Holy Water Read online

  “What about Nanoabsorbers™?”

  Giffler looks at the ceiling for cameras, mics. He bends down, cuts his flat hand across his throat. “Already causing problems in white mice.”

  “Too much sweat?”

  “No. Massification.”

  “What?”

  “Growths.”

  “Tumors?”

  “Your word. I’m sticking with massifications.”

  “Which technically is not a word.”

  “Which technically is why I have a particular affinity for it.”

  “But it’s the same ingredients as always, reconstituted.”

  “All I know is something went kaflooey and they’re pulling the plug. Your entire division is being rightsized.”

  “Layed off. Fired. Wrongsized.”

  “Think up a better word for it, a more employee- and economy-sensitive phrase that big business and cable hosts will embrace, and we’ll make millions. We’ll write a book.”

  “Pillow-fucked, redundafired, gangBangalored.”

  “Should have seen it coming. Asia rising. China. India. Shit, I’ve already got our nanny making our two-year-old watch every Chinese-language and Bollywood piece of shit she can get her hands on. Bend It Like My Big Fat Crouching Hindu Wedding. To understand those cultures is to be eternally wealthy.”

  “So why not me?” Henry speculates about the package the others have been given, wonders if maybe being an outsourcing victim is just the fashionable kick in the ass his life needs right now. A chance at a fresh start. Away from focus groups, team meetings, armpits, or worse: Giffler.

  “Because you were right is why. You are a bit of a knowledge worker. Your previous job, the one you were doing five minutes ago, was not a knowledge job per se. Anyone can stand here and whack off while chicks apply things to their naked sweaty pits. I did it for years. But your supplementary skills, they can’t be replicated.”

  Henry stares through the glass. He thinks one of the participants is saying she feels dizzy, but because she’s saying it while looking into her armpit it’s hard to read her lips. “You know,” he says, “there are probably employees who would volunteer to be, you know, rightsized, if the package were enticing enough.”

  “Indeed there are. And those are precisely the ones we cannot afford to lose. Those who want to leave us of their own volition but lack the courage or bank account to do so are indispensable. Beloved.”

  “For instance, I know someone who would love that, um, opportunity.”

  “Not gonna happen, Tuhoe.”

  “So where am I being transferred to? Dental? Bath and Body? Chemical Weapons?”

  “Here’s a hint: two thirds of the earth is covered with it.”

  “Bullshit?”

  “Hint number two: two thirds of the people on this great planet can’t get enough of it.”

  “I’m being transferred to the Department of Bacon? Please, rightsize me, Giffler. Downsize me. GangBangalore me. Offer me a package. Make me a victim of whatever euphemism for shit-canned Human Resources can come up with.”

  Giffler laughs, but shakes his head.

  “Water?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “We don’t even have a water division.”

  “Do now. Like . . .” Giffler counts on his fingers. “Like six. They’re buying up companies like there’s no tomorrow. Like when they had to play catch-up with the whole trans-fat scare. Twenty-grain this. Organic that. Some number-crunching muckety-muck must have told the C-suiters between lap dances at their favorite upscale gentleman’s sports cabaret that water was the future. A tremendous quote-unquote long-term growth driver. So they’ve been on a tear.”

  “Water? I’m not—”

  Giffler waves him off. “We’re talking the sustenance of billions. It’s over my head, but they told me that by 2025, five billion of the world’s nine billion people will be facing a scarcity of clean water. So there’s big money to be made. Every time you take a shower, a drink, or a shit, someone somewhere’s going, Ca-ching!”

  “I have no background in water.”

  “Not true. Did you not minor in geology at Northeastern?”

  “Christ, Giffler.”

  “If Americans continue to use their current average of one hundred gallons per day, thirty-six states will have significant shortages by 2013.”

  “So I’d be focusing on what, the Southwest? Arizona, California?”

  Giffler shakes his head. “There’d be some traveling.”

  “I hate traveling. You know that. I hate flying. I hate leaving New York. Where, then?”

  “I’m not at liberty to say. But you might want to gain some proficiency with chopsticks.”

  “Japan?”

  “And get your malaria, your bird, your swine flu shot. Your Ebola booster, if there is such a thing.”

  “I will not go to China.”

  “Not China or India per se. From what I hear. Wonderful cultures, though. On the rise. My guess is that someplace that is impoverished, polluted, riddled with disease, and even more economically flawed than we are would be your quote-unquote territory. But what do I know?”

  “I have no knowledge of the industry, the languages. I know nothing about those cultures. I hate travel. Plus you know that I have a huge problem with germs.”

  “These are some of the most fertile economies in the world we’re talking about. It is the Asian century, Tuhoe. You’ll probably just be a relationship placeholder until they figure out what they’re really gonna need, but think of how you can exploit that on your resume.”

  “Placeholder?”

  “Let’s call it investor relations. VP of global water, investor relations, let’s call it. Talk about fulfilling. You could actually be doing something that makes a difference.”

  “So it’s what—desalinization? Ultra-filtration? Some new way to help people in the third world have access to fresh water?”

  “Bottled, actually.”

  “We’re going to give them bottled—”

  “No. Not them. You’re going to help them learn customer relations and set up a customer call center for a U.S.-based bottled water company. More back-office stuff than anything. But still, terribly important.”

  “Which company?”

  “Oh, you know. The one that fucking hippie lesbian couple started in Vermont.”

  “Happy Mountain Springs? They’re privately held.”

  “Were. Apparently even save-the-planet hippie lesbians have their price. Of course, they’re contractually obligated to stay on as the face of the company for three years and let us use their likenesses.”

  “Why do you need me if you’re outsourcing it?”

  “Someone’s got to set up the outsourcing. Teach the locals how to perform as cluelessly as our customer service people in Lincoln, Nebraska—for a quarter the salary, of course.”

  “Jesus, Giffler.”

  “Let’s call it presourcing. Much more 2010, much more marketable than outsourcing.”

  “I’m not gonna do it.”

  “Fine. Just remember that refusal to accept a plum assignment like the one that has just been hypothetically proposed to you would constitute a breach of contract that would result not in a rightsizing, or laying-off, or the gift of a package or parachute, golden or otherwise, but in a good old-fashioned ‘You’re fired and Luther here from Security is giving you six minutes to clean your sorry personals out of your desk and get your ass out of the building.’ Hypothetically, of course.”

  “What about you? What are they doing with you?”

  “Me? I’m firing people, mostly. But until the day comes when I must outsource my despicable self, I’ll be your U.S.-based boss and life coach.”

  “I’m not gonna do this, Roger. I’ve got so much shit going on at home. I can’t. . . My wife and I aren’t even . . .”

  Giffler puts up his hands. “Here’s what I’m gonna do. Take the rest of the day off. Go home and talk it over with Raquel.”

&n
bsp; “Rachel.”

  “Take tomorrow too if you’d like. I’ll give you two days to come to a decision. And you know why?”

  “Because you love me like a son.”

  “Bingo!” A blade of light slices the darkness, then vanishes as Giffler closes the door.

  ~ * ~

  Henry stares at his reflection, his face ghosted over the scene on the other side. On the far right a body wobbles, crumples to the ground. As two other participants grab the woman under her arms and try to lift her off the Oven floor, the moderator flails with both hands up at the projection booth. At first Henry thinks it’s to call for an ambulance or to tell someone to lower the heat. But when he sees the moderator draw her fingers across her neck, he realizes that she’s telling them to kill the camera.

  ~ * ~

  NPB

  Henry’s phone is vibrating in his pants. Rachel, making her presence felt.

  She knows that he had the focus group and that, according to Henry, the cell phone is off-limits in focus groups, so he doesn’t pick up, even though he’s no longer in the focus group, even though he’s no longer at work. He doesn’t know how the phone got back into his pants. He remembers stashing it in his briefcase but has no recollection of taking it back out, returning it to his pocket. Does it have a homing device? Some kind of boomerang function?

  Walking down Park toward Thirty-third, he checks his watch and figures he’s got an hour, maybe two, before he absolutely has to get back to her, and by his calculations, if he gets it right, he can call when she’ll be unavailable in a videoconference with clients.

  Not long ago he’d have been the one calling Rachel. Seeking her counsel, telling her everything. Not long ago, if he’d gotten a chance to scoot home early, regardless of the reason—promotion, transfer, early dismissal—he’d have pounced on it. He’d have picked up a bottle of cab and some Jarlsberg and Amy’s Bread and told Rachel to finish up early to meet him. But now going home early is the last thing that he wants to do, because Rachel, a respected independent Internet security consultant, very much in demand, works out of the house, and rare is the day, no matter what the hour, that she’s not home when Henry walks through the door. Before they moved out of the city he used to say he’d go crazy if he had to spend so much time in the suburbs, no matter how interesting the work. But now she assures him that she’s living a dream, telecommuting, videoconferencing with Kuala Lumpur in her slippers and cloud pj’s, doing every preposterous thing the tech commercials promised, all the dreams they assigned us to live. And now, of course, the irony or coincidence is that she’s the one who’s going crazy and living a lie, not a dream.

  One option would be to go to a bar and drink himself silly, but he isn’t much of a drinker, and when he’s stressed alcohol hits him in the worst way. So, with his phone again vibrating in his pocket, he’s heading toward the gym, and he is listening to “Novocaine for the Soul” by the Eels.

  The clientele in the gym at eleven a.m. is quite different from what you’d see at, say, six a.m., or six p.m. These aren’t the sweat-soaked type As grinding out Thing One on the day’s to-do list before heading to work. These aren’t the lean and jovial early risers, with notebooks and heart monitors and bottles filled with secret concoctions. At eleven a.m. the gym is almost empty.

  The young woman at the front desk doesn’t look up when he swipes his membership card, or when he waves or says good morning. Eighties monster rock is the sound track for those who dare exercise without iPods. Journey, Henry thinks, but he can’t be sure. En route to the locker room he checks out the free-weight area. Two unemployed bodybuilders are doing dead lifts in the far corner. Near the dumbbell rack a Jack LaLanne—like seventy-five-year-old man in a purple-and-white-striped unitard is doing preacher curls, ogling his blood-engorged biceps at the peak of each four-count rep, mocking age, gravity, and the spirit of all things weak and flabby. In the empty yoga studio a Botoxed, liposucked, and tummy-tucked fifty-year-old woman is practicing spin kicks targeted at, Henry thinks, the testicles of imaginary men. The ghosts of husbands past, present, and yet to come.

  He stands naked before the mirror in the empty locker room, appraising his enigmatic body. Arms and shoulders still defined, still strong at thirty-two, despite some seven years at a desk job, ten since he last played third base, in college. Legs lean and muscled, but less so since he stopped mountain biking. But his abs, or more specifically the belly that covers them, are something in which he can take less pride. Not fat, but loose, settling in a roll on his hips, rounding out beneath his navel.

  On other days, when he looked at his belly he thought of defibrillators and fat-clogged arteries in waiting, of corpulent bodies sprouting tubes in ICUs. He felt a certain age creeping in and another slipping away.

  But today his wistfulness is focused on his testicles. Almost six weeks since they were shaved in preparation for surgery, three since the last of the prescribed icings. They’re once again covered with fine brown hair, once again looking very much like Henry Tuhoe’s testicles of old. Yet despite this superficial return to testicular form, Henry feels a rumbling churn in his lower abdomen just thinking about them, a knifing pain in the top of his skull just looking at them. And when he lets his left hand drop to touch them, to gently tumble them like Queeg’s steel balls, he feels as if he’s holding not a surgically altered reproductive organ but two tiny bombs planted by terrorists of the self, waiting to blow his life apart.

  Not Journey. Foreigner: “I Want to Know What Love Is.”

  When he looks back up, balls still in hand, Henry sees the reflection of the old muscle man in the purple-and-white unitard staring at him with a disgusted look on his face.

  ~ * ~

  “Five, six, seven, eight.”

  Henry is on his back on the bench press, listening to the voice of Norman, his personal trainer. But he’s not lifting anything. Hasn’t since the count of two. The bar sits racked above his head; his breaths are silent and regular, not the breaths of someone working hard.

  “Nice job, Henry. Really excellent,” says Norman, who agreed to see Henry on short notice because he had nothing better to do.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. You’re making real progress.”

  “What if I told you I didn’t do a rep after two?”

  “I’d be shocked and offended, Henry. I’d consider it a breach of an understood trust. One more set, then we’ll do some, what? Some incline.” Henry pumps out a set of twelve reps. When he sits up, he sees that Norman is staring across the gym at an unoccupied hack squat machine, and that he is crying.

  At first he tries to ignore it, to pretend he hasn’t noticed that his personal trainer, the man he pays $30 an hour to get him energized, motivated, and physically transformed, is crying. Again. He’s also trying to ignore the fact that Norman is wearing street clothes: black polyester slacks, an untucked black button-down shirt covered with yellow daisies, and flip-flops that have a bottle opener built into the sole. But Norman’s sobbing now, and Henry’s afraid if he doesn’t at least acknowledge this, things may escalate to a genuine scene, a spectacle, and the last thing he wants is to attract the attention of the disgusted old musclehead and the kickboxing man-hater.

  “Norm?”

  “Yeah. Give me a second. You did great. That an NPB?”

  “Norm?”

  “A new personal best?”

  “Christ, Norman. I don’t know. Why are you crying?”

  “Just some tough times, Henry, man. I just feel sometimes kind of down, you know?”

  “Is it because you’re, you know, taking downers again?”

  Norman scratches the dry, thinning hair of his scalp, which looks like it needs a good scratching. “Painkillers. Not downers. Percocet. Mostly they help a lot, but sometimes even though the physical pain subsides the mental anguish lingers, and sometimes, I guess, comes up and devastates my ass, mentally.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Hey, did you see my latest film?” N
orman is talking about the latest of many short films he has shot and posted on YouTube and several of other aggregate, viral video sites.

  Henry has seen it—a four-minute, genre-defying video featuring an inferno of spider monkeys, icebergs calving in reverse, the poetry of Billy Collins, and a mock German techno track that he couldn’t get out of his head for days—but he tells Norman no, he has not had the chance.

  “Well, check it out when you get home and vote, vote, vote! If I want to get a development deal, I need to show I have a following. I told you I talked to that ex-client of mine with the friend who knows that documentary guy, the child prostitute guy?”