Fat Bald Jeff Read online

  Elevator was sick again, so I had to trudge up the stairs with Bev and Francis after the workshop. Francis patiently waited for me to catch up at the landings while Bev bellowed heartlessly about how the thin don’t live as long as the robust. That’s because the robust usually squash us when no one else is looking, but I was too out of breath to say anything.

  Went into the staff lounge in our wing and got my lunch out of the refrigerator. I suppose from now on I will always feel a dreadful anxiety as I open the fridge door. My subconscious will never forget the awful day my sandwich disappeared. To think some deranged personality stole my lunch out of the fridge, then snuck it back into my purse, all without my knowing. Now I find myself looking at my coworkers with suspicion. How sad that I’ve lost my childlike trust of humankind.

  Eating quarters in the lounge are dusty and surrounded on three sides by shelves of books we have published on library cataloging rules. I am usually the only one who eats there, but the solitude aids my digestion. Most zombies eat in the dungeon and the rest eat at restaurants or in their cubicles. Mr. Genett tried to establish a new law prohibiting employees from eating in their cubicles, but the whole publishing staff rioted in response. It all goes back to peons thinking of their cubes as home. Don’t they know better? My rule: no food and no decor in my cubicle; although today I taped to my wall a diagram of a hunchback sitting at a computer terminal, which I hope will remind me to sit up straight.

  I was cutting my peanut butter sandwich into aesthetically pleasing strips, instead of one gargantuan hod, when the graphic designers trooped in. Francis smiled, but the other two ignored me.

  “Can you believe that flyer by the ’vator, man?” asked one.

  “That old chick with her boob in the martini glass! Sick,” agreed the other.

  I cut my sandwich strips into minuscule pieces.

  Francis tried to involve me in their discussion, but I concentrated on my cutlery. He said, “I heard there were flyers up by the elevator on each floor, but the unit heads ran around like mad tearing them down. Did you see them, Addie?”

  “I didn’t do anything. I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said as my forehead became clammy and moist. I blotted my face with a soiled paper napkin. This is what it’s like holding up under rabid inquisition. Perhaps I could be a spy. No one’s getting anything out of me. Calm, calm. Ah, yes … my face was a cool, impenetrable mask.

  Francis said, “You got some peanut butter in your eyebrows.”

  Wiped off peanut butter with lunch bag. Mask still held up, though fissures tried to crack through. “Er … yes, well,” I said.

  The other two designers exited the lounge with their sack lunches, imitating me and mincing about. Expertly, I changed the subject.

  “They’re not very nice.”

  “Those flyers? Yeah, I guess—”

  “No, no,” I said, “the other graphic delinquents.”

  He frowned. “Graphic designers.”

  I said nothing. Francis’s untamed black brows deepened his frown. “So, did you see the picture?”

  I scrunched up my eyes and nose, the way people do when they’re struggling to dredge up some buried memory.

  “Did I see the flyers? No, of course not! Ha-ha! I don’t know what you mean. What flyers? I didn’t put them up, nobody saw me, you can’t prove anything. Ha-ha! Er …” Again with the moist salty stuff running down my face. My throat was parched, as from a powerful sirocco zipping through the Gobi. I glugged the rest of my water. My breath came shallow, swift. Lying does not come easy to sensitive people with acute digestive disorders.

  Francis laughed. “Next you’ll be telling me it was your husband’s idea to murder King Duncan and that you had nothing to do with it.”

  “What?” I cried. My house of lies had come tumbling down around me like faulty Tinker Toys.

  He said, “From Macbeth? Ah, never mind …”

  I laid my head down on the table, pretending a migraine. Curse that Fat Bald Jeff for enticing me into a web of deceit. Putting up the copies of that yucko picture of Coddles’s seemed like fun at the time, but now that I know what it is to be mired in deception and crime, I will surely pay with nervous insomnia and irritable bowel syndrome the rest of my days.

  Francis, oblivious to my discomfort, went on about the flyer. He said its caption announced that the original photo had been found in the dungeon microwave and could be claimed at the front desk.

  “Isn’t that a riot? I wonder who did it?” he asked.

  Just at the point of my confessing to it all, Bev walked into the lounge. Seizing the opportunity, I indicated her to Francis by wild eyebrow activity. Why not blame it on her, horrible bloated sheep that she is? Lura followed after, and they all had a lengthy discussion about the flyers as I chewed off my hangnails.

  “I think it’s just disgusting,” said Bev. She angrily jabbed the buttons on the pop machine and it spat a Mello Yello at her.

  “Methinks the sheep doth protest too much,” I squeaked in a voice two octaves higher than usual. Unfortunately, this comment directed all attention to me. I felt a confession coming on, as I cannot hold up under public scrutiny, but used my last bit of control to rise from my chair to leave.

  Francis looked disappointed; I’m sure he was planning to grill me some more. Lura grabbed my vacated chair and Bev lumbered off down the corridor with her oily beverage and bucket of fried bird.

  Back in the cube I sat down at the computer. Saw that Coddles had sent a global e-mail to all staff in the building. It read:

  Someone sent a rude letter to the CTA from this office and signed my name. I warn you, this is a punishable offense, sending business letters on company stationery and signing others’ names.

  I heard yelling in the hallway, and I gophered over my cubicle wall to see what was going on. Mr. Genett was scolding Coddles for using the e-mail system to air his personal grievances! Coddles insisted he had every right to do so, since one of the employees used the National Association of Libraries’ stationery, signed his name, and sent it from our building. Mr. Genett just shook his head, saying that’s not what e-mail is for. I have to agree with Mr. Genett.

  Unfortunately, I was standing on my folding chair and happened to look down at Bev in her cubicle, sucking the marrow out of the stripped chicken bones. Immediately overcome with nausea, I fell off the chair and hit my head on the cubicle wall, which wobbled a bit but remained rooted. Coddles and Mr. Genett rushed to my aid before I could properly arrange myself, and I fear they got an eyeful of ripped gray underpants. I’m not proud of the state of my undergarments, but there it is.

  I thought I heard Coddles grunt, “Oh mama,” as he took in the sight at his feet. His strand of hair came unglued from his head and trembled spasmodically between his blackcurrant eyes. He helped me into my folding chair and asked, between heavy moist breaths, if I was all right. Why couldn’t suave Genett be the one helping and patting and cooing over me? He just looked me over to ensure no lawsuit would be forthcoming, then hastened back to the executive wing. Coddles fussed over me while a line of drool swung from his fish lips.

  Felt my nostrils flare involuntarily while my mouth widened into a stricken line of poorly masked horror. My eyes began to tear as the stench of brine and brilliantine soaked the air around me. I shouted, “I’m all right,” which at least compelled him to release his grip on my shoulders.

  He sat down in my extra folding chair and dabbed at his forehead with the paper in his hand. I stared at this strange method of mopping up perspiration. He looked at his hand and threw the paper down pettishly. As he fished through the voluminous folds of his prêt-à-porter suit for a hanky, I easily read a paragraph from the paper on the floor. It was from the CTA.

  … very sorry indeed about your sexual episode and sick grandmother! Try as we might to enforce behavior codes on the trains, it is not always possible. Neither is it practical to station armed guards in each car to beat off unwanted advances! Lives at stake
and all that! Please accept our apologies and keep riding the El! Chicago, the city that works!

  Sincerely,

  Ian el-Sabbah

  No doubt some CTA flunky. Coddles saw me reading the letter but didn’t seem to care. I suspect he has other troubles on his mind—such as how someone got ahold of his porno picture and Xeroxed it all over the building! He stuffed the letter in his coat pocket and expectorated into his vile rough-edged hanky. Frankly, his handkerchief makes my proletarian underpants look like silk organza.

  He stood up to leave, blubbering into the cloth, “Stupid letter. I don’t understand why he used so many exclamation points.”

  I didn’t know either but replied that the exclamation point is a grammatical crutch used by overexpressive under-achievers, which seemed to comfort him a little.

  That Ian el-Sabbah seems like a self-righteous little prig. I predict more letters will be flooding his in box over the next few weeks.

  After that haunting episode, I decided to settle my nerves with a sweet treat from the vending machine in the dungeon. I saw Fat Bald Jeff standing in front of the machine, as was his thrice-a-day custom, pouring in vast amounts of change and draining its stock of Bun, a strange and arcane clod of candy. He stuffed his pants pockets full of Buns, a sight I cannot adequately describe. I wanted to say: I’m done with our life of crime! I’m being crushed by the burden of our hoax! But as he passed by, he winked at me. It was a sign of solidarity. I realized I’d had a partner in something, however brief, for the first time in my life. Winked back.

  At the vending machine, I suddenly wondered if in fact he had winked, or was it just a coincidental spasm? My wink truly conveyed brotherhood in a secret society. His just looked like the lazy-eyed twitch of a psychotic pirate. Oh well.

  Dropped my quarters in and chose the Zero candy bar. The white chocolate cramps my ascending colon, but after my debut into lawless society, the pawing of Coddles, and the display of my grundies, I no longer care.

  After days of begging, I finally convinced Mother that we ought to go see Grandmother. She stopped by my building one evening to pick me up. As I feared, she brought the lumbering Swede along. Instead of exiting the car and ringing my buzzer like a civilized person, Jann merely sat in the driver’s seat and laid on the horn. Paco and the giantess sat on the front stoop, sharing a butt, and glared reproachfully at the oaf behind the wheel. I was embarrassed for Paco to watch me get in that honking hunk of junk with those two morons, but I could see no way out of it.

  Sat in the backseat and congratulated Jann on his Scandinavian doorbell. My dry humor flies right over the philistine’s head. He peeled out, with the diesel station wagon spewing black fog, and drove like a madman up the Kennedy Expressway.

  Mother said that my grandmother tends to exaggerate her illnesses and that we were probably taking a trip out to Evanston for nothing. She said Jann’s mother is almost ninety, still cuts her own firewood with a handsaw, and never complains about her health or anything else. I pointed out that Jann’s mother enjoys good health because, like a captive whale, she subsists on a diet entirely of herring, and the reason she has nothing to complain about, unlike Gran, is that she does not have my mother for a daughter-in-law.

  “Not yet,” said Mother.

  Felt queasy the rest of the ride.

  Gran’s daffodils were in bloom in front of the house. I reminded Mother of the autumn we helped Gran plant a hundred daffodils and two hundred tulips, and the picnic lunch we ate outside afterward. Mother said all she remembered was that the squirrels dug up every tulip bulb by the next morning and that Grandfather went out with his .22 and shot them in the trees. He received a stern lecture from the police but was not arrested. He’d donated a lot of money to the city of Evanston in one form or another and in those days was considered an eccentric. Mother said he was lucky he was rich, otherwise he would have been merely criminal.

  Grandmother was playing solitaire in her parlor. She had the heat turned up to eighty and wore a beige cardigan, even though I’ve told her thousands of times that beige makes her look bilious. At least she had on lipstick, a good indication that she was feeling all right. I sat next to her on the raspberry divan and kissed her on the cheek while Mother made a poor show of concern, fluffing pillows vaguely and turning the thermostat down. Jann stood rigidly in the corner, fiddling with the drawstring of his extremely tight sport pants.

  Mother began, “So how are—”

  Grandmother lifted her hand for quiet, saying, “Hold on, dear. This solitaire is going to come out. Red six on black seven. Move the king. Ah, yes.”

  Mother rolled her eyes to the heavens, sighed, and sat in the Queen Anne chair, looking horribly incongruous with her flared overalls and wraithlike gray hair. She leaned in toward Gran and shouted, “Old woman. Old woman. What did the doctor say?”

  I am proud Gran had the poise to ignore Mother’s insults. She finished her play of cards, then muttered, “Drat. Two of clubs.”

  Jann took a step out of the corner and said, “You’re only supposed to look at every third card.” A frosty silence descended upon the parlor, and Jann retreated into his corner.

  Grandmother pulled a pink shawl around her shoulders. “Chilly in here. Ruth, turn that thermostat up. The doctor says the eyes are deteriorating, but I’m in no immediate danger.”

  Relieved, I snuggled up to her and she put her arm around me.

  Mother stood and rubbed her hands together. “Marvelous. Well, shall we get going?”

  My poison darts found their mark and Mother sank into the chair. Gran put down her cards on the end table (Jacobean—yuck, a flea-market gift from Father) and gazed up lovingly at the framed portraits on the wall above.

  “Here we go,” muttered Mother.

  Gran sighed and straightened a photograph of Father at age twenty. His hair was combed and clean, unlike the horrible corona of brambles that I remembered, and he wore a tie and smiled for the camera. The picture was taken when Grandfather still expected his son to follow him into the family pharmaceuticals firm. A good decade later Father finally saw the error of his ways and decided to go to work at the firm, but by then our family unit was on the verge of collapse.

  “Such a handsome boy, Harvey was,” she said, “so much potential. And we thought that houndstooth sack suit was so outrageous then! If we’d only known what hideous costumes men would wear today.” Her voice trailed off and we all looked at Jann’s purple and orange tiger-striped Zubaz exercise pants. He tried to cross his legs casually, but his thighs were too massive.

  Gran looked at Mother and beamed. “He was handsome, wasn’t he?”

  Glumly, Mother nodded.

  “Thin, bookish, intellectual. Not like … er, young fellow there.” Gran can hardly bring herself to pronounce the bricklayer’s absurd Scandinavian name without going apoplectic.

  We all heard Jann’s stomach gurgle from across the room.

  “Oh my,” said Grandmother, rising from the divan, “I suppose it’s dinnertime. I was just going to have some cottage cheese and fruit, but you take it, young man.”

  Jann, unaccustomed to Grandmother’s circular etiquette, practically ran into the kitchen. Mother followed him while I coaxed Gran to sit back down. She picked up her cards again and peeked under the two of clubs. Then she asked me about Martin. It’s so difficult to talk about him because, on the one hand, I would like to move this courtship on to the next level—selecting the Waterford “Marquis” pattern for our stem-ware—but on the other hand, he’s a tedious pedant who doesn’t seem to view me as a potential mate. Once I brought him here for dinner. Grandmother asked several times about his intentions, but he just remarked endlessly on the prudence of capital investment.

  Grandmother had smiled brightly and said, “I’m sure that’s very nice, dear, but don’t you want someone to share it with?” as she offered him a third helping of boiled broccoli.

  He said, “Good God, no.”

  Their eyes met and I sensed an
unspoken challenge. She said, “But broccoli’s so good for the skin,” with a pitying glance at his acne scars. I had been gulping Strawberry Hill by the glassful, and luckily, I gagged at just the right moment during their confused exchange. Gran walloped me something fierce on the back while the Lemming brooded with his fingertips stuck in his pockmarks.

  “Martin’s fine,” I said.

  “Wedding bells yet?” she asked. I flung myself facedown on the sofa in response.

  She patted my head consolingly as I wept of my failure to land him. Without the Lemming, I am bereft of prospects. All I want is a house and a garden and a manservant named Tressilian imported from the Cornish coast.

  I heard Mother approach from the kitchen. Jann trailed after her, whining, “Can’t you get her to make something with a little meat in it?” I sat up and dried my eyes before Mother could see that I’d been crying. Nothing is worse than my mother’s attempts at comfort. She has the maternal aptitude of a serving fork.

  “All ready?” she asked. I nodded, got up, and kissed Gran on the cheek.

  Mother narrowed her eyes suspiciously at me. She asked if Grandmother had been dosing me with homemade cherry brandy again. Grandmother sniffed and walked stiffly up the stairs without a word.

  If my parents hadn’t determined to ruin our lives and squander my inheritance on the vile VW minibus, things might have been different for me. But Fate has always been a sorry jade when I try to count on her. Even though Father refused to support us until I was nine, it’s possible we could have turned out normal. He did eventually submit to Grandfather’s plea to shut down the sickening kiln and take up work at the pharmaceuticals firm. For four years, we were nearly solvent. Father dragged himself out of the house every morning to sell products, and Mother stopped fashioning plant holders and vests out of hemp. She even cooked a sort of evening meal for us, but it was usually wrecked by the addition of kelp and gritty leaves.