The gum thief: a novel Read online

  Oh! To travel back ten years-to when I still thought of myself as a good person and before I realized I was lost. Every moment felt like I was getting away with something. Every moment felt like five o'clock quitting time. Paradise!

  You know how I met Joan? I was coming back from lunch with Alex and Marty. I'd had three glasses of red, and I knew it wouldn't be too smart to show up at the office-it was the tail end of the days when you could still plausibly drink during lunch and not immediately be suspended, and I didn't want to push it-this was my third job in five years. So I pretended I had to pick something up from the dry cleaners. It was a sweater-optional weather day, and the sun came out from behind a cloud and I was standing on the corner of Seymour and Nelson in a wonderful liquid yellowness. I felt like I was being teleported into the sun, and the heat on my skin felt like music. Then the sun went behind the clouds, and I felt like I was locked inside an airliner's bathroom. And then I closed my eyes and opened them again and across the street was a fortune teller.

  What the hey!

  So I walked over, laid down a five and said, "Fill me in."

  The fortune teller certainly wasn't cultivating an aura of mystery. She dressed like her welfare cheque had just arrived and she was off to buy a carton of smokes for her six illegitimate toddlers: sweats; no makeup; a pair of men's brown leather shoes.

  But I still wanted my fortune told. It's a mood you get maybe once a decade, like a thirst, and once you have it, you have to slake it. So I pressed forward. "What can you tell me?"

  She looked at me like I was homework. She grabbed my hand, pressed the meat of my thumb for a few seconds, looked up at me and said, "I see you sitting in a glade, all of the creatures of the forest sitting around you. There's a blue jay on your left palm, a black squirrel on your right - it's dozing-it's resting, it feels completely at peace."

  That's not what I was expecting, but I liked the way the words made the inside of my head feel.

  She looked down at my palm, then back up at me and went on: "You were trouble as a teenager, and you probably pushed your parents too far, and they probably gave you up for lost."

  She was good.

  She said, "You were about twenty, and you saw something that scared you into changing your ways. What was it?" "Aren't you supposed to be telling me?" "A car accident." Shit, she was good. "How many people were killed?" she asked. "Four." "Four people-and afterwards you went to your parents' house. You said to them something along the lines of,

  Mom, Dad, I've seen the error of my ways, and I've decided I no longer want to be the person I was before. I'm going to be someone new now, someone better, somebody I can respect. Your mother cried."

  Traffic and people thrummed around us, but they might as well have been on a TV muted in the background. I didn't know what to say.

  "The thing is," she continued, "you changed only a little bit, and only for a little while. You lacked the courage to follow through on the criminal promise of your teens, and you were too lazy to become a genuinely good person. You wonder why I look at you funny, well, now you know why."

  I was tipsy, so I said, "I know about my past. Tell me about my future."

  She said, "What am I supposed to tell you-that your future's going to be different, or better? I can't, because you're never going to change. You may have a red-haired son and a left-handed daughter. You may be stung by a jellyfish in Mexico and die within an hour. But so what? In your head, you're this neither-here-nor-there person. The experiences won't change you. Who cares?"

  She said, "You think I'm trailer trash, but so? What of it? I have a certain power, but having it doesn't mean I have to embrace it. Most of the time I reject my powers, but today I needed money, and that money is going to come from you. A hundred dollars. Pay me now."

  "Why should I?"

  "Because otherwise I'll tell you even more things about yourself you'd rather not know. Buy my silence."

  I did.

  She folded up my five twenties and her card table and walked away. Then, from behind me, a woman's voice said, "I bet you like animals." 1turned around and there was Joan, with a Jack Russell on a leash straining to sniff curb side newspaper boxes.

  "Huh?"

  "Animals. I bet you talk to animals all the time, whenever you see them. Like right here, right now."

  She was the same age as me, but without the mileage. She looked like Jane, from the Dick and Jane books, grown up, apple-cheeked, healthy and itching to correct my grammar. She saw that I was maybe a disaster, and yet she approached me. She began our dance together. I looked at her dog, Astro. "Hey there, boy. Yeah, I do love animals." I scratched him behind his ears. "Why would your mistress be telling me that?"

  "Why?" she asked. "Because people who talk to animals are people who are easily disinhibited. Certain situations take them out of themselves-talking to animals, or talking to fortune tellers. A fortune teller gives you permission to relax and not keep everything plugged up. You can tell them anything. And once it's over, back in goes the plug and you feel better for having vented." "You heard her?" "I couldn't help it. Young Astra here had to do his

  business and I had to wait." "She saw you there, listening, the whole time?" "Yup." "And you still want to talk to me?" Brendan indeed had red hair, and Zoe is left-handed. But I've never gone to Mexico, never will.

  Bethany (for real)

  Sparrows!

  Sparrows are everywhere!

  At McDonald's! On the park benches! On branches!

  Roger, what a complete loser you are for leaving your diary in the coffee room. As if people weren't going to find it, let alone me. I'm totally creeped out by your description of me and my mother and my life. Creeped out to the point where I could get you fired. But that would mean acknowledging you in a way that would fit too neatly into your self-described loser profile. I can hear it now: That caustic little slut got me fired because I wrote about her black lipstick. You talked about my body, Roger-and what I felt like being inside my body. What kind of perv are you?

  But the bit about the sparrow was nice, I have to admit. And I've actually seen birds yawn before, but then I think of you staring at me at a bus stop staring at sparrows and I get creeped out. BTW, you saw me at a bus stop and drove by when you could have driven me to work? Nice one.

  And what's with you stealing all my comments about birds and biology? We have to talk about something in the staff room-besides Darrell and Raheed and Shawn bitching about customers, especially the needy ones in Hand-Helds & PDAs. Customers are all the same. They're all little children. I hate children. Children are like small brain-damaged adults with no attention spans and no capacity for conversation. Children should be sent away to school until they turn twenty-one and can speak normally. Darrell, Raheed and Shawn should also be sent away until they learn to speak properly, but that'd be age eighty-four, if ever. Man, their bitching drives me nuts. And how dare Shawn tell you about the spit on my locker in grade twelve!

  And don't think I didn't notice that last Thursday you got yourself transferred from Laser Printers into stocking the bond paper so you could drink while you work. I was in the staff room, and I gagged on a saltine cracker and reached for your water bottle, which was on the counter, and got a mouthful of vodka. Yes, you're in winner territory, Roger. And I heard you sold some geek $5K worth of computer crap and forgot to tell him it wouldn't work on Macs. Chris had to stay late and process the returns, and he cursed your existence for an hour.

  I'm sorry people in your life seem to have died or left you or something. So I won't be a total witch here. And two kids-really? Because, Roger, you can barely knot a tie onto one of your semi-washed shirts every morning, so I have to wonder if your kids get fed properly.

  That was mean. Sorry. Shawn says you live alone.

  My mother-you make her sound like a mystic who goes through life singing songs and making people feel campfire good about themselves. Please! She's tortured me my entire life, and she's also the inhabitant of a faraw
ay land called Uselessness. Last week she pushed the wrong buttons and microwaved a bun for ten hours, and the condo smelled like an electrical fire for days.

  Yes, I know what you're thinking: Bethany lives with her mother. Why is it okay for guys to stay home forever but if a girl does she's damaged goods? Have you priced condos lately? And working at Staples is a career? I can't believe the government even classifies what we do as a job. A job is something you can do for life. A job has some dimension of hope to it. Setting up fresh little sheets of white paper for people to use to test magic markers is not a hope scenario. All people ever draw is squiggles. It'd be fun if they wrote the occasional fuck or drew anarchy symbols. I still can't believe people ever pay for pens. Talk about the world's most shopliftable item. Staples must die.

  At least your waste-case diary is something I can fume about while I'm installing the Halloween display this afternoon. (Note: What kind of person buys a jar of orange and black jellybeans to "celebrate" Halloween? Everyone thinks that because I wear black lipstick I live for Halloween or something. It's such an embarrassing holiday. They should call it Alter Ego Day-everyone dresses up as who they'd rather be instead of themselves. Sort of like what you said about people wanting out-or people wanting to be anything except what and who they are. I'd dress up as an ivory-billed woodpecker. Imagine everybody wondering if you existed, hoping you did, longing for a quick glance of you.)

  BTW, did you see the tattoo of the devil on Shawn's ankle? I used to think that tattoo =slut, but now I think it's the total opposite. When you get a tattoo, it means you want your sexual partner to remember you and bond with you which is to say, it's more about monogamy than it is about sluttitude. Nature is crafty, but you know, black lipstick or not, I draw the line at tattoos. Because I like my skin to be deathly white. Michael Jackson white. I want it to look like it's easy to bruise. I want it to look like I taste like almond paste.

  I can't believe I'm writing this to a total perv like you. Well, it's something to kill time here at Shtooples.

  Here's what I'm going to do. When we see each other, neither of us is allowed to acknowledge that we've written or read these things we've written and read. We have to pretend we're cats and dogs, like normal. It'll make life interesting, which is a supreme challenge in this place. Boy, would I like to open a stockroom door one day and find people doing something shocking.

  Describe something shocking, Bethany ...

  Okay, how about Chris using an oversize oak peppermill to grind crack cocaine onto Shawn's rectum because Shawn's nose is so coked out that she's had to find a new absorbent membrane. That's shocking. That'd be fun to see. Or maybe Kyle using words longer than three syllables. But guys like Kyle don't need words to succeed in life, merely a pair of tight jeans and a dab of hair product.

  What's on today's To-Do list? Besides the Halloween display, I have to redo Jamie's lame "Make Your Office Your Home" display down by the business furniture section. All she had to do was put coffee cups on a desktop and set a wacky stuffed animal beside the PC monitor. Instead, she created a scarecrow-ish stuffed body with a head made of pantyhose filled with bubble wrap, the face drawn with a bingo-daubing marker. It's ... disturbing.

  BTW, you owe me, buster. I was walking down your aisle, and I had to reorganize a pile of Sharpie pens into their correct nooks because somebody had scrambled them this morning-some brave anarchist in training. I also saved you from a future shit storm by cleaning off the dust and fingerprints that were all over the cardboard box display for Zebra mechanical pencils.

  Remember, no acknowledging to my face that you've read this.

  Glove Pond begins

  "You're drunk again."

  "I'm always drunk, you combative harridan. Shush."

  "Don't shush me, you failure of a man. You manfailure."

  "At least I don't sleep with a lawn sprinkler repairman as an act of retaliation sex."

  "At least he's a man."

  "Meaning what, Gloria?"

  "You figure it out. I'm having more Scotch."

  Gloria and Steve were being drunk and witty. Daylight savings had just ended, and the world was getting dark way too soon. They had each emerged from their respective realms to forage for liquor in the living room. It was a space defined by its rice-paper-thin Persian rugs and homely, expensive oak furniture made in the late nineteenth century by underfed, uneducated children with scurvy in rural Michigan factories. Random felts of house dust rested where Gloria had not deigned to drag a chamois during her random bouts of chatelaine energy.

  The year was 2007. Steve's head felt like crumpled paper after six hours of departmental meetings. Gloria's blood chemicals were shooting in all directions after an unexpectedly cancelled tryst with Leonard, the director of the local dinner theatre. She would be appearing in three weeks as the lead in the local dinner theatre production of Lady Windermere's Fan, and she was insecure about her adequacy for the role.

  Steve barked, "More Scotch. I don't feel drunk enough." He filled his glass and added one ice cube as an afterthought.

  "Are you sure you want an ice cube in there? It might dilute your buzz." "Why is it that all we do is battle?" He sighed, rattled his ice cube and coughed.

  Back in her thirties, one by one, all of Gloria's other powerful emotions had gone out to get a pack of cigarettes and had never returned. Only anger remained. "We don't battle. We drink. It's different with us."

  Steve looked at his watch. "The guests will be here in a half-hour. What are we having?"

  "I don't know. I'll figure something out."

  "We have guests coming over and you haven't figured it out yet?"

  "No."

  Roger

  It's amazing how you can be a total shithead, and yet your soul still wants to hang out with you. Souls ought to have the legal right to bail once you cross certain behaviour thresholds: I draw the line at cheating at golf; I draw the line at theft over $100,000; I draw the line at bestiality.

  Imagine all the souls of the world, out on the sides of highways, all of them hitchhiking to try to find new places to live, all of them holding signs designed to lure you into selecting them as a passenger:

  · .. I sing!

  · .. I tell jokes.

  · .. I know shiatsu.

  · .. I know Katharine Hepburn.

  I don't deserve a soul, yet I still have one. I know because it hurts.

  However, earlier today at the Oasis Car Wash I bumped into an old friend from high school, Teddy, who had become a psychiatrist. While ex-cons buffed our rear-view mirrors and stole sunglasses and pocket change, I asked him if he'd reached any broad conclusions about humanity.

  He asked me, "What kind of conclusions?" "You know, that everybody on earth-not merely your patients-that everybody's a mess." He perked up. "Oh, good God, man, get real. Everybody's a disaster."

  His Chrysler 300 popped out of the buffing bay, and we said goodbye. I felt a thousand percent good for the first time in months. Having the same illness as everybody else truly is the definition of health.

  Why, you may ask, do I spend the peanuts I make at work on a car wash? Because it makes me feel good. Because it was payday. Because my car is the one thing in my life that's working. It's a Hyundai Sonata, and nothing ever goes wrong with it. It's drop-dead boring but it works. I identify with it.

  I just looked up and out the staff room door to see that Shawn is dressed as Wonder Woman. She's tit-proud, and she works it. I think if human beings had genuine courage, they'd wear their costumes every day of the year, not just on Halloween. Wouldn't life be more interesting that way? And now that I think about it, why the heck don't they? Who made the rule that everybody has to dress like sheep 364 days of the year? Think of all the people you'd meet if they were in costume every day. People would be so much easier to talk to-like talking to dogs. Hey, cool costume! I dig vampires too. Let's go out for a beer. Halloween costumes are another disinhibiting device, like fortune-telling and talking to dogs that belong
to strangers.

  Me? I'd dress like a matador. I can still cut a figure if I skip sugars and carbs for a month. Carrying a sword would be a kick. I'd always be wondering what it's like to stab a large animal, to see blood on the steel. I'd be ... man, I reread the last two sentences. Psycho time.

  Maybe all I want to do is carry a visible weapon.

  There, that would be my costume. I'd be dressed the same way I am now, but I'd have a holster with a handgun. I'd be the Guy Who Mayor May Not Go Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs at Any Moment.

  Yet again, psycho time. I am not psycho. But I caught a glimpse of myself in the men's room mirror, and what I saw did disturb me: a puffy-looking forty-three-yellowing skin under the light of the lone fluorescent tube; dandruff; red patches on my scalp where I scratch my seborrhea. No wonder I've become invisible to people under thirty. Put my body inside the Hyundai and I'm the Invisible Man. I could commit any crime, and when cops interviewed witnesses and asked them who did it, all they'd remember is, "Some guy in a car."

  Some guy dressed as Cupid just poked his head in the door and asked where we sell the jumbo cans of Maxwell House coffee. (Question: who buys coffee at an office supply store?)

  And then Cupid left for Aisle 3-South, and I'm sitting here wondering.

  Wondering what?

  Wondering about Cupid and his arrows. Wondering if I still have the capacity to fall in love. Did I write that last sentence? What's next-growing breasts? And yet again I'm reminded of the pursed-lipped fortune teller I met on the street corner years ago. If you don't change, then what's the point of anything happening to you? It'll still be happening to an unchanged person.