Chapter 1.8 - 1.9

Despite the harrowing experience at the morgue, I was entirely back to where I started, where the days were cold, the work was soul-eroding and I had lost my wife and any motivation to trudge on.

Nightmares attacked me in my sleep. I was unable to recall most of them except for the sheer anxiety enveloping me each time I awoke, and the voice of the man on Mona’s phone, repeating his ominous words over and over again.

“Some people are not happy with what you did. You were warned.”

Parts of the dreams returned to me as I filled yet another survey with information I was collecting from a hesitant telephonic victim. The words would sometimes become twisted, and the voice would speak in different accents or tones, but always becoming a parody of my own, eventually. “Very unhappy, Mona sweetie. I’m unhappy with what you’ve done; you made me think you died! What a fucking, selfish, inconsiderate bitch!” After which I would begin screaming.

And each time the thought of Mona crossed my mind, it became a terrible distraction. Like how it affected me right now, so very difficult to think properly.

“Come on man, what makes you think I’d tell you those things? What’s in it for me? Besides, if you really wanna know, you should’ve come right down here to find out. Especially if you’re from GM like you say you are. They’re Goddamn rich is what I heard.”

“We don’t do visits because that’s very cost-inefficient, sir. We want to know your opinion on those products so that in the future, if GM wants to start a new product line or plan a merger or something, it can do so based on the customers’ needs and preferences. It’s actually for your own good, sir.”

“I don’t have time for this, man. Put me on the do-not-call list, you get it?”

From that point onward, the words just came to my mouth without bothering to make a pass through my brain to be validated first. “Time? Heh, sir, you don’t know nothing about wasting time. My wife’s gone missing for a week, feared dead, I even went to the morgue to identify corpses, damn it, but none of them were her, maybe it would’ve saved so much trouble if it were actually her lying there dead, but thankfully no. And now I wish I could be out there looking for her than in this, frankly, shithole of an office, wasting my time to waste yours. It’s all pretty ironic, isn’t it? Life’s just one, big, enormous irony.”

“What the fuck you smoking, man?”

“Smoke? Oh yeah, you a nigger right? Could you tell me where your people get your fixes from? Pot or coke, I don’t care, I just want to get away from all this, this stupid, absurd situation, even if it’s just for a little while.” I was drawling, but still intelligible.

“Damn, you one crazy motherfucker, that’s what you are!”

“Hey, thanks for the compliment,” I said to nobody in particular - The guy had already hung up.

I laid the phone down and, suddenly feeling all the energy being sucked out of my body, slammed my head onto the table. This drew more attention to me than that failed call had already done. Whispers floated around the cubicles in the office, and like they say, became a roar, one that was possibly referring to me. My inference was confirmed when my manager, a lanky man who’s amiable most of the time except when he doesn’t get his golfing fix (and since it was winter, he didn’t), walked up to me with an incredulous expression on his face.

“What the hell was that, Zack?” We were on a first-name basis around here in this department.

When I was answering him, I seriously did not know. “You know, I’m actually not very sure myself.”

Alexander the manager shook his head disappointedly, his arms crossed but not in a menacing manner. “Look, I know what’s been going on with you, so if you need a break, don’t hesitate to take it.” News of my troubles had spread in the office like wildfire - People here take any gossip they can get. They were that desperate. “Use that time to cool down and clear your head, and do whatever you’ve got to do. You’re just going to burn yourself out and scare the shit out of our respondents if you go on like this.”

I stared up at him blankly and nodded. His words were music to my ears. The reason for my staying here was already gone, so I had no justification for continuing any longer. At least, until I find Mona again.

“In fact, I’d like you to take your leave now. And only come back when you’re sensible again. I’ll get Michelle to count your clocked-in hours today, so don’t worry about your pay, you’ll get it.” Then he added, as an afterthought, “Eventually.”

A lay-off had never felt so good before. I didn’t bother asking Alex if I had to clear my things from my cubicle, or if somebody else was going to replace me in my project - Frankly, I didn’t give a damn. Had I been sacked, I may even have left the building with a stupid grin plastered to my face. Only now did I realise how much I really hated my job - I may never have to use the words “soul-eroding” ever again. My jock mentality took over for a moment, and for a few seconds, I was tempted to flip my co-workers the bird and yell, “Outta here, suckers!” I succeeded in resisting the urge.

And very soon, I was out of there, with only a bag and its contents which I have always taken to my workplace in the morning and have always taken home in the evening. For a while, I was disoriented, for where does a bum like me go on a cold afternoon like this, if there’s nobody or nothing waiting for me, at home or at any other place?

Then I decided that there was only one proper answer to that question: Somewhere with alcohol. I caught a cab and went to the only bar I knew that was open this time of the day. And if I ever drank myself silly there, home was close enough that the staff could carry me home on their shoulders.

***

Paying the cabbie his fare, I got off the road and onto the sidewalk which led to the Citystreets Bar, a small, round-the-clock establishment. At three in the afternoon, the place was sparsely populated. I took a seat at the counter.

“What can I do you for?” the bartender, a man in his mid-forties who may have been a bodybuilder at the prime of his life said.

“A bottle of Bud, dry.” The beer came, the bartender uncapped it and poured the golden liquid into a glass, and I began drowning myself, and my sorrows, in alcohol. The dry, crisp taste of the self-proclaimed King of Beers filled my lips, and then made a bitter journey down my throat as I swallowed it. The mellowing effect came soon after.

I was of the belief that taking alcohol had two effects on a person’s frame of mind. On one hand, alcohol incapacitates you, and makes you slow to react to external stimuli. On the other, alcohol is a catalyst of rage, which leads to the ever present problem of domestic violence and whatnot.

But the one thing that remains constant in both situations is that alcohol shuts off your thought processes, part by minute part until you can barely think anymore. Why do people drink? Because it offered escape from their worries, in the simple form of a drink out of a bottle or can or cask. And it’s legal too, because if we’re on the topic of eliminating thought, marijuana as well as the vast multitude of depressants could (probably) do the job much better. That also explains how alcoholics are born - When they’re too deep in the habit, the beer stops them short from finding out that it’s actually bad for them. Thank God for AA then, for putting all those people back in line.

Life would be so simple if we all had enough to drink, wouldn’t it? Even simpler if they made weed legal. Then, all of men’s social predicaments could be solved, or at least allayed, chemically. No more fighting, no more sadness, no more going crazy over Mona’s whereabouts, just a quiet, peaceful bliss, with a chance of hangover when you come to.

“Free Tommy Chong! Legalise the leaf!” I toasted to the bartender’s bald head, drawing attention from curious patrons.

Man, did I sound like a hippie. Blame it on the beer. I could feel the alcohol doing its work already, as the thought of my wife began drifting to a corner of my mind, to be stored away like an old and unwanted record, to be eventually forgotten. Of course, as I was the only person at the bar counter besides the bartender himself, I was obliged to speak to him - they're there for a reason, anybody can take a beer out of a refrigerator and man a cash register, and those type of people are called 7-Eleven employees, not bartenders - and in the kind of situation I’m in, what else could I really talk about except for my marital woes?

The bottle of Budweiser went empty. I wasn’t satisfied with just one - who is? - so I ordered something stronger. “A bottle of Heineken, please.”

“That was pretty fast,” the bartender commented before serving me my drink. “What’s the problem?”

“You could tell?”

“Work a bar almost everyday for ten years, and you would meet every kind of character known to man. Except the sober ones. I can read people like a book, but of course, there’s the occasional hit-and-miss, too. So this wasn’t a miss, right?”

“Yeah, you got that right.” I drank the beer in the glass, then forwent the glass and drank straight from the bottle.

“You haven’t answered my question. Unless you don’t really wanna talk about it, then I’ll let you be.”

“Will get to it,” I said, downing a few more gulps before wiping some of the beer off my mouth with the back of my hand. “Here’s the story. I have a wife and I love her to death. One day I, came home from work,” I let my sentence hang in mid-sentence to take another swill.

“And?” the bartender urged me to continue. He probably expected another one of those “I caught my wife cheating on me” stories.

“She wasn’t there. She was always there. And she wasn’t there the day after that, or the day after that either. Had me worrying like hell. Then the next day I found her phone lying in our house. In the kitchen, no less, under the refrigerator. And on it, some guy left a message.”

“Uh-huh.” He was really expecting a “I caught my wife cheating on me” story now, I guess.

“He was threatening her. The guy said something about someone not being happy with what she did, and that she was warned. Scared the shit out of me. I thought, hey, maybe it was a prank. But a couple of days later I had to go to the hospital to identify a corpse.”

“Whoa. I’m sorry, man.”

“Thank God it wasn’t my wife, but it was still freaky as fuck, looking at a bog body.”

“Phew, that’s a close one. So, what happened after that?” The bartender seemed genuinely interested in my story now.

“Still up and about, looking, searching, you know the drill,” I replied. Hey, the bottle’s empty - I discovered that I just finished my beer, and began staring at the bottle in my hands, aimlessly.

“Another?” I wasn’t too sure if that was the bartender or me, but either way, another bottle of Heineken soon materialised in my hand.

“Ooh, and did I tell you that I just got laid-off?”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Well, now I did.” Gulp.

“Ouch. I feel for you.”

“It’s probably for the better anyway, I hated that place.” Another gulp.

“What did you do for a living?”

“You won’t believe this - I get paid to annoy people over the phone.” I held the beer bottle to the side of my face. “Hello, good afternoon, would you like to be mindfucked? And the pay was kinda good too.” And another.

“Really? Then why did you get the boot?” he asked while attending to some glasses that needed cleaning.

“Wait, lemme think for a sec.” Gulp, gulp, gulp, then as if by magic, I remembered. “Oh yeah! It’s ‘cause I worked for my wife, and now that my wife’s not around, I don’t need the job! Nice logic, huh?”

“Well, if it’s any consolation, I used to be married, too, until the bitch took my kids and ran to Toronto with a slant-eyed asshole. I’m still waiting for a court order on that.”

“No kidding, eh?”

“Nope. Women can make or break you, but usually it’s the latter. Maybe you got lucky and learned the lesson earlier in life.”

“Nah, not Mona. She’s so wonderful, like an angel.” For a brief moment, the image of my wife appeared before my eyes, complete with a robe, wings, and a halo. “So very pretty,” I continued, reaching out in a vain attempt to touch the illusion as it floated out of my consciousness.

“Must be one heck of a broad.”

“Yessirree.” I took out my wallet, accidentally knocking the Budweiser bottle over (“Whoops”), and showed him a photo that we took during our honeymoon in Hawaii. “Check her out, the most beautifulest creature on the planet,” I boasted, beaming with pride. The bartender took a look at the picture and, captivated by what he saw, squinted his eyes somewhat and brought the photo closer to his face. I flipped my wallet close. “Looky looky no touchy,” I warned, still grinning.

“No wait, I think I’ve seen her before.” He gestured towards my wallet.

“Seen who? Mr. Lincoln? Mr. Jackson? Or our dear and helpful friend, Mr. Benjamin Franklin?” I asked jokingly, referring to the people who lived in my wallet. I showed him the picture again, and he began poring over it like a photographer in a dark room.

“I know this girl!” the bartender exclaimed.

“What?” I was knocked out of my drunken stupor, suddenly alert and sensible again, with a mini-hangover banging on my skull.

“Yeah, she used to work here.”

“That can’t be right, she was always home, she said -” I spoke faster than I could think, “How could she? Hey, you’d better not be pulling my dick on this one.”

“She quit for about two or three weeks now. Hell, I’d be boxing now if we weren’t still looking for someone to fill her shift. She worked from ten to four, by the way. Always came in and left on time, funny girl. But she’s really sweet though - Surprised me at first ‘cause I thought all the hot ones in Phobos were sluts. No offence.”

Confusion and shock came waltzing in without knocking first, as usual. “How long was she - No, when did she first start working here?”

“Not very long. Since September, I think,” the bartender replied. Then, counting the dates on a calendar made out of air, he confirmed, “Come to think of it, some the week after Patriot Day, to be exact.”

Mona had (could have?) been working in this bar for two months and I never was the wiser - It sure told me a lot about the trust in our marriage. “Okay, now, what’s more important is this: Do you have any idea where she is now? Did she tell you anything, when she left?”

“She didn’t tell me personally, but I heard that she took this job offer at VM.”

“VM?”

“You never heard of it? Valles Marineris, the new nightclub in Collins. Get out more often; you’ve still got young blood running in you.”

“I’ll definitely check that place out now.” I finished whatever’s left of my Heineken in one drink. “This is too coincidental to be true. Am I dreaming or hallucinating? Am I still drunk and this is all an illusion? Can you pinch me?”

The bartender gave a backhanded slap across my face, helpfully, causing me to yelp in pain. Then I thanked him as I rubbed my throbbing cheek.

“My pleasure.”

A wake-up call may be fine and dandy, but I still wanted a final confirmation before going on a wild goose chase. “Are you perfectly sure that you’re talking about the right person here?”

“Can’t be any more perfect. None of our usual customers could forget her, if you don’t mind me saying. If you want to,” the bartender paused, then took a look around the bar for a moment before snapping his fingers several times. “Hey, Tony!”

Tony took a break from his conversation and looked towards the bar. “Yeah?”

“You remember that hot Italian chick that used to work the bar at this time of the day?”

“What, you mean Alyssa?”

“Yeah, yeah, Alyssa. This guy here says that she’s his wife.”

“What, you?” Tony said as he eyed me, doubtfully. “Then you’re one lucky bastard, that much I can say to ya.”

“That’s all, Tony.”

“Sure, no problem.” Tony never went back to his original conversation. Instead, the topic of discussion seemed to have changed to theorising on how I could’ve gotten Mona to fall in love with me.

Only then did it hit me. “Hey, bartender, are you saying that the girl in the picture, Alyssa, used to work here?”

“Wasn’t that what we were talking about since your third bottle?”

“My wife’s name isn’t Alyssa - That's her sister’s.”