Fiction by KSM
GROUNDED
It wasn’t possible that Gerard had written the note himself. First of all, he’d never spent much time in the Art Books section. And second, it wasn’t his handwriting. But when he pulled the book off the shelf, and the note fell onto his Adidas Superstars, it felt like something he could have written. He picked it up and read:
You will have a dinner party.
When he’d started working at Writ & Wisdom six months ago, he’d often write cheesy inspirational quotes on scraps of paper and hide them in the Self-Help section. He’d also stash weed in the Erotica section, partly for convenience, mostly as an act of corporate defiance. Even today, a tiny baggy remained tucked behind an oversized hardback of A History of Photographic Obscenities. People, he observed, never lingered long in Erotica, and those who did were too distracted to be concerned with the dregs of a dime bag.
A dinner party. Advice, or prophecy?
He stuffed the paper in his pocket and sat cross-legged on the rug, laying Living the Hero’s Journey on his lap. On the back was a Tolkien-style drawing, the “Map of Self-Discovery.” The path started in the forests of Awareness, wove through the caves of Change, and continued to the waterfall of Renewal.
A pink-haired co-worker passed by. She stopped at the end of the aisle and snickered. “Your beard is exactly like my dad’s.”
An image flashed through his head of biting her jeans and growling. This wouldn’t play well for many reasons, one being that he’d clocked her at around eighteen. He blinked the thought away. “I’m having a dinner party.”
He had no idea where this statement came from.
She looked surprised. “You’re inviting me?”
“No,” he said.
“I’m sure your girlfriend would love me showing up.”
On the other side of the bookshelf, a man coughed.
Gerard imitated the cough. “Do you suffer from unexplained health issues?” he said in his radio voice.
The girl rolled her eyes and walked away.
On the bargain wall, he spotted a book with a pie on it. The title, when he squinted, appeared to be American Homemaking. The idea of a dinner party now struck him as divine invention. They could invite couple-friends they hadn’t seen for years. Erica could watch firsthand as their friends’ children had meltdowns and their friends vanished from the table one by one. Gerard would mention his part-time retail job right away, nip that in the bud, then segue into the graphic novel he was working on. He’d welcome questions, comments, suggestions.
He pictured Erica seated at their dining room table smiling at him, her finger spooling around her necklace. When was the last time she’d looked at him like that?
He stood up and shoved the art book back into its shelf. He resolved to take a not-sick sick day tomorrow so he could get some real work done. Not only could he polish his graphic novel, he could also avoid pink-haired for longer, thus increasing the odds she’d forget their conversation and/or that he’d remember her name.
He started towards the Special Orders desk and saw a man waiting. The man’s buttons-straining paunch flashed as he turned towards Gerard and flung his arms out in an arch, an apparent gesture of bafflement, incredulous he had to wait for service.
Gerard shrugged, a gesture of solidarity, because he, too, was baffled by mankind’s ineptitude. He whirled and marched over to Erotica, where his dime bag waited.
*
Erica came home after seven, eyes at half-mast. She dropped her blazer on the floor and balanced on one foot to unzip a boot.
Gerard liked to share what he’d been up to since coming home from work, so he presented her with his freshly shaved face, twisting his chin from shoulder to shoulder like a fashion model. When she said nothing, he said, “I’ve got news.”
She raised her eyebrows.
“I’ve officially decided that this house is not haunted.”
He waited for her to laugh. Or smile, at the very least, to show that she understood the obvious subtext—that she was a harder worker than him, smarter than him; that he understood they were both making sacrifices for the future, and they were in different places on the Map of Self-Discovery, et cetera. Instead, she shuffled over to the phone on the wall. A coiled cord dangled from its base, like the kind his mom had in her kitchen. Erica’s brother Cameron, who owned the house, had insisted they keep the landline for emergencies, whatever that meant.
“I’m ordering Thai,” she said, picking up the receiver.
His eyes dragged around the kitchen, waiting for her to finish the call. Behind the stove was a collection of salts in little glass bottles that Cameron’s wife had given them. Seven colours of the rainbow. You couldn’t use any or you’d ruin the rainbow.
“Hi, yes, no problem,” Erica said.
He picked up a bottle of salt and found it surprisingly sticky. He went over to the sink to wash his hands. “We could start a new life in Thailand. You, me. A baby, since you’re into that sort of thing.”
Cupping the mouthpiece, Erica stared at him through stringy bangs. “Can you look at the wiring in the garage? The light in there’s flickering.”
“Why? It’s your brother’s house.”
“Because you went to school to be an electrician.”
“And?”
“And he doesn’t live here. We do.”
“So? You went to school for Communications and wound up a credit analyst.”
He pulsed with guilt after he said this. She’d given up the idea of becoming a wedding planner years ago, a choice she blamed on him once. “You’ve made me too cynical for that line of work,” she’d said. Later, in tears, she said it wasn’t his fault, she wasn’t charismatic enough. Which was true. These days, at least.
She jerked the phone to her lips and started to order. They ordered from the same restaurant at least once a week, so she knew what he wanted. Thai food was one of the few leftovers of their twenties. Apart from Erica’s job and the cat.
*
The garage door had been left open, a widescreen view. Trees bent and swayed in the wind like cartoon animals asking each other to dance. The suburbs muted everything except weather.
The purple-grey sky hemorrhaged light, growing darker each second, erasing leafless branches. With no tall buildings spearing the sky, Gerard could see much more of it. It made him uneasy.
He flicked the light switch. The hanging bulb flickered like a horror movie, then glowed dimly. He examined the wiring along the exposed ceiling joists and determined which connections ran to the garage door opener, which to the stupid workbench he’d never use, and which to the light fixture. If he failed—which he wouldn’t, being a bona fide electrical god and all—he could tell Erica about the dinner party. That was his ace in the hole to show he could still surprise her.
His eyes latched onto a frayed wire by a ceiling outlet. He imagined being electrocuted and Erica finding him unconscious, shaking as she sobbed. But that was unlikely. There wasn’t enough voltage and going out in a blaze of glory was too much to hope for.
When he walked back inside, Erica was leaning on the counter staring at her cell phone. “Food in forty-five minutes. I’ll head out at eight.” She raised an eyebrow. “Really wish your dad taught you stick.”
“Maybe you should’ve thought of that before you bought the Jetta,” he said.
*
Erica gaped at the TV like a stoner—though she was not, never had been. Then she stacked the plastic containers, eyes still locked onto 90 Day Fiancé. When she came back from the kitchen, she plopped on the rug and picked up her phone.
“Who you texting?” Gerard asked as he licked soupy green curry from between the tines of his fork.
“Work.”
He stretched his head from side to side, trying to glimpse her screen. It was angled so he couldn’t see.
“Did you know getting a text message elicits the same neurochemical response as having an orgasm?” he said.
Erica glanced over, face blank.
“On second thought, that only applies if it’s from a crush,” he said.
She squinted in confusion, then returned to her phone.
Erica used to like that he was funny. That he was philosophical, in her words. That his comfort show as a lonely, first-year student was Gilmore Girls; that he bought a professional paintball gun but had never wanted to play paintball; that he organized his books solely by date of publication. That, on their third date, he carried her to her bed but tripped over a shoe and they fell to the floor laughing.
She was the first women he dated who didn’t care that he was in a band. Not that he was in a band anymore. Both he and Aidan had been neutered. Aidan’s girlfriend made him play drums in the basement on an electronic set wearing headphones; Aidan, who used to rock out like he was putting a fire out with his sticks had been reduced to plastic tap-tap-taps, like a sad, out-of-work street performer.
Last Gerard heard, Aidan had bid on a ring on eBay. A mere lapse in judgment, Gerard told him. Rectifiable. Not wise, since Aidan continued to namedrop his ex at every opportunity, an elfin girl whose band was in Australia on their second world tour.
Erica stood and started for the door. “Are you writing tonight?”
“Probably. Can you grab me a beer?”
She stopped in the doorway and thumbed a large red stain on the doorjamb until it disappeared.
“I was saving that,” he said.
She curled her lip and licked the corner of her mouth.
“What can I say, I’m nostalgic,” he said. “That was a souvenir from one of our first meals in this place.”
She wiped the doorframe with the bottom of her shirt. “You hate this place.”
“Not true. I hate the idea of this place.”
She smirked.
He wanted to punctuate his point with the dinner party idea, which would show at least he was trying to make peace with the house, until she said, “Are you going down to the basement?”
“Going down to the basement” was a little slap. These days, his sources of pride had dwindled down to almost nothing, and would it be a big deal for her to ask if he was writing, or, better yet, working?
“I’m working on my writing, if that’s what you mean,” he said. “The script’s nearly done. I’m working out some kinks in the Zeus-Hera love story and then it’ll be ready for storyboarding.”
“Shouldn’t you do that with Aidan?”
“Tell that to Aidan.”
Her gaze shifted over to the pile of boxes in the corner of the living room, there since the move. “How ’bout you bring some of those downstairs?”
He arched his back into the couch and stretched. “I kinda like the basement being empty. It lets my creativity flow. It’s my imagination holodeck.”
“Great. I’m gonna go read.”
Erica left, and Gerard relaxed his head on the couch. He rested his eyes on a dark spot in the corner, which might have been dust or a centipede. He liked the mystery of not knowing which.
He reached for his phone on the coffee table but couldn’t quite grasp it. Not for the first time, he wished he had The Force—though he knew that ninety percent of the time, it would only be used to retrieve his phone.
He sat up, grabbed the device, and went on Instagram. He scrolled past a baby in a baseball hat and a pair of toddlers in a red wagon before switching to his alternate account. Here, he could peruse the photos of his ex, Leanne, which—like recalling her mid-coital coyote yowls, sexually graphic emails, and handwritten love letters—always felt good, painful, and necessary, like wiggling a loose baby tooth. Her letters were currently in the guest room closet in a box marked “Old Useless Crap.” Not that this subterfuge was necessary; Erica never touched his stuff, and most of his boxes reeked of weed.
Leanne had been his girlfriend-slash-dealer. One time he offered to peddle dime bags for her on the side. “I’d be good at it.”
Leanne had raised her eyebrows. “You?”
Thankfully, he’d never brought it up again. She’d been right, naturally. That was the thing about the women he dated: at first they seemed batshit crazy, but turned out to be the sanest people in his world—supernatural guides he encountered along his quest to Renewal. Renewal in Erica’s eyes, anyway.
In the basement pantry, he found an untouched six-pack. He drank lukewarm beer and flipped through the printed manuscript. He was certain it was done. All he’d been doing was deleting words and then putting them back. He took out a new notepad and hunched over the IKEA drafting table, imagining himself as the Hulk, brainstorming ideas for sequels, growing larger, stronger, with each movement of his pencil. Then, upon realizing his ideas were poorly revamped versions of the original, he envisioned shrinking.
He reached for the basement landline and called Aidan.
It was around eleven. His friend sounded groggy and horizontal.
“Don’t tell me you were asleep,” Gerard said. He made an indignant sound in his throat. “Erica and I have to start auditioning for suburban friends now.”
“This isn’t…” Aidan said. “Gerard, we gotta put the plan on hold, okay? I’m getting married in six months.”
Gerard wound the phone cord around his finger. “I can’t make a comic book without an illustrator.”
“Learn to draw. Or hire an illustrator. It’s not rocket science.”
Gerard tipped an empty trash can with his toe. When he drew back his socked foot, it fell over. For some reason, this enraged him. “Did I tell you about the dinner party we’re having? We have no guests yet, but it will be, in a word, inspired.”
“Let us know if we’re invited,” Aidan said, and hung up.
Gerard’s heart sunk. He sharpened a Blackwing pencil until it snapped. He couldn’t quit. To quit the project would be the same as quitting himself, the same as falling off the Map of Self-Discovery. He’d stumble into the Cesspool of Depression, and wouldn’t that be great for Erica?
All he could do was buy more time.
*
The next afternoon at Writ & Wisdom, Gerard smoked himself silly and alphabetized the Religion section in reverse order. He hovered in the aisle in hope that somebody would notice—he’d play dumb and plead dyslexia—but nobody noticed or cared. His make-work project took the rest of his shift to fix it, but nobody noticed or cared.
His pink-haired co-worker walked by as he was finishing.
“Hey.” Gerard rested his elbow on a bookshelf. “Can I get some advice?”
She looked startled. Then annoyed. “On your weird swingers party?”
His elbow fell off the shelf. “I said dinner party. Why swingers party?”
She shrugged. “You almost invited me, and you keep flirting with me. Also, you’re the weird stoner guy.”
His cheeks burned. “Your generation is obsessed with sex.”
She pulled out a bright green book and flipped through it. “Sex is like tap water—it’s everywhere, and the sooner you know it’s controlling your mind, the better.” She returned the book to a shelf below where she’d taken it. “You wanted advice?”
A woman browsing Staff Recommendations glanced over, down at the table, up at him again. She was in her forties, probably, and he was surprised how angelic he found her face. “If you were dating someone, and he hid his phone from you—”
“That’s their prerogative.”
“Well,” he said, accidentally catching eyes with the customer for too long, “let’s say you were in a common-law relationship—”
“The girl with the ass is cheating on you?”
Was that a compliment or insult for Erica? He pressed the spines of books, making the row flat and uniform. “I don’t know. Not necessarily.”
“Whatever you call it, is it something you can live with?” She put a hand on her hip. “It’s not like you’re bringing a lot to the table. I mean, you work… here.”
Asking her advice was a mistake.
“You are wise beyond your years, young Padawan,” he said. “In case I have follow-up questions, would it be weird if I grabbed your number?”
She laughed so loud it echoed in the store’s rafters. That was another problem with her generation: Zoomers were too jaded to recognize friendship. They touched each other like icebergs and drifted away.
*
When he got home, the night air smelled like campfire. A tiny dog yapped uncontrollably, the yips connected to each other in space like beads on a string.
Erica stirred a pot on the stove. She frowned into the pot in the same pensive way she frowned in her sleep.
“You know what I was thinking today?” Gerard said, coming up behind her. “The man who invented the treadmill must’ve had a terrible sense of humour.”
“My brother’s having the same wiring problems,” she said, without turning around. “Can you take a look tomorrow?”
“Bad day at work?”
“My day was fine.”
He pulled open a drawer, saw there were no spoons. “We’re paying your brother to live here. You’d think he was doing us a favor.”
“He is. You know what their mortgage is for this place?” She knocked the wooden spoon on the lip of the pot and licked it.
Gerard thought of the French onion soup he’d made soon after they moved here. For a brief period, he’d taken an interest in cooking elaborate meals—tortellini, lasagna, French onion soup from scratch. A soufflé that Cameron nearly ruined when he barged in to deliver a stack of appliance manuals. Gerard stopped cooking once he realized his meals weren’t cost-efficient.
“Fine,” Gerard said, leaning against the counter. “I’ll go over tomorrow. I have a day off.”
She opened the dishwasher, sighed at the dirty dishes. “It might make you feel better about the situation. Fixing his house might feel, I dunno, empowering?”
Their last kitchen was the size of a Mini Cooper. And yet here, Erica, bent over and reaching into the dishwasher, seemed so far away, she might as well have been in another apartment.
He walked towards Erica and pulled her toward him, his arms on her waist. She had round cheeks that flushed when she was told she was beautiful, which, admittedly, wasn’t often enough. Someday he’d buy her useless bracelets and nice blazers and overpriced pairs of jeans with meticulously torn holes in the knees. Fill the house with extravagance.
“I want this to feel like our house,” she said. “I’ll plant tomatoes and herbs in the spring.”
“Why don’t we go on a cruise?” Gerard asked, loosely rocking the small of her back. “Tomorrow? Why not tomorrow?”
Erica pulled away and returned to the soup. “To save money?”
Gerard watched her stir in silence. If he told her about the dinner party now, she’d certainly say no.
Instead, he went down to the basement. He tried to draw Zeus with his leg on an oil barrel, but Zeus’s muscles looked like metastasized popcorn and his pose looked like he was preparing for a colonoscopy. He erased furiously until his hand cramped. He then emptied his mind and lay down flat on the linoleum floor. The hard, cold surface felt oddly comfortable against the back of his head.
*
Once, electricity was magic. College recruited aspiring magicians and explained all the tricks. Now Gerard lived in a suburban house he didn’t own, doing electrical work for free. He stood on a ladder, inhaling decades of dust and probably asbestos.
Cameron’s son materialized in the doorway and watched from below. A Nintendo Switch dangled between his two fingers. “Your shirt has a hole in it,” he said.
“It’s vintage,” Gerard said. “Nine Inch Nails. I got it at a garage sale, just down the street from here. That’s what us aging hipsters do: we buy t-shirts from concerts we haven’t been to.”
“What’s a hipster?”
Gerard sighed and crossed his arms. “A state of mind, really.” With his eyes, he followed the white wire to the next stud and promptly lost it in the shadow. “Not a mindset I subscribe to, personally.”
Cam’s wife walked in and handed Gerard a flashlight. “How’s it going?”
“It’s going,” Gerard said. “Beer might help.”
She left the basement utility room and Gerard looked down at the kid. “Chris, have I told you about my graphic novel?” he said.
The kid shook his head. He wore a look of judgmental suspicion, like a wary construction foreman.
“It’s in the beginning stages of production. Storyboarding and all that.”
“Is there a superhero?”
“Sure. I’m rebooting classical mythology in a modern way. Greek gods were the superheroes of their day, you know. People always need superheroes because people always find the world lacking.”
Cam’s wife came back and handed him an open beer. “Did Erica mention the job?”
“No.” His stomach started to cramp at the mention. He took a swig.
“So, our rights assistant waited too long to request maternity leave, which left us scrambling. If you have any interest in publishing—”
“I went to school to be an electrician.”
“Erica said you like comic books? And you’re not…how did she put it…not fully committed to being an electrician?”
He drank half the bottle, let the sound of his chugging hang in the room. “Graphic novels. And thanks for the opportunity to improve myself. Speaking of work, I should get back to it.”
“Right.” She smiled nervously. “Well, think it over.”
When she’d left, he finished the beer. His stomach still hurt. A grenade-shaped ball of dread had forged in his gut. Instead of helping Cam, maybe it was the perfect time to tell Erica about the dinner party. Also, he was due for a smoke break.
He ran across the street and snuck into his own garage as quietly as possible, but the cheap particleboard door slammed behind him.
“Ger?” Erica called from upstairs.
He locked himself in the unfinished garage bathroom. From the closet he pulled a roll of toilet paper from the industrial-sized bag. Five of its friends came along with it, bouncing on the floor. He picked up the first roll and plucked a pipe and lighter from its center.
The one-hitter relieved the pit of pain in his stomach. He stared at himself in the mirror and smoked another, examining his lower abdomen, where he once kept an effortlessly flat stomach. He realized he’d been gone too long—long enough to require explanation.
He went upstairs to talk to Erica. He had to at this point; their conversation was his alibi for disappearing. There was no sign of her, only lilacs on the coffee table. As if they lived in the kind of house that always had lilacs on tables.
The tables would overflow with flowers at the dinner party. Stems would cram mason jars on every surface. He’d overwhelm their company with so much beauty it’d make them sick.
The empty house echoed with his footsteps. He wondered if she’d leave him. How would she tell him? Would it be an event, or a remark made in passing?
A hairline crack traversed the corner of the living room. An easy fix, but a superficial one. The crack would still be there. The crack was inevitable.
*
Gerard balanced on the ladder—a ceiling joist in one hand, a screwdriver in the other—and wrote a guest list in his mind.
He’d invite Cam’s family, obviously. The party would dazzle Cam’s wife. She’d see that working in publishing would underutilize his artistic talents.
He’d insist on Erica inviting work friends, too. He’d watch her with any guys she brought, especially Wesley, who she’d mentioned a handful of times, and Jim, who called their landline once. He could ask around if she spent time with anyone else. Not that he thought she’d cheat. Not yet, anyway.
“Got a minute?”
Gerard looked down and saw Cameron. Cam thrust his fingers into his jeans’ pockets, thumbs sticking out. “I wanted to talk to you about your house.”
Gerard hopped off the ladder, landing with his knees straight.
“I was thinking about the basement. Think you could add track lighting down there, something like that?”
“Don’t worry,” Cam said. “I’d pay for it.”
Gerard turned his gaze back up to the ceiling. He had been looking at it for twenty minutes straight and had the red, black, and white wires burned into his brain. Maybe he’d gotten too high.
“Thanks for your input,” he said, “but I like the lighting the way it is. It’s ideal for uninterrupted creative work.”
He didn’t know what half of the wires were. Some of them had to be vestigial. An unidentifiable strand of orange was poking out of a rafter. What the hell was that? Where the hell did it go?
“I can appreciate that,” Cam said. “But it’ll increase the value of the house.”
“The house,” Gerard said.
“Your house,” Cam said, dropping his shoulders. “Your house.”
Gerard ascended the ladder’s three steps and shone a flashlight into the dark. His breath caught the carcass of a spider floating in space, which vibrated for a moment before it went still.
“Look, Ger, I wanted to talk to you about something else,” Cam said. “About finances.”
The feeling of dread re-condensed in Gerard’s gut.
“Erica’s worried you aren’t happy,” Cam said. “Ingrid and I were talking about it, and, well, if you’re able to put a bit of money aside—”
Gerard didn’t want to know the rest. It wouldn’t be on his terms, and he wouldn’t be able to say no. “Did I mention we’re having a party?”
“No.”
“It’s going to be a classy affair: cloth napkins, classical music, cupcakes from that expensive place you keep talking about.”
“Doesn’t sound like Erica’s cup of tea.” Cam stuck his thumbs through the belt loops and pulled on them, as if testing their durability.
“Don’t worry, we won’t trash the place. You’re invited, of course.” He couldn’t delay Cam’s serious talk much longer. He needed an exit strategy. Or—he had to actually fix the electrical problem.
He’d start at the source. That’s what adults did. They approached problems head-on, no drama.
Cam cleared his throat. “I need your input about the basement.”
“Don’t interrupt me, I’m working.” He reached for the light fixture like a child for a toy.
“Are you sure—” Cam said.
“Let’s see what’s under here, you son of a bitch.” Gerard aimed his screwdriver, using his other hand to steady the base.
His head hit the concrete first.
*
Gerard opened his eyes. The horizontal room spun up and away over and over. His head was in Cam’s wife’s lap. Her braless small chest, her prominent collarbones, right above his face. He smiled up at her.
“Shh, shh,” she said. “The ambulance is coming.”
Moths fluttered on the other side of the small, dirt-spattered window, turning the world black and white and speckled, like noise on a photograph—an episode of The Twilight Zone on a tiny TV.
Gerard couldn’t be sure—he couldn’t know right away, the wires still twisting above him, moving in and through the ceiling like poltergeists—but now he could vaguely remember writing the note that he found in the bookstore. That he’d written it in his left hand, picturing himself as someone else. Picturing Erica in that green dress he loved, being bored by her co-workers, sending the guests home after dessert so they could be alone. Calling him incorrigible, her round cheeks lifted, and he’d know what she meant.
He felt great relief. He closed his eyes.
Above him, the light fizzled and faded with a sigh.
KSM writes fiction and sometimes essays. Originally from the Washington, D.C. area, she now lives in Toronto. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in journals such as Bellevue Literary Review, Grain, The Greensboro Review, The Malahat Review, and Wigleaf. She holds an MFA from the University of British Columbia. Find her at her website..
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