The Woman Who Married a Cloud: The Collected Short Stories (41 page)

“You can’t go in there.” The boy said behind him.

Empty headed, empty of anything after the shocks of the last few minutes, Aoyagi simply turned and looked at the boy. “Why?”

“Because he already has my file in his hand. It’s the correct one.”

They both looked at old Kropik who was crying now—huge fat tears streamed down his cheeks.

There was no expression on the boy’s face, nothing in his facial cast—no pity, curiosity, not even derision when he said, “He saw the color of my hair. He heard my name. You’d think those alone would tell him.”

Aoyagi remembered something. Once he was in the men’s room next to Kropik as they did their standing business together at the urinals. For some reason Aoyagi had unthinkingly looked down at Kropik’s dick when he was finished and shaking himself off. Kropik had absolutely carrot-colored pubic hair. Aoyagi had never seen such glowing pubic hair on anyone. It was one of the only interesting things he had ever discovered about Kropik but he sure as hell never commented on it.

Now like a hammer blow, the memory of that brilliant color came back when he heard the boy calmly say, “He
still
doesn’t know it’s me. Look at him!”

Old Kropik was talking to the paper. His eyes pleaded, his lips said words with many syllables. He was asking for forgiveness, he was trying to convince. Who knows what he was saying but he was certainly enthusiastic.

Aoyagi didn’t want to say it but did anyway. “You’re him, aren’t you? And now he’s looking at his
own
memories.”

The boy nodded, pleased to be recognized. “Finally someone here gets it.”

“But Jules had no
choice,
Mother!” Old Kropik shouted to a long-dead woman who had never liked him very much, truth be told.

“How could it happen? How could you not know yourself?” Aoyagi said it more to himself than to the boy.

“Because he’s worked here too long. Doing this job, he forgot what it’s like to be human. That’s why they sent me. It’s his last day.”

A good deal of Aoyagi’s carefully dyed hair stood up. “That’s how it
ends
? That’s what’ll happen to me too? They’ll send ME down here to get me?”

The kid shrugged. “Could be. When you were little, didn’t you always want to know what you’d be when you got older? So maybe when you grow up you’re not supposed to forget that little kid. Isn’t that what this job is all about anyway? Remembering what it was like?”

Aoyagi was able to stand long enough to see the boy lead old Kropik out of the room. He had watched so many human wrecks leave here. One day it would be him, led by a younger him he wouldn’t even recognize when he entered the room. This room, this office where people came to reclaim what they thought they had lost, but which had only been waiting for the right moment to get them. Get them good.

H
ARVEY HAD HAD A
good day. He’d been having a lot of good days recently and knew exactly why. But he wasn’t about to tell anyone the reason. Because it would probably jinx things and he didn’t need any more of
that.

You don’t think you know this man but you do. He’s the guy at work whose lottery ticket was only two numbers off from the twenty million-dollar jackpot. Close, but not that close. The fellow with the deeply cleft chin; or the tedious one in the next cubicle who never stops talking about his Microsoft stock. A man whose beautiful wife left him, surprising no one. What did raise eyebrows was why she had ever married him in the first place. Because Doug Harvey was a cheap suit bought off the rack, a plain omelet, a house for sale in need of major repairs. ‘Danger’ wasn’t his middle name. The only luck he’d ever had was either a mistake or taken away almost as soon as he had it.

But that was then. Now for the first time in who knows how long, Harvey had discovered something that changed his life. The last time that had happened was when his girlfriend shocked the hell out him by saying yes to his marriage proposal. But the girlfriend became the wife and the wife took off and Harvey was left with a stone in his heart.

One night a month after she left, when the loneliness got too much for him, he decided to go to the movies. It just so happened he chose one in which a rotten scheming woman tricked a nice guy into loving her and then used him in wicked ways to do her bidding. Harvey was outraged. Although it was Hollywood so the parallels between his own pathetic mess and what he saw on screen were in no way comparable, he could feel the seethe growing in him. When it got to boil he did something he had never done before—he spoke to the movie screen. In an angry voice he said, “Fuck her!”

He said it loud enough so that all of the people sitting nearby looked over to make sure he was just nuts and not dangerous before turning their attention back to the movie. But those two words on his lips and born in his soul felt so good that Harvey said them again quietly—specifically to Laura this time, wherever she was in the world. Fuck her with her airs and agenda. Fuck her with her many weaknesses and charming strengths. When she had first left (via email! That’s right—she’d sent a muddled, 211 word long email to his work address and then disappeared), he’d gone around for days with clenched fists and acid burning through his brain.

That he had won the woman in the first place was one of the few surprises and victories of his life. He knew he didn’t deserve her. He’d always wondered what she’d seen in him. God knows he’d tried hard enough to keep her happy. He spent more money than he had on his wife. She said the same things often but he always listened carefully and tried to look interested. She once actually said she was a pensive person. Hah! The truth was Laura probably didn’t even know how to spell the word. The only thing she really had going for her was a face a few inches to the left of beautiful. And like many good looking people, she thought that made her interesting but it only made her fun to look at.

Harvey felt so good about his soul slamming the door on his ex-wife that he walked out of the theater an almost-happy man. He wanted to revel in this new feeling. So he decided to walk the thirty blocks home to his apartment. On the way he bought a hot dog heaped with all the trimmings and a soft drink so orange in the bottle that it looked like a new kind of biohazard.

Harvey loved junk food. Sweet, sour, thin/thick, soft as mush or hard as rock candy. He would happily have spent the rest of his life gobbling meals that took two minutes to fry, steam or simply serve cold on a roll. As a result, he was not fat but close. After a shower when he looked at himself in the mirror, he made a point of never looking south towards his equator. He knew what was there. He knew too much was there and that as he grew older it would get worse if he didn’t do something about it. But lifting weights in a smelly gym or working himself into a tongue-hanging frenzy on a stairclimber, treadmill or stationary bike was as appealing as riding a unicycle up Mount Everest. The answer was no, despite the fact he looked with envy and no small hatred at buffed guys wearing ridiculously tight T-shirts to show the world what they had under
their
cotton.

Just as he was putting the last delicious chunk of warm hot dog into his mouth, Harvey saw one of these showoffs walking toward him. And naturally Musclehead chose that second to make eye contact. Was that disgust flickering across the other man’s face? Huh, was it? Or was it another look, something deeper, like the guy knew exactly what Harvey was thinking. Whatever, it was enough to make him swallow quickly and avert his eyes.

See—that’s how it was with his life. Just when he was back up again, feeling pretty good about himself and the world, he had to be reminded of his many flaws.

“Check it out!” Muscle guy said, handing him a paper flyer and moving quickly on. Greg looked and saw it was psychedelic orange with black writing on it. It announced the opening of a new “training facility” called ‘Beat Street.’ The gym was two blocks away. On the spur of the moment, the hot dog sliding luxuriously down his throat, Harvey thought why the hell not—go take a look.

“Hi!” A pretty woman chirped when he stepped through the door. But more than her great face, what Harvey really liked was that she was chubby. This was the kind of place for him! So often these gyms were run and populated by health Nazis who looked like they did nothing but exercise twenty hours a day. They drank kelp and ate raw tofu. They had perfect teeth and haircuts. They bench-pressed three hundred pounds. Male or female, they set the worst sort of example because no one could look like them; you might work toward it but forever fail.

“Welcome to Beat Street. I’m Greta. Would you like to have a little tour?”

They shook hands. She grasped his firmly while looking straight in his eye. She had a good honest grip that surprised and made him happy.

That was his first impression of Beat Street. It appeared to be a friendly honest place with no pretensions or frills. All types came to work out and get in shape. While Greta showed him around he noticed a few body-beautiful types, but most of the people were ordinary-looking Joe’s in ratty gym clothes with dark sweat stains under their arms. Good rock music played in the background but not loud enough to drown out the conversations of people riding side by side on stationary bicycles or rowing machines.

Within fifteen minutes Greg had bought a six-month membership and a yellow T-shirt advertising the place. Even that was a nice piece. It was not your typical macho gym shirt with no sleeves and an image of a guy making a muscle or pumping iron. This shirt had a funny picture of a dog with its tail in an electric socket and a zapped look on its face. Below it were the words “Beat Street” and nothing else.

Steeling himself, Greg took a deep breath and after a pause told Greta the truth. “I’m in terrible shape. How do you think I should get started? You know, so I don’t mess myself up completely the first day?”

She nodded sympathetically, understanding everything. “If I were you, I’d begin with Chris’s stress relief class. It’s mostly stretching and elementary Yoga positions. It’s a good way to wake up your body if it’s been hibernating. Get it ready for the more difficult stuff. Maybe do that for a couple of sessions and then start in with some light weights.” She handed him a schedule. The class was held at eight o’clock three times a week.

Most of the next day he was nervous. He couldn’t decide what to wear; not that he owned much gym gear. His exhausted seven-year-old sneakers were the color of a buried dog bone. Should he wear a T- or a sweatshirt? Shorts, or the green sweatpants with the name of his second-rate college running down the leg? He did not want to look a fool in front of the others in the class, especially not on his first day. He worried that maybe this stretching class was different from the rest of the ‘Beat Street’ he’d seen last night—maybe this was the only class where the hard guys and wet-dream girls hung out. Where they toned their exquisite bodies before going off to make television commercials for energy drinks or sex for four hours straight.

By the middle of the afternoon he was so wrought up that he took a ten-minute power-nap with his head down on his desk. On waking, he said firmly, “I’ll just
do
it. That’s all.” And almost made it home on that thought. Passing a sports equipment store on the way, he looked in the window and was stopped by the coolest pair of silver and black ‘New Balance’ sneakers. A ‘new balance’ in his life was what he was looking for, right? Even better, they were ‘cross trainers’ which meant he wouldn’t be cheating if he wore them to workout class. One hundred and forty-two dollars. He swallowed hard, walked into the store and asked to see a pair in his size. A big black guy with a gleaming shaved head and hands the size of chocolate cakes brought them out. Handing them over, he said approvingly, “I got a pair of these last week. They’re the
bomb
.”

That did it. Greg wanted to be wearing the bomb the first time he walked into Beat Street. He bought the shoes without a second’s hesitation.

“Nice bricks!”

“Excuse me?” He looked warily at the cute brunette in a puce leotard that looked like it had been poured onto her tall lithe body.

She pointed at his feet. “Your shoes. Those bricks. They’re very nice.”

Never once in his thirty-five years had he heard any kind of footwear referred to as ‘bricks.’ But he also knew he was the last person on earth to learn the new cool lingo for anything. In the gym only fourteen minutes but already he was on the spot. He had walked out of the men’s locker room with clenched fists and a smile on that looked pained. All Harvey needed was to get across the hall to the room where Chris’s stretching class was held. But this cutie blocked the way and froze him with her brick compliment. He didn’t know what to say. Then he did, and that was the amazing part.

“Thanks a lot. My problem with new sneaks is I’m always afraid of getting them dirty. But then again, people wearing too-clean sneakers are always a little suspicious looking, you know what I mean?” He said it perfectly, with just the right mixture of irony and ain’t-life-funny smile. As he spoke he was thinking where am I getting this line?

But she liked it. Giggling and nodding, she even put the back of her hand to her mouth as if holding more laugh back. Then she touched his arm a moment and said, “That’s so exactly right! I never thought of it before.”

Her name was Bess. They talked a little before she said she had to go teach a Feldenkreis class. He was afraid to ask what Feldenkreis was so he didn’t. But the best part of their short encounter was Greg felt relaxed with her. While they made small talk, his mind didn’t race around like a panicky hamster in a labyrinth, trying to find the right things to say. They chatted and he was easy with it, easy with her, which was very unlike Greg Harvey. He had always tried too hard with women or else could never untie his tongue in their presence. Because women were so great. They knew the answers to things. They were calm. They were not afraid to open their hearts and let you look inside.

Chris the instructor was a handsome man who had a thick English accent and the perfectly toned body of a ballet dancer. He wore a blue bandana on his head and a faded “Krispy Kreme donuts” T-shirt. Just seeing that old shirt on his teacher made Greg feel better.