Tumbledown (4 page)

The weenie looked up at Mick. “I’m Cecil.”

“We’re not talking
to
you,” Maura clarified, “we’re talking
about
you.”

Cecil’s smile was as twisted as the mangled spider carton in his hands. He was still on his first one. Daddy Long Legs packaged its pantyhose in an asinine box that looked like a tarantula. Line workers assembled the boxes (three folds, two tucks), inserted flat plastic envelopes that held the pantyhose, twisted shut the spidery arms, and placed them in a shipping container. To do a hundred in an hour took concentration, and even Maura, who found the work unspeakably boring, wanted to do it well. When she started out, a few months earlier, she had packaged five per hour—
a deliberate deliberateness,
she’d called it. She had hated the Center and expressed her contempt by doing nothing but bitch and talk about sex, which would force Alonso Duran to leave for the bathroom to masturbate.

But who didn’t need money? Cigarettes, for example, cost plenty, and the water in Onyx Springs tasted green, which meant she had to keep bottles in her room. Besides all that, she decided to be faster than Karly Hopper, who had hit a plateau in the sixties. Maura averaged eighty-seven per hour. If she had been a chain smoker, she could have done a hundred. Eighty-seven got her what she had to have. Mick was a spider carton genius. He could box one hundred twenty per hour if he tried, but he wanted to stay in the workshop until Karly got up to speed. Once you hit a hundred, they sent you to the real factory. Maura liked that he put loyalty ahead of cash. It was loyalty to a ditz-brain but loyalty nonetheless.

The unpredictable one was the little fucknut Bellamy Rhine, a finicky, twitchy simpleton who stood too close to people and was exactly as tall as Maura’s breasts. If she ever needed to, she could smother the little prick without even bending over. Rhine could go as fast as eighty early on, but as the day continued his speed fluctuated. He seemed to over concentrate or would carefully spread the tentacles of a carton he had already packed, suddenly uncertain he had done the work. He was fine-featured and delicate looking, as if made of paper, and the part in his hair was so perfect it was like a crease. Some days his totals were as high as Maura’s; other days, Alonso Duran made more money than Rhine.

Not counting this Cecil character, Alonso was the only one of them visibly weird. His eyes were too lidded and his mouth showed its tongue, and not just the tip. Each of his shirts had permanent drool stains from that open yapper. There was something else odd about his appearance, something she couldn’t quite name, like his face was slightly askew on the front of his head. He barked when he talked, but he could package ninety boxes an hour. What kept his average down were his breaks, which he spent in the bathroom. Even though he had been around longer than anyone else, Alonso was still paid cash every hour. They had all been paid that way at the beginning. Immediate reinforcement and that bunk. After a while you were paid daily, then weekly, and then biweekly, just like the real employees of Daddy Long Legs.

Maura made a point of knowing where she stood with the others, but Mick was the only one in the workshop who interested her beyond freak value. He was also the only one who was faster than she was, and that suited her fine. She wasn’t competing
with
Mick, she was competing
for
him.

The sheltered workshop was new enough to be an orphan, housed not in the shining white buildings on the Center’s campus but across town in the cafeteria of a gruesome concrete-block composition known as the Onyx Springs Senior Citizens Facility, which smelled today of spaghetti. About half the time, the dump smelled of spaghetti. Down the linoleum hallway, old men and women learned dance steps or yoga or needlepoint or poetry. They painted landscapes, fox-trotted, studied German. The sheltered workshop only rented the space, and at noon the pantyhose assembly line was folded up and rolled to the corner so the old farts could eat their damn spaghetti.

The assembly mechanism looked like a butterfly on wheels. When rolled away from the wall and flapped open, it had a motorized conveyor belt onto which plastic packets were dropped from tall bins that their supervisor, Crews, filled each morning. It wasn’t exactly like the real Daddy Long Legs plant (Maura had gone on the field trip), but it was the same basic setup. At the real factory, the assembly line was enormous and the workers stood on either side of the belt. They decorated their work spots with photos of their kids, maybe to remind them why in hell they had to keep their shitty jobs. There was no way Maura would ever work at a factory. She was missing her senior year of high school, but she had passed the GED without even studying. She knew she was smarter than nine out of ten people, which wasn’t saying that much, given that the planet was teeming with dimwits. Still, she wasn’t going to wind up on an assembly line.

Well, she
was
on an assembly line at the moment but it was temporary and meaningless, like most things in life. She was intent on discovering what those other things might be, the ones that were permanent and meaningful. There was death, but that could hardly be the whole menu. People had been around for fucking ever. Somebody had to have come up with something besides the bullshit stuff—god, country, family: a figment, imaginary geography, and a conniving crew of flesh eaters, respectively.

If there was anything that did matter, she suspected it had to do with Mick Coury, but when she tried to name what that
thing
might possibly be, she got stuck with crapola like
Whenever I’m around him, I feel great.
This was a disafuckingpointing line, and not just because it failed to capture the thrilling, enigmatic lunacy of hanging with him.
He made her feel nice.
Was that really the be-all and end-all? There were forty million songs and twice that many poems about love, and as far as she could tell it all dwindled down to some skinny schizo fucker who could put together moronic boxes designed to look like cartoon spiderwebs faster than the nearby completely incompetent vacuum-heads, and yet this guy made her skin feel blistered and her breathing clog up. That had to be bullshit. Why, in the past million or so years, had no one got on top of this?

And what was she supposed to do about this age-old problem while she was committed to this swanky asylum? She might as well do what she liked. For example, she liked to be next to Mick, so she parked herself there. Worker ants at the real factory were permitted to talk, so they were free to natter here, too. This meant she liked coming to work. Karly could have taken her spot if she wanted. Maura knew this and had no intention of fooling herself about it. Luckily, Mick liked to be across from Karly so he could watch her. He was gaga for the twit.

“I’ve got an itch for
adventure,
” she told Mick, but it was hard to speak over the noise of the assembly butterfly without broadcasting to the whole squadron.

Before Mick could respond, Karly spoke up. “I know what.” She pulled a slip of paper from her jeans pocket. Karly liked to tell jokes and she was miserable at it. Some people could not be funny. She looked over her notes. This alone was a bad sign:
joke notes.

“There are two cannibals,” Karly said, “real ones that eat people. And they’re eating people. They’re eating a funny clown. I guess he would be dead before they’re eating him. And one of the cannibals says to the other one of the cannibals,
Is this funny?
” She laughed. “Get it?”

Mick laughed, though clearly he didn’t get it, assuming there was something to get. He laughed because it was Karly’s joke. Alonso and Cecil laughed. Rhine never got jokes because he was the living incarnation of a joke. Rhine merely glanced anxiously from one laughing person to the next.

“That’s so funny,” Karly said.

Maura tried to figure out what the punch line was supposed to be. Cannibals eating a clown: what was funny about that?

Cecil the Shrimp piped up. “Mrs. Barnstone is old. She’s going to die,” he said. “Crews, is Mrs. Barnstone going to die?”

“Ms. Patricia Barnstone,” Alonso brayed.

Crews was reading the newspaper. He didn’t seem to have a first name. His bland, pale, bumpy face was like a sack filled with miniature doughnuts. “You don’t talk to me,” he said. “Talk to your pals if you got to, but not to me.”

“One day Ms. Patricia Barnstone will die,” Rhine said, “but almost certainly, unless you know something I or we don’t, not today.”

“Not no but hell no,” Alonso said. He often said this.

“Not entirely certainly,” Rhine went on, “but almost entirely one hundred percent, or at least ninety-nine percent, certainly.”

“She’s healthy as a horse,” Maura said. Patricia Barnstone was her counselor, and Maura liked her. She was a no-bullshit person who actually enjoyed most people but wouldn’t pretend if she didn’t.

Alonso put his work down and coughed out some words. “It’s the party at night at my house, if you’re coming.” The only time the drooler’s mouth ever shut was with the
p
in
party
and
m
in
my.
“My house is over the garage at my house, if you’re coming.”

Alonso Duran lived in his family’s garage apartment. Mick had told her about Alonso’s parties but Maura had never been invited. They usually entailed food and a movie. According to Mick, the movie was always
Wayne’s World,
which was Karly’s favorite. What could possibly make more sense than to watch the same movie over and over because one idiot girl liked it? Every swinging dick in the room was in love with Karly Hopper, except maybe the new one, Cecil, who looked like too much of a mental-case retard to remember he had a dick. She predicted he would wet his pants before the day was out precisely because he could not find his dick.

“I’m invited, right? Isn’t that right, Alonso?” Rhine said. “I’m invited?”

“You’re always invited,” Alonso said. “Karly’s always invited.” He pointed to people and made his way around the room. “Mick’s always invited. Maura’s always invited
now.
” He looked at Cecil. “But not you.”

Cecil dropped the crumpled box he was holding, stared at it forlornly, and bent to pick it up. “When goldfish die,” he said softly, “they go upside down.”

“Mr. Crews,” Rhine said. “Cecil is making a mess of his box, which is really bothering us.”

Crews sighed and put his paper down. “Over here, then. C’mon, Cecil.” He took the clodhopper midget aside to teach him the procedure again.

“Like I said,” Maura tried to speak confidentially to Mick, “some adventure?”

Mick snapped open another flat and bent the flaps at the folds. He was cute even when he was ignoring her. Something about his face looked edible. Her mother often described people as
sweet,
and now Maura got it. She would like to lick Mick’s face.

Rhine spoke up. “Karly, I’m learning sign language. Karly? Karly, I’m learning sign language.”

“What’s the sign for shut your trap?” Maura said.

“I was talking to Karly.”

“No kidding?”

“What kind of adventure?” Mick asked.

“The interesting kind. Like getting to some place besides here. Up in the mountains or down to the beach or maybe,” she lowered her voice, “getting some booze or pot or I don’t know . . .” She involuntarily pictured Mick naked and blushed.

“This is
Hello.
” Rhine waved to Karly. “Get it, Karly? This is if you’re cold.” He rubbed his hands up and down his arms. “Get it, Karly?”

“That is so funny, Rhine,” Karly said. “Isn’t Rhine funny, Mick?”

“Very funny,” Mick said.

“A riot,” Maura put in. “A natural half-wit.”

“Not no but hell no,” Alonso said.

For months, Maura had been certain that Karly was a phony. She looked exactly like a girl from some hateful high school clique—skinny, perky, and cute. All such girls were actually heartless bitches, Maura knew, but Karly wasn’t hateful or a bitch, and for that matter, she was more than cute. Way more. She had the perfect skin people called
olive,
as if it were green, and pretty brown eyes and a great face, and if that weren’t enough, she had thick, shiny hair. She could shave her melon and the boys would still crawl across the floor to French-kiss her ass, but no, she had perfect hair as well. It covered an empty fucking balloon, but what difference did that make?

As much as Maura hated to admit it, Karly wasn’t a phony. She was genuinely nice all the goddamn time. This fact didn’t make Maura like her, but she couldn’t hate her. A person had to be honest about her feelings, at least with herself. Barnstone had taught her that.

Crews returned with Cecil. “Do it that way on the line,” Crews told him.

Rhine spoke up. “Maura told me to shut my trap, Mr. Crews.”

“Smart girl,” he said. To Maura, he added, “You and Mick keep an eye on things. I should be back in time to pay Cecil and Alonso for their next hour. Help keep this one on track.” He indicated dwarfkins.

“No sweat,” she said. This was one of Barnstone’s expressions, and Maura liked using it. “Got you covered.”

Crews worked evenings and weekends for a local lawn crew. Lately he tried to get in one yard during his day job. At first he had made elaborate excuses, but anymore he just gave Maura or Mick the heads-up and took off. When he returned, the cuffs of his pants would be green and he would smell of grass and gasoline.

Maura didn’t mind Crews disappearing. She liked being in charge. She thought about lighting a cigarette, which would drive Rhine out of his mind. During her first week at the workshop Mick had given her a present. She already knew he was crazy for Karly, which meant it wasn’t a romantic-type gift, and that made her suspect that he might be a geek or shithead or some other type of fuckwad. The present was wrapped in the Sunday comics, and when she ripped the funny papers off, she discovered a silver ashtray, the words CARLTON HOTEL stamped in the center.

“So you can smoke,” he said.

Crews hadn’t let her outside to smoke during breaks because she left butts in the hydrangeas. Now she would drag Mick out to watch her puff. Sometimes, he held the ashtray. She stored it in the assembly frame, on a rack next to the rollers. It was a great gift—perfect, in a way—and she tumbled for Mick that first week.