Chapter 10
W
hen Lucas steps out onto his balcony, he can’t see the building across the way. He can barely even see the sky. All he sees is the pile.
“Good morning! The pile grew again last night!” he hears a voice shout over the sound of the sirens.
It’s the woman in the purple dress. She’s standing on the balcony below Lucas, peering up between the spaces in the flooring.
“What’s that noise?” Lucas shouts back.
“Police cars! Your cult members got into a fight last night!”
“What? What kind of a fight? Who with?”
“With each other! They couldn’t agree on exactly what the angel, that is to say you, meant when you said ‘guard the pile.’ So there was an argument, and they divided into factions that interpreted your words differently. Some thought you meant they should watch so that no new things were added, but others thought you meant that no things should be taken away!” the woman in the purple dress shouts up at him.
“Shouldn’t the result of guarding the pile be exactly the same, no matter how I meant it?” Lucas shouts back in frustration.
“Have you ever met human beings?” she asks.
Finally, the sirens stop, and the police cars down in the street take the violent cult members away. That’s when Lucas first hears the protesters. They’re standing across the street, chanting something.
“Who are those people?” he asks.
The woman lights up.
“Oh! Those are the protesters! Four different groups of them!”
“Four?”
“Yes! That one group there is protesting against the pile. They’re anti-pile! But that second group is protesting for
the pile, because they’re of the opinion that piles have rights too. And that third group is protesting against protesters, because they think this whole protesting thing has gone too far.”
“And the fourth group?” Lucas asks.
“Oh! They’re protesting against you!”
“I . . . beg your pardon?”
“They are members of the Facebook group Angels Are Fake. They’ve heard about you, and now they want to prove that you’re not an angel.”
Lucas squints over the railing, slightly worriedly.
“What are they yelling?”
“Oh, they’re yelling that you should jump off the balcony. Because if you really are an angel, you’d be able to fly.”
Lucas takes what is possibly the deepest breath he’s ever taken in his life.
“If I don’t get to finish my video game soon, I might actually do that,” he mutters.
“But it’s kind of fun, though, isn’t it? That something is happening!” The woman in the purple dress grins from down on her balcony.
“Excuse me?” Lucas asks.
“It’s great that there’s something happening
! Nothing’s happened in my life for a very long time!” The woman smiles excitedly.
That’s the most insane thing Lucas has heard in a while, which is really saying something.
“You think it’s fun that a bunch of lunatics are protesting me? And fun that a bunch of other lunatics think I’m an angel and started fighting each other?” he asks.
The woman shrugs.
“They weren’t very good at fighting. I mean, it was a lactose intolerant versus a gluten allergic. I think they hurt each other worse with their farts than with their fists. Also, I think all those lunatics down there were just waiting for something to happen in their lives too.”
Lucas stares at her through the spaces between the floorboards.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
The woman shrugs again.
“You know, I’ve seen a lot of Facebook groups. One is called We Who Are Ninjas. Get it? That’s how badly people want to be something, anything at all, that not even ninjas want to live in secret now. The lunatics are just trying to find a little thing to give their lives meaning, Lucas. Just like the rest of us. They’re just trying to be happy.”
Lucas looks at her somewhat curiously, which is not a common look for him. “Are you a . . . ninja?” he asks.
“If I was, I’d be great at it, and you would never know.” She smiles, although her eyes are sad. Down on the street the protesters are shouting at each other, and at Lucas, but most of all
they’re probably shouting just to shout. Just to be heard. Lucas stands quietly for a very, very long time, thinking about how awful it must feel: to be a person who so desperately wants something to happen. Lucas never wants anything to go on at all.
Finally, he says in a soft voice down to the woman in the purple dress:
“I’m . . . no expert. But I think most people who want to be happy try to add things to their lives. But really what maybe they should be doing is taking something away.”
The woman in the purple dress seems to ponder this for quite a while before deciding that Lucas is completely wrong.
“You’re fortunate, Lucas. You view loneliness as taking people away. But for most of us, loneliness is just adding more loneliness.”
Lucas peers down between the floorboards. He sees cat toys, but no cat.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers when it finally occurs to him what must have happened.
The woman in the purple dress looks up at him with tears on her cheeks and whispers back:
“People who have cats live longer. There’s research. I think maybe it’s because you don’t want to live as long after it dies. My cat was very old, at the end he was almost blind, I used to wake up at night because he’d accidentally knock things over on the floor. I miss that all the time now. It’s hard to get used to a silent apartment.”
Lucas doesn’t really know how to respond to that. He doesn’t think much about death. Not much about life either. He has found that the easiest way to be happy is to think about time in about eight-hour increments, and to always have something to look forward to at the end of those hours: pad thai, video games, wine. Small, great things. But then again, Lucas has never loved a cat, so what does he really know about life?
“Good morning,” a voice beside him says suddenly.
It’s the woman in the green shirt, standing on the balcony next to his.
“Good morning!” the purple dress shouts from the balcony below, wiping away her tears.
“Good morning,” says Lucas, horrified to find that he’s smiling slightly. He’s slowly transforming into one of them.
“How’s your video game going?” Green Shirt asks kindly.
“How did you know . . . I play video games?” Lucas asks suspiciously.
She smiles as though doing so isn’t the least bit exhausting to her face muscles at all.
“I hear the music through the wall. My children play that game too. It seems fun.”
Lucas nods, and before he can stop himself, he hears himself saying:
“Yeah, it’s a lot of fun. You should try playing it.”
Who is he? A motivational speaker? He can’t believe his ears. The woman’s smile becomes a little sadder as she whispers back:
“Maybe. Maybe I can ask my kids if I can join in, when I . . .”
She falls silent. Looks embarrassed.
“How’re your TV shows coming along?” Purple Dress interrupts from her balcony.
“Oh, good, thank you. I’ve watched so many now that I almost . . . ,” Green Shirt begins, but then she cuts herself off, blushing.
“So many that you almost what?” hollers Purple Dress.
“Oh, never mind. It’s stupid . . . ,” mumbles Green Shirt.
“No, come on, I’m sure it’s not stupid at all,” Lucas hears himself saying. It’s like he can’t control his mouth anymore, as if he’s becoming social. He shudders like the word is a terrible disease.
Then the green shirt, her voice quivering with longing, admits:
“Well, I was just thinking that I’ve . . . well, I’ve seen so many good TV shows on my own now that I almost miss watching a bad TV show with my family.”
There is silence on the three balconies for quite some time after that. Finally Lucas clears his throat and asks:
“Are you still in a coma?”
Green Shirt nods slowly.
“Yes. But the doctor called from the hospital yesterday. My husband and our children were there. The doctor said they were very sad. The children had drawn pictures, they put them on the door of my room. My daughter wrote that she’d cleaned her room so that it would be nice when I came home. My son wrote that he had learned to wash his own underwear. And I looked at my husband’s Facebook profile this morning. He’s joined a group where members give tips on how to keep your home tidy. My husband had posted pictures in the group of how he had made the beds up all by himself and how he had put all the dishes in the dishwasher. He was very proud.”
“About time!” Purple Dress shouts.
Green Shirt nods, looking somewhat moved but also a little bit annoyed.
“Yes, it was very nice. Only that, unfortunately, he’d done it all wrong.”
“How do you put dishes in a dishwasher . . . wrong?” Lucas asks.
“Isn’t that obvious?” both women ask in unison.
Not remotely obvious at all, actually, Lucas thinks to himself. You just push the dishes in where they fit, right? But he doesn’t have time to say that, thankfully, because Green Shirt continues irritably:
“My husband had put the pillowcases inside out on the pillows too . . .”
“Nooo? Yuck!” shouts Purple Dress in disgust.
“How does that matter?” Lucas wonders out loud. Big mistake.
Green Shirt looks at him as if she is looking at a five-year-old holding a chain saw inside a bouncy castle.
“If it makes any difference
? The pillowcase is . . . inside out!”
“Sure. But it still accomplishes the exact same thing no matter what, right, the pillowcase?” Lucas mutters uncomprehendingly.
“You should really find a partner to live with,” Green Shirt says firmly.
“These are exactly the kinds of things that make me think I reeeaaally shouldn’t,” Lucas protests, terrified.
“Lucas is happy alone!” hollers Purple Dress from her balcony below.
Then Green Shirt smiles again. This time a little enviously. And so she tells him:
“You know, I tried the pad thai with peanuts, as you suggested. I always thought I didn’t like peanuts, just because my husband and our kids don’t like peanuts, but now I’m actually starting to think that maybe I’ve just forgotten what I actually like and don’t like for myself.”
“So you liked
pad thai with peanuts? I told you so!” Lucas nods with enormous satisfaction, like a raccoon who’s fallen into a trash can filled with cotton candy.
The woman makes a disgusted face.
“Ugh, no! Peanuts in food? It was horrible!”
But then her face softens and she adds, her voice full of gratitude:
“But it was very nice to find that out for myself. What I don’t like.”
Lucas smiles again, which makes his jaws ache a little from the unnatural movement. And so they just stand there for a long while, three humans together, on separate balconies.
“Do you miss your family?” Purple Dress asks after a while.
“Very much,” admits Green Shirt.
“What is it that you miss most?”
Green Shirt ponders this for a long, long time.
“I miss making up. I don’t miss the fights, I don’t miss nagging and arguing and getting upset about the ways in which we’re so different, but I miss . . . making up. It’s like we’re choosing each other all over again when that happens.”
“I hope they’ll appreciate you more now,” says Purple Dress.
“I think . . . maybe . . . I appreciate myself more now. Ugh, that sounds stupid, doesn’t it?” Green Shirt whispers.
“No, not stupid at all,” Lucas hears himself say.
“Thank you,” whispers Green Shirt.
“Are you going to wake up from your coma?” Purple Dress asks.
“Well, maybe,” Green Shirt says, but it might be mostly because she really can’t stand the idea that all the pillowcases at home are inside out now.
Then she adds, her cheeks reddening:
“You don’t need that much appreciation as a mother. Just a little bit. You don’t need that much validation. Just . . . a little. It’s so silly, but I miss another thing, too, from when the kids were very young. They used to come running and jump into my arms when I came home. Jump
into my arms. Have you ever experienced that?”
Lucas and the woman in the purple dress shake their heads from their respective balconies. Then the woman in the green shirt says softly:
“It’s . . . unbelievable. You never forget how it feels. Sometimes I think that children should be teenagers first, and become small afterwards, because it’s unbearable for parents to get used to the fact that they don’t jump anymore.”
“My cat used to jump,” whispers the woman in the purple dress.
Then they stand in silence, the three people, a breath away but with whole lives between them.
A gentle breeze comes through the city. It sweeps over the pile and rattles through all the junk that people have left there. But once it wasn’t junk, Lucas thinks, once it was all things. Once someone bought that frying pan or that ice skate, thinking: Maybe this
is what will make me happy?
For a short moment, Lucas thinks that this strange feeling he is experiencing is a fever. Maybe he’s coming down with a cold? But then he realizes it’s something much, much worse. It’s empathy.
Fortunately, his doorbell rings, and then that feeling passes almost immediately.