vows of silence
by David Gianatasio


The copier hisses quietly, like a snake I can vaguely sense but can't quite see. The cleaning crew tramps by in the hall, vacuums moaning. My hands are thick with Vaseline. Music jangles happily from the CD player: songs about dancing; everyone's dancing, 'cuz dancing's the only thing that matters in this world. Keys work in locks. Doors open, close. Approaching footsteps. I have 5 minutes, I estimate, before they arrive to scrub this suite. I wipe with a Kleenex, pull up my pants and turn around to observe the sheets falling gently to the floor from the Pitney Bowes machine. Blank pages. I reset the copier for another 500.

***

My wife's got moving on her mind, again, even though she knows it's something we can't possibly afford. Besides, I like our apartment with its creamy wall-to-wall shag and bay windows looking down on the bus stop below. Sometimes, on weekends, or after work, I sit in the living-room and listen to the conversations of the people as they wait in the glass shelter, its transparent walls caked with grime and half-torn movie advertisements. I'm about to bring up the harassment complaint my assistant filed today at work when the telephone rings. It's my wife's brother; he's mildly retarded, and from what I can pick up from her side of the conversation, he's asking if he can take a submarine to his new job as a bagger at Shop 'N Save.

***

Crawling among the data lines and power cords tangled beneath my desk, listening, I swear I can hear a distant, monotonous tone -- unnerving yet musical, static yet melodious. Wendy, my assistant, comes back unexpectedly and finds me there, ear pressed to the wall, pants around my ankles. She clucks his tongue, removes some CDs from my desk. She should ask before borrowing, but I don't mind. I've got more intriguing music now, buzzing from the telephone jack in the wall.

***

My mother calls around midnight "It's the only time we can reach you with these crazy hours you've been working, you never return our calls, your father and I are concerned, your wife's concerned." I listen for five minutes, saying nothing. Then she hangs up.

***

Clutching my stomach as the train hums along. I smile at the other commuters, nod my head. My guts are in knots, I'm choking back bile. Across the aisle, an executive-type listens to music through earphones, tapping his fingers on the armrest. The tapping sounds like Morse code: dots and dashes, pauses, then dashes, dots, dashes, dots. My stomach begins to settle down. Outside, there's a single deer drinking from the marble fountain at the entrance to an office park. I stroke myself beneath the Wall Street Journal covering my lap.

***

I'm dreaming of that night 20 years ago at camp, sneaking into the director's house and fooling around with his wife until dawn. We split a six pack and watched a cable documentary about the Middle East. "The day they shovel dirt on my casket," she began, panting rapidly, "The day they shovel dirt over YOUR casket ... that'll be the headline on the newspaper in the box outside the cemetery gates: 'Crisis in Middle East.' That's a given... it'll never stop... there's nothing anyone can do about it. Nothing changes. Nothing. Ever."

***










The severance deal's pretty sweet: 12 weeks full pay and benefits. On my way out, I unplug the copier and wheel it along the hall, ride down three levels and push it into the lobby.The sound is not unlike a gurney being pushed along the corridors of a hospital ward. The machine and I are half-way across the parking lot before security catches up, Wendy's smiling face framed by peroxide-blonde curls in a window high above.

***

A few months later the money runs out, and I've got to come clean about my work situation. Then, where have I been going every day? Just sitting on a bench in the park, feeding the pigeons, squirrels and, one day last week, a deer that wandered over from the nature reserve. My wife lights a cigarette; the tobacco pops and crackles like breakfast cereal. I lean in closer, listening, then draw my ear back slightly singed from the sizzling orange tip. My wife sighs. She'd given up smoking four years ago.

***

Lying awake I concentrate with all my might: heartbeats, lungs expand and contract, digestive juices flowing -- a kind of biological symphony. On the beside table, our vintage art-deco alarm clock keeps the beat like a metronome. I raise my arms and wave them around, like a conductor in a concert hall. My wife sits across the room, smoking, winding and unwinding strands of her hair. I feel at peace with myself and the universe.

***

When she finally moves out, she mumbles something about how on top of everything else, I haven't spoken a word for two weeks. I sympathize ... but why bother speaking when there's so much to hear? Everything makes its own music. Times passes. The power's disconnected and the heat's turned off. Twirling naked through the dark, spacious rooms, touching myself in poignant ways, I'm beginning to learn how to dance.


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