Postcards from a Dead Girl (19 page)

There is a Zen-like state achieved through having a clean work space. Unburdened by clutter, my chi flows freely throughout my Wanderlust cubicle. The walls are bare but for the Costa Rica postcard, which I've tacked up directly in front of me. I feel an even deeper sense of tranquility because I know what I'm going to do today. As a result of my decision, I feel bad for Steve and the world of travel-package salespeople, but they will keep going. The Randomizer will keep dialing.

I haven't called Natalie back, but I will soon. She's probably waiting for my apology-acceptance call, but I don't know what to say yet. I wonder if she called Melanie and told her to forget about that crazy brother of hers. Maybe Melanie has already forgotten me. I hope not. I don't have the energy to think about it all, and I've got calls to make.

Steve walks toward my cubicle and nods a greeting. His eyes sweep over my work space. He grimaces, and a little dimple forms in his left cheek: the dent of disappointment. He prefers a lot of color on employees' walls. He likes to see photos
and posters and calendars and sales charts—clear evidence of seller motivation, that his salespeople believe in the product. He continues his walk down the hall, smiling at the other staff and their vibrant walls.

But I remain pleased with the symmetry and simplicity of my single postcard against the space of the cubicle. All edges are equidistant from the sides of the wall, as if the wall itself were created to frame this very postcard.

I make a few calls, waiting for the right one. I reel out my pitch and people hang up on me. Some folks say it sounds great but they can't afford a vacation right now. Another call, another hang-up. This happens several times, as it always does, brief digital rejections to my fiber-optic ego. Then I sell a Caribbean honeymoon package to a guy my age who thinks it will be a wonderful surprise for his fiancée. It's a nice victory for both of us, a good note to end on, but it's not the call I'm looking for. I'll know it when it feels right.

I watch The Randomizer do its thing one more time, and after four rings a young kid answers. The computer screen says I've called Tom Winfred.

“Hello, is this Tom Winfred?” I ask the boy.

“No,” he says.

Video game guns explode in the background.

“Is he going to be home soon?”

The boy pauses. “No,” he says, more serious.

“Well when would be a good time to reach him?”

The video game guns quit firing.

“He's not here,” the boy says.

“Do you know when he'll be back?” I ask.

“He's not coming back.”

“Oh,” I muster. A few seconds drag by.

Steve's voice whispers in my head. The omniscient supervisor has arrived. “Ask for his mother. Get the kid off the phone.”

“I'm really sorry, buddy,” I say. “We won't bother you again, okay?”

“Ask for his mother, Sid. Don't talk to the kids.”

The boy makes a muffled sound. “My dad left six months ago. My mom says to take us off the list.”

“You've got a good mom there. You'll be all right. Sorry for ruining your video game. Did you win?”

“No. You can't win this game. It's not like that.”

“Well keep practicing. You'll get there.”

Steve pipes in with his baseball announcer voice, which means he's quickly encroaching. “What are you doing-oing? Don't talk to the kids-ids. Next call-all.”

“Hey kid, you've got a lot to look forward to,” I say, and wish him good luck. The call is over, and The Randomizer starts dialing another one.

Steve stands directly behind me. I can smell his disapproval.

“Sid, seriously. What was that?”

“We'll get him next time,” I say, and give him the thumbs-up.

He's a little confused with my positive outlook, but nods and keeps walking. He rounds the corner, out of sight.

I pull my earpiece out and place it on Bug-Out Bob. On a yellow sticky note I write, “Steve: Good luck with the beaucoup bucks. Thanks for the opportunity. Best, Sid.”

I roll my chair under the desk and tack my note on the wall below the Costa Rica Paradise postcard. I take one last look at the lush fauna and tropical toucans, wave good-bye to the
happy couple running on the beach, and make my way to the nearest exit.

Outside, the air is fresh and clean. I take a deep breath and it is invigorating. I feel like I could run a million miles of seashore today, or travel somewhere new and undiscovered. I feel lighter than usual, like I could fly.

That night I dream of beaches. Tropical landscapes with coconuts and hammocks. Swaying trees and ukulele music. Cold, icy drinks with crimson umbrellas. Highball glasses sweating on teak furniture. Fire pits and sugar sand. Warm ocean breezes. The lush rhythm of the surf as the waves unfurl and melt into the shore. Like breathing. Like paradise.

I awaken with a startle and sit bolt upright in bed. In the waking world, I feel sick. The sudden movement upward has left me dizzy and disoriented in the darkness of my own bedroom.

“Beach,” I say out loud. My eyes adjust and I look over at the soft, red-digit glow of my digital clock. It's 4:30 a.m. A cruel hour to be awake. “I need to go to the beach,” I tell myself, and force my body to its feet.

The airline business should call red-eye flights dark-purple. My eyes actually feel bruised from being up and open so early. And when I pull my car into the Jasmine Beach parking lot, the blues and violets of the night sky shine their way through as well. The sun will be up soon, which means I don't have much time.

The beach is incredibly quiet, as if the sand has absorbed all the sound. The gulls haven't begun calling yet, and traffic is eerily absent. Only the hush of waves. The wide strip before me is lumpy and dark, not quite discernible from the black water in the near distance. I stumble over little dunes, search the shoreline for familiar figures. My hands are shaky. This is not paradise, this is not like breathing.

The stars begin to vanish with dawn's arrival, which I've always found a bit sad, but the hope of something brighter lurks beneath the horizon. I see a woman doing yoga a few dozen yards away. She has tied herself up in a pretzel position, but appears peaceful despite her interweaving limbs. I make my way toward her, push my reluctant feet through shifty ground.

When I arrive next to her, she opens her eyes to take me in
peripherally, then shuts them again. She doesn't seem alarmed that a stranger on a public beach has come to join her meditation. She must know it's me. I plop down a few feet away in case I'm wrong, and stare out at the dark, vast lake. I watch the last star fade into the growing turquoise of the sky, and I wish we could sit here together, silently, until it's dawn again tomorrow. I muster up the courage to break the silence.

“Melanie,” I say, “I want you to know something.”

She stares straight ahead. She hasn't run away or attacked me, so that's good. I stare straight ahead too, and talk to the lake, hoping it will serve as a good mediator.

“I'm sorry for leaving you the other night. I mean, really sorry. With-deep-feelings-of-regret kind of sorry.” She holds her gaze, a petrified oak tree. “I can't really explain it,” I say. The waves lap rhythmically. One by one. Lap, lap, lap.

She waits for more.

I sit up and try to mimic her yoga position, but my limbs don't bend like hers. I try to fold my right leg under my left knee, but it hurts to have my limbs at such odd angles. I'm not very good at bending. I give up and lay my hands on my lap instead, hold my legs straight out. This is hard enough. I take a deep breath.

“I really enjoy your company,” I say. “I feel like we connect somehow, like we're on the same frequency or something, so I don't know why—this all sounds so ridiculous. It's just—”

I shut my eyes tight and watch the ghost image of the sunrise on the back of my eyelids—a blue-and-orange flashing apparition. I can't look directly at it or it moves away, floating slowly off to the left, outside my field of vision. I need to say something concrete here, something that puts this all into perspective, or I will lose her. But all I can do is think of everything all at once.

I think about my dad and his copper pipes. I think about
Natalie and the quickness with which she made a baby after Mom died. Dr. Singh with his plaques, Gerald with his underground library. Candyce's dream interpretations. Mom's wine bottle. Zoe's postcards. Everybody trying so hard to be remembered, to stay connected to everyone else. There's only one way I can think to explain all these thoughts to Melanie, and it will sound like madness.

“My dead mother's spirit lived in a bottle of 1967 Bordeaux,” I say.

The sun shoots a knife of light into my tired eyes. I try to adjust my position but my legs are full of needles, the sand beneath me an indifferent mass of cold granules. I sit up awkwardly and wait for the inevitable.

Melanie pushes out a long, deep breath. “Well,” she says, and makes me wait—a long wait, the kind that makes you wonder if words were actually spoken, or if you just thought they were. “That's pretty dramatic,” she says. “I don't know if I'm up for so much drama.”

“I understand,” I say, a little relieved. “I'm not really either.”

And I realize this is it, the end of all my daydreams and rescue fantasies, the last moments of a promising relationship that never quite got off the ground. But then she tilts her head from side to side, as if the options she's weighing are a physical presence inside her skull. I imagine tiny colored balls bouncing around the interior of her cranium, like a circus game, and I wonder which one will drop out of her ear to be the winner. She makes a humming noise, which I'm happy to hear because I know she's working on an answer, but I can't stand this.

Finally, after so much silence, she speaks. “I do love Bordeaux,” she says, with a welcoming but unfinished tone, like maybe she wants me to help her along a little.

Just then, a streak of light blazes across the horizon—a shooting star burning out. I wonder if Satellite Sixty has just fallen from the sky, destroying residences or setting cities on fire. Or maybe only I witnessed its descent, a silent dissolve into the water, unnoticed by the rest of humanity. Forgotten. But soon I realize that the world has not ended. In fact, I can feel it underneath me, albeit cold and wet and fairly uncomfortable.

In my peripheral vision, Melanie has extended an open hand. I don't look at the hand directly because I don't want it to go away. Instead I stare forward at the sun as it pokes its orange round head over the horizon. I feel a certainty that the sun is amused by me, that maybe it's even laughing at everyone. Because to the sun, there is no rising and setting, only watching us spin around in circles. I suddenly have a strong affinity for it. I forgive it for all its brightness and burning, for all the pain it's caused.

The wet sand has soaked through my pants—a cold, unpleasant sensation. I adjust my position by pushing off the ground, but it only rides my pants up further. My hands are dirty now, my clothing ruined.

Melanie's hand is still extended. Her fingers wiggle at me, waiting for my response. And while we're far from being orbs of lotus light floating above Jasmine Beach, I think I finally know what to do.

I reach out to get a better hold.

About the author

2
Meet Kirk Farber

 

About the book

4
A Conversation with Kirk Farber

 

Read on

7
Author's Picks

Meet Kirk Farber

Where were you born?

I was born and raised in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin. 1971.

My dad was a textbook salesman, and my mom was the Avon lady. My dad would go on trips for a week at a time and come back with stories of his travels and presentations. We always had books piled around the house because of his job. I'm sure some of my storytelling comes from him. My mom was a homemaker but also a saleswoman, so she was very active in the community, very connected with people. I think I got my sense of humor from her, as well as the red hair. My sister, Kari also has the red hair. The three of us were quite the spectacle growing up.

When did you first start writing?

I was a hyper kid, so I didn't write my first novel when I was five years old or anything like that.
My parents directed my energy into playing the drums, so I spent most of my youth playing music and wanting to be a rock drummer. I eventually ended up playing in a band throughout my twenties, but as a kid, I didn't really seek out books much. When I did, it was the Chronicles of Narnia, and the Douglas Adams books, and Ray Bradbury. I enjoyed weird stories, surreal stories, funny stories. Still do.

Writing really started for me in high school. I took an advanced composition class and strangely enjoyed all of the assignments. It was a class that many people feared and loathed, but I had fun with it, which was exactly the opposite of my math class experience.

One of my high school teachers, Mrs. Newburg, was very passionate about literature and taught in unconventional ways that really made books fascinating. When we read
Lord of the Flies,
she had the class chant “Deus ex machina!” over and over like savages. And after we read
Welcome to the Monkey House,
she took us to see Kurt Vonnegut speak at a local university, which was a thrill. His stories and books made a huge impression.

One big turning point for my writing came at the beginning of my freshman year in college. My mother died from cancer a few weeks into the school year. I took a couple of weeks off to be with family, and when I returned, I just sort of isolated myself for a while. I remember going to the university bookstore and seeing all of the assigned novels for various literature classes, and I felt compelled to read all of them. I bought fifteen or twenty novels and spent most of my first semester reading. I read
Slaughterhouse-Five, The Catcher in the Rye, Catch-22
—all the stuff you'd expect on the freshman college list. But I had never spent so much time reading, and suddenly there were all of these incredible worlds to visit, all these stories that needed to be read and new ideas that needed to be written down. And that was it. I got the bug and have never stopped.

Any odd jobs to support your writing?

I've worked as a catastrophe cleaner, a caregiver, a group home supervisor, a rock drummer, and a website programmer.

Currently I work at a library, which is a great day job for a writer because you are surrounded by books and people who love books. Your coworkers also happen to be very savvy at finding information, which can be helpful for research. My job is in interlibrary loan, so I process the books our patrons want but we don't happen to own in our huge collection. So I get to see some very specific, unusual stuff come through, which can be great for story ideas or just personal entertainment.
1978 Collectible Salt & Pepper Shaker Pricing Guide?
Check.
Mind Control for Your Slaves During the Coming Apocalypse?
Check.
Electromagnetic Subterfuge Experiments with Reverse Angled Matrix Pressure Static Gages?
All three volumes, please.