Holy Water (3 page)

However, on other days he
’
ll find himself jammed three across on the train and slamming into everyone off of it. He
’
ll attempt to bob and weave, to synchronize movement, to change speeds and anticipate footsteps, but nothing will work.

Today is one of those days. Gathering himself after blindsiding
an angry businesswoman while sideswiping a SWAT cop with a bomb-sniffing dog, he wonders if there is any kind of correlation between the cemetery-waking days and the awkward-passage days, or how about between the level of difficulty of the walk to work and the level of difficulty of the day that follows? He decides to make a note of it, which means he
’
ll never think of it again.

He
’
s listening to
“
Subbacultcha
”
by the Pixies.

A trade show in the old waiting room, Vanderbilt Hall. Well-scrubbed, blond white girls in old-fashioned Dutch dresses and kerchiefs handing out tulips and four-color travel brochures. Henry thinks Grand Central is so much
better now than when he first came through it with his father in the eighties. Transvestites beating off in the men
’
s room then. Foul-smelling squatters in the waiting room. The stars overhead in the main concourse buried beneath generations of diesel soot and cigarette smoke, decades away from restoration.

It
’
s a terminal, not a station, his father had corrected him back then. Stations connect to other places. Terminals terminate. They end.

He accepts a complimentary tulip from a blue-eyed, pink-cheeked girl and asks how the weather is in Holland this time of year, hot and muggy or cool and dry. Armpits of the world want to know. The girl hesitates a moment, looks at the bunched tulips in her hand as if they are a bouquet of roadkill, then looks over her shoulder for help from her team leader. Of course she
’
s not from Holland, Henry realizes. She
’
s just some college kid part-timing for a travel bureau, wearing a costume like a Disney character.

His father was forty-six when he died at a corporate teamwork off-site. Massive heart attack. Jostling among junior execs eager to be the first team member to administer CPR, to catch the eye of the boss. Then a dozen white-collar workers in matching T-shirts that say
No Limits!
carrying his stretcher in a synchronized sprint to the ambulance, the medi-chopper, all thinking, or at least attempting to demonstrate,
Together we can do anything
while the paddles fail and the tiny monitor
flatlines
.

That
’
s how Henry imagines it, anyway.

He puts up his hand to retract the question, to wave off the not quite Dutch girl, but before he can speak he
’
s jolted by the vibrating phone in his pants. Rachel. He recently told her it has become illegal to use the phone on the train, so now she calls him within minutes after his scheduled arrival.

“
Yes?
”

“
Did you check . . .
”

“
Yes.
”

“
And the pool?
”

“
Yes?
”

“
It
’
s green. Again. Like a fluorescent radioactive green. What did you do?
”

“
I used the tester. I added the stuff.
”

“
Did you?
”

“
No. I
’
m lying. I
’
m lying about the pool, Rachel.
”

“
When?
”

“
Last night.
”

“
In the dark?
”

“
I could do it in the day, but that would mean I
’
d have to quit my job to be a full-time pool boy.
”

“
I just didn
’
t notice.
”

“
I did it at three a.m. when I woke up downstairs in front of the TV.
”

“
All I know is our pool is disgusting.
”

He takes a breath. He doesn
’
t want to fight. Doesn
’
t want to feel this way toward her.
“
You don
’
t even like to swim, Rachel.
”

“
It
’
s an embarrassment. Every other pool on this block is a perfect shade of blue, but ours looks like a Superfund waste site.
”

“
Every pool except at the houses that have been foreclosed. Look, I
’
ll check it again when I get home.
”
He moves to hang up, but reconsiders.
“
Listen, did you, you know, think about going back to talk to that guy? Philip?
”
Her shrink.

This time she clicks off. He puts the phone in his briefcase rather than his pocket. She
’
s not a bitch, he reminds himself. She
’
s afraid.

“
Actually, I
’
m not from Holland,
”
the young woman tells him.
At first he has no recollection of speaking to her, no idea what she
’
s talking about. Rachel
’
s calls have a way of doing this to him, detaching him from the present, clouding reality, making him breathless with what he hopes is anxiety, because he
’
s far too young for a heart attack.
“
But,
”
she says,
“
I hear it
’
s real sunny this time of year.
”

He scrolls to Scissor Sisters
’
cover of Pink Floyd
’
s
“
Comfortably Numb,
”
taps Play.

~ * ~

The Land of EEEE

Four years ago they transferred him from Oral Care to Non-headache-related Pain Relief. Three years ago they transferred him from Pain Relief to Laxatives. Two years ago he was fast-tracked to Silicon-based Sprays and Coatings and was making quite a name for himself, but when lawsuits not of his making led to the rightsizing of the division (because discontinuing it would send the wrong signal to class-action lawyers), they transferred him to Armpits.

~ * ~

He has a nine-thirty focus group, which leaves just enough time to drop off his briefcase and check his messages. Outside his office sits Meredith, his administrative assistant.
“
Morning, Meredith.
”

“
You are a sought-after man.
”
Meredith is reading the
National Review.
On her desk, already devoured, are the
Financial Times,
the
Wall Street Journal,
and the
Daily Racing Form.
Meredith
’
s auburn hair is pulled back, as it is every day, in a bun. A 1950s librarian
’
s bun. Her loose-fitting skirt suit makes her look short and, if not exactly fat, then chunky. But Henry knows better.

“
Who
’
s doing the sought-
aftering
?
”

“
The emperor of
eccrine
glands.
”

“
The armpit czar.
”

“
Aka Doctor Sweat.
”

“
Aka Giffler.
”
He loves this machine-gun give-and-take. He loves the way it makes him feel as if they really know each other, as
if he
’
s one of the regular guys, nice to coworkers above and below, even though Meredith, a five-year employee of the firm, looks up to no man.

Meredith thinks the give-and-take is banal.
“
You got it.
Giffler
.
”

“
His mood?
”

“
Bloodcurdlingly chipper. He said he
’
ll stop in on your nine-thirty.
”

Henry rolls his eyes. Poor me. Poor us. Meredith looks away, turns the page. The ironic rolling of eyes, the office politics of Henry Tuhoe and
Giffler
and the rest of them: beneath her.

His office has a decent view of Park Avenue facing east, but he doesn
’
t bother to look anymore, unless there
’
s a demonstration in the street or an aerial view of a tragedy. Like the runaway cab that killed three on the sidewalk last month. They gathered in his office,
Giffler
, Meredith, the rest of Armpits, not because Henry is the one they all run to for calm and assurance in a crisis, but because his office has the best view. That
’
s the type of thing that seems to bond them now. Fatalities on the street below. Rumored and unexpected layoffs. So-and-so
’
s cancer scare. The collapse of a market, an industry, a way of life.

On those occasions they
’
ll gather and talk. They
’
ll inquire about non-underarm-related, occasionally personal topics. They
’
ll linger and joke, briefly revealing intimate aspects of their lives while chalk lines are drawn on the sidewalk below, gurneys loaded and lifted.

By contrast, the supposedly happy occasions—the baby showers in the seventh-floor conference room, the champagne toast for a job well done, and the soon-to-be-extinct ritual of after-work drinks—have the opposite effect on their relationships, their morale. Those rituals bore them, crystallize their sources of anger, and are breeding grounds for future resentment. She
’
s making how much? They had sex where? The nerve, taking the corporate jet with more cuts to come. It
’
s gotten to the point where even the people being honored can
’
t finish their Carvel cake and warm
Korbel
and get out of there fast enough. Or maybe this is just how Henry has begun to see it.

He closes the door, hangs up his jacket, and turns on his laptop. Standing, he bends over the keyboard. He has twenty-nine e-mails,
but he
’
s not interested in them. E-mail now has all the urgency of snail mail, yet nothing, not Facebook or
Tumblr
or Twitter, has risen to replace it. He opens his Web browser and peeks up to look through the frosted glass of his interior windows. Meredith is standing, talking to someone. Through the lens of frosted glass she
’
s relegated to a vaguely defined shadow, but on his desktop screen Meredith is about to become something altogether different.

On a heart-shaped ruby red splash page with an adult content disclaimer, Henry clicks
EEEEnter
. He begins to ease himself into his seat, ready to enjoy the opening montage—which consists of Meredith
’
s alter ego, tanned, heavily made up, topless on a Harley, topless as a cheerleader, a dominatrix, schoolteacher, nurse, commando, construction worker, trial judge; Meredith poolside, ocean-side, in the rain forest, in the cab of a bulldozer, on a mansion roof, beside the broken white passing line of Route 66—when, to his surprise,
“
Steady as She Goes
”
by the Raconteurs begins playing on his speakers, loud enough to cause the shadow blobs outside his office to react. He quickly mutes her audio intro, looks at the window to make sure he hasn
’
t blown his cover. When the blobs outside seem to have stabilized, he slouches into his multi-adjustable, lumbar-supporting swivel chair, for which he feigned
to Office Services a chronically bad back, and begins reading the wit and wisdom of the home page.