The Cube People (17 page)

Ryan answered the door. The man standing before him didn't look like a plumber. He looked more like Columbo, dressed in a trench coat and slacks.

The man looked down at his notebook, and then looked up at Ryan.

“Are you Mr. Ryan Smith?”

“Y
es.”

“I'm Detective Chris Farms,” he announced, holding up a badge. ”I'm investigating the disappearance of Barry Rodriguez.”

“Don't know him,” said Ryan, feeling sweat form across his brow.

“Here's his picture, do you mind taking a look?” he asked, holding up the photo.

“Nope, never seen him before,” lied Ryan.

“Mr. Rodriguez was a plumber. Has a plumber come by your house in the last week or so?”

“No, there have been no plumbers here.”

“Well the reason I'm asking you, Mr. Smith, is because Mr. Rodriguez always keeps a log of his jobs. He did a job last Tuesday only five blocks from here.”

“Well did you check with them?”

“I did. Mr. Rodriguez went and fixed a toilet. Then he left. His next stop was here at 1:15.”

“That's strange,” said Ryan.

“Yes, it is, Mr. Smith, especially after you told me that you've had no plumbers come here. Why would Mr. Rodriguez have you down for,” he pauses and looks down at his notebook, ”a leaking basement pipe?”

“It was my wife. She must have called him.”

“Oh, your wife, I see. Is she in?”

“No, she's at work. That's right, now that you mention it, the other day she did say something about getting a leaky pipe in the basement fixed.”

“So you do remember a plumber coming here?”

“I wasn't here at the time. Gillian must have let him in.”

“Can you give me your wife's number at work?”

“Ah, sure.”

“Would you mind if I came in and took a look at the pipe he fixed?”

“Ah, no, follow me.”

Detective Farms followed Ryan down into the basement.

* * *

When Ryan came back upstairs carrying the bloodied notebook, the doorbell rang again. He hid the notebook behind a vase in the hallway.

When Ryan opened the door, a big man with dirty jeans and shirt and a tool belt around his waist stood there.

“You must be the main course, I mean, you must be the plumber?”

“Leaking pipe?”

“Follow me, it's in the basement.”

I've had a month of Wolfgang and my sanity is fractured. I grab the small stapler off Dan's desk and head into the handicapped washroom. After wrapping it up in a wad of paper towel, I drop it in the toilet, and then proceed to take the most satisfying dump of my life. I wipe using an excessive amount of
tissue, then flush. My semi-mummified turd slowly circles the bowl waiting in vain for watery suction that never comes. The water rises to the lip of the seat. I know that this act of sabotage is passive-aggressive and immature. However, it's now my mission to never let Barry shit in here again. I wash my hands and head out to the elevator to join the rest of my section who are waiting outside for Earth Day: Operation Spring Clean.

Approximately twenty-five people are in Barry's section. They're all grouped around the large brown dumpster at the back of the building. Line's smoking and looks pissed off. Barry is there wearing his smiley-face tie and handing out garbage bags and rubber gloves, the kind that medical personnel use. Carla's decked out in a gas mask, goggles, and a one-piece white plastic suit with yellow rubber gloves. She's either ready for a biohazard recovery squad or a grow-op bust. Barry announces, holding up a bathroom scale, that there will be a prize given out for the most interesting item found and for the most garbage collected by weight.

“Yes, Colin, what is it?” asks Barry as he sees the puzzled look upon my face.

“Well, if I pick up a car battery and let's say Jill here picks up thirty pop cans, she'll have picked up more garbage but I'll still have the bigger weigh-in. See what I'm saying?” The crowd awaits Barry's response with an eager thirst to see him falter. Barry isn't all that popular; in fact, he's strongly disliked. He rubs his chin and ogles the scales. I'm not sure whether he's trying to understand what I've just told him or whether in fact he does understand and is trying to formulate a response that will not make himself look like an asshole.

His head cranes up and he says, “Good point, Colin. I guess we'll just have to eyeball then.”

“How about recycling?” asks Jill.

“What about it?” fires back Barry with a thin tone of irritation.

“Well surely we aren't going to put recyclable materials such as pop bottles and cans in the same bag as garbage, are we?” asks Jill, her chipper Refrigerator Committee voice resounding in everyone's ears.

I can almost see Barry's mind twisting. He takes a deep breath and pauses. “That's why we're going to divide into two groups. Half will pick up trash and half will pick up recycling. As a matter of fact, find a partner and decide who's going to do trash and who's going to do recycling.”

People quickly head twist, frantically looking for the least painful coupling option available. Before I can get away, Wolfgang's at my side. “Howdy partner, do you want to be the garbage guy or the recycling guy?” he asks me happily.

“I don't care,” I tell him.

“Okay, you're garbage then,” he says with a chuckle.

We all fan out, two by two, moving through the maze of cars in the parking lot behind our building, strolling toward the grassy bike path. I pick up a cigarette butt (probably Line's) and immediately have a desire to go out and buy a pack of smokes. We make our way over to the other side of the bike path. A ten-foot fence and a small hill lead down to the Transitway, where only city buses are allowed to travel. Wolfgang and I are walking along the fence when he spots a woman's red high-heeled shoe lying in the grass on the other side. “It's mine, it's mine,” he squeaks excitedly. Before I can talk him out of such insanity, I watch his pudgy little hedgehog frame scramble up the fence, presumably in an attempt to win Barry's coveted most-interesting-piece-of-garbage prize. He's going to kill himself I think. Good. At the top he looks rather worried, straddling the fence as if he were sitting on a giant rodeo bull, the gate about to open. As he swings his other leg over I hear the sound of ripping fabric. He's managed to snag one pant leg on a wire and is flailing about, desperately trying to free himself.

“Help Colin!” he screams, but it's too late. He loses his grip trying to unhook himself. He falls with one pant leg still firmly attached to the fence. His pants rip apart at the seam of his crotch. The result of such action cartwheels Wolfgang down the side of the fence where he lands with a scream and a mighty thud. Several people come running over, joining me. We watch Wolfgang rolling around on the ground, clutching his ankle.

“Are you all right?” I ask as the pant leg flutters in the wind above us, a windsock or perhaps a new flag to represent Earth Day.

“I think I might have broken it,” he whines.

“Well at least you got the shoe,” I say, trying to make him feel better. With those words and his eye still firmly on the prize, he bolts up and scours around for it. He sees it and reaches out for it. He freezes just before he's about to grab it. His hand recoils. “There's something inside it,” he whimpers. “I think it's a finger.”

I turn to Barry, who has wandered over. “Well,” I say smiling, “I think we've found our winner.”

I tell Wolfgang not to touch it and then call 911 on my cell to notify them of our gruesome little discovery. Grabbing hold of the fence, Wolfgang manages to pull himself to a standing position on his one good leg, exposing half of his light blue briefs and his bare leg with a watermelon-sized ankle. Staring at the finger within the shoe, Wolfgang announces he's going to be sick. This announcement is immediately followed by projectile vomit, followed by a chorus of
ewws
from the crowd.

The police show up and immediately cut a large hole in the fence to free Wolfgang and to get in to examine “the finger.” Soon four more police cruisers and a media van descend upon our environmental merrymaking. The whole back parking lot is declared a crime scene and yellow police tape is put up to cordon off the area. All the garbage and recycling that we've collected is seized as evidence. They take statements from Wolfgang, Barry and me, as well as a few others who saw Wolfgang's accident.

They call an ambulance for Wolfgang. I ask if I can tag along. Wolfgang seems touched that I would stay with him until he finds out that I really only want a ride because I've got to go to the ultrasound clinic which is only a few blocks away from the hospital. I call Sarah and tell her not to bother picking me up, that I'll meet her there. After the wedding in Montreal, Sarah became pregnant. She's just past six weeks, so we have an appointment to see if everything looks right with the fetal pole, which is the size of a grain of rice. Just before the door to the ambulance shuts, Wolfgang asks Barry, who is still standing outside looking rather dazed, what does he get for a prize?

“A free month in the water cooler club,” answers Barry cheerfully. Wolfgang seems surprisingly happy with that. Maybe he hit his head. A month in the water cooler club is worth five dollars.

I give Wolfgang my cell number and tell him to give me a ring if he needs a pick-up later. Yeah the guy drives me nuts, but it's not really his fault, he has ADD. The ultrasound clinic is located on the fifth floor of a busy building that strangely has only one tiny elevator. There is a six-person line to ride up, which is the max it can hold. I have to wait until it comes back a second time. When I open the door to the ultrasound office, I see Sammy playing with Mr. Honey on a little kid's table in the corner of the large waiting room. She doesn't see me come in, so I quietly make my way over to Sarah, who is catching up on the latest fashion news in
Cosmo
, and take a seat beside her. “Hi,” I whisper softly.

“Hi there,” she says. We both look over at Sammy who seems to be lost in a world of make-believe.

“She's so cute,” I say. “I can't believe she's ours.”

“Can you believe we're going to have another one?”

“No, it's crazy.” I'm never going to be able to quit my job, I think.

Sammy looks over and sees me. She runs, arms wide, screaming “Daaaaadddddyyy!” I bend down to swoop her up. We squeeze each other tightly. You can't buy this love, but I can't keep going to work to pay for it. “Mommy has a baby in her tummy,” Sammy says, patting her own tummy.

“That's right, we're going to see the baby. But right now the baby is very small.”

“Tiny one?” Sammy asks or says, for I'm not sure if it's a question or merely a statement.

“It's small now, but it's going to get big like you.”

One of the ultrasound technicians calls us in. The room is dark and probably creepy if you're two years old. Sammy's clutching Mr. Honey tightly. Sarah lies back on the table, lifts her shirt and lowers her pants to expose her lower abdomen. The technician squirts a translucent blue gel on Sarah's belly. “What doing?” asks Sammy.

“They put that on so the machine can see the baby,” I say, not really understanding what the blue gel does either, but I presume my guess must be close.

“Actually, in your case, Mr. MacDonald,” says the technician, “it's to see the babies.”

“Pardon?” Did I hear that right?

“Babies. See here,” she says, pointing to the two dots on the screen. “You and your wife are going to have twins.”

Ryan lay fully dressed, shoes still on, atop the neatly made bed. He imagined lying in a coffin. He could hear it all the way up here, br
eathing. It was beckoning him. He could feel its hunger in his bones, in his heart. Every once in a while he thought he heard Gillian call out to him.

DING DONG.

Ryan got up and went to the window. Two cop cars were parked on the street. He knew what he had to do. He walked downstairs, down the hallway to the basement door. He went down the stairs and stood at the edge of the hole.

He jumped.

Sarah threw up every day for six months straight before her appetite returned. During this period, we purchased a three-bedroo
m house and a minivan in
order to accommodate our expanding brood, which we found out was to include a baby girl and baby boy. For a moment I thought we should name the babies Brian and Sandy after Brian Mulroney and the sandy blonde
Sports Illustrated
girl, but then thought better of it. I suggested Kurt for the boy after Kurt Vonnegut. Also my publisher is Kurt. Sarah went with it. She wanted Alexandra for a girl and I happily agreed. But we call her Alex. Sounds like we have three boys: Sammy, Kurt and Alex. Sarah had a C-section. Three weeks later, her incision became infected and she ended back up in the hospital for two days. Otherwise, it's been smooth; no baby blues this time around. My mother's been very helpful: cleaning our house, doing laundry, paying extra attention to Sammy to help her adjust now that she has to share the limelight.

I'm back in the office after being away for almost eight weeks. A Kafka character would look joyful compared to me. I love my kids too much to commit suicide, but I'm only an inch away from keeping a bottle in my desk drawer. There are over a thousand emails to go through. I spend a good part of the morning just deleting garbage Bruce has sent me, mostly statistical comparisons between programs. Dan waltzes in at quarter after eleven expressing his great joy at having me back; apparently Bruce has been riding his ass about everything. Dan was off last Thursday and Friday because of all the stress Bruce has been putting him under. Wasting no time in bringing me up to speed, Dan spends thirty minutes providing me with an overview of his sufferings of the past eight weeks. I'm tempted to share some of mine, but Phil shows up to announce it's time to get the fuck out of Dodge. Dan realizes instantly that the conversation, or should I say his monologue, is now over. Phil doesn't understand how I put up with it; I'm not sure I understand either.

Biting into my shawarma sandwich, my mouth explodes in flavours of garlic, succulent chicken, pickled turnip, onion and hot peppers. I haven't had a shawarma in over a month. I realize that aside from Phil's company, this is the only thing I've missed about work, if you could call this “work.” After we eat we go to Stanzas and check on my book. There are now only four copies. In all probability somebody I know bought one, though I hold out hope it was a stranger. Phil does the honours and rearranges the books so my cover faces outwards. He's great.

As I'm crossing the street back to work, I'm dizzy. I press my fingers to my neck desperately searching for a pulse. I'm having an anxiety attack. I haven't had one in a good long while and this one takes me by surprise. Phil's talking a mile a minute and doesn't seem to notice I'm in distress, for which I'm glad because I'm hoping that this wave of panic will soon pass. It thankfully does as we wait for the elevator.

Hacking my way through the forest of emails, I come across a bizarre one. It's from me, dated last week. I don't have a smart phone, nor was I in the office, so I'm not sure how this is possible unless somebody logged onto my computer with my user ID and password – but I don't think that is possible. Even if they did, who would send this and why?

From: Colin MacDonald

Date: 2010/04/02 PM 1:22:02 EDT

To: Colin MacDonald

Subject: Wasn't it always going to happen this way?

Dear Colin:

Be on the lookout for a package in the mail.

Your Loving Uncle Buck

My loving Uncle Buck? I swivel in my chair, squinting into the light of Dan's SunSquare Plus.

“Can you turn that goddamn thing off? It's been on for the last half an hour.”

“Will do, Colin. Gotta keep fighting the depression,” he says, flicking it off.

“Listen, did you see anyone use my computer last week?” I say gruffly.

“No, no one that I know of, but as I told you I wasn't here Thursday or Friday.”

“Wolfgang, did you see anybody using my machine last week?”

Spinning around, Wolfgang shakes his head. I look over at Carla and she shakes her head in anticipation of the question.

“Strange,” I say.

“What is it?” asks Dan.

I smell burnt toast. Am I about to have a seizure? Just as I finish saying, “Does anyone smell that?” the fire alarm sounds. Normally people wouldn't do anything, but living in a post-Crazy-Larry world, coupled with the odour of something possibly ablaze, people start hustling toward the fire exits at a good clip. The smell of smoke is strong in the stairwell and I wonder if going down is the best idea, but the smell dissipates after passing the fourth floor. We all gather outside as the fire trucks come roaring up. Speaking with others, it turns out that there is indeed a fire on the fourth floor, and it's widely suspected somebody named James Morgan had a toaster oven in his cubicle and somehow it overloaded the circuit, setting his cubicle afire. I mill about for thirty minutes and realize it's almost time for me to go home anyway. I find Bruce and tell him I'm splitting, just in case somebody plans on doing a head count. I wouldn't want anyone looking for my charred corpse.

My mother's sitting on the couch knitting and watching
The Young and the Restless
when I walk in. “Shhhh, not too loud, the twins are sleeping,” she says, raising an index finger to her lips. The TV seems to be at regular listening volume, so I find her statement rather puzzling. And since when does my mother knit?

“Where are Sarah and Sammy?”

“Uh, they went to get groceries. Victor Newman is about to be poisoned.”

“That's nice Mom. I'm going to go down to my writing room.” She nods ever so slightly, so engrossed in her show that I wonder if she really knows that I've come home, or whether she's on autopilot? Have you ever driven home and not known how you got there? The brain is a marvellous thing.

As soon as I log on to my computer, I hear the cry of one of the twins over the baby monitor. Back upstairs I go. Sarah bursts through the front door saddled down with a zillion bags of groceries. Sammy has a plastic bag, too. By the strain on her little face it appears to weigh more than she does. Sarah looks haggard. As I help Sarah with the bounty, both babies wail out and my mother is screeching at the TV, “Don't drink it, Victor! Don't drink it, Victor. It's poison, Victor! Poison!”

It's about 11:30, just after I've fallen asleep. Sammy woke up having peed the bed, so I do the whole sheet-changing business and get back to sleep. Maybe an hour later, the twins wake up. So now it's two in the morning and I've just helped Sarah give the twins a feed and I've changed their diapers. But for whatever reason, they're not settling down. I don't want them to wake up Sammy. Sarah looks as if she hasn't slept in eons. I put the twins into their bucket car seats and take them for a little drive. They both fall back to sleep after fifteen minutes, but I continue to drive for another fifteen, just to make sure they're out cold. Carrying them back inside, I dare not traverse the creaky stairs for fear of waking up anyone and setting off a chain reaction. Still in their car seats with blankets snuggled around each, I place them on the floor of the living room and go about fashioning myself a bed out of couch cushions and an itchy red and purple afghan. I close my eyes and I'm out.

I dream of shoving body parts down toilets and having sex with Angelina Jolie. As I'm fucking her, all six of her kids are watching. She doesn't seem to notice; she's just wild. Sarah and I haven't had sex in several months. It's difficult to maintain a regular sex life through this baby stage of our lives. We just need to ride this wave out. At least that's what I keep telling myself.

I awake as the sun is climbing out of bed. The sky looks like a copy of the afghan which I'm clutching onto for dear life because I'm freezing and have the biggest aching boner of my life. Kurt and Alex are still sleeping. The house is quiet. I grab Marvin and decide to deal with him promptly while fresh visions of Angelina's breasts still dance in my head. I stroke quietly and quickly. Oh Angie, you bad girl. Oh you dirty, dirty girl. Oh… Alex lets out a small cry. She's stirring. I try and stay focused. Come on Marvin, don't let me down. “Waaaaannnn,” cries Alex, then seconds later Kurt lets out a howl. Fuck. It's not working. I can't finish. Pulling up my boxers, the elastic band of my underwear snaps Marvin back, choking him into wilting submission. I get them out of their car seats and bring them up to Sarah for breastfeeding. Sammy awakes and asks for juice and if she can watch her
Wiggles
DVD. I go about accommodating these requests. I make some breakfast for everyone and prepare to go to work on three hours of sleep.