Pears and Perils (2 page)

A figure in a raincoat and a hat slid through the door of the pub, keeping its eyes to the floor and moving quickly so as not to draw attention. Of course everyone noticed it, but when they realized it was neither a deranged shooter nor a beautiful woman, attention quickly waned. There was a groan from the booth’s boards as the figure settled its sizable heft across from Clint.

“You… are amazing,” came a strangled voice from the poorly-concealed face. “You saved my job. My whole department.”

“It’s what we do,” Clint said simply. “I’m glad it worked. Did you pad your schedule this time?”

There was an adamant nodding of the mystery man’s head, one shake so vigorous it caused the hat to slip and nearly reveal the purple vein that bulged against the bald head. “I told him four, he gave us two, which is one more than we should need.”

“Sounds like things are good then,” Clint said. “Just be careful what you authorize for beta-testing in the future. The businesses who lost their e-mails were howling for blood over lost orders and documentation. Even we can only do so much.”

“I understand.” From within the jacket the figure produced a thin envelope and slid it across the table. “Your severance pay, as specified in your contract. To be honest, I’m surprised they agreed to it when they hired you.”

“If your references are fantastic enough, they’ll do anything to get you. Speaking of which, I trust we can count on you for a letter of recommendation and an amazing review when you get called?”

“Of course. Your company held up your end, I’ll hold up mine.”

“I think that’s everything then,” Clint said simply. “Would you like a beer?”

“No, thank you. I’ve spent the last month certain I was going to get fired. I’m spending tonight at home, celebrating with the wife.”

“Understandable.” Clint watched as the large man worked his way free of the booth and hurriedly shuffled out the door. He took another sip of his beer and looked at the check in the envelope. It was all there, of course. Corporations were always fastidious about contract adherence. That was part of what made a position like Clint’s possible. His official title was Freelance Consultant for Withersby Positional Solutions Incorporated. They specialized in bringing in employees just before bad news became known to the higher-ups in a company, and then proceeding to take the blame for whatever that particular brand of catastrophe entailed.

To put it simply: Clint Tucker was a professional scapegoat.

2.

The life of a professional scapegoat was not a glamorous one. Most of the people who worked for Withersby Positional Solutions Incorporated did it as a stopgap measure, something to pay the bills while searching for more gainful employment. It’s not to say the pay wasn’t good, or that the experience of walking into a job with the knowledge you couldn’t stay there wasn’t freeing in some regards. No, the problem was that continually taking blame for something that truly isn’t your fault wears away at a person, each rehearsed tirade shredding a few fibers more of their self-worth. It took a special kind of human to survive such verbal volleys without at least a bit of damage.

Clint Tucker was a special kind of human.

When most people met Clint they thought he was apathetic. This was an understandable conclusion, but an incorrect one. The truth is that Clint was simply Zen. Seeing his upper-class family bend and buckle in the unending cycle of trying to amass more wealth had left a sizable impression on the young Clint. From an early age he noticed the correlation of desire to despair, that the more the people around him got, the more they wanted, and the more miserable they became. So he tried something different.

Clint picked the course of self-denial initially as an experiment, comparing his happiness to those who were indulging around him. The results it yielded were incontrovertible. He still might have grown out of it as he aged if not for an unfortunate event from his eighth birthday, one which made any paths back toward normalcy seem far too thorny and dangerous to travel. By the time he was old enough to read a book containing a bastardized Buddhist quote, the words merely cemented a truth he’d already come to on his own: “Desire is the root of all suffering.” Years later, he would study the religion and learn the actual version, but by that point the stones were already cast.

Not that a Zen being was immune from physical need. As Clint pulled his sedan into Golden Acres Assisted Living Community, he clutched a bag of take-out from Camelot Burger, the knight mascot emblazoned across the cheap white paper telling him of all the riches he could win from the Camelot Island Adventure Give Away. Clint barely even noticed the words; his only concern was the juicy double-patty cheeseburger inside. For some reason his hunger always spiked on the day of a job’s completion. He wondered if somewhere inside him there was actually a bundle of nerves worried about being fired, driving up his metabolism in response. He thought it more likely that the hunger was a byproduct of being canned before lunchtime and being too busy reporting to home office to eat. The reason was ultimately irrelevant: only the consequence of hunger was a concern. Clint walked carefully through the parking lot and past the central doors.

Golden Acres was a step somewhere between an apartment building and a nursing home. It offered individual suites complete with kitchens and bathrooms, as well as some central lounging areas for the tenants to spend time in. There were nurses on staff to assist with laundry and cleaning, plus a cafeteria where those who didn’t feel up to cooking were welcome to eat. The mood and tenor of Golden Acres was far happier than any dreary rest home, if only because the people in it still held some vigor in their bones. All the tenants here were in their twilight years but still capable of functioning by themselves, as long as they had an occasional helping hand. All the tenants except Clint.

Clint had approached the owner nearly two years ago about renting a room, drawn by the atmosphere of peace and community that the members of this particular age bracket generated. At first the owner had been surprised, then skeptical, then suspicious. Clint met all the documented criteria, though: he had the income, he was capable of functioning without major assistance (this was the key rule that separated assisted living communities from nursing homes and was taken quite seriously), and he had no previous history of financial delinquency. The owner had initially scoured the books looking for a rule that placed an age limit on who could take a room; however, he backed down after a consultation with his lawyer made it clear that no rule existed because it was prohibited by law to discriminate against tenants based on age. So the check was cut, a few pieces of furniture were moved, and Golden Acres admitted its first resident that was paying into social security rather than collecting from it.

Nowadays, Clint was a common sight walking the hallways. He greeted each fellow tenant respectfully, inquiring about their grandchildren or latest checkers tournament. There were thankfully few between the young man and his own suite tonight, the late hour having driven most from the lounges and into their beds. They’d be up again before daylight, some making coffee, some smoking their pipes outside, and a few making biscuits that would leave an angel weeping in envy. Clint had to be wary of those biscuits; they threatened to drag his “no desire” policy and his waistline into an inescapable wasteland.

Despite his hunger, Clint did take the time to linger with one resident. Mrs. Adams sat alone in a corner of the lounge, watching a television playing some soap opera in Spanish. When Clint had first arrived she’d been a dynamo, a living tinderbox that engulfed the world around her in the fires of excitement. She had organized pranks on the nurses, once tricked an orderly into taking her knitting circle to a male strip club instead of the crafts show, habitually put together enormous shuffle board tournaments complete with sabotage and trash talking, and generally caused disarray wherever she’d tread. Mrs. Adams had built a pyre for Life instead of trying to get on decent terms with Death like most women her age. She’d welcomed Clint to Golden Acres with open arms and a stick of gum that stained the chewer’s mouth.

Now she sat watching the images on the screen flicker by, an occasional nod of comprehension as a familiar character leapt across the screen. Clint reached into his paper bag, producing a fast-food apple pie and setting it on the table in front of her.

“Good evening, Mrs. Adams,” Clint said softly.

Mrs. Adams looked at him for a moment, her brows knitting in concentration, then gave a noncommittal nod and turned back to the screen.

“You know it’s been a month since she talked.”

The voice belonged to Rose, a plump mother of four in her mid-forties and the undisputed queen of the nurses. Rose was notorious for taking zero guff from her patients and keeping employees in line better than an OCD marching band leader. Once upon a time she and Mrs. Adams had been something of arch-nemeses, one an agent of order and the other an emissary of chaos. Those days had slipped away some time ago; all that remained was another patient in her charge, albeit one Rose went out of her way to take special care of. That’s the thing about having a nemesis: no matter how strangely the relation is shaped, it is almost always a great friendship at its core.

“I know. She loves the Camelot Burger apple pies, though.”

The pie sat untouched, a small trickle of steam wafting up from a corner of crust. If Mrs. Adams could smell or see the calorically-saturated culinary marvel she gave no indication. Her eyes never wavered from the screen.

“You’re a nice boy. Tell you what: she’s probably just full from dinner. Put it in your refrigerator and try again in the morning.” Rose shouldn’t encourage him, but he wasn’t the only one hoping to see a spark fly out of the former wild woman’s eyes.

“Good idea. She preferred… prefers them reheated anyway.” Clint put the pastry back in the bag and patted Mrs. Adams on the shoulder. “How long does she have?”

“Until late next week. The man from the review board is coming by then to assess her condition. You know she barely passed last time,” Rose said sullenly. Golden Acres was a place for people who could still function. That rule was important, and no matter how much the staff might want to make an occasional exception, they knew it wasn’t right to do so. This community wasn’t equipped for someone too far gone; there were too many places for tragedy to strike. It wore heavy on Rose’s heart to think of this old battle-axe being boxed up and shipped off, but there was nothing to do for it. Age and Death were the inevitable prices of Life.

“Late next week,” Clint repeated. He patted the woman again and then went to his suite. His appetite was waning; however, he unwrapped the burger and gulped it down in a few bites anyway. The fries went next, followed by now-flat soda. Clint never understood how soda from fast-food places could blaze with such fierce carbonation that the bubbles leapt from the cup when poured yet be flat as water within the span of mere minutes. He’d once wondered if there was a metaphor in that somewhere, if the moral was that living too intensely burned out one’s time faster. If that were true then Clint would likely live forever at this rate.

Clint put the apple pie, carefully encased in a plastic baggie, in the refrigerator for safe keeping. He turned his attention to clean-up and only then noticed the giant blue announcement on the inside of his burger wrapper. He sighed, crumpled it up, and tossed it in the garbage. That taken care of, Clint grabbed a shower and went to bed.

He slept dreamlessly, as usual, awaking some hours later to the scent of coffee that was strong enough to have sobered up Hemingway. Mr. Timmons, four doors down, was the brewer of said coffee, and swore that it was what kept him vibrant and healthy. While the healthy part was likely up for discussion, there was certainly no fighting him on the issue of vibrancy.

Clint was less roused from bed and more yanked out of it by just the scent of those brewing beans. He’d tried a cup of Mr. Timmons’ coffee once, an experiment that resulted in three days without sleep. Usually this was the point where Clint would make his own pot of mud, sitting in solitude as the sounds of his community coming alive filled his living room. Today, though, the percolator went untouched. Clint wasn’t interested in the world around him just yet; instead he was absorbed in thought. Clint was thinking about how not having desires himself didn’t mean others didn’t deserve a decent standard of living. He was reflecting on all the kindness that Mrs. Adams had shown him in his first days here, and how much joy she brought into the world of Golden Acres. Mostly Clint was thinking about the difference between a nursing home insurance would pay for and the kind that could be afforded with independent sponsorship.

Clint let out a heavy sigh as he reached into his trash can and pulled out the burger wrapper. It took some doing but he eventually got it flattened out on the table enough to make out all of the fine print. After a few minutes of double-checking, Clint pulled his ancient (read: three years old) cell phone off the counter and punched in a series of numbers.

“Hello, Camelot Burger Contest Hotline? Yeah, my name is Clint Tucker and I wanted to claim a prize from a winning wrapper. Oh, sure, the confirmation number is six, six, five, seven, two, one, three, four, four, and nine. Yes, ma’am. Yes, ma’am, I’m twenty four. That’s right, ma’am, it’s one of the fifty thousand dollar cash and adventure prizes, whatever the adventure part means. No, ma’am, I’m not married. No, ma’am, I’m not interested in changing that, though I appreciate the offer.”