The next installment. What'chall think so far?
I'd
been in the elevator for, maybe, half an hour when the intercom
crackled on. It made a little popping noise and reminded me of the
walkie-talkie set I'd had when I was a kid. It always made this
little pop and then crackled, and after that you could hear the other
person's voice. Then you pushed a button, and you could talk, but
couldn't hear the other person until you were done. I wondered if I
was supposed to push the button again. Just to be sure, I did, and
said “Hello?” I felt a little dumb for saying “hello,” but
then if there was any particular etiquette for being trapped in an
elevator, I didn't know about it. A voice came on. “Sir? This is
building security. Are you in one of the elevators?” No,
you dumbass, I thought, I'm
in the Twinkie aisle at the Winn-Dixie.
“Yes, it's stuck.” “Which elevator are you in?” “Umm...the
one that's stuck?” And I'd thought saying “hello” sounded
dumb. “Sir, if you look above the indicator lights above the door,
you'll see the number of the elevator.” “Umm...it's B-4.”
“How many people are there with you?” “It's just me. What's
going on? Did we have an earthquake?” “Yes, Sir. There's been
some major damage to the building, but you should be safe where you
are. Do you have any injuries?” I thought about telling him that
I'd been poked in the ass by a staple but figured that humor wasn't
really a wise option now. “No.” “Well, um, if you're not
injured, Sir, I hate to say this but you aren't the first priority
right this minute. They'll be getting to you soon. Hold tight.”
Why was this guy telling me to hold tight? I was pretty definitely
not going anywhere.
So it
was an earthquake. I could hear sirens, quite a lot of them,
muffled by the walls around the elevator. As if I didn't have enough
on my mind, I started worrying about what was going on outside. What
did the guy mean by “major damage?” I wondered if there were a
lot of people hurt. If my apartment house was even still standing.
If my dog was allright. Hell, this was Rusty's fault anyway. Dude,
don't blame the dog! I told
myself. It's not like he told her to pull this stunt.
The
only reason I'd been in the damned building in the first place was to
give Carolyn my key to our apartment. Her apartment. Since she'd
made me move out a week ago, her
apartment. She'd given me an ultimatum the Friday before: move out
or I'll throw your stuff on the street. I spent a couple of nights
with a buddy. It didn't take long to find a new place. While she
was at work I went back over to the old apartment, got my clothes and
some books and Rusty, and left. I wanted to trash some of her stuff,
but that time at least, good sense won out. Carolyn was a lawyer. A
fairly powerful lawyer. And a vindictive person. It wouldn't take
more than one broken lamp for her to file suit. I don't know squat
about law, but I knew Carolyn well enough to know that if I so much
as left the toilet unflushed, she'd come after me.
I met
Carolyn about two years earlier. We had mutual friends who'd just
gotten engaged—I was one of his friends, she was supposed to be one
of her bridesmaids, and they were having an engagement party. As it
turned out, she wasn't one of the bridesmaids because she had some
kind of fight with the bride-to-be a week before the wedding, and
refused to participate in it. Which made things plenty awkward when
the wedding rolled around, and I had to go because I was one of his
friends, especially because Carolyn tried to talk me out of going.
I pointed out that I couldn't very well not go, and she said that I
owed it to her, since they had been rude to her. I mentioned that he
hadn't been rude, and that it wasn't really his problem, only her
friend's problem (“Former
friend,” she said). That got me two days of silent treatment.
Anyway,
we dated for a few months and then moved in together. Other than the
spat over the wedding that she wasn't in, things went pretty well.
She didn't really like my friends that much, because she hated the
bar we all hung out in--”it's just like a cave in there. A dirty
cave.” – but that wasn't a deal-breaker. She was fine with
letting me go hang out there without her, and that gave her time to
hang out with her
friends. We spent most nights at home anyway. No complaints about
sex; everything was fine there.
After
we'd lived together about a year, she started pressuring me to get a
new job. She'd drop some not-very-subtle hints about some of her
friends' jobs, that they had openings. “Entry level, of course, but
it's a good start.” Then, she started on me about my degree. How
it was going to waste, and surely I wanted to do something besides
work in a bar. I reminded her that I was working on my writing, and
so my degree wasn't going to waste, but I needed to work in a bar to
pay the bills. “That's just it,” she said, “that's the only
way you're paying bills. When was the last time you had anything
published? Oh, that's right—never.”
I couldn't really argue with her, because it was true. Still, it
stung. I wanted to write. I held out hope that maybe, just maybe,
I'd get something published and I wouldn't have to work in a bar
forever. But Carolyn kept pushing.
It turned out,
after a month or so of this, that a couple of her clients who had met
me at one of the firm's parties saw me at work. And that's what set
her off. It's true that the bar where I work isn't one of the most
stylish places in town. Well, to be honest, it's a dirty old place
just off Broad that caters to ancient war vets and tired salesmen and
broke grad students, but I don't think that was the problem. The
problem was that it “got back to her” that they'd seen me at work
and recognized me as her boyfriend. And it Didn't Look Good for
someone in Her Position to have a boyfriend who worked as a bartender
and sometime-bouncer.
She kept on
needling me throughout the rest of that spring and summer until
finally, in August, she showed up at the bar right before my shift
ended. She was still wearing her gray flannel suit and black pumps
from the office. Some of my regulars had dubbed her “Miss
Corporate Look 2011.” I came down to the end of the bar, where she
sat looking like she didn't want to touch anything. I was about to
mix her usual when she gave me the infamous line, “We have to
talk.”
I pretty much knew
what was coming, so I told the other bartender I was going to clock
out a couple of minutes early, and sat down with her. I'd always
wondered what she must be like in a courtroom, and now I knew. She
didn't give me a chance to say much of anything. It didn't sound
like a rehearsed speech, but she made all of her points quickly and
nastily. For a year now, she said, she'd been trying to get me to
realize my potential. And I'd done nothing. It was bad enough that
I'd given up on myself, she said, but she could see that I also
didn't care enough about her to change. She had a career to think
about. If she wanted to get anywhere, it just wasn't going to work
out to be hitched up with a bar bouncer. She couldn't exactly show
up at meet-and-greets with some dolt who may or may not have a black
eye from a bar fight. And, people in her firm thought she was just
using me for my dick. She realized now, she said, that she pretty
much had been doing just that, but that if she were going to buy a
piece of dick, she needed somebody who wouldn't be an embarrassment.
And that since I wasn't going to make any changes, she was. I'd
better be out of the apartment tomorrow.
After that little
deposition, I had no interest in changing her mind, or in ever seeing
her again. Afterwards I guess I could have told her that she didn't
need to treat me like a rentboy, that my education was just as good
as hers, that creativity is just as good as power-brokering, but I'd
gone from complacency to not giving a shit in about three minutes,
so I told her I'd stay elsewhere that night and get my stuff while
she was at work on Monday. I did. Luckily one of my buds knew
someone who had just moved to Roanoke and needed someone to sublet
his place. It's not a great apartment, but it's reasonably clean and
things can suck worse than living on Sheppard street.
Friday night, the
phone rang at the bar. I had the bad luck to answer it. It was
Carolyn, who, without bothering to say “hello,” told me that I
still had the key to the apartment, and to bring it to the office the
next day. I told her I could bring it by that night, but she said
that she didn't want me at the apartment, that she'd be in the office
tomorrow.
I'd
never been in her office. There hadn't ever been any need for me to
go there; even when things were going well with us, I knew that she
was too busy to have visitors at work. I knew that it was on the
18th
floor of the Jefferson Building, but that was about it. When I got
there, the firm's suite seemed empty. I called out for her. “Back
here.”
The
office was not big, but it did have a window looking over 10th
street, and you could see the river. It dawned on me that she really
must have been moving up in the firm, while she was giving me hell
about my non-career. It was furnished in a style that matched the
Corporate Look clothes she wore for work—gray upholstery, gray
carpeting, a big mahogany desk, chrome lamps. All very sleek, and
all of the inviting nature of a hornet's nest. She stood looking out
of the window. “You can leave the key on the desk. And I'll be
over later this afternoon to get Rusty.”
My jaw may have
actually dropped. “Get Rusty? He's my dog!”
“And I paid for
his adoption fees and his shots. Because you couldn't afford it.
He's mine and I want him back.”