Holy Water (17 page)

“
I will not stay in a marriage built upon lies and fakes.
”

“
I did lie and I did fake. But it
’
s because I didn
’
t believe I was talking to the real you. I thought that you were going through a phase, that you might change your mind.
”

“
Well, I
’
m about to enter a new phase. It
’
s called life after the lying faker.
”

“
I want to work with you, Rachel. Get you some help. I mean, get us some help. I mean, what the hell happened to us up here? We were never meant to come here.
”

“
Get
me
some help? I didn
’
t pretend I had an operation!
”

“
Years of moping. Years of your refusing to get out of your own way. You stopped paying attention to me, Rachel. It was as if I never lived here.
”

“
That
’
s the first true thing you
’
ve said. You never did live here! And now you don
’
t have to physically be here either. Now go.
”

“
I was laid off yesterday. Take a job somewhere in Asia or be fired, was the ultimatum.
”

“
This isn
’
t about yesterday, Henry. This is about long-term dishonesty.
”

“
I did it for us.
”

“
Hah! Go, Henry. Go on unemployment, because God knows you
’
re too boring and afraid to do the other thing.
”
She raises her hands as if to hit him again, but she continues to raise them overhead, closes her eyes, and begins chanting something in a tongue not of this world.

“
I don
’
t want to leave you the way you are. I
’
d be willing to—
”

“
What, Henry? What have you ever been truly
willing
to do?
”

He has no answer.

“
That
’
s right. Now get you and your lying penis out of here.
”

~ * ~

Stepping away from the malevolent house, onto the cursed driveway. Reaching for the door of the incongruous car. Pulling away, thinking about sweat, and
then sperm, and now water. Feeling a sharp phantom pain in the recently shaved but otherwise undisturbed scrotal area.

Leaving.

~ * ~

Motel Three

A chain of hotels for wayward men. Displaced men. Men who have been given the boot. Men who have run away. There definitely is a market for it, Henry thinks, heading south on Route 9, in search of just such a place.

~ * ~

Within an hour after she kicked him out, Rachel called to say she was giving him two hours to come back and gather his belongings. When he asked if she
’
d be there, she told him no. She said she was going to her friend
’
s house to learn how to put a spell on his lying ass.

While lurking around the house in which he had never wanted to live, he thought about his belongings. He thought about how they were different from his stuff, his shit, his necessities, and he decided that a belonging was a thing he valued, that he
’
d miss and possibly even fight for. And he was surprised at how few things fell into that category, and even those could hardly be considered belongings. Clothes and music, mostly. His passport. The big bottle of Purell.

Whether he
’
d be gone a day or forever, it didn
’
t matter. These were all the belongings he had.

~ * ~

What amenities would his hypothetical hotel for wayward men have? Free legal and alcohol counseling for monthly guests? An on-call private investigator for the cuckolded? A nutritionist for the
fast-food heart attack victim in the making? A concierge specializing in creative visitation outings and local strip clubs? How about a Barcalounger in every room? A
maxibar
?

~ * ~

Although he had no idea where he might go, the act of packing filled him with a sense of excitement he hadn
’
t felt in many years, and the realization that he was actually leaving was a relief, at least when he wasn
’
t thinking of the shame and disgust bubbling one layer down. When he wasn
’
t dwelling on the death of love, the resurrection of guilt, the consequences of everything, and what the hell he was going to do with the rest of his life.

Just before he left, right after he locked the front door for perhaps the final time, out of curiosity, he took a final look at the pool, and even after the vomit episode it was perfect.

~ * ~

The Rabbit Angstrom Suite. The I-Told-You-So Post-
Nup
Business Center. Only men
’
s rooms in the lobby.

~ * ~

The first motel he sees is a one-story cinder-block structure just south of Tarrytown, with none of the aforementioned amenities.
“
Just for the night,
”
he tells the old man behind the Plexiglas.

“
You can have it by the hour too,
”
the old man offers.

He takes out an order of hot-and-sour soup and Szechuan chicken at a strip mall across the street and eats it looking out the window of Room 111 onto the parking lot. Already he
’
s seen others like himself, unfolding out of the second-string family car, sulkily walking to their rooms, carrying their takeout, their brown paper bags, one with all his belongings in a gym bag, another with more luggage than anyone would ever take on a business trip.

~ * ~

Motel Three (because she
’
s getting half of everything you have), you could call it. Or the Cleaners (because that
’
s where you
’
re about to be taken).

Or simply Asylum.

~ * ~

He spends the rest of the night oblivious of his surroundings, transfixed in front of his laptop, downloading songs and albums off the Internet and thinking of what to do next. Sometimes the music informs his thinking and sometimes it is the other way around. It has always been that way with Henry. He cannot carry a tune and has never shown any aptitude for playing an instrument, yet he believes that music has moved and taught him far more
than any book or person. He
’
s spoken to others who claimed to feel the same way, but they were different. They always seemed more obsessed with the facts and dates of when a group formed, when it changed drummers, when it broke up, when the import single became available in the States, but Henry never cared about any of that. What he cared about was the music and how it made him feel. His father often told him that he used music as an escape, a way to hide from the world, but Henry had always thought about it as a way to discover it.

Tonight he is ripping and sampling songs like a man who may never hear music again.

When he falls asleep, it is three a.m. and David Ford
’
s
“
State of the Union
”
is playing, from the album
I Sincerely Apologize for All the Trouble I
’
ve Caused.

~ * ~

Sometime in what
’
s left of the night his cell phone rings.
“
One more thing,
”
Rachel says.
“
In Vegas, I met an old friend. And the sex was outstanding.
”

~ * ~

Snipped

The song for the morning commute, by design, is
“
Rusty Cage
”
by Johnny Cash.

You wired me awake

And hit me with a hand of broken nails. . .

At nine a.m. he walks unannounced into Giffler
’
s office and closes the door.

Giffler puts down a book he
’
s pretending to read:
Beehive Management: How Life in the Honeycomb Translates to Winning in the Workplace.
“
Dworik gave me this. What a bunch of hooey.
”

“
I want a guaranteed contract, first-class accommodations, and a hell of a lot more money than these assholes are paying me now.
”
Crazy he can put up with. Work with. Adultery? Not so much.

Giffler smiles, does a slow-motion slap of his hand upon the desk.
“
That
’
s my boy.
”

~ * ~

“
Is a typhoid shot a billable expense?
”

Meredith nods.
“
Typhoid, hep A, hep B, Japanese encephalitis, malaria, rabies, swine, avian, and a tetanus-diphtheria booster. All billable if not universally recommended.
”

“
The perks never stop,
”
Henry says.

“
Who says this is not a compassionate multinational conglomerate?
”
adds Warren.

Henry smiles. They are in a side booth at the Ginger Man in Midtown, a long, narrow beer hall filled with young, end-of-the-workday drinkers. The morning and most of the afternoon were spent decompressing with one Human Resources group and introducing himself to another. Accelerated orientations, a crash course in international business protocol, were scheduled. Background packets were expedited his way. He was green-lighted, fast-tracked, and shown the door. And this is his party: Meredith and Warren, who is wearing a vintage Indian Nehru shirt that Henry decides not to acknowledge. Norman from the gym said he
’
d try to make it and Giffler swore to God he
’
d show, but Henry knows better than to count on that.

He could have invited others—the rest of the Underarm Research Division, whoever
’
s left from his days in Oral Care or Non-headache-related Pain Relief or Laxatives, or the ill-fated Silicon-based Sprays and Coatings team—but that would have been just a clusterfuck of negativism that would have had a
This Is Your Life
vibe that would have cast an all-too-revelatory light on an extended period of said life that Henry, in retrospect, would rather forget.

This degree of negativism is much more manageable. And because this is his going-away party, and his wife has just evicted him from his house and her life, and he
’
ll be taking a very long plane ride to a very strange place, very soon Henry has decided that it is absolutely okay to drink again. Just a beer or two. As long as he
’
s not chasing it with ostrich.

Meredith and Warren want to know how it went with Giffler and company this morning, so he gives them a best-of version of the wit and wisdom dispensed by his delusional life mentor and soon-to-be long-distance supervisor. Such as:

“
The more efficient we get as consultants, the less money we make, so . . . By. All. Means. Take. Your. Bloody . . . Time.
”

And,
“
I
’
ve outsourced hundreds of jobs these last few weeks, but you, Henry—your whole miserable
life
is being outsourced.
”

And,
“
Our clients want to hear that we
’
re outsourcing people assigned to their business, not because it
’
s the strategically right thing to do but because it covers their trembling asses and says,
‘
I am a fiscally responsible manager and a passive-aggressive advocate of the corporate trend du jour.
’
Which is why we
’
re diversifying beyond India and Prague. It
’
s the newness of this place, not the practicalities of it, that makes us seem enlightened.
”