Revenge of the Paste Eaters (20 page)
Five days later I found a black cat dead in the road.
There are any number of black cats who live around me. I cannot swear that it was my new neighbor’s cat that I passed this morning. Someone’s cat died. And I felt, as I always do, a stab of sadness. A life was lost. A family pet is gone.
Welcome to the neighborhood.
my alarm clock, which
is not terribly old, recently retired. It had been expressing minor job dissatisfaction—it kept losing the radio station it had been using to wake me up every morning—but I was relatively unalarmed until the morning I woke up to no alarm at all. The clock was just sitting there in absolute silence over my head, mutely reporting the time, which just happened to be the precise moment when I normally close my house door and leave for work. Were it not for the large gold cat stomping in my left ear, I might have slept until noon.
On my way home from work I went directly to an appliance store and bought a new alarm clock, this one with a built-in CD player. I liked its look. I liked its shape and substance. I have become covetous of CD players now that I drive the only vehicle still on the road that doesn’t have one. As I was checking out, the diligent young clerk inquired, “Are you replacing one that has broken, or is this just a new purchase?”
I said, “My old alarm is not alarmed anymore—in fact, it shows no concern whatsoever these days.”
The young man touched the spot between his eyes with his middle finger. He said, “Because they break, you know.”
“You expect this particular one to break?”
The young man gazed at me vacantly for a minute. He said, “But if you buy our service warranty for $9.95 you can bring it back at any time in your lifetime and buy a brand-new one for $9.”
“Wouldn’t it be simpler to apply the $9.95 to the technology of this one and build one that will never break?”
The young man looked around the store as if searching for a sign—from anyone, I suppose—indicating what he had done to deserve me. “So I’m assuming you don’t want the service warranty,” he said, and rang up my clock.
I had not slept well the night before, which is why I overslept at all.
My Beloved is a morning person. Morning people wake up with lists forming behind their eyes of all of the wonderful things they might do on this brand-new sparkling day. They spring gleefully out of bed—often humming or engaging in some other obnoxious behavior—and they are cheerful and prone to spontaneous bouts of calisthenics. All morning people pick night people for their mates because all morning people are just basically mean. However, because she is a morning person, she frequently not only wakes up, but
gets up
, before her alarm goes off. I never get up a second before I have to. In fact, I often get up seven minutes after I should have. Where my Beloved keeps an alarm so she can have something she can feel superior to, I keep one because I need it.
But I had not slept well, and as a result I was tired. On the night I hired my new alarm I plugged it in, set it, poked all of the appropriate buttons, and went to sleep early.
My alarm went off.
I remember thinking,
It feels like I just fell asleep
, but I couldn’t tell what time it was because—and I find this confusing—while the new alarm plays the radio, it does not display the time. Apparently this is to thwart those of us who aim one eye at the digital readout and promptly punch the sleep button.
It seemed quite dark out. It was late fall and morning had been coming increasingly later . . . but this
looked
, to the untrained eye, like the dead of night.
So I sat up, fumbled for the light, and stared blearily at my watch, which said 12:00.
I had set the alarm for 6:30. It is not all that uncommon for an alarm I have set to go off at 6:30 in the evening, but I have never had one set for 6:30 go off at midnight.
So I turned it off.
Or, I pushed the button that said, “Off.”
The radio continued, unabated.
I pushed the power button to “Off.”
The radio continued singing.
I pushed the sleep button.
Sing, sing sing . . .
I dug out my glasses, fumbled around with the clock instructions, and read,
There are three ways to turn off the alarm
, and it listed them. I tried all three, first one at a time, and then in various combinations of two out of three, and then I considered throwing the machine through the window.
I turned the volume on the radio so low it no longer made noise: which achieved my immediate aim, which was to go back to sleep. I did not reset the alarm for a more appropriate time. Certain ironies seem very clear at midnight when you wish you were asleep and instead you are battling a hostile alarm clock, and one of them is that not only is it alarmed when you wish to hell it wasn’t . . . the clock won’t tell you the time.
And then, magically, it all corrected itself. The time returned . . . I gingerly restored the volume and the radio had gone to sleep . . . I should have considered this in more depth, but by this time my sole concern was sleep.
Which is where I went.
The alarm/radio went off.
I bolted upright, scowled suspiciously at the dark sky beyond my window, turned on the light, found my glasses, applied my glasses to my face and my watch to my glasses, where I ascertained it was exactly 12:22.
I poked every button, bar, and color change on that machine. I dug around in my desk for a pen and jabbed it repeatedly into a small hole labeled “reset.” Finally I turned the volume off, and the machine became quiet again.
It refused to tell me the time.
In fact it sat there on my headboard slightly above and behind my head with just one red eye beaming the word “POWER” over my inert body.
I stabbed its single red eye repeatedly with my thumbs. No effect.
“Wake me up at seven tomorrow morning,” I snarled at the cat.
There is always the possibility of operator error and I know this. Even with operator error, most power buttons I’ve pushed in my lifetime have either removed or restored the power—this one does nothing. The instructions are written in English words applied to Japanese syntax, but I believe the intended meaning is that the button will provide or remove power. I believe this machine does not work properly. I believe this machine is power-crazed. Possessed. I need to just yank the plug, deprive it of all power at the source, put it back in its box, and return it to the nice young clerk who wanted me to have a lifetime supply of timeless, hysterical alarm clocks.
I’m looking forward to this conversation.
I’ve been practicing.
Yes
I understand that
but what am I to do
with my anger?
I am running out
of Mason jars
my supply of lovers
has grown thin
my friends all stare at me
with fixed and wary smiles
and yesterday my dog
ran off.
for years valentine’s day
has smelled faintly of crayons and white paste for me. A kid’s holiday. It’s been a long time since I’ve paid much attention to it. My romantic life, while rich and colorful, has also been largely imaginary. I have specialized in lusts-from-afar, those tremendously tumultuous, passionate, exhilarating, risk-free relationships a true dreamer like myself can have with people who have no idea they’re in a relationship at all. Or perhaps they are entirely aware of their relationship—it just happens not to be with me.
Probably the last time I paid much attention to Valentine’s Day I was sitting at my mother’s kitchen table, painstakingly lettering out a cheap, gaudy card for every student in my class, taking exceptional care not to accidentally send any mushy or goopy one to a
boy.
(I had, apparently, even then an inkling of what was to come.) Boys were horrible things and I probably would not have wasted my good valentines on any of them, had it not been for a school rule that if you sent one valentine to anyone, you had to have a valentine for every member of your class.
I may have been somewhat oblivious to the spirit of the holiday. Each year we would beg a good-sized shoebox from our parents and lug it to school, where we would spend several art classes covering it with colored construction paper, cut-up paper lace doilies, and sprigs of tin foil and chewing gum (someone always ate the paste) for the Most Beautiful Box competition. I was a competitive child. I was an extremely competitive child. I needed to have the most beautiful box, and I needed to collect the most valentines inside my box. I also needed to eat the most pink-frosted cookies, have the most punch, and generally suck up attention like an alligator on a log soaks up sun. Attention—positive if possible, but in a pinch negative would do—was the fuel that made my motor run, and ruthless, endless competition was the way to achieve it. (It was about this time in my life that my mother encouraged me to read
The Bad Seed
.)
So it did not occur to me to give valentines to my friends because I liked them, any more than it would occur to me that people would give me valentines because they liked me. I expected valentines because I had the prettiest valentine box. I expected valentines because I needed to have more valentines than anyone else.
Surprisingly enough, I was not exceptionally popular in grade school. If you were to hunt up some of my fellow classmates, you might be surprised to discover I have not always been known for my sense of humor. You might find the little boy in fourth grade, for instance, who remembers mostly being kicked rather soundly in the shins.
I flirted with her the first time I met her because I never really thought it would come to much. I was just in that kind of mood that day.
I was flirting with her the second time I saw her when I told her that the thing I missed most about male/female relationships was the fact that women never flirt with each other. She actually let me get away with that.
And all of those interim times when we saw each other and exchanged our life histories and delved into each other’s minds I kept telling myself nothing would come of it. Someone else would catch her interest. Sometimes when I felt nervous I would take out my old “if you
really
knew me you wouldn’t like me” security blanket and suck my mental thumb.
Last year at Valentine’s Day we were still feeling our way along that “I think I like her—very much—but it could all blow away next week . . .” dust-in-the-wind how-long-can-I-hide-all-my-faults stage of the relationship. She gave me a book and a beautiful card. I may not have given her anything.
Last week I was muttering under my breath about how ill-suited I am for a long-term, long-distance relationship, and there is every chance that I will eventually find myself muttering about that again.
But today I am thinking, “What shall I do for Valentine’s Day?” I need glue. Red paper. Some pretty lace. Perhaps I can use my Dremel or some other rotary tool. A flower or two might be nice.
To my Valentine: I love you.
Wanna help me decorate my box?
babycakes is not a
happy cat. He is pacing the house, voicing his discontent (for there is no reason to
have
discontent, he believes quite firmly, if it cannot be voiced) in each room, where he can monitor the acoustics for precisely the pitch of heartrending melancholy that will render unto Babycakes that which is Babycakes’.
There are packages full of Mommy’s things by the door.
This can never be good.
In the first place, nowhere in any of these packages (and Mommy is known for her many packages) is his fine gold self. Not that Babycakes has any desire to go away with Mommy—he has had quite enough of those adventures, thank you very much. Each time Mommy has put him in a package and taken him away with her, he has wound up on a big, shiny, slippery serving tray on the pointed end of Jennifer Needles. Babycakes plans never to leave home again.
No, the crux of this problem is to convince Mommy she need never go away either. She could stay at home all of the time and be with Babycakes. She would have more time to stir his food whenever it grows stale. She would be in attendance to snatch away bad box smells and refresh them with new litter. They could sit together in the evenings and watch the flickerbox, and then in the morning they could sit together and watch the flickerbox again. Grooming a soiled ear, he rethinks this solution, examining it for unmet needs, but he can find none. The solution is perfect. Now for a plan.
He is a cat who thinks best on his feet. Pacing from room to room, he meows plaintively, cocking an ear for Mommy’s obedient reply.
“Now what?”
Satisfied he has her attention, he paces to a farther room and calls again. This is a pleasant game and it passes the time nicely, but Mommy ruins it by appearing in exactly the same room he is in, seizing his fine gold self in her arms, pinching his fine white whiskers (and the one black one) in her hand as she gazes intently into his eyes and demands, “What do you
want
?”
Babycakes is so unnerved by this attack that he is stricken with the dreaded bonemelt. All of his supporting muscles collapse and all parts of his body not specifically held captive by Mommy dribble down toward the floor.
“Fine,” Mommy snaps. “You are a bad bad bad bad
bad
cat,” and sets him on the floor. This is the highest praise she ever gives him, and it means, “I’m sorry, you’re right, I’m wrong, and I will never touch you without your permission again.” She is sweet, but she can be a little slow.
Babycakes walks into the next room, looks around, considers his options, and cries. He is in Mommy’s litter room now where the acoustics are particularly effective and carry the tone of his personal dissatisfaction all through the house. He reaches down and carefully grooms a few displaced hairs. She will come soon—if not to this cry, then the next. He flexes his toenails, eyeing them critically. If she ignores him again, he will choose something she had appeared to be fond of lately and he will dig it.