Just then, she hears a yelp, and turns to see Mallory sitting up in her chair. She goes over and finds her frantically picking up her purse, flip flops, cup, keys, as though looking for something underneath them.
“Fuck,” Mallory says. “How long was I asleep? What time is it?”
Across the pool, one of the boys lets out a scream that collapses into a hysterical laugh.
“I don’t know,” Iris says, “let’s go now.”
SPACE
Iris’s alarm goes off at a quarter to six. She tries to shower quickly, but her daydreams are persistent. She is on a Ferris wheel overlooking the Grand Canyon when suddenly the wheel comes off its hinges and hurdles forward into the dusty maw. Everyone is screaming, their hands gripping the sides of their candy-colored compartments. But the screaming stops as, one by one, they all notice that they have been hovering over the canyon for some time, the air acting as a cushion on which the Ferris wheel rests. She comes to with shampoo dripping down her face. She leans her head back into the spray to rinse it all out, lets the water run down over her skin before shutting it off and spitting into the drain. She dresses simply, in a black cotton sleeveless dress, and is in the car at six-thirty, leaving the windows open to air dry her hair.
Once at the office, she starts up the day’s machinery, pressing buttons with a decisive index finger, one by one.
She waits. She listens to voicemail and writes down her boss’s one message, which she then leaves on top of a pile of unopened mail on his desk: Mr. Farquar(sp?) called. He needs you to call him back ASAP because he is “at the end of his rope.” No number.
Then she hears what she has been waiting for, the angry mechanical bleat of the alarm followed by the smack and the mumbled profanities, then the crackle of voices on the radio. She moves toward the door and presses her ear against it, creating a seal, a small private space between her head and the building. She imagines him shuffling about in a bathrobe, scratching his unshaven face and kicking things that get in his way. Or he could still be in bed. Or doing any other thing one might imagine. She shouldn’t get ahead of herself. But in her head, in that sealed space between her ear and the door, she can feel his awakening as a cloud that fills his room, and sends cold vibrations through the doors and around her body, circling.
She stands like this, waiting, but nothing follows. She never hears the door open, or anything else. She wonders if he even got the note. If she even really left it. Maybe she could still take it back. Finally, she sits down at her desk and turns on her computer. There won’t be anything today. She tells herself this. When the doorknob turns, though she is doing nothing wrong, she snaps to attention, puts on a serious look, and squints at her computer screen.
“Good morning,” she offers, looking up as her boss enters the room.
“If you can call it that,” he mutters, rapping her desk with his knuckles as he passes.
BOX
Several days later, Iris arrives at the office to find a box on her desk. She sees it as soon as she turns on the lights, and stares at it while she de-activates the alarm system. She drops her purse beside her desk and looks at it from the side. It is about the size of a brick, and has been taped so thoroughly, so determinedly that it shines like liquid. She is almost afraid to touch it. She keeps her eyes locked on it as she turns on her computer and checks voicemail, as though she thinks it will vanish if she looks away.
When she can’t stall any longer, she picks it up. It is light as a piece of paper. With a letter opener, she stabs a thin line around the edges, and lifts off the top of the box like a lid. Inside, there is a white paper napkin folded in half. She opens it, and inside are written the words, I am very busy. Don’t ask. Ask me later. I’m not here.
NAMELESS
Iris learned what death was when she was six years old. She had been sitting at the kitchen table, eating cereal on a Saturday morning, her bare feet resting on Sebastian. She laid her feet on the coarse hair of his back, and he kept her from dangling. Her cereal had gone soggy— she couldn’t eat it fast enough. She was watching the shredded wheat change properties while her mother stood at the counter, scraping oatmeal from the sides of the pot into a white bowl.
On the radio, they were talking about a famous singer whose death from an undiagnosed heart defect had just been announced. He had been found slumped over his kitchen table by the housekeeper. The host was taking calls from people who said they had always felt a connection with him, and people who, embarrassed, admitted he was their first crush. One woman, who readily admitted she was old enough to have been his mother, broke down on the air.
She gasped and heaved for ten seconds straight, the host intermittently whispering, “It’s okay… it’s okay…”
When she finally regained composure, she apologized.
“Oh god, I don’t know why I’m reacting so strongly to this. I feel like an idiot. I don’t even know why I called you.”
“You’re not an idiot,” the host said. “It’s a sad day. For all of us, and especially for those of us who loved his songs so much. We’ll be back after these words. You’re listening to KSTR, the star of the airwaves.”
Iris was confused. She stared into the mush in her cereal bowl and listened as the somber mood of the broadcast was overturned by a bright jingle for a carpet cleaning company. She was jarred by the sound of the twinkling piano and the chorus of voices, singing a phone number, all in unison. Suddenly, she felt like gagging, as though hair were growing on the inside of her throat.
She looked to her mother to see if she too had noticed the change, or if it was only her, but her mother never looked away from the window. Iris poked her head under the table to let Sebastian know she was leaving the table. She made eye contact with him and swiveled around in her chair, lightly dropping her feet on the linoleum. He got up and followed her down the hall to her bedroom.
She was sitting on the floor of her room, adjusting the Velcro flaps of her tennis shoes, attempting to reach the perfect level of tightness. Each time she affixed them, she stopped, concentrated on the space or lack thereof inside her shoes, then tried again. Sebastian sat in the center of the doorway. Then Neil called from the front door, “Hey dingleberry— we’re going to the lagoon without you if you don’t hurry up!”