At 1:00, Tim thinks he should eat something. He makes for the break room to get a candy bar from the vending machine. When he opens the door, he sees that Dave is already back from his food run, sitting in a plastic chair at a plastic table, wrapped in the heady scent of grease that's been fried to perfection.
There's someone else at the table, too. Tim walks in on their conversation. And he hesitates mid-step when he realizes who it is who's eating lunch with Dave: that it's Third-Floor Shelly. Third-Floor Shelly who is funny, actually funny. Third-Floor Shelly who gets a dimple on just one side of her face when she smiles, although Tim can never remember which side. Third-Floor Shelly who made Kara scowl when she said Tim was the only one who looked good in his Hawaiian T-shirt on Hawaiian T-Shirt Day last summer. Third-Floor Shelly eating a celery stick filled with peanut butter and laughing at something Dave has just said. She takes a bite and turns around. She says, “Oh, hi Timmy,” not very embarrassed at all that her mouth is full of food. And Tim says, “Hi,” back as his momentum carries him the rest of the way through the door.
At the vending machine, Tim takes his time with the rows of candy bars. He needs something filling and tasty, but not so ooey or gooey that he has to spend the rest of the day tonguing nougat from the concavities of his teeth. He imagines what his breakup speech will sound like if he has to go through it with the tip of his tongue jammed in one of his molars. It doesn't sound good. Behind him, Dave and Third-Floor Shelly talk about Ron Daltry and the real reasons he must have come all the way up for an afternoon meeting. “Corporate fraud” reasons, and “Layoffs” reasons, and “To experience the transcendent ineptitude of G.T. Kressman first hand” reasons.
Tim chuckles at that. It makes him forget the right number to push for the Milky Way bar he's decided on.
“What? I'm serious,” Shelly says. “Stupidity like that only comes around once in a generation. You should appreciate it”
“I'll appreciate it when I don't have to do his work for him anymore,” Tim says. The Milky Way crashes to the bottom of the vending machine, and he bends over and picks it out.
“Crazy,” Third-Floor Shelly says. “You're crazy. If my boss made me do all of his 'Powerpaint' presentations and called half of his staff Jenny and the other half Jerry, and called his secretary Apple Bottom...” She closes her eyes and a smile crawls over her face. She savors the thought. A dimple pops into her right cheek. “Veuve-Clicquot in a bow tie,” she says. “That's what he is.” Third-Floor Shelly opens her eyes.
Tim takes a hasty bite out of his Milky Way. Because he was staring, and because he doesn't want this woman, this beautiful woman who's smiling at him, to realize that he doesn't know what Veuve-Clicquot is.
He smiles, and Dave laughs, and Third-Floor Shelly turns back to the other man in the room and his laughter. Tim leaves and lets the conversation fall back into its two-person rhythm. As soon as he's outside again, he wishes he were inside again, but it's too late, again, so he walks back to his cube.
Friday, November 30, 2007
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
First Draft: Part Three
Tim spends most of the morning reading, re-reading, until his speech is memorized. Dave from three cubicles away stops by around 12:30, just as Tim is cycling into the “Where Do We Go From Here” section of the script.
For now I think we should take some time apart. Maybe in a couple of weeks–
“Holloway, I'm picking up Drive-Thru. You want in?”
“No. Thanks, Dave. I'm good.”
–once things have settled a little, we can go to a movie, or grab something to eat at The Vantage. Just as friends. I think we'll be good friends. And on and on like that, the words float by. They hum in him like Muzak in a department store – each interruption no more than a call for assistance in menswear, a blip between two tinny notes.
He's never broken up with anyone before. In eighth grade Jenny Silverson asked Marsha Handey to ask Hal Underwood to ask Tim if he'd go to the end of the year dance with her. Tim told Hal he had to think about it overnight. He wanted to say, “No,” because Jenny Silverson had this thing where her gums were too big for her teeth, so, “No.” But she was a girl. And Tim had never been asked on a date before. And maybe her gums weren't too big after all, so he would think about it before he said, “No.” But after dinner that night, Hal called to say that he'd asked Marsha to the dance and she'd said, “Yes,” and that she'd told him that Kyle Sanders had asked Jenny Silverson out on the bus ride home, so now she was going with him instead. Instead of Tim. And that's the closest Tim's come: an almost “No.” Twenty-five and he's never gotten closer than that. So he wants to practice. He wants to make sure he does it right.
He spent a long time on the beginning. He knows, from the public speaking class that he took in senior year, that it's what you say at the very start that sets the tone. Even the very first word is pivotal. The first word of Tim's speech is, “Kara.”
“Kara,” he'll say. “I think you're great.”
Tim stares at a spreadsheet on his monitor and thinks about how important it is for her to hear that before anything else. He wants her to understand that he's breaking up with her, not because she's not great, but because they are not great. And that line was in there, too. “It's not that you're not great, it's that we're not great.” He put it in as close to the middle as he could. He thought she would need to be reminded by then.
For now I think we should take some time apart. Maybe in a couple of weeks–
“Holloway, I'm picking up Drive-Thru. You want in?”
“No. Thanks, Dave. I'm good.”
–once things have settled a little, we can go to a movie, or grab something to eat at The Vantage. Just as friends. I think we'll be good friends. And on and on like that, the words float by. They hum in him like Muzak in a department store – each interruption no more than a call for assistance in menswear, a blip between two tinny notes.
He's never broken up with anyone before. In eighth grade Jenny Silverson asked Marsha Handey to ask Hal Underwood to ask Tim if he'd go to the end of the year dance with her. Tim told Hal he had to think about it overnight. He wanted to say, “No,” because Jenny Silverson had this thing where her gums were too big for her teeth, so, “No.” But she was a girl. And Tim had never been asked on a date before. And maybe her gums weren't too big after all, so he would think about it before he said, “No.” But after dinner that night, Hal called to say that he'd asked Marsha to the dance and she'd said, “Yes,” and that she'd told him that Kyle Sanders had asked Jenny Silverson out on the bus ride home, so now she was going with him instead. Instead of Tim. And that's the closest Tim's come: an almost “No.” Twenty-five and he's never gotten closer than that. So he wants to practice. He wants to make sure he does it right.
He spent a long time on the beginning. He knows, from the public speaking class that he took in senior year, that it's what you say at the very start that sets the tone. Even the very first word is pivotal. The first word of Tim's speech is, “Kara.”
“Kara,” he'll say. “I think you're great.”
Tim stares at a spreadsheet on his monitor and thinks about how important it is for her to hear that before anything else. He wants her to understand that he's breaking up with her, not because she's not great, but because they are not great. And that line was in there, too. “It's not that you're not great, it's that we're not great.” He put it in as close to the middle as he could. He thought she would need to be reminded by then.
Monday, November 26, 2007
First Draft, Part Two
The clock ticks past 10:17 with no sign of Kara. Sometimes she calls when she gets in. Not always, but sometimes. Just to say good morning. What a nice thing to do, he thought the first time it happened. But the phone doesn't ring, and he is thankful. And then she calls. Her name pops up on the phone's display: Tansetti, K. 478. He thinks about not answering, but his hand moves to the receiver. Let it go to voicemail, but he picks up. He cringes – deep breath. “Tim Holloway.”
“Hey, babe. Good morning,” comes her digitized voice through the handset.
“Oh, hi. I didn't know it was you."
“Are we doing lunch today? Because I have that thing at 1, and I need to make sure I'm back by 12:45 to get ready. So if you can't go early, we should just do our own things today, k?”
And there it is: “k?” Kara's favorite little expression. Kara's favorite little letter. She's obsessed with it, the letter K. K mugs and K t-shirts and plans to buy the giant K from the K-Mart on Carlson Ave (which should, of course, be spelled “Karlson” Ave.) as soon as it goes out of business. She told him once, on the couch, under a blanket, with the TV aglow and her head leaned soft against his chest, that the Ku Klux Klan couldn't be all bad, when their acronym was so good. KKK, she said, and there was relish in the timbre of her voice. Then she laughed. And before he knew what he was doing, he laughed too. And they didn't even have sex afterward. That night they just went to bed. But Tim still laughed.
“Oh, yeah,” Tim says. “Yeah, I've got a meeting until, like, 12:30 I think. Let me check.” He pulls up his calendar over his email and drags the mouse cursor down its neat rows of empty hours past 2:00. “Yeah. I've got a thing, too. Also. Sorry.”
“Is yours as bad as mine?” she asks.
“Me? No. No, not bad. Just stupid...stupid prep stuff. For this afternoon. You know.”
“Sure. Wait, this afternoon?”
“You know. That thing. Ron Daltry's coming up from D.C. Gotta get ready for the big boss.”
“You're presenting at that meeting? I didn't know that. Babe, that's huge, why didn't you tell me?”
“What? Me? No, no. Just. You know, just have to get ready. Prep...stuff.”
“Oh, well,” she says, and in the silence, Tim hopes she can't hear the sweat beading up from his forehead. He can hear it. Plink. Plink. Like rain on tin. Plink. He thinks the sound must carry through the receiver. He thinks that must be why she's so quiet. Plink. Plink. Plink. “Alright,” Kara says. “Well maybe I'll stop by after my one o'clock and say hi, k?”
“K,” he says. He hates himself for it. But he says it again in case she thinks he's going to break up with her later in the day. “K.”
“K, bye,” she says, and the phone clicks off before he responds.
“Hey, babe. Good morning,” comes her digitized voice through the handset.
“Oh, hi. I didn't know it was you."
“Are we doing lunch today? Because I have that thing at 1, and I need to make sure I'm back by 12:45 to get ready. So if you can't go early, we should just do our own things today, k?”
And there it is: “k?” Kara's favorite little expression. Kara's favorite little letter. She's obsessed with it, the letter K. K mugs and K t-shirts and plans to buy the giant K from the K-Mart on Carlson Ave (which should, of course, be spelled “Karlson” Ave.) as soon as it goes out of business. She told him once, on the couch, under a blanket, with the TV aglow and her head leaned soft against his chest, that the Ku Klux Klan couldn't be all bad, when their acronym was so good. KKK, she said, and there was relish in the timbre of her voice. Then she laughed. And before he knew what he was doing, he laughed too. And they didn't even have sex afterward. That night they just went to bed. But Tim still laughed.
“Oh, yeah,” Tim says. “Yeah, I've got a meeting until, like, 12:30 I think. Let me check.” He pulls up his calendar over his email and drags the mouse cursor down its neat rows of empty hours past 2:00. “Yeah. I've got a thing, too. Also. Sorry.”
“Is yours as bad as mine?” she asks.
“Me? No. No, not bad. Just stupid...stupid prep stuff. For this afternoon. You know.”
“Sure. Wait, this afternoon?”
“You know. That thing. Ron Daltry's coming up from D.C. Gotta get ready for the big boss.”
“You're presenting at that meeting? I didn't know that. Babe, that's huge, why didn't you tell me?”
“What? Me? No, no. Just. You know, just have to get ready. Prep...stuff.”
“Oh, well,” she says, and in the silence, Tim hopes she can't hear the sweat beading up from his forehead. He can hear it. Plink. Plink. Like rain on tin. Plink. He thinks the sound must carry through the receiver. He thinks that must be why she's so quiet. Plink. Plink. Plink. “Alright,” Kara says. “Well maybe I'll stop by after my one o'clock and say hi, k?”
“K,” he says. He hates himself for it. But he says it again in case she thinks he's going to break up with her later in the day. “K.”
“K, bye,” she says, and the phone clicks off before he responds.
Monday, November 19, 2007
A First Draft: Part One
This particular morning, Tim Patterson wakes up three minutes before his alarm tells him to. He lays on his side and watches through bleary eyes as the red LED colon that separates the 6 and the 5 winks on-off, on-off, on-off. He counts the blinks. One hundred three, one hundred four. He wills them to slow down. Slow, he thinks. Slow. Slow. With each blink, Slow. But despite his best efforts time moves, unstoppable, on toward the ante-meridian boundary between rest and the real world.
At seven a.m. “Howlin’” Hank Hargrove breaks the quiet that had nestled into the room. He is halfway through an unpleasant weather report: “-rain and low 50s this afternoon, and a chance of T-storms tonight, folks, so do what the doctor says and wear your rubbers!” A sound effect cuts in – a woman’s alluring “Ooh!” – and Tim rolls onto his back.
The ceiling fan creaks and taunts him – getup getup getup getup – until he finally squirms out of bed. He turns on the light. He pulls a clean pair of boxers from his dresser. He hobbles, morningsick and tired, down the hall and into the shower. When he gets back to his bedroom, “Fool in the Rain” is just hitting its Latin stride on the radio.
He’s prepared what he wants to say. He’s written it all down. He pulls his notebook out of his bag and flips it to a page toward the back. It lays open on his bed and Tim moves to the closet. While he sifts through his clothes, he mutters to himself. “It hasn’t been working for a while…” He looses a maroon dress shirt from its hanger. “We just don’t match, you and me…” He drags a pair of charcoal slacks up his legs. “I…I…” He pauses halfway up the buttons on his shirtfront, he stares up at the fan. A grimace passes over his face as he blurts out, “I don’t think you’re funny, and I really want to bone Third-Floor Shelly, ok?” He exhales and slumps his head, closes his eyes and cups his palm to his brow. “Jesus, Tim,” he says and pulls his hand down the skin of his face. Back to the notebook where he picks out the trail of his speech with his index finger, saying softly, “I think we’d both be happier if we were just friends.”
He reads and rehearses over a bowl of cereal and the sound of Top-40 hits on another radio, another station. In his imagination, Kara starts to whimper as soon as she hears “We have to talk,” and she’s reduced to tears before he even gets to the part where “We should see other people.” She’s a nice girl, Kara. A nice girl, Tim thinks, and he thinks about how nice she is. He thinks about how she’ll find another guy in no time, and about how happy they’ll be together. But the cereal doesn’t sit well in his stomach.
Work, and the light over his cubicle is blinking again. Facilities came to fix it the night before, as Tim was on his way out, but something more important must have come up. How many assholes does it take to change a lightbulb? he thinks, but only halfheartedly while he waits for the computer to boot up and his email to open. Twelve new messages. None from Kara. Relief. A news update and a pending trade in his fantasy football league, a forward from his mother that he deletes without opening, memo, memo, memo, memo. He sips his coffee and he reads, and soon the flicker overhead fades from overt annoyance to just another piece of background irritation.
Kara works in PR and she won't be in for another hour. PR doesn't come in until 10. Tim never understood why. That was his in when he met Kara: “Why do you guys come in so late?” A simple enough question.
“Well, I don't know about everyone else,” she said. “But I can never get to sleep, thinking about you – I need the extra rest.”
It startled him, it caught him off guard, and he felt himself make that face where his neck pulls back and his brow furrows in and his mouth half-opens, half-smirks, and he stayed like that, silent, until Kara laughed into the awkward silence by herself. She touched his arm when she laughed, and then he laughed too. Even though it wasn't funny. Nothing about it was funny. But he laughed. He laughed because she was pretty and the way she smelled reminded him of the dancers at the strip club. What she said wasn't funny, but it made him think, and what it made him think was, Here is a woman who might have sex with me. So he laughed.
He thinks about it now. He remembers it over his coffee that isn't quite lukewarm, and he shakes his head from side to side in disbelief. Not to say that it wasn't worth it. Not to say that he wasn't thankful for the sex. He looks up at the speckled-tile ceiling. It's not that I'm not thankful for the sex. It's just...well...you know, everything else. With his head leaned back, Tim closes his eyes. Because she really isn't funny, he thinks. And she thinks she is, but she isn't. And that's the worst part. Laughing at all those jokes that land dead in the air. I should have known from the start. I did know from the start. His computer beeps at him. Another email. Just a reminder. Meeting at 3:30. New initiative. Potential for top-level recognition.
At seven a.m. “Howlin’” Hank Hargrove breaks the quiet that had nestled into the room. He is halfway through an unpleasant weather report: “-rain and low 50s this afternoon, and a chance of T-storms tonight, folks, so do what the doctor says and wear your rubbers!” A sound effect cuts in – a woman’s alluring “Ooh!” – and Tim rolls onto his back.
The ceiling fan creaks and taunts him – getup getup getup getup – until he finally squirms out of bed. He turns on the light. He pulls a clean pair of boxers from his dresser. He hobbles, morningsick and tired, down the hall and into the shower. When he gets back to his bedroom, “Fool in the Rain” is just hitting its Latin stride on the radio.
He’s prepared what he wants to say. He’s written it all down. He pulls his notebook out of his bag and flips it to a page toward the back. It lays open on his bed and Tim moves to the closet. While he sifts through his clothes, he mutters to himself. “It hasn’t been working for a while…” He looses a maroon dress shirt from its hanger. “We just don’t match, you and me…” He drags a pair of charcoal slacks up his legs. “I…I…” He pauses halfway up the buttons on his shirtfront, he stares up at the fan. A grimace passes over his face as he blurts out, “I don’t think you’re funny, and I really want to bone Third-Floor Shelly, ok?” He exhales and slumps his head, closes his eyes and cups his palm to his brow. “Jesus, Tim,” he says and pulls his hand down the skin of his face. Back to the notebook where he picks out the trail of his speech with his index finger, saying softly, “I think we’d both be happier if we were just friends.”
He reads and rehearses over a bowl of cereal and the sound of Top-40 hits on another radio, another station. In his imagination, Kara starts to whimper as soon as she hears “We have to talk,” and she’s reduced to tears before he even gets to the part where “We should see other people.” She’s a nice girl, Kara. A nice girl, Tim thinks, and he thinks about how nice she is. He thinks about how she’ll find another guy in no time, and about how happy they’ll be together. But the cereal doesn’t sit well in his stomach.
Work, and the light over his cubicle is blinking again. Facilities came to fix it the night before, as Tim was on his way out, but something more important must have come up. How many assholes does it take to change a lightbulb? he thinks, but only halfheartedly while he waits for the computer to boot up and his email to open. Twelve new messages. None from Kara. Relief. A news update and a pending trade in his fantasy football league, a forward from his mother that he deletes without opening, memo, memo, memo, memo. He sips his coffee and he reads, and soon the flicker overhead fades from overt annoyance to just another piece of background irritation.
Kara works in PR and she won't be in for another hour. PR doesn't come in until 10. Tim never understood why. That was his in when he met Kara: “Why do you guys come in so late?” A simple enough question.
“Well, I don't know about everyone else,” she said. “But I can never get to sleep, thinking about you – I need the extra rest.”
It startled him, it caught him off guard, and he felt himself make that face where his neck pulls back and his brow furrows in and his mouth half-opens, half-smirks, and he stayed like that, silent, until Kara laughed into the awkward silence by herself. She touched his arm when she laughed, and then he laughed too. Even though it wasn't funny. Nothing about it was funny. But he laughed. He laughed because she was pretty and the way she smelled reminded him of the dancers at the strip club. What she said wasn't funny, but it made him think, and what it made him think was, Here is a woman who might have sex with me. So he laughed.
He thinks about it now. He remembers it over his coffee that isn't quite lukewarm, and he shakes his head from side to side in disbelief. Not to say that it wasn't worth it. Not to say that he wasn't thankful for the sex. He looks up at the speckled-tile ceiling. It's not that I'm not thankful for the sex. It's just...well...you know, everything else. With his head leaned back, Tim closes his eyes. Because she really isn't funny, he thinks. And she thinks she is, but she isn't. And that's the worst part. Laughing at all those jokes that land dead in the air. I should have known from the start. I did know from the start. His computer beeps at him. Another email. Just a reminder. Meeting at 3:30. New initiative. Potential for top-level recognition.
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