Drained

Deep South v.3 n.1 Autumn 1997

His soft feathery caresses reached her through half-sleep and asked a question. She tried to think. She could, but she didn't have the spirit in her: no real juice. She had been counting in her dream. And late for a deadline. Then running through the office until she began to float. Fingers tickled her stomach. His eyes would be open, watching her reaction. The warm cotton sheets tickled her nose. The alarm would go off in two hours, she noted as she half-opened her eyes to test her consciousness and to ok in the red numbers of the clock. The day stretched ahead like an inter-state highway, a wide and demanding journey. Pulling away from the questioning fingers, she rolled over and chose sleep.

In the morning there were the usual problems: she was hungry, there was no coffee immediately ready, she had to pee and the cat kept licking her face. The phone rang, and she rubbed her eyes and tentatively put her feet on the cool, wooden floor while he answered it. They met in the kitchen. Dirty blue dishes were piling up in the sink and on the sticky, tiled counter. Dennis handed her a stem of grapes and she took them, half-grateful, then turned to grind the coffee beans. Some powdery grounds spilled out of the mill and behind the microwave. She cursed. He was in a fresh red and white striped shirt and his blonde hair was still wet.

"Good morning, Vicki," he said.

"Yeah." She rubbed her eyes. His red silk bathrobe (which only she wore) engulfed her small body.

"Still asleep, I see." He stretched. His shirt rustled. "I had the strangest dream. This calculator turned into a worm, but it looked like a cat. Our cat, as a matter of fact. Weird, huh?"

"Huh."stopped. The coffee dripped painfully slowly. She would be late for work. She wasn't well-rested and she should have been. "Why wouldn't you let me sleep?" she demanded.

His face crumpled. His dream: she should have said more. She should have been more gentle; at the same time the stolen sleep felt like a hole in the front of her head. "I didn't mean to bother you, for Chrissakes." His voice was defiant and sad at the same time. He pulled the coffee pot from its place on the burner, even though hot coffee was still streaming from the top, and poured two cups. She reached out toward the stream, which loudly fizzled on the burner. It burned her fingers. "You know I hate being woken up!" she wailed. She suddenly felt tears creep into her eyes but couldn't define the nature of the tragedy. "Why the hell did you do it?"

"You went to bed at midnight, for Chrissakes! You slept for eight hours!" He stepped back, then poured sugar in his cup. He had to have at least four teaspoons in everything. "It's early, Vicki. You're crabby." He grabbed a piece of toast from the toaster oven and exited from the room. For a tall man he didn't eat much. She threw the other piece on a plate and left it there.

She drank the watery coffee in her black ceramic mug. Coffee had been his specialty when they first met. He used to greet her with a steaming mug when she stepped out of the shower. "When will you be home?" he asked a few minutes later. His coat was under one arm. He kissed the corner of her mouth, a sign that she was forgiven. "I don't know. Eight, I think. The magazine's coming out soon." He made a face. Disappointment.

The tears almost came back. "And you?" "Six-thirty. Maybe I'll have dinner with Paul, then." She nodded and grabbed her papers. "Bye. Have a good day."

Vicki's red cotton dress was wilting by the time she arrived at the basement of the blue Victorian that housed the magazine office. Summer had snuck up on her. Tony, the editor, and Ted, the art director, were already at work. Between them they shaped the computer magazine out of clay and began to breathe life into it; the other employees only put in a few hours a week or faxed in their columns. The magazine concerned its elf with educational software and guiding computer-illiterate teachers who taught students the importance of using computers.

Vicki empathised with these teachers. Anything too new intimidated her. Sometimes she wished someone would write step-by-step instructions for her life: 1) Get new job in office that's not underground; 2) Give up dreams of being Jackie O.; 3) Learn to do own taxes; 4) Get married before she turned thirty-five next year.

It had been a year of death and drifting for her. Her mother had passed away after a ten year bout with cancer, and her father had been on the road ever since he had bought an RV with his retirement savings. Her aunt and uncle used to call her periodically, but didn't any more.

Vicki's desk was a safe island. Her chair was padded with a cushion her mother had made, and all of her papers were neat as a pin. Instant coffee and mugs were tucked away in the right-hand drawer, and a Guatemalan scarf and pictures in silver frames fin ished off her "decor", as Tony called it. Vicki often imagined that no one could bother her as long as she was in the chair, safely attached to the desk's oaken mass.

The afternoon was full of tribulations: Tony wanted Vicki to take him to Mervyn's. One of the computer printers stopped working, then mysteriously started again. One of the book reviewers still hadn't sent in his column though the deadline had been two days earlier. As the assistant editor, all of these problems were Vicki's and no one else's. Ted always called Vicki and himself "the handmaidens," but Tony, bald little pasha that he was, usually only became demanding if there was a problem.

At three, the death blow fell. They were all sitting quietly at their wooden desks when a rushing noise began. "Someone left the toilet running," Tony said without looking up. Vicki checked, but he was wrong, the porcelain bowl was still. Twenty minutes later she accidentally knocked Dennisís picture on the floor and into a puddle. The closet that housed office supplies and many back issues had begun flooding for no reason.

"For God's sake, do something!" shouted Tony. With his round head, and eyes made bulging by thick glasses, he looked like a frog that had swallowed a feisty dragonfly.

"What do you want me to do, for Chrissakes!" she shouted back.

"I don't even know what's happening!"

Ted began running back and forth to the dark, open closet, dumping piles of wet paper on the already-warped wooden floor. He resembled a big, brown-haired ostrich as he picked up first one long foot and then another to avoid getting his new sneakers wet. Water began reaching them. Vicki ran around the room and pulled the plugs of all of the electrical appliances and the computers, fax machines, printers, and telephones. The tangled octopus wires fought back, wanting to stay in their sockets. Tony began rolling up the threadbare, faux-Oriental rugs.

"I don't know what the hell's going on either, but we'd better figure it out soon," said Tony. He had to have the last word. He put his hands on his low, pudgy hips. "Right, Vicki?"

" So call Unsolved Mysteries, Tony" she said, pushing her long, brown hair out of the way. "Where's the mop?" She could feel her heels becoming wet, but somehow the sensation didn't bother her. Rather, it seemed expected, a natural state of being. "No, call the Vatican!" Ted chimed in. "Tell them we're seeing the Madonna's face in the eddies."

She came home at seven, her back aching from the mopping and moving she had done well into the evening. The skin on her feet was shrivelled from having stood in four inches of water for so long. The water had started out clean but had become filthy. Tony had never been a big fan of vacuuming, and the dirt he had left in corners and under carpets had made the clear water turn a sick light brown.

Dennis came home at nine. Though she had told him she'd be late, she felt cheated. "I got home early," she said. "I was hoping to spend some time with you, but I couldn't." She threw her mystery novel on the blue carpet beside the sofa, which was none to clean, she noticed.

He bent toward her green velvet easy chair to kiss her. "I wish I'd known." "I wish I'd gotten a hold of you. We could have done something fun together. I need to, after this shitty day."

Her arms clung to his neck. He smelled like potatoes and cologne. His hand reached for her breast and disappeared under her tee shirt. She lay limply in the overstuffed chair, spent and distant. His hands were big but not thick, boughs that grew off a sturdy tree.

"Are you dead or just injured?" he joked. He mimed mouth-to mouth. "Almost both," she said. She told him about the flood. He went to the kitchen and emerged with two glasses of wine. He mentioned that he sold another computer system.

"The thing is," he said, "I knew the customer was a real sonofabitch. He treated the assistant he brought with him like shit, called him stupid right in front of me and everything. Pea brain. He actually called his assistant a pea brain. Can you imagine?" Dennis paused to down half of one of the glasses. "The assistant guy just stood there, didn't even get red in the face or anything. Like he hadn't heard. If I had any guts I would've told the customer to go screw himself. But I figured in the end I didn't really know what was going on there." His face grew red. "I mean, the assistant guy could've had sex with the customer's wife, right? I mean, you just never really know about other people. What their real story is. You know?"

She stood up to claim her glass of wine. She smiled, then reached out and tentatively ruffled his blonde hair. He was taller than she by about six inches and she had to stand on her toes. The moment was short. "Sure," she said. "Absolutely. Like with Tony. I may have to play nursemaid to him sometimes, but he's a pretty decent guy. He needs me. I mean, the job has more plusses than minuses, though you'd never think it to hear me complain sometimes." So why do I complain? she wondered. She took a long, loud sip of wine.

Dennis smiled wanly, then walked into the bedroom and turned on the television. She followed. After an hour of dumbly watching the box, they turned away from each other and fell into individual sleep.

The outside steps that led down to the office were dry enough, Vicki noted. A flicker of hope lit up her face. The flood was over. She could go back to work. Her smile disappeared once she opened the door. Tony was standing almost calf-deep in the water , wiping his thick glasses. He looked like he was about to be swept off to sea. Vicki took off her sandals and pulled up her purple cotton skirt. The cold water, now gray, greedily lapped around Vicki's legs.

"Can you believe it?" Tony asked, hitting his forehead with the heel of his hand like an actor trying to introduce comedy to the scene. He still had his shoes and socks on and hadn't rolled up his pants. Ted sloshed past them in red checkered shorts, singing in falsetto, "Wade in the water! God's a gonna trouble the water!" On his desktop the contents of the drawers were stacked: rulers, pens, manuals, software, origami animals. Vicki looked longingly toward the door and the dry steps that lay beyond it, but Tony said, "Vicki, we've got to do something. Do something!" Vicki felt blank. She couldn't remember not feeling blank, like a slate that had been erased. The water, now comfortably cool, was a welcome feeling after the warm, humid outside air that had caused her to sweat. "We could perform baptisms," she said, slowly.

In the background Ted began clapping. "I feel the spirit!" he sang out in the same pseudo-operatic voice. "Wade in the water..." Instead of replying, Tony turned his back to Ted and asked a little louder, "Vicki, what do we do?"

Vicki imagined drawing a bow and letting an arrow sail straight at Tony's head. "Call the landlord," she said. "From a pay phone. Or get the computers upstairs, for Chrissakes!" Ted asked, "Don't floods normally drain like a foot an hour?" The problem was their neighbor's plumbing, the landlord, a tall, sickly-looking Florida emigrant informed them. It would be fixed by the end of the day, not to worry.

Tony and Vicki moved objects from their office to the law office closet on the first floor. When they had finished, they sat in the smoky yellow donut shop across the street, waiting for the landlord's henchpeople to "do something." Vicki watched Tony smoke his Canadian cigarettes and listened to him catalogue life as he knew it: what would be lost in the flood, what could be saved. How much money would be lost, how much saved. What he ate for dinner (spaghetti, cannelloni, lasagne, all made and frozen on Sunday), and did with his evenings (walk his dog and watch the news). The changes he had made in the magazine since she came to work for him four years ago (more informative, wider circulation), what it had been like before (not as big, with everything done by him). Vicki felt as if she had been taken hostage by a benign, very talkative thief, one who wanted to steal her attention instead of her money. If she wasn't careful there was a very real possibility he might bore her to death.

The older waitress with the tight red curls ignored them after the first hour. She realized they wouldn't spend over ten dollars. "How's that fella?" Tony asked. "Dennis." "Fine," Vicki said. She ripped a donut in half. "Yeah? He's a good-looking guy. You make a nice couple. I'm glad it's working out for you."

Vicki smiled and sipped her coffee. It crossed her mind to pat his pudgy hand, but she didn't. At three the good news came: the water was stopped. The hench-people would arrange for a long, thick hose to be stuck through the window and suck the water out. "Can I go home now?" Vicki asked Tony. He looked surprised. "The flood's draining," he said.

"I know," she replied. "It'll be all drained by tomorrow. We can clean up in the morning."

"But, Vicki," he said," it's going to drain now. We should clean up now so we can work tomorrow." His own ideas, when he had them, were usually inconvenient. Especially for her.

"The damn magazine is supposed to go out in a week and a half, remember." Vicki's brown eyes narrowed. Her yellow Indian cotton top was soaked with perspiration. S he had been picturing a glass of iced tea and a newspaper on her sofa. Those images gave way to Tony, Tony watching her clean the two office rooms while he catalogued the belongings. "I'm calling Ted," she said. "You can't make me do this alone."

Tony smiled as if to say, Whatever you want! "Where should we start?" he asked.

Ted picked up two throw rugs and hurled them out of the window onto the bright sidewalk. He was humming a show tune, da da da, a big song bird that constantly pecked at a thermos full of coffee that lay on the window sill. He was efficient, though, maki ng his way methodically and neatly across the room, picking up sodden papers, mopping up the brown, gritty water.

Vicki waded slowly through what remained of the flood. The hench-people would finish up in an hour or so. She meandered, not doing much for the moment except being there. The water reached just over the bottoms of her feet now. She realized she liked it, that it was different, enticing. She imagined living a secret underwater life at the office: swimming through black water from desk to chair, floating as she typed on the computer.

Now that the water was gone, the mess flattened the room. She felt hit, as if an invisible leg had made contact with her stomach. The destruction was so vast there was no corner she could pick as a starting point.

"I thought it would never stop," she told Dennis. It was nine-thirty and dark outside. She had eaten six donuts that day and nothing else. The coffee and hard work left her legs feeling shaky.

"Jesus," he said flatly."I was worried" He was watching a baseball game on TV. His shirt sleeves were rolled up and there was a ring of blonde stubble around his mouth and chin. His breath smelled like beer. "The game's tied." She sat at his feet.

"You can't imagine. The damn thing had to drain. It took forever." Her hands waved in front of him like bats trying to escape from an attic. "The goddamn magazine has to go out in a week and a half anyway, you know."

In a minute Dennis followed her into the bedroom. She collapsed on the butterfly pattern quilt and closed her eyes, but all she saw were soggy papers and endless grit like aquarium sand. Her back ached. Dennis sat beside her and grasped her hands. "We should vacuum," Vicki said. "I know I should've last week, but I haven't had the time."

"Shhh," he replied. He ran his hands gently over her face, then down her small chest and hips. He then began again at the top of her head, this time raking through handfuls of her long brown hair, petting her. His fat bedside lamp was on. It cast a tired bluish-yellow light on the wall. Feel something, Vicki ordered herself. Her eyes were still closed. What do you feel? The tips of her feet tingled, as if the flood water still lapped around them. "A flood. Who would have guessed the damn office would flood?" Dennis reached lower down on her body and she ceased to feel anything. She sat up.

He stood up. "What's wrong?" he asked. "I'm tired." she said. She was. "You're always tired. When are you not tired?" The top of his face was growing red. In a minute he would leave and seek oblivion in the ball game. "It's..." "What?" "It's so much. It was so much." Tears broke through somewhere in the middle. "Jesus Christ, Vicki," he said. He stood over her helplessly, a giant afraid of acidentally stepping on something precious. "It's over. It's just work. Take it easy."

"I wish I could," she said. She began crying earnestly into her hands like a child. "The mess. It took so long to drain...I ...I didn't think I'd live through it." Dennis sat down again and put an arm around her. "Honey," he said softly. They sat, casting one shadow on the wall, for a long time.