You want me to quit? You don't trust me, she said, so I should never leave your basement?
Go, I said. I don't care. Go.
She went.
Maybe I should have been more understanding, but I kept picturing golden-haired Mark, the way he threw his arms in the air when he scored, flashed his idiotic white teeth. How he'd have the same greedy look while he unbuttoned her corduroys. I lay in bed with the curtain closed and the radio on, Etta and Billie and Dinah, and when she didn't call the next day, or the next, I told myself it didn't matter. Lots of fish, and all that. Fell asleep and dreamed red fish in red seas.
Yesterday there was a knock on my door. I was expecting no one, so I figured it was Crazy Mildred, and was feeling so lousy I had my mind half made up to let her grope me with her filthy old fingers.
Rain poured from skies swirling like the end of the world. Sara stood at the top of the steps, framed by the tracks and drooping power wires. She wore ratty jeans and a soaked DePaul sweatshirt, and her eyes were circled in black. I've got something to tell you, she said, and crossed her arms over her belly.
And I knew.
The nerve of the bitch. How could she? How could she sleep with Mark, and then come to me crying, dressed like all the other tramps, and think I'd forgive her? She'd tarnished everything. Red haze filled my world.
She started to lie, to say she hadn't been with him, that it was something else, but I couldn't let her talk. I opened my mouth and freed all the words no one can know I keep inside. I can't even remember what I said, but I know it was red poison. It must have been, because she left, crying and begging at first, then her eyes wide and lips silent as she went away.
After Brian tore the arm off my action figure, I threw it away. It was spoiled.
Now I'm alone in the dark basement that she made brighter, listening to the rattle and clank of the washer, typing with dirty fingers. The radio man is still talking. He's jumped from the apartment fire to the next horror, a body found in the bird sanctuary in Lincoln Park. A woman. Unidentified. Pregnant.
Sara's skin was pale and soft, her freckles constellations in the skies of my world.
The red is creeping back into my vision as the announcer keeps talking, leaving behind the girl in the college sweatshirt and torn jeans, staring open-eyed in the rain. It's time for me to do the same. To press send and lay down to remember Sara the way I first saw her, swept up by the sun, sundress sticking to her pale, perfect skin. My Sara.
Click.
From 1997 to 2001, I ran a web and graphic design shop. I started it with a partner, and over those years we grew to fourteen people. We had a loft office with a climbing wall and beer in the fridge and an open-door policy for dogs. It was a wonderful time, made possible by the sheer amount of money out there trying to cash in on dotcom magic.
Though my shop wasn't a dotcom, we neighbored on the world. There was so much I saw in it that amused me, so much that was obviously completely impractical and yet landing millions in funding, so many excesses and so much silliness. The whole thing struck me as a demented theme park designed by brilliant morons.
This story, which is completely different than anything else I've published, is my attempt to capture that weird time.
Insert tongue firmly in cheek before reading.
Cobalt
I'll feel better once the monkeys arrive.
The habitat went in this morning. Two pleasant Asian gentlemen hung from the rafters installing a primate paradise. There are thick braided ropes dyed green to resemble vines. There are beams lathed like tree trunks. There's even a little monkey boudoir made of hypoallergenic netting.
There are, as of yet, no monkeys.
While I reviewed the invoice for netting and fake foliage and green rope, the younger of the Monkey Environment Specialists asked me where the animals would, you know, relieve themselves.
This is the kind of question that earns an accusatory stare when raised to Jerry. A stare that tells you he is a visionary, that it's his job to handle the view from 30,000 feet, and that while he'd thought you were riding shotgun in the purring airplane of his vision, your focus on such pissant details as the scatological needs of monkeys suggests he may have been wrong.
I told the Environment Specialist it was under control. As Jerry's right hand, I have a staff, and where the monkeys relieve themselves is an item I intend to delegate.
Also, I intend not to linger too long or often in the lobby.
Chastened, the men packed and left me alone in the drafty warehouse to imagine the world that will be born here: a visionary place, well-decorated, in which everyone can enjoy an unprecedented range of custom entertainment with the click of a mouse, all for a reasonable monthly fee automatically debited from any major credit card. From the womb of the new world I used my PDA to check my stock options, which were up up up. Buoyed by my burgeoning net worth, I put the monkeys out of mind and settled in to await the Pod Installation Specialists.