Talking for a Living

The alarm went off at six and Carl turned it off before it finished its first ring because he had learned, over forty-seven years of living, that the first ring is the only one that matters and the rest are just habits that the machine repeats because nobody has taught it otherwise.

He lay in bed for three minutes. Three minutes is how long it takes to decide whether to get up or not. In three minutes, you can think about the day and the week and the month and the year and arrive at a decision. Carl's decision was always the same: get up. Not because he wanted to. Because the alternative was lying in bed and thinking about the things he wasn't doing, and that was a form of suffering that he had tried once and found inefficient.

The motel room was small. A bed, a desk, a chair, a mini-fridge with a vending machine logo on it that he had never bothered to investigate. The AC unit on the wall was making a sound like a dying engine. He had reported it to the front desk three nights ago. The front desk had said they would send someone. No one had come. He had stopped expecting anyone to come.

He showered in the bathroom with the shower curtain that had a tear in it. The tear was about six inches long and ran diagonally from the middle of the curtain toward the bottom corner. Water went through the tear and onto the floor and the floor went into the hallway and nobody complained because nobody in this part of Kansas wanted to complain about anything to anyone.

He ordered breakfast from the vending machine. Eggs and cheese, four dollars and fifty cents. The machine dispensed them into a paper plate with one corner burned. He ate at the motel table, watching the parking lot. A truck pulled in. A man got out. He went into the office, paid for a room. The man looked like Carl. Not physically. The way you look when you've been awake too long and your face has forgotten how to be anything other than neutral.

His phone buzzed. Three emails. One from a client in Columbus about sugar labeling. One from a client in Atlanta about casino advertising. One from Deborah: "Mia has a parent-teacher conference Thursday. Can you make it?"

He typed: "I'll try."

He didn't send it. He left it in the draft folder. He picked up his bag and went to the car.

The drive to Columbus took four hours. He listened to a podcast about a murder in Ohio. He did not think about the murder. He thought about the sentence he had written for the sugar client last week: "The American Sugar Association believes in informed consumer choice." He had written that sentence forty-six times in various forms over twelve years. He did not think about it as he typed it. He thought about other things. He thought about the AC unit in room 214. He thought about the tear in the shower curtain. He thought about the way the vending machine burned the corner of the plate every time.

The sugar client meeting was in a conference room with a view of a parking lot. Paula from compliance sat across from him. She had been doing this longer than he had and had the particular weariness that comes from knowing exactly how things work and not being able to change them.

"The FDA wants a warning label," she said.

"We don't want a warning label."

"We want a disclaimer."

"Disclaimer it is."

He wrote a disclaimer. Seven sentences. The first said the association believes in informed consumer choice. The second said moderation is key to a healthy lifestyle. The third said sugar is a natural product found in thousands of foods. He had written the third sentence forty-seven times in various forms. He did not think about it as he typed it.

"You sound tired, Carl," Paula said.

"I am."

"You should go home sometime."

"I go home."

She laughed. It was not a mean laugh. It was the laugh of someone who recognizes a shared condition. He packed his bag and left. The drive back took four hours. He listened to the same podcast again, from the beginning, because he had not paid attention the first time and the murder was interesting in a way that was nothing like the murders in real life, which are never interesting and never interesting to think about and always, always happen to someone you know.

Thursday came. The parent-teacher conference was at four. His flight from Columbus to Topeka was at three-fifteen. He could have made it. He knew he could have made it. He watched his phone from two-thirty to four-thirty and did not move.

Deborah did not call. That was the thing. She did not call. She never called about these things anymore. Six months ago, maybe a year, she would have called. She would have said: "Carl, the conference is today." And he would have said: "I'm sorry, I'm stuck in Atlanta" or "I'm stuck in Columbus" or "I'm stuck in a motel room on Route 50 and the AC unit sounds like a dying engine and I don't know what to do about any of this." But she didn't call. She had stopped calling. The stopping had been gradual, the way things stop in real life—not a single moment of decision but a thousand small moments of not-deciding, each one adding up to a decision that was never made but was made anyway.

That night, he called home from the motel. She answered on the second ring.

"Did you go?"

"No."

"I know."

A pause.

"How'd it go?"

"Mia's teacher says she's smart. She says she's distracted."

"Distracted by what?"

"She didn't say."

Another pause. Longer. Carl stood in the motel kitchenette, holding the phone, looking at the microwave.

"I'm not gonna ask you to come to more of these," Deborah said. "I just wanted you to know."

"Deb, I—"

"I know what you do, Carl. I've always known what you do. I just didn't think it mattered because you came home every night. But it matters. She knows. Mia knows. And she's sixteen. And she's smart. And she's tired of pretending that what you do doesn't follow you through the front door."

She hung up.

He stood in the kitchenette. The microwave clock read 11:47 PM. He put the phone down. He opened the microwave door and took out a glass of water he had put in there earlier and never drank. He drank it. It was room temperature. He went to the motel room. He sat at the desk. He opened his laptop. He had a new email from a client in Las Vegas—casino industry, asking about responsible gambling language. He opened a new document. He began to type.

"At the Nevada Gaming Alliance, we believe in—"

He stopped. He deleted it.

"Responsible gaming is a shared commitment—"

He deleted it.

"The Nevada Gaming Alliance recognizes that—"

He stopped. He closed the laptop. He sat in the dark motel room. The AC unit made its dying-engine sound. He thought about the sentence he had written for Paula in Columbus. The one about natural products. He had written that sentence forty-seven times. He was forty-seven years old. The coincidence was either a joke or a pattern. He didn't know which was worse.

Morning came. He packed his bag. The bag was small—a duffel that had been everywhere and said it without trying. He checked out. The clerk at the front desk did not look up. He got in the car. He got on I-70. He drove east. There was a client in Denver who needed help with a fracking disclosure statement. The email was waiting for him when he got to Kansas City. He read it. He opened a document. He began to type.

"Fracking is a proven technology that has—"

He kept typing. The sun was up. The sky was wide and empty in the way that only the Midwest knows how to be. He typed. He drove. He existed. The sentence continued.

Author Note & Copyright: