Z-Locks
There’s an empty pain in the pit of my stomach. It’s the kind that comes in the silent hours when night rolls into morning, and common sense remains nestled in the warmth of its bed. But I’m sitting at my bedroom window with my notepad, watching the occasional car spray blackened ditchwater down the road. In the darkness of these vital hours, we’re all unified by our nakedness. Our hearts and veins, momentarily exposed to the world, bulge at the touch of fresh oxygen. But then we remember our lives, our responsibilities, and our skin snaps on tight. These are the locks that keep us bound in routine. As a writer, I’ve found that my characters are free to flourish in twilight’s lonely haze, even if they are trampled and lost with the onset of daily traffic.
“Rise and sunshine!” the bedroom door creaks open and my mom pokes her head through the crack. The morning bites with cold, so she has her red makura wrapped tightly around her tiny figure.
“Breakfast be ready in ten,” she says, and the door clicks shut behind her. I stare at the chipped white paint on the doorframe for a while before putting on my suit. Downstairs it smells like fried eggs and bacon. She’s in the kitchen singing her rendition of Tom Petty’s timeless classic, “Cause I’m flee-ee, flee farring”
“You look nice,” she says, filling a cup with coffee and handing me my plate. “I’m glad you got job as Z-lock saleman. You make great manager someday.”
“It’s Xerox, mom,” I mumble into my steaming mug.
“Right, Z-locks.”
Selling Xerox machines is tough, but not that tough because of the quality of the product. I’ve been in the business for a little while, and I’ve learned some things. Sometimes people get upset, so it’s good to use jokes to lighten up the conversation. For example, here’s a hypothetical sales call:
“Walker residence”
“Hello sir, how are you doing today?”
“Who is this?”
“My name is Tim, and we have a mutual friend in Peter Wilson, he recommended that I give you a quick call today because you might be interested in our product.”
“Oh, geez. Look, I don’t have time for this –”
“I’m sorry sir, I don’t mean to be an inconvenience, is there a better time for you?”
“Well, I’m really just not interested. And I need to go now, I have a… meeting to attend”
“A business meeting this early on Friday? That’s rough.”
“No. And it’s none of your business, so please don’t call back again.”
“Apparently it’s not your business either, if it’s not a business meeting that is.”
“What? Look kid, my father-in-law’s prostate cancer –”
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
“He’s not dead.”
“Of course not! But you know, our Xerox printers can make copies with extraordinary speed and efficiency. It would be a wonderful complement to your father-in-law’s cancer. Maybe even get one for yourself – when he’s gone it’ll be the perfect replacement, and it’s much less expensive than chemo.”
“You need to stop calling my house or I’m calling the police.”
Is that funny? It might be too much, I’m not sure. I don’t know if people would think that’s funny. It might be too much. After spending hours on the 13th floor of this rusty building I think almost anything is funny, so maybe I’m not the best judge. It’s just hypothetical though, so I guess it doesn’t really matter, it’s just a joke.
Today is Friday, and I’m sitting in my corner cubicle on the far side of the room so I can write and nobody will know what I’m actually doing or read over my shoulder. I’m usually looking over my own shoulder anyway, to make sure they’re not peeking. Either that, or I’m looking across the room, over the cubicles filled with black and navy suits and glowing monitors, through the sporadic collection of fake plants, out the dusty window, and into the grey – the Los Angeles grey. I just sit here and watch the time stumble along, tick by tick, second by second, minute by minute until it’s 5 pm.
I pack my bag and leave through the back door with my tie swinging from my throat like a limp snake. The heat of early September curls from the asphalt, and my dark suit is making me humid with sweat. On the drive home I pass by Harvard Westlake. The red-roofed buildings sit lazily on their haunches, shrouded in the smoky heat. People always say California is the sunshine state, but they never tell you that the sunshine is so damn grey. And they also don’t tell you that it’s always sunny for far too long, and just when you don’t want it to be – just when you don’t want to see young students tossing Frisbees on the lawn with their lopsided grins and their flirting hands.
I park my old Nissan on the weed-eaten, slanted driveway and go straight up to my room. I’m anxious to read the fourth chapter of Embracing the Writer, “Writing from Experience.” My main issue as an author is that my life is too average. It’s a problem, not having problems, because everything I write is so damn daily. I don’t get how people can pull off ridiculous plots so realistically. American Psycho for example – Patrick Bateman snorts twice his weight in cocaine and kills people for that whole book. But when I finished it I still felt like I was leaving a world, like Patrick’s life was my life – and I emerged with the burden of his existential struggle.
The next story in Embracing the Writer is about this guy’s wife that’s planted in a pot of soil. Literally planted in a pot in the kitchen. But she’s a good, loyal wife and she can still use her arms, so everyday she makes breakfast and greets him with a beaming Good morning, isn’t it a wonderful day? The only problem is that with each passing day she sinks further into the soil. Soon she’s buried to her waist, then her stomach, then her chest, but she keeps making breakfast and maintains her spirit. After a couple weeks, the soil’s up to her neck and she can’t free her hands to prepare the food. Even then, she welcomes her husband to the table with the same Good morning, isn’t it a wonderful day? By the end of the month, she’s in so deep that the top of her head is barely showing. And when her husband comes into the kitchen, she strains so her lips barely poke through the surface of the soil and she whispers, Kill me. Please, just kill me.
I get this weird feeling that I’m missing something, so I read it again. This time, I imagine the woman stuffed into a miniature pot, like the ones on the cubicle dividers in the office. It adds to the humor of it all. But I still feel unfulfilled – it doesn’t answer anything. Like how did that woman get planted in the kitchen, anyway? And what the hell does her husband do all day that’s so important? I mean I get it, life sucks. But come on, everyone already knows that.
I shiver. It’s getting cool again. All that’s left of the sun is a reddish sliver peeking through the trees. I throw on a sweatshirt and sit back down at my desk with my laptop – it’s finally time to write something meaningful of my own. I think tea would be nice to have though, since it’s cold, so I go downstairs, make some green tea, and bring it back up to my desk. I sit down again, open my most recent story, and read what I have so far to get into the feel of it. Now there’s no question, I’m ready to write. I set my hands on the keyboard.
But as soon as I start typing, that fucking dog next door starts barking. It’s a Pomeranian, or a Poodle, or some other sort of pretentiously fluffy, shit-nosed animal and it never shuts up. Never. It never shuts up. And the girl that owns it, Amanda, she never pays attention to it. I see the thing all the time, tied up to their garage, yapping in circles with clumps of its own shit hanging from its hair. Sometimes I feed it biscuits to shut it up, and once I was actually nice enough to help cut out the shit. That’s how I found out Amanda goes to Harvard Westlake. She just kind of stood there, awkwardly watching me while I cleaned her dog. I was being really nice, but she didn’t even thank me. She just kept standing there and talking about her goddamn boyfriend. Typical girl, talking about things I don’t want to hear about – I already knew about her boyfriend anyway, his red F150 is always parked outside their house.
God that dog is distracting. My mind is disconnected, segmented – like a scalpel cut my brain into quarters and pushed the pieces apart to the farthest corners of my skull. I need inspiration, some nourishing thought, so I start looking through my old photos – Click, click, click. I like to take a lot of pictures, especially for my character outlines – Click, Click. It’s usually better to catch people when they’re not looking. Like when they’re smoking cigarettes on lunch break, in their precious minutes of free time. If they know I’m taking a picture they always pose and it’s so fake. If I’m lucky I catch them being themselves. Earlier is better – before everyone’s actions reflect their stiff attire – like at the kitchen table with breakfast, or on the couch in a bathrobe. Sometimes so early it’s not even early anymore, but very late. You couldn’t imagine what people do in the dark, when they think nobody’s watching. I’m starting to sweat, must be because the tea is hot. I can feel heat rising into my face and I slouch further into my chair. Click, click, click…
A light tapping breaks me out of my trance. I look at the clock, it’s 10pm. My mom’s muffled voice enters the room, “Can I come in?”
“Hold on a second.” I frantically sweep tissues off my desk. A couple of them stick, so I have to peel them off the wooden surface. She walks in just as I’m throwing the last one away.
“I told you to wait,” I say, shutting my laptop.
She puts a tray with a bowl of soup and bread in front of me. “Sorry, I just want to chit-chat for little bit,” she says, glancing at the tissues in the wastebasket. “Is everything OK?”
“I’m fine, I just need to write.”
“Oh. What you writing? Can I read?”
“No mom, it’s not finished yet. I’m still working on the characters.”
She reaches down to touch my forehead and I recoil. “You sweating, are you sure everything OK? I take you back to Dr. Campbell if you want.”
“No mom, I hate that fat bastard and you know it. Now please, leave me alone.”
“Oh, OK. Well get a good night sleep then. I’m proud of you, son.”
“Great, good night.”
My muscles uncoil when she leaves the room, and I feel the dull throb of exhaustion in my bones. I don’t think she’s ever understood me. She thinks I need therapy to help me become a normal person. But I am normal. I function in society. I might not be a great worker, I might not be manager quality. But I don’t need to be changed by some pasty, ass-monkey therapist. As long as I stay out of trouble and get through the days at Xerox I won’t have to either. I strip to my boxers and settle into bed for a night of broken sleep.
I smell roses and mulch in the glowing field of my fantasy. How could you do this to me? She’s standing in front of me. She’s staring into my eyes. Her voice resonates with a metallic echo: I told you to slow down. Crimson stains seep through her white blouse, dripping down her throat and her chest – and her arms… her slender, porcelain arms are missing, and dark blood pumps through deep pits beneath her shoulder blades. She turns her back to me, and flecks of red sprinkle the ground around her. I reach out to stop her and wave her arm. It drips on me, the wormy veins tickle my hands with warmth.
I go after her, running like I’m on the moon, but she’s getting away. I drive my feet hard off the ground, but I keep floating lazily and gently back to the grass. She’s nearing the forest in the distance. I’m so tired. My eyelids droop as I bound forward, floating around in a whir of colors. Now I’m at the forest and she’s fallen and tangled herself in the undergrowth. Her body squirms and contorts violently, but she can’t get free. The ground softens with her blood, it collects in thick pools around her. I’m still holding her arm, but it’s not an arm anymore, it’s a paw. The white hair is matted down and stained a gritty red by rancid clumps of dirt. I put it in the black trash bag at my side and leave it there beside her.
I wake up with a gasp and it’s fucking freezing. I feel like someone’s poured a bucket of ice water in my bed. I lie there unmoving, painfully rigid, trying to calm down. Shivering tremors race through my body. But it’s useless. As much as I’d like to stay in the darkness, drifting in my sheets, I know I can’t lie still forever. When I can’t stare at the walls or the ceiling any more, at some point deep in the night, I’ll rise with the shaking and walk out the door.
The steam drifting from my bitter, black coffee reminds me that today is Monday again. My suit is also black and so is my hair, which is slicked down with gel. My shoes look like shiny bugs on the office’s gently worn carpet and they dig like pincers into the sides of my feet. I spend the morning hiding from people. I can feel them watching me from their cubicles, so I move around every couple hours. Once, I accidentally sit at Rachel’s desk while she’s in the bathroom. Her cubicle surprises me. The walls are decorated with sloppy art (probably done by her two small girls in the family photo), and it smells faintly of mint tea and chocolate, a pleasant combination. I find myself thinking it wouldn’t be too bad to switch spaces with her, even if just for a little while. I turn around because I can feel her presence behind me – she tells me to leave.
When I’m unpacking my lunch at noon, my boss lays his hand on my shoulder. He’s a large man, his height and the girth of his stomach are accentuated by the sharp pinstripes on his designer suit. His voice rumbles deep and low, I can feel it in my bones. “Finish your lunch, then meet me in my office,” he says. I chew my ham and cheese slowly, my mouth is dry and it tastes like sand.
Mr. Bonacci’s office is cast in gentle, yellow lamplight and smells of potpourri. He leans back in a dark leather recliner with his left ankle on his knee and observes me over his folded fingers.
“You do know we track all of your calls, right?” he asks. “The automated message that says we record conversations for customer satisfaction? It’s not a lie.”
“Yes, sir.”
“So what then, you just don’t care?” He uncrosses his legs and rests his large, veiny hands on the desk between us.
“I’m not sure I know what you mean, sir.”
“Well to start, your coworkers say your unsocial, lazy, distracted. They say you never do your work, that you’re constantly doing other things on company time.” He reaches into his desk, pulls out a stack of papers, and drops it in front of me. “Do you have anything to say for yourself?”
Oh shit. I reach out for them slowly – hoping that the papers aren’t mine, praying I didn’t leave my copies in the tray. My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth and my hand shakes as I take the stack.
“You called this house, the Walkers, eight times last week. You better have a great explanation, I want to hear it.” What a relief. It’s just a transcript of my phone calls.
“Well I – uh, not really, no sir,” I say.
“Then pack up your things, I don’t want you around here anymore.” He sighs, shaking his head at me. “I thought you had potential, Tim. I gave you a chance despite what your last employer said, thanks for proving me wrong.”
Well I guess that’s it, I’m done at Xerox. I’m a failure, a fuckup, a mid-life to nowhere dingle berry – kinyo no hun as my mom would say in Japanese. Go ahead, say it. It won’t hurt me, I’ve heard it all before. This is all I have to say to you people with your perfectly constructed lives: You can manage your employees, your assets, your expenses; you can surround yourselves with endless lipsticky, sweet-talking faces until you feel nice and secure, but it won’t mean anything, and you won’t be safe. There are guts clogging the neighborhood shitter, they could be your daughter’s. There’s a woman tied to the radiator with folds of skin hanging off her bony ribs. That could be your wife, and at any moment you could lose everything you think you’ve built. You think you have control, you think you’ve got a grip. You think you’ve found success in your coat pocket; you’re living the American dream. Well here’s some shit for thought – What’s the product of American Standard? Toilets. Porcelain squatters and piss-pots for the collection of the oh-so-diverse piles of American waste.
I can’t go home right now or my mom will know, she always does. I can’t tell how she figures it out, but she does. She always looks at me from the corner of her eye; her face beaten downward by the disappointment, it’s terrible. I would go to back to Harvard Westlake to finish my character sketches, but I’ve been spending too much time there recently. Teachers don’t like strange men looking at their students. I tried to explain to them that I’m not a creep, I’m just taking notes for my writing. I say high school kids are perfect because they dress up in stereotypes – you know, to reinforce their undeveloped egos. I’m not a pedophile or anything, I’m not a fucking creep. They think I’m a creep anyway.
I don’t get home until very late but my mom is still awake, waiting behind the counter in the cramped kitchen. “Where have you been? I call you many times,” she says.
“Just working a little extra, walking around the park, writing, you know,” I reply.
“No, not! I got a call today from Z-locks boss.”
“Oh. We can talk about it in the morning, I’m really tired.”
My mom looks more tired than I feel, her eyes are tinged red and cushioned by loose, purple bags. She studies my face coldly like a stranger, then turns her back to me and starts washing dishes. “Well, I guess we go back to Dr. Campbell tomorrow,” she says.
In the morning, my coffee tastes like dirt. “Did you put shit in this coffee?” I ask my mom.
“What you mean? Like cream and sugar?”
“No, shit. Like actual shit. It’s disgusting.”
She frowns at me, “We leaving in five minutes.”
I only go to therapy to humor my mom. Sometimes I let Dr. Campbell think he’s helping me, sometimes I talk to him in crazy hypotheticals to freak him out. Once I said the next time I’m sitting next to some bitch and she’s talking so loudly that I can’t hear the end of Midnight in Paris, I’m going to turn up the TV and finish watching Midnight in Paris because it’s a great movie. Then, when it’s over, I’m going to grab her by her blonde ponytail, poke my bread knife through her voice box, and twist it around while asking her to speak a little louder. I think I freaked him out, he spoke softly for the rest of the session.
When I walk in through the glass double doors of Dr. Campbell’s office, the powdery stench of artificial cleanser invades my lungs. I turn and watch my mom pull out of the parking lot as the door swings shut. This place always makes me uneasy – the floral patterns on the worn brown couches, the cheap, dusty watercolors of blurry nature scenes – endless prints of fruitful vines and trees and expansive lakes. They’re too generically perfect to exist anywhere but behind cheap glass in variations of the same waiting room – at the dentist’s, the chiropractor’s, and countless other therapists’.
I look over at the counter and wave at the piggish receptionist, Rhonda, and she says Dr. Campbell will be ready for me soon. Wonderful. Soon usually means an hour, the waiting room is always full of the self-afflicted. They’re terrible company, always complaining about themselves. I sit down on a couch next to a shaggy-haired, punk looking kid in a dark beanie. There’s a blue cast covering his left hand from the tips of his fingers to halfway down his pale forearm. He’s staring through the wall in what seems like deep thought. I know the magazines haven’t changed since the last time I was here, so I look at him to get his attention.
I wait ten seconds for him to notice me, but nope, nothing. I tap him on the shoulder. “What happened to your arm?” I ask. He flinches a little and turns his head.
“Ah nothing, it was fucking stupid, really. Just motherfucking stupid.” He looks down at the carpet and picks at the base of the cast.
“Well what did you do?”
“I punched a motherfucking wall, broke my hand.”
“Oh. I see.” I turn away from him, who punches a wall? How pointless and idiotic. I’m starting to think the kid’s look is more of a drug-induced stare.
“It was my motherfucking shooting hand, too.”
“Your mother-fucking shooting hand? Damn.” I sigh loudly. Engaging him was a mistake, he sounds like an angsty pirate. “How does that work, exactly? Do you shoot with it first then fuck your mother?”
His face tightens in discomfort. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m just saying you should wash your hands after shooting, mother fucker”
“Geez man… ok already.” He looks scared, so I almost reach out to comfort him, but I decide against it since he’s leaning so far away from me. I was only kidding you know. Maybe I’ve been speaking a little louder than intended. All the other patients are pretending not to watch me. They pick up old magazines, ruffle newspapers, and whisper with each other but I can feel their eyes as soon as I look away. I take out my phone and try to ignore them, but I can’t, they’re all just staring at me. Just when I can’t take it anymore, when I feel like they’re vaporizing me into a steaming puddle of sweat, the door opens and the nurse comes out.
“Timothy, Dr. Campbell’s ready for you.”
Dr. Campbell is a jolly obese guy that sounds like he always has something in the back of his throat, probably because of his layers of neck fat. How can you be that overweight and still be jolly? I’ve never understood how they seem to go together. He always tries to turn my problems into opportunities, but sometimes things are just bad and there’s no silver lining. I think he has to “stay positive” or he’d want to kill himself just like his patients.
“Good afternoon, Timothy!” he says, scribbling in his notebook theatrically. “It’s been a while, good to see you.”
I slump into the couch across from his desk. I’d like to tell him to clear his throat. Or chew his food. Or get liposuction, but I’ve probably caused enough trouble recently. I’m also still a little unnerved from the waiting room confrontation, so I’ll take it easy this time.
“So how have you been these past couple weeks?”
“I’m sure you can assume, why do you think I’m here?”
“Well you know everything we discuss here is just between you and me. Would you like to talk about it?” I don’t want to spend an hour in silence, so we talk about Xerox for a while and he’s unhelpfully positive as usual. He keeps asking me about my writing, but I can’t tell him, it’s not finished yet. So I deflect with some depressing philosophy, some Grade A Niche garbage.
“You know, I’ve been thinking a lot about how everything’s just so… unstable. We can barely hold ourselves together. One misstep, one deep cut is all it takes for us to pop and spill like water balloons. I’ve felt life’s frailty, Doc. And it kind of scares me, how small we are.”
He perks up like a pigeon waiting for scraps – it’s disgusting. “You’re absolutely right, life is fragile. But that makes it all the more valuable. We all have our insecurities, but you don’t need to be incredible to appreciate life. Sometimes you just need to take solace in the small things and enjoy yourself.” He smiles and leans back in his chair.
So smug, he always thinks he has the answer. He must eat a LOT of small things to be so happy. “What small things?” I say, “Toys? Food? I don’t know, I think I’ve had enough.”
“It just needs to be something you enjoy. Something to relieve your stress, so you can relax and be comfortable. What about a pet? Have you considered getting one?”
I pause for a moment, unsure of what to say. I hate stupid animals. All I can think about is Amanda’s dog barking and barking and barking and – “No, I don’t think I’d want to take care of it.”
“Well many of my patients say the loyalty and love of a dog or cat helps bring value and stability to their lives.”
“Really, Doc? It’s a placebo, they don’t do anything but eat, shit, and make noise. They just get in the way. They’re nuisances.” It took two weeks of milk-bones to get that dog to trust me, but now it rolls over on its back whenever I pass. The other day I put my hand on its white stomach, so warm and soft. I could feel the thump of its tiny heart through its bare skin. I rubbed its chest and it melted. It flicked out its tongue to lick my fingertips.
“It’s the responsibility of having another living thing relying on you that gives it value. They’re great companions.”
“I don’t think I could handle it.” My legs are starting to sweat – they’re sticking together uncomfortably. I reposition myself on the couch. It was strange when my hands were on the dog, moving up and down with each of its panting breaths. It made me feel massive. It was like I was expanding and stretching like a balloon pumped full of helium. Stars started jumping across my vision and I knew had to calm down. So I took a deep breath, and exhaled, slowly.
Then I squeezed it. I squeezed lightly at first and it looked confused, not acquainted with the experience. Then I squeezed harder. It tried to roll to its feet but I kept it pinned on the driveway. Then I squeezed so hard that I could feel its brittle rib cage flexing in my hands. It made little choking whines and squirmed in my grip. It gasped with its mouth open wide and bared its teeth, snarling. It thrashed heroically.
I’m sweating profusely, frozen in place, and Dr. Campbell’s chops are shaking around as he talks to me – his lips are flapping but I can’t hear anything. I can’t move. I can’t breathe. I just watch his massive face rotate slow and pale like the moon and stare at his lips that keep flapping at me. He’s saying something desperate but I can’t hear anything. I just keep staring –
And all of a sudden I’m back.
“Tim? Tim. I asked if you have any new friends or companions, a girlfriend?”
I pull air deep into the bottom of my lungs, and shaking my head lightly say, “Not really, not much has changed.” It seems like nothing ever really changes. Some people are great and others are abhorrent, most float along the best they can. But we all die and end up in boxes in holes in the ground. And when we’ve passed, new people will walk in the tracks we left, work in the cubicles we did, and return to their rooms when the day has gone. Who’s to know how many copies we’ve had? I could be Javier the beaner, or JulioJuanJesusJacobo and JoseJorge crammed in the truckbed. I could be Julie the valley girl. Like, literally? I’m traumatized. I could be Kenji-san taking my suitcase off the 23rd floor – Kaaami Kaaami – kaze! Christina the brunette bitch, wearing a pantsuit to prove myself to my father. Hunter the homophobe, Git’ that faggot, where’s the rope? Where’s the truck? Kelly the attention-grabbing whore and I won’t stop talking until you put something in my mouth. Or I could be Gein and Gacy, the creeping clown, and have my women chained together on the basement floor. We’re all the same from far enough away.
When the dog stopped struggling, I let it go. It twitched on its back, rolled over, and scampered back to the garage where it sat on its haunches, panting in the corner. I tried to get biscuits from my jacket pocket but my hands were shaking too much so I dropped them. I crouched in the driveway to pick them up and stop my body from trembling. The dog just kept watching from a distance, wheezing, drooling in the dark corner. I tossed the biscuits out in front of me. I knew eventually it would come out to eat them and they would be delicious.
Tumors of the Mind 