The Cube People (6 page)

Today a branch-wide email w
as sent out about the photocopier. Things must have come to a head somewhere. Probably Barry started frothing at the mouth. He's a manager and his banality of leadership cascades down upon us every day like the drool off the chins of the institutionalized. Everyone suspects that he's behind the photocopier insanity. The email states that a virtual lock has been put on the copier and you now need a passcode to unlock it. Plus you need to fill out requisition form 822 stating the reason you need to make a photocopy.

I work for the government. I recognize it's insane, but sometimes I just can't believe it. I'm down to my last walkthrough 811 form. I need to make photocopies. I walk down the hall and head over to see Line, the secretary for the floor. Line lives in Gatineau, Quebec, just across the Ottawa River. She's always smacking her gum loudly when I come by. Half the time you can't find her because she's by the front door smoking with the other Francos who work on the floor. To be fair, there are two Anglos who also puff away, Brita being one of them and she smokes enough for four people.

Today Line's wearing white pumps with black nylons, a tight red leather skirt, and a white shirt with black polka dots. Her hair is eighties hair, combed up at the front and long and wavy in the back. You could fit your fist through her red hoop earrings. I can smell the pungent fumes of cigarettes off her clothes as I approach.

“Oui?” she barks out in her Gatineau French. She taps her watch and says, “It's noon thirty. It's time for my lunch, so you have to make it quick.”

“I need the passcode for the photocopier.”

“Didn't you read your email?”

“Yes, that's why I'm here.”

“Where's your 822 form?”

“I don't have one.”

“I thought you said you read your email?”

“Well I guess I need an 822 form then.”

“Well I only have one 822 form, so you'll need to make a copy.”

“Okay,” I say, waiting for her to give me the form so I can photocopy it, so I can make a photocopy.

“You need to have an 822 to make a photocopy.”

“What?”

“You need to have a…”

“No, I heard you. So you're saying that to photocopy my 811, I need an 822 filled out, but to get an 822 I need to fill out an 822 so I can photocopy what I don't have.”

“Yes,” she says, staring at me like I'm an idiot, smacking her gum.

“Line, you can see how insane that is can't you? Why aren't these forms on the LAN so we can print them ourselves?”

“You have a problem with the system, take it up with Barry. I'm just following orders.”

“Orders? What is this, the military? Jesus, how am I to do any work?”

“Listen, Colin, it's time for my lunch. Here's what I suggest, you take ten dollars from petty cash and go to Office Land across the street in the mall and copy yourself some 811s and 822s.”

“You have to be shitting me.”

“You want the ten dollars? Cause I'm leaving.”

“Fine.”

She pulls a long thin beaded chain over her head and a silver key rises out from her deep and well-tanned cleavage. She unlocks her desk drawer, pulls out a small black box and fishes out a ten.

“Sign for it here in the book,” she orders.

I sign.

“Make sure you bring back the receipt and the change,” she says passing me the bill.

“Thanks. Can I also have your 822 to photocopy?”

“Borrow, not have.”

“Right, just borrow. I promise I'll bring it right back.”

“Make sure you do,” she says, locking the drawer back up, the key dropping back into titty valley.

I walk back over to the mall. On the other side of Sunshine Valley Mall is Sunshine Valley Retirement Residence, hence the mall is always jammed up with old people. Here comes one of the regulars. She putters by in her pink bathrobe, riding a motorized scooter with an oxygen tank, plastic tubes up her nose. I have work I want to get done, so I'm annoyed that I have to dodge all these slowpokes. I know they can't help being old, it's more that the whole Catch-822 photocopier thing has got me pissed. As I grouch along, I see Phil sitting in one of the salon chairs at First Choice Haircutters. Zoe's washing his hair. I was just here with Phil only thirty minutes ago having lunch at The Shawarma Pit. He said he was going to stop in quickly and just say hi.

There seems to be only one girl working at the Copy and Print Centre of the store. Three people are in line ahead of me, including the young couple currently being served. The clerk is with them at a computer monitor looking at a picture of a longhaired orange and white tabby lounging on a sofa. They seem to be manipulating the picture. After five minutes of this, the clerk leaves and attends to a beeping machine. She feeds the machine a bundle of paper, then goes back to the young couple and presents them with different types of paper, which I presume the cat picture will be printed on. I'm about to lose my mind.

The old guy in front of me, who has a walker and one giant hearing aid, reeks of mothballs and pee. He twists himself around slightly, still leaning on his walker and asks me which bus I'm taking. “Where are you going? What bus?” he yells, little flecks of saliva sprinkling the air.

“I'm just getting some copies made,” I tell him waving my 822 form in the air, hoping he understands.

“Kingston?” he yells back.

“No,
copies
made.”

“Oh, Cobden. I have a niece who lives up in Cobden. I'm going to Montreal.”

I realize that something is wrong. “This isn't the bus station,” I yell so he can hopefully hear me.

The poor old guy looks confused. “Not the line for the bus?” he asks.

“No, you have to go out the mall and down the street.”

“Oh,” he laughs. “I thought this was the line for the bus.”

I smile at him and nod my head and think, fuck, I never want to be that old.

He throws it into high gear and takes about two minutes to turn his walker around, then shuffles away. It'll be a miracle if he ever does make it to the bus station, let alone home.

After another painstaking ten minutes, the cat people finally finish up and get their print of Gingersnap. Why wouldn't they go to a photo shop? The lady who's now in front of me has a large and complicated order. She has a hefty briefcase and she pulls out fifteen small piles of paper. She needs things collated, bound, resized, stapled, etc. Her order takes twenty minutes. The line grows six people deep behind me while I wait. At one point I ask if there is anyone else around to help. The clerk tells me that Joey called in sick today. Super. Joey is probably jerking off at home with his X-Box.

I would have used one of the several manual printers, which are around me, but Line requires a goddamn receipt. Finally it's my turn.

“Hi, how can I help you?” asks the clerk in her friendliest voice. I must give her credit, she looks tired and overworked, but she's putting on a valiant show.

“Something simple for you, I just want this sheet photocopied.”

“Just one copy?”

“No, make it ten. No wait, make it twenty.”

“Twenty?”

When the clerk hands me back my sheets, I ask for a receipt. It's a quarter after one. Unbelievable. I pass by a pet store and see bunnies in the window. I think that Ryan, my character for
Hungry Hole
, will have to stop by and pick up a few – is that too dark? No, it's a horror story after all, just the same as my work.

At First Choice, Phil is now in Zoe's chair having his hair worked on.

I go to my desk, stash away my twenty copies of form 822 and then head to Line's desk. Crazy Larry is staring out the window as I walk by. “Okay, here's your 822, your change and the receipt,” I say as I pass back everything. The stench of cigarettes wafts through the air indicating Line has just gone for yet another break.

“Merci,” she says.

I go back to my desk and pull out the 822. The form is a crossword puzzle of boxes to fill in. Date. Time. Group ID#. Personal ID#. Name, first and last, my Project Leader's name, first and last, and my Manager's name, first and last. Number of copies requested. Reason for copy request. Approval of request signature box. Photocopy completion date and time. I don't know who's more nuts, the management or me, because I fill the whole thing out. Once I'm done, I bring it back to Line's desk. There's a little sign on her chair that says,
Back in five minutes
. I rub my temples and think about an imaginary hole in the basement of an imaginary house and what it should devour next.

I wait ten minutes before Line gets back. “Oui?” she asks.

“Here's my 822. Now, can I have the passcode please?”

“First you must have the form approved.”

“By whom?”

“Barry, who else do you think?”

“Jesus. How long will that take?”

“He's in a meeting for the rest of the day, and tomorrow he's at a conference downtown, and then he's on vacation for a week.”

“I should have just photocopied both forms while I was there.”

“Mais oui,” she says.

“Can I have five dollars from petty cash please?”

She pulls off the chain, gets the key, gets the box again, I sign the ledger and she hands me a five.

“Sure, just make sure you bring back the receipt and change.”

By the time I'm back from Office Land the second time, it's 2:45. I'm so angry I could bust. I spend the rest of the afternoon writing an email to Bruce explaining what is wrong with the new photocopying procedure. Not that it will do any good, but I'm bitterly sarcastic and it makes me feel good.

I phone Sarah at work and she tells me that the fertility drugs are making her suffer something awful; she's dizzy and experiencing hot flashes. Moreover, the Metformin is giving her cramps. I tell her I love her and hope she feels better. I promise to make her a nice dinner. She tells me that she isn't hungry. I tell her I'll see her at home soon.

I think about pushing Barry and Bruce down my imaginary hole. I smile at this as I walk to catch my bus after work.

Day 11

Sarah and I have been a couple for seven years now. The first year we dated long distance. She finished up her master's at Laval University and moved straight to Ottawa after. We've been living together for six years and have been married for five. Sarah and I have had l
ots of sex. Loads of sex. That first year we were together, every time she took the bus down to Ottawa, or I took it up to Quebec City, it was a sexual circus, and every night I was on the trapeze working without a net. If we weren't walking outside, or sitting in the pub, we were performing under the big top. We even made love in a park by the Museum of Nature, underneath the life-sized statues of the woolly mammoths. The thing about all this sex was it was fun, voluntary sex. We had no schedule. We were breathing each other in. When we touched it was the way a pianist would touch a Steinway; simple notes grew quickly into symphonies. Now we play “Chopsticks.” Wagner has left the building.

So this is Day 11, actually it is the thirteenth day of the month, but the eleventh day on the drugs – the first day we're to have sex according to Dr. King's schedule. After we finish a home-cooked meal of spaghetti and meatballs, Sarah asks me if I want to do it. I'm a little irked by the way she asks. It's not playful or fun, but resonates with a harsh business tone. I recognize she hasn't been feeling well and our infertility issues always seem to be at the forefront of her mind. Still, if we're going to do it, then she could at least pretend she's interested, no? Somehow she seems to have sensed what I was thinking, or maybe she hadn't asked as coldly as I first thought, because she smiles a naughty smile and saunters over to me ever so slowly, undoing the buttons on her blouse. When she reaches me standing in the living room, she cups my crotch in her hand and bites me lightly on the neck. I feel Marvin fill with blood. I smell Sarah's hair and I become rock hard. She undoes my pants, pulls down my underwear, and pushes me backward onto the couch. She peels off her own panties, but leaves her skirt on, just hikes it a bit as she straddles me. Her shirt is open but her bra is still on. I play with her nipple through the black fabric. She throws her head back, mouth slack, moaning. Sadly after only a few minutes of this I can't take any more – it's been a few weeks since we made love. “Sorry honey, but I have to cum,” I whisper to her.

Her eyes widen and she becomes focused, as if she's been faking it the whole time. “Quick, turn over, let me be on bottom,” she says, getting off me. I do as she asks, then quickly get back in. The position change slows me down. “Aren't you going to cum?” she asks.

“Just give me a minute, will you?” She bites my ear. She knows I enjoy this. I cum.

“Wait,” she says grabbing my ass, “don't pull out yet. Stay inside a little longer. Make sure you get everything out.”

So I do. “Are we good now?” I ask after a minute has elapsed.

“Yes, but pull out slowly, try not to suck any sperm back out.”

“It's a penis, not a vacuum cleaner.” She doesn't respond to this. As soon as I'm out, she kicks her legs high and braces her bum into the air with her hands on her hips, elbows and shoulders on the couch in a bicycle gym exercise form.

She turns her head to me, “Good work baby. I don't want to let any fall out. If you want, you can grab me by the legs and try to shake it down,” she offers, bouncing her bum ever so slightly, trying to do just that, shake it down.

“I think you're probably good,” I wheeze, pulling up my underwear and flopping back on one of the living room chairs.

“Is
Dateline
on tonight?” she asks me, legs still high in the air.

Day 12

After work we meet up at her favourite Italian restaurant in the Market, Mamma Grazzi's. After the first glass of wine, the stress of work leaves my body. “I fucking hate my job,” I tell Sarah.

“I know baby. Why don't you look for something else?”

“I want to be a writer.”

“I know honey. Why don't you try working for a newspaper or something?”

“Because I took computer science, not journalism.”

“Why don't you write about computers for a computer magazine?”

“I'm sick to death of computers. I can't stand them. When you have to do something, it takes the joy right out of it.”

At that moment the waiter comes by with our appetizer. When he leaves she asks me, “How's the new book coming along?”

“Fine, I guess.”

“Why don't you write something different? A work of science fiction has never won the Giller.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Maggie Woodland would never write a book like that.”

“What are you talking about? She wrote
The Cranky Ox
and
The Latte Maid's Hand
– they're both science fiction.”

“Yeah, but they definitely weren't her best. She'd never write something so, well, trashy.”

I pour myself another big glass of wine. “Thanks for that.”

“Oh, don't be mad, honey. I didn't mean trashy. I just don't enjoy science fiction.”

“
1984
,
Brave New World
, those are great books, no?”

“They're okay.”

“Okay,
1984
is just
okay
?”

“Honey,” she tries to soothe. “Listen, if you don't want to look for another job, then you'll just have to keep writing and hoping for the best. I'm just not sure science fiction is the way to go.”

“Fine.”

“You're mad.”

“No.”

“Yes you are, I can tell.”

“Whatever, let's just try to enjoy the meal.”

We switch topics to going to see a film. So we hit the Bytowne Cinema after dinner and see some Italian comedy that neither Sarah nor I find particularly funny. We arrive home and another rejection letter is waiting in the mailbox. I'm pissed. I strip naked in the hall and tell Sarah to get undressed. I fuck her angrily and the sex is great. After I pull out, she moves into an upside-down bicycle. I find a bottle of wine and crack it open. I pour two glasses and sit naked in the dark in the living room. I wonder if I'm ever going to make it.
In this moment, I foresee my life as a series of endless little tasks: tie your shoes, wait for the elevator, do your job, fuck your wife as you are told to. Sarah appears wearing just panties. Her beauty strikes me in such a way that it throws me off kilter, as if somebody called out my name for a prize I didn't even know I was nominated for. She grabs her glass off the coffee table as she sits beside me.

“It will happen.”

“The book or the baby?”

“Both,” she says.

Day 13

It's Saturday and I'm hungover, as I'm sure Sarah is, too. Whenever I'm hungover, all I want to do is screw and drink chocolate milkshakes. I smell Sarah's armpit and Marvin springs to life – I'm a rock.

“Come on baby, day thirteen,” I tell her. She still has her eyes closed, but I can tell she's awake.

“Just get on me and do it, I'm not moving.”

I pump away for some time, probably only about seven minutes before I finish. Sarah seems to be enjoying it near the end. When I pull out, she spins around and puts her legs up on the wall and says, “God, your breath is fucking awful.”

“Thanks, sexy,” I say smiling and happy.

“Make me a coffee, will you?”

I walk to the bathroom and piss away my morning erection. As I pass by the bedroom doorway on my way to the kitchen, I ask, “French toast?'

“Sure,” she says, her feet still planted on the wall.

Day 14

We go to our friends' place for brunch. They're big potheads; my characters Dean and Marsha in Hungry Hole are modelled after them. I suspect that they are stoned when we get there, but I don't think I could really tell either way. They are admitted chronics. They've just gotten used to being high all the time, and now they act just as normal as anyone else. Strange. We spend the rest of the afternoon touring the market, picking up a horn-of-plenty satchel of goods.

Arriving home, Sarah has a bath while I hit the kitchen to embark on food preparations. I'm slicing ginger for a chicken stir-fry when Sarah materializes in the kitchen doorway wearing unbelievably sexy red lingerie with black high heels.

“Come get some,” she purrs.

I put down my knife and go get some.

Day 15

I arrive home late, almost 7:30, after a day of computer problems at the office. Sarah left work early today because she felt so lousy, and has been home alone for hours. The place looks like a dirty laundry bomb went off.

“How's it going baby?” I ask her.

“I feel just fucking awful on the drugs. I stood up at my desk and thought I was going to pass out. People say that all the time but I'm not kidding you. My vision went blurry and I lost my balance. It was really scary.”

“Anything I can do for you?”

“No. What do you want to do for dinner?”

“You didn't make anything?”

“Jesus, I've been lying down. I told you, I haven't been feeling well. Besides, I didn't know when you'd be home.”

“Pizza?”

“Sure, I guess”

The pizza takes forever to show up. By the time I've cleaned up it's 9:30. We watch some bad reality TV until 11. When the show is over, Sarah says, “Don't forget, we have to have sex tonight.”

I'm dead tired. I'd completely forgotten about our love-making schedule. “Right, let's get it on.”

We disrobe, brush our teeth and hop into bed. Marvin is half-slouched against my balls. I tug at him a little to get him going. Sarah's hand slithers under the covers and pulls at Marvin a little too.

“What's wrong with Marvin?” she asks.

“Nothing, he's just tired.”

“What, you don't find me attractive?”

“Jesus Sarah, no, I'm just tired. We've had sex every day for the last four days. It's just hard to turn on just like that.”

“Nothing is hard here. We used to make love four times a day.”

“That was seven years ago.”

“So? Why aren't you getting hard?”

“Maybe because you're yelling at me?”

“Can you please hurry up and get hard, I have to work in the morning.”

I play with my dick for a while. I try not to be angry. I think about the tight jeans of the attractive girl I saw on the bus. Marvin responds well to this image.

“Okay, I'm ready,” I say.

“Okay, stick it in.” I get it in, but I'm not all that hard. After a few strokes I firm up. I pump away forever.

“Are you almost done? I'm getting sore down there,” Sarah says, or rather orders, the agitation in her voice evident.

I think about the ass on the bus. I think about Mrs. Dunbar, her tits. I cum.

I roll off.

“Goodnight,” she says turning out the light, spinning around and putting her feet up against the wall.

Day 16

Sarah whispers a dirty story in my ear on the couch about her and another woman engaging in lesbian acts. Marvin loves it. We make love on the couch.

Day 17

I suggest a change of position, so we go at it doggy style. Sarah seems to love this. It works well for me too.

Day 18

Sarah had to leave work early again because she thought she was going to pass out. I suggest that we skip a day if she isn't feeling well, that the doctor said that we could. She tells me that Day 18 is critical for ovulation, that we have to do it. This have to business is killing me. The rebel in me doesn't want to have sex if he is ordered to.

“Look, I know you're finding this difficult too, so I went to the 7-Eleven and got you this,” she says, passing me a copy of
Swank
magazine. A young blonde woman sucking on her own breast adorns the cover. Marvin sits up and pays close attention. It's not every day that your wife buys you porn and encourages you to read it. I believe she partly enjoys it, too, but I know she'd never admit to this. “Let's sit and read it together,” she says, patting the couch beside her.

So I do.

“Wouldn't you love to fuck her?” she asks as she grabs my crotch.

Marvin's a little freaked out, but very excited. The next thing I know we're butt naked, going at it, two savages on the living room floor.

I roll off of Sarah, dripping in sweat. She scoots over to the wall and puts her legs up. “You did good, baby,” she tells me.

“Thanks,” I say, too tired to move.

Day 19

“Do you think this is going to work?” she asks.

“I hope so,” I pant.

“You almost done?”

“Yep, just give me another second. Argh.”

I roll off. Sarah moves into the vertical upside-down bicycle position.

Day 20

“Jesus, I thought you'd never finish.”

“Me too,” I groan.

“Just two more days, baby.”

Day 21

We go to the sex shop and get inspired. She ties me up nice and tight. It's glorious.

Day 22

After work tonight, there's a farewell at the bar for Marc, a database guy who's heading off to PEI to work in another division. I tag along. Marc's a nice guy and I could use a beer. When I get home I'm a little drunk. Sarah's mood smells like it's in poor health.

“We have to have sex you know.”

“Yeah, so?”

“When you drink you never cum, you take forever. God, you stink, how many pints did you have?”

“Four,” I answer, telling her the truth.

“I want you to fuck me.”

“Okay, let's go.”

Marvin surprisingly springs into action. Things are going smoothly, but then after grinding away for ten minutes, I worry that I won't finish. I try to think sexy thoughts, Mrs. Dunbar's sweater, the nude witch on the broomstick… I involuntary flash to my grandmother's tits – yuck!