The Gum Thief (9 page)

She was a quiet child, and I used to think it was because she was smart and had ideas too large to put into words, but now I think she kept quiet to avoid having to engage in her mother's sordid life.

After she leaves, I'll have way too much time on my hands and will have no choice but to accept the fact that the chance of my falling in love again is zero. When did I reach that point? A few years ago?

I
know the moment I finally understood it. It was that night at Denny's with you. It was like I saw myself at the next booth, sixty-eight years old, eating breakfast alone at three in the afternoon, using a coupon for a discount, with the only thing on my horizon going back to my condo to wait for my next meal.

So it's not like I haven't been thinking of you since that date. But when
I
do,
I
think about The Void. About loss. You may or may not deserve this, but that's what
I
see. You may well be the male equivalent of me-a certain age, a grocery list of bad decisions-whatever. Stay away from my daughter. She has a nice healthy thing maybe going with some guy there-Kyle?-and
I
don't want you messing with that. Act your age. Go get hammered at some bar. But leave my daughter alone.

DD

Glove Pond

Gloria smiled at her guests. "Kyle Falconcrest! An honour to have you here in our charming, gracious home."

"Thank you. This is my wife, Brittany."

"Hello."

Steve said, "I'm glad you could take the time to visit our small, modest university. Can I get either of you a drink?" The young couple looked at each other. Brittany said, "Do you have any white wine?" "All we have is Scotch. Would you like some Scotch? No wait-we have some gin, too." Gloria's eyes widened; she would never surrender her private stock. Steve recanted: "No, just Scotch."

Kyle said, "Scotch is fine. On the rocks, please."

"We're out of ice cubes."

"Neat."

Steve went to fetch the drinks, and Gloria ushered Kyle and Brittany into the living room. "Kyle, your novel is magnificent."

"Thank you."

"I read it twice.
It
deserves all the acclaim it gets, and the huge royalty cheques you receive must sweeten life too."

Kyle blushed. Brittany said, "He's just today signed a second book deal."

Gloria veritably shrieked, half to her guests and half towards the kitchen, "A second book deal! How exciting! I can only imagine how much money it was for."

Brittany said, "It hits the papers tomorrow, so it won't be much of a surprise then. Ten million dollars."

Gloria almost fainted with pleasure. "Ten million dollars?" She called to Steve, coming in from the kitchen. "Young Kyle here is getting $10 million for his second novel."

"Is he?" It was the most Steve could do not to break a highball glass on the table edge and slit his own throat. "Let's have a drink, then."

He passed his guests their glasses and Gloria immediately proposed a toast: "To your $10 million book deal." Steve had no choice but to join in the clinking of glasses.

"What is your new novel about?" Gloria asked.

"It's a modern love story with a twist."

"A twist? How thrilling."

"It's about people who work in an office superstore."

"An office superstore?" Gloria was confused.

Steve, using the tone of voice adults use when proving to younger people that they know the current hip bands, said, "I was in one today, as a matter of fact. Staples."

"You didn't tell me that." Gloria felt betrayed.

Brittany volunteered a description. "They're those huge box stores near the freeway off-ramps. They're everywhere. Staples, Office Depot. Those kinds of places."

Gloria took on the aspect of someone trying to attach a name to a face at a party. "I ..." Steve said, "For God's sake, Gloria, everyone knows about office superstores." "I buy my stationery at that store a few blocks from here.
It
never occurred to me to go to a ... an office ...

superstore. "

"You can get tremendous deals at superstores," said Brittany. "Post-it Notes and reams of bond paper are half the price they are at smaller, non-globalized stores. The aisles are wide. You can shop in comfort and style. They even have entire aisles devoted solely to ballpoint pens."

Gloria felt out of it. "Tomorrow I'm going to make a point of visiting an office superstore."

Steve felt like he'd won a small victory, but the smirk on Kyle's face robbed him of joy. "How's your drink?" Steve asked.

"It's fine. I have to go slow on the booze and watch my diet if I'm going to meet my deadline."

Gloria purred to Kyle,
"It
must be something to be young, handsome, rich and talented, with a beautiful wife and the future wide open to you. Don't you think so, Steve?"

Steve replied by fetching more Scotch.

"What are you working on now, Steve?" Kyle asked.

"A new novel."

"Really?"

"It
doesn't have a title yet."

Gloria said, "Actually, the book doesn't exist yet."

"That's not true," Steve said. "I'm well into it."

"What's this novel about, then?"

"Curiously, it also takes place in an office superstore. "

"What a coincidence!" said Brittany.

Gloria sniggered.

Kyle was confused. "Really-an office superstore?

You're setting a novel in an office superstore? Are you far along with it?" Kyle asked.

"Oh, you know, a few chapters."

"Well, I'll be-"

Gloria said, "Steve, why don't you give us a reading?"

"I couldn't possibly do that, Gloria. The book is too young to be released into the world." "I see." Brittany asked, "Do you spend much time in office superstores, Steve? By the way, I must confess, I'm a fan of your work.
Gumdrops, Lilies and Forceps
was deeply moving.
It
changed the way I view fertility in literature." She blushed. "I can't believe I actually get to call one of my all-time heroes 'Steve'-in his own house, no less."

Gloria blurted out, "I'm an actress."

"Oh?" said Brittany, taken by surprise.

"I'm Lady Windermere in the local theatre production of
Lady Windermere's Fan."
"Isn't that something," said Kyle. "For me it's all about the craft, you know. Act, act,
act."

Steve quickly batted the conversation back on track: :'I go to office superstores all the time. I enjoy the wide array of goods they provide at reasonable prices. And they're such a-you know-a popular phenomenon. I think it's important to
engage with society."

Kyle sipped his Scotch. Was Steve
really
writing a novel set in an office superstore? As far as Kyle knew, Steve's concept of literature was frozen in time roughly three weeks before the invention of the telephone.

Steve said to Kyle, "I'm so busy at the university I haven't had time to read your first novel. Tell me, what is it called?"

"It's called
Two Lost Decades."

"A good title."

"Thank you."

"What's it about? A vulgar little question, but in the end, it's the only one that matters."

"Okay. Because you ask. It's about this guy. He's fortyish. He used to be married, and had two kids, but one of them was hit by a car while riding his bike. Almost immediately after that his wife got cancer, and at the beginning it brought his family together in a way that he had never imagined possible, but that didn't last long, and a fog of death clouded their lives for a year. Then his wife got better, but she was tired, and our protagonist was tired-and he'd also said and done foolish things during the fog-so his wife left him, getting custody of the child.

"This guy endures all of these tribulations, except they don't change him. They don't make him a better person. They make him a worse person. He begins to lead a falling-down life. His body won't fit his old clothes, and he doesn't know how to find new ones. He keeps waiting for the moral of his life to appear, but it never does. The clock is ticking, and all he can see is decades more of the same thing until his body gives out, and he wonders what the point is of being alive if it's merely more of the same-and the thing is, he'd like to change things, but he doesn't know what, or how. He sees a scam in everything the world offers. He doesn't believe in the Apocalypse, and he thinks that both faith and reason are equally stupid, and that all leaders are frauds.

"He tries to lose himself in work, but he's also lazy. He wonders if he should declare himself a ward of the state and live in a homeless shelter, but he can't bring himself to do that, though he feels close to the edge. He looks back on his early life for clues to his present disaster, but he doesn't think he was raised
to
be overly dependent on others or without morality or without a few practical hints for good living. But the other people in his family are pretty tight with each other, and he knows that on those rare occasions when they discuss him, or even think about him, it's probably not too fondly or with much charity. He used up all of his 'welcome coupons' in the family department when he was younger. He pretty much used up his welcome coupons
everywhere.
He feels wretched, yet he knows that he has a ways to go before he hits bottom. Perversely, a vision of the bottom keeps him going. Every morning he's curious to see what new indignity he will be subjected to what flagrant new assaults will be made on his good taste. And will he ever change in some way that's good or meaningful?"

There was a pregnant silence after Kyle's plot summation. Steve used this moment to try to remember the office superstore he'd visited that very day, that grotesque hangar filled with Chinese-made office crap, staffed with kindergarten students and offering all the charm of an airport luggage-handling facility.
Steve, you
can
write a novel set in an office superstore. You
can.
Bring a notepad. Pretend you're an anthropologist-anthropologists can do anything and appear smart. Who knows-perhaps a grand theme will emerge from the stacks of underpriced CDs, vinyl attaché cases and software upgrade kits.

Steve realized the silence was going on a bit too long (oh yes, that wretched young man's wretched novel) and looked out of the corner of his eye at his wife, her jewelled talons clasped to her bosom, her eyes tearing up. "So deep. So truly,
truly
deep," she said, casting a taunting eye at Steve. "So simple and yet I felt blood pulsing through every fibre of its being. Intelligent, yet broad. And it's sold millions of copies, correct?"