Squirrel Cage (34 page)

The companies agreed to work with me to resolve the issue.
They sent me new cards.
But I could not use them as my credit line until the case had been investigated.
For now, my source of funding was depleted.
My life test would be completed in just over 3 months. I wanted to schedule my trip to Trinidad Colorado for the very day it ended. This would very likely prevent it.

I began languishing over the details.
Financially, I was doing poorly.
I didn’t make enough to cover the bills.
I was going in the hole
a little
every month and credit cards were taking up the slack at high interest rates.
I had to get out of this rat hole.
I had to get out of this job. I had to make more money or I would not survive.
But I only had 100 days left.
Oh, how this brought me down.

I received a letter from my Bishop
in Utah
. No one could have possibly known where I was living. I knew that my parents would never give it out. Charlene was the only other one who knew.
It was clear that as in the past, she had given it out again.

I called her and asked her about it.

“Charlene, I’ve asked before to please keep my address to yourself. Have you given it out to the bishop?” I asked.

“Well he asked for it and I can’t say no to the bishop,” she answered.

“Charlene, I am sending you money every month for child support and alimony. Regardless of what you think of my situation, you had better support me. If I lose my job, you lose that check every month,” I said. She agreed to keep my address confidential.
Some how, that information would still leak.

I had been paying for her support until she married. I could see no end to my financial problems. They weighed heavily on my mind every day.

I opened the letter from my bishop.
This man had been a friend of mine years before. He was a good and decent man.
He had just recently been appointed to this position of authority and he was only trying to help. But I couldn’t bear another letter like this. I read it and wept. It didn’t cha
nge my resolve to change, it
weakened
my drive to live.

I had a business trip planned to visit Hughes in Tucson Arizona the following day.
They had been commissioned to make minor improvements in the antiquated tow missile design and they were looking to second source the tracking device in the tail end. We had thought this a potential savior to our company’s financial problems.

We went to Hughes offices the following morning. I was accompanied by the local sales rep and my VP.
The people at Hughes showed us the new missile. Under strictest supervision, they could only show us the compartment area of the tail end where our tracking components would go. I was totally dismayed.
The technology was far beyond what we could
produce
. There was absolutely no way that we could
build
the components with our obsolete production methods, facilities, and work force.

My partners showed total incompetence
in
the meeting. Not only did the Hughes guys know we were idiots, they treated us
like
idiots. I was so embarrassed and ashamed to even be seen with them. The conference ended within twenty minutes. It was my fault that we had wasted the time and the company’s money for this trip of course. I had set it up. I would be blamed somehow, I knew it.

The activities had increased to get me out of the company and it was pressing hard against my will. The sales guy from Jersey still kept pushing the limits. It was blatant discrimination and no one would do anything about it. My feet were anchored but the force of the gale was pushing me over.

On the trip home I was paddling hard to keep my face just above the lake of doom.
I had tried so hard. I could not survive financially.
I knew that I would never be able to make enough money. I knew that the people in Utah would never leave me in peace. I knew that my life once shattered so many times in the past and restored could no longer face the burdens any longer.

As I was driving from the LA airport to my place in West Covina, I listened to a Stevie Wonder tape. The song went on… “I know that heaven is ten million light years away…” A click snapped in my head.
I realized an instant connection to this song.
I had heard it in South America while I was there.
T
he flood gates opened.
All of the admonitions and all of the pain of my faith were dumped on me in a single load. I would never get out of this piss ant job I thought. “If they fire me, I’ll not find another.”
My life seemed worthless again.

I hatched the plan. I would go to different drug stores and buy sleeping pills.
I would go home, call the answering service at work and tell them that I was very sick and would not likely be in for a couple of days. This would give me a buffer of at least two days
after the weekend
, maybe three or four. I had a credit line on my checking account.
I would make a check out for what it had left and send it to Mike.
The note would ask him to cash the check immediately and send the proceeds to Charlene and the kids.
I would then take the pills and check out.

Mike and Cindy, my good friends from Utah had moved down so that Mike could work as the computer analyst at my company. I got him the job there. I knew that Mike would do as I asked.
At least my kids would get something out of it.

I did not return directly home from my trip.
Instead, I stopped at three different drug stores and purchased sleeping pills.
I stopped at a convenience store for a bottle of milk.

I carried
packages
, purse, and briefcase into my home. I threw the suitcase and
bag down a
nd set the sack of pills and milk on the counter.
The letter from the bishop was still there. The letter pulled me in. “Do it… Do it” it
pushed
.

Among other things, the letter admonished me that suicide was a sin. It was no way out. The Lord could not forgive suicide. I had received many such letters over the past year.
I wondered later what the results would have been, if instead a letter from my mother awaited me when I returned.

“Remember that we always will love you. Remember that you always have a place to go” as she would often write in her letters. I did not, could not remember what she had written
so many times at that moment
,
however
.

“Do it” the letter on the countertop demanded.

I wrote the letter to Mike. I made out a check to him. I put it in an envelope with a stamp and put it out in the mailbox. I returned to the counter top to spend the time required to cut all the pills from their bubble packs. It was a small mountain of pills.
I washed them down in gulps with the milk.

I put on my favorite piece of music Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings”. I had performed the piece several times in my string ensemble in high school.
It expressed the love torn sadness of my life. It expressed the beauty of death with the sweet breeze of strings. Perhaps, this too, was why it had been chosen as the theme for the movie “Platoon”.

I set the CD player to repeat the song.
I fell asleep to the sweet straining sounds of the strings as they climaxed for my death.

The Rusty is here! What am I going to do?
The Rusty is here! Where is my family?
Where is the table? The Rusty is here.
Quick, hide in the closet.
My heart beat rapidly as I heard the Rusty search my little apartment. The thought of what the new Rusty would do to me if found sickened me.
I threw up.

“Cindi” someone said in a barely audible voice. “Cindi, come out. I can help you.”
It was Mike. He had come to save me from the Rusty.
I quietly opened the door.
“Cindi” I heard the voice emanating from the other side of the bed.
I tried to run to find Mike. I tripped on my feet. Hanging clothes in my hiding place came down with me.
“Cindi… Cindi…”
I crawled on my hands and knees to the other side of the bed. Mike was not there. The Rusty went into the closet.

“Cindi” a barely audible voice beckoned me from the kitchen. “Quick, run to the kitchen while the Rusty is still in the closet.”
I tried to run but fell down on my little make shift computer desk, sending it all to the floor.
Mike was not in the kitchen and the Rusty heard me. “Cindi” said Mike in a barely audible voice, “I’m over here”. I tried to find Mike, running from the Rusty.
I tried to follow the saving voice with the Rusty in pursuit. It was hours that I followed the voice. It was days following the voice.
It was years running from the Rusty. Time passed so slowly as Adagio for Strings played on. It was agonizing to run from the Rusty. Mike would save me but I could not find him.

I awoke suddenly with a grey stupor hanging in my mind. My eyes were blurry.
Sleep goo had fastened my eyelids together. I tried to wipe it from my eyes.
I was sprawled on the floor of the living room. My knees and elbows were bleeding from carpet burns. I had two severely broken finger nails with cracks running vertically.
I felt like shit.
I couldn’t get my body to move for a while.

I glanced at the clock. It read 7:45. I was late for work. I stumbled to the bathroom and took a shower.
I dried my hair and went to the closet for clothes to wear. It reeked of vomit.
My clothes were strewn across the floor. My computer lay in the middle of the floor with its toppled makeshift stand.
The bedding had been pulled off and thrown in a corner.
I quickly put on my work clothes being careful to find something to cover my bleeding elbows. As I hurried out the door, late for work, I noticed that the complete apartment had been trashed. I couldn’t make sense of it. I didn’t have time.
I locked the door and realized that “Adagio for Strings” was still playing on my stereo. I unlocked the door and turned it off.

The drive to work was fast. Traffic was lighter than normal. The brightness of the day pierced my sensitive eyes.
I got to the office in a rush. I was much later than I had ever been.
The doors were locked. I looked around. There were no other cars in the parking lot.
I glanced at my watch 8:20. I did not understand. And then I noticed the position of the sun in the sky. It hung in the west. It was not morning. It was early evening. And then, only then, did I remember what I had done.

I quickly drove home knowing that I had lost complete track of time. My thought processes were improving. My head was still stuffed with a mattress. But soon clarity replaced the mind of broken wheels. I had survived. Why had I survived?
“Because Cindi
,
” started
Squirrel
“someone does love you”.

“I can not ever die,” I whined to myself wondering why I could never end my torment.

“No, you are mortal,” said
Squirrel
.
“You just can not die today,” she continued.

*****

The voice of Dr. Wynn came back to me. “You can find a new job, you can mend the relationships with your family, you can grow your hair back.” My mother’s words of love started ringing in my ears

“We love you. Remember this. You are always welcome here.” The words of consolation seemed like they came to me too late, after the fact. “You can not die,” I told
Squirrel
.
“No,” agreed
Squirrel
.

I had survived. They didn’t bring me down after all I realized with twisted logic.
I beat them. Cindi beat them.
“I will live!”

When I got home, I called Mike. His wife Cindy answered the phone.
“Cindy, will you please do me a favor?” I asked.

“Sure, you just ask anything and we’ll be happy to help,” she replied.

“Cindy, there is a letter coming from me, addressed to Mike.
Will you make sure that he doesn’t open it? Will you ask him to return it to me?” I pleaded.

“Cindi, no problem.
We haven’t received it yet,” Cindy stated.

“Cindi”, she started, “Would you join us for dinner on Sunday?”

“I’d love to”, I replied.

“Good, we’ll prepare something special for you,” she said.
I felt in her voice a careful understanding of what was going on. She did not ask what the letter was or why I had sent it. She knew exactly what it was.

“Cindy, can you tell me what day it is?”
I asked.

“Why it is Thursday,” she answered with a questioning tone in her voice. She sounded different. She sounded very concerned.
I had only been in my stupor for a day.
I thought that it must have been at least 2 or maybe 3 days. I had truly lost all sense of time.