Disconnect

Darren sprawled on the couch in a senseless stupor, vaguely aware of the infomercial cascading from the TV in front of him. His limbs splayed uncomfortably, his chin resting painfully on his chest, he looked like a rag doll, gathering dust in a forgotten corner. I should move, he thought numbly. I should change the channel. I should get up and write, he thought, his cloth limbs mocking him with their limpness. You’re a disgrace, he chided his muscles. Get up, you pansy, he goaded his body, but it was unflappable.
Darren felt like a stranger in his life; or rather as though life had abandoned him, leaving him stranded in a foreign place, stealing his will to move. Life had been a little girl tripping along with her doll, but she had cast it aside, left it powerless, defenseless.
Darren’s every thought of action, of direction, was like trying to flex a muscle he didn’t even have. God, help me, he cried, despising his thoughts even as they left him.
The phone’s ringing fell on him like a blow; he jerked upright, his masochistic thoughts fading away momentarily. He leaped up and crossed the room in a hurry, glad to be moving. Reaching for the portable, his gaze fell on a stack off bills sitting on the table, and he felt a momentary disgust: abandoned by life, he now had only to wait to be captured by these monsters, to be sucked into a lifetime of fifty weeks of misery a year, like his dad, and his grandfather, and his great-grandfather, and likely a hundred generations of broken men before him, trudging across infinite muddy fields.
These thoughts translated into a vague, directionless anger as he answered the phone: “Hello?”
“Darren?”
“Hey, Dad. Where are you?”
“I’m in La Guardia. The airport.” Distant clattering and muted voices, occasionally spiking in anger or exclamation, put Daren in mind of some vast bazaar.
“That’s great…”
“Is your mom there?”
“No, she went to the store.”
“Oh, well, listen: if Tom from work calls, tell him to tell Mr. Rosen to wait on closing that account until Tuesday. I’m just about to board, so I won’t be available for a few hours.”
“Alright.” First a rag doll, Darren had now advanced to an automated messaging service.
Next came the painful tension, the awkward silence that heralded the end of each of their conversations. “Well…good talking to you,” his father mumbled, the effort he made to make his voice sincere painfully obvious.
“Sure, Dad. See you tonight?”
“Sure. Well, bye, then.”
Darren hung up the phone and felt that vague anger harden into a point of searing heat, a needle that dug into his soul. He wanted to take that needle and stab every corporate executive, shred every corporate newsletter, destroy every 757 crammed to the ceiling like a cattle car. He felt his hands clench into fists with the desire to hurt his father, to hurt him so that no more week-long business trips would be possible.
The phone once again shook him from his black humor; he looked down at the table in surprise, hoping suddenly that his dad had forgotten something. He shook his head to clear away the clinging anger, and pressed TALK. “Hello?”
A thin, reedy voice whispered back. “Ummm, hello. This is Ernest Schultz, at the Internal Revenue Service. Is this John Giraldi?”
“No, it’s his son.”
“Well, I’m sure you can help me just as well. In line 16 of Section A16-b24 of your father’s taxes, there is a blank for your home address that was left, well, blank.” He chuckled quietly, as though this was terribly witty. “Could you please confirm your home address for our records?”
The address was poised on Darren’s tongue; he was ready to be done with Mr. Schultz. Yet, at the last second, something within him leaped forward and caught those fateful words. He paused, as that needle of anger turned maliciously against poor Ernest. He wanted to act, to strike a blow, however meaningless, against this ridiculous world that turned men into machines and sent them scurrying to copy the addresses of men they would never meet for reasons that would never quite be disclosed. He wanted to rail and scream, to break things and face down tanks; but he couldn’t muster much on such short notice.
Ernest’s quavery voice brought Darren back to reality. “Are you there?”
Darren let his own voice quail slightly: “I’m sorry, it’s just that…my dad died six months ago.”
Ernest’s reply sounded like a tree being shaken in a hurricane. “W-w-what?”
“He died six months ago. A heart attack.” Darren, an experienced liar, knew how to silence a pushover like Ernest. Be direct, be confident.
“W-well, we s-should have been notified. The h-hospital or funeral home is sup-p-posed to send a certificate of death. Are you sure?”
“Mr. Schultz, this has been a very difficult six months. I’m sure my dad’s address can’t be very important to you if he’s dead, right?
“Well, no, not really. If you’re sure. You’re sure?” he pleaded.
“Quite sure.”
“W-well…I’m sorry to bother you. I’ll work to correct this error as soon as possible.”
As Darren hung up the phone, he felt a bubbling exuberance that was marred by only the slightest twinge of doubt. He felt light, like a boy that has just gotten away with kicking a crabby uncle. Nevertheless, Ernest’s parting words gave him some pause. How exactly did one “correct” this type of “error?”
* * *
A thousand miles away, Ernest slumped in his office chair, his cubicle suddenly seeming to close in on him. This was impossible. His first day in his new position, and disaster struck. He waited five years for a promotion, and found upon rising that the universe had only been planning an elaborate joke. On a sudden impulse, he lunged forward and began scrabbling at his computer like a rat clawing at its cage, pulling up every available piece of information on John Giraldi. The panic welling within him overflowed into beads of sweat as he realized that this alleged dead man had somehow sustained an entire identity for these six months: bank account open, credit cards showing regular use, social security still being drawn from a salary that had been paid regularly every two weeks.
That little bastard, he thought to himself. Either the boy was lying, or this man’s life had somehow been left exposed, and probably violated, by society for all these months. Ernest felt nauseous; he felt like a necrophiliac. How dare he put me in this position? Ernest had a history of panic attacks and asthma; he had once spent an entire night hiding underneath the school bleachers after he tripped and fell down twelve of the hard aluminum seats at the Homecoming Game.
What can I do? There were legends at the IRS of men, usually the janitors of multi-national corporations, who died without making a ripple, leaving their salaries to quietly trickle into bank accounts for years, even decades. However, Ernest had never heard of anything like this. If it were an error on the part of the IRS, it was the most egregious mistake he had ever encountered; it was probably big enough to make the news, maybe even at the national level. And it was Ernest’s fault. Well, not technically, but Ernest felt deeply in his soul that he would be blamed, and he was likely right. Ernest was a born scapegoat, a nervous, twitchy man who invited bullying but hadn’t the spine even to be a tattletale.
So he sat there, an unwilling god, holding the fate of an unknown man in his sweaty palms. If he called his boss for help on his first day, he would seem weak. If he asked his co-workers for advice, he would only invite further abuse. As minutes passed, he felt a dull sort of anger welling within him: anger at the injustice of his life, anger at his own cowardice, anger at his ridiculous career choice, anger at those rickety bleachers and a hundred petty bullies who had slowly murdered his self-esteem. His panic began to harden, becoming a knot within him, a burning fist that gripped his throat and left him breathless. He was trapped, was he? The universe had it out for him? Ernest felt tired of hunching furtively before life, cringing and whining plaintively for a few stale crumbs. He felt the need to act, to do something. He had been given a choice, and he suddenly no longer cared if he chose correctly.
Damn this screwed up system, and damn this hollow life, he thought as he began to type briskly, sending out memos and notices like a crazed archangel upending the Bowls of Tribulation onto an unsuspecting earth, his face lit with a deranged smile.
* * *
John Giraldi stepped into the brisk air of the terminal with the almost mindless determination that is the hallmark of any good executive. He had honed his walk over the years: it was fast enough that friends not adapted to the corporate life had trouble keeping up, but not so fast that it tired him to maintain its pace for long stretches. While as unflagging as a marathon runner’s steady plod, it never seemed to be a physical act: John’s body seemed to be just another machine at his disposal, always ready for use, and forgotten immediately afterward.
He set off from the gate with his economical carry-on suitcase bouncing off his hip, and instinctively took out his cell phone, thoughts of the Rosen account crowding out any budding desires for home. To his consternation, there were no new messages, an unthinkable occurrence in John’s non-stop correspondence. I bet Darren didn’t pass the message on, that lazy kid. He’s going to end up on the street, on welfare, five kids, four mothers…As he mechanically punched in the number of his remote voicemail, John fought against the cycle of worry and resentment that swallowed him like some mythic vortex whenever he thought of his distant son. With great effort, he wrenched his thoughts from that destructive whirl and focused them on the tiny screen before him, where a cute little bubble informed him that the impossible had occurred.
Service to this phone has been terminated.
He shook his head numbly; there was some mistake. As he tried again, and again, he felt frustration welling within him. He squeezed his phone tightly, wishing it were a person so he could hear a tiny voice cry out in pain.
John channeled that violence into his walk, driving his feet into the floor with stinging force, a forty-two year-old’s temper tantrum. His breathing came heavily through the sudden tightness in his chest, his thinking turning in mindless circles like ants on a wheel: a five hour flight with no leg room for his knee, Darren in a homeless shelter, his phone gone, a terrorist attack leaving his neighborhood a smoking crater, and himself tied to a chair with his eyelids taped open so he missed none of it. A distant corner of his brain mused if these bouts of frantic worry he experienced so often were true panic, or just a successful man’s eccentricity.
Rising suddenly from the scuffed linoleum and burnished floor-to-ceiling brass wall plates, the Rocky Mountain Sports Bar and Grill beckoned to him like an oasis. He paused guiltily, fearful of trouble at home, but desperate to stop. A glance at the phone in his hand, now just an elaborate paperweight, tipped the balance. I need a drink, he thought wearily.
For an hour he nursed a pair of Coronas at a small table, alternately mourning his useless phone and his relationship with his sullen teenager. The phone, he reasoned, had surely passed at a crucial time in his career, causing him to miss a conversation whose outcome would determine his financial well being for the rest of his life. Then his thoughts turned to Darren, and while for a moment he would be furious with his son and curse him under his breath, after the next swig he would feel morose and hang his head like a beaten dog.
John hated to confront his relationship with Darren; he preferred to reside in his familiar world of offices, commerce, phones, and memos. There, he had control. Usually. His uncooperative phone had cracked the retaining wall that sealed one from the other; he could not stop his sickly home from seeping in, as out of place as a bum in his neatly vacuumed waiting room.
When his emotions had exhausted themselves, he handed the waiter his debit card thoughtlessly and took a mental inventory, finally feeling certain that he was sober enough to drive. John prided himself on his ability to hold alcohol.
He had almost begun smiling fondly, recalling long-gone near-drunk driving experiences, when the waiter returned, his expression nervous. “There was a problem with the card, sir.”
John rose from the table imperiously, wrapping his boardroom aura about him like a robe. Looking down on the skinny, timid boy, barely older than Darren, he leaned in slightly and let the tiniest hint of disdain creep into his voice. “Excuse me?”
“I’m sorry, sir, but the account appears to be frozen.”
“That’s not possible,’ John answered, already certain that it was absolutely true. He fiercely maintained his composure, in spite of the sudden spike of fear that coursed through him. What was happening?
“I’m sorry, sir. The computer is indicating that all accounts under your name, including credit, are frozen. There’s nothing we can do.”
He stood there uncertainly for a moment, hoping for some way to save face, but none presented itself. Finally, he nodded and gave the boy a twenty. His change an indistinguishable mass in his pocket, he rushed from the restaurant, vaguely panicked. He felt hunted, as though some deranged sniper was methodically blasting apart his life.
He reached the desk marked Secure Parking Check-In looking flushed and sweaty, his stomach roiling nervously. The attendant looked distantly concerned, his expression the same that John wore when viewing footage of some Third World atrocity from the security of his bed. “May I help you, sir?”
“I’d like to get my car,” John practically gasped.
“Certainly. I’ll just need your driver’s license.” John had to support his weight on the desk as his knees buckled; he wanted to shout prayers of thanks to a God he didn’t believe in that he had paid for the entire stay before leaving. He handed over his driver’s license, feeling that some measure of justice had returned to the universe.
The attendant swiped the license under a scanner and typed a few words. When his eyes went wide and flashed to John like a boy passing a grisly car accident, John almost laughed. He had been so close. He nearly collapsed again, a hollow feeling carving a hole in his belly.
He seemed to hear the attendant from a great distance. “Sir, there’s a problem.”
John looked up in resignation, the life draining from his face. “Yes?”
“Sir, I don’t know how to say this…there’s obviously been a terrible mistake…I can’t say who’s responsible—“
“—Well?”
“Your license has been canceled, sir. Not suspended, but canceled. The computer lists you as dead.”
John cocked his head to one side, as though studying some curiosity. He heard a strange voice mumble, “Jesus…” and didn’t realize for a moment that it had been his own.
“The immediate problem, sir, is that the computer won’t release a car to anyone without a valid license. I’m sorry. Do you have anyone you can call?”
John turned away from him without even answering, leaving his worthless license, dropping his worthless phone into a trash can as he exited the building, stepping out into the frigid night air.
He stopped where cement met grass, and looked up into the clear mountain sky. A billion stars stretched overhead, their twinkling seeming to mock him. He remembered how he used to hold a hand in front of his face when he looked at the stars, telling himself that he could blank out the heavens. You arrogant bastard, he thought. You never blanked out the sky; you only blinded yourself. He sank slowly to the ground, grinding his expensive pants into the dirt, wrapping his arms around himself. He was dead. He really might as well be, he reflected. No bank account, no phone, no car. How else could anyone tell that he was alive? His hands, his feet, his voice had all become machines; he felt crippled without them. Life had tossed him by the wayside, he was a paralytic on the side of the road, calling soundlessly for help.
A distant voice counseled that this problem could be sorted out, that there was an answer. Yes, he acknowledged, his life could almost certainly be salvaged. The many layers of his public existence could be restored. But, who will save me from them? he wondered bleakly. Is there even a me to save? Tears welled in his eyes, and he began to rock back and forth quietly.