INANIMATE
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CHAPTER 4
FRIEND OF TOM
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Maybe Emma Jay was right about that couch.
Here, standing in my little enclosed glass box, behind the cash register and in front of the 99 cent cigars, I wished, as I often did at this job, that I was somewhere else, but this time, my fantasy brought me not to some island in a vast sea, a lonely little space station, or even the ceiling of the Regional Hospital – no, this time I really just wished I were on that dirty, cracked old leather couch.
James and I found it on Craigslist – we couldn’t believe someone was giving it away. Well, I could. It absolutely reeked of cigarettes, and in its cracks resided entire ecosystems of crumbs, strange new worlds made of bits and pieces, scraps of forgotten history. A relic, marked by a legacy that we would scrub away, spray with bleach, and never know. James smoked, and he was always a bit more… rough-and-tumble than I was. He wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty – he loved it, thrived with it. Where I saw a disgusting couch that somebody couldn’t wait to get out of their hair, he saw the future centerpiece of our new living room, the first big step in turning our new house into some facsimile of a real home. There was an energy about him – an optimism of sorts, but not a whimsical one; a stoic, self-assurance of the //fact//, not a belief, that everything would work out, it always would, it was always meant to.
I remember the guy we got it from, kind of. Frat-guy kind of look to him, a gray crewneck and backwards hat – seriously, who wears a backwards hat? – and living in a student housing complex, the new one they had just built, parallel straight lanes lined with the same house, over and over again, just wearing slightly different clothes, like evergreen trees in a line. Emma Jay would’ve been //gone// with the way the symmetry was so fierce. Even back then, even before I had //this//, I felt the place’s eerie atmosphere. How inorganic it was, how surreal. I couldn’t pick the guy’s face out of a crowd; I don’t think I could have done it even five minutes after it happened. James was too busy gushing to this stranger about how excited he was about the couch for the dude to say much of anything at all other than a couple of shrugged “yeah, yeah, no problem”s.
James was so outgoing – he used to be able to strike up a conversation with anybody and turn that conversation into a genuine friendship, the kind where they’d stay in touch years down the line. He’d learned to control that ability by the time he’d met me – sometimes, when his first impression of somebody wasn’t up to snuff, he’d cheekily give me that look, that look that says “not this one,” and his charisma would switch off like a lightbulb. It wasn’t just the strength of it – it was all about the control. He was a master at his craft, and had he been less of a kind soul, he’d surely have made quite a few enemies.
We had just bought that house then. Our house. It wasn’t a dream house, and to be honest, it was barely a house. Of course, James being Mr. Fix-It, we put in (on a particularly frenetic evening) a lowball offer on a recently abandoned property and thought we could fix it up to be – not perfect – but good. Great, even. A house we could call our own, something we never thought would be possible. After two months, a new water heater, some retooled sewer pipe, and about $9,000 burned, we were able to finally move in, and it was time to start furnishing. But each day that passed we discovered something else to fix, and our budget had quickly ballooned to the point that a Craigslist couch being given away by a college kid was not just a necessity, but the highlight of our week, a temporary break from the chaos, a moment’s solace away from the building that had been trapping us in its creaky, dusty grip.
I had always wanted a house of my own. That’s what I told myself at that time, and I do think that, in a way, that’s partially true. I’m sure everybody would love a little space in the world, somewhere they can call their own, as strange of a proposition as that may seem from the outside looking in. To “own” a piece of space… it didn’t really make sense to me then, and it especially doesn’t now, now that I’m, well, one of //Tom’s friends//, as they say. One of the unlucky few. One of those spacey mental cases who goes to groups at Brighton on Tuesday nights.
But the truth is, I don’t need a whole house. A room is nice, a studio apartment, but even then, I don’t really need it. As much as I do like to be alone, being around other people never bothered me. When I //object//, I’m rarely alone. The ambience, the invisible hum that the presence of other people going about their business inevitably makes, it somehow heightens the sense of leaving my body yet further.
It’s one thing to wash away into the ceiling in a silent, empty room – it’s another entirely to do it while a hundred strangers, people with lives and histories and legacies and goals and dreams that I’ll never know, hustle and bustle indiscriminately around me like blades of grass underneath a harvester. A cloud of infinite mystery. An army of ghosts I’ll never see again. And in that intoxicating aura, in that airless space between spaces, I feel so unabashedly free, so simple, so plain, so austere. A locomotion without any movement. A ubiquitous, universal and constantly //shifting// aura that surrounds us all, a powerful wind through an imaginary cornfield. Glissandos. Gliss–
“Lights, in the soft pack. Two.”
I blinked, and blinked again. What was I— At work. Behind the register. Customer. Customer right in front of me. Saying something. Words.
I watched my eyes narrow, and when my mouth opened, I felt words fall out – like raindrops, automatic. “Sorry, what was that?”
The customer scoffed, and repeated louder. “Soft pack lights,” he said, “two packs.”
Right. Cigarettes. Soft packs. Okay. I can do this. Of course I can //do this//, what am I, losing it?
No. I wasn’t losing it. I just… Shit. I was about to start object-ing. Off of what, a fucking memory? A daydream of the hospital? I don’t even have to //be// there anymore?
I thought I was doing well. I really did. Or at least I was able to tell myself I was.
How easily we delude ourselves, I thought. How natural it feels to lie.
“$15.56,” I said, a number I had long since memorized. The price of a pack hasn’t changed since I got this job, and not much else has, either. It’s the Fresh Stop on Debonaire, one of those gas stations where the cashier lives in a seperate little glass room – my box, I call it. It’s supposed to make us harder to rob, I guess, but I can’t see why anybody would ever rob this place. We’re a small little outfit, and there’s a bigger gas station with a kitchen one block over, and an even //bigger// one with an even //bigger// kitchen a quarter mile down on Alton, so suffice it to say, it’s pretty quiet here – we’re not exactly rolling in dough. And you know what? Neither one of the big stations gets a little glass room. The cashiers get to live out in the open with all the customers. All the sweaty, rude, aggressive customers.
Actually, now that I think about it, I like the box.
As much as I enjoy the wash of a crowd, there’s something to be said for having a wall between myself and everybody else. Not a metaphorical wall – don’t get me wrong, I’m well aware I can’t open up to people, and I’m working on it, I think. But I mean, like, a physical wall. Something that gives me that little bit of extra breathing room, some space. To be surrounded by people, and to be totally assured that none of them will look at or talk to me. God, isn’t that the dream?
The hospital’s perfect for that. No one has ever started a conversation with a stranger in a hospital cafeteria. It’s a fact of life.
“Nodding out on the job,” the customer said, in a way that seemed wholly uninterested in me giving a response – more of a distant observation. Like he was talking to a sunset.
I guessed I should at least try. “I wasn’t ‘nodding out’,” I said without blinking.
“Junkie,” he said, walking out too fast to see my lip furrow.
The wall between us dulled the words to a blunt sort of jab, a verbal poke with a stick. I didn’t care. And really, I wasn’t just saying so to protect myself. It genuinely had no impact. Like a distant horn in traffic. Who honked? Why did they honk? Who were they honking at? No one knows. It means nothing. It’s empty.
There was nobody else in the store now – back to the usual – and I felt myself sweating a bit. I can’t believe I almost object-ed at work. It’s been months since I’ve done that. What happened to all the progress I was making? I had better find something to occupy my mind that didn’t involve that fucking hospital ceiling. God, is there anything to do around here? Anything to stock, or… any cigarettes to refill? Any coffee to brew? No. Not really. There never really is.
I’m gonna lose it. I’m really gonna start to freak out. Patrick’s not here, there’s no customers… it’s literally just me here, so fuck it. I’ll keep one eye on the security monitors, and one eye on my phone. I have a couple of YouTube notifications. I’ll just watch something.
Oh, good timing! Vanessa Lyons just uploaded. She’s the only person I’ve ever found who talks about object-ing online. But even with clickbait titles like “A Mental Illness So Rare It Doesn’t Have A Name” and “I Wish I Didn’t Exist (As A Living Person)”, the lady’s pulling like 25 views per video, and they’re long, and I mean //long//. 45 minutes plus, she talks about the intricacies of object-ing, how she feels, how she copes. Of course, she’s not from Nevada, and she’s never met Tom, so he doesn’t call it object-ing – she calls it “fading into” something. I’ve always kind of liked that – it reminds me of that Mazzy Star song. I must be the only person to have her alerts on; she probably has less than a hundred subscribers. I don’t really remember how I found her; it must have been from when this stuff first started for me, and I was frantically searching every corner of the internet I could find for answers. Either way, I’ve kept up with her since then. This time – huh. It’s a short one.
“Hello?”
Oh, shit, a customer. I looked up and was shocked to see a petite, mousy woman with huge eyes and a messy blonde bun – and a very familiar face.
“Sylvia?” I asked in genuine surprise.
“Hi, Gray,” she said slowly, her eyes carefully scanning the corners of the store. “I… didn’t know you worked here.”
“Yeah,” I said, a bit dazed. It’s always so odd seeing someone from the group in the ‘real world’, and on top of that, I have no idea how to make conversation with people I barely know, so I just sort of looked past her into the distance and waited for her to say something else. I don’t know.
“Well, so, while I’m here,” she began, fidgeting with her pockets a bit, “I wanted to talk to you some more about Emma Jay, if I could.”
“Emma Jay?” I guess she’s still concerned about her, I thought, as I watched Sylvia fumble with her keys. Though she gave off a surprisingly confident energy, her fiddling somehow made //me// feel nervous, even though I doubt //she// did.
I glanced over to the parking lot. Her white sedan was parked neatly at Pump 4. “Um, did you… did you need gas or anything?”
“Gas?” she looked positively caught off-guard. “No. I just came in for a drink.”
“You know, there’s a bigger store like a block that way,” I said, trying to avoid eye contact. “The Top Mart. They have way more stuff than we do.”
“No, that’s okay. I don’t like the crowds, so I come here instead.”
I’ve literally never seen her here before. “Oh. Okay.”
She wandered off toward the cooler wall, and as she did, two more customers walked in. Well, I guessed talking about Emma Jay was going to have to wait.
Sylvia finally came up to the counter with a bottle of water. The cheap kind, the 99 cent kind. She came in here just for that?
“Okay, it’s, uh, a dollar,” I said, and she handed me a fifty. I guess I can break it. I’m supposed to check these with the pen, the thing that sees if they’re fake, but I thought it’d be rude to do it to Sylvia, of all people. I decided to let it slide. The other customers were still browsing, and Sylvia was watching me with a sort of expectant look in her eyes. I guessed I should say something.
“So,” I started, “you’re worried about Emma Jay?”
“Like I told you over text message,” she said quietly, “she left while I was sleeping, without a word.”
“Has she said anything since?”
“No. And I’ve been trying to call her all day.”
I sensed the muddled desperation in her voice. I don’t know what happened last night, but I guessed Emma Jay must have said something that rattled her.
“Are you saying,” I wondered aloud, mirroring her softness, “you want me to try calling her?”
“I don’t want to push you if you’re uncomfortable doing such a thing for me. …Can I be honest with you, Gray?”
Even knowing her polite demeanor, I was taken aback a bit. She had always struck me as the kind of person who’d never ask for anything, had to handle everything herself. If she was lying there bleeding out, I doubt she’d ask for a bandage.
“Sure. Of course,” I responded.
“I am very concerned about her. She’s…” Sylvia paused for a moment and seemed to consider very carefully what she would say next. “‘It’s… ‘TDIOS’, it’s called.”
“What?”
“So you haven’t heard of it?”
I hadn’t. I shook my head.
She thought a moment. “It’s… Temporary Delusions of Inanimation, Occupational Study.”
“I don’t… what?” I was lost.
Sylvia started to reach into her comically large beige tote bag. “Here, I have a–”
Suddenly, a noise. Loud. A thump. Followed by a voice. Louder. Sylvia’s eyes widened just as mine did the same, and the both of us turned toward the two customers that had come in after her.
An older man in a jersey and sweatpants was collapsed in a heap on the floor of the potato chip aisle, and a woman standing nearby was covering her mouth with her hands. A few snacks lay around him on the floor, and the man’s arms and legs looked totally limp, as if his body had simply, without warning, given up. A chill, sudden and pointed, enveloped the four of us, and without thinking, Sylvia leapt to action, rushing away from the counter and up to the collapsed man. I don’t know what came over her. I just froze.
She held him as the standing woman muttered. “He, he, he just,” she whimpered, “he’s not responding!”
She was right. The man’s head slacked down toward the tile floor, and his eyes lacked any acute sign of awareness. His mouth hung, slacked and open. His body seemed heavy, as if pulled to the ground by an impossibly large magnet. Sylvia was clearly struggling to hold him up. Finally, staring at the scene in front of me, I snapped to attention, and I ran out of my glass box toward Sylvia and the man.
The whimpering woman stared deeply into my eyes and I ran, and when I arrived, I turned my gaze back down at the collapsed man, lingered a moment, and looked up at her again as my heart beat relentlessly.
Before I could blink, Sylvia had lowered the man and laid him down flat on the floor.
Finally, I spoke. “I don’t… what, what do I do?”
Sylvia’s eyes locked in on me like a hawk’s.
“Gray, call 911 right now.”
Something in her had clicked and her polite, formal demeanor had changed to the focus and determination of a mother lion.
I took longer than I’d wanted to to respond. “Right. Yes. Okay.”
Sylvia focused intently on the clock hanging behind the register as she placed her fingers on his neck. I was too focused on the task to notice much of anything else she was doing. The rest is a blur. I dialed.
“Does he have any medical conditions? Is he diabetic?” Sylvia spurted out at the woman.
“He has problems with his hips… he’s never done this before!” She yelled, her body even stiffer than mine was.
“His pulse and breathing are normal. I’m going to–”
A voice on the other end of the phone. Asking me something. What my emergency is. Focus, Gray!
“There’s, there’s,” I steadied myself. “I’m at the Fresh Stop on Debonaire Street. There’s a man here who’s collapsed.”
“Is he breathing?” the voice on the line asked me, and I repeated it louder for Sylvia, who was moving with the focused intention of someone who knew exactly what she was doing.
“He’s breathing. His pulse is regular and strong. His eyes aren’t responding to light.”
“Okay, he’s breathing and his –”
The man’s eyes widened as he coughed and snapped to attention. Sylvia was on him immediately.
“He’s awake!” I blurted into the phone. “He’s awake.”
The dispatcher replied. “A unit is on the way. Make sure he stays awake until they arrive.”
“Right. Yes.” My blood was pumping so fast I barely understood a word.
Sylvia spoke loudly and clearly to the man. “What year is it?”
He spoke in a ragged voice. “2011.”
“Oh, thank God!” the woman cried.
“What’s your name?”
“My name is John Mathis. I’m okay. I’m fine.” He rolled his shoulders back a bit and winced. “I didn’t have a stroke.”
Sylvia helped the man sit up and gave him her bottle of water. “What happened?” she asked.
“I was…” the man’s brow furrowed as he thought. “I’m not sure how to explain it. I’ve never felt like that before.”
“Did your fingers and toes go numb? Did you feel a pain in your chest or head?”
“No, no, I just…” he began, and he grabbed a small bag of chips from off the floor next to him.
“Good idea,” the now-less-stiff woman sighed, “you should eat something.”
“This bag of chips,” he said, staring, focused, intently.
“What’s wrong?” Sylvia asked.
A noticeable stillness in the air. A silence. All eyes turned to the man, and in some ethereal way, the air felt sucked from the room.
“It’s so perfect, so… I don’t know. Something about… it’s so symmetrical, so, I’m not sure. Peaceful.”
Sylvia reeled back slightly.
John thought a moment before continuing. “For a moment, it’s like…” He breathed in and out. “It’s like I //was// this bag of chips.”
I turned to Sylvia. Sylvia turned to me. No words were said. None needed to be.
“John,” Sylvia said firmly, “are you friends with Tom?”
“What?” He replied.
“Tom. Do you know Tom?”
“Who’s Tom?”
“Shit.”
Footsteps and a bell ringing. A customer? Now? Sylvia spoke before I could.
“There’s been an emergency! Leave the store //now//!”
“Oh, I, uh, sorry!” the customer blurted out before leaving.
Sylvia looked like a wild animal, her eyes piercing and dark. I stood there, helplessly, still clutching my phone. I have no idea how much time passed.
Finally, colorful lights reflected against the glass windows on the front of the store. “They’re here,” I declared, and the ambulance pulled up to the doors.
“I’ll handle this,” Sylvia told me with an undeniable fervor. “Go and call the store manager right now.”
I hadn’t even thought about it. “Oh. Yes. The manager. I’ll call him.”
“Step out of the way to do it.”
“Right.”
I retreated back behind the register and made my call. As the phone rang, I watched Sylvia and the woman talk to the paramedics as they lifted the man out to the parking lot. From behind glass, it all played out as if a scene from a movie, or more accurately, a daytime TV show. Slowly, I felt my breaths deepen.
“What’s up, Gray?” Patrick asked as he picked up.
“Hey, there was a guy who, I don’t really…” I wasn’t sure what to say exactly. “I think he had a stroke, or something.”
“What?! Like in the store? Call 911, don’t call //me//!”
“No, I did already. They’re picking him up now. The ambulance, I mean.”
“Dude, //what are you doing?!// You need to stay with them and answer their questions!”
“My, uh, my friend is here. She’s doing that. She told me she’s got it under control.”
“Are you… you brought your friend again? Jesus, Gray.”
“Not Emma Jay. I don’t do that anymore. It’s somebody else.”
“//Right.// Of course. Because you have so many friends. You know I can just check the cameras. Listen, did you help the guy? Did you give him CPR or something?”
“Maybe my friend did. I’m not really sure.”
“Right. Your mystery friend.” Patrick sighed a deep, heavy sigh before continuing. “Fucking shit, man. I guess I’m coming back over there.”
“What? Why?”
“If he slipped or something, I could get fucking sued, man. And it’d be //your fault//.”
“Don’t joke about stuff like that.”
“I’m dead serious. People are wild out here. … All right, I’ll be down there in a few. Keep your //friend// around.”
“Yeah,” I said, and for some reason I felt defeated, like Patrick had ‘won’ the conversation – even though in reality, //he// was the one being an idiot.
I hung up and looked out to notice that the man and (who I assume was) his wife were gone, and Sylvia was standing in the aisle absentmindedly, lost in thought.
“Hey,” I called out to her.
“Yeah?” she didn’t move. I felt like I should go and check on her, but I just stood still behind the register. Something in me wanted to stay right there behind that wall.
“You, uh, you really handled that well,” I said, loud enough to pass through the little slot in the bottom of the glass. “Are you a nurse?”
“I’m a nurse practitioner,” she said, still focused on the now-empty spot where the man had been.
“Really? That’s cool,” I said, still projecting my voice and now leaning forward over the register. “I didn’t know that. That’s like a doctor, right?”
“It’s an entirely different pathway, but yes, it is similar.” As she calmed down, her usual demeanor began to seep back in, like water into a sponge.
“You’re really good in a crisis,” I said.
“I used to be a paramedic myself,” she said, finally breaking her gaze and walking up to the register.
“That makes sense.”
A brief moment of silence.
“So…” She hesitated. She didn’t want to bring it up.
I scratched my neck. “Yeah...” I didn’t either.
We both stood there a moment, savoring it. Savoring the time before we’d have to talk about it. Once something’s said, it can’t be unsaid.
I steeled myself. Someone had to do it. I made the decision. I’d be the one to say it.
“He object-ed,” I said quietly, looking away from her.
“Yes.”
“And he doesn’t know Tom.”
“Yes.”
“And he’s never done it before today.”
“Yes.”
“You… started object-ing around two years ago, right?”
“Just like you,” Sylvia offered.
“Just like everyone else in the group,” I said flatly, as though I was reading off a teleprompter.
Maybe Sylvia had suddenly become pale, or maybe I just suddenly noticed how pale she already was. Either way, her lips pursed, and her face looked as though she’d had the blood drained out of her.
“More of us…” she said softly and off into the distance, to no one in particular. She held those words in the air in front of her for a moment, then shook her head and returned her focus.
I decided to change the subject. “I called my manager, by the way. He’s on his way. He, uh, wants you to stick around.”
“Why?”
“He thinks… It’s kind of a long story. I think he thinks that Emma Jay was here.”
“What?” She perked up immediately. “//Was she?//”
“No, no,” I said, shaking my right hand. “I used to let her hang out behind the counter with me when she had nothing else to do, and I got in trouble for it. I told Patrick–”
“Who?”
“Sorry. The manager. I told him my friend was handling the paramedics and I think he assumed I was talking about Emma Jay. …I know that sounds weird.”
“No, Gray, that makes sense. She had mentioned that actually, that she would spend time talking with you while you were working. I had assumed she meant ‘on the phone’.”
“No, yeah, she would just chill back here the whole shift sometimes.”
“Maybe she should apply for a job //here//,” Sylvia offered. “You know she’s been looking.”
“Believe me. I tried to get her to. She wouldn’t listen.”
“She’s stubborn,” Sylvia declared, smiling slightly.
Wait a second. Something was bothering me. I felt I had to say something before I lost the chance.
“Hey. Honestly. You came here just to talk to me about Emma Jay, right? Why did you pretend you just came in for a drink?”
“I //did// come in for a drink, Gray,” she said, and she really seemed to believe it.
“You gave your drink to that guy when he fainted.”
“He needed the fluids,” she replied.
“You said you didn’t know I worked here,” I said.
“I didn’t,” she replied again, staying stoic.
“You just said Emma Jay told you she hung out here with me.”
She didn’t even blink. “I didn’t know it was //here//.”
I had nothing else to say. She was obviously and blatantly lying, and I couldn’t understand why.
Reminds me of a certain someone earlier today. I guess Sylvia really //has// been hanging out with Emma Jay.
The door to the store swung open forcefully, and, clad in white sunglasses and sandals, in stepped – who else – Patrick. But the man I saw before me was not the same man I had talked to on the phone a few minutes ago. He was different somehow. Changed. He stood in the entrance, turned toward us, and took off his sunglasses. I saw an palpable emotion in his eyes. What was it? Fear?
“Are you okay?” I asked him, not out of obligation but out of concern.
“Yeah, I’m fine, there was just… this weird guy in the parking lot.”
I felt my temperature rise. “Weird how?”
“Just staring at the streetlight out there. Said something about how he //is// the streetlight,” Patrick answered, and Sylvia’s head wrenched toward me expectantly as I stood in stunned silence.
“More of us,” she repeated again.
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The little moments of all of our little lives, intertwining, forming perfect patterns, like thread through needles, like wool on a loom. The intricate loops of history, circling and bending, a billion strings, a billion knots.
Glissandos. Glissandos, all.
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