The Future for Curious People: A Novel (20 page)

I knock on the door. Normally I freeze up at confrontations. Godfrey, the boy who always rolls over, whose dormant animal nature is a joke, the little shit who still wears mittens.

But I kissed Evelyn Shriner last night and this morning. A lot. I rolled around animalistically with her in her giant bed this morning. We might even be engaged. Now I just have to end the other engagement.

No one comes to the door.

I knock again. “Madge!” I shout. “Madge! Come to the door! We have to talk!” And then I’m kind of pissed. Madge’s fiancé, missing all night long. I could be dead in a ditch somewhere. Didn’t Poe famously die in a Baltimore ditch, or is that a myth? I make a mental note to Google “death of Poe Baltimore ditch” and tape my findings to the refrigerator door so Madge can feel appropriately guilty. And then I realize —my mind clearing like smoke dissipating after a rocket launch—
I don’t care.

“Madge! Please! This is important! It’s about us! We have to talk!” I pound until my knuckles are bruised and then I press my forehead to the door and clunk my head against it a few times. “Madge.” I sound really plaintive now. “Madge, please!”

And then the neighbor’s door squeaks open and I’m expecting a bondage girl, but it’s the neighbor, the hefty, broad-shouldered, bare-chested masochist. “Jesus! You’re killing me! Could you please shut the hell up? She’s obviously not home!”

There’s something damning about being yelled at by a masochist. “Sorry.” I apologize. “I’m really sorry.”

He grunts at me with disgust and slams the door.

I charge back down the stairs, and that’s when it hits me: Madge has my cell phone in her possession for her own purposes.

I slow down on the stairs.

I grip the railing and come to a complete stop.

And Evelyn has my number—written in lipstick on her bedroom mirror, in my own stupid, dumb-ass, fourth-grade handwriting.

At this very moment, I can feel the collision course. Madge will receive a text or a call. Probably a text. And she will put two and two together.

And she’ll text back. Yes, she will. She most definitely will. And it won’t be simple with Madge. No, she’ll take her time and really think it through. There’s no telling what she will do, but I know one thing: she will ruin this.

On a break, I call Dot and fill her in on my night with Godfrey Burkes. She doesn’t comment much, but finally she says, “Okay, I’ll teach you to swim,” as if that’s what I’ve been getting at all along.

“Do you belong to a gym with a pool or something?” I ask her.

“Pool?” she says. “I don’t need a pool to teach someone to swim. In fact, I find water generally gets in the way.” I don’t know what this means exactly, but I trust Dot. What do I know about swimming? Dot says to meet her around four at the picnic tables under the pavilion just north of where the dogs are allowed to shit at Robert E. Lee Park.

I take a late lunch and bike to the park.

When I pull up to the pavilion, Dot’s already there, sitting on top of a picnic table. She’s dressed top to bottom in matching blue Adidas sweats. A whistle hangs loosely around her neck. And if I’m not mistaken, there’s a pooch over Dot’s midsection that wasn’t there yesterday.

“I see you’ve grown four months pregnant overnight.” I lean my bike against one of the four poles holding the pavilion in place and wrap my bike lock around it. I spin the numbers until I hear a click.

“It’s a throw pillow,” she says. “I was getting into the role.”

“Swim teachers are pregnant?”

“It’s a potbelly. What gym teacher isn’t overweight? And I figured a swim teacher is the same as a gym teacher, just one capable of doing even less.” Dot rubs her belly. “That Krispy Kreme sign is always flashing when I happen to be driving by.”

Luckily, the park is mostly desolate except for a few kids on skateboards. Dot points them out. “I don’t trust emo skateboarders,” she says. “I think they’re criminals in disguise.”

“How do you know they’re emo and not Goth or scene?”

“With that head bop, you can just tell that they’re piping screamo into their ear buds.”

“I think they’re kind of sad.”

“Just keep your pocketbook close. It takes a thief to know a thief.”

On the floor next to the picnic table is a large bag from Dick’s Sporting Goods; I’m scared to ask what’s in it. But I give in to the afternoon. There’s no wind, but it’s overcast. The sky looks like it’s aching. The trees are naked. I find myself embarrassed for them.

I realize how tired I am. I’ve been running on pure adrenaline since a handful of pebbles hit my window late last night. It’s amazing how much has happened today. One day. Twenty-five years and everything happens in one day. I started seeing Dr. Chin for a hint, a cheat sheet, but somehow everything still seems like a complete surprise.

I had told Dot about Godfrey’s mother’s funeral, the pool, the half-naked conversation where Godfrey told me I should learn how to swim. But I couldn’t tell her that it felt like a proposal. She knew I was holding back, but she didn’t push for more.

“So what exactly is going to happen here?” I ask.

“We’re here to teach you how to swim, obviously.”

Obviously
.

I consider telling her that this was a mistake.
Let’s go waste a few hours at Café Honeybun. I won’t even make you give back whatever you swipe.
But then I think of Godfrey’s lips, the fullness of them. And then I think of Godfrey’s lips again—still the fullness of them. I think about the necessity of his entire face, how everything is put exactly where it’s supposed to be. His penguin boxers. His eyebrows. So I take a breath and ask, “What does a park have to do with me calling you for a swim lesson?”

“I might be good at stealing things, but I haven’t learned how to steal a pool,” she says, looking at me out of the corner of her eye. It feels like she’s smiling, but she’s not. “Not yet anyway.”

And I believe her. One day Dot will steal a swimming pool.

Dot puts the whistle in her mouth and blows hard. The ringing is shrill, and it stays in my ears—still ringing, still shrill—even after the whistle leaves Dot’s mouth and is hanging quietly around her neck.

“Was that necessary?” I tug on my earlobes.

“I was getting into character.” Dot puts her hands on her hips, but the inside of the throw pillow has started to slide down the bottom of her track jacket. She fixes herself quickly. “Now stop giving me lip and get on the bench. I want to see you doing the back float, Shriner!”

Dot wants me to get on a park bench and float in my puffy coat. This is fucking ridiculous. But water is the exact thing that seems to have always thrown me off. It crosses my mind that Dot’s a genius, and this is the only way I’ll learn how to swim.

I climb onto the picnic table. I lie on my back. The wood is hard and cold, but I could probably fall asleep if I let the top of my eyes fall into themselves. The table creaks slightly.

Dot reaches into the shopping bag and pulls out a pair of orange floaties. “Every swim teacher is prepared.” She hands me the floaties. “Put these on.”

“You’re kidding,” I say. But I take the floaties. I have to push hard to get them over my coat. I know there’s more in the bag. It’s a big bag.

She grips something in her right hand. They look like iPod ear buds, but the buds are too close together. She tosses them to me. They land on my chest. They’re knotted. By the time I’ve untwisted them, I realize they don’t go in your ears. They’re nose plugs.

“So you don’t take on water and get waterlogged,” she says.

“You need water to get waterlogged.”

“I’ll blow the whistle again.”

“Okay, okay.” I plug my nostrils. “They’re tight,” I say.

“That’s the point.”

“Of course.”

“One more thing.” Dot rustles through the bag before handing me a pair of goggles. “Now,” Dot says, trying her best not to sound like Dot, “on your stomach, Shriner!”

“Will you stop calling me that?”

Dot brings the whistle to her lips.

I turn over slowly. On my stomach, I can see through the bench’s cracks.

Dot adjusts my body so my head hangs off the end of the picnic table. “So you can turn your head with every stroke,” she says. I can feel all the blood rushing to my head. She stands in front of me. I have to stretch my neck out like a turtle to see her.

“It’s going to be stroke, breath, stroke, breath,” she says, inhaling and exhaling with each word.

“That sounds simple enough.” I’d like to get this right.

“Try to be as smooth as possible,” Dot’s saying. “Like you’re in the shower shaving your legs. You have to move your face to the opposite side of the arm you’re using to stroke. Just glide.”

In my puffy jacket, it’s hard to move my arms in any motion that resembles a glide. I’m sweating. I’m trying to pay attention, but I’m getting dizzier and dizzier. Everything is fuzz, white noise. Who stuck me in a blender? I don’t want to drown in a pool at the age of forty. I practice holding my breath. I close my eyes so the chlorine won’t sting them. I then remember the goggles. I open my eyes.

Within minutes of my stroke, breath, stroke, and breath, there are worms dancing over my eyes. I let my arms drop to my sides, and slide down until my forehead rests against the picnic table.

“Stroke and stroke and stroke! God damn it!” Dot blows her whistle. “I said to stroke. Left arm. Right arm. Left arm. Don’t quit on me now, Shriner!”

A couple walking their German shepherd where the dogs are permitted to shit turn and look at us. Dot blows the whistle again and waves. She motions with her hand for them to keep moving. “Jesus Christ,” she says. “I don’t know what’s worse—your effort in the pool or those assholes rubbernecking.”

“It’s not a pool, Dot. It’s a goddamn picnic table.” The sweat is drying, and I’m shivering. “And it’s like twenty degrees out here.”

“I checked the weather after you called this morning. It hasn’t dropped below forty all day.”

“Well, it’s gray out.”

“
It’s winter.
It’s supposed to be gray.” Dot puts the whistle back in her mouth. It hangs loosely from her lips like a cigarette about to be lit. “Congratulations, Ev, you’re the first sober forty-year-old to drown in a swimming pool right after her mother-in-law’s funeral.”

“Fuck.” I roll onto my back. My throat is stinging like it’s been stung by an entire wasp nest.

I take off the goggles and hang them around my neck. I pull off the nose plugs and toss them on the grass in front of me. I’m still wearing the orange floaties. “He kissed me with his whole mouth. I forgot how to stand.” I don’t tell Dot that it made me feel safe, that even when Godfrey was just looking at me, I felt like I just came home. I’m keeping that for myself.

Dot sits next to me on the picnic table. She tugs on the whistle wrapped around her neck. “Oprah brought back the book club.” She pulls two bottles of water out of the Dick’s shopping bag and hands me one.

“It looks like Adam Greenberg will never leave you.”

“You’re nuts,” she says. She takes a sip of water. “But at least you’re going for it.”

Across the way, the couple with the German shepherd has doubled back. They’re not even pretending not to stare.

“Fucktards,” Dot says. She starts to bring the whistle to her lips when I stop her.

“Let me,” I say. I take the whistle from Dot’s hand and blow it as hard as I can. My ears ring. I keep blowing. Shrill, just shrill, but I can’t stop. It’s liberating. The German shepherd is barking. Dot’s laughing. The couple looks slightly frantic. I let the whistle drop and hang around Dot’s neck.

“The student becomes the teacher,” Dot says.

“And the teacher becomes a mother.” I rub Dot’s puffed belly.

“I hope it looks like Adam,” she says.

“He’ll probably pop out with glasses and an argyle sweater vest already on.”

Dot doesn’t say anything. She’s pushed my hand away and is now rubbing her own belly. “Did you text Godfrey?”

I nod.

“Has he texted back yet?”

“Not yet.”

“Maybe he’s the thoughtful type.”

“I think he is,” I say, and then I ask Dot what people eat after swimming.

“Peanut butter sandwiches.” Dot hands me a paper lunch bag and pulls a beach towel out of the Dick’s shopping bag. “Put this around your neck,” she says.

“Why?” I say, taking the towel from her.

“It just feels right.”

I put the beach towel around my neck. It’s white with blue stripes. “Will I really have to wear a nose guard when we finally get to a pool?”

She looks at me. “Wipe the chlorine off your face and give me a quote from Churchill, God damn it.”

“ ‘Success is not final, failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts.’ ”

“Then that’s what we will do. Continue!”

I get to work as fast as I can, mainly so I can use the phone. It hits me as soon as the elevator doors open—the smell of the Department of Unclaimed Goods. I can’t stand it. Now I don’t smell so good either, but that’s not it. This is the smell of . . . what? I don’t know, but it’s awful.

I walk to my cubicle. Bart isn’t there. His computer isn’t on. He hasn’t come in yet. Or has Madge taken him hostage? Was he in the apartment, duct tape over his mouth, when I knocked on the door? I need Bart. I need him to tell me Madge’s location so I can retrieve my cell phone or make him a double agent so he can steal my phone back for me.

Where is he? Huh? In my hour of need?

Gunston isn’t here either, but that’s not unusual. Gunston is the Reigning King of Dead Aunts and Uncles, of Minor Surgeries, of Communicable Infections That Entail Bed Rest.

I’m not supposed to be here either. In Evelyn’s envisioning session, I had multicolored fingertips. In the right future, the one I want more than anything, I’m teaching kids to apply finger paint to rolls of newsprint.

And then I see the little note:
Godfrey —We need you in Lost Cell Phones again. —C.

Chapman.

I’ve mentioned that I hate Chapman, the idiot prick, haven’t I?

I sit in my seat, refusing to go to Lost Cell Phones. Evelyn’s the kind of girl to text something brilliant and tender right out of the gate, especially after an irreversibly fantastic night—and morning. And, in response, Madge will intercept that text. I could call Evelyn’s home number. I’ve got the white page torn from the phone book in my pocket still. But she’s at work. I could call her at work and have her paged. But, in either scenario, what would I say? My fiancée might be in possession of my cell phone and therefore ignore all texts and calls from my number?

Shit. No. Of course not. God, I wish I’d explained it all last night or even this morning. We were being honest. I should have come clean.

Okay, okay. I promise that I will come clean as soon as I see Evelyn in person. You have to be looking someone in the eye when you explain about hooking up with them while you are almost engaged.

But, for right now, I have to stop the panic. There’s the rational possibility that Madge found my phone and shoved it in the junk drawer. There’s the rational possibility that she spiked it and its splintered parts have been swept up and now sit in the kitchen garbage.

I just have to get to Madge, break things off as quickly and cleanly as possible, and then find Evelyn, explain everything.

Why not be an optimist? Why not put a little faith in love?

I think: What would Thigpen do? That ladies’ man. That Casanova. That animal. Evelyn spoke the truth, I’ve got him in me—why does that have to be a bad thing? Thigpen wouldn’t do something wussified like having her paged in a library. Do they even page people in libraries? No. He’d do something big.

I look up ways to send messages. And there—in five or six quick links—I’m at a singing telegram service. Yes. I will send her a singing telegram—something so big and old world that, as a gesture, it will blot out all other forms of communication.

I call up and order a duck.

“What kind?” the receptionist asks.

“What kinds are there?”

“Daffy, Donald, or something more generic.”

“I’ll take the generic duck.” I don’t want this to be commercialized.

“And what’s the occasion?”

“Nothing, really. It should be romantic.”

“Not a birthday or anything?”

“No, but do your singing telegrams know anything by, like, Iron and Wine?”

“No, sir. Our ducks sing ‘Happy Birthday.’ Also available in Spanish.”

This goes on for a while. The woman is dying to get off the phone with me. Finally, it hits me. “The national anthem. Tell the duck to sing the national anthem. In falsetto—for extra points. How about that?”

I give her my name and Evelyn’s name. Just saying her name makes me happy, like full-body happiness.

“Address?” the woman says.

I give the library’s name. I know this won’t go over well in a library, but surely there’s a back room somewhere in which singing’s okay. We settle on the financials, and I get off the phone, feeling triumphant. What if I could become a triumphant type of person with Evelyn in my life?

I hold out my hands. They’re shaking a little. I’m hungover and hungry and jacked up. And I think to myself. Why not start being that triumphant type?

Step 1 seems clear:
No more, Chapman. No more pushing around Godfrey Burkes, you petty tyrant!

I walk down the hall, past the water cooler and straight into Chapman’s office without knocking.

Chapman is drinking Red Bull. He puts down the can and says, “What?”

“I’m not going to Lost Cell Phones again today. Tell Garrett to do it. He’s new. He needs to pay his dues.”

“I’ll make a note of your suggestion,” Chapman says, and for effect, he lifts a pencil and licks the tip and makes a checkmark in the air.

“Do you smell that smell?” I ask.

“What smell?” Chapman says.

“It’s the smell of petty tyranny. It’s the smell of dying souls. It’s the stench of unlived lives!”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Chapman says.

“I quit.” I can’t believe I’ve just said these words.

“What?”

“Listen you fuck-wagon, you ass-dangle, you prick-wad, you douche-hopper!” I call him a few more names, a blur from my mouth.

“Those aren’t real curse words!” Chapman says, though he’s clearly stung by them.

“I quit because I have another life to lead.” And with that, I turn around and walk out of this office and down the hall. I can hear Chapman yelling at my back, “
You’re
a douche-hopper! You are! You hear me? Douche-hopper! You’re fired, too, so don’t come back!”

I open the back door of the office building, and the parking lot stretches out before me. I start running. I can’t help it. I’m not running away from my shitty job. I’m running toward the future—the one future I really want.

“Godfrey!”

I turn.

Five cars away, Gunston hits the button on his car lock and his car beeps twice. “What are you doing?”

“Can I borrow your phone?”

He’s wearing a puffy blue down jacket that is snug on his wide hips and one of those wool wrap-around ear-warmers, the kind that look like a girl’s headband. His hair is puffed up on top of his head. “Tell me what you’re doing first. You look different . . . and weird.”

“I’m free, Gunston. That look you don’t recognize, that weirdness—it’s freedom!”

“Really? Because it looks kind of shroomy.”

“Give me your phone, okay?”

I want to call Evelyn, but I’m a man of honor. I can’t call her until I’m completely free of Madge. I can only hope a giant patriotic duck gets to her before Madge does.

Right now, I want to tell
someone.
Why? Because I’m becoming myself—for the first time in my life. I feel like I’m becoming Godfrey Burkes.

I decide to call my parents. I feel like they should know. I push in the numbers of my mother’s cell. It’s midmorning. She’s often out in the yard with the bunnies at this hour.

“Godfrey?” she says. “Where are you?”

“I quit!” I tell her. “I quit my job!”

Gunston says, “You what? You quit?” He’s incredulous.

“You quit your job?” my mother says again.

“It’s okay!” I tell her. “In fact, it’s really good!”

Gunston paces a small circle. With his mouth open, he slightly wags his head in awe.

My mother muffles the mouthpiece and says something, probably to my father. And then it’s my father’s voice on speakerphone. “Are you coming or not?”

“What are you talking about?” I ask.

Gunston has started flapping his puffed arms like he’s going to try to fly away. “You really quit?”

I nod to Gunston.

“Lunch!” my father says. “We’re waiting for you. We’re at Sal’s on Calhoun. You and Madge were supposed to be here twenty minutes ago.”

Lunch with my parents. How could I forget lunch with my mother? “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” I say. “And Madge isn’t there?”

Gunston starts jumping now, and he’s still flapping. A small bark emits from his mouth. Is he trying to yawp? Is he hoping to get a promotion or something? Or is he weirdly joyful? It dawns on me I’ve never seen Gunston express joy before.

“Isn’t Madge with
you
?” my father asks.

“You quit!” Gunston cries out so loudly that his voice bounces across the parking lot and rings up in the open air.

“Quiet down, Gunston.” I turn back to the phone. “No. I don’t think she’s coming.” It terrifies me that I have no idea where she is or what she’s doing.

“Is she mad you quit your job?” my mother asks with a disapproving tone. Madge is only allowed to have one emotion about me: joy, utter joy.

“I think she’s mad, yes.”

“But you have another job, don’t you?” my father asks.

“I have a plan.” I could get my degree in early education. I could grow into those finger-paint-stained fingers that Evelyn saw in her envisioning session. It’s possible.

My father says, “You’d better get your ass down here. This is important.”

“Important?”

“Your mother has already cried twice.”

“Over what?”

“Never you mind. Get here.”

“Go ahead and order,” I say, but my father’s already hung up. My mother’s cried? Twice?

I turn around and there’s Gunston. He’s taken a knee and seems to be praying on the pavement. “I quit,” I say again aloud. It’s just dawning on me in a new way.

“Why?” Gunston says. “How?”

“In the end, it was the smell of petty tyranny. I got to the end of it.”

Gunston nods. “I get it. I understand.”

“Follow me, Gunston.” I hold out my hand to help him up. “You can get out, too.”

Gunston shakes his head. “I wish I could,” he says, tearing up. “I wish I could.”

I can only save myself.