as she approached one imaginary edge, running his flattened palms along the box’s ceiling just before penetrating her. It was a hell of a thing, at once funny and deeply disturbing, and distracting as hell.

  When he was coming, pretending to cry out silently, she suddenly realized this was not a story she could bring herself to tell at parties. Mostly passed out, she lazily watched him lift the imaginary box off of them, get up and get dressed, then lift the box back in place, over her. She drifted off feeling it there around her, edges softly gleaming, holding her in.

  She woke up early the next morning to find herself smeared with white face paint, as well as a few loops of black, like bruises, from his lips. She got up and brewed some coffee, had some toast, vomited. Her head felt wrapped in batting. The mime had not even been good in bed, though he had mimed being good in bed when she had picked him up. No, she thought, he had been more interested in his imaginary box than in her.

  So she had slept with a mime, so what? In any case, it was over now, over and done.

  But it wasn’t over, nor was it done. True, she didn’t think about the mime for the rest of the day, but later, that night, just as she was lying down to sleep, she felt something. There was the box, rising up around her. She closed her eyes and tried to sleep but kept seeing the box, its edges burning in flashes on the insides of her eyelids. It was hard to sleep feeling it was there, and when she finally did sleep, it was fitfully, dreaming of the mime moving inside of her, shoulders hunching to avoid the ceiling of the imaginary box, white face floating like a buoy in the darkness.

  She brushed her hand through the box, but it remained undisturbed. She threw back the covers and got a drink and climbed back into bed, beside the box this time, but no, somehow the box was still over her, holding her in. No matter where she went on the bed, it was there. This is ridiculous, she thought, and tried to sleep, but instead sat there, staring at the inside of the nonexistent box, wondering how to get rid of it.

  She got up and wandered the apartment, read a little in an armchair, made herself some warm milk, drank it. She began to feel a little sleepy. She nodded in and out in the chair, finally got up and went into the bedroom, climbed back into bed. An instant later, she was wide awake, staring again at the inside of the box.

  Most of the night was like that, with her oppressed by the box that wasn’t even there. She slept a little in the chair, on the floor, but never for long, mostly lying in the bed, in the nonexistent box, wide awake, feeling absurd. I should kill that fucking mime, she thought, around four in the morning. A little after five she wondered if there were support groups for women who had slept with mimes. Five minutes later, she started to wonder if the mime had worn a real or an imaginary condom. She kept picturing his exaggerated motions as he put it on. If she had a baby, would it be wearing a beret and white gloves? Goddamn it, she thought at 5:23 a.m., her eyes puffy, what’s wrong with me?

  She must have fallen asleep for a few minutes anyway, for by the time she awoke light was streaming through the window and the box was gone. Relieved, she called her office and left a message saying she’d be late. She slept a few hours. The rest of the day was a little hazy, her responses slower than normal, and there was a point in a meeting where she completely blanked out, and came to herself seconds later to find the client staring at her strangely. She recouped as best she could, waded through the rest of the day, left right at five.

  I’ll sleep well tonight, she told herself on the drive home. She collapsed onto the bed before dinner, with the last of the sun coming in through the window, and fell asleep in her clothes.

  She woke up an hour later in the dark, mouth dry, blouse rucked up around her breasts. In the dark she could feel the box there around her. Suddenly she was wide awake. She could not get back to sleep. She wanted to weep. Instead, she lay there feeling the box, trying to ignore it, trying to pretend it wasn’t there. But no, she thought, I’m not pretending. It’s an imaginary box; it isn’t there. But thinking this didn’t seem to help.

  It was one night among many, each of them shading into each other, each essentially coming down to the same thing: her lying in bed, staring through a nonexistent box at the ceiling. In the days that followed, she tried everything she could think of. She slept naked, she slept clothed, sober, drunk, half-naked, half-clothed, half-sober, half-drunk. She took sleeping pills, which seemed to work for a few hours but didn’t make her feel any less tired once she woke up. She changed the sheets; the box was still there. I should kill that fucking mime, she thought. She turned the mattress over; the box was still there. She tried to sleep on the couch, but even though the box wasn’t over her, she could feel it in the next room, gently shimmering. She tried to sleep at a friend’s house but somehow could still feel the box even from there, blocks away, waiting for her.

  She started seeing a psychiatrist, who tried to give her strategies for coping. Maybe, he suggested after five or six sessions, you need to give in to your inner mime, so to speak. My inner mime? she wondered. She listlessly attended two or three more sessions, and then stopped.

  Which left her where, exactly? In bed, beneath the box, having difficulty sleeping, eyes redder, mind more and more distracted, wishing every night, as she tried to close her eyes and found they wouldn’t close, that she were dead. I’ll try anything, she kept telling herself, I’ll do anything. Just as long as I can get some sleep.

  Which is what led her, one night, at three or perhaps twenty past three or perhaps somewhat closer to four—hard to say, since there had been so many nights since in which she had done the same thing—to begin thinking with two different parts of her head at once. One part of her head was thinking, as it had thought at least once per night, that she should kill that fucking mime, but the other part was thinking that, no, perhaps not kill but fuck him again and this time, after he came, get him to take his fucking box away with him. One part of her head was walking into the kitchen and taking a knife from the block and sliding it into her purse, but the other part was thinking what it would say to get the mime to go home with her again, how she would first find him and then fuck him, or, no, stab him dead, back and forth, until, when she came to herself again and was thinking with only one part of her head, there she was, alone, in the dead of night, in the street, searching for her mime, not knowing whether she would have sex with him or kill him or perhaps both. It was useless, she knew, to look for him so late, but there she was, walking, half-dressed, walking, and now the same thing seemed to happen almost every night, almost without her knowing it, that strange moment when her thinking split into either side of her head and she seemed to fall into the gap between, and by the time she had managed to clamber out, she was out alone on the streets, looking for a mime, only a mime would do.

  And perhaps it is best to leave her here, half-asleep and wandering, grasping at straws that don’t exist, for what good can possibly come of any of this? At best, she will soon have butchered a mime in her bed or will end up dead herself. At worst, she will soon find herself enclosed by not just one imaginary box, but two. That she might actually work her way free, that she might actually, for once, sleep through the night, ever again, seems the least likely possibility of all, even to her. S
o, let’s leave her, let’s tuck the covers up around her neck and take a step or two backwards. Let’s turn out the light and—despite the soft gleam of her open eyes in the darkness, despite the sounds of her tossing and turning within her box, despite, as night deepens, her little groans of frustration—let’s smile and, lying, tell ourselves yes, everything is all right, yes, shhh, yes, she’s finally asleep.

  The Third Factor

  Clearly the method of elucidation I employed in my report did not satisfy the administration, and thus I am at a loss as to know how to proceed. I beg to be forgiven here for stretching regulations, for deviating slightly but, I hope, productively from the standard report. Since I have already tendered my resignation, I will also say frankly that I see a supplemental report as superfluous. Or, rather, I would see it as such were I not aware that failure to answer the administration’s request might well result in my being subjected to a sustained process of observation—observation of the sort which I myself have been obliged to carry out in the past. Obviously I am assuming—hardly a safe assumption—that I am not already under observation.

  Had I a copy of it, you would find appended to this notebook a completed copy of what I believe is grievance form 026/a, “Formal grievance, superiors, non-immediate, at hands of.” I would have shaded the box marked “Request, redundancy” and would have, as per requirements, bolstered the form with the requisite material: my initial report, my letter of resignation, and the administration’s latest request. Perhaps whichever administrator receives my materials will argue that, since I previously tendered my resignation, I am no longer considered an employee and thus not authorized to file a grievance. My inability, despite my best efforts, to obtain said form suggests as much. Yet if I do not de facto possess employee status, why am I being asked to supplement my original report?