The Kissing Game (8 page)

            In the morning, I wake to the livid
sound of my phone ringing. Bleary panes of morning light huddle in one circle
on the floor as I grab for my cell phone.

“Hello?” Blinking, I note the clock perched on
my nightstand reads 6:03 AM.

            “Caroline,” says the strangely
bearded voice.

            “Robert?”

            “Sorry to call so early.”

            I sit up in my bed, my mind a wagonwheel
of strangeness.

            “I have an emergency,” Robert says.
“I need you to take care of rescheduling my calendar this morning. I’ve got
meetings lined up from 8:15 throughout the day and I can’t get in to work
today. You’ll need to head in early and take care of it.”

            Could Henry have been wrong? Could the
head partner have received the video footage already? Impossible! The bluish
morning outside my window suddenly feels painful in my eyes.

            “Why?” I wince, waiting for
Robert’s answer.

            “It’s my dad,” he answers. Robert’s
voice sounds if he’s just swallowed something too large for his throat. “He’s
at San Francisco Memorial. Doctors aren’t sure yet what’s wrong with him but
I’ll be there most of the day.”

Standing up, I hold the phone to my ear with my
shoulder. I yank underwear, bra, and work clothes out of my drawers and closet.

            “Yeah, of course, I’ll get ready
now and head over. I’ll take care of it.”  

            “Thanks,” he says, and I’m about to
hang up, when he adds, “I really appreciate it.”

            My commute to work that morning is
barren and bright. At that hour, my bus is almost empty, but like a mutant
kingdom where the few lone nightshift workers make their way home. Some look
like changelings awakened to the troubled dream of daylight. Others look
tattooed, pierced, and mangled, as though they’ve partied all night and bought
back dead things in their bags. The train ride is jerky and empty, seeming
without purpose or destination.

            Soon I arrive at my desk on the 22
^nd
floor, where few of the high rise office lights bleach the interior dark of the
building. After setting down my things, I step into Robert’s office, where I
open the dry brown leather calendar he keeps on his desk. I don’t bother to turn
the light on. Although his office is dim from the window shade, the fogless
summer light outside makes the room bright enough. From Robert’s notes on his
calendar, I see his morning is full of meetings with clients. I head to my desk
and call all the clients, leaving messages on both office and cell phones and
following up with emails. 

By the time I’m done, the phone rings. It’s the
secretary from our client at 555 California. She’s panting.

“Your copy guy lost one of our boxes!” she
huffs, as if we’ve killed puppies or stolen babies. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” I
attempt to calm her by telling her this never happens (which is a lie; it
happens often at this firm) and that we always know where our files are (also a
lie) and that I’ll call her back as soon as I can.

I phone our copy guy, Conrad, who assures me
that “It’s all under control,” in that slick salesman-like way that makes me
worry that things are absolutely not under control. After several perspiring minutes,
he calls me back and explains, “It seems we delivered the file back to your
file room on accident.”

“Oh, God, Conrad, you didn’t?” I say because
sending anything to our firm’s filing department is like ejecting something
into outer space. It may never be found again.   

“Who did you talk to?” I ask, my stomach
feeling as though it’s perspiring.

“Erin Livingston, your file clerk. She signed
for the box.”

I hang up the phone and take the elevator to
the fourth floor, where I walk all the way around to the darkest corner of our
firm. It feels featureless and hopeless down here, as if aspiring young people
made an employment pit stop, desiring to just camp overnight, but ended up
stuck here. Like captives without food or water, they blearily huddle over
files all day, whimpering and snarling.

Yanking open the heavy metal door, I enter hell.
It smells like old paper and gym sweat. Floor to ceiling banks of shelves
sprawl just as they do in a massive library, only this one hardly sees visitors.

“Erin,” I say, trying to smile as I approach her
metal desk, which sits at the end of the corridor, guarding the entrance.
Erin’s chewing something. Gum? Tobacco? Lawyer limbs? She’s reading something
from a ledger and clicking her pen incessantly. Her gemstone nose piercing
bounces the light and matches the red-dye in her hair. Her tattoo, which
displays a big-toothed bulldog, peeks out under the arm of her t-shirt. From
her attire, one would think we don’t work at the same firm. She gazes up at me slowly,
as if she’s contemplating stabbing me.

I aim for a friendly tone that hides my panic. “Erin,
you signed for a box this morning … and I really need to get it back. It was
supposed to go back to the client, but the delivery guy made a mistake.”

“When do you need it by?” she chews slowly, the
pen still clicking.

“Um, now? …
Soon
, very soon.”

She looks as if she might call for her fellow
file clerks. Instead, she gestures for me to follower her. She guides me toward
the floor-to-ceiling rows of boxes. I follow, thinking that remaining silent is
the best option.

She strolls up to a shelf, pulls out a box, and
asks, “This one?” The dog on her arm ripples as she hands me the box. I place
it on the floor and yank off the lid, my fingers scrolling over the files.
“Children’s Refuge Project, Philippines,” the file label reads, along with the Chairman’s
name. I have no idea why the file clerk hands me this box.

 “No, it’s the 555 California client.” I
contemplate how it will feel to call the client back and have to tell them we
lost their box. At the thought of disappointing Robert, I feel that sweaty sick
feeling.

“Oh,” she chews and places the box back in its
hold. Following Erin her along more rows, I visit several more boxes, none of
which is the box I need. She chews and walks slowly, while I consider the
effectiveness of prayer.

“Do you think we’ll find it?”

“There’s definitely a chance it’s lost
forever,” she says gleefully before stopping. “This one?” she asks for a fifth
time.

The box reads: “555 California.”

“Oh, thank god! You found it!” I sound as if I
might hug her but I wouldn’t dare. Instead, I grab the box from her and lug it
towards the door, fully expecting her to stop me. But she doesn’t stop me, even
though she should because she’s supposed to keep track of all the boxes, but I
know she cares about as much about that box as she does paying taxes or abiding
by the law.

When I arrive at my desk with the box, I open
it to find files mixed together. The Children’s Refuge Project is all mixed in
with the 555 California files. I spend another hour sorting them, leaving the
files in a binder on my desk before I ensure that the client files are safely
hand-delivered back to the client. Then, it’s past 7:15 PM and lawyers stride
through the hallways like shapeless figures.

My mind at last has the opportunity to think of
other things. I begin to contemplate Robert sitting over his dad in the
hospital, and I feel as if I should start praying again.

Slinging my backpack over my shoulder, I make
my way downstairs to the street and onto the bus. The city is almost dark,
office lights twinkling like distant heat lamps, and cars passing by, breathing
gritty heat and rumbling sounds into the nighttime air.

When I arrive at the hospital, I ask the front
reception where Mr. Spencer’s room is and find out that he’s on the 8
^th
floor. “Are you family?” the reception asks. “Yes,” I lie. I feel adept at
lying lately. Not a good thing.

Before I head up the elevator, I buy the last
flower bouquet from the gift shop: a wilted sunflower with purple and white
sweet peas around it. I can’t imagine a worse combination of flowers, but
perhaps flower arranging doesn’t need to be perfected in hospitals: sick people
won’t notice.

When I step off the elevator on the 8
^th
floor, it’s ghostly quiet, as if everyone has already died and the nurses are
just waiting for the bodies to be collected. Bright lights shine through some
of the open hospital room doors, spilling white onto patches of the tiled
hallway floors.

As I’m about to approach the nurse’s station, I
see a familiar figure through an open door.

In an instant, I realize I could recognize the
back of him anywhere.  I’ve feared it and dreamed of it so often that it’s
imprinted into my psyche. In the same way I’d remember a villain who tries to kill
me or a nightmare that I won’t forget. He leans over the railing of the hospital
bed, his head on the metal as if he’s sleeping. He’s wearing a t-shirt, jeans,
and tennis shoes. Perhaps, I expected him to sleep in a suit and business
shoes. His hand drapes loosely over Mr. Spencer, whose face suggests he’s in a
comfortable sleep. The back of Robert’s hair looks unbrushed and wavy. In his
t-shirt I clearly see the lines of the muscles that almost shape a y, which
extends from under each arm and disappears into his back. Briefly, I stand
there, knowing he can’t see me. His shirt shakes, and I think I hear him
whispering.

Frozen there in the hallway, I begin to wonder
whether I should leave. Why did I come anyway? Because Mr. Spencer was nice to
me? Because I feel obligated to do something nice to Robert before I ruin his
life?

For no apparent reason, I also begin to wonder
whether I was right about Mrs. Smith, my sixth grade teacher, the evil woman
with the gray beehive hairdo whom I believed hated me from the day I stepped
into her classroom. She was a beady-eyed creature who would not let me go to
the nurse when I fractured my arm on the playground, and who never apologized
when I returned to class the next day with a cast. Maybe I had her all wrong.
Maybe she wasn’t mean. Perhaps she was simply doing her job? Perhaps she was just
one of those dry, unemotional types unable to express herself?

Backtracking, I take two steps back and one
sideways, the flowers in my hand, backpack over my shoulder. Witnessing Robert
like this is like watching monks in prayer. I definitely shouldn’t have come.

After I take a step, Robert turns around, his
eyes puffy. Instead of the fear-inducing lawyer I know, he’s just a guy leaning
over his father. Does he call him his father?

He sees me and reaches for the tissue box near
him, wipes his nose, and then tosses it into the nearby trashcan.

“Come in,” he says, looking as though he’s lost
two inches in a day. And then he stands, resuming his height, strides over to
the other side of the room, grabs a chair, and sets it down near his own.
Wordlessly, he then takes the flowers from my hand and sets them in the water
bucket on the nightstand. The hospital room is brightly lit, solemn.
Checkerboard tiles on the ceiling give the room a seventies vibe.

“I’m sure he’ll appreciate them. Have a seat,”
Robert offers, sniffling.

“How’s he doing?” I ask.

Robert sits down next to me.

“They don’t know yet. Had a stroke sometime
last night. They’re just not sure. It’s a wait-and-see situation. Could wake up
any minute … We’ll see.” Robert isn’t looking at me. He’s looking at Mr.
Spencer, who somehow appears ten years younger lying in the bed.

“He looks comfortable.” I don’t know what else
to say.

“Doesn’t he?”

Outside the room, the shuffle of doctors or
nurses echo as they enter the elevator and the muffled sound of their voices
disappears.

“You didn’t have to come,” Robert states.

“Would you prefer I leave?”

 “No.” He nods towards the bouquet. “You just
didn’t need to go to the trouble to bring flowers.”

We sit quietly for a little bit, both watching
Mr. Spencer. The number of wires, monitors, and computer screens coming from
Mr. Spencer’s body are a testament to the value of human life.

“He’s a nice man, your father,” I say quietly.
“I got a chance to talk with him that day I delivered the package.”

“Did you? He’s not my dad,” Robert clarifies.
“He is to
me
, but he’s not my biological father. He adopted me when I
was a teenager.”

I briefly contemplate the tape and wonder where
it is now. At the thought, the Titanic rests somewhere in my stomach, full of
screaming passengers on the sinking vessel.

“He had a lot to say about you,” I add.

“Did he?” Robert’s eyebrows do a slow dance.
“It was all crap, no doubt. Have you eaten?” he asks.

“No, I haven’t eaten all day.”

“There’s a cafeteria downstairs. You should
eat, and I’ve sat here all day, could really use a bite. Why don’t we head
down?” He nods towards the elevator.

“Yeah,” I say.

We stand and stride out the door. He pauses at
the nurse’s station to tell her he’s going downstairs to eat. Then we walk
toward the elevator together, with his tall, long-legged stride and face,
handsome enough to garner him free sandwiches for life, leading the way, and my
criminal, sadistic, cruel, evil self pokes along behind him.