I’d better go, she thinks, I’d better get out of here.
On her way out, lights, appliances, and computer on, she begins setting the burglar alarm, but stops and presses the green button to erase what she’s punched in. If she is following a pattern, then it makes sense to leave the alarm off. What is supposed to be off is on, so what is supposed to be on should remain off. This balance needs to be maintained or the pattern falters, and without the pattern, there is nothing to follow. She steps out, almost leaving the door unlocked, but this last habit, she can’t break. She stabs her key in the hole and gives it a grinding turn, then tries the doorknob a few times, unconvinced of her ability to do anything and have it be done.
ACCUMULATION
On the way home, she pulls into the bank to deposit her check. There’s a sign on the ATM outside that says it’s out of service, so she steps inside the bank for the first time in possibly years. The music floating down from the overhead speakers is subtle, a completely ignorable slip of violin, and the air is goosebump cold. Iris fills out a deposit slip, endorses the check, and tucks both into an envelope, which she slides into a deposit kiosk.
The floor, walls, and glass partitions of the bank are sparkling clean, like the whole thing was carved out of liquid. But on the way to the exit, Iris spies a ceiling fan overhead, turning very slowly, and heavy with dust. Each edge of the fan is lined with a thick layer of gray muck. The fan groans a little with each turn. Who knows how thick it is on top, out of sight. She thinks about how dirty the air must be to have this effect. They are all breathing in this dust every second of every day. She can feel it, the filth sticking to the walls of her lungs. Noting the suggestion box by the door, Iris grabs another deposit slip and writes on the back with her Sharpie:
Don’t forget about what’s in the air.
She drops it in the box and steps outside, the late breakfast and early lunch crowds beginning to fill the streets. She gets back into her car and is no longer one of them. She is sealed off from the day out there. She starts the car and Tommy James is singing crimson and clover, over and over with that sonic tremble effect, and in her head, the sun dims and brightens in time.
GOOD, GOOD
In a towel, with a toothbrush hanging out the side of his mouth, Neil stands at his dresser tossing rolled socks across the room into an open suitcase on the unmade bed. If there’s anything more fun than packing, he doesn’t know what it is. He throws in one more pair of socks and then steps into the bathroom, swishing the toothpaste water in his puffed cheeks for a few seconds before spitting into the sink. He clicks his tongue, his mouth fresh and icy.
Next he moves onto clothes, weighing different outfits in his head, the gray suit, the navy blue suit, the black pants without pleats, the ones with pleats, ties steel gray, maroon, and marigold. He lays them all in the suitcase so he has plenty of options, throwing in a lint roller in the outside pocket, nail clippers, razor, comb, trench coat because the weather is unpredictable everywhere you go, better bring an umbrella too, and can’t forget underwear, boxers, briefs, and boxer briefs, because you never know what your body’s going to feel like wearing when you wake up. He pauses to vigorously towel dry his hair and the phone rings. He grabs it off the dresser and answers without looking to see who it is.
“This is Finch.”
“Finch, Mason. You got a sec?”
“Uh, just a sec. I’m packing.”
“Right. Listen, I just wanted to talk to you about the meeting with Creationeers.”
“Yeah?”
“Nothing to be too concerned about, I just thought you should know so you could keep it in mind for future reference.”
“What is it?”
“Obviously you know we didn’t close the account.”
“Yeah…” Neil sits down on the bed.
“Well, I had a talk with Krebs to see if I could change his mind, and he… shared his impressions. Of you.”
“Impressions.”
“Listen, don’t worry too much about it, but he said you made him feel uncomfortable.”
“Uncomfortable. Huh.”
“He said he couldn’t put his finger on it— just something about your demeanor, your ‘intensity,’ he called it. Again, this is just something to keep in mind.”
“So, you’re asking me to just keep in mind the fact that I somehow, in some ineffable way, made someone uncomfortable.”
“Hey, hey, it’s no big deal— no need to get up in arms about— ”
“Up in arms? Who’s getting…? I’m fine. That’s fine. Is that it?”
Mason doesn’t say anything.
Neil steps into the bathroom, where he looks into the mirror, watching himself on the phone. He blinks fast, then slowly, listening to Mason’s long silence.
“I’m just asking you to keep it in mind,” he says, finally. “Maybe you just need to relax, do some deep breathing exercises, take up yoga or something.”
“Or something.” Neil squeezes the phone. “Well thanks, Mason. Thanks for telling me. Duly noted.”
“Hey, I’m just here to help you succeed, right? You okay?”
“I’m great.”
“Good, good. I’ll check in with you later in the week, all right?”
“Talk to you soon.”
Neil hangs up the phone and tosses it into his briefcase. He stands there for a moment, staring at the suitcase beside it. He gets dressed and grabs some more clothes out of the closet, and a few pairs of shoes he wraps up in dry cleaner bags. He zips open the extender so he can fit in a few more things, some books, magazines, his still-wet toothbrush and paste, deodorant, band-aids, more socks because you can never have too many, more underwear too, why not bring all of it, a few different pairs of sunglasses, and then in his briefcase, his laptop, notes, planner, his checkbook, a couple rolls of cash, a folder containing his Social Security card and passport, a few of the blindfold prototypes, a blank pad of hotel paper that’s sitting on the bedside table, and then rattling around loose he tosses in eye drops, breath mints, gum, a watch he never wears, a few pens he finds around the apartment, some loose change, a button.
He stops packing for a second and realizes that he’s sweating. He looks in his hand, a bunched up yellow tablecloth he was about to stuff into the outside pocket of his suitcase. He’d pulled it off the table, letting a stack of mail scatter onto the floor. He drops the tablecloth on the bedroom floor and gets down on his knees, rubbing his eyes. He wipes the sweat from the back of his neck with an angry swipe.
Where am I going, where am I going, where am I going… he thinks, rubbing his scalp, because in order to pack he needs to know where in the fuck it is that he’s going. He lost track somewhere along the way. He closes his eyes and sees himself driving, driving cross-country, passing by so many towns that used to be, towns with train tracks that stop abruptly at the outskirts, the steel ends gnarled up like bony fingers, towns that have been vacated because the jobs dried up, filled with abandoned houses with doors warped shut and closed-up drug stores with merchandise useless on dusty shelves, and little graveyards, with no one left to tend them, the sludge of dead flowers in piles.
He stands up again, and begins removing items from his luggage. The extra suits, the magazines, pens and paper, coasters off the coffee table, he shovels things out onto the floor with a cupped hand.
My demeanor. My intensity. That’s it. He’s just too intense, whatever that means. Was it that intensity that made it so easy for people to believe he’d done something unspeakable all those years ago, something worlds more sinister than noticing too late that the branch was straining, that the fall would send the boy catapulting into the sharp maze of branches below, that his neck would snap with a sound like metal against metal, a ringing smack that would carry through the whole yard and beyond? And was it intensity that led him, instantly, unconsciously, to scrape his own hand hard against the tree, drawing blood, his idea of evidence that he’d tried to do something, and failed?