Listening to a Rose

I got back from the doctor after he said one month.

Got an email my first day back from Bill T. Everyone has to work overtime for the rest of the month to meet the quarter numbers.

Great.

I'm at my desk and I want to quit. What's the point of all this? This number goes here, but not there. This number is worth so many dollars; this number needs so many man-hours.

I don't tell anyone, so they come up to me and sit in the chair at the end of my desk and make small talk. Kyle W. always smirks when he comes over and I can never tell why.

"So…" he says, smirking, "did you see the Cardinals last night?"

"No." I'm a Cubs fan, and I don't watch TV. He knows this.

"They won."

"Oh." His left eye is a little smaller than his right. When he smiles it shrinks, and it makes me uncomfortable to look at him. I look at my screen and click my mouse.

"Yeah, by two runs." He's grinning now. "It was funny. Yeah."

I glance over my shoulder and twitch a smile. He sits for a moment longer before leaving.

This place sucks.

Then I think, What would I do otherwise? Sit at home and read stories. People I'd never meet doing things I'd never do. Maybe I'd go for a walk. Down the same streets I've memorized, getting looks from people who wonder if I've run out of gas. Because that's the only reason to walk nowadays. Right.

I go out into the shop with a clipboard in my hand. It makes me look busy. The welder's arc throws shadows on the far wall. Machines that sound like overgrown staplers stamp shapes out of sheet metal. Fans as tall as I am suck paint fumes outside. One of the technicians curses the copper out of a wire. These are the sights and sounds of commerce.

There's a reason they have to pay people to come in to work.

Eventually the shift bell rings, and people look at the clock. They got the email. I walk to my car alone.

At home I drink a beer and eat a pork chop. I'm zoned out in my chair. On my way back from the bathroom I go to grab another beer, and I find my empty bottle, my plate, my fork, and my napkin at the bottom of the fridge. I don't remember putting them there.

It's things like that that made me see the doctor in the first place. I'd be looking for my keys for ten minutes before realizing I was holding them. Or I'd start dinner and the smoke alarm would go off because I'd put a towel in a frying pan. Little things.

Nothing to do about it now. I put the dishes in the sink and pop my beer.

I put on some music and look at the wall. I wish I could think of something profound. Something to prove to myself that I've gotten something out of life. I wish I had an enemy to fight. Someone who would kill me on my feet. I want to go out with guns blazing. I want to go out with God, Woman, and Country on my lips.

Between songs my apartment is dead silent. Some birds chirp in the gloaming outside.

The doctor said it would progress quickly. I probably won't even notice when it happens. He did say it was best to give notice at work soon, though. I might be fine wearing lettuce as a hat at home, but at work people might notice those things. I won't. They will. That's what gets me.

He showed me a cat when he was testing me. A tabby. It meowed at me.

I said, "Cat."

He said, "Hmm."

It wasn't a cat. It was a soccer ball. The rose wasn't a rose, either. The rose was a pair of headphones. I swear I could smell it. But later he showed me a tape.

I called a pair of headphones a rose.


Friday. Joanna calls while I'm playing with the margins on my resignation letter. She wants to meet at a bar after work. All right. Fine. At six; we can order food there. She doesn't know either. No need for it. The last thing I need is feigned sympathy. I hate that. You tell someone bad news, and they become upset. Then you have to comfort them. There's some kind of humor there, I'm sure.

Bill T. is busting someone's balls for botching a wiring diagram. The phone guys are talking to customers, who they hate, in their most pleasant voices. Allison, the woman who sits next to me, apologizes for the delay in a voice so saccharine I need an insulin shot. I'm keeping busy looking busy.

One of the younger techs comes over in a huff, his face red, his safety glasses pushed back on his head. He's Jason T., not to be confused with Ponytail Jason, Big Jason, or New Jason. We have a lot of techs named Jason. Jason T., has worked sixty-eight hours this week and is planning on staying until ten tonight. I heard him arguing with his girlfriend on the phone the other day. He's a dedicated employee.

Jason T. nods to me and grabs an instrument out of a cabinet by his desk. I furrow my brow and click some keys on my keyboard. I send my letter to the printer as Jason T. heads back to the shop. I get it and go stand near Bill T.

"Hey, Bill, got a minute?" I ask.

This is my big exit. We go to the small conference room. He asks if it's the money. I say, "No, personal reasons." He can't argue with that. He asks if I can stay long enough to train my replacement. I say, "I don't think so." He shakes my hand and wishes me luck.

And that's that.



At five forty-five I stop at a quick-stop oil change and try to order a beer. The attendant looks at me like I'm crazy. He gets on the phone as I leave and takes down my license plate number. It used to embarrass me, but now I take it in stride. I won't remember it in a few weeks anyway.

I still manage to beat Joanna to the bar. She shows up in low heels and a low blouse. Wisps of hair blow around her head as she walks. She sits next to me and orders a drink before saying hi.

"One of those weeks," she says.

"Tell me about it."

"So it's been forever since we've seen each other! Where have you been keeping yourself?"

She's smiling. I smile back. "I don't know," I say, truthfully. "Here, you've had a rough week? Hey! Can I get two shots of Red Label? Here, cheers. To the weekend."

"To the weekend. Cheers! Wow!"

"Good, right?"

"I don't know how you sip that stuff. I'll get next."

"In a minute. Been crazy at work?"

She chases the shot with her beer. "You know how some people are so incompetent you wonder how they can feed themselves? They all work at HBC."

I laugh and forget for a while. We talk about work and football and sex.

A few drinks later Joanna says, "So we set got a gig for the CD release party!"

"Sweet!" I say. Joanna's band, KOE, started out playing coffee houses and open mikes. They moved on to bars and band battles. Now they're opening for other bands at music clubs weekly. They're going places. "Where at?"

She smiles and looks at me sideways through her hair. "House of Blues."

"Nuh-uh!"

She nods and does a dance with her shoulders. "Yep. Mike's been making the rounds and talked us in."

"Babe, that's awesome!" I hug her. She smells like vanilla. "Congratulations! When is it?"

"November thirtieth. We're on nine to ten-thirty, and three-dollar you-call-it all night."

"Oh. Yeah. Man, House of Blues, that's huge, Jo."

She cocks an eyebrow. "So are you coming?"

"If I can."

"Have other plans?"

"No. I'll make it if I can." Halloween isn't until next week.

"You should. The S.L. Tees are opening for us; it's going to rock."

"Sounds like it. I'll do everything I can to make it."

"OK. If you need a ride or anything, you can chill with us before the show."

"We'll see."

"OK," she says, and looks at the TV. The Cubs shortstop bobbles a grounder and she yells at the TV. Joanna's good like that. She won't even ask if I don't say something's wrong. She knows, but she won't press it. When I do say something, she'll be there, no ifs, ands, or buts.

We've been friends for more than a decade now. We've never dated. We tell other people and each other that we never will. But, God, if I had more time, I'd marry that girl.



On Sunday I push my bed into the closet and sleep on the balcony. It was comfortable until I woke up. My computer tower and a dry mop are in an air conditioning box in the sink. I guess I felt like cleaning up before the work week.

I'm a half-hour late to work, and it's the same old shit. Kyle W. saunters over, grinning, and says he heard I'm quitting.

"I am."

"But why?" He chuckles.

"I have my reasons."

"Like?" His face is turning red. I want to hit him.

"Like my own."

"Yeah? Well, I'll let you—get back to—work, then."

I turn around and rub my eyebrows. Another headache is coming on. They come and go. I see things right when I have them, but they're so bad that sometimes all I see is the inside of the toilet bowl.

A few more people come by to ask why I'm quitting. I let some of the headache show, and I say, "Personal reasons." It starts the whispers rolling, and I take off after lunch.



Wednesday I don't make it in at all because I spent all day sitting on a chair on the balcony rubbing leaves on the railing. Thought I was putting together a sales document for our new controller. Had it all nice looking too, and I got up to go to the bathroom and realized I was at home.

Bill T. chews me out the next morning. I really did have to put together a sales document, and now one of our customers is grumbling that our company never gets anything done on time.

I get it done. Terribly boring work; it was like making a duplicate of one I already did. My chair didn't feel right either, so I put my monitor on it and sat on my desk. I knew I did this, it wasn't an illusion. The chair was just uncomfortable, and that's what I said when people whispered and asked if everything was okay.



On Friday I decide to retroactively make my two-week notice a one-week notice, because, fuck, what are they going to do about it?



Another headache hits me over the weekend, and it's all I can do to make a doctor appointment for Monday. I spend most of the weekend hiding under a blanket in my room with the shades drawn, drinking water through a straw.

I lose it a few times. On Sunday I'm over the toilet, and the seat came down, bang, on the back of my head. You talk about kicking someone when they're down, try getting smacked with a toilet seat while you're heaving up your guts through a headache that blinds you purple. Had me in tears. I'm crying and puking into the toilet, and I know when the headache stops I'll start seeing illusions again. Really got me down for a while.

I clean up and get some more water and put my alarm clock on to get me up for my doctor appointment. I cry myself to sleep under my blanket.



I found a banana, and I slit the top with a knife to get it started. It started bleeding. A squirrel crawled out the peel. Its throat was cut, and it stared with big bulging black eyes. I shut myself in the bathroom, and I could hear it scrabbling at the door. After a while it stopped.



There were a few days in a row I got headaches in the morning that were gone by the time it was dark. I sat in my chair then. I didn’t read. Don’t know how many days or hours I have where things are clear like that, so I just sat in my chair. I say it’s safer to stay in, to stay still. That’s what I think about. A couple weeks, at most, and I stay in and drink coffee so I don’t get hurt. Figure that one out.

I had dreams. Things I wanted to do. When I was a kid I wanted to be a pilot. I wanted to fly airliners. Launch two hundred tons of metal through the clouds. Carry hundreds of people from one pinpoint on the map to another. That’s power. I wanted that, once. Looking back and I can’t help but think. Maybe if I had partied a little less, maybe if I hadn’t gotten crushed by one chick after another, maybe if I had moved away from home a few years earlier, maybe if I had done this thing instead of that thing, or maybe if I had done this thing differently, maybe I could’ve flown planes.

But what good are dreams? What difference would it make? I’d be thirty-thousand feet over South Dakota and I’d think I was home in the tub. My dreams would make headlines then.

It’s safe in my chair. Sometimes, though, I wish I could scream— climb up on the tallest building and throw my jacket to the wind and scream—and have someone hear me. That’s all I really want. I don’t want anyone to listen. But when I really toss back I wish someone could hear it.



The days blend into each other. I ate a magazine and a sandwich from the deli down the street. My phone rang as it was getting dark, and I answered. There was a dog on the other end, barking. I asked who it was, but I started speaking French, and I couldn’t understand myself. The dog got louder on the other end.

I checked the display and it didn’t make sense. I knew there were numbers there, the number of the call and the time. They looked like bugs under glass. The dog started whining. Something clicked and I went from confused to panicked; I was really losing it. I hung up and didn’t answer when the phone rang back.



The headaches returned that night and went on through the week. They’d let up long enough to eat a bit, and then hit me again before the food could do any good. Every time, I tried to get my shit together. Focus. Touch my chair and talk to myself, describe it and get it right; call it a chair. Hit the voice mail and listen to the words, repeat them and put them together to understand. Joanna called. Wanted to know if I was okay, and to say her concert got pushed up. I wrote down the time and place, and then spent two days with a map and a pencil trying to figure out how to get there.

I was going to make it, one way or another.



A headache hit before sunrise that morning and kept me in bed until afternoon. As soon as I could stand I got my things and headed out. No way I was going to drive at this point, and it would be a long walk even if I didn’t get lost.

I’d been in my apartment for so long I didn’t notice how things had changed. My head was still ringing and there are clowns running through alleys in my peripheral vision. The streetsigns are stapled to trees coming out of the concrete, and I walk faster. I spent an hour in an outdoor mall thinking I was following the map. Nothing serious.

Inside the House of Blues they were just setting up for the night. I go straight to the bathroom, throw up in the urinal, and try to order a drink from the mirror. After a minute I got cleaned up and went to the bar.

People make me nervous, to be honest. A few words with the bartender and I take a drink to a table by the edge of the curtain that wraps around the back of the stage. My hands shake, so I draw in the condensation my glass makes for a while. I remember not being like this. Being sick and being alone got to me I guess. It must happen to everybody eventually; might as well be soon. I want to go home, but I don’t.

The place fills up with all sorts of people. A chick wears a snake around her neck and talks with someone wearing a mask that makes him look like he has lizard eyes. There are fairies flitting around the lights, and Jason T. is hanging from the ceiling scaffolding rigging bug zappers to catch them.



She leads her band onto the stage from behind the curtain. The room dims and the music starts. My table vibrated, and I grabbed it to keep it from bouncing away. I look up and there she is.

The lights make her hair a rainbow. Behind her, a cat bangs on the drums. She’s at center stage with the microphone, plucking at a long-stem rose, singing with her eyes closed. A bass heartbeat throbs just under the surface of her song. I blink the blurriness away and see her smiling at me.



It’s a short set; at the end I stand and clap and whistle. She hadn’t taken her eyes off me the whole time, even as she swayed with the music. Before the applause died, she was with me at the table. The rose, shorter now, twirled in her fingers as she talked. Her words were lost in the applause, but I know what she said. How long have we waited, letting comfortable years past get in the way of those yet to come? So afraid of losing what we had that we stopped every time we approached the place we both wanted to go. We kissed in the glow below the stage.

On through the night music turns our words to whispers. Neither of us leave the table as crowds ebb and swell around us. She laughs at jokes I tell while she draws shapes in my hand with her finger. It’s like any other time we’re together. But there’s something else there now. Something I’ve been looking for my whole life. Something that matters. Something beautiful. I kiss her again. Rose petals glide along my face. Her hand covers mine. She’s wearing a bracelet I got for her years ago, and I gently roll it around her wrist.

Then she puts a hand on my shoulder and says, “Time to go, buddy.”

“What?”

“Night’s over, go home.”



I look up and the music dies. The bartender scoops my glass up and wipes the table with a cloth. Someone carries a clanking garbage bag out a back door. The lights are up, and I’m the only one there.

“Where’d KOE go?” I ask the bartender.

“I don’t keep tabs on them once they leave. Let’s go, we’re closing up.”

In a daze, I head for the door. Outside the night is quiet. I check my phone and listen to Joanna ask where I am, then tell me where KOE is spending after hours, and then assume I’d been busy and halfheartedly asking to call her back when I get free. My throat closes.

I look around and don’t know where I am. My map must have fallen out of my pocket. I feel another headache coming on.